Boethius and Bowser

Yesterday, at the public library, grading short papers on St. Augustine's understanding of Original Sin (strangely, it has something to do with the molecular composition of Edenic semen), I found myself stopping every arcane paragraph or so because a middle-aged man sitting at the next carrel over was loudly playing Super Mario Bros. 3 on some new device--an Acer or Pad--and, for some reason, had chosen not to turn the sound down, thereby sending a cascade of coin-twinkles throughout the entire reading room every time his Italian-avatar jumped, boobeepishly, over a mushroom and onto a spinning piece of gold.



When this got egregious--as it did while he no doubt encountered, via pipe, an underground cache of life-giving bullion--I gestured to the air and sighed, muttering, "really, why is this allowed to continue," as if appealing to a cosmic jury. Unfortunately, God, or his twelve small-claims court sub-angels, declared a mistrial.

It is odd to me that this man didn't seem to have any public consideration at all. And it's odd that collecting coins gives you extra life in Super Mario Bros. 3.

"Are riches naturally precious, or are they precious because of some virtue of yours?" asked the character, Philosophy, in Boethius's The Consolation of Philosophy. "What is precious about them, the gold metal or the pile of money? [. . .] Riches are miserable and troublesome."

Philosophy might have been surprised to find that by the early 1990s, gold would actually have palliative powers for animated video game characters, giving to the player of those games, as I used to say, "Extra Guys."

I couldn't take the implications, or the noise. Rather than giving life, those video-riches were sapping mine.

So I stood up to approach the man, steeled myself for confrontation, but found that I just couldn't be the one to chastise him even though his behavior was really unsupportable. Returning to St. Augustine, I held my useless tongue. Just as the Bishop of Hippo predicted in the 5th Century, my free will was powerless in the face of sin and Super Mario.




And yet, for Boethius's character Philosophy, "nothing is miserable unless you think it so"; I, therefore, ate my granola bar, grew to twice my size, and stormed through that august stack of freshman papers, undaunted by the local man's considerable and vexatious skill.

Now, my dear Philosophy, spurred by that experience, I'm home. And I'm ready to count my blessings and my coins as I once-and-for-all defeat the offending Nintendo game, alone and silently. "How can glory be great that is severely limited by such narrow boundaries?" you ask. Good question. But for the next 45 minutes, I choose to ignore it.

Super-Hasty Best Of Movie Party List

I always want to do a best-of movie list at the end of each year and then cop-out because I also always want to wait until I've seen more, and then it's April by the time I've seen more, and more reviews loom, and such a list seems worn out. Enough of that! These are the 18 movies I saw in a theater in 2011, in order of greatness:

1. We Bought a Zoo

At one point, I had a tear tracking down my right cheek in the precise place that Matt Damon had a tear tracking down his right cheek. He is my favorite non-Pullman movie star. And this movie is so charming (Elle Fanning) and happy-sad (there's a devastating setting, but there are cute animals, kids, and Johanssons). My concerns that it's cheesy are overcome for now. And there is no Crowe-ish manic-pixie-dream-girl even though there easily could have been three.

No one really teaches anyone any lessons. Also, Lowell Mather.

1a. Midnight in Paris

I'm somewhat worried that I put a tear-jerker first and that, in the coming weeks, the immediate power will diminish (I saw WBaZ on New Year's Eve), so Midnight in Paris comes in at 1a. Its humor and its cleverness about nostalgia (and Salvador Dali) won't diminish. The only marks against it is that Rachel McAdams is too one-notedly mean, and, as in some Woody Allen movies, the characters don't necessarily have real human feelings. What's French for Human feelings are sometimes over-rated?

2. The Tree of Life

LACRIMOSA!

A see-by-yourself movie.

3. The Muppets

I'm a very manly muppet!

4. Moneyball

Constantly entertaining and funny. Brad Pitt is a great non-Pullman/Damon movie star. We have solid movie stars these days. They'll be looked on fondly, I think.

5. Captain America

Speaking of nostalgia, this is a movie set in the 40s which, like The Rocketeer, knows it's being schmaltzy about said-40s. Exciting and funny.

6. Rise of the Planet of the Apes

I enjoy it when I love movies that graduate-school-me has pre-decided he won't like. Ergo, I may go see Contraband with Mark Wahlberg. James Franco is a fabulous movie star. We have great movie stars these days.

7. Winnie the Pooh

Saw this at the drive-in and it was 56-minutes, catchy, and sweet as honey. Fantastic evening with Megan (despite the bottom of this list).

8. Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

I was 80 percent confused by this movie because whenever the phrase "double-agent" is uttered, I start to turn off a little bit. But every British-y detail made me envious of (and scared for) anyone who was in London in 1971. I dream of owning a giant red phone booth in which I can store my various cell-phone chargers.

Also, a dude duels an owl.


9. Bridesmaids

Funny, but I don't really understand what was so groundbreaking. Many of the jokes seemed to come from the same 14-year old boy's mind that's imagined most buddy comedies of the last decade. I'm cool with that brain.

10. Water for Elephants

Classy. Solid. Saw it in Nelsonville.

11. The Adjustment Bureau

Sharp. Semi-solid. Saw it in Nelsonville.

12. Rango

Imaginative. Draggy: I might think that because a little girl's light-up shoes and a little boy's terrible, sopping cough had me feeling a skosh uneasy. Saw it in Nelsonville.

13. Margin Call

A movie about stockbrokers making shady decisions. Not much else.

14. Super 8

This is so low because it was my biggest disappointment. The first half was so perfect and Elle Fanning is a great pre-Winnie Cooper, with all of the attendant middle-school charm. Then there are aliens and the people become much less important. Why? Why must there be unsustainable twists, J.J. Abrams?

15. Submarine

I thought I was liking this while I saw it, but I don't remember much. Maudlin standing in for edgy?

16. Buck

Good enough documentary about a horse-whisperer, but not a lot of conflict or purpose.

17. Cowboys and Aliens

This was the second half of the drive-in, Winnie-the-Pooh-begun double-feature. I thought it would be the perfect idiocy for such a setting, but it was a little more idiotic still, and I fell asleep.

Meanwhile, today I read the following in Elaine Pagels' Adam, Eve, and the Serpent:

"In Greek, the term 'Idiot' literally referred to a person concerned solely with personal or private matters instead of the public and social life of the larger community."

Cowboys and Aliens was not concerned with the larger community of the folks at the Skyview Drive-in in Lancaster, Ohio. On a scale of zero to five, I give it zero extraordinarily large milkshakes.

_______

UPDATE on my complete movie list: I finished the wikipedia scan and have found that I've seen approximately 1,011 movies that were released between the years 1896 and 2011, including the very enjoyable Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat (1896) and the very enjoyable Adventures of Tin Tin (2011), which I took in yesterday. I've seen no movies released in 1930, and I intend to remedy that swiftly in 2012.

The Muellers

As reported in the New York Times this morning, the baseball player Don Mueller died Wednesday at 84. This news made me think of two people: Bill Mueller and Don Miller.

First, the scoop on Don Mueller (pronounced Myooler). He's known for delivering a single right before Bobby Thomson hit The Shot Heard Round the World, which led the NY Giants to the pennant in 1951. Mueller, known as "Mandrake the Magician," had a way of directional hitting that made him difficult to retire. In that famous game, he singled past Gil Hodges, later injured himself sliding into third, and was taken off the field.

"Mueller was lying on the clubhouse table when he heard the crowd erupt. 'I couldn't be certain that it wasn't something good for the Dodgers because there were plenty of Brooklyn fans in that park [. . .] There was no radio in the clubhouse. But I knew pretty quickly what had happened once the players started to pour Champagne over my injured ankle."

Bill Mueller (pronounced Miller) meanwhile, is known for delivering a single up the middle for the Red Sox, sending Dave Roberts homeward in Game 4 of the epic 2004 ALCS.

Don Miller (pronounced Miller) is my mother's father. If we were Swedish, he would be known as Morfar--Rob Strong recently gave me this speech: "Your mother's mother is Mormor; your mother's father is Morfar; your father's mother is Farmor; and your father's father is Farfar."

Don Miller was not Swedish, so I called him Grandpadon, which sounds like a really sweet dinosaur.

When Don Mueller hit his single in 1951, my mom was 25 days old and Don Miller was 32 years old. Bill Mueller was 33 years old when he delivered his single. My own Far, Robert, is 60 and once hit a homerun in Hadley, but this might have been a tale he told me when I was little. Little is known about whether he ever had Champagne poured on him. Dave Roberts once pointed at me on Boylston Street after the 2004 World Series while I was reverently shouting his name.



Little is known about whether Don Miller ever singled or homered or drank champagne. He did break his pinky playing basketball in Hadley, leading to an amputation, but this might have been a tale he told me when I was little. And he did like whiskey sours.

He, like me, was color-blind.

John Ruskin was not color-blind. The greatest art critic of the 19th Century, he often studied the work of J.M.W. Turner. My Mor's initials are J.M.W. (Jean Miller [not pronounced myooler] Wanczyk).

Ruskin said this about art:

"Now, I want a definition of art wide enough to include all its varieties of aim. I do not say, therefore, that the art is the greatest which gives most pleasure, because perhaps there is some art whose end is to teach, and not to please. I do not say that the art is greatest which teaches us most, because perhaps there is some art whose end is to please, and not to teach. I do not say that the art is the greatest which imitates best, because perhaps there is some art whose end is to create and not to imitate. But I say that the art is greatest which conveys to the mind of the spectator, by any means whatsoever, the greatest number of the greatest ideas[.]"

By no means are my Mueller/Miller ideas great, but the thing which brings to mind the greatest number of ideas for me is the New York Times. Is it art? Probably not. But it helps me sink into pattern-making of a Saturday morning, and that is my favorite pastime.

So, thanks to my Mor and my Far, who bought me a home delivery subscription to The Grey Lady, I read for awhile this morning, reconsidered my Morfar and my Mueller, and had a way to pleasantly bandy with the one-page of Ruskin I read on the toilet.

English Interlude - An Epitaph, Now with Puns

As regular readers know (hey dad!), I've been pulling pieces of paper out of my Milwaukee Brewers hat and those pieces of paper have been telling me what part of the British Canon I need to read next--that meant I spent much of my holiday season thinking about World War I.

Well, I finished Vol. F and felt triumphant, then a little perplexed, then mildly lonely, ecstatic, persnickety, peckish, and finally inspired to cut up more prophetic little slips of paper. So I now have a couple dozen in that old hat, each corresponding to a piece of literature from Volume E (The Victorian Age).

Today I read some Ernest Dowson (1867-1900)--who seems to have coined the phrase "days of wine and roses," and I also took in a spot of William Ernest Henley (1849-1903), who wrote a poem called "Invictus." There was a footnote on the title that suggested that "Invictus" meant "medicated bandages." Hmm, I thought, audibly, and then spent a couple seconds figuring out how the movie Invictus, which I have not seen, could have possibly been about medicated bandages.



Maybe that Rugby team of Matt Damon's was like a medicated bandage for South Africa. Yeah, that's it. I was satisfied.

Of course, as my eight years of Latin (and my toddler's logic) should have made clear to me, "Invictus" means "Unconquered." I'd mixed up the footnotes (Henley's poem "In Hospital," situated above, references "Plasters").

That's the most interesting thing I can think of to write about Henley, who is troublingly jingoistic. I'm troubled by troublingly jingoistic British poems (cf. my late immersion in World War I literature).

N.B.: Two other things I learned today which my eight years of Latin should have made clear to me. 1) I.e. means id est, "that is." 2) Cf. comes from conferre, and means "bring together." (I already knew what N.B. means).

Dowson and Henley having been consumed, I turned to Michael Field, who I assumed to be a straightforward, straight-laced Victorian poet writing about work/god/godlessness/fairies and the like. Turns out "Michael Field" was two women--Katherine Harris Bradley and Edith Emma Cooper (1846-1914; 1862-1913). Ironic enough? Not in the least. These pseudonyminous ladies, who were also romantically attached, were more than pseudo-related! Finding out about this aunt-niece pair shocked me into reading all of their poems.

They insist that they will never be ones "to take heed" of judgment. They want to continually dwell with those who are "Indifferent to heaven and hell."

Even wearing my aesthete, continental, moral-relativist hat, my best analysis of their poetic arrangement is still "ick."

After I considered these relations, I moved to a heavy hitter--Christina Rossetti.



Rossetti's poem "Song" could fit on a gravestone or come out of the mouth of a sedated Fozzy Bear. Such is the moroseness. Such are the puns:

"When I am dead, my dearest,
Sing no sad songs for me;
Plant thou no roses at my head,
Nor shady cypress tree:
Be the green grass above me
With showers and dewdrops wet;
And if thou wilt, remember,
And if thou wilt, forget.

I shall not see the shadows,
I shall not feel the rain;
I shall not hear the nightingale
Sing on, as if in pain:
And dreaming
through the twilight
That doth not rise nor set,
Haply I may remember,
And haply may forget."

"Wilt" in the first stanza makes us think of the green grass just above it but also of the archaic "will," and perhaps even "will it." It seems like the speaker wants to leave her beloved with two messages: 1) be comforted by forgetting me; 2) don't you dare forget me. 1) Be as natural as the grass, and happy. 2) Be so obsessed with me, and grief-stricken, that you become the grass above my grave.

The second stanza turns on "haply," which I can't help reading "happily." But, literally, the last two lines mean "maybe at the point of death I'll have enough left to think about you and my life, and maybe I won't." But with the pun, that double-message of the first stanza seems to resonate. The speaker seems worried that she will have consciousness and worried that she won't at the same time.

You can still be you, offers death. Only, you'll be dying and then in the ground.

Or, you can be absolutely nothing, no one will remember you, and/but/so you won't even know any better.

Both would have their happinesses, Rossetti seems to suggest, with the help of some wordplay. Wokka, Wokka, Wokka!

(This reminds me of Thomas Hardy's poem, "Ah, Are You Digging on My Grave?")

Meanwhile, CR got quite a little bit happier in her poem "A Birthday," during which her "heart is gladder [. . . / ] Because my love is come to me."

The following is just a terrific evocation of loveuphoria, and I can sense Rossetti about to burst into a musical number as she writes (The British are always sitting at a desk on the left side of my imagination, windows at the right, and it's always 11am).

Despite what follows, Rossetti never married, having turned down two proposals for religious reasons. Still, one day when she was around 27, she felt like this:

"Raise me a dais of silk and down;
Hang it with vair and purple dyes;
Carve it in doves and pomegranates,
And peacocks with a hundred eyes;
Work it in gold and silver grapes,
In leaves and silver fleurs-de-lys;
Because the birthday of my life
Is come, my love is come to me."

Bullish on Analogies

While I was preparing my essay today, I got involved in a lengthy back-and-forth with Rob Strong--who has an Economics degree--about Economics. As is often the case, this diversion seemed more interesting to me than what I was straining to work on. So, if you'd kindly wait until tomorrow to see the fruits of that daily strain, and to see further mixed metaphors, I'd be much obliged.

In that strained fruit's stead, I present. . . "Strong and Wanczyk Discuss Investing and Develop Ludicrous and then Incrementally Less-Ludicrous Analogies about Same" (brought to you by Maybelline: "Maybe She's Born with It. Maybe It's Maybelline.")



For a number of years, Rob has been developing a theory that the stock market cannot be intelligently navigated by an individual lay-investor. He believes, correctly, that there are many millionaires who have already outsmarted said lay-investor, that those people-bots have thought, 100 times, whatever clever thing the lay-investor has thought before the lay-investor gets out of his PJs.

But he also believes, perhaps incorrectly, that knowledge is essentially useless for the lay-investor in this context.

One of the great things about this discussion is that neither of us necessarily cares about it. And so it's perfect ground on which to construct analogies. The discussion becomes about whose analogy illustrates the debate more than it is about who's right.

Today, he began his argument with a forward of an article by the very tall libertarian Megan McArdle, a section of which I include here:

(Photo Credit: the awesomely-named David Shankbone)

". . .I am rather skeptical [that] specially clever investment allocations are really possible. We can argue about whether Warren Buffett's results are random chance or inherent genius, but here's one question we probably aren't going to argue about: neither you or I (or almost anyone else) is Warren Buffett."

Rob Strong:

"What I've been saying! (The bit about the impossibility of outguessing the market, that is.)"

Dave Wanczyk:

"I still think someone like me--who's minorly knowledgeable--could probably do better at investing than a dog could. I read this whole article. Please give me a treat."

Rob Strong:

"You know a lot more about roulette than a dog does, but neither of you can calculate the ball's trajectory on the fly. In the meantime, ten thousand millionaires wake up at 5:00 am every day and do nothing but look at balls. "

Dave Wanczyk:

"On the roulette analogy:

Dogs don't know any numbers. So I have a much better chance to win at Roulette than a dog. Just as I could probably make more money by investing in Apple than a dog could if he stepped on a button that indicated Taco Bell or Acer or Enron. He might step on Berkshire Hathaway. Good dog.

(This image will only appear on this blog when I am explicitly discussing canine-gambling).

The millionaires can't guess Roulette's results either. They have more balls perhaps. But unless the house always loses, or always wins, there's still a reason to know marginally more than not.

Entertaining but confusing analogy.

Meanwhile, many people know more about everything than I do, and though you make a provocative and useful point, I think it's hasty to say that I can't be somewhat successful by getting an edge on most people.

If the fix is in, it's in. Assuming the market's not fixed, I'd like to offer another analogy:

1) Adam Schecter [sic] knows much more about football than I do. (Aside: He's also an unbearable ass). But unless there's a deep conspiracy, he doesn't always predict the outcome. 2) I know more about football than my mom. 3) Adam Schecter will predict that the Packers will win. So will I. The Packers will win. 4) My mom believes the Bears are good because the last time she heard about them--1986--they were winning the Super Bowl.

So, if we all put our money in to a bookie, I do well on this bet. Companies are not sports, of course. Things are baked in that I don't know about that favor the Schecters. But, again, unless you're willing to say that the stock market is a total cheat, knowing more always helps.

An effective analogy you might employ: say I attempt to beat Gary Kasparov at chess. It doesn't matter how much I learn. He's going to beat me every time.


However, when I invest, I'm not always playing against G.K. Chessterton (there it is Homer, the cleverest thing you've ever said, and only Rob was around to hear it). I may be investing with Gary Kasparov. So, if I learn The Amazon Gambit, for instance, we will both defeat the investor who's still caught up on The Snackwell's Defense.

The fact that I may be making money at the expense of others is a separate concern. Believe me, I have considered withdrawing my funds on account of the recent Occupy (un)pleasantness. However, I also don't know enough to ultimately decry our brand of capitalism.

Enjoyable discourse."

Rob Strong:

"I love this discussion.

Why does the dog need to recognize numbers at all? He could bet red (or 33) all night and statistically tie every strategy you would devise to beat him.

[Note from Wanczyk: See a forum on dogs in casinos here].

As regards your football analogy: picking the winner of a football game is like picking the winner of, say, global profits. It's just a fact that one company will have the most profits in a given year, and while your mom might have great affection for Chevrolet, people who are paid to know about stocks will know with a high degree of certainty that Exxon will make more profits this year. Your mom uncontroversially loses this wager.



But investing in the stock market is more like wagering on the point spread. You mom picks the Bears for historical reasons, or even based on the color of their jerseys, and she'll win her bet about half the time. Adam Schefter [not sic], with all his expertise, loses his point-spread bets about half the time (I assume). Nobody beats the spread (in the long run), because like the price of a publicly traded stock, it is a product of the hive mind, the Market. In both cases, experts spend their waking hours devoted to figuring out the correct price (or spread), and if the Market disagrees with them, the price/spread will tend to correct towards the "true" value."

[Note from Wanczyk: Rob seems to be putting his faith in experts and in the hive mind. Do the experts beat the hive mind? Schefter doesn't beat the spread].

Dave Wanczyk:

"We have come to a very useful analogy. I think it's still possible, however, to have some sense of what the hive mind will do by knowing more about the hive mind and the hive mind's(') foci.

Say the spread on the Packers-Bears is 10 points in the Packers' favor. Everyone knows the Packers are good. But I've noticed that they will be particularly good against the Bears' passing defense. I assume that most others haven't noticed this, or haven't noticed it enough.

Similarly, Apple is set to sell many IPads. That has helped determine the price of Apple stock. But I believe the Indian economy won't be as bad as the hive mind thinks, so I predict, because of my knowledge, that even more IPads will be sold in India, and the stock will outperform.

I won't beat the spread every time. Apple won't sell more IPads every time.

But that's why they play the game."

Rob Strong:

"But here's the thing: most others have noticed these things about iPads and India, because it's their job to do that. You might happen to be right on any individual bet, but over the course of a year, you will not be right more often than the South Asia Consumer Tech Markets analyst at Goldman Sachs, or the one at Merrill Lynch, or Credit Suisse, and the three dozen at whatever the big Indian bank is.




You might flip 100 coins this year, and get 53 heads, and think that you're really good at flipping coins and that you've earned a 6-head return on your coin flippery. This is a false inference. Next year you will flip 46 heads, and you will blame the Greek public sector for your woes, and you will also be wrong then.

The people who constitute the hive mind also have people who are paid to know about how the hive mind thinks. And those people have computers that respond to hive-movements faster than you can click "confirm trade". "

There's no free lunch, there's no hundred dollar bill on the sidewalk, and there is no slack in the stock market left for non-expert individuals to pick up. (The slack was picked up at 9:30:01 AM by a computer in suburban Connecticut). Any gains from specific trades should be attributed to good fortune and a generally-rising market, no matter what story someone tells himself about how he outsmarted the world."

Dave Wanczyk:

[Then proceeded to offer further analogies about surfing, carnival-barkers, chess (again), and, finally, ITunes. Suggested that he had both won and lost the argument. Realized, as it got dark outside the Athens Public Library, that he spent his day this way instead of analyzing Pork Belly Futures. Rejoiced].

Postales del Fin de Mundo

On Monday, Zokeler, Megan and I had an End of the World Dinner. We weren't influenced by Mayans or Nostradamus or Y2K12, but by a coincidence of alcohol. Seeking the evening's spirits, I saw La Fin Du Monde, a Quebecois beer Megan likes, over at Village Bakery, and then we remembered that we'd previously had a wine called Postales del Fin de Mundo, Postcards from the End of the World.



I asked the cashier what she thought "end of the world food" could be and that conversation got me started. We had a brick of frozen smoked bacon left over from Zokeler's last visit that I wanted to get rid of, and I figured saffron, the spice that once caused "The Saffron War," should be in an apocalyptic meal. Typing in "Smoked Bacon AND Saffron," I found a recipe from the restaurant Per Se (check the headline in the link to see that this was an auspicious stumbling-upon).

After a couple hours and a half-dozen explosions, we ate Lobster Corn Chowder (with pollock, the middle class man's lobster, substituting for the clawed thing--even if the world was ending, I didn't see any reason not to save 16 bucks). The soup was pretty delicious, an A, but nothing to send a postcard from the end of the world home about, per se.

We woke up the next day, thankfully, and ate even more smoked bacon. And that diligence, I think, fully justifies this posted card.

Zany Weather Report

Zany accu-weather Meteorologist Joe Plicka here to tell you that it's 64 degrees and sunny in Athens. Appalachia'll be dreaming of a muddy Christmas. That's it from here. From mine to yours, Happy Holidays.


This is Newschannel True: Count on the Truth.