Something is horribly wrong when a shoeless boy runs up to you in the morning to tell you Michael Jackson has died.  It’s the kind of thing that lets you know you’ve lost touch with the in-crowd, that you’ve found other things to do besides listen to the news.  And it’s wrong because you don’t know if it’s good or bad, if you’ve found something better to do than keep up with Mr. Jones or if your life has deteriorated and you’re left with nothing but to complain — incessantly – about the weather.  (And it is too hot right now.)

But that’s not wholly sad.  What is sad – what is downright tragic, is that Farah Fawcett died of ass cancer.

I’ve always warned past girlfriends that they should be extra nice to me, because pulchritude has a shelf-life, and when you force me to break up with you I know you’re going to have a one-weeker with some nasty bald guy who happens to have warts (which you won’t see).  And then you, too, will die of ass-cancer.

I’ve been in Uganda exactly one week now.  Here’s what I’ve been doing:

Monday (June 15): Slept for 5 hours then worked all night.  Threatened to kill someone for starting a fire near a pile of plastic.

Tuesday (June 16): Threatened to cut someone’s hand off with a butcher knife.  Initially thought I might be having a fit of rage, being jetlagged and all, you know, the kind of rage that comes when you’re not thinking straight and desperately need a blowjob to calm you down.  But six hours later I threatened to cut Peter’s hand off.  Turns out it was just that kind of day.

Wednesday: Found out that the thugs that wait for me outside of my factory had died from eating some local herbs they’d stolen.  There is a god, after all.

Thursday: Slept, then worked for 20 hours.  An askari (security guard) begged me to teach him kung-fu.

Friday: Worked, then drank.  Apparently, a whole new club scene opened up in Kampala while I was away.

Saturday: Waited outside my factory gate until 5am to assess how many thieves would come to attack me.  Turns out everyone there knows me now and won’t bother me — a terrible thing since they attacked Robert just a few months ago.

Sunday: Saw Robert and had a look at his elephantitis.  Jesus.

All in all, a great start to my summer holiday.  Kisses.

Harvard gets a new lending service.  Hope they have the wits to increase the maximums.

Note: Facebook started the same way.

Michael Agger wrote a short piece about whether fish feel pain that just seems all wrong.  Actually, his lapses in logic and failure to achieve any real depth bother me so much I need to note them here — so I know, in the future, if I ever start making the same mistakes in the articles I write, I can just kill myself.  Slowly.  Painfully.

Whether animals feel pain, I believe, is a function of their nociceptive capacity.  Hence, nociception is not actually pain, per se.  If a hot ash from your cigarette falls on your knee, and you happen to have a callous there, you might not feel anything at all.  But if that same ash flew up into your eye, you might be crying for hours.  Same stimulus, different nociceptive input.  In the first case, few nerves recognize the burning ash.  But in the face, a particularly nociceptive area, it hurts like hell.

Presumably, we are dealing with a parallel problem when considering other animals.  Humans have a relatively immense intelligence when compared to other animals, so, naturally, we can start off by saying we have an “improved” capacity to suffer (not science per se, but logic: something falls and breaks a foot and maybe experiences similar pain, but only humans have the capacity to think about all the soccer games they’ll miss and how they’ll have to use a cane before turning 30 — our pain is sophisticated in that way).  If we can presume differences in nociception, we can say “animals don’t feel pain the same way we feel pain.”  And, if we can do that, then we’re talking about another problem altogether — the real problem.  Nociception?  Sure, I’ll buy that; I think all animals can process aversive stimuli and react to them.  But pain?  No.  I need more proof.  Not only that, but I need to know, if fish do experience pain, whether that pain actually bothers them (i.e., it may be quotidian; fish may feel the same thing when they bite into baitfish, for instance).

None of this is Agger’s problem.  I think he considers nociception as well as any angler can; however, in the middle of the piece, he loses his fucking mind:

What does my gut tell me about fish pain? Not happening. When I reel in a trout, I may be stressing the fish—making it expend precious energy—but it’s not howling in agony.

Fantastic.  You go from using reason to guesstimation .  This is how you preclude your writing from having any real depth, buddy.

And the reason why I care at all may be because I live in England (I cut live sashimi at parties sometimes, after all).  The English, to me, seem to suffer from this very affliction: there’s enough intelligence there to fool people, but not enough to make things work right.

Earlier today, for instance, I had a 15-minute conversation to book a ride to Heathrow.  13 minutes of that was repeating my address (four times…) and listening to the guy tell me how important it was to be timely.  Then my credit ran out, ride never fully booked.  Do I expect the guy to be here at 5pm — especially knowing he’s written my address more than once?  C’mon.  Seriously.  This is England we’re talking about.  I’m better off walking.

It would involve less pain, at least.

… beautiful.  Just fucking beautiful.

Sometimes I get a random e-mail asking why JamesSong.com hasn’t been updated in a while.  The answer is invariably, “because I’ve been too busy.”

Now “busy” can mean lots of things to lots of people: deadlines at work; messy divorce; violent masturbation.  For me, it means I’m in Portugal — or was for the last week, at least.

It was Ben Shahn’s book, The Shape of Content, that taught me to open myself (creatively) by traveling the world.  It’s not necessarily about moving, rather, it’s about transporting yourself to an alternate reality and thinking in whole new ways.  Tokyo, for instance, is nothing like New York, even though Ginza can be likened to Times Square.  The culture, the people, the vibe, the essence — it’s all different, a parallel realm.  It is, then, about seeing with new eyes.  Or, perhaps more accurately, seeing for the first time.

Eddie Bravo is one of the few who are quietly pioneering a new American martial art. Known generally as MMA, I’m reluctant to dismiss Bravo as simply a great mixed martial artist. Instead, he is a brilliant artisan, creating a new, uniquely American Ju-Jitsu. But somehow he is more; he’s an artist as well, expressing something deep and profound through his craft: that the sum of their parts amounts to more than the whole.

You can see this here, in this video, as Bravo reveals variations on a theme, showing us how the rubber guard is more than just a trick, more than just a system; rather, it’s a new way of thinking.

At the Sasquatch 2009 music festival, this guy brought the party (this is the essence of frame control):

Regarding the recent murder at Kirkland, the NY Times has published an article that gives a bit more regard to what Chanequa Campbell has to say about her ordeal. The problem now, however, is that she (unfortunately) refuses to share the contents of the letter she received from Harvard with the public.

Harvard tends to be meticulous. Its first rule is, generally, to cover her own ass. Hence, the letter may have detailed some things that justify her not receiving her diploma (albeit in Harvard’s inimitable vagueness), despite Campbell’s claim that no reason was given. Moreover, I find it strange that there is no mention of Campbell defending her integrity. One of the first things Harvard teaches you is how to put up a fight — that’s the whole point of Expos.

The issue now rests with Campbell. She needs to detail, explicitly, why she thinks Harvard is being unfair (and corroborate that detail) before anyone can further risk their reputation to defend her — including me.

The NY Times put together a graphic map of people who were raised in NYC housing projects and grew to become influential in their respective fields. This immediately struck me as mildly racist. Of the 20 people mentioned, 12 are black. Of those 12, four are in sports (e.g. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar) — a full 20% of the list. One is a boxer (Mike Tyson), another a musician (fellow Stuy non-graduate Thelonious Monk), five more in entertainment (actor or singer or entertainer) — and only one, Ursula Burns, is noted for her influence in industry.

Of the eight non-black people mentioned, only one is an actor (Erik Estrada) and one a baseball player (former Met, John Franco). The rest are as follows:

Pedro Espada Jr. — State Senator

Sonia Sotomayor — Judge (and Supreme Court nominee)

Gary Ackerman — Congressman

Lloyd C. Blankfein — Chief Executive, Goldman Sachs

Hubert Selby Jr. — Novelist

Richard Price — Novelist

It’s as if the NY Times is saying: “anyone from the ghetto can make it in New York, but if you happen to be black, you should learn how to sing or dance or run real fast.”

The problem with America is not that we are a country of buffoons, rather, our buffoons make for the best of our television and, hence, we are cursed (and blessed) to carry their reputation with us, always.

This is not my problem, however.  Mine is explaining two things to every African I meet: that I am not Jackie Chan and that, no, I don’t know how to fly.

As for Europeans, how do you explain to them that in some ways WE ARE EXACTLY LIKE THEM:

I just saw Twilight three times.  Why, might you ask, would I devote so much time to a movie so fantastically bad, with acting so poor I’m sending Robert Pattinson (right now) a single dollar so he can buy a clue, when I have so little time as it is?  Well… work.  I wanted to know how Summit pulled this caper off, why it got so lucky (Twilight did massive box office).

Now I know.

Twilight tries to be neither slick nor smooth.  It’s awkward and angsty and clumsy all at the same time — the epitome of high school.  This is how people relate to the movie, pimples and all.  Most people think it takes lots to impress teenagers, that you need fantastic special effects and incredible graphics.  Not true.  Apparently, all you really need is to tell a story that they can relate to — and they will, no matter how fantastically bad.

The Harvard Crimson reports Chanequa N. Campbell ’09 is being barred from graduating because of her alleged involvement with the recent shooting at Kirkland.  This is bullshit.  Her involvement, it seems, is based upon evidence pointing to her (and another, Brittany J. Smith ’09) as the means to which the victim, Justin Cosby, was able to get into the dorm.  The problem is that all kinds of non-Harvard people sneak into the houses.  You can’t use that as a basis for kicking someone out — what if you need 25 pizzas delivered?  I sure as hell ain’t going to carry all that into the dining hall myself (that’s the DELIVERY guy’s job).

Moreover, crime, in America, is judged by a jury of one’s peers.

So let’s say Chanequa is exonerated in the end.  She’ll get her diploma and (probably) a very nice apology letter, as well as a lifetime of these never-ending e-mails and letters from the Alumni Association asking for money.  And let’s say she’s not, and this emboldens Harvard to continue judging without balanced review.  Either way, something substantial is lost.

Bottom line: believe it or not, people invest a lot to go to Harvard.  There are sleepless nights and impossible loans and all those goddamn tourists with their goddamn cameras.  The transaction is not one-sided.  Harvard does indeed brighten the lives of her graduates, but Harvard sometimes forgets that her reputation is burnished by these very same lives.  We bet on you, Harvard.  Would it be too much to ask that you, perhaps, at times, go out on a limb and bet on us?