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Stuck In Traffic
"Current Events, Cultural Phenomena, True Stories"
Issue #16 - July 1996
Contents:
Olympic Spirit: Then And Now
An examination of the symbolism shown in the modern Olympic games shows
that the modern day Olympics, as they are presented, have not remained
true to the original spirit of the ancient Olympic games.
The Zero of Consciousness
Subliminal poetry from Seth Fehrs about the most dangerous man in
America.
The Death of Cool
An urgent bulletin from the front lines of the Culture War on how to
avoid the "coolness booby trap."
"Lead Us Not Into Penn Station"
A review of the latest CD from Professor and Mary Ann
Tabula Rasa
Reflections on the value of a PC, made after accidently destroying the
disk drive on my PC.
====================================
Current Events
Olympic Spirit: Then and Now
As the Centennial Olympic Games open in Atlanta, it's fitting to think
about what makes the Olympic Games special. Amid all the hype, the
sponsorships, the news headlines, and the pageantry, it's easy to
forget why we're holding them in the first place. The Olympics, after
all, are far more than just an opportunity to sell T-shirts and
baseball caps by the millions.
The history of the Olympics can be traced all the way back to the days
of ancient Greece, then known as the center of the civilized Western
world. So we only know about them through legend and myth. But the
ideas behind the Olympics are clear. Every four years, nations set
aside their differences and people traveled to Greece to participate in
games of sport. Soldiers set down their swords and spears and left the
battlefield and headed for Greece when the time came. People who were
enemies one day suddenly became comrades and competitors in the Olympic
Games. Whether this is literally true or not is irrelevant. That is
the myth that has survived, that is the archetype in our consciousness.
The Modern Olympic Games, are quite different and they've lost some of
that spirit from the Ancient Games. For one thing, nations don't stop
their antagonism toward each other for the Olympics. These modern
times move far to quickly for that. The wars continue, the battles
rage on. Two countries may be at war with each other while individuals
from the two countries are peaceably running marathon races against
each other at the Olympic Games.
But worse than that even, governments and political activists all
stripes too often try to use the Olympics to further their political
goals or make a political statement. The politically disenfranchised
have on more than one occasion taken Olympic athletes as hostages,
interrupting the games, terrorizing the world, and worst of all denying
innocent people the opportunity to live their dream of Olympic
competition. Who can forget the hostage standoff at the Munich games?
But it's not just the politically disenfranchised that have ruined the
Olympics in the past. Governments themselves have done so as well. On
more than one occasion, a government has "boycotted" the Olympics by
forbidding athletes from within its jurisdiction from participating in
the Olympic events. The arrogance of such boycotts are stunning, as if
the boycotting nation were saying, "You can't possibly hold the Olympic
games without us, so we'll just take our ball and go home." The United
States has done this in the past, and the former Soviet Union even went
so far as to start their own pseudo-Olympic games, called the "Good
Will Games," in a bald attempt at coopting the Olympics and controlling
who gets to attend. The Olympic Organizing Committee does its best to
prevent the Olympics from becoming a showcase for political statements,
but the media coverage is just too irresistible for politicos who want
to get their message out fast. Every nation on earth has reporters
covering the Olympics. There is probably a higher concentration of
media at the Olympics than any other event on earth. And where there
are cameras, you'll find political activists trying to get their
message out.
But it's not just the media concentration that threatens to turn the
Olympics into media showcases for politics. Part of the problem lies
in the nature of the modern Olympics themselves. The modern Olympics
have been portrayed in the last few decades not as human contests as
much as national contests. The image portrayed by the Olympic
organizers is not one of athletes coming together, but of nation-states
coming together by sending teams to the Olympics that represent their
country. It is a subtle but important difference.
By treating the athletes not as individuals, but as "teams"
representing a nation, the nations take center stage. For example, the
opening ceremonies always have all the athletes marching into an arena,
segregated by nation, each marching in under their country's flag. And
it is exciting to see all the flags flying. The pageantry is nice and
it makes for good TV. But the athletes tend to get lost in all the
hoopla.
It's not just that the national symbols overshadow the individual
athletes, the Olympic games almost invariably turn into competitions
between the national teams. We count the medals that each nation wins
and compare how many medals "we" have won against the number of medals
"they" have won. "They" almost invariably being the nation that we're
currently at war with or antagonistic with. The Japanese may be
whipping our butts in foreign trade and education, but we can beat the
hell out of them in basketball and we've got the medals to prove it.
Remember how the everyone in the United States was suddenly a hockey
fan when it looked like we were going to beat the Evil Empire in this
particular sport?
All this is a very sad commentary on the modern Olympics, and we in the
United States, of all peoples, should know better. The worst struggles
in our nation's history, the issues that have caused us the most angst,
have always centered around the unwise segregation of people for
arbitrary and inconsequential traits. The American Revolution was born
largely out of the belief that "all men are created equal" and that
one's background, the accident of ones birth, confers no special
privilege on a person. No one has the right to rule you just because
they have "royal blood." And of course the whole issue of slavery has
been fundamental in forming our national character. Almost from the
very founding of this nation, we have been striving to rid ourselves of
an institutionalized discrimination based on the accident of one's
race. And even though we perhaps haven't quite reached the point where
we are a "color blind nation," we've made tremendous strides in the
right direction.
If we can accept that fact that men and women should be judged not by
the color of the skin, but by the character of their souls and the
merit of their accomplishments, is it such a stretch to accept that the
participants of the Olympic games should judged by their speed, grace,
and strength instead of the accident of which flag they happened to be
born under?
Why is this so difficult for us to do? Part of the reason is that the
Olympics appear to be _designed_ to glorify the nation-states instead
of the individual athletes. That's why the athletes are segregated by
race during the opening ceremonies. That's why the athletes wear their
national flags on their uniforms. That's why the winner's national
anthem is played when the medals are awarded. That's why the winners'
national flags are hung from the rafters during the awards ceremonies,
always with the gold medal winner's flag in a dominant position over
the second and third place winners' flags. That's why the medal
winnings are always reported by nation. The symbolism of these
arrangements is unmistakable.
A more proper way to hold the Olympics, one that would be true to the
original Olympic spirit, would be to ban all mentions of nationality
from the games. The one exception might be for cases where identifying
nationality would help in the logistics of running the events. There's
no reason why the opening ceremonies have to segregate all the athletes
by nation. They can march in together, without national flags. If you
want the visual pageantry of flags, let them carry the Olympic flag and
streamers of the Olympic colors. When medals are awarded at the
conclusion of an event, it would be more fitting to announce the
winner's name than to play his or her national anthem. And I think it
would be fitting to let the winner address the crowd for a minute or
two. I would much rather listen to an athlete say "Hi" to the folks
back home than to listen to another a national anthem.
A responsible news organization would not report the tallies of medal
winnings by country, even if other organizations stooped so low as to
do so. A news organization should simply report the names of the
winners. It's perhaps reasonable to report where the athlete is from,
since spectators do tend to be curious about where the winners are
from. But it should only be done in the context of painting a picture
of the individual athlete, helping the spectator get to know a little
more about the personal side of the athlete.
The focus of the Olympics should always be on the individual athletes
because they are the real marvel. They are the reason we do this.
They are what's impressive. It's the dedication a person has to have
to excel in a sport so well that they qualify for the Olympic games
that impresses. Not that they are from a particular country. The
Olympics, as the ancients' intended them to be, are symbolic reminders
of the ability of each and every one of us to transform ourselves
through sheer force of will. They show us that we can become "super
human," or as you prefer, they give us a glimpse of God.
It's a shame that the modern Olympics games have coopted the spirit of
the ancient Olympic games and turned them into to a glorification of
The State.
====================================
"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion,
butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance
accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders,
give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new
problems, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight
efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects."
-Robert Heinlein
====================================
Cultural Phenomena
The Zero Of Consciousness
by Seth Fehrs
Wiped, in the blink of an eye.
Live and learn, RIP,
stuck in traffic and dead at the age of,
I would guess, about 21 or 22.
So when can we expect to see the outside looking in?
Or come oozing out the sides...
To relieve the pain,
share with the world his experiences with dying
on the six o'clock news.
He was one of the few hedonists
(no greasy kid stuff)
with the respect and honor
of today's net generation,
but city buses show little mercy.
Curiosity got the best
of me expecting the worst.
Low-intensity events just happen,
in the most common ordinary ways,
by the most ordinary folks--
a cartoonish image of the latest issue
that seems to find peace and security
for the flower children of yesteryear.
The most dangerous man in America
never meant to hurt anyone.
About the author:
By day, Seth Fehrs (fehrs002@mc.duke.edu) works for Duke Medical Center
as a programmer. By night, he works on the Executive Committee for the
NC Libertarian Party and is running a laid-back campaign for NC
Secretary of Labor. His stance on the issues is that NC doesn't need a
Secretary of Labor. If elected, he will fire his staff and donate his
salary to charity. Seth also writes subliminal poetry that he finds
hidden in other people's zines--the above was found in the last issue
of Stuck In Traffic.
====================================
True Story
The Death of Cool
There are few things that sadden me more than the death of a good word.
Ideas, concepts, new ways of looking at the world coalesce from our
synapses. The billions of overlapping associations in our head find a
seed crystal and then slowly clump together in the precipitate of a new
idea and when that seed crystal grows large enough it emerges into our
consciousness and we give it a name. As David Byrne said, we give
names to things because, "It makes the conversation easy."
But there are word scavengers in the world that attack language; they
parasitically attach themselves to new concepts, weighing them down.
Like a virus, they inject themselves into a concept, mutate it, and
enter our brains unnoticed. The Culture War is not a frontal assault,
it's an indirect attack on the frontal lobes. It's guerilla war. It's
guerilla theater.
Take, for example, the word "cool." Cool used to have a distinct
meaning and a well understood connotation, though these were rarely
made explicit. At its root, "cool" means "expressive of a
personality." Cool is something that enables a one-on-one interaction.
Cool is an opportunity for connection. It's an opportunity for a
degree of two way communication, even if the parties involved are
separated by time, or space, or culture. It's an opportunity for
insight into the originator. Cool requires participation from the
receiver as well as the originator.
If I say, "That's a cool leather jacket you got there." I'm
acknowledging that it is expressive of your personality. I can relate
to you through this leather jacket and therefore the jacket has
coolness. An object or an idea is cool if it gives you insight into
the originator's soul. And by extension, a "cool" person is someone
who has mastered the art of expressing themselves through the things
they say, through the things they do, and through the material things
they own. But mastering this first requires that you know who you are
inside. So a typically uncool person, isn't uncool because of the
particular things they say or do or have. A uncool person is not so
because he or she dresses funny. An uncool person isn't so because
they are timid. An uncool person isn't so because he or she doesn't
hang out with the "right crowd." An uncool person is so because they
aren't in touch with themselves enough to find their personality in
order to express it. Coolness requires a person. Coolness requires a
personality.
At least that was so before the word cool was destroyed.
Cool is essentially an adjective that means "this gives you access to a
person's soul, or personality." It didn't take very long for the
scavengers to latch on to cool as a way of getting inside out heads.
Pretty soon, the scavengers began to use the word cool to describe all
kinds soulless ideas. Attaching the word cool to all sorts of things
unassociated with a personality was their means of laying a booby trap
for those of us striving to communicate with each other. It was a way
for the scavengers to get in our heads and we willingly let them do it
because we thought it was an avenue for communication.
Cool has become little more than a marketing gimmick used by companies
to grab out attention, drop our defenses, and let them into our heads.
It's become the modern day equivalent "New and Improved." There are
ways to spot this abuse of the term cool, and if you keep them in mind,
you can avoid falling into the coolness booby trap.
First, nothing can be cool with out a personality at the other end.
Cool without soul is not cool at all. Cool is associated with a
person, either directly or indirectly with things associated with a
person. Cool is not a group effort. Cool is not corporate. This is
not to knock corporations. Corporations are eminently useful and
beneficial in their own ways. But they are not cool.
Second, cool is never self-descriptive. While it emanates from a
person's soul, through their actions and thoughts and creations, it can
only be applied by the observer. Anyone describing themselves as
"cool" automatically isn't. Anyone describing something they've done
or bought or created as "cool" automatically isn't. When a new product
is introduced into the marketplace and labeled _by_it's_producers_ as
being "Cool," it automatically isn't.
While it is possible to avoid the coolness booby trap, I believe it is
too late to save the word itself. And so I have vowed to wean myself
off the word cool. It's going to be tough to do because the original
concept is useful, even necessary. But we will have find another word
to express the concept. When, just to name an example, Bill Gates uses
the term "cool" to describe the products from Microsoft Corporation,
it's time for the rest of us to find another word.
====================================
Cultural Phenomena
"Lead Us Not Into Penn Station"
Ken Rockwood and Danielle Brancaccio, collectively known as the musical
duo Professor and Mary Ann, don't need gimmicks to sell their act
despite the obvious homage to Gilligan's Island. They don't need
elaborate orchestrations, mind numbing beats, or walls of amplifiers.
All they need is an acoustic guitar and their uncanny knack for
combining quirky, entertaining lyrics with intense, undiluted love.
Building on this style that they introduced in their previous album,
"Fairy Tale," Professor and Mary Ann's latest album, "Lead Us Not Into
Penn Station," is an even stronger collection of songs, both musically
and thematically.
Of course everyone is doing the trendy coffeehouse "unplugged" scene
these days, with varying degrees of success. No doubt even Metallica
will give it a try someday soon. But Professor and Mary Ann are at
home in it. Their songs are designed to be listened to, not just
heard. And their music gains rather than suffers from the simplicity
of its orchestration. And unlike the so many acoustic acts, they
refuse to be ghettoized into an easily labeled genre. They are unique
as well as plain and simple.
Danielle Brancaccio has the sort of voice that makes voice teachers
shake their heads, but it also makes men sit up and take notice. She
has a breathy, waspy sound that can go from a sophisticated mood
reminiscent of torch singers from yesteryear to a playful
man's-best-friend easiness. Ken Rockwood knows how to write tunes that
are fun without being too silly and emotional with out being
embarrassing. Put the two together and you get songs that sticks in
your head for days at a time.
"Lead Us Not Into Penn Station," an obvious pun on the line from the
Lord's Prayer, "lead us not into temptation," titles both the CD and a
mini-story contained in the liner notes about urban decay and misery
which serves as sort of an anti-theme that brings the collections of
songs together. The CD opens with Danielle singing "Willow," a
haunting, gothic inspired song in which she voices everyone's angst and
incompleteness without love. And it's followed by "Flea Circus," sung
by Rockwood, that sets a scene that makes modern city life look
bewildering and scary. The stage is then set for the rest of the
album, all about love and caring, about a woman and man finding solace
and comfort in their relationship. These aren't drippy, greeting card
songs, but they definitely affirm the value of romantic relationships.
Quite a rare thing in music these days.
The best of these songs are Danielle's "Make Me Your Baby" and
Rockwood's "Stumbling Home" in which he manages to perfectly capture
the contrast between a guy's romantic dreams and reality, "tonight I'm
going to rest my head in your hands/ going to close my eyes and dream/
tonight everyone will understand/ exactly what I mean/ tonight I'm
going to reap the harvest/ that took so long to grow/ But most likely
tonight I'll just be stumbling home.."
And true to their "Fairy Tale" tradition, the CD also features "House
By The Water," a funny blues-inspired song about "marrying a
millionaire's daughter" and "Luck," good old-fashioned beer-hall
sing-along song with just the right hint of sad fatalism to balance the
catchy refrain.
But as fun as those songs are, the real value in "Lead Us Not Into Penn
Station," the thing that sets this CD apart from all the rest is its
unabashed sentimentality. Pretty strong stuff by today's standards.
"Lead Us Not Into Penn Station" can found at Tower Records, J&R Music,
Rebel Music, and Kim's Underground or it can be ordered by mail from
Bar None Records. The price is $13.50 for CD. Send checks to Bar None
Records. P.O.B. 1704, Hoboken, NJ 07030.
====================================
"The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure, and the
intelligent are full of doubt." --Bertrand Russell
====================================
True Story
Tabula Rasa
I should just say right up front that no one is to blame except myself.
Last month I accidently wiped the disk drive on my computer. The
details of how I did it are unimportant. I wasn't paying attention and
I accidently formatted the wrong drive. It's conceivable that I would
have been able to recover the drive even after having formatted it but
I had spent twenty minutes installing stuff on top of the newly
formatted drive before I realized what I had done. So there wasn't
much sense in trying to recover anything.
One of the key things lost in this disaster was the subscription list
to the free e-mail edition of Stuck In Traffic. So if you used to
receive Stuck In Traffic via e-mail and didn't get it this month, well,
now you know why. Please send me a note and let me know you want back
on the subscription list.
It's amazing to me how anti-climatic this disaster was. It took along
time for it all to sink in. What had I lost? What had I not lost?
What could be recreated? What couldn't?
Thankfully past issues of Stuck In Traffic are archived both on the net
and on diskette. And my all my financial data from Quicken is backed
up on diskette, so that's recoverable. And I have a printed copy of my
address book so that's recoverable, although it is a pain in the neck
to retype it all.
But it's the little things that I can't recover that I miss the most.
Things you don't normally think of as being worthy of backing up. For
example, I lost two years of journal entries. Some of them I have
printed out, but most of them weren't. What was in them? I don't
know. Stray thoughts. Practice writing. Samples opening line from
essays I intended to write someday. It's interesting that these things
don't hold much interest or value when you write them. They only
acquire value over time. I won't feel the pain of losing them until 20
or 30 years from now.
I had three years of news articles that I had saved from online news
services. Some of it were headline kinds of stories, some of them were
seeds of ideas for stories. Again, not something that you use
everyday. It's not of any value until you start looking back over
time.
Starting all over has been, well, not exactly a good or cathartic
experience, but it has made me realize the value of having a computer,
which had never quite sunk in before. Yes, computers can be wonderful,
time saving devices, once you master them. Yes, they can balance a
checkbook faster than you can. Yes, e-mail is wonderful. Yes, the
world wide web is a fun place to play around.
But computers also make terrific scrap books. They are good journals,
They are good junk drawers. Maybe that's the best reason of all to
have them around.
====================================
About Stuck In Traffic
Stuck In Traffic is a monthly magazine dedicated to evaluating current
events, examining cultural phenomena, and relating true stories.
Why "Stuck In Traffic"?
Because getting stuck in traffic is good for you. It's an opportunity
to think, ponder, and reflect on all things, from the personal to the
global. As Robert Pirsig wrote in _Zen and the Art of Motorcycle
Maintenance_, "Let's consider a reevaluation of the situation in which
we assume that the stuckness now occurring, the zero of consciousness,
isn't the worst of all possible situations, but the best possible
situation you could be in. After all, it's exactly this stuckness that
Zen Buddhists go to so much trouble to induce...."
Submissions
Submissions to Stuck In Traffic are always welcome. If you have
something on your mind or a personal story you'd like to share, please
do. You don't have to be a great writer to be published here, just
sincere.
Contact Information
All queries, submissions, subscription requests, comments, and
hate-mail about Stuck In Traffic should be sent to Calvin Stacy Powers
preferably via E-mail (powers@interpath.com) or by mail (2012 Talloway
Drive, Cary, NC USA 27511).
Copyright Notice
Stuck In Traffic is published and copyrighted by Calvin Stacy Powers
who reserves all rights. Individual articles are copyrighted by their
respective authors. Unsigned articles are authored by Calvin Stacy
Powers.
Permission is granted to redistribute and republish Stuck In Traffic
for noncommercial purposes as long as it is redistributed as a whole,
in its entirety, including this copyright notice. For permission to
republish an individual article, contact the author.
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E-mail subscriptions to the ASCII text edition of Stuck In Traffic are
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Subscriptions to the printed edition of Stuck In Traffic are available
for $10/year. Make checks payable to Calvin Stacy Powers and send to
the address listed above. Individual issues are available for $2.
Archives
Postscript and ASCII text editions of Stuck In Traffic are archived on
the internet by etext.org at the following URL:
gopher://gopher.etext.org/11/Zines/StuckInTraffic
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more information.Stuck In Traffic
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