Doing a column of any kind is something of a management activity -- you develop a venue and some kind of style for your little standup act, then you go out subject-hunting in a timely manner. Being under the gun is always both a stimulus and a burden -- I used to have two opposing mottos: "Deadlines are for the dead." and "Deadlines keep you alive." I've noted before my intention of using the Gazette to get me off my duff and write, but it also trains me in the values of hitting a schedule.
Assembly lines may make good widgets, but they're a little hard on art. One writer offered up the prayer, "Lord, thank you for today's column, and please forgive me for yesterday's." Oftimes I've been tempted to revise a Gazette after the fact, but I try to resist the urge. This way lies madness. When somebody wants to make a book out of the stuff, then I'll rewrite.
Last week's foray into the politics of computer upgrades left me thinking, though. In a way, there's a peculiar connection between almost any natural or real-world process, however visceral, and its representation in one or another information modeling scheme, however abstract. While there's a lot of talk about taking care not to confuse the map with the territory, there's necessarily also an intrinsic correlation (duh) between the two.
This correlation gets much stronger and much more profound when the stuff being modeled is itself informational in nature -- the Law of Gravity, say. And it gets to the vase/two silhouettes stage when information itself is being abstracted as, well, information.
Human personality has no direct physical existence. It's a biproduct of the highly-evolved neural organs crammed into our craniums, lumps of şesh that were shaped by chance and survival selection over eons into the structures they now rejoice in, structures dedicated to storing and processing knowledge. The personality seems to exist as a superstructure of all this, riding atop the kill-rabbit-run-tiger substraits which are themselves somehow coded into dendritic networks woven of molecules and powered by glucose. It's a ghost of a ghost, thoughts made of other thoughts.
It's tempting to draw a parallel between this peculiar arrangement and the hardware/firmware/operating system/application/document hierarchy in your friendly neighborhood PC. While the box on your desk may be in danger of being out-thought by the average anthill, it exists as a sophisticated (for us) attempt to mechanize the same job that neural anatomy does. It's a stretch, but not a long one, to imagine an unwitting structural convergence by artificial information management with the natural variety, functionality dictating design in either case.
Does that mean, though, that there are congruences to be drawn in the opposite direction? Metaphors are infrequently commutative, no matter how appealing the notion might be to the magical mindset. But even if you can't break your enemy's leg with a voodoo doll, you might still learn a lot from a dummy if the anthill's not available.
Take this matter of upgrades, for example. For a long time, I've carried around a theory of personal psychology I call the palimpsest model, in which I imagine personality evolving, not in any smooth or continuous fashion, but in a series of jumps, the way modern evolutionary biologists picture punctuated equalibrium in speciation. Like its namesake, a painting which has another painting applied on top, the palimpsest model describes a personality maintaining equalibrium for a period of time -- weeks, months, years -- until time or trauma or education or realization or something brings it to a point where it breaks down and reintegrates in some new fashion. The evolutionary bent to all this extends into the idea that a personality, like a species, has an innate homeostatic stability and resistance to change which is only overcome by environmental pressure.
My last missive to the ether took up my reluctance to change the computer software I use unless forced to it by outside forces, eg, when none of my applications work with current documents anymore. My mind leaps (okay, lumbers) to the connection with personality change -- the same evolutionary pressures in play, albeit in a more loosely constituted system. It's not a proof, but it's an intriguing correspondence: species emergence, personality development and software replacement as examples of granulated change.
Nobody, least of all myself, would claim that computers work anything like the brain. But could it be that, on a nonphysical plane (oooh, mystical...), the process of organizing, storing and collating data has large-scale least-effort organizing principles involved? On some level beyond DNA, desktops or cerebrums, I hear faint echos of universal rules of engagement for self-organizing tiered information systems, a Unified Upgrade Theory that would be applicable to anything from star formation to breeding dogs, if you could just figure out how to quantify the kinkin' thing.
But if I'm gonna have anything to do with that, I'll have to upgrade to Thaddeus 12.5 at least. And then what do I do with all my old T10.0 applications?
I haven't always been this way. Once upon a time I was a ravenous shark in a school of smelt for anything with a button or a display. My first experiences with computer programming and MIDI music were like religious conversions. Even now, mired deep in my curmudgeonly dotage, I've cluttered my life with toys, tools, programs, protocols, codes and wiring diagrams to the point that I lose track of my own nervous system. Machines order my life, earn my income, knead and bake my literal daily bread.
Despite my egregious accumulation of technodebris, though, I've always had a streak of that contrarian impulse that made weavers shove perfectly good wooden shoes into the guts of the automatic looms that stole their livelihood. Probably for a similar reason, too -- tech is spendy, and cutting edge tech will cut you as fast as it mows down your competition. One side of me continues to wonder what's wrong with just a simple acoustic guitar and a plain voice, anyways? And come to think of it, just how much improvement have we made over soft clay tablets and a wedge-ended stylus?
Partly, my current disgruntlement is fueled by a bad case of obsolescence. Current events in the interlocking lands of OS, web and hardware are rapidly leaving me with a persistent dust-cough. What're those red tail lights off in the distance? Is that OS X? The ever-reconfiguring web? EIDE hard drives designed to back up the Library of Congress? Can't tell, they're getting too small...
In true economics-of-deprivation style, I do my best to impede the shining juggernaut of progress blasting along at relativistic speed along the info highway. Gimme an unsupported cheap OS any day. Used computers, that's the ticket. Old apps without bloat, please. Can't access the Great Whosit website because my browser's a trilobite? Fugeddaboutit, they didn't need my eyeballs anyways.
And with the titanic leaps the industry made in the 90's, old and funky is still pretty sci-fi. For my current purposes, retro tech serves admirably. Audio recording, image editing, self-publishing, email, correspondence, even web site support -- I can do everything I want without crossing the threshold of the 21st century. Hey, I burn CD's and do VHS video editing on a Quadra 840 AV. When Apple stopped building those, Kurt Cobain was still alive.
Eventually, of course, my perennial denial of The New And Cool (TM) is brought to a sharp and expensive (for me, anyway) halt by that nasty ol' invention, Necessity. When I determined that I wanted to move up to full-fledged computer recording, I was compelled to purchase a real live power PC and give up my beloved System 7.6.3 just to have a box that would accept pro sound cards and process 16/44.1 files in less than, oh, a month of Sundays, say. My yearning for similar frivolous conveniences bulldozed me into the other two or three upgrades I reluctantly did, leaving behind a ragged trail of heel rubber. Each acquiescence to vile utility brought with it an unpleasant season of swatting the swarms of bugs accompanying the so-called improvements to my rig.
This past week, after striking out on several links that had modernized beyond my surfing capacity, I tried to replace my model T version of Navigator with Netscape's latest. Installation were straightforward enough, although it took an ungodly long time to reconstruct my old profile. I was impressed with the snazzy new look and feel, and the speed was definitely higher, and the sites I'd been bouncing off came up loud and proud. But when I tried to download, the big beautiful piece of fungus locked up like an old maid's bedroom. Not only that, within three days my available hard drive space had shrunk by nearly half a gig. Says I to meself says I, Not on my computer! Turned out that Netscape prefers you use their latest precious bundle with OS 9, and I'm still an 8.6 troglodyte. After thoroughly scrubbing every trace of the overfed poot from my drive, I turned around and installed an earlier version of Mozilla instead. It seems to have the functionality without the cancerous storage hit, and "Save as..." works quite nicely, thank you. Open source, too.
I'm painfully aware that time marches, nay, stomps on, and everything in its path suffers the consequences. I just wish there were some alternative to the choices that this, the glorious thing that is capitalism, presents me in the field of personal computing.
It's clear at this point that System X is not a Macintosh system, that it is in fact a whole new hardware/software collusion in direct competition to all the Mac stuff that has come before. As one columnist put it, the lady in the running suit is throwing the hammer at a mirror this time. But the heavy tread of the clock and the competitive might of Apple are behind it, and Mac Classic is headed for the thriftstore of obscurity to share counter space with Amigas and Ataris and Commodores. The milk train won't be stoppin' here no more.
So what's a kludging schmoe like me to do? I can run the system I have as far as it'll go, however far that is, buying myself some time to plan my next compromise. But I'd be cashing in everything I own and starting over if I migrated to X. Wouldn't it be just as simple to waddle across the aisle and join the dark side? Wintel state-of-the-fart equipment is half the price of Apple, and the software's cheaper too. And almost everything's back-compatible -- the government made them do it. Or then again, what about Linux? If I don't want to feed the coffers of Ma Bill, maybe I could go with the penguin. If this is a total reboot, why not choose the real future? Dam' the learning curve! Full speed ahead!
Or maybe it's just time for me to stop chasing the feckless future and settle down with the comfy past. Unless and until we have pocket communicators that interface wirelessly with the web at gigabit rates, program by voice and provide heads-up 3D display directly on our retinas, it's silly to think that a fractional speed bump or prettier interface or fifth-wheel creature feature is going to be worth anything much to anyone but the company flogging it. It may be a decade or more before we see the next big thing in computing, and until then, my yard sale getup will serve me just fine.
Oh, who do I think I kidding? I'll probably break down and upgrade long before then. Despite how much I hate this stuff, there's no getting away from the fact that I love it too. And those new flatscreen iMacs are just so -- darned -- cute...
Hey -- Happy Yule, Y'all!
You're never too smart to be dumb. It's the law of life -- cruel, isn't it? A glaring, blaring, warthog marching band - sized example of the Thaddeus Principle ("The more you know, the less you know") popped up on the media this past week in the mismatched coat and pants of an economics debate over escalators.
Seems that several esteemed professors, eminences of note within the Dismal Science, stumbled into a lunchroom discussion of why people walk up stairs and stand on escalators. From a trivial BS session, this intellectual tar baby grew into a week-long struggle that consumed hours of hot air and miles of blackboards in its voracious search for an answer that was obvious to anybody who'd ever done it.
The problem stemmed, not from the activities of the people on the escalator, but from the good pedants' misapplication of a process called margin analysis, essentially a mathematical set of scales that balances cost against benefit. Costs and benefits looked nice and sparkling clear in this case -- take a step, get a step closer to your goal. But like one of those proofs that 2=3 that divide by some huge expression that actually evaluates to 0, there's a quiet flaw in that noisy assumption, namely that the real benefit you're reaping isn't distance, it's time to destination. Take a step on the stairs, get a step closer to your goal. Take no step on the stair, get no step closer. But take no step on the escalator and you're getting closer anyway, and saving energy in the bargain. D'oh! Like the old programmers always said, GIGO -- garbage in, garbage out.
Okay, now that we've all had a good laugh at the eggheads' expense, so what? The poor dears had a Ivory Tower Moment, that's all. But that's not all. It's exactly this kind of loose construction of specific theory that leads to a lotta down days and blown up babies in this our all-too-human world. A little knowledge, sayeth the prophet, is indeed a cyanide pie in the face.
In a way it's an example of the oldest model of systemic development, human or otherwise: Overextend and Crash. Nature favors the prolific, if only because there's so much extra energy running around (or as a pal put it, "Make millions of them -- something will eat them.") Unfortunately, Nature can be a real mother, and what she favors might not be so good for the objects of that favor. And in the application of a powerful and predictive theory, it's really tempting to just grab that ol' .20-.20 and blast away at everything in sight from gnats to elephants. Eventually the smoke clears and the cleanly killed bodies can be counted, but the halt and the blind are left to wander and ponder.
This is exactly the warm and wonderful process that brought us such sideshow attractions as eugenics, social Darwinism and trickle-down theory. It looks good, it sounds right, but when you put it in place the roof falls in -- and in retrospect, you should have seen it coming.
Enormous successes, especially in the 20th century, at using the hairiest and scariest of theoretical constructions to engineer everything from computers to synthetic sex have blinded us to the pitfalls of overabstraction. We tend to the misguided notion that every problem should have a rational, and preferably numerical, solution. But just because quantum mechanics can deliver results accurate to six (count em) significant digits doesn't mean that stepping on a rake is the best way to push your glasses up on your nose, no matter what the figures say.
Our highest achievements as a species, like the ability to love one another, spring from an entirely different skill set -- perhaps blessedly, one not currently open to modeling or computation. And in the face of an impending armed conflict apparently spawned by the epic misconstruction of a welter of chainsaw weltpolitik academic opinions bred in thinktanks and midwifed by powersuited advisors, it would do well for us to meditate long and hard on the message of the season: Peace on Earth, Good Will Towards Men.
That and to watch out for marauding rakes. D'oh!
It's been like this for a goodly while now, barring the occasional temp office work I turned to in years past. In truth, I never wavered from what I've considered my true calling, that of a creative artist. You pinkos out there may remember the notion of the "cultural worker" put forth by the grimly humorless socialistas of the 70's -- okay, forget it. I'm strictly a cash-and-carry esthete. And the farther down the yellow brick road of Art-with-a-capital-ARRR! I've gone, the harder it is to get back. 50% of what HR people are looking for in a new hire is whether they'll show up with the predictibility of oh, say, a large slab of cold beef-- that "solid work history" you read so much about, mostly in the Help Wanted classifieds. I used to joke that my work history only suited me for two jobs: CEO or janitor. These days, I'm not sure I could even land janitor.
And yeah, it hasn't been beer and skittles either. Tofu and tea is closer. Partly that's just the nature of the work. In the Big Book of Occupations (you know, the one they had in the high school library with fascinating entries like "100.2.357 -- Nitpicker, professional --"), if you look up "Artist" you'll find "see -- Sales, Media Content." Even in the technical professions, the more creative niches are less than completely respectable. A common joke around Seattle in the late 90's was "So, what are you doing?" "I'm a web designer." "Oh, are you unemployed too?"
Not just a matter of lack of demand, this downward mobility -- it almost seems that there's an outstanding prejudice in the world of work against anyone gaining a livelihood from something they actually enjoy. The prevaling attitude seems to be "Why should I pay you to do this? You'll do it anyway." In the small shop, getting to design the letterhead or the display ads is a plum reserved by the boss or the general manager, possessed of time or an artistic bent or no. And particularly in the graphic arts, the proliferation of computer design applications, complete with stocks of templates designed by real artists, has generated the fallacy "Hey, anybody can do this," and the accompanying blizzard of horrendously constructed documents under whose yoke and lash we now endure our mizzable existences. A similar effect in recording software lurks behind the rash of new bands, solos, remixers, dj's and self-styled college students flogging their favorite wastes of time on the internet.
But I soldier on, swinging my metaphorical sledge on the chain gang of culture. Will it or nil it, Mars needs women and h. sapiens needs art. There's an interesting theory bouncing around the evolutionary biology world right now opining that hoo-mans developed intelligence because chicks dug smart, creative guys. I myself wouldn't know too much about that, but hey! It's scientific, right? Must be true. I've always contended that crazy people who invented new stuff all the time were an adaptive mutation to pep up our culture and ensure that we wouldn't get blindsided by a new kind of predator or an ice age or something. We make the widgets that keep the whole world breathing...
More than once in the recent economic downturn (welcome to Niagara Falls -- here's your barrel), I've been reminded of the timeless words of Hunter Thompson: "When the going gets weird, the Weird turn pro." I'm familiar with the concept of putting your act together and taking it uptown, and I've never been chary about coming up with cute li'l names for all my various services -- hey, that's another of the plums reserved by the boss (me). But the question of just how formally to declare my risible business intentions has always been a high wire act with no net for me (and at these wages, not much gross either -- budabump). The first rule of microindustry is the same as in the Army: Never volunteer. Tax law is perfectly happy with vest pocket sole proprietorships devoid of name, rank, serial number or business license, and it's downright fascinating to watch the vampire fangs flash in the night the instant you use the word "business" relating to anything from utilities ("Will this be a business phone, sir?" *kaching*) to office supplies ("Everything for your Home Office!" *kaching*).
Life at the bottom may have its anonymous perks, but there are arguments in favor of more formal business registration. One was handed me by my last refi broker, who assured me that I could have gotten a point off my mortgage just by having had a biz license for a couple years. It seems that mort co's detest the self-employed almost as much as wage slaves do, but are blinded by the vision of a person employed by a certified organ of capitalism, however pipsqueak. And then there's always that one check for therestofthehousepayment made out to one or another of my pseudonyms instead of to me. Unless I wanna go Yes Yes Yes Straight To Check Xpress to donate a bit of the ol' epidermis to the Shylock Relief Fund, there are endless annoying little hoops to jump through before I can claim the green and mail it off to the Me Relief Fund instead, hoops that would be circumvented by a simple business checking account ("Will that be a business account, sir?" *kaching*).
Imagine my surprise to wake up one morning to find huge glossy billboards all over town proclaiming a local bank's willingness to supply Free Checking For Small Business. Well, finally! Time to get right with the Gods of Formality.
Now step into the Thaddeus Gazette Space Time Distorter (watch yer head) (isn't that anatomically difficult?) and take a little trip to Bahrein Island, circa 1947. Hey, it's hot! it's a desert! An uncivilized wasteland of sand dunes and Arabs and BP oil fields. None of the high rise hotels and air conditioned business centers that have sprung up there in the wake of the energy boom. And spang in the middle of the whole sweaty postwar mess we find Mike and Betty, a couple of funloving kids out for kicks, seeing the world and serving the petroleum industry. Bored spitless in the bargain. What do you do for fun around here, anyway? It isn't easy entertaining yourself in the Middle East, especially if you're hanging out with Brits.
For these two, the answer is to make stuff up. They start a running gag revolving around a found art approach to product development, taking everyday objects and packing them up with appropriate satiric advertising. Take a safety pin, gilt it with gold paint and suddenly it's -- A Solid Gold Diaper Pin! The Status Symbol Of The Year For Your Baby! They have a lotta babies in Bahrein for some reason. Most of these joke products are packaged under the auspices of Improvising Industries Inc. Merriment, as they say, ensues, along with more babies.
Visions of enchanting Bahrein, jewel of the Persian Gulf, fade in our rear view mirrors as we yoyo relentlessly back to loud, overcrowded 2002. No, I'm sorry sir or madam, the rules clearly state that I can't let you out in 1964. So what was all that about? Just this: Mike and Betty, both gone to their just rewards now, were my parents. Whadya mean you knew all along? Obviously I come by my slightly bent spirit of commerciality honestly, which is more than I can say for those stuck-up Enron types. How many of them had zany moms and dads?
The last Improvising Industries Inc. product ever created, as far as I know, was a Yule gift Betty sent us just before she became disabled, a pair of wicker decorator bells labeled "Jingle-less Christmas Bells, peace and quiet for those whose nerves have been rattled by constant jangling!" She might have been reacting to all those Starvation Army kettle workers. The bells graced the tiny tree on the cover of our CD "A Family Christmas," but sadly, it was only after her passing that I thought to add an I.I.I. (Ay Yi Yi!) credit to the liner notes.
There is honor among nut cases, especially when they're linked by lineage as well as peculiarity. So the other day I went online (golly, this really is 2002!) and applied for a City of Seattle Business License. I set up Bard's Cathedral and Amber Tide as DBA's -- no more silly putty checks, please. And on the line for Primary Business Name, I proudly and humbly entered "Improvising Industries."
So if anybody asks, I just got tired of being an independent and went into the family business.
In days of yore when vaudeville nouveau was still wet behind the ears and the Flying Karamazov Brothers were a bunch of ren fair hippie jugglers, we of the Oregon contingent of that vast and numinous fellowship would daily bend down and do obeyance to our own personal Mecca, the Oregon Novelty Company of Portland. Within its cluttered and cryptic depths lurked such wondrous treasures as strap on beards, fake handcuffs and juggle-able rubber sharks. Over the golden years of my midyouth I stocked endless shows and raggletaggle gypsy sidewalk circuses with the cheesy and utterly indispensable supplies sold by this fine establishment.
But youth and strength are but a single breath of the endless aerobic workout of Time, and the moment came when the Oregon Novelty Company went wholesale and was lost to us forevermore. But we of the Northwest Fraternity of Fun did not despair, no! We did not hang our heads in morose defeat. There was another hope: Archie McFee's of Seattle.
While the ONC may have been the champion of practical show outfitting, Archie's makes up in variety and sheer attitude what they may lack in inventory. They are to novelties and weird trinkets what Boston is to beans. They also have the distinction of a print catalog that could make the NYT's bestseller list if it ever got high enough over the radar. And it was in Archie's that my fervid imagination first conceived what may well be the towering pinnacle of my creativity, the apotheosis of my inventive career: The Heal Wheel.
It was the early 90's: money was tight, grunge was on the make, the Mariners were dogs and we lived in an RV. Archie's was still in its old building on lower Stone Way with the giant lizard head crashing out of the wall. One day S and I were paying our respects to the joint when we happened upon a display of gray cylinders labeled "Tube of Gloom." Upending one would cause a sliding reed within to make a perverse moaning sound.
I cannot say that there was a moment when the concept of the Wheel came to me. It was as if for me the notion was packaged with the product, illustrated on the blurb card. It had the inevitability of true love, of mathematical elegance, of a falling safe in a Roadrunner cartoon.
I had no choice. I had found a cause. No amount of dickering would get the tubes for a decent price. I paid anyway. I bought them all. Back at the trailer park I pulled out the old bike wheel the landlord had given me for want of anything else to do with it. Shipping tape was sufficient to hold the tubes to the spokes. I grasped the quick-release handle and spun, and the Wheel was born.
As I'd anticipated, the dozen or so tubes on the wheel would moan nearly continuously when the wheel was spun slowly. It was a truly dreadful noise, one that was difficult to tolerate for long. S and I were elated. We'd created a new musical instrument, one that made angel's song of fuzz guitar by comparison. Call it our inner punks flexing their leather thighs.
But S wasn't satisfied. "It needs more tubes," she decreed. She found a cheaper supply at the dollar store around the corner and funded me to purchase a few dozen more. Soon the Wheel was filled to capacity, and its plaintive cry rent the night. Life was good.
The Wheel was an instant hit. Friends were appalled and delighted by its horrendous wail. "It sounds like the inside of my head when I'm getting crazy" was a typical review (we have such interesting friends). Vaudeville associates imagined bizarre and unlikely showbiz applications -- the Incredible Floating Jerry Garcia Head! We'll clean up! Musicians jammed to it, chanters chanted to it, New Agers did their spiritual best to meditate to it. We took it to gigs, to parties, to Country Fair.
But despite its popularity, it remained a functional cypher. Try as we might, we couldn't come up with anything for the twisted doodad to actually do. And without a use, how could we properly name it, this fortuitous creation that fairly begged to be given a moniker?
And then Sandahbeth went into the hospital.
You may conceive of that previous sentence as a lesser, more traumatic cousin to the one in The Last Unicorn, "And then the unicorns came out of the sea." It was the beginning of the whole ridiculous alopathic treadmill we've traveled together these last eight years. But it also marked the inception of the Wheel's true identity.
In confinement for a hip replacement, S chaffed at the restrictions on her activities. I did my best to keep her supplied with fidgets, twiddles and sundry diversions. The Wheel was one. And just as in the realm of our small circle of friends and fellow fools, it was big fun on the rehab floor. Older nurses shook their heads and muttered "How weird!" Young assistants laughed and proclaimed "Way cool!" Despite the difficulty of actually spinning it, associates were popping in from other floors to check out the goofy construct and laugh.
I realized that the Wheel had found its true calling, as an inducement to health and high spirits. And I began calling it the Heal Wheel.
Over time, the endless parade of medical dramas, large and small, that plagued our lives drove a fair amount of the penache out of our approach to hospitals. The Wheel was left to languish on the porch, its tubes dampening and clogging in the open air, its framework half-finished, the hair bands holding the tubes losing their elasticity -- a sad, crumbling memorial to the hijinks of yesteryear. Just another choo choo left out in the rain.
The last year had been especially vexing -- S's first hip job had worn out and the replacement seemed reluctant to set, complicating on three different tries. We realized it was time for extreme measures. The Wheel would have to turn once more.
I brought it in, cleaned dead leaves and insects out of the tubes, bought fresh hair bands, finished its mounting frame and reassembled it. And immediately its unique character reasserted itself. Carrying it in from the car to the hospital, little kids and staff alike proclaimed it "Cool!" Attendants and doctors are already being drawn from all over like moths to the flame by its therapeutic emanations. And S is definitely feeling better. The Heal Wheel has returned!
It may well be the ultimate triumph of Coyote Art that a work so totally devoid of either practicality or social grace can have such a salutary effect in medicine, a field so virtuous as to be darn near sacred. And that unconscionable and hilarious paradox is what I think makes the Wheel the apex of human achievement that it unquestionably is.
You're all cordially invited to nominate me for a Genius Grant. And if anybody knows how to get in touch with the curate of the Museum of Modern Art, well...