Short Stories, Long Odds

(As long promised, so now delivered: The first of a three-parter I did for Quorum Report in late January.)

The night Barack Obama was elected, my wife and I decided to go to his inauguration.  I had a romantic notion that taking a road trip across the heartland from Texas to Washington, D.C. would be the best way to go. The idea of this trip became fixed in my mind as a necessary pilgrimage to my nation’s capital. I had never seen it.

As I write this, America exists in a fluid present at the crossroads of history and on the precipice of total disaster. Economically, domestically, and internationally we have plates brimming with misery.  As a counterbalance the American people elected the first African-American president.  Everyone that has not already decided to hate Barack Obama has placed all of the world’s troubles at his feet for him to bear on strength of what thus far is little more than potential.

I voted for Barack Obama - it would be dishonest for me to conceal that - but I don’t know that he can save my country, let alone the world.

I love my country but I also readily admit to pessimism concerning its condition. I wonder if my countrymen feel the same way.  That is the most accurate explanation I can produce, and I hope it sufficiently illustrates the origin of my need to drive across the United States in a bitter winter, and to ask people how they feel about America, and to be one of millions on the National Mall on an Inauguration Day during what will be, for good or ill, a turning point in history.
(more…)

(cross posted at http://ratlist.tumblr.com)

We have all watched over the last few days as Twitter went from being a hot social networking tool to being used by brave Iranians to change the world. With media restrictions in place from the Iranian government, the main source of news coming out of Iran was, especially in the first few days, the tweets of students and protestors and supporters of Mir-Hossein Mousavi.

As the protest has grown and the days have worn on, the nature of the intelligence one could glean from certain twitter feeds - #IranElection and #GR88, in particular - changed. In the first few days it was a heavy but seemingly pure stream of raw intelligence, dispatches that contained up to the minute updates on everything from events personally observed by the twitters to rumors to video and pictures of the ongoing clash between protestors and government forces.

In the last 48 hours, the main tagged feeds have become diluted: innocently, by western twitterers who have been captivated and motivated by what they’ve read; and more troublingly, by people who are quite obviously disseminating incorrect, inflammatory, or misleading information. The latter is incredibly problematic, as Twitter is not only being used as a source of information for the outside world. It is also being used by activists in separate parts of the country to communicate information about what is happening where they are. So not only does the misinformation dilute the message and news coming from the Iranian people fighting for freedom, it also is detrimental to their efforts, and could very well have life or death consequences.

That is why I’m starting The Rat List - a collection of Twitter users disseminating incorrect or blatantly propagandistic information. Many of these users have new accounts, have no history of accurate updates, and are not trusted sources. They could be Iranian intelligence agents organizing to thwart the efforts of the activists and put down what is becoming a vibrant and viable uprising. They could also just be assholes who think they are being funny. Either way, I am mostly doing this for my own edification, to record some small part of what is happening in a way that I know something about, by analyzing raw intelligence. If it helps out, I’m glad for that too.

Visit http://ratlist.tumblr.com for updates.

Best Song Lyrics I’ve Found In A While:

So I’ll stick to my guns,
but from now on it’s war:
I’m armed with the past,
and the will, and a brick
- Frightened Rabbit, Good Arms vs. Bad Arms

Best Line from Neruda That Used To Be a Favorite Until I Forgot It (Tie):

I want to do with you / what spring does with cherry trees.

…and…

The moon lives in the lining of your skin.

Best Description of Me, Worrying About Who / How I Am, by Someone Else

If I didn’t know you, I’d say “Stop being a girl. You’re fine.” But I know you really weigh these things.

( I have rescued the first two paragraphs of this from something I wrote last summer, something begun and never finished.  The rest is likewise not a real narrative but rather a collection of stuff, much of which is from a notebook I’ve been writing tiny bits in since last century. It is leather-bound and has some sort of Celtic design on the cover. I have always liked the book but the punchline is that I am a terrible diarist.)

It is hot these days. It is the kind of heat that immediately stupefies you, that displaces you from your regularly ordered senses, that makes you wonder where the time went or what that buzzing sound is in your ears. If this heat were sweetness, it would be cloying. If it were fear, we would all be nightmare-paralyzed from the waist down. If it were love, it would be suffocating.
(more…)

In the fall of 1997, I started college at the Berklee College of Music in Boston. I would ultimately end up attending Berklee for just three semesters. I left after the first two semesters when my hands went bad, and went back for one more semester in 2004 for one last ill-advised grab at living the dream and becoming a film scorer. During the first year I lived in Boston, it became my home and I made great friends of the people I lived with. Even these days, 12 years later, I have the rhythm of that city in my bones more than any other I’ve been to. Some nights when I lie in bed I still feel the thrum of the T.

(more…)