Lost Speculations and Observations, February Edition

The biggest, most global, farthest-reaching conflict on Lost continues to be Ben Linus vs. Charles Widmore, but as I commented last month, don't be fooled into thinking this is a conflict of good versus evil, of right versus wrong, of selflessness versus malice. It's an interpersonal conflict, plain and simple. So much has been invested into this conflict, in fact, that it would be a copout to make either Widmore or Ben the "good guy" and the other the "bad guy". A mystery that eventually resolves into black and white is a lot less interesting than one that retains gray even after the big reveal. It's a lot like Harry Potter; for Snape to have been either a good guy or a bad guy would have been irresponsible storytelling. And I think that Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse are even better storytellers than JK Rowling.

"The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham" finally gave us a little more backstory regarding Ben and Widmore, and it was much of what I and others theorized anyway. At some point in the past, Ben and Widmore got into some dispute, likely over the leadership of the Others. I can see this happening immediately post-Purge: Richard convinces Ben that Dharma is bad for the Island, so Richard and his people (including Widmore) orchestrate the Purge with the help of Ben, and possibly a few other Dharma people. Naturally, having done Richard's people a great service, Ben assumes that he should now lead them. Widmore disagrees, loses the battle, and is booted from the Island.

Brandon, one of the guys I sometimes watch with, and I came up with a good interpretation of this. Both Ben and Widmore claim that they're out for the interest of others, when all they really want is the Island for themselves. Who's actually out for the Island then? Richard Alpert, probably. As the Panchen Lama, he knows that sometimes there just needs to be a new Dalai Lama. Changing out the leadership is in fact the best thing for the Island, even though it might spawn the ill will of the likes of Widmore and Ben. Ben was, at one time, allied with Richard; once Richard sees Ben again (which he will, now that Ben's back on the Island), what will the former allies think of each other?

Does that make Richard a good guy? If you take the position of the Island, yes. But I still maintain that "good" and "bad" are completely relative on Lost, which the Others made painfully clear back in seasons 2 and 3. And what of Alpert's immortality? I think it's creative time travel. Remember what Widmore said to Locke when they spoke in Tunisia: he was amazed it had only been four days for Locke, but more than fifty years for Widmore. "And you look exactly the same." What if Alpert does the same sort of thing; flashing through time, not constantly living on the Island, but appearing where and when the Island takes him?

I mentioned last month that Widmore and Ben had essentially the same motive and goals, but different means of achieving them. That distinction has blurred a bit. There's no better example of that blur than how both talked to Locke. In fact, we heard essentially the exact same speech from both of them: "I know what I did may have looked evil, but I did it for the Island's sake, so you could be the new leader." The chess match analogy has been beaten to death in Lost, but it's the best metaphor for what's happening here. Locke is only a piece--albeit maybe an important one--in the game Ben and Widmore are playing. If there really is a war coming, like Widmore suggests, it's not a war that holds the fate of the world at stake. It's one that holds nothing at stake except the fate of the Island, and whose hands it falls into. It's a voluntary war of Ben and Widmore's making--and both are courting John to be their general in the war, or their king in the chess match.

Of course, plenty has been happening completely unrelated to Ben and Widmore, which is what makes Lost such a great show. The smoke monster has had a nice couple of episodes, during which we finally see the gruesome fate of Montand's arm. We've been promised that every time we see Smokey, we learn more about it. In "This Place is Death", we see its lair--presumably the Temple. The hieroglyph motif suggests it's from the same ancient era of construction as the door in Ben's house and the Frozen Donkey Wheel. It's doubtful that Dharma knew anything more about it than we do, because they designed the sonic fence to contain it. Perhaps that knowledge is one of the perks of leading the Others, because Ben sure seems to know a lot about it.

Exactly what the smoke monster is, and its relation to the Island, is very much the provenance of Season 6. But we've already gotten a few clues. Apparently, the Wheel's hieroglyphs have to do with resurrection. Certainly the characters who are associated with the Wheel have some manner of resurrection associated with them too--Christian Shepherd, and now John Locke. In addition, the monster was known at least by some as Cerberus, the mythical guardian of the underworld. That name is not accidental. I think we'll eventually come to find out--though not for a very long time--that Cerberus, the Wheel, and the Temple are all related to the underworld and the journey from death to resurrection. Remember what book Ben was reading the moment Ajira 316 crashed on the Island? Ulysses, by James Joyce. Ulysses is of course the Roman name for Odysseus, a man whose years of travel took him to the underworld among other places.

Does that mean Locke is resurrected? Undoubtedly he is in a manner of speaking, but I have huge reservations about calling him "alive". Recall the terminology applied to Yemi and Christian: "undead". Both people were dead beyond a shadow of a doubt, brought to the Island, and have been known to walk around again. That's the same boat Locke is finding himself in now. While dead is dead on Lost, dead might also be undead, if the Island finds it necessary.

I fully expect that Desmond will have to return to the Island to bring Penny back to life. Desmond and Penny are the Odysseus and, well, Penelope analogs in this story. It seems likely that Ben's "errand" was killing Penny like he promised Widmore he'd do. Desmond is probably not taking too kindly to this. Hawking's prophecy that the Island isn't done with Desmond is going to come into play when Desmond realizes the only way to get Penny back--if only as an "undead"--is to go to the Island.

Speaking of Ben and Penny, remember the reason that Ben vowed to kill Penny? It's because Widmore's men killed Ben's "daughter". Alex was of course not actually Ben's daughter. But Ben sure got indignant when Kate suggested that her not-son Aaron was her own. Maybe that explains Ben's lack of compassion for Kate's assumed child, because Ben's own assumed child got such a horrendous death.

It's far too early to begin speculating about our new castaways Caesar and Illana, except that they know each other. Also, they probably know far more about what's going on than they're telling, and in true Lost fashion, they probably have mysterious connections to everyone else we know. That's certainly true for Sayid, who was handcuffed and led aboard Ajira 316 by Illana.

I could move on and talk about event windows, or Daniel and Charlotte, or Matthew Abaddon's untimely demise, but instead I'll mention the only gripe I have with Season 5 so far. I don't care about the Oceanic Six. Sun had huge potential when she made her alliance with Widmore, but one work from Ben about Jin, and that all went down the drain. Sayid has been mildly interesting, because let's face it: you can't say no to a gun-toting Iraqi assassin. Hurley has been borderline at best. I've never really been that interested in Jack, I'm even less interested in Kate, and I couldn't be less interested in Aaron. He's a plot device, not a character, and given that he's being fought over by the two least interesting real characters, that whole plotline is a snooze.

Finally, two questions for the audience. First, we know of at least three characters on the show named Charlie or Charles: Charles Widmore, Charlie Pace, and now Desmond's son Charlie. Are there any other pairs or groups of characters who have the same name?

Second, what would be a good title for the last episode of the series? I saw that as a poll on a website, and all the choices it suggested sort of sucked. I'm a fan of "See You in Another Life", but I'd like to hear some more opinions too.


Currently listening: "I Am the Walrus", the Beatles

The DTV Transition

I was a little wary of the government telling private television companies how they were allowed to broadcast their signals, but I got over that. Mostly I got over that when I got a HDTV, and I saw just how good the picture quality was. Then, I was a little upset that everyone had gotten worked up over this transition, just to have it pushed back by four months. Honestly, if you'd made it to February 2009 without knowing that the transition was impending, it probably didn't matter to you anyway. Seriously, I'm not sure how you could have missed it unless you didn't own a television at all.

I've mostly gotten over that, too. Except that the delay means I have to keep hearing about it for the next four months now. Here's the kicker: CBS interrupts my HD feed, changing back to a crappy analog signal, to bring me the message that I'm going to need to support digital television in four months. If the broadcast is smart enough to give me less-than-HD for three minutes, surely it's smart enough to know that I already have HD in the first place?


Currently listening: First Suite for Military Band in E-Flat, Holst

Information Security and xkcd

I've been saying for years that information security is one of the most over-emphasized and overblown "issues" around today. It's as if the second someone realized "hey, maybe some dishonest person out there might try and steal my information", without any provocation, an entire industry was born out of paranoia.

In playing devil's advocate, even I'm not prepared to say "just because it's out there doesn't mean someone will want to steal it." I think if it's out there, someone eventually will try and steal it. But what I certainly am prepared to say is "just because it's out there doesn't mean it's worth stealing." Apparently today's xkcd agrees with me (read the comic, then look at the alt-text).

The truth is that very few of our secrets are worth stealing. Financial information is probably the one exception for the individual; corporations and governments do of course have secrets that might be worth stealing. A personal email address, though? If you're going to take the time to guess my gmail password, then by all means read my dictionary.com "Word of the Day" emails and Facebook notifications.

The good folks at Google realize this and therefore do not make its users change their passwords if they don't want to. It's a very laissez-faire approach to information security: let the individual apply exactly as much security to his information as he thinks is necessary. It's one that colleges would to well to emulate.

Georgia Tech's policy involves changing your password once every few months, with a mandated arcane combination of different "character classes" (ie, upper-case letters, lower-case letters, numbers, and symbols). But that's where the restrictions end. If I wanted to make my password "abc123!", I certainly could. It's essentially a middle-of-the-road approach, comparable to most corporate systems. And honestly, my password getting hacked could lead to some untoward things going on, including my unwitting withdrawal from school. The one issue I have with the system is that it presumes my password is not good enough the first time around, and I have to keep trying to improve it.

The Georgia Tech School of Mathematics (where I'm currently employed) makes the Institute policy look lax by comparison. In addition to the aforementioned restrictions, the Math password cannot start or end with certain characters, it cannot repeat the same character too many times, and it cannot "resemble a dictionary word" too closely. After a few rounds of my usual passwords getting rejected, I resorted to video game characters, of course augmented with different character classes.

I don't know what dictionary this system is drawing from, but if "Akatosh" really resembles a dictionary word, my vocabulary obviously isn't as strong as I'd like to think it is.

And what would guessing or hacking this password get for you? Emails about Friday bagel breakfasts with Math grad students and access to a handful of computers that I didn't even know existed until I started working for the department.


Currently listening: "A Day in the Life", Mae (covering the Beatles)

Lost Speculations and Observations, January Edition

This will probably evolve into a monthly thing, at least through the end of Season 5, so my heartfelt apologies go out to those of you who couldn't care less about (the best show on) TV.

A double-feature premiere and the most mythologically intense episode since "The Constant" later, and Lost has already hit its stride for the penultimate season. We've come a long way from wondering how these people eat and stay warm; once-intense conflicts like Jin and Michael's now seem petty. We saw a lot of exposition in "Because You Left", and a lot of nice Hurley moments in "The Lie", but it was "Jughead" that really got the theorizing taking off.

It was a divisive episode, to be sure. I think any individual's response to "Jughead" shows exactly what that fan is interested in from the show. If you want Jack and Kate and romance and character drama, then "Jughead" certainly was not the episode for you. For those of us who love nothing more than to dig into a little Richard Alpert speculation, "Jughead" was phenomenal. What did we learn?

We know that the original inhabitants/Richard's people/the Hostiles/the Others (for simplicity's sake, "the Others") were established on the Island at least since the 1950s--and potentially much longer than that. That also means that the Others' claim to have been the Island's original inhabitants is true, at least relative to the Dharma Initiative.

We know that the Others use Latin as a sort of lingua franca (a "lingua alia"?) since the 1950's, and potentially much longer than that. There are plenty of interesting things about this. First, all the Others we've seen speak English seemingly as a first language, with the exception of the Rasputin-esque (and known Ben Linus recruit, rather than former Hostile) Mikhail Bakunin. So it seems that Latin was not a lingua franca after all, but a code language to hide their conversations. Presuming the Others have been isolated on the Island for a long time, why the need to hide conversations?

Second, Juliet specifically mentions Latin as the language of the Enlightenment. That's not significant in and of itself, but I can name at least four characters off the top of my head who were named after Enlightenment prominents--John Locke, Desmond Hume, Danielle Rousseau, and Anthony Cooper.

Third, and most interesting to me as someone who's studied a bit of Latin, is the form of the language they speak. They're speaking Classical Latin, the language spoken by the Romans during the Republic and Empire. That's as opposed to Ecclesiastical Latin, the language spoken by the Church during the Middle Ages. Most scholars agree that it was a vulgarization of the Classical form; it was later vulgarized even further into what was spoken by the scientific and philosophical elites of the Enlightenment.

While obviously neither language has had native speakers for centuries, the Ecclesiastical version at least still enjoys some official use from the Vatican and others. Classical hasn't had any purpose outside of high school foreign language classrooms for a millennium. Given that the Others speak arguably the more obscure form of the language--and certainly not the one spoken in the Enlightenment--we may have a clue as to how long the Others have really been there.

We know that good old Ricardus Alpert has been in an authority position (the Panchen Lama, if you will) in the Others, and that Jacob has been at the top of the Others' command structure, for at least fifty years, and again possibly a lot longer. Furthermore, we know that rank-and-file Others like Juliet either don't know how old Richard really is, or they have some idea but consider that knowledge such a liability that they're unwilling to share that knowledge with their friends.

We know the reason Alpert visited Locke during Locke's childhood was that Locke told him to visit. Furthermore, the reason Alpert expected Locke to recognize that the compass already belonged to him was that Alpert had already seen Locke, as an adult, with the compass.

And of course, we know that the reason Charles Widmore knows about the Island is that he used to be on it, as an Other. Talk about a jaw-dropper.

In other parts of the world, we know that "Faraday's mother" lives in Los Angeles, conveniently the same place that Ms. Hawking lives. And we know that Faraday was doing some downright sketchy research, funded by Widmore, and probably resulting in poor Theresa losing her mind.

Now, for the speculation. First, I don't believe Richard Alpert is a bad guy. True, he sees the Island as his own domain. But I believe he has a better claim to that then either Ben or Widmore. And true, he goes to extreme lengths to defend the Island, but I see that as more "what Richard sees as necessary" than "Richard likes to kill people."

It seems likely that Widmore and Ben met on the Island at some point probably near the time of the Purge. The two must have come into conflict, a conflict that resulted in Widmore's expulsion from the Island. To this day, Widmore 1) holds Ben personally responsible for the expulsion, explaining his hostility towards Ben and Ben's people, and 2) had expended countless resources trying to find the Island again. Obviously the Freighter was his most recent attempt, and it only succeeded because the electromagnetic anomaly at the Swan had been neutralized when Desmond turned the failsafe. More and more, I'm convinced that Libby's boat race around the world, the real Henry Gale's balloon, and possibly even Rousseau's "science expedition" were previous efforts of Widmore's to find the Island again.

What was the source of this expulsion? How's this for conspiracy theory: Widmore was forced, for some reason, to turn the Frozen Donkey Wheel?

A lot of people have speculated to whether Ben or Widmore is the real "bad guy" on the Island, and my answer is that both of them are. A theme of Lost, ever since the beginning, has been "good people" versus "bad people"--not "good versus evil" or "right versus wrong". That's important because "good" and "bad" are a lot more relative. To Widmore, Ben's people are the "bad" ones, and vice versa. Both Ben and Widmore are quite evil, wanting the Island for their own personal gain, and stopping at nothing, not even killing people, to get it.

The only thing different about them is the way they go about it. Widmore, in classic "supervillian" style, keeps expensive scotch by his bedside, had a windowed office in London, and has a seemingly endless supply of thugs and resources to get at the Island. He doesn't disguise the fact that he wants it for personal gain because he doesn't need to. Ben, on the other hand, is much more devious. He lies and manipulates people into thinking that he has the good of the Island in mind, but in truth all he wants is the Island for himself.

How about Faraday? It's intuitive at this point that Hawking is Faraday's mother, but what other possible relations are out there? I think cute little gun-toting Ellie is a good candidate for being the same person as Hawking/Faraday's mother--that's why Faraday thought she looked familiar. (We know from casting lists that Hawking's first name is Eloise, which is even stronger evidence.) And I think that Widmore might even be a good candidate for Faraday's father... but no word on why Ellie would be working against her former lover.

And what of Theresa? We know she was involved in Faraday's research somehow. My idea is that she was the natural next step from Eloise (the rat, not Faraday's likely mother), and that Faraday tried to send her mind back in time, with disastrous results. She had the same progression of symptoms that Charlotte is having now, explaining why Faraday is so concerned about Charlotte now. Faraday's attraction to Charlotte is probably tangled with his feelings for Theresa too.

Now all we need is a little Matthew Abaddon to really get the rumor mill turning.


Currently listening: "Slow Cheetah", Red Hot Chili Peppers (from Stadium Arcadium)

Reviews of EPs from Last Year, Part II

Review: Always the Bridesmaid EPs, the Decemberists

In this curious arrangement of three EPs of two songs each, we have the latest efforts from the Decemberists. Why the obtuse order of release? Tough to know; a single EP of six songs might be more conventional. But then, the Decemberists were never known for convention. Recall their first album, a six-song EP called 5 Songs. As if that makes any sense.

I mention 5 Songs specifically because in some strange way, Always the Bridesmaid hearkens back to the earlier EP. Personal, mostly heartfelt songs about relationships, mostly gone sour. Ill-gotten souvenirs. Raincoats that only make it rain more. Lapses from drinking. Something fouled up so badly that it recalls the fall of the Roman Empire. One of the first descriptions I heard of the Decemberists was something about their "over-the-top grandiloquence", and it seems to have returned--or at least changed form to look more like its old self--on this EP.

The worst song, by far, is "I'm Sticking With You". The Decemberists ought to have learned long ago that songs that repeat the same phrase over and over again for their entirety are not their best.

But it's made more than okay by "Valerie Plame", by far the best song on the EP. It's like "The Bagman's Gambit" from Picaresque recast from the Cold War to the War on Terror. This song has just about everything going for it. First, and most saliently for me, we all know the Decemberists have some expressed political leanings. Very, very rarely do I think that's an appropriate matter for music--leave it to the angry talking heads and op-ed writers. Despite writing a song about a current event that sparked a good deal of outrage and controversy, the Decemberists never make the song overtly political, mostly because it's only tangentially about the controversy anyway. I hope they realize that their song is that much stronger for it.

Of course, it also includes a catchy chorus. A horn line that, like the subject matter, reminds us of Picaresque. A much lighter mood than "The Bagman's Gambit", as if to poke fun at the guy in the song rather than build up drama around him.

All in all, this is a decent collection of songs. It works well for fans of the band who've had a two year drought of new music; even though you won't really feel like you've heard anything new, that's sort of okay. At the very least, maybe it'll remind you why you loved the Decemberists in the first place.


Currently listening: Day and Age, the Killers

Reviews of EPs from Last Year, Part I

Review: Stages EP, Vedera

Imagine if two of my favorite bands in the world, Eisley and Mae, got together and had a little music-baby. They named their progeny "Vedera", and she looked promising since the day she was born. Quickly, though, she entered her "angsty 14 year old" phase. She started hanging out with that slightly-off twenty-something down the street, Evanescence, and her friends. In her rebellion, she makes it clear that she wants to be called "Veda" now. And little baby Vedera/Veda, clearly not such a baby anymore, started throwing around phrases like The Weight of an Empty Room. It's not bad, not by a long shot, but everyone who's close to her can't help but wonder where she's going now that she's made her statement.

Never fear, Mommy Eisley and Daddy Mae. Vedera is back to listening to what you have to say. She's outgrown her rebellion and become a fine young lady. Now, she's more precocious than rebellious. She's more introspective than angry. She has a bit darker outlook than either of her parents; she's more fragile. But her melodies are as beautifully crafted as any of her mom's, and her dad would be proud of the way she uses tonal changes to create mood changes and integrates some theory and progression into her chords.

The result is a splendid, though short, EP. No collection of three songs has ever made me happier. Like lead singer Kristen May's voice might suggest, these songs weave together a tension between apprehension and resolve, between nostalgia for the past and trepidation about the future. Consciously or not, Vedera channels Death Cab ("you're the only song I hear") and Jimmy Eat World ("the middle") and even old Vedera (the chorus to "Satisfy").

You'll wish desperately that there were more than three songs here, that we could see a few more of Vedera's perspectives, that we could see if any of those contrasts ever resolve themselves. May's voice has come a long way in terms of range, and she's willing to put more vocal experiments on the line than Eisley ever was, but it seems that she still has a little growing up to do. Perhaps that's what we'll get on the next full-length album, and that's something to look forward to very much.


Currently listening: Always the Bridesmaid EPs, The Decemberists (review to follow)

2008 in Superlatives

It's in vogue, of course, to bring in the New Year with superlatives of 2008. Most (whatever) Politician, the perennial favorite Most (whatever) Political Scandal, and new for 2008, the Most Historic Political (whatever). Politics are, of course, not the domain of Isoceleria, so I've come up with some some superlatives of my own that are more comfortable in the "marginal relevance" landscape.

Most Strike-Proof TV Show: Lost

The disastrous 2008 Writer's Strike left television as we know it in total disarray. Some of TV's best shows (eg, House) decided to push through it and run the episodes they'd planned on anyway. That left us anachronistically watching the Christmas episode in late January, and not really remembering who these roomful of fellowship candidates were in the first place. Some others (eg, Battlestar Galactica) just took a figurative cleaver to their seasons, with ten episodes now, ten later, and an implied Gallic shrug somewhere in the middle. Still others, like 24, washed their hands of 2008 completely, choosing instead to focus on the 2009 season. (It might have been odd to call it 11 for a season anyway.)

Not Lost, though. The show was coming into its fourth season with a renewed sense of purpose, with the mythical End Date only a few years off. Three seasons to introduce some more new wrinkles, kill off a few main characters, give the faithful plenty to speculate about, and finally wrap everything up. So Lost was already in a "cut the crap" mode, even before the strike hit. It was one of the few shows to make it out of the strike an even better show than before, mostly because the "streamline" mentality was already very much a part of the show's philosophy.


The V For Vendetta Memorial Award: The Dark Knight

The V for Vendetta Memorial Award is presented annually to the most over-rated film based on an existing comic book or graphic novel. Last year, it would have gone to 300, hands down. This year, none other than The Dark Knight takes home that prestigious award.

To reiterate, The Dark Knight was not a bad movie at all. The acting was mostly overdone, whatever attempts it had at philosophizing or "commenting on the human condition" were dime-store at best, and what should have been one of the most interesting character developments (Two-Face) felt rushed. But for those faults, this movie might have been able to live up to its hype, right?

Absolutely not. I'd heard so much about how wonderful this movie was--particularly Heath Ledger's performance in it--in the weeks and months leading up to my watching it that there was literally no way it could have been as good as everyone was saying. So this V for Vendetta Memorial Award is not so much for the low quality of the movie--because it wasn't a low quality movie--but more for the downright unrealistic expectations I had after two months of Dark Knight hysteria.


Best Three-Hour Board Game: Imperial

Imperial's not a new game, I don't think, but I played it for the first time this year. In the grand German tradition, here's a board game that takes no less than three hours to play, can only be played by three or more people (of course, six is preferred), and has absolutely no element of chance, just careful planning and reacting to what the rest of the players do. It's way more fun than it ought to be, and it's one of the best ways I know of to kill a sleety Sunday.


Best Wii Party Game With Innuendo Gestures: Mario Party 8

The Mario Party games are always a lot of fun for big gatherings; they succeed mostly in that you don't have to be good at Mario Party to enjoy Mario Party. There's no competitive cult that exists with most of the popular shooters, and let's face it--it's not nearly fun enough to play as a single player game that you might want to "practice".

As with any series of games, you're going to get some (unnecessarily) impassioned arguments about which game is the best. I've only played a few of them, so I'm a poor judge of that. I can say for certainty, though, that the eighth installment is clearly the most impressive when it comes to innuendo hand gestures, mostly because it involves the use of the Wiimote. Can anyone say "Shake it Up"?


Best Contribution to My Writing: Jacqueline Snedeker, Georgia Tech School of Chemical Engineering

If you read through earlier Isoceleria entries, you might notice a tendency of mine to start sentences with "this". I was swiftly and completely broken of this habit over the semester by Ms. Snedeker, who's the closest thing to an English teacher most Tech upperclassmen will ever have. "It's ambiguous," she assured me. "You don't know what the antecedent is." Too true, Ms. Snedeker. And I did it a lot, or used to, but I quickly got a lot better at not doing it. At one point, I even challenged her to find a sentence starting with "this" anywhere in my most recent lab report, to the tune of $20 if she could find one.

I kept my Jackson squarely in my wallet.


Best Place to Pretend to Be a Hipster: Starbucks in Tech Square

Though, I'm forced to admit, that Starbucks by Lake Lucerne and Starbucks in Athens and even Starbucks in Schererville, IN are close runners-up.


Currently listening: Metro Jazz Club, Live at the Aurora Theater

Theology in the Benedict Era

It’s been a long road, Pope Benedict. I’ve been trying for exactly three years now to finish your book, Truth and Tolerance, in which you discuss (among dozens of other things) the relationship between the Christian faith, other world religions, and the philosophical concept of “truth”. And it’s been intense.

I still haven’t gotten a good answer about how to address the author of this book. When the book was written, the author was Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, the Prefect of the Congregation of the Faith. Since then, he has been elevated and elected to the papacy and is now Pope Benedict XVI. I’m leaning toward referring to the author as Cardinal Ratzinger, merely because that’s the capacity he wrote the book in.

Review, Reaction, and Discussion: Truth and Tolerance

This book is not an easy read. It would be very easy to dedicate an entire semester’s worth of study to this book, discussing how each concept Ratzinger touches on relates to his Catholic theology, the philosophical traditions of the Christian religion, and the beliefs of other historical and contemporary religions. It wouldn’t even be a stretch to base a graduate thesis on this book, and how the philosophical background of European thought has informed Ratzinger’s theology.

That’s one critical point to understanding this book: it’s obvious Ratzinger is writing very much from the European tradition. Hardly a page goes by without reference to a prior work. Those references range from Kant to virtually unknown German theologians. They range from the ancient (Plato and Aquinas) to the contemporary, and from existentialists (Sartre) to Catholic popes. Ratzinger is always very careful to construct each of his points from syllogisms derived from earlier writings and scriptural references.

That can make his writing very difficult to understand, particularly if you’re unfamiliar with the sources referenced. I have a rudimentary understanding of Kant and Plato, and I’ve at least heard of Sartre, but when Ratzinger bases an entire chapter’s worth of argument on Romano Guardini’s work, that’s another story. An hour of Wikipedia about this man later, and I feel like I can at least evaluate what Ratzinger is saying in its philosophical context. Trying to do that with every author that’s referenced would be prohibitively time-consuming… but also absolutely necessary to really grasp what’s being discussed.

Put another way, the reason it’s clear that Ratzinger is writing from the European philosophical tradition is that he won’t ever make a statement like “here’s what I believe.” It’s always “here’s what scripture and logic dictate that it’s reasonable to believe, and here’s how previous authors have described that.” That’s a very, very good thing to have in a religious leader. A papacy marked by “the Church is going to do this because I say so” is a much less effective one than one that says “the Church is going to do this because it follows from scripture, philosophy, and theology.”

There are two particularly salient points from Ratzinger’s work: first, that religious pluralism is dangerous, in part because it leads to the “indifference of the content of what is believed”. He is particularly vocal—and effective—in attacking the pluralism and relativism implied by various Eastern “Dharmic” beliefs such as Hinduism and Buddhism. He says it’s tempting to turn to a religion that doesn’t care for a worldly concept of truth. However, he argues, the more you look into these religions, the more they’re concerned with escaping the worldly concerns of truth (ie, ascending from the eternal cycles of reincarnation), and a religion predicated on escaping the world ultimately leads to an unfulfilling experience in the world.

The second point that shows up over and over again is the connection of God the creator and Supreme Being, God the source of love, and God the source of reason. Ratzinger painstakingly defends the Johannine declaration “God is love.” He explains in even more detail how Christianity, from its roots in Judaism and its translation into Greek, represented the natural union of religion and philosophy into the one system that could bring its adherents both truth and reason.

Based on those two points, this book is more effective as a defense of Christianity as a system of philosophy and a way to approach a quest for “truth” than a guidebook for Christians on how to approach truth or tolerance. Considering Ratzinger’s intellectual background and philosophical traditions, that makes perfect sense. However, the book left several questions that I would very much like to pose, should I ever get the chance to speak with the Pope.

For me, the most grievous omission from the book dealt with the relationship between Christianity and Islam. Most of the book’s material was written in the 1990s, when Islamic extremism was still an emerging threat in international geopolitics. Now that al Qaeda is a household name, many Christians—particularly American Christians—want to know what sort of relationship Christianity and Islam can have. Ratzinger only mentions Islam a handful of times in the book, at the same time acknowledging that the beliefs of Muslims are a topic that probably deserves a treatise of its own. Allah and the Christian God are the same deity in the Abrahmic tradition, but to what extent are Muslim beliefs the same as Christian ones? I’d like to know, in Ratzinger’s opinion, if Muslims hold the same view that God is supreme, God is reason, and God is love that Christians do (or ought to).

Second, to what extent do we, as Christians, have the obligation to spread the religion? We all know the Great Commission. I say the best way to do this is to lead by example: to show love and reason in all your actions. As Christians, we should never be afraid to proclaim our worship of God. And if I notice that someone I’m close to had a lack of purpose, or love, or reason, then I see it as my duty to suggest Christ as a way to get that. However—and this is probably where the Pope’s theology diverges from my own opinion—if I have a friend who’s committed to Judaism, or Hinduism, or whatever other system of belief, I have no intention of trying to dissuade that friend from that belief.

Despite these shortcomings, and Ratzinger’s tendency to argue ultra-abstractions like “what is truth?” and “does truth have a place in religion?”, this book is an invaluable insight into both what the Pope’s beliefs and how those beliefs were formed. Though plenty of critics have portrayed Benedict as far too conservative, his writings indicate that it is a deeply founded and well thought out conservatism, as opposed to a conservatism for the sake of tradition. Finally, he proves to be one of the most well-read, educated, and downright brilliant theologians of our time.


Currently listening: "Hiphopapotamus vs. Rhymenoceros", Flight of the Conchords

The 2008 Bowl Season

On ESPN.com's bowl selection show, the national audience was polled to see which college had the biggest BCS gripe: Texas, Texas Tech, or Boise State. The winner, in a landslide, was Texas. Now, I like Texas a lot. I'd consider myself at least a tangential Longhorns fan, and come September 2009, I may well be enrolled there. But I respectfully disagree that Texas had the biggest BCS gripe. They were ranked third in the BCS, and they earned a bid to the Fiesta Bowl. Seems fair to me. Whether or not they had a Big XII gripe, especially relating to how Oklahoma got a spot in the Big XII championship, is another matter entirely.

No, it's the Broncos who have the biggest BCS gripe. Their coach put it better than I could have: "we did all we can do." An undefeated season, beating a solid Oregon team and winning the conference handily. Apparently, that's not good enough to earn a BCS bid.

I think the national championship game between Florida and Oklahoma will be a fine one. Whether or not these are the two best teams in the country, they're certainly two of the best in the country, and we'll get one heck of a football game. I'm going to go with Florida for three reasons. First, they beat Georgia, not just this year, but consistently. And I can't help but support a team that does that. Second, Oklahoma's fight song is annoying--not just the song itself, but the frequency at which they play the first eight measures of it. Score, okay. First down, maybe. Missouri does an illegal shift? Sorry guys, that's not "Boomer Sooner" worthy. And third, I think Sam Bradford is a bit of a douchebag. Did you see his ten-degree hat tilt after Oklahoma beat Missouri?

I like Penn State in the Rose Bowl, mostly because I'm no fan of USC, and Texas in the Fiesta, mostly because I'm no fan of Ohio State. Either Alabama or Utah would be fine in the Sugar, and really I couldn't care less about the Orange, since Georgia Tech isn't in it.

The saying is that "my two favorite teams are Georgia Tech and whoever plays Georgia." In that case, color me a Michigan State fan. I don't know much about the team this year, mostly because they've been so thoroughly overshadowed by Penn State and Ohio State. I do know--incidentally, so does ESPN--that Georgia has had a disappointing season: giving up 40 or more points in losing all of their important games. Let's see the Spartans put up 50 in the Capital One Bowl.

Of course, Tech will take care of LSU in the Chick-fil-A Bowl. No doubt about it. Remember the last game each team played? Tech takes care of their perennial rival Georgia... and LSU loses to Arkansas.

Finally, I'd be remiss not to talk about the Playoff Question, which is a sine qua non for debating the intricacies of college football. I think it's a bad idea. Yes, it would more accurately crown a national champion, but that's all it would do. Part of the draw of the bowl season is seeing all these bizarre matchups of teams that would never, ever play each other except under the duress of corporate sponsorship. All a playoff would do is shift the focus to a handful of four or eight or sixteen elite teams for a few weeks. I don't know about anyone else, but watching USC and Oklahoma and Ohio State play three games apiece to end the season is a little anticlimactic.


Currently listening: "Bethlehem", Chicago (from What's it Gonna Be, Santa)

The Urbanspoon App, For Free

One thing I'll never get tired of is eating at interesting restaurants. We've got a lot of them in Atlanta--no shortage of whatever cuisine you might be desiring. My newfound mobility (in the form of a '99 Subaru Forester) and windfall (in the form of the remnants of a lucrative summer internship at the hands of Big Oil) combined with several good friends having the same have afforded me a lot more opportunity to quest for decent places to eat.

The biggest problem is that I'm horrible at picking restaurants.

I'm bad at making a lot of decisions, but I'm actually really good at important ones. Where to go for grad school? I'll do fine making that choice. How much to spend once you get to the restaurant? I have very good self-control. "Should we go to Target or Best Buy first?" "I don't care." "No, really, which one?" "Um, really, I can't make that decision. It doesn't matter." The lower the stakes for a decision, I think, the worse I am at making it.

Now comes the Urbanspoon app, which is possibly the most hipster phrase I've ever uttered. "Urbanspoon app". It just smacks of people who wear scarves in October but not January, who read a lot of McSweeney's and Dave Eggers, and who scorn corporate culture except for when it happens to be emblazoned with the Apple emblem. But no matter. The Urbanspoon app is pure genius.

Shake your iPhone, and it tells you where to eat dinner. It's not random, either. It's weighted toward where you are right now (via GPS) and what's gotten the best reviews on the website (via an actually legitimate use of Web 2.0). Don't like the idea? Shake it again. This, and this alone, might make me want an iPhone. Then again, $300 and $90 per month for dining advice? Maybe I'll pass.

Or, as several of my friends have suggested, you can do this for free. Write down the name of twenty or thirty restaurants, some of which you know and like, some of which you want to try. Put them in a Ziploc bag. Shake it, and pull one out. Concerned about the directions? Write them on the back!

Here's where you come in. I'm taking suggestions for restaurants to write down on my ghetto "Urbanspoon app", and I'd like to take a quick screen of where everybody thinks is worth eating.

After all, I'm not about to pick a restaurant by myself.


Currently listening: "Disturbia", Rihanna (no, really. It's a good song.)

New Keane and Snow Patrol; Old Stars

It's been a while since Perfect Symmetry and A Hundred Million Suns came out in the States, but I've been keeping myself busy. A few weeks of impressive success in mock trial, a few days of stuffing myself with far too much food, and an afternoon of stunning Georgia Tech victory (how 'bout them dawgs?).

Review: Perfect Symmetry, Keane

I could tell you "okay, listen to this album, then go back and listen to 'Spiralling' again" but that would be wholly redundant, because you'd already be doing it. It's tough to give a positive review to an album based on one track alone, but I'm on the verge of being able to do that with Perfect Symmetry. It's the rare track that you can listen to over and over again and not get tired of, because it's so much fun. Excellent production, catchy, and not entirely vapid lyrically, if you're into that sort of thing.

The one problem that stems from this is that Perfect Symmetry might naturally suffer from a bit of In Our Bedroom After the War syndrome: front-loading the album with the best music, so the rest doesn't seem as good by comparison. This album doesn't quite do that to the same level, but it comes close. It does, however, compare favorably to Viva La Vida, in that it is the most interesting thing that Keane has ever done. I thought Hopes and Fears was sort of okay. I wasn't a big fan of Under the Iron Sea, although I didn't per se dislike it. It was just sort of neutral.

Perfect Symmetry is not neutral. It is good music, through and through.


Review: A Hundred Million Suns, Snow Patrol

I love this one too. Snow Patrol has transcended "alternative rock" to make music that actually has some sort of soul to it, almost like Mae's The Everglow. That's not praise I'm going to hand out lightly--and I'm not about to say that A Hundred Million Suns matches Mae's masterpiece. But it's beautiful nonetheless. There's so much heartfelt niceness here that if it comes across as saccharine at times, we're perfectly willing to forgive Snow Patrol. We're willing to forgive them because it's unmistakably sincere.

There's a point at the end of them album where we're treated to "Snow Patrol does Sufjan Stevens", or at least something that sounds remarkably like it. And it works. Most of the album sounds like traditional Snow Patrol, and it works too. But though some will accuse this album of being the same thing Snow Patrol has done five times already, it's not, because of the immense amount of emotion that made its way in. It will make you feel good, albeit in a non-cutting-edge manner.


Review: Heart, Stars

To bring things full circle, and talk about Stars again, I've finally brought myself around to listen to Stars' first album, and I don't think it's that great. Too weird and electronic-y for my tastes. Then again, like I mentioned in that earlier review of In Our Bedroom Under the War, or possibly in my review of the Stars concert from March, how much you like Stars' albums probably has the most to do with the order you listen to them in. And it makes perfect sense that fans of Heart probably wouldn't like the more recent endeavors.

Specifically, that introduction is way too hipster for me. "Elevator Love Letter" is a classic, to be sure. But the album goes downhill from there and really can't hold a candle to Set Yourself on Fire.


Currently listening: "Carry on Wayward Son", Kansas

The "So" Neologism

(This entry is coming to you from the Grizzled Old Prescriptivist department of Isoceleria.)

The worst sort of neologism is the sort that you're not aware that you're using. When I caught myself sending a sentence with the antecedent-less "so" the other day, I immediately asked myself "isn't this the exact sort of thing that I should hate?" Yes, yes it is.

You know what I'm talking about. "Hey, why didn't you guys go to the game?" "We were planning to, but Dan didn't want to go, so..."

"Aren't you going to do your calc homework?" "I don't know--I've done the rest of it, and we get to drop one, so..."

My biggest problem with "so" is its grammatical nonsensicality. In this context, this seemingly benign conjunction transforms its meaning from "therefore" to something approximating "which explains what I just told you". This is not useful. "Dan didn't want to go, so we didn't" is a fine sentence. So is simply "Dan didn't want to go."

Therefore, it seems like the "so" neologism is nothing more than a rhetorical crutch. It doesn't mean anything. It's not important to elucidating the meaning of the sentence. In fact, it muddles it if anything. This use of "so" is in fact exactly like the French "t" that's stuck in the middle of words so the mortal sin of consecutive vowels isn't committed. But it doesn't even have the French excuse of making the phrase sound better.

Instead, it shows an utter lack of confidence on the speaker's part to simply end the sentence where it ought to. And it's a becoming more and more accepted crutch to lean on.


Currently listening: "Spiralling", from Perfect Symmetry, Keane (review to follow)

An Exhortation to Voters

Normally, Isoceleria does not touch politics with a ten-foot pole. And indeed, even though this entry is about the election, it still does not offer any views on political discussions or policies.

I'm very, very worried about what the two-party system is doing to our elections in this country. Not since 2000 at the most recent (perhaps earlier than that) has a presidential election actually been about two candidates. Back in 2004, I heard pundits describe the election as a "vote of no confidence in Bush" instead of an election between Bush and Kerry. How many times, for example, did you hear the following?

"Hey, who are you voting for?"
"Definitely Kerry."
"Oh yeah? How come?"
"He's not Bush."
"Well, that's true. But what do you like about Kerry?"
"He wouldn't have gotten us into this war."
"Be that as it may, we're in this war now. How does Kerry plan to handle it?"
"We wouldn't have fought it in the first place."
"Yes, I understand that. Are you saying you're voting for him based on what he would have done, rather than what he will do?"
"I'm just voting for him because he's not Bush."

The 2004 "vote of no confidence" failed. And I firmly believe that that's at best a very weak function of John Kerry and his policy statements. The Democrats could have thrown Howard Dean, or John Edwards, or anyone else, on the ballot. It wouldn't have mattered. Kerry voters didn't like Kerry; they disliked Bush.

Now that it's 2008, that mentality has far from disappeared. Consider what's become a typical conversation now:

"Hey, who are you voting for?"
"McCain, I guess."
"Oh yeah? How come?"
"I'm scared of Obama."
"Okay, but what do you like about McCain?"
"His policies are better than Obama's."
"Yes, but are they good?"
"Well, McCain definitely wasn't my first choice. I'd rather have seen (Giuliani/Huckabee/Romney) on the ballot."
"So why are you voting for him if you disagree with him?"
"I'm just voting for him because he's not Obama."

We haven't made much progress. This time, instead of an election between McCain and Obama, we have a "referendum on Obama". By all accounts, that referendum is about to succeed. And again, even if it had been Giuliani, or Huckabee, or Romney, it wouldn't have mattered, because this election is only about Obama vs. Not-Obama.

One additional factor that's peculiar to this election is race. It's obvious that there are people voting for Obama only because Obama is black. And it's obvious that there are people voting against Obama only because Obama is black. I'm not sure which one is more racist. But there's equally as nonsensical.

Take-home message? If you truly, honestly believe that either Obama or McCain is going to take the country in a good direction, then yes, by all means, vote for one of them. If you don't believe that; if you dislike both of them; if you disagree with both of them so thoroughly that you believe neither one of them is going to take us in the "correct" direction, then don't feel pressured to vote for either of them. Vote for neither. Write yourself in. Go for a third party.

Vote on November 4th. But vote for the candidate you like, not against the one you dislike.


Currently listening: Perfect Symmetry, Keane

Mock Trial Scoring and Ties

I've developed a strong preference for quoting mock trial scores and results in terms of total ballots (equivalently, total wins) over in terms of win-loss record. A win is worth one win, naturally; a loss is worth zero wins. But the tie ends up adding a ternary complexity to the otherwise binary system, being worth half a win. Some systems (for example, Georgia high school mock trial) address this problem by eliminating the possibility of a tie altogether by means of a "team score" that's specifically designed to break a tie. College mock trial, though, gives a total score that's the sum of the individual performances, and nothing more. This can range from 14 to 140, although scores typically find themselves in the range of 80-120.

The combinatorically savvy will note that out of 127 possible scores, or even 40 or so likely scores, the tie should not happen very often. It does, more than it really has any right to. One Georgia Tech team had three of them in one weekend, out of eight total ballots. Therefore, you get monstrosities like a record of 3-3-2, which is far from self-explanatory at first glance. Decoded, it's three wins, three losses, and two ties, and if you know the tie-win conversion factor, it's easy to see that this team has four win equivalents... but how much better or worse is that than a team with plain old four wins?

Here's the key: in college mock trial, it's not necessarily either. A team that goes 3-3-2 is not necessarily going to be ranked higher or lower than a team that goes 4-4. No, that comes down to a construct called CS, which stands for combined strength, and is actually the least arcane of all the tiebreaker formulae. A quick rundown: CS is like strength of schedule in football; higher CS means you played tougher teams and ranks higher in the tiebreaker.

So consider the following (admittedly contrived, but mathematically possible) scenario. At a particularly tough tournament, the best teams only get six wins or the equivalent. Team A has a record of 6-2, CS 15. Team B has a record of 5-1-2, CS 16. Team C has a record of 4-0-4, CS 14. To someone who knows 1) tie equivalencies, and 2) what CS means, it's obvious that the top three teams in order are B, then A, then C.

Plenty of tournaments would choose to report the standings with win-loss record, so we'd see a convoluted mess of wins and losses and ties that make you do the tie conversions yourself. Why not just report each team as having six wins?


Currently listening: "One By One All Day", the Shins

What's Good on TV This Fall?

By now we're a few weeks into the season, and it's time to give a few opinions.

House is nominally my favorite show on television, at least during non-Lost season. Anymore, I'm going to have to amend that to "the first three seasons of House" forming my favorite show on television. Okay, it's not really fair to judge a show by its 2007-2008 season, what with the strike and all. I wasn't too crazy about the new band of House's cronies (except in that I think Olivia Wilde is pretty). It's probably more a case of new-different-bad than anything, but if the old trio was working, why bring in a new one? Sure, we still see Chase and Cameron on the show, but not nearly enough of them (and Cameron is looking worse and worse as a blonde).

Compared to what's going on in House this season, though, that's the least of our concerns. So Wilson doesn't want to work at the hospital anymore, ever since Cutthroat Bitch died. Whine, whine, whine. Now House is all emo because his best/only friend is gone. Whine some more. No clinic hours. No blatant flirting between House and Cuddy. Private investigator dude is all right, but the storyline doesn't have the legs to become a permanent part of the show. We've had some good House lines--"Send Foreman. Old people are scared of black people." But instead of the wit that we're used to, we have a a bunch of unnecessary drama.

Oh, and I have lots of trouble watching the show. Fox, crafty bastards that they are, have apparently found a way to prevent my DVR from recording the show. Oh well. Just watch it on the internet, right? Sure... eight days later. It's as if Fox doesn't want me watching this show after all.

The Office hasn't disappointed so far. Making Ryan the new receptionist was a master stroke. "How," we wondered, "can this main character remain part of the show despite his firing and arrest?" And perhaps some of the show's more astute or diehard fans wondered "who will be the new receptionist at Dunder Mifflin?" Two birds with one stone, and excellently done.

I like Holly so far. Definitely an interesting dimension in the Michael love polygon... although you know Jan won't be gone for long, and Michael's going to have some explaining to do regarding his maybe-child. I wonder how this season can survive without seeing Pam around--an occasional phone call per episode to who used to be a major character is too drastic a change. And how will the dynamics of the show change once Jim and Pam are married?

The tension and complications of that relationship have been one of the driving forces for the past four seasons of the show. From day one of me seeing the show, I thought the show had to end with two things happening concurrently: the Scranton branch finally closing due to Michael's mismanagement, and Jim and Pam finally getting married. It's obvious by now that's not going to happen. That's okay, as long as there's some equal motivation introduced pretty quickly. And that motivation better not be Jim and Pam not getting married after all, because those two deserve a happy ending.

I've liked what I've seen of The Big Bang Theory, but that hasn't been much. My computer TV tuner seems to know whenever I'm trying to record the show, and conspiratorially restart my computer. CBS.com exacerbates the situation by refusing to post any full episodes of the show. No idea why.

For my trashy reality TV fix, both Survivor and The Amazing Race are doing just fine. And the good part of those shows is that you don't really feel bad if you miss an episode. It's fun assigning a douchebag score to each of the contestants on these shows (similar to the same process one can go through with certain professors). Everybody plays to their stereotypes perfectly, which wouldn't be a valid source of humor except in the situation where they want to "show the world who they really are" and "break a few misconceptions". Right.

Criminal Minds and both the New York and Las Vegas editions of CSI are good, unfortunately having been relegated mostly to background as lab reports are written, or something equally miserable. I do want to pick an ideological bone with Criminal Minds, however, in their depiction of "libertarians". About the only accurate thing said about libertarians in the entire episode is that libertarians believe individuals should be free to do as they please as long as they don't interfere with anyone else's rights. That does not make them crazy cultists.

Finally, how long before I no longer have to alter my entire television-watching plans to watch politicians yell at each other for a while? This is not influencing how I'm planning on voting.


Currently listening: "The Island" from The Crane Wife, the Decemberists

Tails Between Their Legs

A brief history of the vaunted black jerseys:

November 10, 2007: UGA debuts the black jerseys against Auburn, one of its many archrivals. UGA wins a decisive and convincing victory in the '07 installment of the "Deep South's Oldest Rivalry". Superstitious and almost ritualistic belief in the mystical power of the black jerseys begins to grow.

January 1, 2008: UGA meets a terribly outmatched Hawaii in the Sugar Bowl of the same season. The game is never, ever close. Plenty of fans credit not the lopsided matchup, but the color of the jerseys. This is beginning to sound like Andrew's "lucky Georgia Tech shirt", which he has never failed a test while wearing. "Well, to be honest, I did preselect the tests a bit."

September 28, 2008: Roll Tide. A 41-30 game was never really that close, and Georgia's national championship dreams suffer a serious blow. All this despite the mysticism.


Poll: how many times will WSB be replaying this one? My money's on zero.


Currently listening: "Taking Control", Eisley

The Dark Knight, Better Late than Never

Review: The Dark Knight

Finally time to get around to this one. Even if I had absolutely no desire to see this movie (which I did, at least a little), the Pop Culture Powers that Be would have had my head if I didn't. Now, I'm not a comic book person, really. My extent of Batman knowledge can be summed up pretty much in one paragraph:

Bruce Wayne is a billionaire by day, but by night he's the conflicted vigilante Batman. Batman lives in Gotham City, which is deliberately contrived to be the very worst place possible so that he never runs out of greater and greater evils to combat. Some of these villains include the Joker, Mr. Freeze, the Riddler, and Two-Face. In the vein of Iron Man, rather than Superman and Spiderman, he's a technological superhero. One critical piece of technology in most renditions of the Batman mythos is the Batmobile.

The remarkable thing about this is that for not being a comic-book person, I know a respectable amount about the setting and the characters. And this is a part of the superhero movies' massive success in the past eight or so years. Most of the people in a given X-Men, Spiderman, or Batman movie have never read the comics in question. Maybe they've been exposed to a movie or a cartoon in an earlier incarnation of the setting, maybe it's just a trickle-down cultural effect that's brought them the touch of knowledge that's necessary to get them excited about the new film.

Give some credit to the superhero movies here, too. All of them, The Dark Knight being no exception, walk a specificity tightrope beautifully. By that, I mean they're tuned so precisely between regurgitating the earlier interpretation of the setting, and setting off into some abstraction of it, that non-comic-book people feel like they're not hopelessly lost and that diehard fans of the setting feel like they're seeing something new and worth their time.

In my limited knowledge of Batman history, I sort of knew who the Joker and Two-Face were, and I'd heard the names Rachel Dawes and Harvey Dent in some vague connection with Batman, but that was about it. And like in most superhero movies, you didn't have to know even that much to get something out the the story, but if you knew that and a whole lot more, it was still a fresh take on those characters and their place in the setting. This is something that gets the movie major points right away.

That's of course not the reason that anyone pitches to see the movie. They talk about the special effects, which have long since ceased being a reason to see a movie for me. They laud Heath Ledger's portrayal of the Joker, which is a performance I can't help but liken to a Schoenberg composition: unsettling and not at all pleasant, but technically masterful, in a way that you're forced to appreciate intellectually even if you can't say you liked it. But Ledger executes it impressively, disturbingly well. In truth, of course, there's nobody who's as 1) evil, 2) deranged, and 3) successful as the Joker. (Okay, maybe Joseph Stalin.) But it makes sense that a true "superhero" needs something that thoroughly vile to battle against.

A less compelling reason, at least for me, to see the movie, was Heath Ledger himself. But then I've never been the sort of person to care about who's starring in the movie as much as, say, how good the movie is. To me, the hype surrounding Ledger's death is just another reflection of the deification we grant to movie stars in modern culture. Had that been anyone but a celebrity who met the end that Ledger did, it wouldn't have been "tragic", it would have been stupid. So forgive me if the mere fact that this guy showed up in a movie was far from a driving force to motivate me to watch it. Fortunately, his performance lived up to all its hype, which is really the only thing that matters when assessing a movie's worth.

I wouldn't even say that his acting was the strongest in the movie, actually. That would go to Maggie Gyllenhaal, who does something remarkable. She plays her role as if Rachel is a real person. It's the same sort of thing that I praised in Iron Man, especially the interactions between Robert Downey Jr. and Gwyneth Paltrow. Very, very well done, because it doesn't seem like these people are going off a script. There's no overly dramatic lines, nothing that would make you roll your eyes, just watching characters that seem like anything but characters.

It's an enormous problem in movies. We, as real people, get tired of watching actors deliver lines that are impossibly witty, seeing the perspicacious come from what ought to be the mundane. Maybe it's good script writing, maybe good acting, but it's long been a mantra of Isoceleria that you must have both to get good cinema. Here, only Gyllenhaal actually pulls it off. Aaron Eckhart almost gets there as Hervey Dent. Christian Bale doesn't even come close as Bruce Wayne.

The only other major flaw in the movie is its pacing of the Two-Face story. One minute, the shining white knight is burned in an explosion, the next minute the Joker shows up, and hey! It's time for Two-Face! This is the sort of internal conflict that's almost impossibly difficult to portray in a movie, but at the same time, it's one that's integral to this particular character. I would have much rather seen Dent slowly transform into Two-Face over the second half of the movie, and have him stick around into the inevitable third installment. The version we got felt horribly rushed, and it's a story that deserves more development.

So what worked? Commissioner Gordon felt appropriately pulp and hard-boiled. (The parade commemorating the previous commissioner's death was one of the most excellent scenes in the movie, too.) Richard freaking Alpert (Nestor Carbonell, for non-Lost fans) showing up as the mayor was great. I liked the Joker's psychological experiment with the boats at the very end, despite the fact that if it should have had some sort of philosophy behind it, I clearly missed it. (And no, political commentary enthusiasts, this movie is not commenting in either direction about the war on terror, no matter how much you'd like it to be.)

Yes, this was a good movie. No, it was not "AMAZING" [sic on the caps], as some friends of mine would have had me believe. And as good as it was in places, I found myself longing a couple of times for the good old days of May, when Mr. Downey Jr. was screening what turned out to be the superior superhero movie.


Currently listening: "Saving My Face", KT Tunstall

The Wikipedia Band Name Game

This is absolutely fascinating. It turns out that there is so much random junk in Wikipedia that there are hidden hundreds, or perhaps thousands, of gems that would all make excellent things to name your new band. How do you play? Easy.

Step 1: Open Firefox, or any other browser that features tabbed browsing.
Step 2: Go to http://en.wikipedia.org (or replace the "en" with letters corresponding to a language that you'd like to see).
Step 3: Holding the control button, click "Random article" ten times.
Step 4: Pick the name that sounds like the best band name, and try and assign a genre to it.

This is particularly recommended... er, sharply discouraged, for those slow days at work when you aren't doing anything better. In fact, it may or may not have been invented under those exact circumstances.

Some of my best results:
Lagrange Point Colonization (ambient techno-trance)
Spring-Loaded Cat (humor rock, in the vein of Flight of the Conchords)
Lystrosaurus (thrash metal)
Leaf-Warbler (girl singer-songwriter)
Keadby Railway (Brit indie rock)


Currently listening: Raising Sand, Robert Plant and Alison Krauss

The Olympics, Most of the Way Home (or: Earth to Bela)

Only now do I realize that I didn't make a post about Torino two years ago. That, come to think of it, is because I barely watched the Torino games at all. Probably I thought that "paying attention to schoolwork" was somehow a more worthwhile pursuit than paying attention to what was going on in the world. Or because the television belonged to my roommate, and his girlfriend was in a perpetual state of Dynasty Warriors addiction.

Of course, no blog would be complete without at least some nod toward current events, even if I usually stray from the arena, and I don't touch politics with a ten-foot pole. My first question, is there anyone who is not watching, or at least interested in the Olympics? If the answer is yes--and I imagine that it probably is--my next question becomes why not? Are there people who are so absorbed in counterculture that they can't stomach the thought of accepting anything associated with the mainstream, regardless of the fact that in this case "mainstream" applies to most of the rest of the world? Is there anyone so filled with boorishness that they can't find the uneven bars beautiful, a pinnacle of artistry? Anyone so filled with torpor that they can't get a thrill out of the last few meters of a freestyle swimming race?

Sadly, yes, those people are out there. But for the rest of us, the Olympics represent something very special indeed. Exposure to sports most Americans can't honestly claim to know anything about. Sure, you may have heard of water polo and handball, but who actually knows the rules for those games, much less strategies or nuances or personalities? (Tangent: handball is actually pretty cool, though you know what side of the Atlantic something is from when penalties are assessed at a seven meter line.) Even the huge marquee events of the games, the gymnastics and swimming and track, are sports that suddenly gain lots and lots of fans once per four years.

And about those huge events? I could gush over Michael Phelps for several paragraphs, just like thousands of other third-rate bloggers, plus a handful of real journalists. He absolutely does deserve gushing over, but the job has been done for me. Instead, I'll take the opportunity to gush over Nastia Liukin. If you've seen my Facebook page lately, then you've seen it: I have an enormous crush on Nastia Liukin. And why not? She's gorgeous: graceful, blond, elegant, incredibly feminine. Taller than five feet. Eyebrows that are the same height (that one's directed at you, Ms. Shawn Johnson). Extremely skilled and talented. Bilingual. Not content to rest on Olympic laurels, but headed to college after all this business is done. (Is there a new contender for my grad school application?) Even my friends support me on this one: "she's way better than Emma Watson." The one downside is that she has a sketchy Russian gymnast for a father.

While we're on gymnastics, one of the reporters identified an interesting meta-Olympic sport to observe: watching Bela Karolyi watch the Olympics. It's remarkable how into it this man gets, and it's equally remarkable that despite his generally good English proficiency, he hasn't quite gotten the hang of those articles yet. Karolyi identified the 4th-place finish of Alicia Sacramone as "ripoff", which was absolutely correct. (All of that gushing over Nastia would be remiss if I didn't mention that Alicia Sacramone was the second-most beautiful women's gymnast in the games.)

Sure, we've had our share of shady Chinese moments. The fireworks in the opening ceremony. The "not cute enough to perform" girl. The fact that the Chinese gymnasts are probably no older than fourteen. Less than consistent judging. But absolutely wondrous feats all around.

One question that my family has debated over the Olympiad was the issue of the "gayest sport" for both men and women. To make it a touch more politically correct, I'll rephrase it here to the "least manly" or "least womanly" Olympic sport. On the men's side, a lot of people immediately gravitate toward gymnastics, which with one major exception is completely unfair. I'll direct you first to the rings, and second to the pommel horse. Incredibly intense. The exception is of course the floor exercise--I can't think of anything less masculine than traipsing across a padded floor, pointing your toes, and doing it all in short shorts. Some people have said men's synchronized swimming, which would win automatically if it were real. When informed that it's not, a common response is to default to synchronized diving, which is a fine answer as well. Trampoline rounds out the common responses.

The women's sport that made me consider this curious question in the first place was beach volleyball. Scantily-clad women--not particularly feminine ones either--who go about smacking each other on the butt. Add to that all the talk of "partners" and "breaking up" with old ones to "hook up" with new ones. Tiny bit suspicious? Surprisingly, no. Most of these women are married, and a few have families. Actual contenders include water polo (especially that scary-looking Russian team).


Coming soon: the Wikipedia Band Name Game, plus a couple summer movie reviews.


Currently listening: "Marching Bands of Manhattan", Death Cab for Cutie

Pierogi and More Hipster Music

If you've never heard of a pierogi, then I'm very sorry, because they're absolutely delicious. Recently, I had the good fortune to attend the Pierogi Fest in Whiting, Indiana, where I ate a whole pile of them (not to mention some Polish sausage and potato pancakes). Wonderful experience, particularly because I could look around and think "these are my people." American descendants of Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, and others of that ambiguously Slavic central European heritage descended on the town my dad was born to delight in the world's best stuffed dough food. Pictures are available. Note the pierogi-shaped foam hat.

I've been writing again. This installment is called The Hustler, and it's entirely dialog. I mentioned before how I'd taken to having dialog speak for itself, and didn't like to include a lot of "he remarked" or "She answered,". This is the extreme end of that, with the dialog not only speaking for itself but telling the entire story. The format was inspired by an excellent story my dad wrote, "Your Own Personal Jesus". The setting is mostly drawn from personal experiences. And the characters are very loosely based on real people.

I promised a discussion of some decidedly non-mainstream indie music. The first is a band that I've become quite the advocate of lately, This is Ivy League. A bit of background: two guys from Cobra Starship (of Snakes on a Plane fame) decided to get together and play some indie folk/pop. Mellow, but not in a boring Jack Johnson style. More like catchy yet relaxing. The duo describe themselves as "tropical" sounding too, and I see where they're coming from there. I immediately thought of Kings of Convenience, with their relaxing close harmonies, but their music has just a bit more tempo to it than the Norwegians'. The album might lose a little of its interest, but certainly none of its quality, toward the end; personal favorite tracks are "The Richest Kids" and "London Bridges", which non-coincidentally are the first two I heard. Ah, primacy.

Now, I'm not necessarily a Cobra Starship fan--I don't dislike them, but I'm not into them the same way I might sing the praises of Rilo Kiley. More like I'm just not familiar enough to give an informed opinion. I came to like the band after hearing them on the Paste Magazine Culture Club podcast. They were alongside similarly bafflingly obscure bands that if you said you'd heard of, you'd be lying. Such hyper-indie bands are a mixed bag at best: in many cases, there's a reason the bands are so unknown, and that reason is they're not distinctive, or not interesting, or just not that good.

But every once in a while, there's a hidden gem there that makes the whole podcast worth listening to. And This is Ivy League is one of them. Check out their self-titled CD. (If you were thinking of bootlegging it off some sweet torrent, don't bother. Nobody has it. You're better off just shelling out the ten bucks, and it's worth every dollar.)


The other band came from a very different source: MTV. I was relaxing and preparing to suffer through the commercial break between episodes of Next when I was shocked to hear... music that didn't suck! In fact, it was so good that I rushed to my computer to download the rest of it. Shocked as I was to hear something on MTV that was not "Bat Guano and Lime", I wanted to make sure this wasn't a musical mirage, and that this "Carolina Liar" band was actually worth listening to.

It was. As far as I can tell, this guy might be from South Carolina or from Sweden. The internet has been uncharacteristically spotty with its information about the band. You can tell it's a young band; there are vocal miscues, one per song on average, but they don't make the music on a whole unlistenable. And I'm not sure if there are two singers, an overlay of two vocal tracks, or just some really well faked harmony, but there's some second dimension there. They have a pleasantly creative use of unconventional instruments: synthesizers and otherwise electronic effects and chimes recall Mae in both The Everglow and Singularity modes.

The song on MTV turned out to be the first track off the CD, "I'm Not Over", and after I bought into its peppy and just slightly emo rock, I wondered if that track's appearance on MTV wouldn't turn the band into a one-hit wonder. The rest of the album is sufficiently strong that they shouldn't be; hopefully MTV recognizes that as much as I do. That strength really hits its stride toward the middle of the album. From "Simple Life" on we get baroque pop sensibilities of multiple tracks of multiple instruments doing different things at the same time, and that works very well.

There's nothing special in their lyrics, except for a couple humorous bits about Myspace, and choruses are repeated a little too much. Despite the handful of weaknesses, the strengths are much more pronounced. Comparisons, especially vocally, to Keane and the Killers is apt, but the band has a sound unique and separate from either of them. Rather, their alternative-ish sound proves (along with Kings of Convenience, just to bring things full-circle) that Scandinavian influence in music is a good thing.


Oh, and does Pineapple Express look funny? I can't really decide. I'm pushed toward "yes", because the last collaboration between Seth Rogen and James Franco was Freaks and Geeks, which was absolute genius.


Currently listening: "Close Call", Rilo Kiley

Trash on TV and Annoyances in Alton

I didn't even realize how well that alliteration would line up until after I typed it.

I was about to remark a couple of weeks ago that I turned on MTV and couldn't find any trash. Forget one world government or the conversion of Israel into a giant garden, there would be no surer sign of the apocalypse. Now, I'm not saying there wasn't anything trashy on MTV at all. There was plenty of the Real World, which you could argue was in fact the original "trash on MTV" show. And "America's Best Dance Crew" is less trashy than just irritating, maybe a dumbed-down version of American Idol. (I really don't understand "dance" as a culture at all. It would never occur to me to want to watch people dancing in the same way that I might want to watch people acting or playing music. And I have to confess to having no idea what a "master mix" is.)

I wanted to find something entertainingly trashy, though, something along the lines of "A Shot at Love", which is Tila Tequila's bisexual dating show. Or "The X Effect". So I was pleasantly surprised to find "Parental Control" and "Next" shown right after one another. The former is a show where two parents hate the guy or girl that their child is dating, and fix her or him up on two blind dates in an attempt to rectify that. And the latter is the sleaziest speed-dating situation ever devised: when a guy or girl doesn't like a potential suitor for whatever reason, he or she can yell "next" and another douchebag emerges from the bus without fail.

"Douchebag" is the operative word here too. I have a theory that you can tell exactly how much of a douche a guy is by the angle of his hat. Forward is not inherently douche--it might be baseball player or white trash or old-school rapper. Backwards is not inherently douche either--maybe frat boy (which indirectly might imply douche) or gangster-era rapper. Even sideways might or might not be. When you can spot a clear sign is when the hat is slightly oversized, slightly cocked to either the right or the left, maybe plus or minus fifteen or twenty degrees. I'd estimate that a third of all the males on these two shows have this douche giveaway. (The rest of them have other tells.)

As always, when I'm watching trashy shows, two things amaze me. The first is the contestants'/actors' vocabularies. Every time I hear a white kid saying something is "real" or "tight", I shake my head--and I end up shaking my head a lot. Every time a guy describes a girl as "totally hot", you'd think there was no other adjective in the English language to describe attractiveness. The second is the fact that these people are evidently doing nothing with their lives. These people are my age, give or take maybe three years, and I swear the most ambitious thing I've heard is "I'm going to college for TV marketing." I'm not expecting everyone to be a doctor or architect or businessman, but honestly? "I work at an In-n-Out Burger"?

And MTV... it doesn't matter how many times you play that "Corona and Lime" song by Shwayze. It does not make it any more listenable.


One thing that I really miss about Atlanta is Publix. It's no secret that I kind of like grocery shopping, and I've gotten comfortable doing it at Publix. They're always clean. Well-lit (heck, the Spring Street location even has windows, one of the only grocery stores I know to include such amenities). High-quality produce and store brands. Fine selection of anything from wine to deli. And the local stores just don't compare. I've grown to prefer Shop-n-Save over Schnuck's, for no good reason other than the layout is better and the volume is more impressive. But the environment is just not as accommodating in either store as I've grown to expect.

Another thing is the roads. "You have to be crazy. You miss driving in Atlanta?" Well, no, not really. But the roads here have their own special character to them. There are way too many motorcycles, like packs of a dozen of them that just show up on your street every Saturday and Sunday, making it impossible go go faster than 30. Worse, stop signs predominate. I'm not talking, there's the occasional stop sign that you might inadvertently miss. I mean practically every intersection, from the seemingly inconsequential one of two residential streets, to what actually turns out to be a major one of multi-lane commercial highways, are regulated by stop signs. And it serves as a reminder about why the stop light is superior. Specifically, people do not know how to navigate stop signs. They don't like to take turns, and they sure as hell don't find it necessary to stop for pedestrians.


Currently listening: Coming to Terms, Carolina Liar

"An Historian": Bad English

Generally, I have pronounced prescriptivist leanings when it comes to language. For instance, I don't care how thoroughly "ten items or less" has entered common usage. I still believe that "less" is inherently continuous, and "fewer" is discrete, for a reason. There's sufficient linguistic justification for keeping these words separate and distinct. I still observe the distinction between "who" and "whom", at least in writing. And I don't believe that "effort" should ever be a verb, or that "thusly" is a word at all.

However, there seems to be some idea that "historian" (as well as "historical" and occasionally other related words as well) needs to have the article "an" attached to it. That is ludicrous. It defies all the conventions of modern English. Say you were talking about one mathematician. How would you say that? Clearly, it would be "a mathematician". Now, your pronunciation of that might change depending on your intention. If you're talking about any old guy (or girl) who professes math for a living, then you might schwa the "a", as in "uh mathematician". You might do the same thing, if you want to emphasize the fact that you're talking about a mathematician as opposed to a biologist or a chemist. Or, you might use a long "a", as in "ay mathematician", to emphasize one of them, as opposed to two or three or five or eight.

Would you ever use "an mathematician"? Of course not. That's because "mathematician" starts with "m", and "m" is a consonant. In English, we use "a" as the indefinite article for words that begin with consonants. Another example: do describe one surgeon, you would say "a surgeon", again pronouncing the "a" differently depending on your intention. And finally, you'd say "an economist", because "e" is a vowel.

Any kindergarten teacher would agree with me that there are five vowels in English: a, e, i, o, u. Sometimes "y" us added to the vowel list, or more accurately, it's always added to the "sometimes a vowel list". In some languages, the "w" sound is also a semivowel. But you know what's never a vowel? The letter "h". Therefore, it never makes sense to use "an" for any word beginning with "h".

Now, before anyone says "but there's a reason for that!", I know the linguistic justification. I don't believe it's a very good one. The word comes from French, from "histoire" or "historien". French has this lazy habit of not pronouncing their leading "h" on words, probably because they don't like how it sounds. In English, we do pronounce the leading "h". All the time. It's not "otel", it's "hotel". It's not "air", it's "hair". We would say "an air", true. And if "istorian" were a word, then "an istorian" would make perfect sense. But it's not. The word is "historian", with a pronounced leading consonant. That means it's completely incorrect to use "an": a false analogy from a language we do not speak.


Currently listening: "Colors", Kira Willey (you know that Dell commercial, "I am green today," etc.? That song)

Chicago's "lost album" and something about the Arctic Monkeys

Review: Chicago XXXII: Stone of Sisyphus

Chicago fans will note that the title track sounds awfully familiar. It's been "out" for about fifteen years, in stages of dubiously varying legality. It was actually released about five years ago, on Chicago's "The Box", which contains five CDs of their very best and well-known music. Apparently there was an album attached to the orphaned Stone of Sisyphus, one that had been hanging around since 1993, and only now is it getting released. Drama with record companies ensues.

It, along with Chicago XXX, mark a weird fourth era in Chicago's music. First, we had the brilliance of Chicago's first two or three albums, characterized by some sort of brassy edge and influenced by the Windy City itself. Sometime in the 70s, you could almost hear the band saying "okay, let's take the edge off, and start playing power ballads." ("After all, it's the 70s, and that's what all the cool kids are doing. It's either that, or we subject you to a decade of disco." Whatever they think of the power ballad era, the fans thank you for picking the former.)

Inevitably, the musical graveyard of the 80s had to roll around, and bring us Poison and Whitesnake. (Tangent: if you're this guy, how are you supposed to take yourself seriously? It's two thousand freaking seven, and you're joining Whitesnake. You're their seventh drummer.) By that time, Chicago moved to stage 3, when Chicago changed their tune (so to speak) to "all right, now we play adult contemporary." That label's vague enough, but like alternative rock and pornography, you know it when you see it.

XXX and now Stone of Sisyphus are the fourth era, which basically translates into some weird amalgamation of the first three. Power ballad... power ballad... brass chorus! Or brass intro, giving way to some soft rock later in the song. Or any combination of the three. As I always say when I'm talking about this band, I'm inherently biased toward the more brass-heavy songs, mostly because I'm a trumpet player. "Stone of Sisyphus" is probably the band's strongest track because of that. I also like "Plaid", which has a sort of "Kalimba Story"-era Earth Wind and Fire inspiration to it. That makes sense, given the bands' collaboration over the past several years.

Ironically, or perhaps completely expectedly, the album is at its strongest when it does draw from its past three eras of music. And it's at its weakest when it starts screwing around. The funk of "Mah-Jong" is interesting, but I have no idea what the song is talking about. And the chorus is repeated far too much. As for "Sleeping in the Middle of the Bed"... let's just say that Chicago should never, ever, ever rap. On a whole, "Middle of the Bed" seems an apt metaphor for this album. It's far from Chicago's best work, but then they've been far from their best work since 1973. And it's by no means the worst. For a Chicago fan who's been starved for new material for the last who-knows-how-many years, it's better than nothing. But, on the other hand, a Chicago fan who's been waiting that long has probably been spoiled off the first five or six albums.

General discussion and semi-review: Arctic Monkeys
My friend Melody recommended the Arctic Monkeys to me when I had the good fortune to hear "Phantom Limb" by the Shins when we were having lunch. "Wait a second!" you're saying. "What does a Shins song have to do with the Arctic Monkeys?" Nothing, except for the fact that it got us talking about good music. Blindly, I downloaded Your Favourite Worst Nightmare [sic on the "u" in "favourite"--they're British] and gave it a listen. I'm not sure if I like it yet. I don't know what I expected, but it was a lot faster and louder and more dissonant than I thought it might be. Very Franz Ferdinand, and that's not necessarily a bad thing.

Again on Melody's advice, I downloaded their less recent Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not. I listened to it, and I'm not sure it's necessarily any better. The most salient quality the band has is that all its music sounds approximately the same. Sure, it has some variation to it. At best, the music is energetic and driven. At worst, it's frenetic and jumbled, disorganized. Of course, I think that fans of the band would probably find that another strength, a reason to listen. The dissonance is not local to Your Favourite Worst Nightmare, there are perplexing and inexplicable changes of key and mode more or less without warning.

The influences on this band are unambiguous and uncompromising: unlike the American indie and alternative scenes, Arctic Monkeys take more than a few pages from British punk. One disturbing trend that's shown up from across the pond, though, is the practice of muffling and muddying vocals, seemingly intentionally. It almost seems in vogue to sing too close to a bad microphone, then feed the result through some manner of filter that degrades the sound quality even further. I don't ever think it's a good thing to make your music sound worse deliberately, but then again I like my classical music tonal too.

Bottom line, Arctic Monkeys aren't a bad band, I don't think. But I don't see me suddenly renouncing Shinsism and converting. If you don't need all of your songs to sound any different from each other, then you're not going to have a problem with the Arctic Monkeys. If you like your songs fast and loud and under three minutes on average, then you'll like them a lot. And if you wish the early-2000s "pop-punk" movement did more to honor the "1980s London" half of its roots, then you might just have a new favorite band.


Coming up, a couple of indie reviews that aren't at all "mainstream indie".


Currently listening: "Hungarian Dance No. 5 in D minor", Brahms

Anatomy of a Mix Tape: The Aftermath

New to the Accidental Mix Tape discussion? Start with the introduction and go from there.

Finally, all 20 songs are out in the open, and I promised looking at some trends. The most obvious one is genre. Ten of the songs--fully half of the CD--are what I'd classify as "indie". That's music by Rilo Kiley, the Decemberists, the Postal Service, the Shins, Death Cab for Cutie, the Dandy Warhols, Sufjan Stevens, Eisley, Stars, and Neutral Milk Hotel. I don't care for the label, mostly because of it's ambiguity, but I think I'm about to use it correctly: I'd call five of the bands represented "alternative". Specifically, that's Something Corporate, Mae, Guster, Weezer, and Snow Patrol. Two are going to be "pop rock", KT Tunstall and Coldplay. Two are classics, Chicago and the Beatles. And Rammstein? Call it industrial, or tanz-metall, or "Neue Deutsche Hart", it's miles away from anything else on the CD.

That's not to say those boundaries are rigid though. Rilo Kiley is now signed to a major, as are the Decemberists and Death Cab, so who's to say they're still "indie"? Often, that particular label more closely refers to a band's heritage, or its sound, than what label it's currently on. That's a confusing practice to say the least, but after a while in dealing with the culture, it begins to make sense. And Coldplay and Snow Patrol have a whole lot in common, but I've chosen to put Coldplay into a completely separate category mostly because of their huge exposure and popularity.

Plotting this into a theoretical visual representation, it shows that my musical tastes are somewhere in the intersection of indie pop, indie rock, and alternative rock, if those things truly intersect at all. Perhaps they're all subsets of some greater "music that Matt likes" group. Because, naturally, the entirety of musical organization is based on my tastes. An important point, though, regarding this "indie" music: it's what I refer to as "mainstream indie". That might sound like a hideous contradiction, so allow me to explain.

I tend to listen to music that's just obscure enough that the mainstream won't touch it. Sure, I came to KT Tunstall through the radio, and you hear Coldplay and Weezer and even Guster and Death Cab sometimes. But when was the last time you ever heard the Shins or Eisley on any Top 40 anything? Sadly, it just doesn't happen. The other side of the coin, however, is that the music I listen to isn't something that real indie kids haven't bothered with for the past four years. Sure, Oh, Inverted World was cool, back when it was first released and nobody knew about it. Once they got popular, well, time to move on to another band that nobody's heard of.

Six or seven tracks--that is, a whole third--of the CD were by bands that my friend Nick introduced me to, so he's a clear influence on my musical tastes. Two came from my parents, and the rest were either products of personal musical searching, recommendations from other friends, or some combination of the two.

The release dates span more than 40 years, from November 1967 to June 2008. One is from the 60s, one from the 70s, three from the 1990s, and the lion's share of fifteen from the 2000s. Half of the tracks, ten in total, come from 2005 or later, which makes sense--that's when I started to develop a musical aesthetic of my own and finally decided what I actually liked.

Perhaps the weirdest trend comes in track placement on the original CDs. Half of the songs are either the first track or the second track--five of each--on the album they came from, plus a third, a fourth, and two fifth tracks. That could be any one, or possibly a few, of three things: a primacy effect, in that the first thing I heard off any given album subconsciously becomes my favorite. It could be a reflection of front-loading, in that the bands deliberately put their best material at the beginning of the album. Or it could be total coincidence.

There were a few notable omissions from the CD. As I already mentioned, anything classical; that might be coming up later. I might have liked to have added something by the Killers, particularly something off their first album Hot Fuss. I'm a huge fan of "Foux de Fafa" by Flight of the Conchords, because I've taken exactly enough French to understand it all.

I wouldn't call myself a Red Hot Chili Peppers fan per se, but Stadium Arcadium is really good, and I think "Dani California" and "Desecration Smile" are particularly strong tracks. And I'm really not at all a Goo Good Dolls fan, but every time I listen to Dizzy Up the Girl I'm pleasantly surprised at how good it is. Same with Augustana and Can't Love, Can't Hurt (which is exactly as emo as it sounds). Perhaps tracks by Jimmy Eat World, Incubus, or the Juliana Theory might be in order, and I've recently become quite a fan of This is Ivy League, too.

It's been a fun project, and any further Accidental Mix Tapes, while probably less accidental, will get a full documentation here.


Currently listening: "Shining Star", Earth Wind and Fire