For those of you who haven't been told yet, I have a Carl Wilkerson Fan Club Mailing List. Topica is hosting it. Click here to go to the club's web page, which includes subscription information.

I am suffering through Buy Nothing Day today. Pattie and I agreed we would have to consume electricity, but otherwise, we should be able to make it to tomorrow. It strikes me that most days I don't buy anything, anyway. I'm not sure why it seems so spooky when I make it explicit.

I put together a long response to Pattie's blog today. I thought it would be apropos to post it here as well:

Nice post. It's good to see you speak to these issues, if only because you are contributing to others' understanding in your attempts to make sense of all these atrocities. Atrocities are often referred to as "senseless," but that implies a uniquely determined logic by which they should be assessed. Often, the atrocities follow a very perceptible pattern, a quite rigorous "logic." It's just that the implications of the pattern are distasteful to us. Cause: the ozone goes away. Effect: we die. Not what one would have, but not logically inconsistent.

Check out discussions in literature of the "prisoners' dilemma" for a specific example of how disastrous results can occur "logically." The way to escape from such consequences is often to do some assumption-checking (beginning with assumption-marking, inevitably) and see where it gets you. In the specific case of the prisoners' dilemma, it is in the assumptions that the "logical" outcome of mutual destruction is set up. In particular, the forced competition ensures the results (and, BTW, shows up the "invisible hand" model as presumptuous). Logical systems always presume. A high-school geometry student knows the distinction between an axiom and a theorem (although his attempts to apply this knowledge anywhere but geometry class may well be followed by painful consequences, particularly if the application is well-suited, which only begs the issue of contextuality), and college calculus is littered with inescapable "regularity conditions."

I bring all of this up because much of what you lament is a result of American "logic." Development is good, ergo kill all the trees. Fat is bad, ergo shovel the fat people into the already-enormous slave class. The LOGIC, in the strict sense of that word is fine in and of itself; it's the ASSUMPTIONS being

(a) only several of many conceivable starting points from which "logic" could proceed (and an arbitrary subset thereof),

(b) productive of other conclusions beyond the ones that those who are still at liberty to speak want you to draw, or

(c) just plain erroneous

that causes the trouble.

Assumption-checking is no longer permitted in American culture except by the ruling class and the police class. Members of these two classes may attack the validity of specific premises in others' arguments. Anyone else doing so is met with, "Are you calling me a liar?" and will be beaten, killed, or lose permission to pursue sustenance. Attempts to attack purely logical considerations are somewhat better received, but one notes that as long as the party free from considerations of assumption-checking can continue to spout off propositions that must be considered a priori truths by his opponent, the ball game is essentially over before it begins.

Your perceptions are fine. The surreality you perceive in your situation is largely caused by having to speak to a culture with extraordinarily shabby standards and norms of discourse, some of which I have mentioned above. You are too good to be saddled with lowest common denominator rules of engagement, and that is the source, in my opinion, of your frustration. Somehow, though, I get the feeling that you will be better able to deal with such matters as time progresses and you continue your writing.

Thank you for inspiring me to write this.

Love,
Carl

P. and I went to Vancouver last weekend for business reasons, and the trip went well aside from my not being able to drink the water or breathe the air. Oddly, I had been to the Lower Mainland half a dozen times before, including trivial visits involving little more than driving through it to get to the ferry to Victoria a couple of times, and I had never had any such problems. The air was especially, um, visible this time around, though, and it might have tipped the balance. My recovery time from long walks was out of whack, and my contact lenses also went on the blink at times. The conditions reversed themselves as soon as I got back to Vic and got a good night's sleep, however, so don't make plans to attend my funeral yet.

The business part of the trip went well. We did lunch with a married couple who constitute a film production company re: specific and general considerations we had, P. went to a conference at BCIT re: her day job, and I visited the HQ of the magazine Adbusters (and was unimpressed). Not too productive on the surface, but one has to sow a certain number of seeds, and P. felt that the BCIT conference was especially promising in that respect.

"First Person, Plural" is still in production. Episode 23 made it to initial broadcast last week, and Episode 24 is right on schedule to go out this week. We're still on every Thursday at noon (Pacific Time) on CFUV.

The SHOUTcast option is still available to me, but I'm going to save it for "utility" purposes, i.e., on a need basis instead of just broadcasting continuously. I'm not sure yet what uses I will put it to, but what I'm not going to do is pursue the "music-and-ads" format that seems to be mandatory for commercial success even among Internet radio stations. I expect I'll be firing it up on a case basis: it's there if I need it.

I have transferred webcasting activities to SHOUTcast, an open source webcasting solution. Listen to my new station, which is usually on the air in the afternoon and evening hours (Pacific Time). For now, tune in and you'll hear old Coffee Shop episodes along with live voice breaks and other material. I'm not sure where to go with it in the future, but I'm having fun just setting it up and working out the kinks. I may even do a station page and provide related links if I get motivated.

Episode #30 of "Coffee Shop" got recorded and uploaded on August 7. Still no decision on the "modified format." The good news is that "First Person, Plural" is now accessible from the show's web page. To wit, there is a "featured rerun" saved in the form of various MP3 files that visitors to the page may download and listen to using any player they have that supports MP3 format. Perfect for those of you who can't commit to the regular broadcast Thursday at noon Pacific time. Perhaps a similar repackaging would be suitable for "Coffee Shop" now that Live365 has lost its appeal.

CCC is branching out into video. Our first project is to be entitled "None Of Your Business!" and seeks to be business media criticism with a twist. The featured on-air personality will be yours truly, putting my MBA from Goizueta Business School at Emory University to good use. More about that as the technical considerations get sorted out.

What a difference a month makes. My rec league team won the league championship. OTOH, Live365 is using the CARP/Library of Congress rulings as an excuse to put the screws to the microbroadcasters on their server. Already they are restricting access to our show to "Preferred Listeners" of their service, and they plan to delete our account unless we agree to pay a "royalty administration fee." Not being pleased with the idea of paying royalties on our own intellectual property, Pattie and I are going to record only one more episode, the 30th, of "Coffee Shop." After uploading that one (each of the previous 29 episodes has already been uploaded at some point), the show will be out of production. Live365 lowers the boom in mid-September: our Internet station will be off the air at that point. So if you want to hear more "Coffee Shop" episodes than you have heard to date, you will need to purchase "Preferred Listener" status from L365, or you can just hang around the CCC site and wait for the series to reemerge in a modified format, hint hint.

Our terrestrial radio show, "First Person, Plural," is ticking along nicely. We have thirteen episodes sewn up and are airing our first rerun this Thursday. We will be rebroadcasting Episode Five. Tune in if you can.

My brother-in-law Deeve (don't ask) bought Pattie a webcam for her birthday. We have been using it to explore the world of digital video. More about that as we become more experienced in the field, but early returns indicate that an Internet-based TV show or similar project may well be the next step for Cultural Construction Company.

Coffee Shop, our Internet radio station, is one year old today! I'm not sure what we're going to do with it in the second year. We've been thinking about adding other programming, and we've also been thinking about broadcasting LIVE at least part of the time, which Live365 makes it possible to do.

I wrote a response to a journal entry by a fellow blogger. It addresses her "coming out" as a fat person. I have copied my response below:

On a semi-related note, one thing that complicates attempts to "come out" is the possibility (which may even be normative) that you can tell someone about the issue and they can still not get it. Prejudice means preconception, and even the people who "know exactly what you mean" often do not have a clue what you mean when you are proposing a new paradigm. "Oh, I know it hurts, dear." It does hurt, but the point is not just that. The point is that it hurts AND that the dominant paradigm is bullshit. A lot of compassionate but misinformed people think that the best response they can give is to "help you adjust" despite your "shortcoming." The best response is for them, and you, to realize that you have no "shortcoming" in any a priori sense and to understand the supporting arguments for the position that you have no shortcoming in any a priori sense.

The Dead Things won the Cup 4-1. My rec league team is now 1-2. We are taking a week off to let them drain the arena, after which we will play six more "regular season" games followed by The Playoffs.

BTW, I thought I'd throw in some philosophy in accordance with the Blog description. I did a review of Baudrillard's Simulations for "First Person, Plural" (actually part of a "tandem" review, with P. doing a book by Ritzer). I will probably be doing a review of one of Derrida's works for one of the shows we are planning for July. So much for philosophy.

We played our first rec league game last night and lost 8-0. Still, the tenor of the game was friendly enough: I had half expected the other players to be bitter old failed jocks, and they weren't, at least not in spirit. Moreover, the rec centre had indicated that if the teams were unbalanced, they would share the wealth by making a few "trades" and evening things up, so our suffering will not be as protracted as certain teams I could name.

In unrelated news, Detroit tied up the Cup finals versus Carolina last night at one game each. I am frankly surprised that the Hurricanes won either of the first two games against the Red Army. Their roster strikes me as devoid of any stars, unless Ron Francis having been one five to ten years ago counts. I mentioned my bafflement to one of the other players on my rec league team, and he said that Carolina plays the dreaded Neutral Zone Trap to perfection. Maybe my team should try that.

Episode 1 of "First Person, Plural," our show on CFUV-FM, went off without a hitch last Thursday, May 9. Today we air Episode 2. We are also uploading additional "Coffee Shop" episodes (especially since we may not have the option later if Live365 gets nuked off the air by the U.S. federal government).

The weather is geting nicer here, slowly but surely. I have signed up to take part in a rec hockey league for players over the age of 35. The league is being conducted by the Oak Bay recreation department and begins in June. See you on the ice!

Lots of activity today. We aired a special hour-long episode of "Coffee Shop" all day long on our Live365 Internet radio station. We also heard the PSA re: CARP we had submitted on L365's special "Stinky Fish" protest/light pop station. We recorded a promo for our new show premiering on May 9 on CFUV-FM in Victoria, "First Person, Plural." Later in the day, Pattie cohosted the weekly "Women On Air" show, devoting the episode to CARP and related issues, including the CPCC. I recorded the broadcast from our home, and after I picked her up at the station, we listened to it together while sitting in the van alongside Dallas Road, looking across the water to Port Angeles and the mountains of the Olympic Peninsula.

Pattie and I walked to Beacon Hill Park from our apartment today.

The temperature felt like it was about 15 Celsius, and it was sunny the entire time we were outside. We stood on a stone bridge and watched a number of ducks practicing landing on a pond: they would take off, fly across the pond, and touch down on the surface of the water in a manner that allowed them to brake gradually and stop just before they reached the shore. Then we went to a coffee shop on Douglas near Belleville. Pattie had mocha, and I had cappuccino. Then we walked home. Pattie did a very good job of walking throughout. I was afraid her stamina might give out, but she held up nicely.

Hello!

In 1984 I wrote a song, about myself, that made me a cult hero in my dormitory. Performances of the song were obligatory at social events, and the song has survived all these years, destroying in its wake the composure of everyone who has heard it.

The Carl Wilkerson Fan Club Theme Song

Carl Wilkerson!
He’s the answer to our prayers.
He’s the only one who dares.
Carl Wilkerson!
To wrest the tyrants from their place,
To knock the usurpers on their face,
He’s come to save the human race.
Carl Wilkerson!

Carl Wilkerson!
He’s a man above reproach.
On all elitists he will encroach.
Carl Wilkerson!
With steely eyes and flaxen hair
He speaks the words no man will dare.
He’s come to save us from despair.
Carl Wilkerson!

Carl Wilkerson!
He’s the man with will so bold.
His mind is quick; his heart is gold.
Carl Wilkerson!
He wants to keep our thinking free
From pseudoaristocracy.
He’s come to save our liberty.
Carl Wilkerson!