Seattle

A Room With a View

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My new apartment
On Thanksgiving I finally moved into a new apartment. I’d been living at my old place for over two years (since I graduated and moved to Seattle in May, 2003), and it felt like time to move.

Funny thing about my family and moving: Notwithstanding the fact I moved from Minnesota to Washington, when people in my family move, we tend not to move very far. I vaguely recall that when my dad was a boy, his family once moved just a few houses down the street. Likewise, when I was a kid and we moved, the new house was less than a mile away from the old house. Now, my new apartment is about three blocks from my old one.

Despite the fact that there may be genetic factors playing into my decision to stay within the Pike/Pine corridor area, location was my #1 criterion for moving. I love the area I live in now (close to bars, close to downtown, close to the bus lines, etc.), so that is hopefully a valid reason for not moving very far as well.

As for the new place, the view is, hands-down, the best part. My old apartment had one window that looked out at a brick wall. At my new place, there are two walls of windows. The east windows give me a view of First Hill (and if I get some binoculars, Molly‘s apartment, maybe…). To the south I can see parts of downtown as well as the Space Needle (and on a cloudless day I can see Elliott Bay and the mountains). Needless to say, the view kicks-ass, especially at night.

In addition to the awesome view, I also love the apartment for the very stylish kitchen (stainless steel stuff), the speakers in the bathroom, the ability to do laundry in my own apartment (even though it is a slow-drying Splendide Italian-made washer/dryer combo), and the cave-like loft above the kitchen where I will sleep once I get a queen-sized mattress.

The lease is for one year, so hopefully I won’t be moving again any time soon. This last move made me realize that I have a lot of stuff and that I really need to start downsizing a bit. I also want to get a much larger television. It feels strange watching movies on such a small (I think 20 inches?) screen in such a large, open space.

Site

See What I’m Working On

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Posts In Draft
I’m pretty excited and/or proud of my first WordPress plugin. (It hasn’t been officially announced or anything, but I intend to in a week or so once I’m sure I’ve got all the cool features and whatnot.) The plugin is called “Posts in Draft” and lets WordPress blog owners add information about what posts are in draft status.

I, for one, tend to be working on a bunch of posts at one time, and I thought it might be cool to give visitors to the site a little sneak-peak into what I’m writing up next. You can see the new list added below “Recent Posts” in the right-hand sidebar.

If there is any other information that you think might be interesting for the plugin or other plugin ideas, let me know and I’ll see what I can do.

Philosophy

Past Lives

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For whatever reason, the topic of past lives has come up a few times in the last couple of weeks. In order to save myself the trouble of stating my viewpoint, I’ll post it here. I may go into more details at another time.

Being an atheist, I don’t believe in God or any of that stuff, nor do I buy into the agnostic idea of souls or whatever. I wouldn’t say, however, that I strictly believe in science or whatever. My beliefs on those “big questions” are rather nebulous, to be honest, and I am still trying to figure out what I think is true.

But on the topic of past lives: I do not believe that souls are reincarnated. I think when people have hypnosis that finds past lives (or however else people determine that stuff), one of two things is happening:

  • The “past life” is really some repressed idea in the person’s unconscious psyche (yes, say hello to Jason the Freudian). To the person, it may very well be “saved” as a past life and there are ripple effects of that past live in the person’s life, but it all comes from some sort of inner psychological goings-on.
  • The “past life” is really a simultaneous existence of the person, though in another dimension. What I mean by “dimension” is rather vague. Do I mean another universe using the Bubble Universe Theory? Or do I mean another dimension as in a hypothetical “sixtieth dimension” where reality is shaped based on different variables and whatnot? Like I said, I’m not sure what I mean by “dimension” here, but any of the possibilities seem more likely to me than the existence of a human soul that is reincarnated.

So there you have it. Don’t be afraid, however, to ask me this in person. I just figured since it seems to be a hot topic lately, I should get my thoughts out there.

Music

Plastic Pitchfork

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Plastic Constellations on Pitchfork
Time for a shout-out to The Plastic Constellations for making it on to the front page of Pitchfork. They already made it to the track reviews for their song “We Came to Play,” but this time they are the #1 and have a picture for the track review of their song “Sancho Panza.”

I knew these guys back in high school (the drummer is my mom’s best friend’s son and we used to be really good friends, as well), so it’s great to see them doing so well.

Now if only they would do a West coast tour…

Music

Hung Up

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Madonna's 'Hung Up' single
Following Paulo’s lead, I guess it’s time to comment on the fact that I am totally loving Madonna‘s new song “Hung Up.” I’ve had the track since iTunes made it available back in mid-October.

I first heard it at the club on Halloween weekend, and I have to say that hearing it while dancing and drinking and being around people only made it better. Since then, I’ve managed to download six versions (radio edit, album version, Tracy Young‘s Get Up and Dance Groove remix, SDP [a.k.a Stuart Price]‘s extended dub), SDP’s vocal mix, “Blueyender Tech” remix). I’ve also downloaded the video.

I may even be so bold as to say that this is Madonna’s best song since “Music” or “Ray of Light” — mostly due to the fact that it sort of reinvents her yet again. (Although I really liked “American Music,” it wasn’t as exciting or danceable.) And for those who complain that she is just “stealing” from ABBA — it’s called sampling and had I listened to “Gimme Gimme Gimme” before hearing “Hung Up,” I wouldn’t have been very impressed. Now, however, I think the song is kind of cool, and the part that Madonna sampled is even more exciting in the ABBA original.

I like the song so much, even, that I used some of the lyrics during a philosophical conversation last night. My friend was talking about how all these goals she has and that she just wants to have them right away and I said it sounded like she spend most of her life waiting for the future. Then I said, “Time goes by so slowly for those who wait.” How obnoxious is that???

Nonetheless, I cannot wait for Confessions from the Dancefloor next week. Here’s hoping the album is as good as the lead single.

Books

100 Best Novels

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Thanks to Restless Reader (i.e. Molly), I found Time Magazine’s All-Time 100 Best Novels (published after 1923).

Of the 100, I have read 17… not too bad, but not great either. But then again, these lists are sorta silly and whatnot anyway. I have read:

  • Animal Farm
  • Beloved
  • The Blind Assassin
  • The Catcher in the Rye
  • The Corrections
  • The Crying of Lot 49
  • Gravity’s Rainbow
  • The Great Gatsby
  • The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe
  • Lord of the Flies
  • Mrs. Dalloway
  • Neuromancer
  • One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
  • Slaughterhouse-Five
  • Things Fall Apart
  • To Kill a Mockingbird
  • White Noise

I am surprised to see that two Thomas Pynchon books (Gravity’s Rainbow and The Crying of Lot 49) were on the list. Gravity’s Rainbow is a great read, but it’s also one of the most difficult books I’ve ever read and not very accessible. Does that make it one of the best books? I’m not sure.

I cannot think of any books that I would add to the list. My favorite book, Glamorama by Bret Easton Ellis is hardly a “best” book — I love it because it’s a fun read more than anything else.

Nonetheless, these lists are always fun and it’s neat to compare what I’ve read compared with what I “should” read in order to consider myself a well-read person. I will say, there are a few books I’m embarrassed that I haven’t read: Catch-22 (which I own but haven’t read), Infinite Jest (which I own and have started reading twice but have given up both times), Invisible Man, Lolita (which, again, I own, but haven’t read), 1984 (which I always forget that I need to read), and Tropic if Cancer. Now I have ideas for next time I need books!

Movie Reviews

Doesn’t She Look a Lot Like…

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Julia Roberts in Ocean's 12
I won’t say much about Ocean’s 12, mostly because there isn’t much to say. The film is fun and has a bunch of twists at the end that make you go, “Oooohhh,” but for the most part the film is just a basic action/suspense movie. (Though, to be fair, Steven Soderbergh is a genius filmmaker and the movie has a lot of interesting intertextual moments that make it more intriguing then your basic mainstream blockbuster.)

My favorite part of the movie, and the only part that necessitates a post from me, is the scene where Julia Roberts, playing the character Tess, “plays” Julia Roberts in order to get into an art museum. She runs into Bruce Willis, “playing” Bruce Willis, and ultimately her cover is blown.

I just have to say that the idea of an actor playing a character playing that actor is totally awesome. It’s a perfect example of redoubling and, if you want to get really deep, brings the question of identity into the light. Are we really ourselves or are we ourselves playing an idea of ourselves? It’s a total circular question, and no, Ocean’s 12 doesn’t really address this as much as I suggest, but nonetheless, it’s fun to see Julia Roberts doing something sorta unconventional/artsy.

Books, Humor

From Our Youth

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And now today’s For They Know Not What They Do quote of the day from Slavoj Zizek:

We all remember from our youth the sublime dialectical materialist formulas of the “subjective mirroring-reflection of the objective reality”; (15)

Ahhh yes. Our youth and that silly sublime dialectical materialist formulas! How can I forget!

Movie Reviews, Philosophy

Gothic Machinist

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Christian Bale in The Machinist
(I had started writing this post literally months ago but sorta gave up so this is a super simplified version…)

Ever since taking a “Gothic American Literature” course in college, the idea of the uncanny has been one of my favorite literary themes. The idea comes from Sigmund Freud’s essay “The Uncanny.” The best way I can summarize the idea of the uncanny is: the familiar becomes unfamiliar. For example, you look into a mirror and you don’t immediately recognize it as yourself.

Another one of my favorite literary themes is the physical manifestation of psychological phenomenon. This is nothing unique or special, I realize, but I love it nonetheless for two reasons: I tend to think that a lot of illness is somewhat psychosomatic, or, at the very least, affected by your mental/emotional state (i.e. if you are feeling sad about something, you may be more susceptible to a cold or something like that); and since I view truth as a subjective matter, of course I would believe that a person’s psychological state could somehow manifest itself in their notion of reality.

All that said, I loved that The Machinist combined these two elements.

Without giving too much of the movie away, I’ll just say that understanding the idea of uncanniness and physical manifestations are key to this film. Or, rather, they make it much more rewarding. Christian Bale’s character has a mysterious past which is manifested in paranoia and insomnia (which indirectly results in the extreme thinness that, more than anything, got lots of publicity for the movie).

I liked The Machinist as a psychological study. The twist at the end isn’t much of a twist (or wasn’t for me, at least), but this is one of those movies where the ending matters less than everything that comes before it.

News, Politics

“Nexus of Politics and Terror”

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It was great to see that Countdown with Keith Olberman had a segment called “The Nexus of Politics and Terror” tonight that went over 10 (though they have 13 on the web site) situations where bad news about the Bush administration was followed by a change in the terror alert.

I realize that Olberman isn’t the first to make this connection (JuliusBlog‘s “Timeline of Terror Alerts” is the most cited, though I prefer his chart showing Bush’s approval ratings and terror alerts), but Olberman’s show appeared on a major cable news network (MSNBC), which makes it more likely to be seen by the masses.

I know that one could make the argument that all of this is just a matter of coincidence and that correlation does not imply causation, but it does raise the question: Is the Bush administration using terror level alerts to distract the public? As Olberman joked, if someone felt so inclined it would probably be possible to create a list connecting Wal-Mart openings with terror alerts, but with those two items there is no relation (well…) — but the terror alerts do help the Bush administration and make people convinced that they are actually doing something and that they should still be afraid.

I, for one, am convinced that there is something sneaky going on.