GIG TODAY

Hi.
I am playing today at Brennan's Grille (Blackthorne) at 3pm with Amy Basse (www.amybasse.com)

Brennan's is running a hurricane benefit concert from 1-4pm, with three acts. We are headlining.

$10. Free apps.

Stay for the seisiun after!


Turnpike St (RTE 138) S. Easton, MA 02375
508-238-9017
Contact: Steve Brennan
www.brennansgrille.com

Cogito Ergo Me nTumi nKyere Hwee

I have been so busy at school and work that I haven't been able to post. I am, however, building my capacity to eloquently opine on such intellectual points of interest as standard deviation and confidence intervals. If you need to find me, look for the blithering madman who is quietly nodding at a meeting, or studiously taking notes. I could be anyone.

Ideas - The Boston Globe

Walter Benn Michaels reviews two novels in the Ideas Section of the Boston Sunday Globe for 10//9/05: Curtis Sittenfield's "Prep" and Tom Wolfe's "I am Charlotte Simmons". The review, entitled "Class Fictions", interests more than the novels reviewed.

Michaels understands that both novels make the same argument: That social class in America is a figment of the 'neoliberal imagination'. Or in short, that there is nothing wrong with inequity, as long as those on the wrong side of privilege aren't snubbed for it, but respected for their "cultural difference." This is what the novels argue, according to Michaels. He writes:

Classism is the pseudo-problem that brings left and right together: It's prejudice not poverty itself that counts. . . .Classism is what you're a victim of not because you’re poor but because people aren't nice to you because you're poor.


I don't care whether his take on the novels is correct. The article provides wonderful, intuitive, and lucid insight into contemporary American society. That neo-liberal gobbledygook has subverted its own tradition of true liberalism; that it has substituted 'feel-good equality' for the real pursuit of social justice, rings true. And, that the privileged would buy into this language of the new left approaches pathetic satire. Of course they do:

Almost always [the desire not to think about class difference in America] takes the form of insisting that class doesn't matter, that "In America," as New York Times columnist David Brooks. . .once wrote, "Nobody is better, nobody is worse." Of course it might be objected that, when it comes to being healthier, safer, freer, and happier, being rich does indeed make you better and that a more just society would imagine a more just distribution of money, health, safety, and freedom.


Those who supposedly care about social justice have turned the cause into a politics concerned more with self-esteem than social change: "a politics concerned with its opposition to racism, sexism, and homophobia. . .and the idea that what we should do with difference is not eliminate it but appreciate it."

In this context, even the "subversive politics" of multiculturalism becomes mundane "diversity", because it suffers from the same twisted logic: 'respect the poor' becomes 'respect the Other'. "Diversity" becomes concerned with the above-quoted trio far more than it does with acting as a catalyst for real or subversive social change. Let's all 'appreciate' discrepancies in opportunity and wealth and be sure not to snub the less fortunate. Mighty white of us.

Shafting

Of course I was wrong. And I knew it, before the ferry unloaded us unceremoniously at Red Hook without apology.

"Go see the agent in the harbor," we were told.

As it turned out, the agent's office was a plywood kiosk among several others, with a Plexiglas window and a little airhole through which to speak. I had to bend over both to address the opening, and to try and squint through the reflected glare of the sun on the plexi. Perhaps, also, to bow.

I intuited as much as saw a local woman absent any uniform, speaking on her cellphone.

I can only use this cliche: I shook with rage. There was not a drop of any other emotion present in my nervous system but fury. Mad blind throttling fury. I didn't manage to keep it from my demeanor when I attempted to explain that we had been assured a trip to Charlotte Amelie, but had been dropped just here without explanation or apology. I had been sent to her, as she was the Native Son representative.

The accumulated stresses of travel, poverty (ours!), and, over the prior three days, the unremittant obsequious accommodation and self-abnegation in which both my wife and I had engaged, AKA unsuccessful cultural sensitivity exercises that would have charmed the most dubious 15th century Japanese samurai; the stress--the sensation I may say, of flogging yourself, to separate yourself from the insensitive horde that must indeed descend continually upon the Tortolan locals; this flogging all to no good end, and practiced expertly and well by us, past masters of hypersensitivity to each other and others generally, desperate in our needy way to be liked and avoid being pegged as, gasp, Americans--just now I say that stress blotted out any insecure care, personal or cultural, socio-economic or racial; blotted out any concern even for fair play or just, well, common decency and politeness. Blotted out all concern of any kind except the one eclipsing desire to vent scorn and derision upon this woman, a representative of Native Son Ferries, and indeed the Incarnation of Scowling B.V.I.ians.

In the event, she deserved it . . .

Trouble in Paradise

To recap:

My wife and I were on a Native Son ferry somewhere between Tortola, B.V.I., and St. John, U.S.V.I.

The ATM machine in West End, Tortola had rejected both our debit and credit cards.

I had ten dollars in my pocket. The only reason we were on the ferry at all was due to the purchase of a return ticket on Native Son several days before. At the time, it had been a mistake: Guides warned against getting locked in to a return ticket because the ferry schedules and businesses were potentially so untrustworthy!

Now of course we were happy to have tickets at all, since we had virtually no money!

We had confirmed at check-in that the ferry went to Charlotte Amelie in St. Thomas, and not just Red Hook.

We had confirmed with a crew member upon boarding that the ferry went to Charlotte Amelie and not just Red Hook.

We had breathed a huge sigh of relief (into our hands, that is, since our breath was stinky with rum, after self-medicating at the Jolly Rodger and on the ferry ride) as we passed through customs at the stop in St. John. St. John felt a quantum leap closer to home. It felt like America, dammit.

The sun was shining, the passengers were laughing. We had accounted for all our luggage.

That is why it was such a shock when as we reboarded the ferry, our feet leaving nativish turf, the crew member shouted out West End! West End. The same crew member who had confirmed Charlotte Amelie now informed us that the ferry was returning to Tortola. West End!

He was abrupt when I tried to interject, "After Charlotte Amelie, you mean." He was snarly when I insisted he had himself confirmed Charlotte Amelie to us not forty minutes before. He was a stocky, short, sweating twenty-something black man, and he snarled over the can of Amstel he drank off in a moment.

No money no time no credit card no debit crad no phone no St. Thomas no plane no plane no plane

And I a typical foolish insulting annoying Yankee. No doubt. I could take anything at that instant, any stereotype or insult. Except foolish. I read in a moment the fact that we were the only passengers 'booked' for Charlotte Amelie. And we didn't count. What a joke on the foolish Yankees.

No amount of rum could prevent the sobriety then of absolute fury. I fumed in the seat beside my wife as we headed for Red Hook and told her and myself that we would indeed find that the ferry would continue to Charlotte Amelie--that he was wrong. That businesses couldn't act this way, and that, despite our tall amount of cultural distrust built up precipitously in our short stay, this would be a shafting of proportions too unseemly even by Tortolan standards.

Spammers Must Die . . .

Enough said.

Yes, I am not dead. Just have a new job. Am coming out of the darkness and into the light.

Thanks, Traveler, for keeping blog alive in the meantime.

Will finish my damn narrative soon.

PS
Cornelius,
Any interest in a gig in the beginning of December?