Posted tagged ‘ManicdDaily colored pencil drawing’

« ManicDDaily home page

Foregoing Fear of Big Brother For the Fast Lane

September 6, 2010

I’m thinking again about Orwell today, in part because of a comment received setting forth a particularly dire quotation from him.

I confess to being, well, too optimistic a person to be terribly comfortable with Orwell’s dire quotations.  I do have great admiration for Orwell;  his ability to distill political phenomena into both momentous narrative and an original and precise vocabulary–newspeak, groupthink, Big Brother, thought crime–may be unparalleled.

And (though some readers may doubt it), I do have some understanding of the fear of governmental/official power and legally tolerated unfairness.  Official power, unfair laws, a lack of economic and political clout, are things that have oppressed my sex (female) for centuries, and still oppress women (as well, of course, as many others) throughout the world.   Ironically, I just finished reading a decidely pre-Orwellian novel, Wilkie Collins’ 19th century mystery, The Woman in White, in which one of the heroines (the beautiful one) is dispossessed of her identity and her estate by a fraud, supported by legal authority, that is only finally reversed by her bearing a son.  (The novel’s other heroine never actually has a chance to be so oppressed due to her physical ugliness.)

So. As any reader of novels (much less history) knows, abuse of individuals and groups by statute and authority is not particularly new, not only a product of totalitarianism, and something of which to be wary.  That said, it seems as if Orwellian ideas are frequently trotted out and then turned on their head in today’s media and political speak.  People adopt the idea of conspiracy at the drop of a hat (the sleight of a hand).  Glenn Beck traffics in this readiness with crazy illogic:  see e.g. Lewis Black’s Glenn Beck’s Nazi Tourettes–“Glenn, get a grip — they came for the Jews to kill them; they came for the banks and car companies to give them 700 billion dollars!”

My most recent experience with this kind of Orwellian mood came a couple of days ago in the person of an upstate New York car service driver who, grumbling about Big Brother, characterized EZ Pass as a government conspiracy designed to know exactly where he was at all moments.  I was a bit concerned about his vehemence against EZ Pass since we were on our way to JFK (on various toll roads) with very little time to spare.

Still, I was (sort of) sympathetic.  It’s very possible that EZ Pass evidence has been admitted in criminal prosecutions. I’ve also heard that some jurisdictions use it as a tool for dishing out speeding tickets when drivers cover distances in times that are not possibly legal.   (I have not researched these issues.)  Even so–and I may be naive–the only conspiracy I can see in EZ Pass’s original conception and in the way it’s generally administered in today’s world of strapped state governments seems to be to relieve the State of a certain number of low-paying toll jobs.  (And possibly to earn revenue in speeding tickets.)

I pointed out to my driver that people who were concerned about being tracked on EZ Pass could simply pay for their tolls in cash.  And then, watching the clock, I immediately bit my tongue.  Maybe he was one of those truly principled types who would steer us into one of the long slow lane of other principled (or disorganized) non-EZ drivers.  Maybe I was even encouraging him to do that.

But, for all the grumbling, the driver drove straight into the EZ pass lane, then, when the light went green, sailed on through.

Categories: news
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Comments: Be the first to comment

Blog Birthday

July 25, 2010

From "Thin Birthday"

Today is the one year anniversary (ironically, the “paper” anniversary) of this blog.

I have made 473 posts and gotten over 10,000 views.  (A small number for a blog, but amazing to me.)  Writing the posts, drawing the pictures, and putting them out into the world with a click of a button has been fascinating; doing this on a daily basis has been both stressful and freeing–yes, it’s been a lot of work, but because of the pace, I have been continually forced to move on from whatever I just did to embarrass myself.

I first want to thank all of you who have followed the blog, or even just occasionally checked in.  If you are a regular viewer, you must know that I have an (a) obsessive and (b) moody temperament; this combination has occasionally translated into repetitive and tormented checking of “stats”, a whole new form of masochistic escapism.   However, you regular viewers have really done a lot to buoy me up over the last year, you irregular viewers to thrust me into momentary despair. (Ha!)

I especially appreciate your time and interest since, as some of you may have already realized, I am not a natural blogger.   Yes, I write and draw fairly quickly, but I don’t really know anything.  (Oops!  Important caveat – I do know quite a few things in the area of my non-blogged profession.)

But I can’t give advice on household management, money-saving, science or health. I’m not even particularly political, though because a daily blog works a bit like a newspaper column, I tend to sound off in that area.

I’ve said before that my subject is “some overlap of stress and creativity”.  (This may be a cipher for “whatever stressed me feels like creating that day”.)  But as the year mark passes, I really would like to move more into the area of creativity and a bit further from the area of stress.

This, of course, is easier said than done.  And I’m not quite sure what I even mean by it—I hesitate to spell it out yet in the light of that uncertainty.

Any ideas?  Suggestions?

Thanks again.

(And as always, check out 1 Mississippi by Karin Gustafson – publicizing that book was the real reason I started the blog, but I’m afraid I haven’t done a very good job of it.  It really is a cute book–discounts are readily available if you write me.)

Categories: Blogging
Tags: , , , , , ,

Comments: 5 Comments

No A/C (With Anteater)

July 24, 2010

Anteater with Brain Freeze

My sweaty brow turns now to Stan Cox, an agricultural scientist and author of Losing Our Cool: Uncomfortable Truths About Our Air-Conditioned World (and Finding New Ways to Get Through the Summer), a book which argues against the excessive use of air conditioning in the modern world because of its negative environmental and societal effects and its effects on overall health.   Cox, who lives surrounded by cotton (barely) and fans (liberally) in Salina, Kansas, had the nerve to write an opinion piece in the Washington Post in the midst of this record hot summer, explaining the downside of air conditioning.  He received 67 pages of negative emails, which included death threats, and the epithet “Idiot!”  And these weren’t even from his family!

I know it’s hard to make a choice against A/C.   A New York apartment without it feels not only muggily hot but horribly grimy.

And yet, and yet… if you just stay still enough (so that the sweat congeals to a 98.6 degree layer between your skin and the 102 degree world), and keep your rooms dark enough (so that you can’t quite see the grime), it really is quite liveable.

I can hear some of you thinking—”you call that a life?”  or, “but why?”

All I can say there’s something kind of lovely about heat-enforced laziness; and the relief that comes as evening falls, as cold baths are slithered into, as icy smoothies are sipped (despite the brain freeze), is really pretty cool.

(PS – I’m trying to branch out from elephants, but if you like elephants, check out 1 Mississippi by Karin Gustafson on Amazon.)

Categories: children's illustration, news
Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Comments: 2 Comments

Little Sleep, Little Function, Little Sloth

July 17, 2010

Sloth (Not Elephant)

My husband and I have an ongoing argument about a universal human sleep standard.  He insists that people–all people–need many many hours of sleep for even minimal efficiency;  I counter with the variable sleep needs of different people (citing myself among those who need little); I talk about the efficiency of having extra time to do things in (even if that extended time is burdened with some level of fatigue.)

Sometimes, however, I find that I really do not function all that well without sleep.  Some hints:

  1. At 1.am., folding freshly-cleaned clothes, I come across, in a laundry basket of towels and underwear, the only pair of glasses I own that do not hurt my eyes when working on the computer.  These are old glasses, whose frame has one stem that had been very loose. They are now old glasses, whose frame holds one stem that is not loose.  The lenses are currently very very clean, and shiny.
  2. It is approximately 2:15 a.m.  I am wearing glasses that only hook onto one ear.  I am considering downloading old drawings of donkeys to my computer, since everyone thinks I only draw elephants.  Yes, I know that you have to get up at 4:45 to catch a plane, and that I have not yet packed.  It feels somehow easier to think about donkeys.
  3. It is 2:30 a.m.  I’ll figure out the packing in the morning… that is, in…uh… two hours.  I begin to re-read an old Terry Pratchett novel about wizards whose heads are always up in the clouds, but who somehow manage to come out all right in the end.
  4. 6:30 a.m.  Somehow, despite the repeated last minute changes of clothes, and glasses, I have gotten to the airport.  Feeling extremely efficient, I take my computer out of my suitcase, rather than my little composition book,  and type the original first sentence of this blog as follows: “sometimes you are all too anxious that, in fact, you don’t function very well without sleep.”  I feel just amazingly efficient, though I also worry that the guy next to me is reading over my shoulder.  He, on the other hand, mumbles something about Kansas City while my flight is slated for Orlando.  Hmmm….
  5. After leaning some time on an Delta steward’s counter, I am too tired to be pleased that I’ve been bumped to first class, though I have to say this big wide seat is awfully niiiiii….zzzzz.
  6. Later in the day.  I keep trying to think of some animal to draw, something other than an elephant.  I really can’t come up with anything;  I just feel too tired, too slow, too lazy….
  7. And where did I pack those glasses?

Categories: Stress, Uncategorized
Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Comments: Be the first to comment