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i attribute it to sheer laziness ...
It's dead?
Egad! Exams killed your blog!
Hope all's coming along well, sir. In fact, I'm sure they are.
Good journeys!
Technology IS art! And happy birthday!
I voted against Prop 1. And here's my central reasoning: First, you called it, in your first sentence, a "transit bill". It is not. It's a "roads & transit bill" and I think it's shady politics to couple two issues (with the largest pricetags of any tax-project in Seattle history) that are, in my view, too conveniently connected (i.e. politically as much as practically) to each other, and force voters to accept them both or none, ne'er the twain shall split. Now, I'll grant--in fact, I've been vocal about it since the day I drove into town--that Seattle has a huge infrastructure problem. But, frankly, I have almost ZERO confidence that adding 187 miles of new lanes & roads would even begin to soothe congestion. Adding more infrastructure does not make less traffic, it makes more. This is historical. A badger carcass draws a bunch of maggots. A buffalo carcass draws a billion. My uncle lived here for 11 years, moved away almost a decade ago--citing traffic as one of the very few frustrating things about living in Seattle. This ain't a new problem, & more lanes ain't gonna make it go away. When I drive about once a month to the airport, and it's 11:00 on Sunday night, and, almost invariably, I-5 is crowded--not just full, but really crowded--you'd be hard pressed to convince me that all those cars are out because of the poor infrastructure. That's a usage problem. Moreover--and this is important--have you noticed how shitty the condition of nearly EVERY ROAD in the area is, especially in-town Seattle? It's amazing! And we're going to pay a ton of money to build new ones, instead??? Now, I am bummed that this waylays a chunk of funding for the 520 bridge. That is important. Not to mention the--oh, golly--viaduct. Or the South Park bridge. Astounding. Neither the viaduct nor the So. Pk. bridge were included in this behemoth. Separate these issues, we'll have something to talk about.
Ultimately, my nay-vote had nothing to do with taxes, which is unfortunate because that's how our friendly politicos are reading the results (and, even more unfortunately, it's probably true, by and large): that people don't like more taxes. Pete's sake, I'm more than happy to pay more taxes. Just on smart plans. Hell, when I had my car, I was all set to pay huge car-tabs for the monorail. Nor is my position entirely "environmental" (I'm getting sicker & sicker of that word). On principle, my concerns are fundamentally ecological, though, of course. However, I'm excessively frustrated with the opponents of this bill who disparage it for not doing enough to "save the environment". No one should have expected that. We're way past that. My concerns are over the ways that this two-headed monster does nothing to help us live better as a part of this terribly rich ecosystem--this rainforest inside of which Seattle was built. It's just living better. I simply do not see how new roads help people live better. The Seattle metro area is crawling with (awful, crumbling) concrete surfaces. There is absolutely no reason to make more of the same. Improving transportation infrastructure by building more capacity has done nothing--in fact, it's only worsened conditions--to ease traffic woes since Eisenhower created the Interstate system. That's over 50 years of experience. We haven't learned a thing.
So, to respond to your last sentence, I'm not thinking about expecting everyone to drive less. I'm simply expecting it, and it has nothing to do with gas. Build a much more focused and thorough transit system first, fix the crap roads we've got, if we need to, and then look to new roads.
In the end, it's just embarrassing that a plan that took this much money & time to dream up & propose was this short-sighted. That's what drives me crazy about Seattle politics: not that we don't want to actually sacrifice, but that our politicians are, by and large, business-brained oafs who all drive to work. I take it your frustration hinges on the collective failure to sacrifice financially--i.e. someone like me pay taxes for roads I hardly use--but it's clear (see gas-prices) that money isn't much of a sacrifice for Seattlites. The actual sacrifice we can't seem to make is getting off-road.
At any rate, we gotta git together soon.
bah. "only love songs" ... as if there was anything better than a good song of love and loss and wordless yearning.
J-
Brief replies, tho I can't quibble too much because you are taking up issues that move the topic in other (no less productive) territories.
First, in terms of rereading: ESPN classic? Crunchtime videos? The Stanford game used in ads constantly? The Immaculate Reception? Granted, these are not what immediately come to mind when we talk about "sports" as a practice, but I think they reflect the fact that sports is a historical practice, that is, that like poetry and music, it has a TRADITION. Which is what enables both analysis and the ability to assign value. And while it is unproductive scholarship to place bets on an artist's next move, sometimes the most productive scholarship can be the retrospective tracing of an arc in a given artistic career, period, development, etc. (I can't help but quote _High Fidelity_ here: "I can tell you how I got from Deep Purple to Howling Wolf in just 25 moves.")
I have no beef with your politics point--I largely agree. Tho one could make some very interesting observations about the political function of, say, international football. But politics wasn't exactly my concern.
As for the aesthetics of the thing: this is where I disagree the strongest. Games attended, like books read, can be a marker of two things: either they can be a symbol of status or they can be the path to recognizing a beautiful game (or novel or album) when you see one. To be sure, marketing and much of the rhetoric surround the game may privilege the first, but they do not eliminate the reality of the second. [I've not read it, but wanted to check out the recent book _In Praise of Athletic Beauty_]
In sum, I'm not trying to indiscriminately lump sports and art. Instead, I'm trying to use sports to de-mystify some of our prejudices about art.
I like your point on literacy, Paul -- how we read and imagine, not only what.
One thing, tho: Universities make quite a profit from English, no? (Consider the deployment of composition curricula to high schools, as well as your salary-labor ratio.) What I'm assuming is that you are stressing the student (and not the institution). Nevertheless, I think a consideration of who profits (and how) is crucial to questions about canon formation, no?
Best,
-j
Predictably, I'm going to quibble with the sports-music comparison, primarily because of the speculative culture crucial to sports as an economy. From my vantage, people in musicology and literary studies re-listen and re-read quite more often than sport enthusiasts, who tend to look forward (and often bet accordingly). It would be unproductive scholarship to place bets on an author's or artist's next move. All the while, the stats-loving sports fan invests invariably in prediction.
Plus, my bet is that you would be hard-pressed to compare the politics of a movement (such as punk or Dada) with the politics of sports. True, "You're not punk, and I'm telling everyone" (for example) doesn't get anyone anywhere; however, punk as a set of political practices certainly does. Consequently, I still maintain dissatisfaction with punk as merely a consumer category or even an identity.
Now, if you were to transfer such a move to the sports fan (who is a dedicated fan and who is not), then you might have something to consider. Still, I think that move would be limited by sports as a set of consumer practices (e.g., number of games attended, stats memorized, and the like), which tend to override (and subsume) any sort of sports politics (let alone a sports aesthetic). Appeals to expertise always have to be consider how expertise is acquired, sustained, and circulated.
Or am I off chart?
Thanks, Paul.
-j
Paul,
Just got caught up on your blog. Really enjoy the intellectual stimulation. So well written!!