New blog

I am now using this blog:

http://sisyphusgoestocollege.wordpress.com

Facebook: Another Love/Hate Relationship

First off, I just want to note that I don’t always read the blogs on my blogroll regularly.  Honestly, I’m a busy college student, and I don’t have a lot of time to keep up with the blogosphere.  I feel guilty enough about the time I do spend frittering around “Internet never-never-land” as one of my professors called it.  If I did have more time to spend on the web, you’d see me update this thing more

Now to the point of the post…

As Facebook gets ever more popular, the backlash grows: this article in The Weekly Standard is probably the strongest indictment of the bad side of Facebook that I’ve seen yet.  I think he really makes too big of a deal out of it, but has some valid points about the way Facebook is changing our social interaction for the worse.  And I say this as an unrepentant Facebook fanatic.  Here’s a more humorous take on some of the less fantastic parts of Facebook:

I got Facebook relatively late for a high school student – about a year and a half ago, at the beginning of my senior year, shortly after a class trip where I watched classmates who had brought their laptops spend every spare second perusing each other’s profiles and fooling around on the different applications, which were at the time still a relatively new addition to the site.  I felt like I was majorly missing out on something, and once I got home signed right up for an account and began friend-requesting everyone I had ever known at any time.

The first problem I had with it is that it’s incredibly addictive.  Facebook was quickly taking over my life at a time when I had about a million pressures coming at me from all sides, and the last thing I needed was such an extreme distraction.  (This was the time when I was getting my portfolio of compositions ready to send out to music schools, along with tackling the mountain of pressures being a second-year IB student brings.)   But other than that, I enjoyed it.  Going to a magnet high school had meant that I had to leave a lot of friends I had known in middle school behind, and Facebook allowed me to keep up with them, along with friends and family in other states.  It did the work for me.

Now that I’m in college though, I feel like that keeping-up-with-old-friends-even-when-you-don’t-want-to is both a blessing and a curse.  Sure, I’m glad that it makes it easier for me to keep up with my good friends in high school.  But it’s a hindrance as well.  I felt very limited by the persona I had created in high school, which I’ve become increasingly aware is not necessarily the person I actually want to be.  Having my high school friends with constant access to my profile makes it that much harder for me to create a new identity for myself that’s closer to my true self, to say nothing of those friends from middle school and even further back…

Facebook reminds me, in a strange sort of way, of some of the ideas presented in Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five.  In the book, the protagonist, Billy Pilgrim, is sent to a zoo on the planet Tralfamadore, the residents of which have the ability to experience the universe in four dimensions.  Of this, Billy says:

“The most important thing I learned on Tralfamadore was that when a person he dies, he only appears to die.  He is still very much alive in the past, so it is very silly for people to cry at his funeral.  All moments, past, present, and future, always have existed, always will exist.  The Tralfamadorians can look at all the different moments just the way we can look at a stretch of the Rocky Mountains, for instance.  They can see how permanent all the moments are, and they can look at any moment that interests them.  It is just an illusion we have here on Earth that one moment follows another one, like beads on a string, and that once a moment is gone it is gone forever.”

Facebook has created that sort of an experience for us three-dimensional Earthlings.  On Facebook, your past is still as much alive as the present, to the degree that sometimes it’s hard to escape.  Even the Tralfamadorians ideas about death hold true to some extent, as anyone who has lost a friend recently probably knows.  One of my high school friends perished a few months ago in a car accident, but on Facebook she is still very much alive.  She gets constantly tagged in old photos (as well as that “Little Mr/Little Ms” meme that’s been going around, where you tag your friends for which character represents them) and many of her closer friends still leave comments on her wall like she can read them from beyond the grave.  I understand how therapeutic this is – I certainly left a comment or two on her wall right after she died – but at the same time, it does register as a little bizarre, and considering how frequently some people still comment on her page, it makes me wonder if Facebook is making it impossible for them to move on and accept her death.

There’s also the loss of mystery in our lives, as the author of the Weekly Standard article bemoans.  Part of the fun of getting to know someone is just that… slowly learning about all their little quirks and idiosyncrasies which make them who they are.  On Facebook, though, you’re suddenly presented with all that info at once.  Although you can control what you share, you can’t control what your friends post, and sometimes you learn things about them you’d rather not.  (This was half the reason the “25 Things” meme got as much attention as it did.) For someone like me who has some issues with social skills, it sure does make getting to know people easier and less stressful.  But it also makes it a lot less fun, and less exciting.  And it makes us (or, at least, me) less willing to make an effort to really get to know someone, beyond who their Facebook profile says they are.  (Because, even with as much info as Facebook encourages you to give out, a person’s online profile can really only say so much about them.)

In spite of everything, though, I feel like I’ll be addicted to Facebook for as long as it lasts – or at least until Facebook’s incessant upgrades render the site too dull and confusing to make an effort anymore.

I’m home in Michigan for spring break, which probably means I’ll have more time to update this thing over the next week or so, assuming I don’t get too bogged down in all the reading I have to do for my Russian history class.  (300 pages of Brothers Karamazov! Sometimes I really miss high school, when our teachers weren’t allowed to give us homework over vacations.)

Caffeine: A Love/Hate Relationship (And Some Beatles News Too)

So I recently decided to attempt to give up my caffeine addiction, after spending a particularly miserable Friday night mooning over some forbidden crushes, completely strung-out on Rockstar. (I feel like drinking Rockstar is proof that one is a hopeless caffeine addict, because I can’t imagine anyone drinks this stuff for the taste.  I and most people I know drink it for the buzz, and the fact that at our school we get it free because one of our RAs is a campus rep for them.) I gave up after I needed to pull yet another all-nighter for a history essay I had unwisely pushed to the very last minute to do. Also, the only diet drinks that can come on my meal card are all caffeinated, but really, that’s just an excuse – I could always go to the main campus and buy some good, non-caffeinated, calorie-free drinks at the grocery store and have it come off my meal points. I just don’t want to give up what has become my most loyal companion over the past 11 years.

Yes, my somewhat-clueless parents started letting me drink Coca-Cola regularly at age 8, and I haven’t looked back since. There was somewhat of a brief period in middle school where I wasn’t drinking caffeine as regularly (maybe that’s why middle school sucked so hard?) but when I started high school at an all-International-Baccalaureate school I was of course right back at it. And by this time, my taste buds had evolved a little, so I started drinking tea as well as soda. And then Frappucinos, which of course turned out to be just a gateway drug to everything else Starbucks and its competitors sell. (I think everyone in my generation learned how to appreciate coffee by first drinking Frapps and then moving up the menu to mochas, then lattes, then pure, pristine, black caffeine shots. Yum yum.) I love caffeine because of all the times it has helped me stay up later than I should to write a paper or study for a test, and then kept me from passing out on my bed the next afternoon from the sleep debt. I hate it because I think it’s making me a little crazy.

It’s easy to forget this, because caffeine is legal and completely unrestricted, but it is a drug just like anything else. You can overdose on it, just like you can with alcohol and other drugs (I’m pretty sure that my Friday night of Rockstar hell was the caffeine equivalent of getting blacked-out drunk.) There’s even a condition now called “caffeine intoxication.” It is a member of the stimulant category of drugs, along with nicotine (a rather weak stimulant) and cocaine (a very strong one). This is why it’s dangerous to combine strong energy drinks with alcohol – because you’re dealing with a fairly strong stimulant (caffeine is a weaker stimulant, but when those drinks are loaded down with the stuff…) combining with a fairly strong depressant. This is the same reason you don’t want to do coke and alcohol either. It doesn’t “neutralize” the effects of the alcohol – it confuses your body and your heart goes crazy trying to figure out who to follow. You could have a heart attack, especially if you’re not a regular caffeine drinker and haven’t developed a tolerance.

Some of the reasons caffeine isn’t really all that great are outlined here. I’ve come to the conclusion that I’ll never be able to give up my caffeine habit, at least not until scientists discover enough bad things about it that its legality comes into question (a day I think will inevitably arrive), but perhaps you can save yourself before it’s too late! Now, excuse me while I go grab a Diet Snapple Iced Tea so I won’t pass out from the all-nighter I pulled last night for theory homework. Aided by my good friend and enemy, caffeine.

In other news: Liverpool Hope University is now offering an MA in the Beatles. No joke. Though I’m a huge Beatles fan, I think that my feelings about the subject are put best in this post on Dial M for Musicology. (Yes, I’m not even a musicology major yet, not until grad school, but I still read musicology blogs occasionally. Do you need further proof that I’m hopelessly nerdy?) A course in the Beatles as a part of a major in popular music or British culture, for example? Sure. But as pivotal as they were in the development of popular music (or even just broader 20th-century music), they don’t warrant their own degree any more than Beethoven does. And they should really just give it as an honorary degree to obsessive fans like me or the people who go to these things.

Belated update on arts funding, and other news

After it was almost ousted completely from the stimulus bill by the Coburn amendment , the $50 million in funding for the NEA was finally re-added to the stimulus package Congress ended up passing, which made me so happy I had to post that particular article on my Facebook.

The Coburn amendment is still destructive – it got rid of other “pork” funding for institutions such as zoos, aquariums, golf courses, and casinos. Of course, none of these are pork because they ALL create jobs, but when was the last time Congressional Republicans ACTUALLY cared about creating jobs?

The big political news for the week: CPAC (and all its accompanying ridiculousness) is in town (there’s so much weird shit I had to link to all of Wonkette’s CPAC articles); Barack Obama has officially set a timetable for total withdrawal from Iraq; and Bobby Jindal said some dumb shit.

The most interesting recent news articles come from Alternet: How legalizing pot in California could help the state survive the recession; and whether sexual and romantic love are mutually exclusive. Possible rant coming later on the pot issue, by the way (I don’t personally use it, but my knowledge of the issue makes me a very passionate supporter of legalization).

Obama and the Arts

Pretty much everyone expects a little bit from Obama. (That link is to an article from right after the election about the expectations that other countries have for him.) One of the big expectations from him though, is that he will be a champion for the arts.

A lot of people are hailing the fact that four famous classical musicians (cellist Yo Yo Ma, violinist Itzhak Perlman, clarinetist Anthony McGill and pianist Gabriela Montero) played at his inauguration and how that shows that we have a president who appreciates classical music. (Please stop bitching about how they were “lip-syncing.” Anyone who knows anything about those instruments and how they act when exposed to the cold for hours on end – and I’m a cellist, so I do – will understand why they did it.) He also lists the Bach cello suites on his Facebook profile as among his favorite music (among other awesome stuff. Miles, Dylan, Stevie? This guy rocks!) He has put $50 million in the stimulus bill for increased funding to the National Endowment of the Arts (NEA), which Republicans in Congress are hailing as “unnecessary pork” that “doesn’t do anything to create jobs for people.” (Because, of course, us musicians and artists aren’t people who need jobs… but more on that later…)

Anyways, I was excited to find out that, now that arts-funding is a big issue, the news media suddenly cares what us classical musicians think. Here’s a post from the very-awesome composer John Adams about what Obama should do to help the arts.

John Adams references the petition to add a Secretary of the Arts to the cabinet, spearheaded by music producer Quincy Jones. I have to admit I signed the petition! But I agree with John Adams to some degree. He doesn’t come out completely against the idea of an arts secretary (despite what the headline says), but he does suggest that what’s most important is just getting more money for the arts: “You know, I’ve seen several people circulating e-mails [encouraging the president] to create a cabinet-level position for the arts. My attitude is: let’s get the really critical things done. I’m just hoping the guy doesn’t get destroyed…What they could do would be to give a tiny amount of funding to the NEA or something. That’s one of the great disgraces, that our federal budget for the arts is laughably small.”

My favorite line, though, is the one he reserves for the pig-headed conservatives who keep asserting that arts funding is “pork”: “That, again, just reflects this great distrust of the arts in this country. Anti-intellectualism has great prestige!” Though he says it in a kind of jovial way, he seems about as fed up as I am over this. If any of the anti-NEA conservatives are reading this, here’s a little message from someone who probably knows way more about this issue than you do:

As I said above, ARTS FUNDING DOES CREATE JOBS. For us. Musicians, artists, writers, actors, dancers. WE ARE PEOPLE TOO!!! And not only for us… but having cultural institutions in a community draws more people to that community, which will help create jobs for EVERYONE there.

A common argument among conservatives who don’t want to fund the arts is that symphonies, art museums, theaters, etc. (and not only arts institutions, but also things like sports stadiums and community centers) only benefit those people who enjoy them, and they should just support them with their own money. But that’s just not true. Everyone benefits by having these things – even if they’re not a classical music fan or an art junkie – because of the fact that those institutions will draw new people to live there, forcing the city to create more jobs not just in the arts but in other areas as well. Not to mention, good culture creates a tourism industry as well, which again creates jobs and attracts even more new residents. Look at the cities that have “turned themselves around” by beefing up their cultural options – Pittsburgh and my home-away-from-home of Baltimore, for example. In essence, cultural institutions benefit everybody, the same way infrastructure and transportation does. They make you money too, even if you’re not in the arts, because more people will come to your town and buy from your business!! (Who’d-a thought?)

So Obama: please go forward and do whatever you need to do to help us artists. Because it won’t just help us, it’ll help everyone, no matter what the selfish crybabies on Fox News say. As John Adams put it, don’t let anti-intellectualism continue to hold the reins of American politics. We deserve better.

P.S. A few more good links: check out what another great president had to say about the importance of art to society, via The Rest is Noise. And also, Rob Walker from the New York Times on how Obama has already helped art. This one’s kinda old, but it’s still completely worth checking out.

The Worst Addiction I’ve Ever Had

And this is coming from the worst caffeine addict the world has ever known.  (No, seriously.  I’ll add more on the extent of my caffeine tolerance/intoxication in another post, as there’s a lot to tell.)

So I’d like to expand in my second post on why I created this blog: to deal with something that is plaguing me that has come to be known among similar sufferers as “Election Withdrawal.”

Perhaps the best way to explain it is this xkcd from briefly after the election, but I will attempt to explain it in words as well.

Election Withdrawal is the symptom that most political-junkies are going through in the aftermath of the 2008 election.  It hasn’t really been mentioned in the previous elections, because it is more severe this year than pretty much any election year in the history of the U.S. (or the world, for that matter).  Primarily for these reasons:

1. This election season has been the longest in U.S. history.  With such incredibly low presidential approval ratings (which are now the lowest since Gallup has been reporting them), people were eager to see what’s next, and so the speculation started in mid-2006 and the major candidates had announced their runs by Easter of the following year.  By the end of 2007, at the point when candidates usually start joining the race in a normal election year, each party had run at least a couple of primary debates and the candidates had visited pretty much every town of considerable size in the state of Iowa.

In essence, it’s been going on so long that the constant focus on it has become the “norm” in America, and when sudden change happens there’s a rush to run back to what’s familiar.  So has become the case for so many a politico (no matter what wing of the political spectrum they fall in) this month.

2. This has also been the first true “Internet” campaign.  True, the last two elections featured the Internet as well (and I guess the two before, although not really).  But in 2004, Facebook was still in its infancy and YouTube had yet to launch.  The average American had yet to be made aware of the vast array of Internet news sites and political blogs, and let’s face it – most people above the age of 25 or so still got most of their news from the mainstream, TV media.  This was the year when the candidates truly “got” the Internet.  We watched the primary debates on YouTube; they were even called the “CNN-YouTube” debates.  We could friend the candidates on Facebook and MySpace and debate issues with our friends through their politics apps.  We saw signs telling us to “Google Ron Paul”; during the primaries, McCain ads popped up on the side pretty much everytime you typed in something remotely political into your Gmail.  But Obama was the candidate who really “got” the Internet, with his extremely-organized site generating phonebanking and canvassing lists for his supporters who wanted to get the vote out.  Pundits are now attributing the candidate’s superior command of the Internet as one of the keys to his victory on November 4th, as it made it easier than ever for people to help his campaign.

So what does this have to do with election withdrawal?  Basically, it’s been impossible to ignore the election if you are a regular Internet user and blog-reader, as pretty much everyone was talking about it.  (I remember being disinterested in the first year or so of primary speculation, telling everyone it was too early; I still couldn’t get away from it.)  People who were never interested before suddenly were turned on to politics simply because of the fact that they used the Internet a lot and ended up hearing about some candidate who inspired them (and an unfortunate number of those people became Ron Paul supporters, but that’s beside the point).  And even now that the media has shifted to Obama’s transition team and Bush’s last-minute mess, so many of the Internet politicos can’t handle the fact that the election is over and continue to analyze it from every single angle.  You know what I’m talking about:  Which demographics voted for which candidate and who had the most influence?  Which historical election is this most like?  And how will this affect the next five elections to come?  Those people (and I’m one of them, I have to admit).  And with the Internet being controlled by the geeks and specialists, they control the political discourse of the virtual world.

I’m trying to figure out how to cure this affliction, as far as it pertains to me.  As I’ve said before, this site is partly an outlet for it, since talking about is starting to irritate my more apolitical friends and schoolmates.  I’m debating whether to gradually tone it down, or to go cold-turkey and swear off reading political blogs for a week (or at least, for a few hours).  I’ll have to see what approach my fellow Internet political junkies prefer, although it looks like most of them have met with little more success than I have.

And the fact that speculation for 2012 (and even possibly campaigning) has already begun is not helping.  Jumping into the next contest is only going to make it worse for us politics-addicts next time around.  We need rest time between campaigns.  And really, this is one election I’d like to savor and celebrate as long as possible.  Let’s not rush into the future too fast, please??