I’m doing my taxes now. It’s not fun, but even I had to laugh out loud when I read this sentence in an IRS form:

You may be eligible to claim [a tax deduction] for a child, even if the child has been kidnapped. For more information, see IRS Publication 501.

I wonder if the IRS catches people who tell the IRS they had
kidnapped a child — just to save a few bucks on their taxes. I’d also
like to read IRS Publication 501.

UPDATE: Another funny line from that hilarious book-of-jokes called IRS Publication 17:

Illegal income, such as stolen and embezzled funds, must be included
in your income on line 21 of Form 1040, or on Schedule C or Schedule
C-EZ (Form 1040) if from your self-employment activity.

Even if you’ve never listened to Eminem, you probably have an opinion about his music.

But no matter what you think about what he raps about, if you listen to his lyrics, you gotta admit he knows how to rap. His lyrics look like crap on paper, but his lyrics sound amazing on his CDs.

What’s his secret? Well, I was just read an article online that gives a tantalizing hint:

At first, [Eminem friend] Fields says, Eminem was just a smartass cracking inside jokes with Manix and his cronies. Before long, however, he said Eminem began teaching him what he called “the inside rhyme.” “At that time, if you had two lines that rhymed, that was it,” Fields says. “Marsh was putting it to the next level. He was trying to put as many words that rhymed into a line as he could fit.”

The inside rhyme. Pretty cool.

With this in mind, I listened to his latest CD and found inside rhymes everywhere. Take this excerpt from his current radio hit, Without Me (I’ve highlighted matching “inside rhymes” with matching backgrounds):

A visionary, vision of scary
Could start a revolution, pollutin the airwaves
A rebel, so just let me revel and bask
in the fact that I got everyone kissin my ass {*smak*}
And it’s a disaster, such a catastrophe
for you to see so damn much of my ass; you asked for me?
Well I’m back, na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na
{*bzzt*} Fix your damn antenna tune it in and then I’m gonna
enter in, in the front of your skin like a splinter
The center of attention, back for the winter
I’m interesting, the best thing since wrestling
Investing in your kid’s ears and nesting
{*bzzt*} Testing, attention please
Feel the tension, soon as someone mentions me
Here’s my ten cents, my two cents is free
A nuisance, who sent? You sent for me?

Compare this to a less talented rapper like Puff Daddy — I mean, P. Diddy — in his incredibly lame recent radio hit, I Need A Girl:

I had a girl that would’ve died for me
Didnt ‘preciate her so I made her cry for me
Every night she had tears in her eyes for me
Caught a case, shorty took the whole ride for me
At first we were friends then became lovers
You was more than my girl, we was like brothers
All night we would play fight under covers
Now you gone, can’t love you like I really wanna
But everytime I think about your pretty smile
And how we used to drive the whole city wild
Damn I wish you would’ve had my child
A pretty little girl wit Diddy’s style; this shit is wild.

Can you find a single inside rhyme? Except for the J. Lo references, P. Diddy offers no value for your CD dollar — especially musically. He can’t even master the outside rhyme; the first four lines quoted here all end in for me, he rhymes “wanna” with “covers”, and “smile” with “wild.”

We don’t often pick up on this stuff consciously, but I bet a big part of Eminem’s success comes from our subconscious paying attention to how Eminem raps. The man may not be polite, but he’s got mad skillz.

“Hitchhiker’s Guide” Catches Final Ride

Hey, Douglas Adams is going to publish a sequel to his “increasingly misnamed Hitchhiker Trilogy”! Well, at least, they’re going to publish a posthumous, unpublished, and unfinished version that “is being edited from files found on the author’s computer.”

Four thoughts:

1. I thought this quote from the article was interesting:

We have pored over Douglas’s hard drive. There were so many different versions of the novel. He would take it and then revise it repeatedly so there were many files…As soon as he wrote anything he would say, ‘Oh God, that’s terrible’. He was a very, very self-critical author.

It’s ironic that someone who wrote so much about the absurdities of life (and how one needs to accept absurdity) would be so critical and harsh on his own work.

2. I loved the first four books in the “Trilogy” (and appreciated the Dirk Gently stuff), but how much acid did Douglas Adams drop while writing Mostly Harmless? (I can’t believe Adams killed off Fenchurch!)

3. I just looked up posthumous and found out that it means after soil. I guess posthumous is just a nice way to say, “dead and buried.”

4. Oh God, this blog is terrible.

Response to HerbieTheElf’s Response to My Review of Groundhog Day

Wow, I’m a “Mystery Xangan“… How cool and mysterious…

First, to speak to a comment to HerbieTheElf’s blog:

*  Syphilis is a terrible sexually transmitted disease.
*  Sisyphus was the Greek king who was punished to roll a rock up a hill for all of eternity…

Yes, I know, the spelling of either word is just about impossible to remember, and eerily confusing…

Anyway, back to the topic… You can definitely watch the movie Groundhog Day as a love story between Bill Murray’s and Andie MacDowell’s characters. In addition, though, you can watch the movie as a philosophical statement about life, which is what I blogged about earlier.

Here’s the parallel:

In the movie, Bill Murray’s character (Phil Connors) has to relive the same day over and over again. No matter what he does, after Phil falls to sleep, he somehow wakes up 24 hours earlier, on the morning of Groundhog Day. The movie is about how Phil finds meaning in his “life” consisting of the same day over-and-over-again.

In the “Myth of Sysiphus,” the Greek King Sysiphus rolls a magic rock up a hill. Unfortunately, right before Sysiphus gets the rock up to the top of the hill, it magically rolls back down. Sysiphus’ life consists of the same activity over-and-over-again.

Herbie and Camus make the interesting point that if our lives are often filled with boring tasks, then we face the same problem faced by the cinematic Phil Connors and the mythical Sysiphus: How do we ascribe meaning to our lives if our lives have no inherent meaning?

Groundhog Day addresses this question explicitly. Interestingly, at the beginning of the movie, the cinematic Phil Connors (a weatherman) doesn’t ascribe any positive meaning to life whatsoever. This is exemplified by Phil’s quote: “You want a prediction about the weather, you’re asking the wrong Phil. I’ll give you a winter prediction: It’s gonna be cold, it’s gonna be grey, and it’s gonna last you for the rest of your life.”

Strikingly, Phil Connors is comparing himself here with Punxsutawney Phil, a groundhog who is (A) also named Phil, (B) also predicts the weather, and (C) also sees his shadow, which portends a long, dark winter.

With such a bleak outlook, it’s no wonder that Phil Connors eventually tries to end it all. But no matter what he tries (“I’ve been stabbed, shocked, poisoned, frozen, hung, electrocuted, and burned!”) Phil always wakes up on the same morning, with “not a dent in the fender!”

After a long process of self-examination, though, Phil changes his entire outlook on life. This change is best epitomized by Phil’s “weather prediction” at the end of the movie while he talks to his love-interest (Rita) played by Andie MacDowell: “It doesn’t matter what happens tomorrow or for the rest of my life. I’m happy now.”

As I understand it, this is exactly what Herbie means when he says: “Heaven and Hell are literally states of mind. They are not punishments and rewards handed down to us by some all-loving God who just so happens to feel the need to punish the vast majority of his creation for an eternity. They are choices we all consciously make every day, irregardless of spiritual affiliation.”

Interestingly, speaking to Herbie’s point, John Milton’s Satan states that it would be “Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.”  So Heaven and Hell really are states of mind…

Anyway, thanks for continuing the dialogue…

-Bob

Groundhog Day – movie, 5 stars

Groundhog Day is a brilliant movie in many, many ways.

First, a brief summary of the plot: Some unexplained force forces a disgruntled and cynical weatherman to relive one day — a visit to Punxsutawney, PA on Groundhog Day — over and over again.

The cast: Bill Murray is Phil Connors, a snobbish and deeply cynical weatherman for the local news; Andie MacDowell is Rita, the beautiful, sweet and kind television producer who works with Phil; and Chris Elliott is Larry, a goofy television camera operator.

Why I love this film:

* Wholly original premise. Unlike so many other hackneyed Holywood stories, Groundhog Day works with a wholly original premise that surprises the viewer in every scene. It’s hilarious to watch how Phil reacts to living the same events over and over. We see Phil first react with disbelief, until he realizes he can abuse his “power” for personal gain. The use of judicious film splicing results in some of the funniest scenes in the movie, when we watch Phil “replay” life and finetune his schtick to steal money and seduce women. Eventually, Phil changes his ways, as he alters the entire way he approaches life.

* Great romantic comedy. Director Harold Ramis — Doctor Egon Spengler of Ghostbusters, director of cult-hit Caddyshack, and a cameo in the film as a neurologist — proved his comedic genius again by leveraging a great script and a cast with magical chemistry. You truly come to care about the characters, as you appreciate the great traits of Andie MacDowell’s Rita, and watch the emotional blossoming of Bill Murray’s Phil. There is an element of the “Beauty and the Beast” story to Phil’s relationship with and courtsip of Rita, and Ramis uses this dynamic to deliver more than the Hollywood cliche of Boy Meets/Gets Girl.

* Philosophical message. Camus’s Myth of Sisyphus asks how one would react if you were the mythical Greek Sisyphus who had been cursed to roll a rock up a hill for eternity. Would you despair and commit suicide, find religion, or somehow find meaning in an essentially meanlingless task? Amazing, this romantic comedy manages to address this esoteric philosophical qusetion! In a very concrete way, the movie deals with this question. Listen to this dialogue from early on in the film:

Phil to drunk blue-collar guy: What would you do, if you were stuck in one place, and every day was exactly the same, and nothing you did mattered.

Drunk blue-collar guy: That about sums it up for me.

True to Camus’s example, a cynical Phil initially tires of his life-treadmill, and despairs. He tries to commit suicide by electrocuting himself, jumping off a building, driving off a cliff, stepping in front of a truck, and other macabre methods. But even death doesn’t prevent his life from resetting every day to the morning of Groundhog Day. Over time, Phil tries other more subtle forms of suicide, as he tries to drown an eternity of time in a hedonistic splurge, as he gluttonously eats doughnuts, pursues sex, and engages in anti-rational violence. Eventually, though, he discards those indulgences as an incomplete way to live life, and learns to use his access to an eternity of free time to improve himself, as he reads poetry, learns how to ice-sculpt and play jazz piano, and saves lives. Meanwhile, his entire philosophyl changes from being self-centered and hypocritical to being passionately selfless and sincere in his approach to living life every day.

Carpe Diem!

* DVD issues. The transfer to DVD was excellent (no video artifacts), and the widescreen shots are great (no annoying pan-and-scans). My only wish would be for “specials”, like out-takes, cast interviews, commentary by the director, and the like.

Overall. I highly recommend this movie. Amazingly, even though there are necessarily many similar takes of various scenes, I have thoroughly enjoyed rewatching this DVD many times. A true classic, and a must for anyone’s DVD collection.

I’m reading a great compilation of the seminal writings of prescient media guru Marshall McLuhan, entitled Essential McLuhan. McLuhan’s ingenious insights stem from his recognition that different media (e.g. an oral myth, a dry narrative newspaper, radio, television, etc.) define a context that affects the reader/viewer/listener irregardless of the content of the message. Immortalized in the expression “The medium is the messsage,” this insight led McLuhan to distinguish between “hot” media like radio and cinema that have more information and appeal to fewer of the reader’s senses, and “cool” media like the telephone and cartoons that are less full of information and appeal to many of the reader’s senses.

While I’m still reading and processing this book, it does seem to serve as an effective partial substitue for the ideas in McLuhan’s seminal books (e.g. The Global Village, Understanding Media, and The Gutenberg Galaxy). It also has additional material (e.g. McLuhan’s Playboy Magazine interview) that would be impossible to find elsewhere.

I haven’t got far, but I thought I would comment on the following quote in the introduction by the collection’s editors, the following quote appears:

When you begin a book which is something relatively new, you get first of all a “what nonsense” reaction and then the “many brilliant insights, but of course all wrong” reaction, then finally the “we knew it all along” reaction.

This editors used this quote to refer to the reaction to McLuhan’s writings, which followed much the same course.

I found this quote interesting for different reason. Namely, this three-stage process exactly corresponds to my mood whenever I attempt to write an insightful piece of original analysis (in my job as a Wall Street analyst):

1. Nonsense. I get tremendously confused during this stage of my writing, and feel that nothing makes sense (and it never will). Hopelessness reigns!

2. Insightful, but all wrong. I then get tremendously excited when I complete small bits of analysis that “work” and start writing it up in a coherent piece.

3. Knew it all along. Without exception, whenever I’m done writing the piece and read it for the first time, I think, “Egads, I just spent 100 hours writing something that is completely obvious and trivial, and why would anyone read this? I can’t believe I wasted my time!”

This last feeling only goes away when I get excited feedback from someone who has struggled with the problem I am analyzing. Ironically, I find that when a newbie to a particular subject reads an original essay, he or she tends to immediately jump to the “knew it all along” category. In my experience, it’s the reader who has struggled with that problem who is most apt to think, “Gee, I’ve thought about this problem for a long time, and not come up with a solution, and the author’s ideas offer a solution to this, and isn’t that cool!

Malleron’s and John’s weblogs both talk about “finding your voice”. Thus, I thought it would be interesting to record the definition of “voice” from Sol Stein’s great book on writing, aptly called Stein On Writing:

The author’s “voice” is an amalgam of the many factors that distinguish a writer from all other writers. Many authors first find their voice when they have learned to examine each word for its necessity, precision, and clarity, and have become expert in eliminating the extraneous and imprecise from their work. Recognizing an indiviaul author’s voice is much like recognizing a person’s voice on the telephone.

A comment: Most blog writing (mine included) includes what Stein calls “top-of-the-head” writing, which tends to have a lot of extraneous and imprecise verbiage padding the text. For example, Hemingway need to do countless revisions before he imbued his writing with his unique style. Or to paraphrase him, “first drafts are excrement.” Thus, people who want to “find their voice” probably have to revise their work to whittle their text down to the unique and non-trivial.

Proposal: A Field Trip to The Museum of Failed Products!

The other day, I read about The Museum of Failed Products in Ithaca, NY.

Rather than describe it myself, I’ll let the article do the honors:

It’s not the Guggenheim. Nowhere near the Louvre. But you can look up and down those hallowed places and never find an exhibit of edible deodorant. That’s right, edible.

Such a giggle-inspiring item is the soul of this museum, though, full of failed products, in Ithaca, New York, a place where classical sculpture and portraits give way to marketing disasters and just plain dumb ideas.

Like Garlic Cake.

I’d love to take a field trip and go to Ithaca, NY to visit this museum. For one, it’s got to be really interesting, funny, and absurd. So, it’d be fun to go down and visit it with some like-minded friends. Also, I bet you could learn a lot about business by looking at all those failed supermarket products. Nothing teaches better than reality, and those shelves are filled with actual ideas executed by actual companies that didn’t pan out. What better Business School could someone fascinated by consumer packaged goods ask for?

Great (albeit sacrilegious) Vonnegutt quote

I read Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five last weekend. I had read Vonnegut’s Breakfast of Champions a couple of years ago, and while I didn’t like it that much, I thought I’d give Vonnegut another shot.

After I had finished the first half, I thought Vonnegut had pretty blown his second chance, but then, I read the following quote, and came to appreciate Vonnegut as a genius:

Rosewater was on the next bed, reading, and Billy drew him into the conversation [with his wife], asked him what he was reading this time.

So Rosewater told him. It was The Gospel from Outer Space, by Kilgore Trout. It was about a visitor from outer space, shaped very much like a Tralfamadorian, by the way. The visitor from outer space made a serious study of Christianity, to learn, if he could, why Christians found it so easy to be cruel. He concluded that at least part of the trouble was slipshod storytelling in the New Testament. He supposed that the intent of the Gospels was to teach people, among other things, to be merciful, even to the lowest of the low.

But the Gospels actually taught this:

Before you kill somebody, make absolutely sure he isn’t well connected. So it goes.

The flaw in the Christ stores, said the visitor from outer space, was that Christ, who didn’t look like much, was actually the Son of the Most Powerful Being in the Universe. Readers understood that, so, when they came to the crucifixion, they naturally thought, and Rosewater read out loud again:

Oh, boy–they sure picked the wrong guy to lynch that time!

And that thought had a brother: “There are right people to lynch.” Who? People not well-connected. So it goes.

The visitor from outer space made a gift to Earth of a new Gospel. In it, Jesus really was a nobody, and a pain in the neck to a lot of people with better connections than he had. He still got to say all the lovely and puzzling things he said in the other Gospels.

So the people amused themselves one day by nailing him to a cross and planting the cross in the ground. There couldn’t possibly be any reprucussions, the lynchers thought. The reader would have to think that, too, since the new Gospel hammered home again and again what a nobody Jesus was.

And then, just before the nobody died, the heavens opened up, and there was thunder and lightning. The voice of God came crashing down. He told the people that he was adopting the bum as his son, giving him the full powers and privileges of The Son of the Creator of the Universe throughtout all eternity. God said this: From this moment on, He will punish horribly anybody who torments a bum who has no connections!

Two thoughts:

1. First, it’s pretty cheeky to criticize the Gospels as “slipshod storytelling”, particularly with analysis this acute. If you think about it, the idea that “the meek shall inherit the earth” only works if it’s backed up by the almighty power of God. Indeed, I always that the vengeful God depicted in the Old Testament, and parts of the New Testament (“Worship ME or suffer terrible consequences!!!”) reminded me a bit too much of a chain letter (“Send this to ten friends or you’ll get hit by a truck and die!”)

2. Second, and this is a minor point, but Jesus wouldn’t have been able to say all those wonderful things, because a big chunk of the Gospels (as I recall) is Jesus coming to terms with the fact that he’s the Son of the Creator of the Universe, fated to die on the cross, etc. If Jesus doesn’t know he’s Somebody until he’s dead, that kinda screws up the Bible’s plot.

Book Review: Model Patient by Karen Duffy

I just finished reading Model Patient: My Life As an Incurable Wise-Ass, by Karen Duffy. I picked it up at Barnes and Noble the other day, because I always thought Duff had a lot of spunk, and I thought a book by her wouldn’t be the usual celebrity cliche-memoir. Usually, this reading strategy results in me slogging through pages of drivel, but occasionaly I find something that makes all that drivel worthwhile.

Model Patient deals with Duff’s struggle against sarcoidosis of the central nervous system. The subtitle of the book desribes it best: “Embracing the Chaos of a Life-Threatening Illness with Style.” To tell her story, Duff talks about her entire life, so she’s not just talking about fighting a disease in a impersonal context. We learn all about how she started modelling at age 27, how she got her job as an MTV VJ (and how she came to hate it), how she met her husband, etc.

Most of all, we learn about how Duff looks at the world. Maybe it’s her ghostwriter, but I laughed out loud when Duff found a way to inject humor into prose describing some terrible stuff. Some examples:

“The pain was so bad that I couldn’t help crying, harder than I’d cried since I watched Old Yeller and Sounder and the other puppy snuff films aimed at kids.”

“I still have to spend a lot of time in bed when I have drug side effects or the pain flares up. But even on my worst days, I can still cheer myself in little ways, like whipping out my panties out from under the blankets when a friend comes to visit and demanding, “Just whose are these?”

It’s this unbelievable attitude that has made Revlon keep Duff on as a model alongside Cindy Crawford, despite having to work around Duff’s medical problems, and her body-changes from the illness.

I also love Duff’s embrace of the absurd as a strategy to survive life.