double up.

Listen to this song when you read this blog. I listened to it while I was writing it. It asks the question that I want to ask. It doubles back on itself as I will double back on myself before your eyes right now. The song itself is a classic love story. Guy likes girl, but can't find the words to tell her. how can he say what countless others have already better stated? In the background of the song, we also have this great, echoing "yada yada yada."
“Why should I say
what’s already been said
better a hundred times before?”
“ya-daaaaa”

Somebody once said:
“Fuck this noise”
Well I say, fuck that. The only people that get to complain about things are the people who can do something, but have to question whether or not it’s morally correct. And I honestly do not think that’s the case here. If you can do something about it, and it’s morally correct, then go do it. If you can’t do anything, complaining won’t help. Shut up. Soldiers get to complain, so do murders and prostitutes. College students? rarely. Unless of course we just want to express disgust towards something, but leave it alone so that we’ll always have something to be disgusted with. Do we need that? Maybe, but do we really have to leave old things alone to mix and fester with the new?
Q: “Does he not see the hypocrisy?”
A: I see the hypocrisy that you see, that you so kindly took a photograph of, but when I look for it; it runs, hides, and shits itself. Really.

Some set of people I vaguely know joined a face book group the other day called something along the lines of “I’m only friends with the weird kid so he spares me when he snaps.” The first thing I thought was, “well if he sees this, your brilliant plan is foiled!”

But then I thought, I can’t complain about this.

You say:
“I'm not asked to coffee
I'm not challenged by you
I'm not asked to coffee
I'm not asked to coffee”

Well then I say:
I’m not challenged by you
I’m not challenged by you
I’m not asked to coffee
I’m not challenged by you.

By mirroring the quote, I try to balance it, to give a clearer picture of how we can interact with other ideas. In a simple sense, we can either fight them or work with them. To "ask to coffee" (as often as it's used) is the offer to collaborate. To challenge is the honorable way to begin a battle. I think we need a bit of both if we want to get the most out of ourselves.
But as luck would have it, I am challenged by Joe, somewhat at least. He doesn’t ask me to coffee, but that’s fine. And then I do find myself wondering at the placement and repetition of those two phrases. Then I decide how it looks when I take off my glasses and that’s what I come up with.

“damn! that is some stuff” And then I laugh to myself at how people can say something without actually saying anything. And then I laugh again because it happens all the time. Then I double over on myself and start to cry because I am, of course, laughing at myself. We just want to be careful that we don’t become the eight-ball, and if we become the eight-ball, we better really fucking pray that “ask again later” doesn’t come up too often.

So then I have to try and challenge you back right? You challenge me sir and must answer.

“If you can bring them up--and there are more--in the conversation, you get bonus points. That is-- you get intellectual recognition. You're listened to, you're perceived, you're on-it. Which is kind of laughable. A person can hide behind big words and small parasites”

I would tend to agree with you but I hope you don’t think that this is the case for the class you are writing this for, for the class that you give examples for. If you don’t give us any credit of having any real intelligence, at least give some to Tony. Also, aren’t there usually reasons that these “buzzwords” are around? Aren’t they more relevant then say, describing your standards to make-out with someone at a party? Again, I fold in one myself, but a little bit less than the last time.

There most likely is a selfish reason for everything we do, but still we aspire to something more. Just, try not to write this off right away ok?
So why should we say what's already been said? Because old words can get new meaning. Now go out and get the girl.

If you wonder about all this, listen to the song again. I’m not kidding.

still pushing them parasites...

I made it to the Olympics last weekend. It was something else, and now I feel the need to describe it. Originally a buddy from high school and I were planning on seeing three events: the luge, the ski jump, and the biathlon. For some reason, that turned into alpine skiing and the luge. Alpine skiing was postponed. All we saw was the luge. Three events down to one, so I was a little disappointing right off the bat. The Olympics were heavy. I don’t know how else to describe them; actually, that’s not true. The Olympics were messy, The Olympics were getting places too early, The Olympics were exhaustion, the Olympics were unbelievable amounts of people, the Olympics were consumption, and last, and definitely least, the Olympics were athletics. All in all it was a hell of an experience, and it’s not one I’ll be able to repeat anytime soon, even if I really wanted to.
The implications of the Olympics being a parasite are obvious –we already heard in class about one of the programs being cut to fund it. But every city wants to host the Olympics. It must be one of those socially desirable parasites. A parasite queen that summons hordes of innocents, only to send them on their way with souvenirs and autographs, “hey, I wish the Olympics would come to our town.” Whatever, it’s still not a big deal. Cash flows in, cash flows out; the parasite spends our money (or is it its money?) and then makes us/it some money.
Does age and repetition disguise the parasite? Master Serres (my go to expert on all things parasite, aside from Tony) us that noise must not be continuous to continue to be a parasite, but what about rhythms? What about the regular that is also irregular? I’m thinking of things like traffic, alarms, speech, echoes. It would be pretty tough to completely oust the Olympics, but they’re only around once every four years per variety. Traffic (mostly) goes away at night, or when you get out of town. Alarms get turned off. A parasite that hides in crowds, that blends in? Again, Serres is my guide.
“He becomes invisible by making, on the contrary, a lot of noise. One can hide by being too visible or too perceptible. The parasite hides behind the noise and to-do of the devout.”
What we are getting into here, I feel, is the idea of hiding in plain sight. This is how the socially desirable parasite must operate. There is an important distinction between invisible, that of the un-desirable parasite, and unrecognizable, that of the desirable parasite. The socially desirable parasite must be uncanny, and the uncanny must be, will be, visible. It cannot be invisible, lest the observations of its uncanniness become impossible to make. Furthermore, when the undesirable parasite becomes visible, it will cease to be a parasite. The socially desirable parasite can remain a parasite visible, but would fail if it became invisible (no longer socially desirable)
Then there’s the fever, the parasite is not the fever itself, but that which causes the fever. Here we find another difference between the interaction of different parasites and their hosts. The undesirable parasite will try to get its eating done without making a sound –without causing a fever. If this occurs, the parasite must flee, to remain invisible, or it will fail. A socially desirable parasite also causes the parasite, but then it disguises itself as the cure. “Fever” or “frenzy” are both words used to describe something that is inexplicably desirable. “I’ve caught the iPad fever” “tourists are in a frenzy to get to Vancouver”. We know that the fever is a defense mechanism of the host, but the parasite, as it has before, and will continue to do in the future, has invented, and reinvented itself, in order to make use of this as well

ugly rat stopped dead in its tracks.

“Imagine if you will a world where women, rats, men, and children live in peace and harmony.”
Could such a place ever exist? Serres doesn’t seem to think so.
“The parasite invents something new. He obtains energy and pays for it with information. He obtains roast and pays for it with stories.”
How does the rat survive? He does not produce; he cannot properly steal or threaten (intentionally). So he picks up what we leave behind. But what we leave behind, is usually what we do not intend to leave behind; we don’t what rats in our homes or in our trash. A parasite is born. And yet, the rat still lives in the margins of society. Humans will hate him where ever he dwells. (Didn’t anyone tell them that in order to see eye to eye with humans that humans would first need to see eye to eye with each other?)
We blame the rat, the rat blames the flea, the flea, I am sure, would blame the Black Death. I’m sure the Black Death would blame something else as well, maybe the infected, for not being touch enough to survive it. Maybe not, maybe something else. The trail goes down the line and then back up, the parabola.
Of course, now things aren’t so simple. If the producer gets tired of his parasite, and gets his hands on some information, his only choice is to become a parasite himself. He has to chase off the rats, or poison them, set traps. He has to get inside the mind of the parasite. He must also invent a new interruption.
Serres also tells us why the producer will not be able to remain a parasite in definitely:

“The balance of exchange is always weighted and measured, calculated, taking into account a relation without exchange, an abusive relation. The term abusive is a term of usage. Abuse doesn’t prevent use. Abuse doesn’t prevent use. The abuse value, complete, irrevocable, consummation, precedes use- and exchange-value. Quite simply, it is the arrow with only one direction.

Abuse value, it seems, is how far up one side of the parabola you can get before you fall
back down and start going up the other side.

Serres loses me here though. The parasite invents, and yet the producer is the only alternative to the parasite. Can you produce and yet not invent? Serres also claims that to reproduce is to not true production. He has a nasty way of building and building on ideas as he writes. I may have missed part of the architecture, or just not seen enough of it yet.

thought experiment 1. the place of the parasite.

To what lengths do people go to remove parasites from their bodies and from society in general? How do we determine if these parasites are threatening or not? How did these parasites get to be where they are? All these questions have a common thread, and that is: what place does the parasite occupy, both physically and imaginatively? My roommate and I just watched Schindler’s List; this of course got me thinking about World War Two and the Holocaust. We can say that Hitler did what he did, in part at least, because he thought that he was removing a harmful parasite from the planet. The common argument would be to say that his error was thinking of a cultural group as a parasite, and not as people. I would like to shift this somewhat by suggesting that his error was not in mistaking a group as a parasite, but rather, in thinking that he was justified in attempting to kill off a parasite group. At first glance it might seems offensive to refer to Jews as parasites, but if we take a look at the bigger picture we find out that this really is not significantly harsh view of humanity. The Nazi’s were also a parasite, both to the German population, and to Europe as a whole. The allied forces also, all parasites to their respective countries.
Anyone who has ever poked around into parasitism will probably be quick to tell you that parasite comes from the Greek “Parasitos” meaning “near food”. I could stop there and say that anyone or anything that is not starving is a parasite. This method of deriving definitions is a poor one, in my opinion; it’s outdated, vague and lazy. I am going to try to expand the context a bit, one of the definitions turned up by the The Oxford English Dictionary, is: “A person who lives at the expense of another, or of society in general; esp. a person who obtains the hospitality or patronage of the wealthy or powerful by obsequiousness and flattery; a person whose behavior resembles that of a plant or animal parasite; a sponger. Chiefly derogatory.” Now instead of “anything that is not starving is a parasite”, a parasite can be just about anything. With this multitude of available interpretations, “parasite” becomes much more significant as an action rather than as a thing; keeping in mind of course that humanity comes up on the roster before any other, seemingly more conventional parasites, such as a tape worm.
Not only do the above definitions give us an idea of the vastness of potential parasite has as a verb, but they also hint at where the parasite will always be found. The parasite is chiefly concerned with sustenance, often food, but not always; and since it does not produce its own it must remain near to the host. Without the host, the parasite dies off, or rather, whatever is acting as a parasite can then no longer parasite. Without nearness, neither the host, nor the parasite exists. The imagined threat of a parasite is also greatly mitigated over distance, as we see in The life and Opinions of the Tomcat Murr, Lothario is only threatened by, and only poses a threat to, Murr when in close proximity. Here the parasite-host relationship does not hold well, instead we have a battle over who will be the dominant parasite. “The brute will become a lecturer, receive a doctorate, will end up as a professor of aesthetics lecturing to students on Aeschylus! ... -- Oh I am quite beside myself! – that cat will root about in my own entrails…” (111) In this section we find a Lothario worried that Murr will rise up and claim his job. Each thinks the other to be the inferior parasite, but neither is a threat to the other when separated. Parasites, it seems, have a competitive nature over hosts.
Similarly, hosts also would appear to compete over parasites. This is derived from the intimate relationship that a parasite and a host share. I am by no means the first to realize this, no here is where the flea gets its truest poetic justice:
“Thou know'st that this cannot be said
A sin, nor shame, nor loss of maidenhead ;
Yet this enjoys before it woo,
And pamper'd swells with one blood made of two ;
And this, alas ! is more than we would do.”
Donne, with poetic panache, cuts right to the heart of it. The flea, as a parasite, is intimate enough to represent sex without the loss of virtue on the part of any one of them. Not only does the flea get to take in part the act of Donne’s desire, but it is also pampered by this act, the parasite, it seems, is allowed enjoyment. The flea is also protected, partially at least, by being a vessel for a sacred mixture of blood. In “Puce” Barry Sanders gives us some history to Donne’s metaphor, “The events in question unfolded in the most innocent way. One particular evening in the summer of 1579, Monsieur Étienne Pasquier, a lawyer and distinguished man of letters, made a call on Madame Madeleine Des-Roches at Poitiers, and, to his surprise, noticed a flea on the bosom of her daughter,” The men at this get together, we are to understand, did not know what to make of this. The flea has had centuries of negative connotations attached to it, but at the same time, how could they kill the well positioned fellow without embarrassing both themselves and the young mademoiselle? Instead of taking action, the men did a rather French-y thing, and all wrote poetry about it. Donne’s sexually charged flea was born. These Frenchmen did more than just create a witty metaphor however; they were perhaps the first to discover a parasite that is socially desirable. Now we have iPods and iPads, and we shell out big money for these things, and then even more money for applications and songs to fill them.
If anything is to be gained from this thought experiment thus far, I hope it is that parasites are everywhere, and that quite a few of them are not too bad to have around, or are at least tolerable. This, however, is all still built into a society that usually has an aversion to parasites, or as OED puts it, their use is “Chiefly derogatory” we have also know that people will go to great lengths to remove what they perceive to be a parasite from themselves and from society. As I have hinted at earlier, this is not so much derived from any notions of superiority, but rather from competiveness stemming from instinctual systems. To become a parasite contains a set of desires, the want for more, for improvement. For the last piece of this puzzle, I want to take a look at Shivers as the ultimate representation of where lies the parasite. The parasite’s relationship to the host ends up being so intimate, that competition is ruled out almost entirely amongst the infected population; it seems likely that the parasite only wishes to spread to increase the population, not to become more powerful than any other individual parasite. Within the Starliner itself, the parasite’s transmission is always evident, but aside from the transmission, its origin and destination are much vaguer. Take Dr. Hobbes for instance, we are led to believe that he first engineered the parasite at first to replace livers, but then we are told that he made them into a combination of a powerful aphrodisiac and a venereal disease in order to let humans go back to their animal instincts, to live lives less burdened by social constraints. Finally, although at the beginning of the film, we see him kill off his test subject in an attempt to also kill the trial parasite. This seems to confirm my ideas that a parasite without a host is a vague notion at best, and also that you cannot really know what sort of relationship the two will have until the point of actual exposure. Also raised is the question of what will the parasites ultimate victory look like. Suppose it takes over every human, will the parasite still be considered a parasite, or will the world’s population just gain a characteristic. In order for a parasite to exist, do we not need a norm with which to compare the host-parasite relationship?
My discoveries are thus: the parasite cannot exist without the host, and by that rule, nothing is a host without a parasite. If the parasite leaves the host, or the host removes the parasite, the relationship is also void. The parasite only sometimes seeks the host. The host sometimes seeks the parasite. By these rules, parasites often compete for hosts, hosts often compete for parasites. More intimate parasite-host relationships can sometimes negate this competition. The place of the parasite is the host; the place of the host is the parasite.

the biography gag.

What is the context set of a biography? When are they written? What accomplishments warrant them? How accurately can someone else capture all the different facets of a human personality over an entire lifetime? How accurately can an individual capture all the different facets of his or her personality over an entire lifetime? What inspires an individual to write an autobiography? What context set has that person’s life consisted of? How does one edit an autobiography or biography? What events of a life can be thrown out in the drawing room? How do these edits affect the overall biography? What, if it exists, is the archetype of the modern biography?
My best attempts to answer that last question lead to one place: the gospels, at least for western society anyway. And why not? Fact or fiction Jesus has had a lot of people write a lot about him. Hoffman’s combo of Murr and Kreisler mirror them in several ways, be this purposeful or not. At the beginning of John’s gospel we have a take on existence just as we do in the beginning of Murr’s autobiography. As an opening, the contemplation of existence seems almost overwhelming as it roped backed into the context of a single life, but we soon realize that we are not just dealing with anyone, but with a messiah. We also know that Murr dies young. I find myself asking, has he passed before his work his completed? Curiously, Hoffman himself will die before finishing his masterpiece to its entirety. It is understood that Murr was not betrayed by any followers (he lacks them for the most part) but we do witness people who want to kill him even though he poses no direct threat to them, besides the threat of potential of change. It also seems like a running joke that Murr, as both messiah and scholar, writes his own biography. This is probably because Murr would of course feel that no one else would be talented enough to write it, not that no one would want to.
Where he may be a parody to a messiah; Murr is a highly satirical character as an enlightened scholar. He is naïve and narcissistic, under the impression that his every action is improving the life of every creature he comes into contact with. He also does not have much of a theory of mind, other than that he must be recognized as a hero. Hoffman claims that Murr is only being honest, but even this is a poke at writers and enlightenment in general. Murr also cannot keep up a relationship, nor does he seem very good at make friends. It seems that the only place Murr can thrive is when he entirely immersed in his scholarly work.
Overwhelming as he can be at times, Murr is not the only satire and Parody we encounter in the book. Kreisler’s interruptions mirror Murr’s quite well, only from the context of a biography instead of an autobiography. An early take on this is gained when Kreisler describes his childhood

“On the day of St. John Chrysostom, that is, on the twenty-fourth of January in the year one thousand seven hundred and some years more, around midday, a boy was born with a face, and hands, and feet. His father was eating pea soup at the time, and in his delight spilled a whole spoonful over his beard, at which the newly delivered mother laughed so hard, although she hadn’t seen it, that the tremor broke every string of the instrument in the hands of the lutenist playing the baby his latest murky,”

This quote sets the tone for any other descriptions that we will get about Kreisler’s childhood, that is, one big joke. An unknown child hood, or a joke of one, is a trademark of many biographies, including the one featuring god’s own son. His mother’s laughter that breaks the lute is apparently supposed to make him an “ignoramus in musical matters” so naturally Kreisler grows up to become an accomplished composer. In a way, this is the Kreisler version of Murr’s musings on existence; the romantic joke against the enlightened quest for trust. The description of a human birth becomes ironic when we consider that the other primary character in the book is a cat.
Perhaps the greatest gag of all though, is that Kreisler isn’t even present in all the sections of his book, sometimes we just have Julia and Hedwigga, other times the editor apologizes for a lack of information on Kreisler. This brings us back to a few of my yet unanswered questions. Specifically: how accurately can someone else capture all the different facets of a human personality over an entire lifetime? And: how does one edit an autobiography or biography? The answer to both of these questions becomes quite clear in Kreisler’s case, the answer seems to be: not well. Murr’s case is a bit more difficult, as the autobiographer, he gets to choose which sides of himself to show us, and I feel that Murr has probably given this a great deal of thought.

A success story of one of the most pervasive parasites in modern times: Escapism

Before we get too involved into the areas that escapism has been especially successful in to date, I would like to take a brief look at what it is, and what meaning it has to me personally. The Merriam-Webster definition is as follows, “habitual diversion of the mind to purely imaginative activity or entertainment as an escape from reality or routine.” And an “escapist” is someone who possesses this habit. In this context escapism basically refers to anyone who regularly uses their imagination, and importantly, that one can be an escapist without any outside input on hand. That being said, there are myriad mediums that are, in part, escape-inducing, the list is different for everyone, but classical examples include books, television, film, and videogames. I personally believe that any object perceivable to humans could possibly induce escapism, but some objects seem to do it better than others. (The reasons for this are somewhat beyond the scope of this post, but I may touch on them briefly.) Anything that stimulates imagination, it seems, can help induce escapism.
At this juncture I’m not really sure if I should comment on the all the negative connotations commonly associated with escapism. I think it will be enough for me to say that I consider myself to be an escapist, but that I do not consider the “real” world to be unbearable, or completely unsatisfying. I do not believe there is anyone alive who finds the real world completely unbearable, no matter how many hours a day they play video games. Also, I do not feel that whether or not I am addicted to anything has any relevance to whether or not I am an escapist.
So, with all this nonsense hopefully one will come away with the idea that when you perceive something you then think about it, and if you then imagine that something in a context different from its original context you are practicing escapism. You do this often enough and you can call yourself an escapist. Escapism is a parasite in the sense that it interrupts your regular life, and is enticing because it gives you an opportunity to become someone else somewhere else. Also, like any good parasite, escapism watches out for itself and ensures its survival by utilizing medium that tend to inspire the infected to go out and create more escapism-inducing medium. Anyone who has ever been inspired enough to create something should know what I’m talking about. I understand the process goes like this, you see something interesting, think about for a while and then you start imaging it in different forms and contexts. If you get into it, you tell someone, and that’s really all it takes, the process can repeat itself. If you’re really into it then you’ll probably produce a tangible version of it. Now you’ve not only caught the escapism “bug”, but you’ve also helped give it you someone else. If we consider this, then one begins to understand not only how wide spread escapism is, but also how long it has been around. How would our lives be different if humans were not able to look at things in a context different from the original?
I will admit that there is a hole or two in what I am telling you, for one thing, most of what I have been saying so far sounds as if it is under the assumption that in order to create something one must be an escapist. While I think it is difficult to create without first escaping, I also realize that some creations are intended to be as real as possible in all aspects. (Morel’s invention?) I also acknowledge that, in using one’s imagination to create, that “escaping” is not necessarily the intent. Even allowing for these two things, we cannot escape escapism entirely because whatever you create can still induce escapism in someone else.
In class on Friday, I shared with everyone that I consider escapism to be one of the most significant parasites in my life. I also stated my top two mediums to be writing and video games. By the comparison, any video game is easy. Just go control someone else’s creation in someone else’s world. If you die, it’s usually not a big deal. If you win, you can always play it again. My favorite games have always been the ones that give the most freedom of control over your environment. Grand Theft Auto does this pretty well, so does Oblivion (although not nearly as well as Morrowind did), and Spore is almost revolutionary (although still limited in so many ways).
As far as I am concerned, writing is the last word in escapism. When I write, I feel as if the whole process is suspended in escapism. I am either working at abstracting new ideas from ones I’ve heard elsewhere, or I’m furiously trying to remember times I’ve done it in the past. For the true escapism junkie, writing puts video games to shame, and I would like to see a day in my life where I spend more time writing than I do playing video games. I’m just not strong enough yet.

A disclaimer

With the start of my parasites class, it seems likely that my blog might be getting a few more visits, it will also certainly get several more posts. That being said I want to inform anyone who decides to wander these pages that past blogs show who I was, not who I currently am. I am not particularly proud or ashamed of any entry, but I am interested to see if any of them have any relevance to this new class. I suppose all this could be said in a singe sentence: I'm putting the past behind me.