Jeg er på dagen 15 år yngre enn Stig Sæterbakken

Det lærte jeg av å lese hans nye essay/foredrag, "Å skrive er å uttrykke som forbrytelse det som ble innsatt som lov." Tilfeldig? Neppe.

Man har som barn en formidabel evne til å vurdere seg selv som universets midtpunkt. Så også jeg, idet jeg med selvplagerens mest rettferdighetsskrikende offermine sto der og studerte de fryktelige fotografiene. Mine foreldre på påsketur sammen med andre forelskede par. Gapskrattende ablegøyer i snøen. Kyssing og klemming foran tente peiser. Tøylesløse sprell til ære for fotografen (sikkert sanseløst beruset, han òg). Tomflasker og spillkort. Løsneser og papirhatter. Som om mine foreldres samliv hadde vært en eneste sammenhengende fest helt frem til den 4. januar 1966.

Uhyggen forsterket etter syklisk mønster av den ubønnhørlige frasen som hjemsøker en gjennom hele oppveksten: DET VAR FØR VI FIKK DEG, liksom en stikkende gaffel mot min barndoms hud, en som ikke et øyeblikk tillot meg å glemme den byrde jeg med min tilblivelse hadde bragt inn i denne verden og som det uforvarende var blitt mine foreldres åk å bære.

Og kanskje er dette den uunngåelige konklusjon du som oppvoksende og overfølsomt barn før eller siden uansett er nødt til å trekke, at det aller meste av den fest og moro som beriker et voksent menneskeliv i det store og hele fant sted FØR DE FIKK DEG, eller med andre og hardere ord: at alt de er gitt å betrakte som livets innhold og mening etter din ankomst på Jorden i grunnen bare er for et usselt nachspiel å regne?

"It's something they use in coal-mining, father"*

Min far, Peter Larsen, har skrevet et essay** om journalisters selvbilde.

I MEDIENE er det etter hvert blitt jaktsesong for statsråder året rundt. I februar måtte barne- og likestillingsminister Manuela Ramin-Osmundsen gå. For to uker siden kom turen til olje- og energiminister Åslaug Haga. Ha det, ha det. Hurtig videre. Hvem blir den neste?

De som blir felt, mottar gjerne støtteerklæringer og trøstende ord fra nær og fjern. Ingen tenker derimot på de egentlige taperne, på dem som virkelig trenger sympati og omsorg i en vanskelig situasjon: Nyhetsjournalistene i VG og Dagbladet og NRK og TV 2.

RITUELL STATSRÅDSJAKT annenhver måned, og «gravende» journalistikk og sensasjonelle avsløringer annenhver dag, er jo i realiteten et symptom på at selve yrket er i dyp krise. Hver VG-forside og hver «politisk kommentar» på TV 2 er egentlig et skrik om hjelp fra journalister i nød.

Det er blitt stadig vanskeligere å være nyhetsjournalist i de store mediene. Lønnen er visstnok utmerket. Men tenk på skammen, tenk på stigmatiseringen, tenk på den sosiale utstøtelsen som følger med. Ville du ønske at din egen sønn eller datter ble journalist? Nei, vel? (min.uthv.)

Far, det er bare et sommervikariat, hvor mange ganger må jeg si det? Må vi ta denne diskusjonen i offentligheten? Jeg bor i Oslo*** og jobber i avis.**** Det må du lære deg å akseptere.

* "Good! good? What do you know about it? What do you know about getting up at five o'clock in t'morning to fly to Paris... back at the Old Vic for drinks at twelve, sweating the day through press interviews, television interviews and getting back here at ten to wrestle with the problem of a homosexual nymphomaniac drug-addict involved in the ritual murder of a well known Scottish footballer. That's a full working day, lad, and don't you forget it!"
** "medieviter og essayist", står det.
*** "He never calls, he never writes..."
**** (Og er helt enig med deg.)

Lately, every time I've made tea, I've thought of George Orwell.

Spice Pears and Cardiograms

Scatter-brain post, all over the map:

1.

Yesterday, Suttonhoo and I had a frustratingly 140-charactered conversation about ads and social software over on Twitter. I am (as is obvious from the thread she quotes in the next link) a bit of an idiot about these things, so she went off and wrote this nerdy lovely post on the topic.

The feeling I'm left with, and which Suttonhoo puts in admirably specific terms, is that the models for predicting user engagement for sites are - in dumb terms - too quantitative and not qualititative enough. The difference between Flickr and Facebook are enormous in terms of what I experience. I have an intense engagement with Flickr and it feels like an important part of my personal and cultural landscape, while Facebook is a shiny new toy which I don't use very seriously. I'll probably still be on Facebook in a year. But in two years? Three years? The fact that I'm not sure tells me a lot. Flickr is a site I engage with seriously and deeply, and it is a site whose interface, layout and geography were obviously designed for me, not as delivery vehicles for ads, like Facebook.

Going to Facebook, as I say in the comments of Suttonhoo's post, is sort of like going to McDonald's. You're in an environment which is hyperefficient for what it is trying to accomplish: get your money & fast. Massive advertisement & human-unfriendly environment. The overwhelming feeling is that it was not entirely built for you, and that is uncomfortable. Flickr was. It's like your local greengrocer. He's still making money off you, but he wants to make sure you get the right piece of fruit, and he likes chatting you up when you walk in the store. Not just - or even primarily - because he knows that will make you come back, but also because he simply wants to.

But still, I'm on Facebook & Flickr an equal number of minutes per day (if for no other reason than that Facebook's interface is sluggish and requires lots of clicks for simple operations).

So anyway, after that lovely post, Suttonhoo went off and got sick. At least she's got a good beat, unlike, say, the Spice Girls. Go tell her to get well.

2.

A skeptic and an enthusiast write about academic blogs. Both of them have interesting and valid points, but though I'm obviously an enthusiast I find myself nodding more vigorously at the skeptic's points. He accurately diagnoses some of the problems that must be fixed about academic blogging.

3.

I have made spice pears. They are cooling in a glass jar on the window sill in my new kitchen. Did I mention the new kitchen? We have a kitchen. It's new. We cook things in it. For instance,

spice girls pears

Pears
Cinnamon sticks
Vanilla Posh pods
Bits of ginger spice
Star anis
Water

Peel the pears - they should not be too ripe. Make a sugary spice suryp by boiling sugar in water. The water should just cover the pears, and have quite a lot of sugar in it. Bring to a boil with the spices above and whichever extra ones you feel like. Fresh mint works (but maybe remove the cinnamon?), as does red pepper if you're feeling sporty spice, as well as many other kinds of spices.

Simmer until tender. Let cool for hours and hours because sugar in sufficient quantities somehow increases tenfold the specific heat capacity of water. Pour onto a glass jar and let it sit in your fridge for a month if you want. They can keep for a good long while, unlike Spice Girls which only keep for a couple of albums. Alternatively, you can serve them the same day if that's what you want - what you really, really want - (though I advise you to simmer them for at least three hours then. If you store them, the spices zig-a-zig seep in over a longer period, so you can stop earlier). Serve with a scoop or two of vanilla icecream and fresh berries.

4.

I've started reading Orwell's "As I Please"-columns again. They're nice because I often don't have time to read more than a page or two, so shortish essays like these are good. I like the scattershot effect of them. Their utility and simplicity, and despite often being blatantly wrong, they show an interesting mind at work, and really there's nothing better than that.

5.

Oh, and I also create life for fun: I've got a sourdough starter (not quite yet) puttering away on the new kitchen countertop. Anyone have any tips on preventing them from crusting over when left in the open air, like the recipe says?

DFW & no more paper

David Foster Wallace keeps popping up in blogs and magazines I read these days.

First, there's a new sort-of essay online here. It's the introduction to a volume of American essays he has edited (or as he puts it, Deciderized) for Houghton Mifflin.

He also has a huge essay online over here I should read soon.

So I went looking in the Wikipedia article, and hey, look, there's the title essay to his latest collection of essays. I swear: who even bothers with paper these days?

Og for de norskspråklige: Preben Jordal gir en introduksjon til DFWs essayistikk i siste Vagant. Jordal har også oversatt novellesamlingen Oblivion av ham. Special Bonus: Han klarer å presse inn et stikk til bloggere i artikkelen.

Walker Rettberg replies to Lovink

Jill Walker Rettberg has a reply to Geert Lovink's article "Blogging, the Nihilist Impulse" which, you may recall, I had a long response to back in June. Then I got a reply from Lovink, and so on and so forth. Here's everything I've written about Lovink's article on this blog.

Jill's response is great. Very considered and voicing lots of interesting objections to Lovink's essay, not least her critique of his lack of examples, and the discussion of the "positivist" argument.

News Flash: Europe not center of known universe after all

Hey everybody,

I'm going to be a little longer with the MA-thing. I've gotten an extension until the 22nd of May because of some logistical issues.

But I just wanted to share something I learned today completely by accident. As it turns out, Gutenberg didn't invent movable type first after all. In fact, a fellow named Bi Sheng did, in China, way back in the 1040's sometime. His type was made out of baked clay, which was later turned into wooden type by others.

And as if that wasn't enough to shake my eurocentric view of the universe, it turns out that Michel de Montaigne was not the first essayist, either! Well, I knew that, actually. He just popularised it, and created a really elegant style in it. But I was intrigued by the introduction to this Wikipedia article on Shen Kuo, a Chinese polymath and scholar:

The Dream Pool Essays (Pinyin: Meng Xi Bi Tan; Wade-Giles: Meng Ch'i Pi T'an Chinese: 梦溪笔谈) was an extensive book written by the polymath Chinese scientist and statesman Shen Kuo (1031-1095) by 1088 AD, during the Song Dynasty (960-1279) of China. Although Shen was previously a highly renowned government official and military general, he compiled this enormous written work while virtually isolated on his lavish garden estate near modern-day Zhenjiang, Jiangsu province. He named the book after the name he gave to his estate, the "Dream Brook". The literal translated meaning is Brush Talks from a Dream Brook, and in his biography in the Dictionary of Scientific Biography (New York 1970-1990), Shen Kuo is quoted as saying:

Because I had only my writing brush and ink slab to converse with, I call it Brush Talks.

...Because this is basically the biography of Michel de Montaigne, set in China. Montaigne was a noted statesman and occasional soldier who sort-of-retired from public life to a country estate near Bordeaux (which he was also elected mayor of twice, while being sort-of-retired from public life). He spent his days reading and writing in his tower and occasionally combating the plague in nearby Bordeaux.

Lesson: the Chinese do everything before we do, and get only a fraction of the credit for it.

Oh, and if you haven't read Montaigne, you really, really should.

the paradox of politics in the 21st century

...as seen from the year 1948:

as early as the beginning of the twentieth century, human equality had become technically possible. (...) But by the fourth decade of the twentieth century all the main currents of political thought were authoritarian. The earthly paradise had been discredited at exactly the moment when it became realizable. Every new political theory, by whatever name it called itself, led back to hierarchy and regimentation. And in the general hardening of outlook that set in round about 1930, practices which had been long abandoned, in some cases for hundreds of years — imprisonment without trial, the use of war prisoners as slaves, public executions, torture to extract confessions, the use of hostages, and the deportation of whole populations-not only became common again, but were tolerated and even defended by people who considered themselves enlightened and progressive.
-- George Orwell, "The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism" (in 1984)

Oh, and he pretty much sums up the whole Guantanamo- Abu-Ghraib- 9/11-changed-everything- schtick in there as well.

Here's a collection of George Orwell's essays. All of them should be read and some of them should be memorized.