The Vulva of Russia

"I think the results speak for themselves," a grieving father

I had a terrible headache Wednesday morning, my sister messaging me later, before the American dinner hour, that she wanted to give me money. Fuck that. Between our aunt and our father, the debits for the fact that I paid my younger siblings mortgage from the bowels of my nigger habitat twelve years ago have been paid. She has four children. Two have had significant conditions. I told her to let it go. The headache was a trade off in concession to my age: I had been running the air conditioner, to which my Mediterranean constitution rebels, believing a stroke was imminent. I shut off the machine, and the cranial tension eased.
 While Otto's comatose body riled the fourth estate, I evaluated Oscar Isaac's death scene as reasonably effective in Ex Machina, though my immediate objection resides as it always does in empirical observation. We attribute anthropomorphic characteristics to artificial intelligence, perhaps for dramatic anxiety, but this is Deep Blue against Kasporov, processors, circuits, pulses. Conditionally, its future self awareness may not contain a minimal personality, so why is Google hurling along? Why do we desire machines to survive our eventual extinction? I was merely revising an old piece, stopped myself, logged on for archaeological data, made an FB page and appointed my baby half brother administrator, just hitting his forties. I may have adapted to Twitter's utility, but social media is dangerous, and I hate it. I really do.

Apricot Canning

"But you are human, human as I could make you."-- William Hurt, before embracing the garrulous conservative approach.

The British android series Humans doesn’t bring anything new to the table. In the SO2 climax, Laura’s mildly insistent argument to the actor performing Hester was an apologia to the viewing audience for the fact that we can only approximate what we hope sentient machines will be like. The actress in Ex Machina does a little better, merely observing the death of her creator. The geek who freed her had scruples, in the movie’s initial inclination toward sympathy. The end is ambiguous, mildly chilling—but we still don’t really comprehend the issues inherent in AI creation. Forbes had an interesting backstory piece about Bell Labs technical secrets leading to the behemoths of our 21^st century anxieties: Apple, Google, Facebook, and the government’s drive to break AT&T into component spinoffs might serve as a warning to the Big Three. What we might also consider, however, is that we don’t need Hal, Arnold Schwartzenegger, or Spielberg’s sentimental AI romance to be alarmed at the human digital interface already having something of a negative impact. Computer processing as it already exists sets off sequential events with detrimental results. Do we want drone technology and drone kills to eliminate human pilots? Or facial recognition software to turn the planet into a quantum prison? Despite William Hurt’s ostensible cameo, allowing the audience to pit the British no nonsense sensibility against AI’s grandiosity, comparing David with Odi, and their inadvertent threat, Humans is more or less an English domestic quarrel with diversity and its economic caste system. Leo Elster, if not an anemic beatnik, looks like an exhausted punk who’s lost the nerve to be crude. Niska is the outraged feminist who goes butch, making a rather huge leap, conceptually, into simulated incest. The writers don’t really trouble themselves with how a self-aware android would intuit penetration as a violation, or even why Mia and Hester pursue sexual objectives, proletarian as they are, the caretaker and exploited chemical worker. The actor who embodies the Beatrice/Karen composite puts in a sturdy performance as a woman divided between domestic tranquility and despair, the least autonomic of the prototypes, hence improbable.

Since Asimov inflicted readers with the moral dilemma of robotic awareness in the mid-20^th century, machines are either victimized children or a malevolent efficiency model. In Terminator, the machines are DOD systems which eliminated most of human civilization, then came up with time travel to ensure the resistance did not survive Siri’s destruction. Granted, the saga is simply an action thriller with characters to root for, but we never ask if machines designed for combat would be so relentless, and we might wind up with something quite different if we bring these things to life, an alien mindset that doesn’t mirror and magnify human behavior. I am not saying I was unmoved by the story line of the series, but we’ve seen it all before, trapped by our own anthropomorphic tendencies. If Terminator offers a sliver of hope against the hubris of the military industrial complex, and The Matrix is a futurist parable warning us not to be too caught up in technical optimism, Humans has faith we’ll remain true to our core values in the age of Google, with a Zuckerberg-like CEO trying to make happiness just that much less effortless. Uh huh.

Bakery Frosting

Dick Polman's 2010 article in Obituary Magazine castigating Hitchcock's Psycho at 50 was fair, perceptive in view. I do not think Judith Rossner's Looking For Mr. Goodbar would have been possible without the reverberation of the first slasher movie on camera, but I also cannot find an archive version of Polman's piece for reference, and Dick has no reason to help me out, nor twitter as a whole, despite my pleading. 

Polman was one of the first journalists I read on Blogger, and if I wanted to be that kind of introverted groupie, I could drive to University of Pennsylvania's campus and attempt to place my disenfranchisement in his path, but I was never that far gone for our locally grown national analyst; drifted away from him, not from any distinct animus, not in terms of ideology, though his entirely wasted opinion about Romney and the sect that stuck in Utah provides a good indicator of my waning enthusiasm, with some exceptions, his byline in Obituary being one. I could scold and say "Dick, by the time I get to the library guide to periodicals." Or just be myself and say Dick can you help an old woman out? Unlike Scorsese, who can teach us about what Hitchcock was doing with Janet Leigh in terms of artistry, Dick does not like the legacy of Psycho's impact, which some critics suggest Hitchcock himself attempted to address with the later and even more chilling Frenzy, circa 1972. The opening rape strangulation in Frenzy was a vivid remonstrance of my childhood, and I did not need ThisTV to remind me that British pathology can be just as pernicious, and far worse than Jason in a hockey mask.

Hitchcock, however, is an unabashed structuralist, Polman's grasp of the culture shock in Psycho's wake notwithstanding.. What came after also got messier, and I believe Richard Brooks tried to take his cue from this in Goodbar's climax, which, if the filter is correctly applied, might be seen as Rossner's argument against Hitchcock's stark, manipulative fantasy sacrifice, and not simply in terms of Theresa's masochism goading her into her dangerous liaisons and lack of caution. Rossner's work begins the process of de-glamorizing pathological misogyny which Hitchcock consistently elevated, and Spielberg parodies with devastating irony in his use of Jude Law as the automaton which may not even know it is innocent of our fascination with murder of women in A.I. Law's Gigolo parody is an enhanced version of of the chameleon he plays in Music From Another Room, the Clinton era touchy feelly romance of manner which has not sold me, yet none the less wrestles a rebuttal against too much of a sweet tooth for dandies.

What I feel about Andrew Sullivan's departure as an online columnist, now, is contempt. He deserves credit for pushing back against LBGT militancy to silence hostile and trauma- considered it persons such as myself--but he is in part responsible for this path where the inclusion and destigmatizing of every form of conduct will ultimately be our own undoing. I'd like to see Andy take on the corruption of activists like Erik von Schmettering and Jimmi Shrode. If I had the dexterity I could make a best seller writing a title like Faggot Wars.

Iron Necessities

Let me hit the pause button. You might infer from Carcano that I'm a duplicitous schemer, but that isn't quite the case. Political aides who work for my state representatives advised me not to place a classified on Craigslist, and after trying cleaning businesses which weren't suitable, using Craigs was a last resort which worried me. I am not infallible, and I daresay I do function savant at times, so I was scared. The Web is a pornography shallow troll riddled junkyard to which I'm contributing like catacomb of ghoulish delight, and the new guy got the job because the other interviewee I telephoned without the appropriate judgment at first glance. That takes patience. 

I did not know he was gay, but I know the terrain, and in terms of what I might have gotten, feeling that I could be safe, this counted. The safety factor won, in essence, despite the fact my hostility toward homosexuality radicalized equality is genuine. And it was, in fact, extremely difficult to be civil to Erik in front of s/his brother "in the life". The flesh fair freak happened to be on the pavement outside the vestibule when I introduced J-- to the building. My show of civility vanished when my new assistant headed home. Erik and Jimmi are a significant factor in my need to get off this corner. Dealing with the two of them feels like rust eroding my esophagus. I'd enjoy beating them into a pulp.

Erik von Schmetterling did not know I was pleading with Linda Dezenski as a last resort to avoid calamity those years ago, but that doesn't absolve him. They don't like each other that much, Linda and the regional shim, and Erik is in fact a sick bangle of nerves on its last legs. I hate the two of them equally for being corrupt and necessarily vicious when it suits them. The bitter transvestite failed intern and the gloating Jewess I transformed into an icon with her own hagiography. Back biters, allies by necessity.

We'll see how it works. J-- is nice. I selected him on my own terms without imposition from regulatory authority. He is better looking than Alan Gordon, and I am not going to see him daily unless I surrender to Medicaid waiver and he wants that position. My social fear is not ignited and we aren't going to swap sexual escapades and stories.

Pop Up Recollection: Enemy Consortium

"I'm a puppet of a high functioning sociopath."-- Megan Boone

Patty Duke is given a diva scene in the tepid drama, The Baby Sitter, tapping into her varnished mania to have an episode made leaden by booze, and it is sadly camped, almost stenciled in to a talented actress'es notable itinerary. 

All aging actors seem to encompass these plot points: the breakthrough, the rise, the critical accolades in the train toward the apex, and then they attempt to cling to their glory through hackneyed scripts which then go to DVD. Shatner is no exception, and the only reason he had a resurgence on Boston Legal was because he played with audience nostalgia for his embodiment of James T Kirk, lampooning the action hero with considerable sophistication as the barging litigator. Boomer middle age anxiety was cruel, however, and heads rolled in the dust. 

Duke is a footnote, and Shatner plays the gallant, and we're indifferent. Respectful to the elder celebrity with a nod, but know in the back of our minds he is fish meal for obit gurus. Duke's exit is more consequential.

Her bipolar disorder initially cycled her creativity, and in The Patty Duke Show, between the lines of the starched script, runs an argument for accommodation of mood differentials, as opposed to their classification through the ever gargantuan medical model. Arguably, Duke herself may have put a dent in her ability to get roles through her embrace of the term as a medical definition. As a teen, she channeled that intensity to humanize Helen Keller, but failed to transition over in maturity, in contrast to Sally Field, who dramatized the condition for ER.

If we're going to deconstruct our humanity through microcelluar biology, the potential cyborgs which emerge from Google's Tonka Toy kit in AI might provide an answer as to why self aware intelligent life destroys itself before a hospitable planet cooks in a nova event horizon. By the same token, competing theories, in certain instances, do more harm than good. We're all assuming Lubitz died a mass murderer, perplexed by his actions. Unless he left a manifesto in a drawer, we'll never know, and shouldn't automatically consign his fate to the need for advanced neuroscience.

Flesh Fair: Quest In the Design

Vladimir Nabokov uses a narrative framework similar, but upgraded, to that which Conrad developed with such success. It is an omniscient framework within a framework, like a boxed set of novels that make up a franchise, only on a smaller scale. It is a technique that opens Lolita with blaring trumpets, in the incident report which summarizes the death of all the parties involved. (You might be surprised to know that I do not own a copy of the novel extant, but for me this is not a must have addition to my personal library, not under the duress of my present circumstances. I'm hostile to it as a masterpiece for reasons I shall not tackle here.) It is also present, but in softer fashion, in the earlier title, The Luzhin Defense. I have not seen the film, nor am I ready to view it, though some brief capsule skims convey the disappointment of reviewers; nor am I going to discuss the novel in great detail, except to say that one of its major motifs seems to be that if humans do not search for transcendence in religion, or even divinity, we still search for it through mastery of patterns and formal structures, which is a dystopian subtext when we take up androids, cyborgs, and robots in science fiction, the crux of the matter coming down to a dichotomy between personhood and a set of programmed responses, like kimmy using her piglet self to lie down on the keyboard when cynical adoptive parent is on a roll. I wonder if she'll inadvertently reformat the HP for me. Sulking, she is snuggled with Vinnie on the Quantum, so adorable we should all just die and cede the field to felines, and this too cute moment makes me regret that I cannot join marshmallow heads and upload another 7 billion cat pictures online, and tongue ties me when I say "She's not Joey!" Joey was special in that marshmallow overweening sentiment so very and extraordinarily difficult  to define. He feared all ambulatory humans except those in wheelchairs, and suspect my aunt rushed him and his surviving sibling to me because something happened that instilled fear that left its imprint, at least on the deceased. Spielberg uses the same framework technique in A.I., almost, suggesting that in the end all we can hope for is that testament will survive, but this is an obdurate, romantic review of machine (and man) over the brutal realism of evolution before our eyes. What transforms particles into Being is beyond the scope of our own CPU's to understand, and I am highly skeptical that a mechanical device will ever evolve in the Darwinian sense, although I am less skeptical, and almost alarmed, that through mimicking microbiological processes, we will create artificial life. It scares me, as even cloning sheep and cows seems to create vulnerable immune systems as a residual effect of losing sexual division.

In mulling my quite exasperated conscience, I do not really want to explore the dark side of attendant care too much in this account, and Tim is better than much of the trash I've dealt with, past tense, but the system, designed toward de-institutionalization, is still a highly charged source of class conflict. Tim is basically a good man, and if I could walk, he would not exist for me, unless I was a paternalistic globe trotter like Niall Ferguson or Nicholas Kristof. Do those of you who can balance on the balls of your feet ever think about it? I have no organic sense of what it feels like. I accept it as a fact, our bipedalism, but I can feel my lungs expanding; I'm intimate with what it is to breathe. Walking was ever and only an approximation, and an exercise in pain, as indeed, is much of what mobility I do have.

The Beckles Projection

I had a busy, if virtual day, angling to see if I can return to the real world against young turks, such as this gent, if I indeed have enough left in my cognitive matrix to do so, since I am barely a goose with enough down left to hold myself up to a swan, and I was never a turk. In the convenience store, a young nerd said "here you go mamma," and of course I allowed it to glide, but it rankled. My mother was a mamma, a loose one, a lush, without the humor we tend to associate with the Wife of Bath, she opened her legs to the wrong people. So did I, come to think of it, without the magnitude of such reverberating damage to anyone other than myself, still with the mettle of the feckless, social media is not all that it is hyped to be, because I still like the weight of critical analysis as compared to typing "ooo how lovely!" to Ms. Farrow about her pictures. When it comes to Woody's behavior yes I have picked the side I am on, but as a matter of social equality, I have to get fusty with the forces of feminine domestication, and believe, especially in the West, that women have to "embrace their inner bitch" to quote Laurie in script, to operate in the alpha male world, and that we'd be better off engaging without overt lesbianism in the process. Do I expect secular academia to really take me back in the fold with that plank, nearly collapsed as it is? Am I for real? Not in terms of fire and brimstone epithets, no, but as an intellectual warning, yes.

My pleasures are few. One of them once was dragging my body into class with a spastic infantilism, my crutches splayed in the hallway, my breathing labored, gratefully pushing my buttocks back onto the sling seat of a metallic wheelchair frame long rusted into recycle, or landfill. Video rarely takes me out of my consciousness, sex never, good or bad, and I am probably past any point of abandon, and yes, I know abandon is ellusive for the healthy. Levels of practice and expertise are involved. It was like that when I took Paratransit to the Riverfront to see A.I. Bladder filled itself like a weakened rubber, most likely I wet myself in the studio when I returned, not a good day for wonder, or even to feel secure. After the Colorado shooting, reporters kept blaring that theatres were supposed to be a safe place for families, and those of you with relevant pair bondings, of which I am sometimes envious. I never felt that way, not safe, except when Kmac told my mother, the bungle of us screaming at Jaws popping out of the ocean, that "damn shark should run for president." She was wry in the closet. We're catching up with our fictions of science, the erosions of those boundaries, the autonomic, clinical coolness of a Spock, a Data, a Goren, a Sherlock Holmes. I always thought the organic androids from Alien were the most plausible. Should I have my DNA preserved, and come back without damaged brain tissue? Is that possible? 

Subjective Innocence

Spielberg's A.I. is also an allegorical indictment of liberalism, whether the limpid blockbuster director intended it as such, or not. The denouement of the film was a failure, and Haley Joel Osment's rise as a child star marked my own denouement as a movie viewer on the traditional big screen, as The Sixth Sense and A.I. bookend the last gasp of any positive outlook I attempted to cling to as I entered my fortieth decade. I had previously bookmarked the film in my head as one relevant for my purposes, but it is on my local UHL this afternoon, as it happens, so I might as well refresh myself on the poignancy of human loss which Spielberg highlights, even as humanity faces cessation.

I decided to put in my adoption papers for kimmy, after a lengthy and weary self-argument; in the balance, my despair juxtaposed against economic rationalism. I fear not keeping pets more than my need to reduce expenses, whether or not this means I have purchased my social ostracization as valid because I am, ipso facto, unbalanced; it is more and less than this, however, in that I have losses too, and my only real defense against this, is Jerry's old maxim, via Heidegger, to "focus on the things themselves," and so now I will study Joan of Arc. I used this poor woman of Lorraine as a faulty symbol in my quite desperate poem I wrote about Linda and the ideology, called "My Patron Saint".

(I understood why I wrote the poem; it was a desperate lunge against my impending financial ruin, and in the back of my mind, even then, my subconscious was warning me that I trusted this former supervisor at my peril. I should have never shown her my work, ever, among other things).

I toy with the idea of revising it, savagely. Right now I need coffee, and breakfast.

Glowering Embers

Because the end is just too hard to take.-- Gordon Lightfoot

Not everything has to have Shakespearean elevation, and though a body may understand Ewan McGregor's appeal, The Island, which glimmers in its opening with such potential, pissed me off so badly I'm taking a break. Everything in Hollywood devolves into a fucking LA freeway disaster, and I want absolutely nothing more to do with Michael Bay's fear of taking chances with real moral implications. Spielberg and Lucas, whatever else may be said, at least know how to aspire, though I am eased that I found my dates. I idiotically adopted little kimmy in 12, her age an estimated nine months. She kept little Vincento alive three -- no, four-- years. She objects to my emotional distance and insists I love her, but my heart is already a dwarf star on the event horizon. What the problem is with Johansson in a dramaturgical context eludes me, at the present time.