Koufax Awards Open

Minions! Now is the time to strike! Go leave a comment here for the Crazification Factor, and aid the Kung Fu Monkey takeover of the Interwebs!

Visited States

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or check out these Google Hacks.

The benefits of a stand-up career, although I only actually performed in about 3/4 of those states. Via Pandagon.

Farm Fetish

You know, I just realized how many errant Google hits that title is going to bring. Creepy.

This will just break Neil's heart, as he does see me as a champion of fighting regionalism, but this CNN piece (from over at Atrios) is the sort of thing that, Jesus H*. Christ on a crutch, gives me a headache. They send a reporter to literally Middle America, and surprise, discover that they don't much care for them Hollywood movies. Suuuurrr-prise!

But one chunk of this report, to me, is symptomatic of a larger issue that grinds my molars.

ANDERSON: We stopped by the Lebanon [Kansas -- ed.] hotspot, Ladow's Market, where one local told us Hollywood just can't relate to a farming way of life.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They've never been back in here to know what it's like to actually have to make a living doing this.

You know what, Unidentified Male? You're right. I don't know what it's like to have to make a living farming. NOBODY DOES.

For chrissake, only 17% of Americans live in rural settings anymore. Only 2 million of those people work on farms or ranches (USDA figures). Hell, only ten percent of the average farm family's income even comes from farming anymore (did you know that? I didn't. Funky). The median age of the United States is 37. I am more than willing to point out that the agriculture industry is a crucial, nay vital part of the American economic infrastructure generating a sizable amount of the GDP. But why in the name of John Deere's Blood-Soaked Wood-Chipper Gears, every time I hear a news report on what "real Americans" think do I wind up watching some farmer in their fifties and sixties bitch as they survey the blasted plains landscape behind them, and not only that, somehow their cultural observations are assumed to have more relevance than anyone else's?

This is only half-rant. The honest question is, what in the American character keeps us returning to this completely false self-image? Seriously, how did we get to a point where this report may as well have started: "Hi there, Carol, we're about to talk to people twenty years older than the average American living a lifestyle less than one in five average Americans live ... to find out what the average American thinks" and somehow nobody blinks an eye?

There are four times as many Americans living in urban than rural areas. There are four times as many people sucking back coffee in New York city alone than make a living farming. According to the Burea of Labor, there are just as many people employed in Architecture and Engineering as farming, hell, 3 million people working in Computer and Mathematical jobs. But when one of these "What does America think about culture" pieces comes on, do I ever see a mid-30's software engineer onscreen bitching about having to download BitTorrents of "The IT Crowd"? Fuck and no.

Four million people in the US play World of Warcraft. And yet, do I ever hear:

ANDERSON: We stopped by the gates of Ogrimmar in Durotar, on the east coast of Kalimdor, where one local told us Hollywood just can't relate to the level-grinding life.

UNIDENTIFIED ORC: They've never been back here, questing Razormane or Drygulch Ravine, y'know ... or farming for Peacebloom and Silverleaf. They're out of touch.

No. No I do not.

This is not Fuck the South, or for that matter a betrayal of issues I raise in "Ain't" -- that essay is about understanding crowd dynamics and communication in any context, not just rural (althogh many people mistake it for that). This is a cultural/economic issue, not a geographic one, athough there are geographic factors.

The rural life, specifically, the agricultural industry, is a massive, important part of our nation's economic well-being. And yes, yes, I've read Kunstler's Long Emergency, and I know that one catastrophic afternoon in the near future, I will rue the day my grandfather gave up the sod to become a cop in the New World. For some people the rural life is an incredibly rewarding way of life. They should be very proud of the fact they have held on to this great tradition of commerce and, one might argue service, in the face of corporate farming. But that life is not holy, it does not bless one with special insight into the intent of the Framers of the goddam Consitution or what America "should" be like. Have I lost some sort of sacred connection with the land? Maybe. But the last time I checked, the land was dirt, same dirt as the rest of the world, and several generations of my family went broke farming other people's dirt, interrupted only when easily annoyed Englishmenwould occassionally show up and burn all their shit down. Pardon me for enjoying my goddam latte.

Hell, I grew up in Massachusetts, and we didn't go around nodding and saying "This is the very birthplace of America both geographically and ideologically, those idiots in Kansas have no idea what being a real American is, like we Commonwealth bastards." One would be considered insane. Whatever connection people in rural America have to the "idea" of America is the exact same as mine -- the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. They are public documents, accessible by all (well, for now), and last time I checked the versions printed in textbooks in Kansas didn't have special magical ink and secret clauses not included in the versions handed out in the Northeast urban great city of Philadelphia where, if we remember, the damn things were actually written.

To be clear, I have not shied away from calling some of my fellow Americans "fuckwits". But that's because of what they say and do, not because of where they live. I believe in the democratic principles of idiocy. This is a nation of self-made people, where you know a man by his actions. Just, sometimes, those actions prove him a fuckwit. Sorry.

I am just, I guess, well and truly tired of being told what "Middle America" wants, when Middle America is my age and lives in a goddam city, just like I have for my entire life.





(* The H stands for "haploid", by the way)

FrinkTank

Science ... and FUNNY? You're MAD, Jenkins, MAD!

34%

Hey, always glad to help, but when the Koufax Awards start, I want all the people citing Crazification Factor to do us a solid. I promised Tyrone that if we won, I'd put the Obama t-shirts on sale.

ScienceBlogs

All my favorites, including Respectful Insolence and Pharyngula are here. One stop-reading for all your geek-goodness. Dreeeamy science types.

4GM - Generate

Jordan Levin and a few other like-minded folk announced today the launching of a content-company, Generate, which has already announced a partnership with MTV.

Why is this interesting? Because Jordan's company is platform-independent. The talent will focus on making their talent-y things, and then the material will be tailored to fit whatever platform -- download, portable, feature or TV -- that it best matches.

“Generate will take a media-neutral approach to the development process, starting with a core idea and then developing it for the distribution platform best suited to ensuring the integrity of the concept, which could just as easily be on an emerging or traditional distribution channel.”

The focus of the company is on getting the entertainment to the audience in whichever form the audience cares to enjoy it. If that ain't 4th Gen Media thinking, I don't know what is.

Sloooowly. Sloowly the tumbrils move ...

Ain't Redux

I don't have time right now to do the full next-step of Learn to Say Ain't, but seeing as there are a bunch of referrals to it in the last two days, I do want to clear something up.

In the post, I'm not talking about "being all things to all people," or framing in order to trick people into agreeing with you. My point is simply this -- learning effective message control and disseminaton, or what in the olden days we called "rhetoric" wasn't too low for Socrates, wasn't too low for Thomas Jefferson, and we should stop turning up our noses at it and calling it "selling out."

My point is not in how to fool rubes into agreeing with you. My point is that often, when communicating our ideas to other people, we do not stop and think of the best way to make clear that we already share the same ideas. I used to mention in passing about how Canada had single-payer health care. Always got a few "socialism" catcalls from the audience. But as soon as I said "It's wrong for you to lose your house if you kid gets cancer", you could feel the audience swing, sometimes burst into applause. For that group, at least, a little meme-seed had been planted. I could have gone on about bed/patient ratios and per capita expenses to my heart's content. But that wasn't relevant to my audience.

Learn to Say Ain't isn't about being something you're not, or all things to all people. (and if that's how you read it, you were really just looking for something to disagree with in order to reinforce your own beliefs. Sorry.) what Boats taught me back then is that we all have common ground, and if you want to communicate your idea clearly, you need to start with the common ground of your audience and then get them to meet you halfway. It's about boiling your idea down to what really matters. This is not about lying -- this is about telling the truth in a more effective manner.

What's so horrible about that? And once you have done that, and changed the Us/Them dynamic, you've won.

In a bit of time (I am STACKED with screenwriting work) I'll parse out the stand-up/electioneering link a bit more, linking it more explicitly to meme theory. Stand-ups spend years honing their little sentences into language constructs that evoke a distinct involuntary emotional response (laughter) and also stick in people's heads, get repeated(disseminated) because of the inherent simplicity and easy memorizability of their construct, and then help establish loyal fan bases (constituencies). Good comedians don't just create jokes, they create coherent worldviews.

You know, you hate the idea of "framing" fine. Keep repeating the same policies in the exact same way over and over again. But the sad thing is -- as Molly Ivins says:

What kind of courage does it take, for mercy's sake? The majority of the American people (55 percent) think the war in Iraq is a mistake and that we should get out. The majority (65 percent) of the American people want single-payer health care and are willing to pay more taxes to get it. The majority (86 percent) of the American people favor raising the minimum wage. The majority of the American people (60 percent) favor repealing Bush's tax cuts, or at least those that go only to the rich. The majority (66 percent) wants to reduce the deficit not by cutting domestic spending, but by reducing Pentagon spending or raising taxes.

The majority (77 percent) thinks we should do "whatever it takes" to protect the environment. The majority (87 percent) thinks big oil companies are gouging consumers and would support a windfall profits tax. That is the center, you fools. WHO ARE YOU AFRAID OF?

-- the sad thing is that despite the fact that the progressive movement's priorities are plainly the priorities of a massive majority of the country, WE ARE NOT RUNNING THE JOINT. (and feel free to insert any whining abot biased media and fixed election machines here) We have somehow got into a position where people who just out and out fucking LIE have come to the positions of power.

Call me crazy for saying that maybe we ought to look at every little nook and cranny of why that isn't so. why somehow well-crafted lies have come to defeat serious truth. My job as a stand-up was communication, and so this is my take on the communication issue. Disagree, fine. But I don't think anyone can disagree that this is a field that needs serious examination and some fresh ideas, even if those ideas lead to naught, they may inspire even better discussion. We need every, EVERY tool at our disposal to change the terrifying direction this nation is sliding in. "Shut up and vote harder" just ain't going to hack it, kids.

Autistic Basketball Player

Fine. I cried. Happy?

EDIT: By that, I mean, of course, that my eyes watered up a bit. That's all. I have very dry library, and my eyes were already stressed from watching hours of pornography and car-crash footage.

Just don't want you to get the wrong idea.