I certainly didn’t expect to be renting my own little patch of airspace, all of 18 by 20 inches. The only indication of its existence was a one-row duct-taped grid, barely distinguishable from the concrete floor, with a little “1” scrawled in Sharpie.

But I was there to support the team, our Spokane Shock. My job, such as it was, revolved solely around screaming my lungs out while simultaneously sticking my fingers in my ears in an attempt to block out the steady low hum of the vuvuzelas so thoughtfully sold by the host team.

And so I stood in my box, eagerly.

The game got off to a bit of a slow start. I scanned the crowd, noticing some of the very same people who had stood out so conspicuously while waiting in line.

Most of the fans were properly outfitted in jerseys, official ArenaBowl shirts and other Shock-branded tees. Even among the less officially authorized clothing, some managed to nail the particular garish shade of Shock orange. They looked like human Cheetos, though decidedly of the “puffed” as opposed to “crunchy” variety.

Over there, a three-pack of neon redheads stood grinning in their sea-blue shirts like buzz-cut Troll dolls in policemen’s uniforms. And over there, next to the vuvuzela-clutching headache-in-waiting, a man who either tried to paint his face Avatar-blue and misplaced his hairline, or else applied his hair dye before going to sleep and passed the night in a frenzy of macking with his beloved pillow.

What I noticed about all of these fans was their location: in seats. Standing in front of their seats, to be more precise, as if taunting those of us who lacked accommodation for our posteriors. I shifted uneasily, trying to fend off a nice-looking middle-aged couple who unilaterally commandeered three squares, forcing me into a no-man’s land ungoverned by the duct tape.

And so I stood outside my box, warily.

There was still a game going on, I think — the Napa Auto Parts ArenaBowl XXIII. A thrilling sequence, that started with a “Toyota game ball in the stands” and was followed by a pair of “Dishman Dodge first downs,” culminated in a rather pedestrian “touchdown.” Fortunately, after the YMCA Kickoff Kid grabbed the tee — and on the heels of another Toyota game ball — the Shock defense managed a Papa Murphy’s takeaway, setting up the offense for some more Dishman Dodges and ultimately another … touchdown.

It was all terribly exciting. But it was getting to be around halftime, and my legs were starting to ache. I glanced around at my fellow standees, and most of them — though cheering — appeared to be preoccupied with alleviating pain: Doubled over to ease the strain, crouching, leaning against the wall …

I glared at the Sitters, who were of course standing. How dare they take their seats for granted? How we Standers longed for the gentle cupping of our buttocks by those plastic blue thrones, sinking in to those rigid, unforgiving slabs and literally taking the load off our backs. Where they could pile their hot dogs, their nachos and their taco salads on their knees, we set our popcorn on the floor and kicked over one another’s Bud Lights.

I fantasized a coup, a hostile takeover, in which we would remove from them their laps of luxury and line them up against the wall, just as they had done to us. But they were too numerous, and we too tired.

And so I stood in my box, uncomfortably.

The rest of the game passed in a blur. The paradox of the sports fan began to assert itself. Despite the outrageous lengths you may go to acquire a suit stitched from what can only be melted traffic cones and then wave around a bloated, grotesquely lifelike orange hand, you still must subordinate yourself to the team.

Though you wish to be recognized for your devotion, ultimately it’s not about you. And when your team is on the verge of winning it all, the arbitrary divisions between fans come down. Eight-year-olds and 80-year-olds beam alike, tripping in the heady haze provided by the proximity of champions. Standers and Sitters …

I have one small confession to make: I bailed at halftime. And though the fans at my next stop were more generous with their advice to the players (“Don’t talk to the press, get your head in the game!”) and loquacious in their constructive criticism of the referees (“I don’t even know what that call means, you encephalopathic zebra!”), they cheered all the same as we watched the clock tick down and the ArenaBowl trophy being trotted out. Whether at the Arena or miles away, a “championship atmosphere” formed wherever the fans congregated.

And so I sat on my barstool, contentedly.

This story was originally published in the Aug. 26 issue of The Inlander. I’m republishing it here because I <3 it (and, by extension, myself) so much.

I was at [public place] the other day when I saw a young person extricate [latest technological obsession] from her purse. Now, I don’t disparage [Generation X or newer] their technological revolutions, but it seems to me that [outdated technology people don't use as much but is still prevalent] works just fine, for my purposes.

See, my generation, the [any generation older than X, whose name invariably invokes a more positive connotation than more recent ones], we didn’t need your fancy new [latest technological obsession] for [arduous chore made easier by modern advancements, but still possible to perform "the hard way"]. We were happy as [animals commonly presumed to be in a constant state of rapture] with [old technology] — it may have taken longer, but that was the way we liked it.

You see, with the [fancy new technology], people aren’t able to [incidental advantage of old technology no one noticed/cared about until new technology]. Why, when we wanted to talk to one another, we just [verb for specific type of communication]ed on our [technology two generations removed; old enough to be nostalgic about, but young enough to masquerade at least a passing interest in technological advancements].

[Obligatory reference to that goddamn Nicholas Carr article/book about about how the Internet is imploding our brains].

I don’t see why young people today feel the need to live their lives so quickly, or expensively. Sometimes, you just need to take the time to [verb indicating the activation of one of the senses] the [pages/roses/other noun that often evokes nostalgia or pleasure]. That’s why I refuse to buy [advanced technology]. I’m perfectly happy with [older technology that's itself a vast improvement over how things "used to be done"] — the way things used to be [until a newer version of the advanced technology comes out and I can bitch about that while upgrading to the previous generation without seeming hypocritical].

One day, when [generation too young to have a name yet] grows up, they won’t remember the feel of [physical object being replaced by technology], or the joy of browsing [physical store replaced by Amazon, et. al] to spontaneously find [physical object]. Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t think being [verbified formation of name of new technology] necessarily means [pun-ish play on verbified name of thing being replaced by new technology].

See the inspiration for this guide here.

For almost all purposes, Iraq has no government. Almost six months after national elections, the country’s politicians remain unable to compromise and cut a deal, showing the persistent lack of maturity and vision that has earned the political class the justifiable contempt of the Iraqi public.

- George Packer, A Date That Will Live In Oblivion.

It’s easy to point out the darkness of coloring of the respective kitchen implements in this statement, but the more pressing question is why no one seems to think this is a problem at all in our country.

There’s been much ill-considered speculation and outright lies concerning Barack Obama’s spectacular fall from grace. From a lofty (and ridiculously inflated) 70 percent immediately following inauguration, he has crashed to a measly 46 percent approval rating² in recent months. Most pundits will decry it as indicative of one thing or another — disapproval of health care, disapproval of the Democratic Party, disapproval of Michele Obama’s outfits — but it mostly comes down to the disconnect between expectations and reality. Frank Rich had a piece in the New York Review of Books³ on this very subject recently, and it’s a good framework at which to look at our political system.

The following example hits close to home in several ways, in that I not only live in the district mentioned, but I also wrote a piece about the race. Thus, some of the media criticism is directed inwardly as well, but I did my best to avoid the pitfalls mentioned.

The 6th Legislative District in Washington state is known for being pretty evenly split. In 2006, the state Senate seat flipped parties for the first time in 40 years, and the second Legislative position (the one being discussed) was decided by a grand total of 47 votes in 2008.

When the 2010 primaries rolled around, both candidates from the last go-round — Republican John Ahern, who held the seat for eight years prior to losing it in 2008, and incumbent Democrat John Driscoll — signed up for a repeat performance. But Ahern was challenged on the right side by one Shelly O’Quinn, running for her first political office.

It’s difficult to discern precisely what is the worst-kept secret in politics, as very few secrets are ever kept. One of the most often-discussed but least worried about statistics regards incumbency: Nationally, about 90 percent of elected officials retain their seats every election, with significant drops (such as the Republican takeover of 1994) barely dipping below 80 percent since 1940.

In O’Quinn’s case, as she put it, she essentially squared off against two incumbents — both with name recognition and, one would hope, public knowledge of their stance on the issues.

So how does a political neophyte go about trying to get herself elected? O’Quinn did it the hard way, knocking on more than 16,000 doors (her count), standing on sidewalks, curbs and street corners waving signs, and generally just trying to be visible. Though more moderate than Ahern⁴, she was younger than both candidates by far — a better demographic fit for a district with a median age of 35.

But baby-shaking and hand-kissing will only get you so far in a modern race. You still need your Facebook, your Friendsters, your MySpace and — regrettably — your mainstream media. Especially in a city like Spokane, whose “Wi-Fi network” has spottier coverage than AT&T, the printed rag remains king. Even if absolutely everyone I’ve spoken with complains about the horrendous decline a certain austere daily paper has suffered.

Aside from announcing her candidacy, there were three big stories covered by local news outlets in regards to this race. The first involved a video posted to YouTube on May 4. The video, which appears to have been shot from below the level of a table the videographer sat at (and thus invisible to O’Quinn), shows O’Quinn making a speech at the Friday Morning Republican Breakfast Club, a get-together for like-minded red-heads. It appears to be heavily edited, focusing on two stances: O’Quinn’s position on river set-backs⁵, and abortion.

Leaving aside the fact that state legislators have almost zero impact on the question of whether abortions can be performed⁶, the video highlights what, to the extraordinarily conservative mind, can be viewed as an abrogation of doctrine. O’Quinn puts forth the — quite reasonable — idea that perhaps not all cases are black and white. In her example, she postulates that no one outside of her family (namely, her and her husband) should be able to decide her medical options if she were pregnant but the baby posed a serious threat to her health. In her words, “who gets to decide if my other two children have a mother?”

One of the local political agitators blasted the video out to his listserv, attaching to his email a document that included various accusations of personal and professional activities that, again, when viewed through an ultra-conservative lens, might appear somewhat unsavory. (I will not repeat any of the accusations nor provide a link to the original document. I have not verified the information, nor do I find it all germane to the discussion of whether she is qualified to represent the 6th District.) This managed to elevate everything into the “spat” category, with accusations, counter-accusations and generally a whole lot of noise on personal and Spokesman blogs.

The second campaign incident involved the self-same Spokesman campaign blog. The Spokesman came up with the idea to videotape candidates being asked questions in a one-on-one format, interviewer and interviewee. Ahern and Driscoll both agreed. O’Quinn, expressing a — legitimate, under the circumstances — fear of having her answers videotaped and edited, refused.

The League of Women voters scheduled a televised debate for a number of local races, including the 6th District Legislative position. O’Quinn, of course, accepted, because it’s not like she could have lost anything from it. Ahern originally accepted as well, but pulled out when he discovered Driscoll had never agreed to debate. He then proceeded to question whether O’Quinn would have even shown up for the debate, citing her refusal to participate in the video interviews.

The problem is the subsequent Spokesman article, which not only included Ahern’s (asinine) statement, but allowed it to pass unchallenged.

One can argue O’Quinn’s reason for not participating in the interviews was not valid, but consider the circumstances. There was no reason for her not to appear in the videos aside from her fear of having her answers manipulated — something that had already happened once. Name recognition, being placed on an equal footing, both of these were good reasons for her to agree to the interviews. Her refusal makes sense only if we take her reasoning at face value.

So that became the second story of the campaign. The candidates would not participate in a head-to-head debate, because Ahern was afraid O’Quinn wouldn’t show up. That also meant her refusal to participate in the videos became a story as well, because it had to be explained what Ahern was talking about. Additionally, at the top of each video, it mentions that O’Quinn “declined to participate.”

The third event is perhaps the most cynical, though at this point that’s a bit like saying Jimmy Fallon is the least funny comedian on NBC: the degrees of separation are so close as to be almost nonexistent. Apparently, O’Quinn’s campaign manager had been sending out emails that included sentences like the following:

“Recent polling data shows that Shelly O’Quinn is blowing the competition away…”

“Recent polling is also showing that Shelly is beating the competition…”

These sentences are obviously ridiculous, if not out-and-out lies. No one polls in a state representative race; not only is it prohibitively expensive, but it’s completely useless. They’re in it until the primaries, so there’s no reason for a campaign to commission a study to find out how well they’re doing.

If someone merely wanted to bring up the inaccuracy of these statements, I could understand it. Instead, Chuck Skirko Jr., president of the Spokane County Young Republicans, decided the O’Quinn campaign must be conducting secretive polling and not reporting on campaign expenditure reports. So he filed a complaint with the state Public Disclosure Commission.

Again, no one’s questioning that the campaign manager lied. But by filing the complaint, it paints O’Quinn not only as a liar but also unethical. In the Spokesman article, Spokane County Republican Chairwoman Cindy Zapotocky was quoted as saying the party asked for the specific polling data.

“I asked him to show us (the poll), and he didn’t do it,” Zapotocky said.

Why this quote is included in the story is baffling, because at that point it’s already been established no polling exists. It’s not that polling data was withheld, it’s that it existed only in the campaign manager’s imagination.

If you were a voter in the 6th District, these are things you would likely know about the candidates: The incumbent, John Driscoll, is a Democrat; John Ahern, an arch-conservative Republican, held the seat for eight years before losing to Driscoll in 2008; Shelly O’Quinn, a newcomer Republican, has questionable commitment to conservative ideals (from the video), refuses to articulate her views (because of the Spokesman videos), and had a PDC complaint filed against her for campaign finance irregularities.

However:

Driscoll essentially coasted through the primary on the virtue of being a Democrat in a race against two Republicans. I mentioned it in passing in my story, but there’s only so much you can say along the lines of “he’s just playing it safe until he has to wade into the fray.”

Ahern’s campaign mantra focused on three things: “privatize, privatize, privatize.” I couldn’t find anyone to go on the record with exact, but my notebook calculations of the direct impact privatizing the three things (state liquor, state ferries and the Department of Printing) would reduce the total amount of money spent by the state, but the revenues taken in by those industries exceeds expenditures by something in the neighborhood of $300+ million.

Both Ahern and Driscoll said their “experience” was what made them best-suited for the job. Both have owned small businesses, and said the day-to-day operations and knowing how to “create jobs” would serve them well. You’ll forgive my confusion in puzzling out how running a copier-and-printer supply business or a career in “medical service delivery, medical practice management, and physician recruitment” qualifies you to write laws.

But O’Quinn’s not a perfect candidate by any stretch of the imagination. When pressed on specifics for helping heal the state’s gaping budget wound, she deferred, saying decisions could be only be made after proper study. “If we’re looking at reducing health care inefficiencies, we should not have a government-run health care system,” she said. Even though health care reform includes only an expanse in an existing governmental operation (Medicare) that’s almost universally supported. Again, not that she has the power to do anything about it.

These are all things voters in the 6th District should know. Whether they care about them is another point entirely, but these are the leadership abilities and substantive questions upon which we should be basing our decisions for who we’re electing.

Instead, we get the political equivalent of Paris Hilton journalism. Who’s bad-mouthing who, what the candidate said in an insidious “gotcha!” video, and who’s the centerpiece of the manufactured scandal.

Who’s to blame? Everyone. A one-man demolition derby would be pretty boring; everyone needs to get involved in order for a truly calamitous experience. Driscoll, Ahern, O’Quinn herself, the Spokesman, the Inlander, political blogs, everyone. We’ve confused image for substance, as we have in so many other aspects of our lives, but this is an area where it gets dangerous.

More than that, we’ve become so polarized as a populace that it almost wouldn’t matter if voters did have that information at hand. They vote for the letter next to the name in parentheses, rather than the person. Candidates who lose in the primaries routinely endorse the very people they vilified two days prior.

I’m not saying O’Quinn should have advanced past to the general. In fact, her conduct after the primaries suggests that her claims to “integrity” were nothing more than posturing. Despite being disparaged by Ahern’s campaign, despite disagreeing with him on (stated) legislative priorities and any number of issues, she was still willing to sit down with Ahern for lunch, where he will “encourage her to run for another office.”

She claimed that because of her job at Greater Spokane (the chamber of commerce for the region), she was unable to endorse candidates. This highly dubious claim⁷ aside, why should she? Clint Didier, a Republican/Tea Party candidate for Patty Murray’s Senate seat, withheld his endorsement from Rossi until he changes some of his opinions to those deeply held by Didier. Agree with him or not, at least he had the integrity to stick to his issues.

O’Quinn claims she can’t endorse Ahern. God forbid she go public with the decision not to endorse anyone at all. As with Monopoly (another game involving almost incomprehensible sums of money), it seems the only way to win in politics is not to play at all.

Notes:

• 1. The lone exception I have to this theory personally is the Sen. Al Franken, a Democrat from Minnesota. He’s repeatedly taken up the mantle for Net Neutrality at a time when very few other senators have bothered, and I have yet to see anything indicating a compromise of his strong (as portrayed through his numerous political books) moral compass. I hold out hope this will continue to be the case, but like baseball players and steroids, am always prepared in the back of my mind for disappointment.
• 2. Rasmussen
  There’s a good argument to be made such metrics are about as meaningful as the attractiveness of a performer at a strip club: failure to receive a majority of the crowd’s approval doesn’t mean anything, as somebody’s going to be up there doing it.
• 3. Which includes perhaps the strangest picture I’ve ever seen in a nationally syndicated publication. If the piece is ostensibly about Obama, why are the only discernible faces not his? Is it indicative of his primacy in the minds of the voters? His inscrutability? Or is that the only picture that’s been taken of Obama that hasn’t been overused to the point of inducing nausea?
• 4. Ahern referred to O’Quinn as “in-between moderate and liberal,” which is accurate only if your idea of the political center is somewhere to the right of Sen. Joe McCarthy.^4.1
  • 4.1 I’ve always felt bad for the esteemed Sen. Eugene McCarthy, who I feel must get confused with his altogether more repulsive McCarthian counterpart quite often. Since the end of the election of 2008, I’ve often hoped that Sen. John McCain would have similar homophonic difficulties, but alas I don’t think “McCarthian” is quite the epithet in Arizona as it is in civilized places.
• 5. A “controversy” I could not possibly begin to care about, let alone explain.
• 6. Though I’m aware of the power state legislatures have to curtail abortions and regulate requirements for getting one, the overarching question is ultimately Constitutional and thus in the hands of the Supreme Court.
• 7. There are two possible reasons for this: 1) GSI, as a nonprofit, could get in hot water if it endorses a candidate, or 2)GSI has a policy against its employees privately endorsing candidates. The first is ridiculous, because O’Quinn wouldn’t be endorsing anyone in an official capacity — the IRS said (I asked) that employees can endorse whoever they want in the primary. The second is possible, I guess, if GSI actually cared enough to have thought out a policy that preserves their “nonpartisan” status by pretending their employees have no political opinions of their own at all. This, however, seems unlikely.

Luckily, the piece is more masturbatory than elucidating. The age-old conundrum of column-writing rears its ugly head yet again: Tell someone their mellifluous words are interesting, and pretty soon they’ll start believing their witty remarks on humdrum, everyday experiences are fascinating to the rest of us.¹ You mean YOU JUST STARTED using Twitter yet aren’t abandoning it on the basis of your contrived quasi-history of participation? Color me a satisfied reader.

To me, the interesting aspect of social-networking sites like Twitter and Facebook is not the psychological aspect of the area from which you derive joy (which was an utterly insipid fulcrum to balance a column on; it is in fact possible to enjoy the same thing for multiple reasons). These sites are merely extending and, in some ways, clarifying a profound shift that has been slowly making its way through our culture.

It’s difficult to imagine, I know, but once upon a time not everyone could gather around the magic glowy box and partake in 20 minutes of nonsense from everyone’s favorite anthropomorphic sponge. Instead, it was plays, political speeches or sporting matches (traditionally football) that formed the basis for an audience. You had performers over here, the audience over there, and a great big (societal as well as physical) chasm separating the two. They danced, you watched. There was a ceremony to things, a proper decorum respected by thespian and theatergoer alike (unless you were John Wilkes Booth, that play-ruining bastard). In a sense, the audience’s role was as scripted as the actors’; shush when the house lights dim, clap perfunctorily at the end of a movement, stifle giggles when your neighbor’s kid playing Peter Pan throws up all over the Lost Boys as they hoist him in the air for the flying sequence. This is known as a simple audience.²

But then came radio, with its retarded half-brother television following along in its wake (who in this metaphor is more Lenny from Of Mice and Men than Sloth from The Goonies³). The ability to transmit performances around the country meant that people no longer had to suffer the indignities of the cummerbund or corset when they wanted some entertainment. The experience was mediated through the magic of radio waves or satellite dishes (or, for the very poor, shadow puppets), allowing them to pick and choose what horrible drek disguised as entertainment they wanted to shove down their brain holes. The rules for conduct among audience members slackened considerably, though the distance (again, both socially and in the physical sense) between performer and watcher increased considerably. Even though distribution method allowed for one person to influence a large number of people, the consumers themselves experience it individually — sitting in their underwear in unswerving faithfulness to their hi-def TVs, munching Cheetohs. This is the mass audience.

With the advent of the internet, omnipresent advertising and the explosion of media sources, the audience model changed again. To put it quite frankly, the media became a pervasive influence in everyday life; from bus stop to when you close your eyes at night, you’re assaulted by media. The audience, therefore, became selective about which media it chose to focus its attention on, while letting the others recede into the background. In essence, we are all an audience all the time. This is called the diffused audience.

This is where the audience model ends. But to take that last point to its logical conclusion, if everyone is always an audience, then there must always be a performance going on. And while one can hardly argue against the notion that media is everywhere, the fact that the producers of media have changed alters the traditional compact. Where once the performance featured Jim Carrey getting made up and speaking out the wrong end of his body for the camera, our consumption of media has shifted to include amateurs as well: friends, family and the guy you met at a party that one time

Ornstein’s citation of sociologist Erving Goffman’s assertion that all life is a performance is correct; the problem lies in her ascribing its usage as a metaphor. Posting to Twitter and Facebook is not metaphorically putting on a performance; it is literally play-acting. In fact, the idea goes back much further than the 1950s. From Simnel, 1898:

In the same sense … in which we are poets and painters, we are also play actors; i.e. CULTURE endows every aspect of life with this characteristic. Without being in any sense false or hypocritical, the personal existence of the individual is metamorphosed into some predetermined guise which is of course di out of the resources of his own life, but is nevertheless not merely the straightforward expression of his own life. The possibility exists for us to assume such appearances, even strange ones, and nevertheless remain consisten with our own nature.

Here he makes the case that not only do we mediate our own experiences when conversing with others, but we also can do so without being inconsistent in regards to our own inner nature. The first thrust is undeniable; who has never posted a Facebook status that was, at least in some way, untrue? Even something so small as faking composure after breaking up with a significant other counts. On the same page, even though it seems impossible to believe (given the number of “I ate a sandwich!” or “On the crapper” tweets), Twitter is not actually a full accounting of everyday life. We can create personas, if not on the same level as WoW character, then at least one that — even to people who would consider themselves “friends” — might be unrecognizable.

This ultimately boils down to the point that, in order to agree with those suppositions, then everything short of telling someone EXACTLY WHAT HAPPENED during your day (down to the “after the cessation of urination, I lingered over the toilet bowl for a few seconds, staring deep into the shallow blue waters, lost in thought”-level of detail) is in fact mediating your own life through performance.

Exactly.

Without rising to the level of Humpty-Dumpty-esque word games, every relationship you have with someone else (be it through Facebook, over the phone, working alongside them or some combination thereof) involves some level of performance — they cannot know precisely what it means to be you. There’s always some amount of self-censorship that goes into conversations, even innocuously. After all, you wouldn’t want to tell Brandi about the horrible wheat-threshing accident that cost you your thumbs when she just got a promotion, would you? In that case, not only is your action a performance in the sense that you’re feeding a selected amount of information to someone in order to influence their opinions/actions, you’re also setting up a narrative storyline (from the joy of celebrating one’s accomplishments to comforting a friend who has undergone tragedy, in itself an act that usually brings about warm feelings).

This, to say nothing of the passive-aggressive Facebook posts and tweets that always show up.⁴ You know the type. The “OMG I am so MAD right now. Why can’t people just learn to accept that I ate the goddamn gorgonzola?” Though clearly directed at one person or group of persons (presumably the person who’s gorgonzola was consumed), it’s posted where the message can be viewed by anyone. This not only has the desired effect of letting your feelings be known to the offending party, it also allows the creator to a) play the part of aggrieved victim, and b) suss out who may or may not be on his/her side. It’s by definition a performance: staging something (that should be private) in order to elicit a reaction from those assembled, whether virtually or in real life.

Facebook and Twitter serve only to make the performance phenomenon more pronounced. Indeed, certain settings within these web applications underscore that fact. On Twitter, for instance, you can choose not to have your thoughts made public; perhaps wary of job-related repercussions, or simply because you don’t want that bitch Caroline to know you and Diane are back together. To choose this method makes a statement not only to the people who can access your feed (“this is the unfiltered version that is decidedly NSFW”) as well as those left on the outside: This feed is very secretive, and only the trustworthy may gain access. A bit overdramatic, yes, but nevertheless true.

Facebook doesn’t do nearly as good a job of cloaking your status as a performer. Originally, privacy options were almost nonexistent; everything you did could be viewed by everyone, almost the penultimate example of a mass audience (albeit in a slightly different social situation). Once everyone got sufficiently outraged⁵, they changed it so you could choose who could see what. They essentially handed over the reins of distribution to the individual user. Don’t want your church friends to know you go out drinking dressed as Marilyn Monroe on Fridays? No problem. Want to keep mom and dad out of the loop on everything save your dire financial straits? Easily done. Even the act of restricting who can view what you do is itself a reflection of the performance you’re putting on.

But what, then, of postmodernism? It’s a lot like irony in many respects, in that there are innumerable definitions for it and everyone who thinks they know what it means, doesn’t. Technically, postmodernism is merely the movement that followed modernism⁶; it sets itself apart from modernism in that it rejects the notion of absolute truth, focusing on the upheaval of traditional power structures.

In practice, however, postmodernism means absolutely nothing. Postmodern art (usually) means the rejection of the traditional notions of what art is; it separates itself from “modern art” because the latter uses something like splattered paint on canvas, whereas to be postmodern one could hurl a computer through a wall and frame it — the convention being defied is that art can even be restricted to a medium. See Duchamp’s fountain for the ultimate expression of such.

In literature, the postmodern ideal is one that is not restricted to form or idea. In addition to the rejection of traditional notions⁷ of what a novel’s supposed to look like, postmodernism has also come to encompass the idea of the self-aware novel: The character know they’re performing a story.

This is perhaps the best analog to postmodernism writ large, especially when ascribing it to person as performer. We are all aware — if dimly — of the concessions and decisions we make that allow us to operate as our own creations. We may not consciously realize it as a performance, but there is a very real moment when you ultimately decide what to tell and what not to tell.

A more interesting thing to ponder is where this urge comes from. It’s easy to blame Twitter or Facebook for this, but it’s a bit like blaming guns for shooting people — they may function as facilitators, but there has to be someone actually choosing to use these tools. Similarly, the urge to blame “celebrity culture” is a strong one, but must be resisted. No one is forced to DVR Entertainment Tonight or surf Perez Hilton’s site obsessively.

That said, celebrity culture should not be pushed aside entirely, either. Where once people turned inward to find tranquility and ponder their life’s existence, they now turn outwardly because it’s easier. Attaining true inner peace sounds a lot more difficult than racking up a few thousand Twitter followers, and there’s a much more quantifiable method of tracking your success with the latter.

Ultimately, the question will boil down to whether this is a “good” thing or a “bad” thing⁸. Not to sound too postmodern, but such an arbitrary distinction kind of goes beyond what we can know. It simply is. We cannot judge the innate goodness of the endeavor because there is no method of capably measuring its worth. As with most things humans create, be it abstract concept or physical thing, its value is entirely dependent on how we choose to use it.

Notes

1. This, in itself, is horribly post-modern. And likely hypocritical. This note, however, is so post-modern as to reflexively bend back in on itself, to emerge Victorian.
2. Nicholas Abercrombie and Brian Longhurst, Audiences (University of Michigan, 1998). All of the audience bits germinated from this book.
3. Though both are rather unassuming, Sloth eventually comes to redeem himself and to assist when called upon, even if the people he’s helping were his tormentors. Lenny, on the other hand, is kind-hearted and means well, but isn’t aware of his own capability for destruction. Ultimately, it’s better that Lenny not stick around.
4. The analog passive-aggressive note is a masterful stroke, most commonly found in the workplace or in roommate squabbles. It’s the perfect way to gauge the level of support for an idea if someone is unsure of its popularity. Tacking up a “NO POOPING IN THE BATHROOM. BE COURTEOUS TO OUR GUESTS” sign allows the sign-maker to not only advance an agenda, but also to ascribe it motives that — if done in-person — would be much easier to see through. If someone brought up the topic in casual conversation, it would be difficult for them to say “well, it’s for the guests” without everyone thinking “Bullshit. You just hate having the closest desk.” But in an unsigned note, there’s no way to cast aspersions of personal bias. Though it’s decidedly less effective as a method in a situation with only two people — something most roommates don’t discover until one is holding a butter knife to the throat of the other.
5. It remains eternally baffling that people don’t comprehend the concept that things put on the internet can be viewed by other people. This incredulity enjoyed particular usage during the early days of LiveJournal and MySpace; teenagers used these services like they were private journals, then professed outright outrage that others were reading, commenting and making fun of them for it. Most of the ones who didn’t get angry were those that quickly discovered the “make private” option, thus implying that they actually did expect their journals to be private. The rest were just bloviating because they had nothing better to do (this was before the widespread availability of pornography).
6. You’d think English majors could come up with something more inventive than “after the thing we just did.”
7. David Shields’ Reality Hunger — A Manifesto is almost book as performance art. Derived from the ethos of remix culture, it takes bite-sized chunks of other works to craft a cogent narrative of its own. His original manuscript did not include notations, but the publisher forced their inclusion. He compensated by putting a dotted line along the inner edges of those pages, to better facilitate their cutting and removal.
8. Of course, the only sane way to resolve such a weighty and important dispute is via cable television. Talking heads will blather on, refuting evidence not presented and presenting evidence not existing, until Jon Stewart eventually appears miraculously on a white horse and runs them through with his blade. His breastplate, naturally, will be gleaming.

Vampires, along with various other mythological demons (werewolves, etc.), are to the current generation what aliens were to the generation that grew up in the 1950s — fictional, looking to mess with humankind, and found absolutely EVERYWHERE. But despite the overwhelming popularity of these blood-suckers, I believe there are certain cultural links that have been overlooked, certain connections that have been missed.

Without going into absurd amounts of detail and arcane histories of the vampire phenomenon, I would like to stipulate a few general facts about vampires I believe to be universally accepted, or at least inferred from those assumptions:

• Vampires suckThis is not a judgment on the modern glittery archetype, but rather a statement of fact: vampires suck blood. They need blood in order to survive; they cannot survive without drinking blood. This, I think, is THE single most defining characteristic of vampires.
• Vampires are not aliveRegardless of whether you think of them as dead, undead or what have you, they are emphatically not living. That is, they have no heartbeat, they need not breathe to live, and McDonald’s is — unlike for us mortals — merely a delicious snack, not absolutely vital to their existence.
• Vampires are scary motherfuckersUnless you’re a teenaged girl trying to be ravaged by what has to be the severely mentally challenged vampiric equivalent (what creature thousands of years old would subject himself to the daily horrors and tribulations of high school?), vampires are by and large things to be stayed away from. They will suck your blood, possibly kill your or — if you’re lucky/unlucky, depending on your view — turn you into one of them, forcing you to feed on human flesh.

With the basics out of the way, let us proceed. When a vampire drinks blood, it stands to reason that the blood courses through the esophageal system, same as if you were to drink a Bud or a Blood Lite. The idea that a vampire’s body somehow morphs unrecognizably into accepting the victim’s blood into the bloodstream doesn’t hold weight for two reasons: 1) No heartbeat (so no circulation), and 2) There’s nowhere for the old blood to go. Somehow, the blood must be processed and converted into food for the vampire, so it’s logical that the traditional systems in humans (stomach, liver, etc.) have simply been repurposed and retooled into accepting blood as fuel.

(By the way, according to this theory, a vampire could technically drink his/her own blood if necessary, but only until he/she ran out. Also, it may be difficult to access, but we’ll get to that.)

If we accept the notion that the blood consumed by the vampire is kept apart from the vampire’s own blood system, we can then turn to the vampire’s physiological workings. As previously mentioned, there is no heartbeat to keep the blood circulating. What then, happens to the blood? In corpses, the blood in their bodies flows where we would expect it to once the heart gives out: wherever gravity damn well feels like pulling it. For vampires, who spend a majority of their time upright and walking around, there’s only place for the blood to go: the feet.

As you can imagine, this creates a bit of a problem for your average vampire. For blood, when it pools, makes the body’s tissues swell. This leads to a lot of pasty exsanguinous-minded bastards tooling around with some huge boats where their feet are supposed to be. How then, to disguise oneself?

That’s right. Clowns are vampires in disguise.

Let’s review the facts about clowns:

• Clowns wear boats for shoesOne of the most distinguishing characteristics about clowns are their enormous floppy shoes. This fits in perfectly with vampire anatomy, which provides large, swollen feet (not very easily controlled) to fit in those blood-red (!) shoes.
• Too much makeupClowns often coat every available inch of their skin in white makeup — the better to blend in with their natural coloring. Vampires not only have to contend with natural geisha-like facial coloring (no blood in the face), they also (typically) can’t stand the sun. Gee, if only they had an excuse to cover up all skin exposed to the outside world with some sort of protective layer of cosmetics …
• Clowns are creepy motherfuckers

Seriously, Just look at Ronald. Dude looks like he could rip your head off and drink your sweet neck nectar at any second.

Am I saying that all clowns are vampires? Of course not. Once vampires could get paid to dress up like morons and dance around, other people probably joined their ranks without knowing the true origins. But clowns still remain the perfect cover story for a vampire who wants to be out and about (for those that don’t want to be out and about, they can just say they’re nerds who spend all their time in front of the computer). Next time you see a clown, make sure there’s a nice, juicy (preferably fatter and therefore slower) child between it and you.

Note: This note is the only time the word Twilight will be uttered. If you mention it in the comments, I’m sending lycanthropes after you

Even though I am copyeditor (hear me roar!), they presume if I — like a monkey — spit out enough words eventually I’ll write something coherent. Luckily, as there’s only one of me, they’re not expecting Shakespeare. I hope.

————

In college, the standard ice-breaker at any function is “what’s your major?” Through this question, one ostensibly seeks to categorize the person standing before them, allowing the asker to a) ascertain what kind of person is being dealt with, and b) prepare a (hopefully) relevant anecdote or quotidian factoid that might be used to impress or at least convince the askee of the asker’s basic competency.

Also c) provide an opening to get into the askee’s pants. But that’s more of an unstated assumption true in every conversation with the male of the species.

In the real world, this question is supplanted by “what do you do for a living?” One imagines the reasoning behind the query is largely the same, but it also allows the asker an opportunity to brag about their own position once the askee completes the social interaction through reciprocation. (e.g. “I’m a barista. What do you do?” “Oh, I mostly just lift weights, read poetry and cry about the rainforest. I’m very sensitive while at the same time comfortable in my masculinity.”)

This provides a bit of problem for me. Normal people don’t know what a copyeditor does. As someone who’s been deeply involved with a newspaper for two years, it seems ludicrous that this should be the case, but there you have it. Whenever I say, “I’m a copyeditor at The Inlander,” it’s always followed by “Oh, that’s cool!” (an indicator of the paper’s cultural cachet more than anything), followed by a pause, then, “So what do you do?”

Le sigh.

“I edit all the stories before they get printed,” I explain while gesticulating randomly (though this movement provides absolutely no clarification, it’s the universal symbol for, “The time it would take me to explain this so that you’d understand is in no way proportionate to how interesting it would be for you, so for God’s sake just go ahead and brag about how you’re just tending bar until you find something you’re REALLY PASSIONATE about”).

Cue the “Oh …” of total incomprehension and the exaggerated nod trying desperately to hide that fact, and we can get on to what promises to be an excruciatingly awkward five minutes before a vague acquaintance is “spotted” and must be greeted.

Hence the alcohol (usually) found in my hand.

But I genuinely enjoy my job, much to the surprise of almost all the “writers” I know. And though I admit, in regard to writing, I do derive a certain satisfaction when I’m able to craft a well-written piece that a) illuminates b) entertains or c) illumitains to a satisfactory degree. (I really have to work on that last one.)

Of course, there are drawbacks. Despite outward appearances, I am not infallible and therefore have the occasional typo or missing word. Also, I never read over my own stuff. Makes me queasy.

The real kind of editing, however, where you get to delve into someone else’s work with the sole purpose of helping them convey whatever they’re trying to say with the utmost efficacy, flourish and style … That’s where the fun comes in. Because not only do you get to exercise that same creative juice that flows when you’re writing, you also get to relieve that frustration that builds up when you read articles or stories online that have such great ideas and such horrible execution that if anyone had been given the chance to take the slightest minute to run over it with a red pen, it would have been improved …

Oh wait, is that just me? Well anyway, for all those people I meet in bars or at parties who have no comprehension of why editing is so much fun, here’s a short primer (the length of which perhaps shows exactly why I would never bother to take the time to explain this to you with Lady Gaga screaming HER OWN NAME [seriously, what is with that?] endlessly in the background).

(Damn, I should really get this post’s URL printed on my business cards. It would save loads of time.)

1. The thrill of the hunt
One of the most basic jobs any editor has to do is find the typos, factos (a word I just made up meaning “facts that are incorrect and therefore, by definition, not facts at all”) and grammatical abominations. Depending on who you’re editing, what level they’re at and what they’re writing for (editing friends’ papers for class usually requires the payment of a fifth for the sheer syntactic nonsense I encounter), this can bring about varying levels of satisfaction.

I tend to tackle this particular problem the same I way I would a scavenger hunt, or a treasure map; every error I find brings a small amount of glee. Not in a schadenfreude-y way (usually … depending on the person/error), but just in the delight I have at being able to catch it — improving their work as well as justifying my own existence, even if the change is so small nobody else would even notice it. Naturally, the more arcane the error, the better. It’s especially fun when you finish an entire article, check one single fact that for whatever reason (a mother’s intuition?) seems a bit off, and it turns out that, in fact, King Henry VIII emphatically did not decaffeinate some of his wives.

2. Using the scaffolding
Sometimes, a paper or story is so flawed at the outset that the only thing to do is rewrite it completely. This occurs very rarely (at least to me, because I’ll usually just send it back and make THEM do it), but it does happen. More often, though, the piece is just in need of some minor tweaks, whether that’s enhancing flow, word choice or story structure.

When it comes to these, I try my best to maintain the author’s natural sense of style, flow and the rest — sticking with the framework I’ve been given. This is probably not true for everyone, but I find my best work comes when I’ve got rules and boundaries, to a certain extent. It’s why I always did so well with legal classes and the like: There are laws that absolutely cannot be broken, but the key to being the best at it is to find a unique approach to those laws that allows you to press right up against them without breaking them.

Much of the same approach is found in editing, and editing anything really. Even if you’re just critiquing your child’s coloring books, you can find the same principle. You’re not going to be telling little Beatrice (why do you hate your child so to name her Beatrice?) to be coloring outside the lines, but surely even the simplest 2-year-old can see the flaws inherent in the green elephant.

3. Help me help you
As alluded to earlier, the best part about editing is the end goal: helping people better communicate whatever point they’re trying to make. It’s the one thought I keep in my mind whenever I’m helping to edit anything, and why my most common question is, “So what exactly were you going for?”

I know that most people’s writing process can be spastic at times (mine certainly is). It’s great if you know exactly what you’re going to be saying before you start, but it’s exceptionally easy to find yourself chasing down a tangent that seems more interesting than your main point, and … hey, maybe that would make a better opening?

Pretty soon, you’ve got two really good ideas in one article. Both would be great on their own, but we’ve got one main point to make so the other has to take a backseat. Ultimately, the outcome of editing should result in the both the writer and the editor feeling like the end product is the best way to express the thought the writer feels is the most important.

And to help someone else reach that goal? There’s no better feeling in the world.

Moving is supposed to bring about an onslaught of different emotions: a twinge of nostalgia at leaving the place you’ve called home, sadness at altering/losing the different interpersonal relationships you’ve developed at said location, and excitement or trepidation at thought of what’s to come.

I don’t know that exhaustion can rightly be counted as an emotion, but the depth to which I feel it now seems to indicate it should at least be in the running.

After the third or fourth major geographical upheaval in 12 months (with a few minor phase shifts as well), moving just doesn’t have the same impact anymore. Sleeping for the first time under a new roof felt just as comfortable as sleeping under the old one, which is to say “not very” because I never really “settled in” to the old apartment in the proper sense. Despite living there for eight months, the overly spacious two-bedroom apartment treated me more as a guest in a motel room than a permanent occupant.

Sure, I have some memories. The hideously overweight 40-some-year-old creepster who lived on the ground floor and sat outside his apartment 80 percent of the time, whiling away the days smoking, eating peaches or painting his fingernails a flamboyant hunter orange. That wouldn’t have been so bad were it not for his completely obvious leering at women half his age or whenever he’d get in the mood to go shirtless.

Or consider the Albertson’s grocery cart in the parking lot that mysteriously disappeared and reappeared on no set schedule, without rhyme or reason. Nothing says class like an Albertson’s grocery cart.

Obviously, it wasn’t all bad. Friends came over, drinks were drunk (and drunks kept drinking), movies were watched, great books were read and many a sleep was slept. But none of this served to dispel the ever-present air of transiency.

I’m now in Spokane, more specifically Browne’s Addition, working at a job that seems pretty damn perfect for me (more on that later). The hope is to keep this apartment for quite some time, to break the moving cycle. At least long enough so that the next time I have to move, it actually means something again.

That’s right, chums! After years of claiming “accidental” status, I’ll now be doing journalism on purpose! The folks at the much-revered Inlander have foolishly consented to allow me to copyedit their fine newspaper. “Psyched” describes my emotions only inasmuch as I easily could have passed for someone bereft of sanity as I ran around the block hooting and hollering (though I suspect the nudity didn’t help).

Of my previous employer, I’ll say little, as has always been my way on these here internets. I truly do feel sad about not getting to hang out with my coworkers all day anymore, as they are (to a man/woman) amazingly fun people to be around. Believe you me, if I could shrink them down and cart them around in one of those Polly Pocket houses, I would. Those things, however, do not have skateboards, and Joel would be terribly sad.

But the excitement is building for the next step. I really cannot wait.

Priority No. 1 – Revel.
Priority No. 2 – Don’t screw it up!
Priority No. 3 – Grilled cheese sandwich. Perhaps some tomato soup? Only time will tell.

No, I’m not pregnant.

But for the nonce, you can enjoy the photos I took. It’s sort of like when you go over to someone’s house and they force you to watch their vacation slides, but now you don’t even have the excuse that I’m forcing you to see them – you’re doing it of your own volition. Odd, that.

A note on quality: Being an idiot, I forgot my camera quite often, so a number of these pictures are from my cell phone.