Brideshead Revisited (Evelyn Waugh)

Alec recently enjoyed Brideshead Revisited so I read it too in a fit of foppery. Waugh’s prose was masterful but I thought the book’s comic moments were far more successfully realized than its theme (described by Waugh in his foreword as “the operation of divine grace” on the book’s main characters).

The Catholics in this book struggle with the outward moral strictures of being Catholic but are indifferent to the internal. We aren’t privy to any thoughtful exploration of their faiths, just an inexplicable attachment to following some rules (eg. not divorcing your husband even though you have a loveless marriage and have fallen in love with someone else) but not others (eg. not cheating on your husband in the first place). I honestly don’t understand why they continue to feel any residual attachment to Catholicism when they have long ceased to practise it; it feels more like an explanation of the power of superstition rather than divine grace. I guess Graham Greene has just spoiled me in this regard, because I really think Waugh’s attempts here don’t hold a candle to anything Greene has accomplished in a similar vein.

But in case anyone reading the previous paragraph has immediately decided that Brideshead Revisited doesn’t sound like their kind of book, let me discourage you from that – it has many inimitably funny moments and it always feels wonderfully luxurious after I overdose on modern fiction to plunge into the vintage elan of a writer like Waugh. Here’s a passage I enjoyed – Anthony Blanche, my favourite character in the book because he’s just totally fabulous, describes the fumbling attempts of some fellow students at Oxford to dunk him in a fountain (due to his excessive fabulousness):

About six of them came into my room, the rest stood mouthing outside. My dear, they looked too extraordinary. They had been having one of their ridiculous club dinners, and they were all wearing coloured tail-coats – a sort of livery. “My dears,” I said to them, “you look like a lot of most disorderly footmen.” Then one of them, rather a juicy little piece, accused me of unnatural vices. “My dear,” I said, “I may be inverted but I am not insatiable. Come back when you are alone.” Then they began to blaspheme in a very shocking manner, and suddenly I, too, began to be annoyed. “Really,” I thought, “when I think of all the hullabaloo there was when I was seventeen, and the Duc de Vincennes (old Armand, of course, not Philippe) challenged me to a duel for an affair of the heart, and very much more than the heart, I assure you, with the duchess (Stefanie, of course, not old Poppy) – now, to submit to impertinence from these pimply, tipsy virgins…” Well, I gave up the light, bantering tone and let myself be just a little offensive.

Then they began saying, “Get hold of him. Put him in Mercury.” Now as you know I have two sculptures by Brancusi and several pretty things and I did not want them to start getting rough, so I said, pacifically, “Dear sweet clodhoppers, if you knew anything of sexual psychology you would know that nothing could give me keener pleasure than to be manhandled by you meaty boys. It would be an ecstacy of the very naughtiest kind. So if any of you wishes to be my partner in joy come and seize me. If, on the other hand, you simply wish to satisfy some obscure and less easily classified libido and see me bath, come with me quietly, dear louts, to the fountain.

Do you know, they all looked a little foolish at that? I walked down with them and no one came within a yard of me. Then I got into the fountain and, you know, it was really most refreshing, so I sported there a little and struck some attitudes, until they turned about and walked sulkily home, and I heard Boy Mulcaster saying, “Anyway, we did put him in Mercury.” You know, Charles, that is just what they’ll be saying in thirty years’ time. When they’re all married to scraggy little women like hens and have cretinous porcine sons like themselves getting drunk at the same club dinner in the same coloured coats, they’ll still say, when my name is mentioned, “We put him in Mercury one night,” and their barnyard daughters will snigger and think their father was quite a dog in his day, and what a pity he’s grown so dull. Oh, la fatigue du Nord!

Wearable Wankery

A curmudgeonly post about the dull Mosaic Music Festival lineup for 2008 is forthcoming, so I thought I would pave the way for it by showcasing a few music tees I found funny recently.

Diesel Sweeties’ Elitism Diagram really skewers it. Threadless’ Music Snob shirt sold out in every size within days of its release, unsurprisingly, but girls can still enjoy some sale-price snobbery with I Listen To Bands That Don’t Even Exist Yet.

[Note: If you happen to buy the last tee through the above link, I get a little credit in my store account. It would make me very happy, but it’s up to you. :) ]

Wholly Unfair

Christmas decorations are up in the common areas of our condo. I feel a little degraded by them.

Introducing Orlando

This is Orlando. Orlando appeared out of nowhere on my family’s doorstep (it’s weird, either someone left him there deliberately or he had an uncanny ability to wander to where he would be totally pampered) about two weeks ago, with a very skinny body and distended belly. Since then, my family has fattened him into healthier kitten proportions, cleaned, de-fleaed, de-wormed and toilet-trained him, and he’s now in good condition to go to a loving home.

Update on 10 Dec 2007: Due to unforeseen circumstances of extreme cuteness, my family informed me over the weekend that my mother cannot bear to part with Orlando. As such, he is no longer up for adoption.

He’s a plucky little guy and has formed a sweet wrestle/play relationship with one of our other house cats Dinky who is about three times his size. He’s also incredibly friendly (the other three adult house cats aren’t anywhere as friendly to strangers) and does the whole sitting on your lap purring until he falls asleep thing, which will never get old, never never never.

He’s hard to photograph because if he sees the camera lens he runs right up and sticks his face in it, so I had to wait until he was distracted with something else.


If you read Cute Overload…

…I believe this qualifies as an “ENH!”

I can haz pawburger?

Num num num.

Pwease adopt me!

Please leave a comment or email “name of this blog” at gmail if you can help little Orlando out, or know someone else who can. I’m absolutely dying to keep him for myself, but the flat where I now live with Alec isn’t very cat suitable.

Alecversary

Two conversations from the weekend:

#1

While discussing this recent post (where the comments closed before I found the time to write a proper response to Jol’s comment and I can’t figure out how to turn them back on, argh!), I brought up Jol’s impression that Christian ethics involve the belief that people can be banished to Hell for failing to believe.

Me: It’s definitely not anything I’ve ever been taught in all my years of Catholic education and weekly churchgoing. Did they teach you that in Ireland?
Alec: Of course not!
Me, satisfied: Good, I thought as much.
Alec: In school they taught us we were all going to Hell. For wanking.
Me: ……
Alec: It makes God blind or something.

#2

Alec, sulking: I didn’t have enough time to linger in the library, so I had to just run to the section nearest to the door and grab some books to borrow.
Me: Aw, that’s a pity.
Alec: Yah! So all my authors literally start with B, but because I didn’t even get enough time to go look for Batman, I had to settle for Brecht instead.
Me: Batman is not an author.
Alec: Yes he is. He’s an author OF DESTINY.

I just realized on Sunday night that back on November 6th, our sixth anniversary as a couple came and went and we didn’t even remember it. It’s hard to believe we just forgot a day we used to celebrate quite dutifully, but we weren’t too bothered. I’ll try to remember it next year (any excuse for a nice meal), though in many ways it feels like the importance of that date to us has been overwhelmingly superceded by the new life we now get to enjoy together on a daily basis.

Anyway, just so I can say I did something to celebrate having this lovely man to myself for 6 years now, I hereby rename the sub-category formerly and boringly called just “Alec”, repository of classic Alec stories like Spandex Party Boy and the particularly ugly bird, to “Alecdotes”, with all credit for the name due to James (for coining it in his best man speech at our wedding party).

Im In Ur Ears, Blowin Ur Mind

My commute to and from work is an hour-long bus ride each way, and I’ve long been convinced that a core requirement of sanity maintenance under such conditions is being able to shut out TV Mobile at all times (except of course if it’s showing any of my reality shows, in which case I have to be right in front of it). When I first got my iPod I was very dissatisfied with the standard earbuds it came with because I needed to really turn the volume up in order to hear anything, and even then all subtlety would be drowned out by external sounds. After a while I decided there was only so much Knifehandchop and hardcore punk I could listen to, so I ventured into the world of Internet audiophile forums to research canalphones.

It was an alien galaxy. People spoke of transducers and woofers and tweeters and analysed their preferences in terms of bass, mid-range and treble tones, which could be thick or bright or transient or any of a dozen other adjectives which I had never thought of applying to music. And they routinely plonked down hundreds of dollars on brands I’d never heard of or seen in the local megastores. After a lot of research, during which I spent more time unglazing my eyes than understanding audio analysis, I settled on the Sony MDR-EX71s for around S$90, one of the more affordable choices I could find at the time. They impressed few experts but were very popular with plebs, and if there was one thing I’d learnt from my research it was that I was definitely an audiopleb.

I was pretty happy with them. They sealed out enough noise that I could listen appreciatively to a lot more music, though they still weren’t much good for stuff like Philip Glass, Nico Muhly or the quiet bits of quiet-loud-quiet type post-rock. Anyway, by allowing me to listen to my iPod at half the maximum volume and thus assuaging my fears that I wasn’t further exacerbating the hearing damage that years of very loud gigs and clubs had inflicted on my ears, they served their purpose perfectly well. Until last week, when after nearly three years of use, the right phone stopped working and defied all my attempts at resuscitation.

Full of trepidation, I ventured once more into woofer world and learnt from this rather epic hardwarezone forum thread that a shop called Jaben Network was a good place to go locally for affordable earphones and great service. I visited on Sunday and was served by a very nice guy called Gabriel. He urged me not to worry about online reviews, to choose based on personal taste, and to feel free to test all their canalphones before deciding.

Sitting down to start testing, I made a quick grab-bag playlist of a few songs I figured were kinda different. I didn’t know what I should be looking for or what I liked, but I hoped some preferences would magically materialize. And they did! In MIA’s Pull Up The People, I found I wasn’t looking for heavy bass, but rather a nice balance between the bass and the higher, spitting beats. In Low’s Belarus, I started to notice the distribution of sounds between my left and right ear, and the flat weightiness of the song’s only beats. In Brian Wilson’s Surf’s Up, I tried to evaluate how well the sounds seemed to occupy the inside of my head; in Ellen Allien & Apparat’s Turbo Dreams, how well the sounds made the inside of my head a massive warehouse full of people raving till dawn. And in Sonic Youth’s New Hampshire, how sensitive the phones were to the tiny high notes that accompany the opening drums.

To my surprise, after listening to three options (I didn’t want to listen to too many because I was worried that too many options would just confuse me) I found I had a clear favourite. I asked how much it was, was told it cost $45 (half the price of my old Sonys) and nearly fainted. Gabriel seemed genuinely pleased at my amazement and told me enthusiastically that my choice was a good one. I think they’re the Crossroads Mylarone Classics reviewed here. From my online research I was vaguely aware that this brand had a new model, the X3s, which everyone was clamouring after but which was in very short supply as a result. The geekdeal-seeker in me briefly considered whether to put myself on the waiting list for those, but I decided that I honestly didn’t think I was discerning enough to enjoy them like an audiophile would, and in the meantime I would rather not succumb to incandescent rage on public transport.

So I got the Crossroads Mylarone Classics, and as soon as I plugged them in on the bus back home I realized my world had been transformed. With the Sonys, listening at half volume would still yield fairly frequent intrusions of My Sassy Neighbour, but with the Crossroads I can now listen at a third of the volume instead and enjoy an existence mercifully free of Patricia Mok.

Just for fun, I added more songs to my initial “testing” playlist (mostly songs I already knew well which seemed like “headphones tracks”) and listened to them on my commutes this week. Espers’ Dead Queen is chillier, its vocals more ethereal. Andrew Bird’s A Nervous Tic Motion Of The Head sounds more intimate, like I’m sitting right next to him as he sings just for me. The crazy Japanese drum sounds in Asa Chang & Junray’s Hana now come from distinctly different places and I can imagine the drummer’s flying hands. Outkast’s B.O.B. used to feel dense; now it feels like there’s plenty of space for the ten million things it has going on. I’ve always loved that incredibly euphoric introduction to The Knife’s Silent Shout but now it’s like a catherine wheel in my head and there’s a serious risk of me bursting out on the bus with that frenetic pointy finger thing which really mashed people do to trance.

You get the picture. I could go on for ages, but some audiophile might come and point out that most of the improved sound I’m describing here is entirely psychological and that would be embarrassing. Anyway, this is just to say that if you see a girl on the bus listening to music with the most beatific smile on her face, don’t worry if I suddenly bust out some moves, I’m totally harmless.

WWJD / WWSD

I save up online comics in Google Reader and read a month’s worth at once because I’ve always preferred reading comics in compilations. To provide a light-hearted alternative to my religion-themed previous post, here are two October delights from Sinfest: read this one first, then this. I love the third panel of the second strip.

To Jesusland And Beyond

Revolution in Jesusland is a fascinating new blog questioning and challenging the cynicism behind that “Jesusland” map which was widely circulated after the 2004 US elections. I’d suggest you read its introductory post for a full explanation of its goals and motivation, but in summary, it explores a growing movement among American fundamentalist Christians who, despite the strident intolerance of some of their number, are far more deeply concerned with issues of social justice and welfare than hating on gays and evolution. These Christians have taken on local yet hugely ambitious goals such as “eliminating” homelessness and poverty in their cities and have been prepared to make radical personal choices – such as moving their families into bad, violent neighbourhoods – in order to emulate how Christ engaged with the poor.

One of the blog’s two authors spent his life in left-wing progressive circles, leaving college to become a union activist. The other spent her life in conservative Republican circles and left college to become a missionary. They are married to each other. Beyond telling the story of this movement, the blog hopes to illuminate and analyse the often unexpected similarities and contrasts between these “fundies” and the secular left of America which generally despises them. It is incredibly refreshing to read something which departs so radically from the tone of debate on religious issues elsewhere on the Internet (where it often seems an unwritten rule that nastiness and en-masse straw man construction is OK as long as you’re an atheist dismissing something religious) but still doesn’t proselytize or pontificate.

Apart from the pure human interest aspect of the stories about what people are doing, on a personal level I find the motivations behind the stories truly inspiring. I’m cool with secular humanism even if I’ve chosen Christianity as my truth, and I certainly believe religion has no monopoly on the creation of exceptionally good people. But I’ve also always felt that for quite a number of us humans, there’s something about Christianity’s approach (I don’t know enough about the other religions to speak for them, but it may well be the same) that can force us to leave our comfort zone and do things where a non-religious perspective could not. (By “us humans”, I mean those of us who are essentially decent but not exceptionally virtuous – we are generally ethical in the things we do and minimally committed to good causes in that we might give them some money or sign a petition or two, we live lives that make us and our loved ones happy and are more or less harmless to other people, but it doesn’t go much further than that. We are not actively bad, but we are passively lazy and self-absorbed. This is me, and I think it’s also the average human being. If it’s not you, all power to you.)

First, there’s the idea of doing good because it is God’s will that we do so, and not simply because it’s good to do good. I’m a selfish lazy-ass, in all honesty. Without any sense of carrying out God’s purpose in the world, there’s little chance I’d ever go to the bother of doing something of real consequence (as in, beyond donating money or a few hours of time) to help the less fortunate. Following on from this, there’s the need to keep thinking about the good things in our lives and what we should be using them for i.e. the idea that the good things in my life are not things I did on my own or deserve; they are God’s blessings which I should use to do his will. For me, this works against the lazy complacency of being smugly happy with my awesome life but then dropping the “awesomeness ball” instead of passing it on.

Hang on a minute, you ask – here’s Michelle being all preachy about the wonders of Christianity, but does she demonstrate any of what she’s just claimed it can do? In all seriousness the answer is that I demonstrate very little. But while it’s certainly possible that things other than Christianity can motivate people like me to go beyond their essential selfishness, personally I’ve always believed it’s my best hope of transcending my suckage. (Seriously. I may not be saving the world yet, but without Catholic guilt I would be completely insufferable, and at least that’s something.) Here are excerpts from some posts which, to me, especially capture this:

Eternity In The Heart:

I asked, “Why is it that the Christians we’re meeting are so humble about the programs they run, even though some of them are incredibly impressive? In the [secular lefty] movement I come out of, we’d be bragging and sending out press releases and winning awards and all kinds of stuff for these kinds of achievements.”

And he said, “Well, I have seen that among many non-believers and many Christians who’ve lost their way too. And I have a theory about it.”

“Tell me!” I said.

He explained (and I’m paraphrasing, unfortunately) “God made humans in his image. And so we’re walking around with this huge, God-sized sense of meaning and purpose and importance in us, and a feeling of being entitled to that sense importance.

In addition, we walk around with all these amazing God-given abilities. It’s amazing what I’ve seen people do. Just amazing. And you’ve seen that too.

Now, if you know God, then you know where that power comes from. And you know where that feeling of importance and purpose comes from: you know you’re here to do God’s purpose.”

(Earlier he had explained in no uncertain terms that “God’s purpose” is for people to take care of each other.)

“If you think all that power comes from you, then you’re going to get pretty cocky about your successes. And if you think that your purpose belongs only to you, then you’re going to get pretty vicious any time anyone gets in the way of you and the exact way in which you think you’re supposed to be doing good in the world.”

It’s so interesting, because, of course, many Christians throughout history (including very powerful ones) have been incredibly arrogant and have even killed for what they believed was God’s purpose. (So have non-believers.) But this rising movement among Christian born agains and evangelicals today is obsessed with humility and “giving it all to God” is the way they seem to pull it off and maintain it, even when their heads should be swelling according to their successes.

I’m Doing This For God Not You:

The struggle burning in these white folks’ lives is: How can we eliminate poverty and tear down the barrier we’ve built up around ourselves WITHOUT veering into paternalism and doing more harm than good.

I haven’t seen any counterproductive white guilt here yet. I think there is something about these folks’ spirituality that cancels it out. It’s already part of their theology to accept and confess that they are utterly flawed sinners – broken people living in a broken world. That’s a pretty humble platform from which the Haves can go make relationships with the Have Nots. It seems to work pretty well for them (despite the mishaps they’re confessing, there’s a foundation of unmistakable, astounding success at helping huge numbers of people and developing communities).

…

Yesterday during a break from Bob Lupton’s talk, I was talking to a young guy (maybe 25 years old) who’s working as a missionary in Mexico, in an operation that provides all kinds of services and development assistance in a small community across the border. He looked a tiny bit overwhelmed as he was thinking out loud about the implications of what he was coming to grips with at this conference:

He said something like: “It’s easy being down there. I mean, it’s draining physically and emotionally. But I don’t have to change to be there. And it’s cool. You know, it sounds exotic. People back home get why I’m there, and think it’s cool. The whole church is behind me. But, living in a poor neighborhood in my own city in America – no one’s going to think that’s cool. And I don’t want to do it. It’s going to be awkward for all kinds of reasons. Being a foreigner in another country is one thing, but being a foreigner in your own neighborhood – that seems like that’s going to be really hard.”

But it sure sounded like he was headed for exactly that. Why? Because Jesus wants him to do it. I said something about how I have already seen more comfortable people in the Christian world make that uncomfortable decision than I ever had in 20 years in the secular left. (Mind you, they’re not just moving into the neighborhoods, they’re crossing boundaries and becoming responsible, as members of communities, for their neighbors’ lives.)

He said, “Hmmm. Yeah, that makes sense. The ONLY reason I’d do it is for Jesus.”