Degeneracy

One of my coworkers was disturbed by yesterday's post.  She raised some valid concerns.  First, I don't believe that all shoplifting is pathological.  It's always antisocial, but there's a big difference between kids testing boundaries and developing their consciences and their sense of morality with what Winona Ryder and Claude Allen are alleged to have done.  Such conduct is performed in spite of conscience (if it still exists) in an attempt to destroy it.  It's proto-psychopathological, degenerate behavior.

I wonder if strong families help guard against this kind of degeneracy.   More responsibility towards others may turn one aside from morbid internalization.  Just a thought.

Low Crimes and Misdemeanors

Petty theft, as opposed to treason, which is a high crime performed for the most egregiously venal motive, personal financial gain, is almost always pathological.  When Winona Ryder was caught shoplifting, the news organizations trumpeted the headlines all over the world.  But have you heard the one about Claude Allen, though?  Claude Allen was President Bush's domestic policy advisor.  He was a White House intimate, a person who advised the most powerful man on earth.  Claude Allen is also an alleged petty criminal, who allegedly swindled Target out of more than $5,000 worth of merchandise. 

What makes otherwise successful people resort to this kind of public indecency, this maladaptive and apparently uncontrollable urge to behave in deplorable ways?  What makes them flirt with discovery, and the public humiliation and destruction of one's reputation which inevitably follow?  Like bulimia, masturbation or self-mutilation, it hides in secret.  It's a festering miasma of hidden rage, deep and gangrenous.  Like a reservoir of pus it lurks under the surface, growing hotter and more pestilent, until it expresses itself in the only way it can: an eruption of self-destructive conduct.

It is the desire to be caught, to flirt with danger, but also to be caught, to get away with it for a while, but also to be caught, that drives such a deeply disturbed, proto-psychopathic mind.  The only difference between such a one and Theodore Robert Bundy is scale.

Justification

"Be a sinner and sin on bravely, but have stronger faith and rejoice in Christ, who is the victor of sin, death, and the world. Do not for a moment imagine that this life is the abiding place of justice: sin must be committed. To you it ought to be sufficient that you acknowledge the Lamb that takes away the sins of the world, the sin cannot tear you away from him, even though you commit adultery a hundred times a day and commit as many murders." 

--Martin Luther

Stay away from Pate

An article in today's Slate magazine about swans dying of avian flu have put the issue into the forefront of my mind.  Last summer was the first I'd heard of it.  I ignored it.  My mind justified the ignorance by saying "it's a third-world problem..."  So racism helped me keep my head stuck in the sand. 

However, recent stories such as the one in Slate, and the stories that the virus has jumped to cats has me pulling up my sandy head and panicking. 

The danger for human beings is that we have no natural antibodies for this strain of flu.  In Indonesia, there have been 29 confirmed cases of avian flu, of which 22 have proven fatal. 

That's a very high percentage of fatality.  Likewise, if the flu begins to be passed from person to person, then it will quickly decimate the world's population.  Currently, all confirmed cases were contracted from infected birds, though there have been cases where it may have been contracted through proximity to an infected person--though the infection doesn't go beyond that. 

So it's still contained.  But I see a chained monster ready to be unleashed on a very vulnerable population. 

The CDC has the most current information, and from there you can link to the WHO and other government sites that can help you prepare.  But, they'll also scare your pants off.

In the meantime, I'm going to stay as far away from birds as I can, particularly ducks, which can carry the virus without dying of it themselves.  So, no more walks around Greenlake for the forseeable future.

Disney's Decline

The Shaggy Dog opens today.  I don't know about you, but it's a miss on my list.  Tim Allen is a talented guy and I'm sure that he and all the artists involved tried their best.  But when guys in Armani suits come knocking, bearing skads of filthy lucre, who can say no?  Thus we have this remake.  The Disney of yesterday made its reputation on clean, wholesome, family-oriented entertainment.  Let's be honest: Their movies were square even in the 60's and 70's when they were made.  The Disney of today makes its reputation snickering up its sleeve at its former reputation.  Their films have all the technical expertise one would expect from an A-list film, the timing is right, the images clear, the camera stable and firmly affixed to its tripod, which all cameras should aspire to.  But there's no soul.  These films are as pretty and empty as Seattle would be after a neutron bomb explosion.  The filmmakers have no conviction because they've got mixed motives.  They can't make quality family entertainment because their corporate managers have no desire to do that.  The only raison d'etre is the filling of bank accounts and to do that, they must be hip.  Everyone wants to be hip, don't they?  It is souless, bankrupt, bereft entertainment that is as sharp and unappetizing as aluminum foil.  That is because their people in charge of the company are souless, bankrupt, bereft of style, grace or substance.  The Disney Studio of the past has transformed into the Disney Corporation of today.

Booming Toward Bethlehem

I am a member of the Baby Boomer generation (1946-1964), as I was born in 1958.  Having spent a good deal of my youth recovering from a serious chemical dependency issue (successful) and then trying to find a career in the arts (not so much); I have reached the age of 48 without a robust retirement portfolio.  I paid into an IRA for several years before I qualified for a 401(k) plan through my work.  The best investment has been the 401(k) without any doubt.  After ten years it has grown exponentially, doubling itself, then tripling itself.  I now have, between my IRA and my 401(k) almost seventy-five grand saved. 

This ain't much from the standpoint of my parent's generation, who all went into retirement with three quarters of a million in their bank accounts and could also count on social security to provide for them.  The number crunchers in Washington realized that 75 million people would be entering the system roughly over a period of 20 years starting in 2008, when the first boomers turned 62.  They realized that social security would have a difficult time meeting the demand.  Thus George Bush's attempt to privatize or reform the program.  His attempt failed, but at some point so will the program. 

Although I have a rather modest nest-egg, I'm far better off than the vast majority of my 75 million fellows.  The US Department of Labor states that the median (not the statistical average, but the numerical mid-point of the number range) for boomer households is $2,000 in retirement savings.

The average is $46,000, but that takes into account people who have tens of millions of dollars in savings.  The super-rich bring the average up for everyone else.  Even the Dept. of Labor acknowledges that there are wildly varying amounts in retirement accounts among households with similar incomes and expenses. 

What does this mean, objectively, for me?  (This is, after all, a me blog written by a member of the me generation.) 

Retirment is going to be a beyatch.  I think the answer may be a kind of communal living situation, investing in property with friends that we then share.  I have a feeling that there are going to be a lot of Golden Girls arrangements in the future.  I thinkthat we boomers have got to find a new template upon which to base our golden years--that the template our parents created will not work for us.

And even less so for generations to come.  I predict that in a hundred years retirement as we know it will cease to exist; that the only individuals who will be able to retire before they are no longer physically able to work are those who work for the goverment.  That can be avoided, of course, if present young people get smart and begin to save as soon as they can, even if it's just a handful of dollars a week.

The Oscars

No, I didn't watch.  The televised Academy Awards always fill me with a mixture of dread, revulsion and panic.  They are never funny enough and always too embarrassing.  I fall for cheezy "in Memoriam" moments, tears moistening my banal cheeks, as though these were people who actually meant something in my life--rather than being refracted light through tinted celluloid--or in the alternative, millions upon millions of eight-digit sequences of microscopic pits, read by a laser and transformed into imagery upon a cathode-ray tube. 

I did see some of the films.  Capote was especially good.  I thought Brokeback Mountain was beautiful, but I was more taken with The Mysterious Skin, which was far too extreme to find popular appeal.  My friend Jack wept copious tears at Brokeback Mountain, but I did not share his emotional experience.  However, an emotional experience was there to be had, judging from his reaction.  That's why it's always good to go with someone else to a movie.

My friend Robert is my favorite person to go to a movie with.  He can make sense of things in a way that really impresses me.  For example, he summed up Capote beautifully by saying, here was was a writer who exploited these killers for his own ends, and ironically, they wind up knowing that, and forgiving him anyway.  When you're facing death, nobody has time for a grudge, believe me.  Again, when Robert and I went to see Napola (AKA Before the Fall), he succinctly described the Napola as a school that trained killers.  That the filmmakers were presenting a society wherein there was no room for anyone who could not kill.  His description encapsulated the theme of the film beautifully and right on target.

I wish I could be so astute.  But my emotions get in the way.  It all becomes a blur of suffering and desire. 

Speaking of suffering and desire, what did I do instead of watch the Oscars?  I watched the Sci-Fi marathon of all five Hellraiser movies after Hellraiser 4--in other words, all the Hellraisers that went straight to video.  Now there's suffering and desire! 

I have to say that I was quite moved by Hellraiser 5--Inferno.  I was quite taken by the themes in the movie.  My suspicion with these five Hellraisers wasthat they were written as standalones, and reworked to fit into the Hellraiser universe.  So Pinhead makes an appearance in each of them.  Inferno worked as a kind of variant on Jacob's Ladder and Angel Heart.  It was an excellent story, though it does not fit into Clive Barker's thematic core--the Cenobites are almost Lovecraftian in their pitiless need to make human beings suffer the most excruciating pain in their flesh and their souls.  Pinhead almost becomes a moralistic figure in this film.  I've read that Barker hates this film--but be that as it may, the film works and is worth watching and even owning.  I cannot say that for the rest of them.  The thing, of course that connects the Hellraiser series is not only Pinhead, but the Lament Configuration: a puzzle box, one of three hundred created by a French toymaker.  When you solve the puzzle, the box opens a gateway to a dimension where the Cenobites exist, a kind of hell.  Cenobites are human beings transformed by pain and desire into otherworldy creatures who give such agony that it ceases to have any relevance at all, and becomes indistinguishable from pleasure.

It is a remarkable creation.  If Barker had created this alone he could be considered a genius.  But that he's created half a dozen other alternate realities, as fully imagined and detailed as this one makes him a paragon.