I'm Just Sayin

My Honors thesis has been justified or shown to be worth nothing by three New York hipsters.

The Writing Process

For the past week or so I have had what could best be called writer's block when it comes to my thesis. Part of this is because I have been doing other projects, but most of it comes from an intense need to get it done. I often find that on most projects I can think much more clearly if I know I have a deadline, but it is far away. Right now my thesis needs to be mostly complete by the end of this month.

This is crazy.

I have spent the last year and a half working on this thing. I have read a good number of books, many make it into the paper while a good deal of them are only there in spirit only. I have had so many conversations about cool with my advisor, my girlfriend, my friends, my family, and nerdy guys who work for NASA out in New Mexico. I have written upwards of 150 pages on cool, but have junked most of it or at least refined it down to something between 40-50 pages. I apply everything I learn to cool, from game theory to democratic system formation. I may not be cool, but it is always on my mind.

After meeting with my advisor today and bouncing some ideas off of her, I wrote a little today. I will write more as soon as I wake up tomorrow too. I feel like I have a second wind. I might actually make this happen.

LA is almost gone...

In about a day or so I will be leaving LA for the desert city of Las Vegas. From there I will stop by the Grand Canyon to get a post card or two, then home to Arkansas. Most of this will be driving down I-40, but I have never shied away from road trips.

I won't be sad doing this. When I get back to AR I have plenty of catching up to do in terms of videogames, friends, and rainfall. I also won't miss the horrid parking or at least having to pay to park anywhere that exists out here. There is also the excitement of moving into a house just off campus with some of my best friends that is also less than a block from my sister's residence. Life is waiting for me to get back there in other words.

While I have been out here my time has been fun. I have gone to the beach a few times, been in neighborhoods looking at houses that cost more than the net worth of most people I know, attended a filming of The Price is Right, eaten chicken and waffles at the same time, eaten Pink Berry, eaten Chinese food in a crowded restaurant in which Hannah and I were the only people of Western descent, seen famous movie houses, and over all just been around some of the most awesome places in the world. All said, it has been good in getting a feel for LA.

In terms of productivity... I wrote a bit for my thesis. It needs way more work, but in the pages I have written so far I have the ball rolling with my thoughts. I have read just about everything published by Chuck Klosterman. A man with whom I feel a certain bullshitter's connection. I have read a few other things as well, but nothing to point out. While I wish I had read and written more overall, there is nothing too specific that I did not do that I wanted to.

So while I go off into the future in the next few days I will be ready for it. Soon school will be starting and I will be forced to go into heavy work mode, something I forget that I am capable of doing during the summer but seem to fall right into the moment I find I have dozens of pages to write while studying for that many tests while trying to have a life and be an active Honors person too. It makes me wish I was going to be a PA again...

The Dawson Fallacy

This is an idea I am toying with putting in my thesis...

The Dawson Fallacy is the suggestion that every interaction with the world must not only be meaningful and important, but also dramatic. While I am sure that there are plenty of examples of this in the world, Dawson's Creek not only represents this, but also seems to be about this.

Dawson as a character never seems to have any interaction with anyone that is simply him being friends. While part of this is just the way television must work conserving time to push the plot forward, but even sometimes a story can move along without the characters analyzing it to death.

Mostly when this sort of thing happens it is very soap opera-y and is cast aside into the pile of low quality characters that populate the pop culture landfill. Dawson is different though. A combination of being right for the times and being somewhat smart in the cultural metaphors used in the dialog and the show works. Anyone who has watched the show will agree that it is good enough to want more, even if they will tell you that melodramas are brain rotting.

This is because there is a feeling that Dawson is self-aware of his acting out for maximum drama with his friends and loved ones just trying to make their way through their pulp romance lives. He knows he is a teenager and guy, but his ideas on what to do as a teen come from what he has seen in all the movies he has watched. His desire to be a filmmaker is then played out through his life. He doesn't want to just be a film maker he wants to live in a movie. He wants there to always be conflict. If as a teen he was ever happy it would be a sign that he is doing something wrong. He is not being a teen the way he should be.

This is why the end of Dawson's Creek is both satisfying to the audience and a painful realization for Dawson. The only way that Joey can ever be with Dawson is in Dawson's world of film. That's why in the TV show Dawson creates they are together. Joey as a real person goes off with Pacey who has always been the one who ended up in overly dramatic situations without having totally put himself in them.

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This is really all I have right now. I have only really seen about half of the show's episodes so I do not feel too comfortable talking about the show in any great detail, but I feel like I am on to something here with Dawson. If anyone would was/is a fan of the show we need to talk. I want to see just how close to base I am.

Self-consciousness

As I was making up some notes for the book Teenage by Jon Savage I came across this idea: “The Bright Young People's style was a fusion of modernity and Oedipal obnoxiousness organized around what looked like meaningless pleasure” (246). “The problem with outrage, however, is that it always needs to be trumped. The Bright Young People began to hit the law of diminishing returns. What had begun spontaneously became self-conscious rather than joyous.”

Now the Bright Young People were a group of partiers primarily in the 1920s it, but they made a lasting impact. There were hedons with a purpose. They saw enjoying life and all it had as a way of not only bucking authority, but also as a way of expressing their own youth. One of their best creations in this area was the themed party. From Russian parties to murder parties they came up with wild ideas to give each night's merriment a certain twist.

The above quote describes what happen as the BYP began to have too many parties with too many in attendance. Fun was once the only goal of a party, but when trying to top the last party is the goal it stops being fun. There is actually a point at which massive drunken orgies are just not fun. I know! Shocking!

Does this over saturation happen to all social movements though? Indie-Rock Pete would probably say that it does before you have even heard about the movement, but we all know that we can't find the lower limit of quality because it doesn't exist according to the Theory of Hipster Relativity. This means that there should be a range of popularity at which something is cool. My first reaction is to see cool as looking something like this (sorry for the poor quality chart, also note that a high quality graph would not have the movement at 0 on the x-axis):



This is clearly what happen to the BYP. They were a small group of cool seekers who found something that was not only rebellious it was also something that was fun (a necessary combination for something cool as I will explain in another post).

I wonder though a few things. What are the parts of popularity that make something cease being cool? The number of people willing to participate seems important. Whether or not something is still rebellious or not does not seem to matter. What matters is that there is a mass of people that want to be part of something. The kind of people matter too. Here I mean the specific clique of people and if more other cliques connect to cool movement. The graphical representation of this would be something like a single circle being the clique that contained the cool movement to begin with, but as time goes on the image begins to look more and more like an impossibly complex vin diagram. As this happens the movement is less cool.

However, the movement can become cool again I think. The first is not a true cool. It is around the point at which the movement becomes as uncool as possible. When this happens the cool kids can now enjoy the thing with the irony that makes modern popular cool run.



There is a genuine cool out there. This cool is something appreciated by many but the movement is now not appreciated for its novelty so much as its technique. Here it is no longer good to simply do something, one must do it with a flare that makes the moment seem almost artful.

For an example of this cool cycle let's assume that picnicing is a cool activity. People will go picnicing and with each visit to the park they will begin to gain attention. At the same time the things they did at the last picnic will seem less exciting because they will have done them already. This will force more extreme picnicing (maybe people will start cooking and eating turkey instead of enjoying a cold chicken leg from the night before). As this happens the people within the movement will become tired from the need to constantly improve because of the expectations of others. Soon there will be so many in the park picnicing that people will begin deciding that the activity is square. Before long the only people really picnicing are those who do it because no one does it. The might even use sporks and eat KFC, but only because irony dictates that it is cool to mock-picnic. Eventually, the idea of picnicing will become cool again but will be practiced by a smaller set of people who will set out to elevate it to an art. Sporks might be kept, but now metal sporks are seen and the food is prepared beforehand specially for the picnic. So we get a chart that looks like this when it comes to the actual practice of cool movements:



This is the cool cycle as I see it right now. I am sure that last graph needs a bit of work, but it is close for the time being. The biggest question is not about the theory then but about operationalizing these variables. Any suggestions?

Porn and the Image

While I will have a more formal write up on my thesis blog soon enough about this hopefully, these thoughts are more personal than will go there.

I don't really look at porn. Honestly, I would feel guilty doing so while I have a pretty wonderful girlfriend who only has eyes for me, but there are other things about porn that I just find so unappealing that looking at it can be a turnoff.

Now when I say porn, I am talking about Internet porn. I have only ever looked at a few Playboy mags ever (and they were all my girlfriend's). Porn to me is what you find on the Internet by looking at the dirty page of fark.com or googling the terms "nude girl" plus whatever trait you might be feeling into at that particular moment. This should give you plenty of sites that are just junk because they are either pay-sites or portals trying to get you to go to pay-sites. And as we all know the only pay-site that anyone is probably willing to admit actually purchasing access to and not regretting is Suicide Girls. Of course, the only reason that anyone does that is because it is the equivalent to getting a Playboy back in the day "for the articles."

Anyway, when I see porn my mind goes through the same thought process every time. This is simply because all porn ends up looking the same to me.

1) Is this girl attractive? I have to ask myself this because I cannot help but to simply be entertained by the fact that there is a woman, nude, sitting in some odd position with her clothing (if any) removed to cover her stomach's creases as she sits awkwardly looking at (or away from) the camera. To me, while I enjoy nude girls, this stance always strikes me as overly staged. Either it is meant to be done in a less than tasteful pin-up style or the girl is trying to show as much of her nudity as possible in one oddly angled shot. Once I get past this there is still the hair and make-up and photographic effects that I have to see through before I can even answer my question.

I feel like this in real life sometimes too. For most people determining attractiveness is like finding a ripe melon. We all have that idea that we should tap on the melon to listen for that hollow sound, but does anyone ever hear anything but that sound? This rule of thumb seems pretty useless to me, but we all follow it. My thumping measure for people to imagine them as if we were serfs in Europe in the Middle Ages. This way we are all kind of dirty with our hair a mess and all the make-up and push-up bras are being used to burn the witches. The only thing that people take from this world is their weight and fitness. These are things that I cannot get rid despite the fact that in the Middle Ages we would all be much skinnier (and shorter). At this point I think, "Okay, this is natural beauty, whadaya think?" More often then not with this game I find most people good looking enough, even if they do not match my personal standards.

I cannot do this with porn though. The package that porn is presented in is too static for me to do this. So I end up with only my personal standards of what I enjoy in physical appearance. This immediately fills me with rage at my callowness when shown this sort of thing. So I am pushed on to my next thought.

2) Would I like to have sex with this person? I tend to think no, but how can I be sure. My first question is needed to have a sound answer to this one so I am just lost before I move on to my third question.

3) Would a feminist like this? The answer is usually no in the most strict sense, but I tend to think there are shades of gray in this. What about this is anti-feminist? Pubic hair? Weight? Any Plastic Surgery? Photoshop? Pose? I tend to not worry about the whole objectification of women thing. I feel bad when I accidentally do this for the first split-second I see a girl in real life and I typically avoid that line of though unless I am people watching, in which case I am evaluating the attractiveness of boys as well (because such games are fun in malls). Eventually, my moral code is placated by simply thinking about this and all the social and psychological effects this sort of thing has on our culture.

But the only reason all of this really comes up is because I have been thinking about why I could never really like porn movies or even any kind of porn beyond just a picture of a nude girl. It is because she as a girl, nude, smiling at the camera is an image that has no tarnish with all the stickiness that is sex. There is only the fresh smell that people only have before sex. There is no awkward foreplay, no post-coital dismount to worry about doing gracefully, not even the need to make sure that the blankets are pulled up properly so no one gets cold. All that is in the photo is just a girl with a promise for idealized sex.

To me this kind of idealizing is a mental pitfall. It allows us to become all to enamored with something that doesn't really exist. I see this in my desire to be like Marty McFly or Brodie Bruce. These guys are not the best at anything, but they have a wit and happiness with life that I aspire to. I tend to see this as being a good thing to want, but in my darker hours I wonder. I compare what I have to what that idealized version is and see my life as imperfect compared to it. Often it takes a large amount of effort on my part to remind myself that the parts of those guys' lives I get to see is framed to seem like their whole life is awesome. Rationally, I know that Brodie will always have fights with his girlfriend and will probably eventually have to spend a few stressful days at work. These are not the first thoughts I have of him though. To me he will always be the jobless slacker who has a hawt girlfriend and a collection of comics that is so perfect he won't even let his best friend read them. I am sure that this idealized view of life is a part of the way I see the world, but at least I am aware of it. What about the rest of the world that shares in my idealized idols but does not see what I do? Are they more or less prone to the same bouts of worry I feel from time to time?

School's about to start

The night before class begins always gets me feeling anxious. While I can tell myself it is good to start back, get back into a grove, be productive; I know doing so is nothing I really look forward to doing.

I do school because of what I get out of it. Not for its own sake. Don't get me wrong, I love education and learning. I would much rather have a way of learning that was a bit less stressful though. I do this sort of thing though because of what I will get out of it. So in order for me to get ready for school here is a list of what I plan on getting out of this semester:

-A clear focus on my Honors thesis. By the time May is here I will have read at least a dozen more books and have a sense of what connects all of these stray thoughts that I have with the rest of what is cool

-One major down. I will be done with both Spanish and Political Science classes. w00t... (word of last year)

-More economic ideas. I am taking to economics classes that will hopefully be better than the class I had last semester. I don't want to feel like going to BBA will cause my brain to melt this semester.

-The proof I am not a lazy person. I feel now more than ever that I am often lazy and spend too much time just doing things to enjoy myself (sloth and gluttony). 21 hours should do that...


While I am sure there are more things I want from this semester these are the biggest ones. Now I can only sit back and enjoy the whiteness of my to do board before it is filled with lists of books to read, papers to write, and anything else that is going to come up this semester.

Now that we've taken care of that...

I am done with school finally, but not done with work. I still have to write a paper comparing something with the Baltics. I don't know what I will be writing on, but I need to get it done in the next few days.

I also have to work on my thesis. There are at least three books I want to read before the break is over. Hopefully, I won't be lazy and actually read them.

This blag should update more often now that I am not actually having to read almost 20 kids work every other night.