The Case for Virginia

Posted on April 13, 2012 by Citizen Ted

Here’s the challenge: if someone has never been to America and doesn’t have the time to see every corner of our vast country, which one state would you recommend they visit to get the most rounded appreciation of what America is all about?

Which single US state offers a sincere glimpse into the American way of life with lots of cool, interesting things to see and do?

Difficulty: California is too big too see in less than two weeks.

"Thus Always Unto Tyrants". It's so welcoming!

I’ve given this a lot of thought and the answer is Virginia.

Right now, most of my American readers are screaming. They have another state in mind. Probably California. But they are wrong. If you have never been to America and you want to know what “average” America is like while still enjoying some recreational fun, Virginia is the best choice.

Here comes the Case for Virginia!

(note: I’ve only been there twice and I am not employed by the Virginia Tourism Board)

History

How many Monticellos does your area have? Hmm?

European skeptics like to sniff at America because we are ‘inauthentic’ and have no history worth mentioning. These snobs have never been to Virginia!

Virginia was founded 400 years ago. It isn’t as storied as Rome, but Virginia is no Silicon Valley, either. It’s old. From Pocohontas and Capt. John Smith to Washington and Jefferson, Virginia is a microcosm of early American history.

In fact, Virginia is so fucking historical that there’s too much of it to outline here. Tourists will be tripping over colonial mansions and Civil War battlefields until they finally land in Colonial Williamsburg.

Williamsburg may be a tad schmaltzy, but it’s far less offensive than those bell-ringing turds in livery who stand outside European museums. Take THAT, you snooty French academics!

If you have any interest at all in American history, Virginia is practically the goddamn epicenter of it all. You just can’t miss.

Recreation

Virginia Beach doesn't suck!

Millions of Brits flock to Florida every year to escape the grey and loll in the sun. Once their discount airfare gets them there, the poor saps pay a premium for the privilege.

Not so in Virginia. Virginia Beach is reasonably priced and offers a less crushing experience. You’ll see plenty of hot bikini chicks as well as plenty of scary fat people, which is why you came to America in the first place.

Most importantly, Virginia Beach attracts middle-of-the-road American visitors. You won’t meet too many snotty rich people; nor will you have to abide a bunch of ghetto trash. Instead, you will come belly-to-belly with middle class America.

If you have kids with you, Busch Gardens and King’s Dominion should replace your Disney desires without robbing you blind. There’s a couple of big zoos and enough water parks to float your trunks for weeks.

For adult fun, Virginia is for Lovers. It’s true. I know because I once banged a chick from Virginia. And man, she was HOT. If you visit Virginia from overseas, use your sultry accent to score a Virginian. You wont regret it.

Culture

It ain't much, but it's all-American.

No. Virginia is not renown for the arts. But it is the home of GWAR, so that’s gotta count for something.

Yet Virginia is a diverse place. Despite its slave-holding past, about 20% of the population is black, 10% is Latino and the rest are white or various shades of world workers in the industrial northern part of the state. What this means is the outsider will meet a wide array of people.

You won’t like them all. Some of them are jerks. But most of them are nice and actually do believe in exuding some form of southern hospitality. This is where the visitor will really learn something about America. That’s what defines us: ethnicities all jammed together and trying their hardest to get along despite the evolutionary call of the tribe.

We have no Tito or Stalin to force us to live together. Instead, America (and Virginia) tends to unify under Christianity. You’d be a fool to visit Virginia and not check out some churches and even some public church events.

They will likely freak you out. Some churches are…charismatic. But even an old atheist like me knows that life in the South (and most of America) is defined by its churches. In Virginia, it is the neighborly call of Christ that binds them. It shapes the one cultural aspect they all share. Sniff all you like, but if you want to understand America you better learn to understand her strange affinity for this wacky religion.

Landscapes

Are you kidding me?

What Virginia lacks in high culture it makes up for in varied, beautiful landscapes. Bring your camera because in this one state you will be framing misty mountains covered in greens and yellows, lonely roads winding through ancient farms, mighty estuaries racing into the Atlantic, waves crashing on sandy shores and Neoclassical buildings rising up against the azure sky.

Yes, Arizona has deserts and Maine has craggy shores and Texas has endless brush and Colorado has majestic peaks and California has big trees. But Virginia has almost all of that stuff and it’s all within a few hours’ drive. Virginia wins again!

And then there’s DC…

Washington DC

Giant-ass domed buildings? Yeah, we got that shit.

As you head north, you leave behind the mountains and farms and enter something truly American: enormous suburban developments, godawful strip-malls and gigantic glass-and-steel office towers. This is the epicenter of the might that is the government of the United States. Defense contractors, lobbying organizations and massive federal agencies ingest and disgorge hundreds of thousands of busy bees every day. It’s a madhouse. Drive carefully.

Just beyond is the nation’s capital. Enjoy the irony of the grinding poverty in her ghettos. Shake your head at the ostentatious displays in our inauthentic public spaces. Marvel at the galaxy of junk in the Smithsonian and gawp in disbelief at the massive jets suspended inside the aerospace museum.

You want world-class museums? Yeah. We got that shit.

DC is worth a visit, but it’s not more American than Virginia. Seriously.

It’s the People, Stupid

Happy Virginians at the recent presidential inauguration

I’ve been lucky to meet average folks in Europe and Japan. I’m an average guy, too. Weird, but average. And meeting my fellow average people gives me a much greater sense of a nation’s culture than meeting its service workers or representatives or immigrants.

When foreigners visit America, I’d like them to see cool stuff and have a good time and meet average Americans. They’re not the salt of the Earth. They’re not particularly noble or bright. They aren’t even very pretty.  But they are the genuine article. They are the are the distilled remains of our history and they are the real faces and real voices that betray all that Hollywood crap you watch on your satellite dish.

These people are hard to find in New York, Florida and LA. There’s plenty of them in the Midwest, but Virginia has more to offer than Iowa does. Sorry, Iowa.

Truth be told, I don’t personally give a rip about Virginia. But if some accountant from Ghana told me he wanted to see America but only had two weeks and no desire for long journeys, I wouldn’t hesitate.

Virginia, man. It’s America in a bottle.

You Virginians can now tell me how right I am; the rest of you can tell me how wrong I am.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Digital Samsara

Posted on March 12, 2012 by Citizen Ted

Trippy.

This post isn’t about the psychedelic trance composers Digital Samsara (although if you dig that kind of thing, they really are the best).

This post is about samsara in the digital age. And by samsara I refer to the Hindu concept of an endless continuation of births, deaths and re-births. Samsara is intrinsic to the Hindu spiritual world and samsara is also the cornerstone of western Science. Evolution and astronomy describe forms of samsara. Even the human condition – our social and cultural mores and constructions – are samsara. They ebb and flow and wither and transpose without end.

The only certain thing is change, eh?

Digital samsara is the inevitable demise and rebirth of concepts and systems in the digital domain. We must accept this. Whatever format or feature or function that you adore will eventually disappear and you will never see it again.

Sadness over the “loss” is understandable. Something dreadfully important – something cosmic and universal! – went away forever. We grieve. Then we move on. And as we do, new forms appear and hold us spellbound. We fall in love again.

We are all used to this cycle. It describes our lives. But there is one aspect of our lives that is utterly intolerant of samsara.

Money.

The continual generation of wealth doesn’t work well with samsara. It’s hard to bank on cataclysmic change. Widget producers won’t give you a big hug when you inform them that widgets are out and whachits are in. And those smug whachit manufacturers will shit a brick when whatchits go out of style and some young punk replaces them with gidgets.

Enormous fortunes are won and lost on single events (blips, really) along the continual line of samsara. Only the craftiest, wisest thinkers can maintain their fortunes through a cycle of death and re-birth. Such people are very rare. Steve Jobs is one and he survived just two cycles. Now he has joined the NeXT project himself.

The trouble with samsara is its inevitability and its impassivity. It can’t be cajoled or convinced. It can’t be bought off. It just…is.

The wise among us understand and accept this. Our business venture will not grow exponentially forever and guarantee us wealth and happiness for generations. Ain’t. Gonna. Happen.

Yet strangely, it is this very belief that pervades corporate concepts of the digital realm and threatens the balance of our digital lives. There are some who believe that the digital samsara can be forced to obey crumbling old rules of wealth creation. They use power, threats, money and guns to force their way. They will lose in the end. But we must ask how many will suffer before that day comes.

What the SOPA legislation actually looks like.

Like children, the RIAA and MPAA want to continue suckling the warm familiar taste of mother’s milk. They cannot imagine a world without $17.99 CD’s and $12.00  movie tickets. For decades, they have had free reign to bilk artists, cheat writers and gouge consumers. Things have been so good for so long on this blip, this birth, this life.

But that life played its hand. Ratcheting up prices, monopolizing distribution and collecting radio stations are the modern business equivalent of performing a heart and liver transplant on a 99 year old man. It is fighting samsara, not surrendering to it. Despite all these efforts, the body is still dying.

These should be the watchwords of the old distribution method.

A wise man would have looked at the scope and reach of the Internet and realized that a new era in human expression was presenting itself. The RIAA and MPAA, like children, did not see this. It was like a heaven of wine and caviar had appeared before them, but they insisted on continuing to suckle their mother’s teat

But not everyone was so blind.

It was technologists who understood samsara and paved the way. From nappy-headed wunderkinds like Shawn Fanning to inscrutable geniuses like Steve Jobs, these were the people who saw plenty. Rather than grieve for the loss of the old ways, they welcomed the beauty of the new ways.

This cannot be stressed enough: the monetization of online content distribution was pioneered by programmers, not the music/film industry.

Rather than greet this new creature, the entertainment cartels have entered digital samsara screaming and kicking. Like children torn from the breast, they cry.

I want my profitability back!

It isn’t coming back. The 99 year old man is dying. You are too old for your mother’s milk. Do not grieve. A great rebirth has occurred. Celebrate it!

Wise people have discovered that there is profitability in the new medium. It’s a different system, though. Rather than convincing 100,000 people to spend $10 on your content, you must now convince 1,000,000 people to spend $1. In all likelihood, the volume will not be there to realize your prior years of obscenely high profits. But the new medium operates more efficiently and cheaply, so your costs can go down.

In the short term, this will hurt. In the long term, purveyors of content that people want will become fantastic gatekeepers of global intelligence. In the long term, the money will come.

But you must be patient and wise. The RIAA and MPAA are neither.

Right now, the raging child is threatening to destroy the medium rather than exploit it. The child wants its Mommy back and if Mommy is gone then it will fashion a new Mommy from the body of the woman that should have been the wife.

We can rebuild her! We can bring her back to life!

All around the world, the entrenched industry is seeking to stop digital samsara and somehow stifle human progress. SOPA, ACTA, etal. are the cries of children who have been tossed into the backyard pool by a no-nonsense Dad. Swim, damn you!

As we all know, samsara does not yield. Digging in your heels and generating friction is merely adding tension to the tectonic plates of society. There will be outrages and destruction. And none of it will slow or limit the next set of deaths and re-births. BBS > USENET > Napster > Kazaa > Limewire > BitTorrent. A natural evolution moves in sync with digital samsara, buffeted by the **AA into unusual habitats, but continuing to grow and improve and morph as necessary.

All the weapons in the arsenal of billionaires fail to make a dent. DRM and HDCP burst, then weaken, then dissolve in the face of perpetual change.

Yes, pirates sail the Seven Seas. But in the digital realm, there is no need to damage and plunder; one need only understand the sea and the wind. The pirates are fine sailors and can see the changing winds and read the stars while their pursuers struggle to stay afloat. The money-changers curse the storms that the pirates ride out in quiet bays.

Many years ago, Nordic people settled in Greenland. Rather than live in harmony with the land, they exploited it for wood and domestic animals. They refused to subsist on fish and sea mammals like the natives did in the north. In fact, the settlers sometimes hunted the natives for sport. The natives tried to explain to the settlers that Greenland was not Scandinavia; samsara dictated a different approach.

Eventually, the Greenland settlements collapsed. The natives, however, still thrive.

In digital samsara, the pirates are not evil men bent on plunder. They are denizens of the media and are trying to teach the “settlers” how to live there. But the settlers want fresh meat and crops grown in perfect rows. They want the Old World. They refuse to learn how to survive in the new one.

The settlers will cause some deaths and they will destroy some things, but they will eventually fail. They will collapse. Samsara will go on.

It is the way.

Worth noting: while writing this missive, I was told I was being laid off from my job after seven stable and productive years. I grieve, but I also realize that this death will lead to a re-birth and I look forward to that new face.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted in Cultural, Political Whingings, Technology | 1 Comment

A Royal Pain in the Ass

Posted on November 19, 2011 by Citizen Ted

Oh, I do say, what's all this fuss then, what?

Her full title is Her Majesty Elizabeth the Second, by the Grace of God, of Great Britain, Ireland and the British Dominions beyond the Seas Queen, Defender of the Faith.

Of course, we just call her Ma’am. This utterly benign and inoffensive woman, a kindly yet stoic grandmother recognized by everyone everywhere, is under attack by her own countrymen. Why? Because they’re just sick of her and her kind. That’s why.

You’d think that we Americans would understand Britain’s beef with the Queen. After all, nobody dethrones royals and then makes snotty comments about them better than we do. We invented the practice.

Yet ironically, we have more respect and devotion for the House of Windsor than Britain does. The Brits trot out plenty of arguments for getting rid of their own royalty. They’re a throwback. They don’t represent brown people. They exemplify achievement without merit and they cost too much. Is it true?

What critics of the royal family may look like.

Let’s review some pro’s and cons of British Royalty:

Pro’s:
– They are living links to Britain’s illustrious past.
– They drive a lot of tourism and charity.
– They represent the pride of Western Civilization and embody its achievements.
– They do all this without interfering in the political process.

Cons:
– They happen to be a pretty fucked up family.
– They cost a fortune.
– They represent a monarchical system that everyone hoped had died in WWI.
– The average Briton wouldn’t feel much pain if the royals got the boot.

So, how do the scales look? Before you decide let’s delve a little deeper in the lives of the Saxe-Coburg and Gotha (they changed their name to Windsor in WWI to avoid appearing too German).

Good evening to the Kingdom and all ships at sea. My sister Margaret is a doodyhead!

And so…

The Royal Cavalcade of Fail

Princess Margaret

Show us your tits, love!

The Queen’s sister Princess Margaret decided to fall in love with a married man named Peter Townsend. While Henry VIII typically got away with shit like that, the Windsors don’t have Henry’s gravitas. As things started careening toward Margaret wrecking a family to marry this guy, the Queen put her foot down. It’s just so…untoward.

The fickle public – who had originally agreed that Margaret should find a more suitable mate – suddenly flipped a 180 and decided that Margaret should marry whoever the fuck she wants to marry and that the Queen was a total bitch for standing in the way of love. You just can’t win in the British court of public opinion.

Margaret begged off the marriage and went on to marry and divorce some other schmuck and to later link herself with a couple of other dudes until the British public could no longer make any sense of the woman. A neurotic mess, she chain-smoked herself to death. Not exactly a storybook princess.

Prince Charles

Behold the man who wants to be a tampon.

I really want to like Prince Charles. In 1989, he published A Vision of Britain, which stands as one of the most sensible and passionate defenses of humane civic design ever written. Chuck is smart and Chuck genuinely loves his realm and all its people.

As a child, he had every earthly need met except one: the warmth and security of a loving Mum. This failure has manifested itself in a man who has no idea how to behave around women. His first wife was totally hot, incredibly intelligent and adored by every human being on Earth. Only Charles and his weird family were immune to her charms. She was frozen out of the family and ended up splattered all over a Paris tunnel with her Arab boyfriend.

Not only did Charles hound Britain’s beloved princess into the arms of an Egyptian playboy, he was also busy wooing his horse-faced mistress by saying he’d like to be her tampon. Now, I’m no prude. I’d like to be Leelee Sobieski’s tampon! But I would never tell her that. It’s so…gauche. And I’m not even a member of the royal family!

Charles, I tried to like you but you are a Class A fuck-up. Seriously.

Prince Phillip

I'll give up polo when those dirty foreigners give up communism!

The Queen’s husband Philip is a walking, talking caricature of what the British aristocracy once was. For that alone he has value as a living insight into history. Unapologetically racist and elitist, Philip realizes that he shouldn’t say mean things, but by God sometimes these things just need saying, what?

I admit a smirking admiration for this man. At 90, he’s not long for this world and we’ll be poorer when he leaves. Here’s  a few of his pearls:

  • To British students in China: “If you stay here much longer, you’ll all be slitty-eyed!”
  • “If you travel as much as we do, you appreciate the improvements in aircraft design of less noise and more comfort – provided you don’t travel in something called economy class, which sounds ghastly.”
  • “If it has four legs and it’s not a chair, if it’s got two wings and it flies but is not an aeroplane and if it swims and it’s not a submarine, the Cantonese will eat it.”
  • To a group of Aborigine businessmen: “Do you still throw spears at each other?

Of course, the Brits don’t find this to be particularly cute when they have to fork over £200M a year so Philip can enjoy his private jets and non-Cantonese fine dining.

Prince Harry and Prince William

Dude, did you see her ASS?

Before Princess Diana died, she managed to produce two worthy heirs to the throne: Princes William and Harry. William is clearly his parents’ son: he has his mother’s good looks and his father’s lousy hairline. But Harry? The ginger wunderkind? He’s as related to Prince Charles as I am. Word has it he’s the son of Princess Diana and her secret lover James Hewitt. Is it true?

Charles - Harry - Hewitt. I'll let you decide.

Um, yeah. It is true. Just another bump on the road in the lives of the royal family. And despite the youthful frivolity of the boys, they do offer some hope that the Windsors can evolve. Diana (and Hewitt!)  may have provided the fresh blood needed to move the monarchy to its next phase. But are the British people patient enough to wait for it?

Queen Elizabeth II

Oh, I'm sorry. I can't hear you above the sound of how awesome I am!

It’s easy to lay the blame for this fucked-up family at Elizabeth’s feet. But to a certain degree, she was behaving exactly how she was programmed to behave. She took the throne when she was 26, an age when most of us are still playing bass in a shitty garage band. And she was dead serious about making this thing work.

Along the way, she was distanced from her family and her people. Sidelined but always needed, she walked the line she thought best to maintain the dignity of the office. “Duty first” and all that rot.

Trouble is, she refused to change with the times. She provided an anachronism when her country cried out for a modern figure. There is not an evil bone in her body, but she is certainly rather cold. Someone should have told her that about 40 years ago Britons became weary of being diffident and cold and decided to be warmer and more outgoing like their American cousins.

She could have learned a lot from Buffy St. Marie. Where were you when we needed you, Buffy?

(She was busy getting high with her surfing instructor boyfriend.)

The Verdict

While British sentiment towards the monarchy tends to go up and down,  a recent poll shows only 30% of Britons actively desirous of abolishing the monarchy. Other polls put the number as low as 20%. Thus, despite much public fury and grandstanding about the waste of maintaining an irrelevant British monarchy, most Brits plan to keep calm and carry on.

I agree with the 70%. Sure, the Queen is old and uncool. And yeah, Prince Charles is a massive douchebag. And sure, the whole damn family is a huge burden. But what republican Britons need to understand is that without the colonies and their industrial base, Britain no longer has very much to offer the world.

It costs an American like me about $4,ooo to visit Britain for 2 weeks. That’s almost £78! And for that kind of money, I want to visit a land whose storied history still breathes.

I’ve been to Vienna and visited the crypt of the Emperors. You can read the names and smell the dust. But it’s all dead. The Holy Roman Empire, the Habsburgs, their reach and their quirks are lost forever, washed away in the blood of WWI. Are there any Habsburgs alive today? Yeah, but nobody knows and nobody cares.

Britain, you have a chance to keep the one thing that sets you apart: your storied history.

If you get rid of the monarchy, what do you have left? What are you going to feature on your tourism brochures?

Oi! What's wif da mingin' bitches, eh? Right slags, innit?

Certainly not the armies of chavs that infest every High Street from Inverness to Exeter. Get rid of the royals and this will become your most notable cultural touchstone. Think about it.

Home Sweet Home!

We certainly aren’t getting all geared up to visit your godawful council estates. There is so much shitty architecture in the United States it makes no sense to spend thousands of dollars to see something even worse.

I know this sounds like a Visit Britain tourism board ad campaign, but you Brits would be well-served to listen: the Royal Family may not be great, but they are all you have! We’re all slowly crumbling as the global economic system tips us underwater. Do you want to be just another gray crumbling monolith or do you want to stand out from the rest? What shall be the mark of the United Kingdom: a nation that still salutes its living crown or a nation that punches pub-goers in the face with a sovereign ring?

This American votes for the former.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted in Cultural | 1 Comment