Nostalgia Chronicles Part 2: Super Mex Cantina

Continuing my series on nostalgia, which for me is a feeling akin to a flashback, only packed with emotion and often consisting of highly condensed time, I thought I might speak about a place that was near and dear to my heart, rather than a piece of intellectual property. That place is Super Mex, a Mexican restaurant and bar at Sunset and Pecos in the city of Las Vegas. I say that the place “is” Super Mex because, even though it has been re-worked by the owner and is no longer known by that name, the memory and reality of it as Super Mex is still clear in my mind, as if I had eaten there last night.

Las Vegas, Land of Late Night Tacos

One of the best things (or worst things, depending on your perspective) about living in Las Vegas (or visiting, for that matter) is the fact that you can get anything your heart desires, at virtually any time of day or night. This includes food, booze, gambling, karaoke, ice cream, donuts, groceries of virtually any variety, drugs, prostitutes, guns, and ammunition. You can also go to the gym, doctor, or even tanning salon at 3 AM. This doesn’t mean one has to indulge in all these things while in Vegas, just that one can at any time. This produces what I like to call “Vegas Time,” which is the inevitable turning of one’s schedule so that waking occurs at 2 PM and sleeping begins at sunrise. My main indulgence was tacos and diet coke, with the occasional order of pancakes and a glass of tequila thrown in for good measure, and my preferred time to indulge was between 1 and 3 AM.

When I was first considering moving to Las Vegas, I would visit a few of my friends, and at night we would go looking for new places to eat. If that seems like a boring thing to do in Vegas, well… I find slot machines and strip clubs boring, and only one of those is a lie. New food is like a small adventure, full of excitement, risk, and great reward. That is a good attitude to have, and one that in no way explains the fact that once my friends and I found Super Mex we went there three times a week for two and a half years. It also doesn’t explain why we always ordered the same thing (except for pancakes, as I said – those were the best in Vegas), which was delightful concoction they called “Tacos Tijuana.”

Tacos Tijuana: Slayer of Gains

The first time I ate at Super Mex with Matt (my roommate at the time and still one of my best friends), it was a fairly traditional dining experience, and we ate at a fairly traditional hour. I had a torta. It was decent. The second time was like the first, but only because Super Mex was the only decent Mexican food place in south-east Vegas that I felt like wasn’t going to give me salmonella or e-coli. I had milanesa (basically Mexican chicken-fried steak). It was surprisingly good.

The next time we went in, it was well after midnight. Technically, the dining room is open 24 hours, but it was deserted in there and felt odd- kind of like going into a restaurant after the apocalypse, so we ate at the bar. A bartender named Julie (a short, lithe brunette, and surprisingly attractive despite a scar on her upper lip) working the deserted second half of the restaurant suggested the now infamous tacos. She had a smoking habit and always seemed to be lighting up next to the “no smoking” signs, but she didn’t charge us for diet coke and the tacos were pretty smashing good.

What are Tacos Tijuana? There a set of three, massive soft corn tacos loaded with carne asada, chorizo (the greasiest available, by God), pico do gallo, topped with “queso fresco” (basically cottage cheese without the general grossness of such), and served with guacamole. Healthy, no, but more satisfying meal I cannot imagine. They became a habit over the next two years, and as Matt and I took up a serious weightlifting routine they became a frequent after-work out meal, usually eaten well after midnight. They were probably not the best choice to follow an hour of lifting, but squats have a way of driving hunger into a man, and they were but seven dollars. Combine that with the free diet coke and it’s a hard bargain even for a pauper to pass up.

Kelly- Your Friendly Neighborhood Sports Gambler

After a while, Matt and I made friends with one of the graveyard bartenders named Kelly, a stout Irish with a mouth like a sailor and an always running line of massive sports bets. I knew he’d end up being a friend when I forgot my debit card at the bar one night. I didn’t realize until the next day, but I was able to get it back the next night – and order tacos with it. For any interested parties, one sure way to earn my trust is to not steal the last fifty dollars from my bank account if I leave my card with you.

Kelly was the man when it came to sports. He would tell you who sucked, why, and by how much, because chances are he’d made money on his opinions. Either that or he had lost a ton of money, and that makes certain opinions as well. A fan-boy he was not, unless it was money you were talking about; he never cared to bet for teams he liked, a lesson more people should learn. I always wondered why he kept the bar job. Maybe he needed a w-2 for tax liability. Maybe he lost more than he care to admit.

Kelly had an affinity for bourbon, a favored drink I had the pleasure of sharing more a few times with him, and he was always generous with the tequilas I would drink at the bar, and of course the diet coke (the restaurant actually served Pepsi, but it’s all diet coke to me). The amount of diet soda he served me would probably feed a family of four for a year, except not at all because it is zero calories and I wanted to make an analogy that didn’t involve swimming pools.

Besides bourbon, the only thing I remember him drinking was tea, but not the restaurant’s tea. Instead, he drank instant tea that he brought into bar. I don’t remember why exactly; maybe it was the caffeine.

The Demise of Super Mex

I found out awhile back that the restaurant I had known as Super Mex had departed, in a sense. The Super Mex franchise had been discarded, and the place had been re-worked as something else. I know that sort of thing happens with restaurants, but it doesn’t work that way in my mind or memory. To me, even though I’ve been gone awhile, Super Mex is still there, like I just had an order of tacos and drank three gallons of diet coke, and I am rushing home with Matt to use the bathroom and try to get into bed before sun was up.

I could see myself driving up to the parking lot, filled with police taking their meal break at 3 AM, tired from a work-out at Gold’s Gym on Flamingo (the best gym in the world, now also gone away). We walk inside to hear jukebox playing 90s music of its own accord, and pull up the bar between poker machines, since we never gambled. There’s a weird boar’s head on the wall behind us, which I never found out the story to, and the tacos are on the counter before we even order them. They taste great, but they always come out a bit small when you put both orders in at the same time. I don’t think I’ll ever get to eat there again. It's sad to me, even though I can remember it like a waking dream.

If I ever make it back to Vegas I’ll probably avoid whatever the place is now. Super Mex exists in my mind like a reality, and that would kill it.

That’s nostalgia for you.

Man! Why is the sound so bad at this concert!

A veteran’s insight into live amplified sound.

“Man, that band would have been amazing if it weren’t for the awful sound!” I said as the house lights went up and the band known as Holy Grail, along with what few people constituted their road crew, began hastily clearing their gear away for the next act.

“I know, all I could hear was bass drum,” Matt said, pulling his ear plugs out.

“If you go in the bathroom you can actually hear the guitar,” Ron said, sipping his bass pale ale. It was our last beer of the night before the headliners, Blind Guardian, were set to take to take the stage in a club in Tempe. We had driven some seven hours from Las Vegas to catch them on their American tour, a rarer appearance for the old German power metal band as time went on. On the drive back, I would feel sick, blaming it on that last beer, which I admit tasted a bit funny.

“It’s a pretty awful thing to say that I can’t hear the guitar in a power metal band,” I said. “And the funny thing is, I can see what they were playing; I know it was hard to play.”

“I guess we’ll have to imagine the sound of shredding,” Ron said.

After a short wait, the lights dimmed back down and the intro track started for Blind Guardian, a long orchestral affair. The stage lights went up and – holy crap! – we could hear the guitar. Marcus Siepen and Andre Olbrich played their separate and intricate parts with crystal clarity. The drums rumbled, with the bass drums giving out a perfect, chest-thumping kick. The bass had tone! You could hear the keyboards perfectly balanced on top of the mix. Then Hansi Kursch started singing, and it was crisp and dynamic. The band dropped into a softer section, and I realized I had forgotten to put my ear plugs back in. For anyone who frequents heavy metal shows, you know that such experiences are rare ones.

The whole show was like that. Dynamic and powerful. Soft songs were soft and clear. Loud aggressive tracks chugged forward with clarity. The concert went from being a tolerable experience to a truly great one. What was the cause of this rift? The sound, specifically, the way the sound was run through the P.A. A well-run sound board can mean the difference between hearing nothing with bleeding ears and hearing everything without plugs – from a heavy metal band, no less.

If you want to check out either of these bands and get a perspective on what I’m talking about, here are a few links (I believe these are actually the first songs each of these bands played live):

Blind Guardian: http://youtu.be/CFZ_Uyqbr4k

Holy Grail: http://youtu.be/0BE1RwR81dc

That concert was a great example of lots of things with live sound. Who is responsible for greatness and failures in that department? The blame usually lands on the “sound guy,” that is, the technician that is managing all the volume levels coming out of the P.A. or house speakers. That’s true for the most part. There’s a lot more to it than just the board though, and the band, along with every piece of equipment that gets toted from gig to gig, is usually responsible for at least part of a failure when it comes to amplified sound. I’d like to talk about some of those reasons.

Before I begin, I should tell you that I’ve been performing music most of my life. As an adult, I’ve performed lots of amplified music on many kinds of instruments in far too many venues to even list. Just as much, I’ve been a member of the audience for musicians that I love. I’ve also been “the sound guy” for lots of other gigs, and I have experience as a recording engineer. These days I’m usually not a good choice for those later two due to my hearing loss, but I’ve learned a lot by filling all those different roles.

The Room

The most overlooked, and yet still most important, aspect of any gig is the room in which it is being played. The acoustics of the room, its tendencies to amplify and reflect certain frequencies and its tendencies to dampen others, makes the biggest difference when trying to create an adequate sound environment. Where you are standing as a listener can have a huge impact on your perception of the concert. Stand close, and you may get blasted. Stand in the back, and you may miss something. Or, as in the above example, you stand in the bathroom and hear something inaudible otherwise.

This is why sound booths are usually placed center stage at the back of the venue, where all the tendencies of the room (or outdoor venue, if that is the case) can be more or less heard and accounted for. A good acoustic space will produce similar experiences throughout the room, a poor one will be full of bass traps and hard surfaces, distorting what the audience hears. The amount of people in attendance can affect the sound too, as the human body acts like a big treble dampener when the crowd is packed in. Many times sound checks are done on an empty room, and when the place is packed things can sound very different.

A good technician will be able to make adjustments depending on what the venue is doing on a particular night and what they hear from the band. I’ve met a few bad sound technicians that will refuse to adjust levels in any event, claiming that they’ve already figured out the best levels. These are usually people that work the same venue every night, and though you would think they have the room figured out, every band sounds different and requires some different treatment to sound good coming out of the P.A.

Sometimes, a venue is just an all-around bad choice for a concert, and very little can be done to improve the sound. Stadiums and arenas were built for sports teams, not concerts, so nobody should be surprised at a poor acoustic experience at such venues.

The Band

This is the next big variable. If you are traveling with the same band for weeks, doing the same sets over and over it isn’t such an unknown (though there are always little things that change night to night, like a hoarse singer), but for most gigs you have a sound team that is local, or is at least somewhat different than the night before. Figuring out how to make a band sound good is sometimes a puzzle, but can be accomplished easily with a solid sound check and some adjustments as the night goes on.

The band can also affect the sound outcome negatively in some ways they themselves may not be fully aware of. In the above example, the opening act, Holy Grail, was playing on stage with traditional amplifier rigs. In a heavy metal band this usually consists of very loud half or full stacks (guitar and bass amplifiers with one or two cabs filled with four speakers each) placed next to or behind the drummer, facing out toward the audience. In the old days these were more necessary, as P.A. systems often lacked the power and clarity to handle much more than vocals, and venues were small. Now they are less necessary. This detail is important because, although we in the audience could not hear the guitar players much at all, they likely could hear themselves loud and clear. They were not aware that they sounded bad.

Bands also can ruin their own sound by making demands about their sound from the stage, where they cannot accurately hear the P.A. They can also play differently than they did at the sound check (you would be surprised how much this happens – bands turning up their amps, singing louder, or using their microphones differently). They may also not have an idea of what they want their amplified sound to be like, just assuming that the technician will know what to do. The person at the board might just assume they want everything bass-heavy and loud when what the band wants to be heard is the high-end of the bass and the sound of the hi-hat. The band must communicate what they want.

Lastly, their equipment might not be set up to be easily compatible with their sound system. Direct inputs for bass and keyboards can be distorted without the proper knowledge for patching in, and the microphones for acoustic instruments may be something unfamiliar to the musicians if they did not bring their own. All of these things are the band’s responsibility.

The System

The sound system at a venue can have a big impact on your experience as a listener as well. A sound system might be geared toward a certain type of music that frequents that location, and you may be listening to a different genre. Monitor systems may give the band a different impression of the sound than what comes out of the main speakers. The P.A. may be too big or too small for the genre you are listening to, making a jazz band sound over-loud or too bass-heavy, or making a heavy metal band sound like static. Big subwoofers work for rap, but sound far too boomy for folk music.

The “Sound Guy”

Though it may seem like I spent the last thousand words trying to shift the blame for bad sound away from the technician, ultimately it is their responsibility to run their equipment optimally during a concert.

This failing comes in several varieties.

The union guy. I’ve been to a few shows (and played in a few more) where the technician running sound got the job based on seniority; even non-union venues will often hand jobs to the people who have been around the longest. Needless to say, with age does not necessarily come wisdom, much less skill. I’ve dealt with older techs that are deafer than me, which is really saying something. You can usually tell if this is the case when there is a screeching amount of treble, even from the booth, as those frequencies are typically where most people lose their hearing. This isn’t to say all union guys are deaf or bad at their job (in fact, most are quite good at what they do), just that they are out there and you get them from time to time

The rock/pop show guy. You will find this particular kind of tech running sound at a gig of a different style, say jazz or an acoustic guitar-based group, and generally bringing over habits and assumptions from the other side. Audiences at rock concerts or clubs generally like things really loud, with the bass booming, and rock show guy will give you just that, even if the current act is a jazz trio. If you find yourself plugging your ears at an unplugged concert you usually have this sort of tech. He might also like to pump up the reverb effects for an indoor event, or make acoustic instruments like horns overly dry because he’s used to guitar coming in drowned in reverb from the amp.

The vengeful sound guy. This the tech that gets angry over a band making certain requests, and chooses to exact his revenge by making the show sound awful for everyone present. Any number of small things can set him off, such as a drummer repositioning his mics so that he doesn’t hit them while he plays. If you’ve ever heard a musician declare that you should be nice to the sound guy, chances are they’ve med the vengeful type and fear them.

The sound guy who just doesn’t care. This probably most of your bad sound experiences right here. It’s an opening act. Who cares? Eh, so what if that mic doesn’t work, you can hear the cab from the stage anyway. Hey man, can you watch the board? I’m gonna go get a drink. Just pull back this slider here if you get some feedback. What more can you expect from a PA salesman from Guitar Center that was asked to run sound for his buddy in a local band?

Blind Guardian and Holy Grail- Why Such Difference?

Revisiting the two metal acts I saw with my friends, I can tell you why they sounded so radically different in the same room with the same PA only minutes apart:

1. The Band. Blind guardian is a group of very experienced and legitimately good musicians. They have been touring for nigh on thirty years and understand how to adapt to situations better than their young and still inexperienced openers.

2. Equipment. Blind guardian actually played with no monitors or amplifiers on stage with them. All of the amplification and processing was done off of stage left in well-organized road racks. Isolation cabinets were used to perfect the sound. All five of them used in-ear monitors, which deadened some of the loudness of the drums on stage and allowed them to play with good balance. Holy Grail, by contrast had their cabs on stage, and was using angled monitors to hear themselves.

3. The sound guy. Blind Guardian travelled with their own sound tech who was familiar with how to run their show, but the opening acts that travelled with them had to use in-house sound techs. The person running the board for Holy Grail was likely not as competent or did not understand what the desired sound for a metal band was, as shown by the booming, muddy bass and total lack of guitar in the mix.

There you have it! I hope you have found it informative. Feel free to leave me any more article suggestions.

Discrimination: Rights and Consequences

There has been a great deal of jabs thrown about a bill recently passed by the Arizona state legislature that is intended to protect freedom of religion or enshrine discrimination against gays, depending on your position. The bill, called “SB1062” (or AB 1062, the assembly version) in the typical fashion of laws, is short by most legislative statutes and attempts to expand the state’s definition of free exercise of religion to include economic activities, or more specifically, the denial thereof. Though no specific mention of LGBT categories of persons are made, both proponents and opponents of the law have made mention of it. The law may be found here:

http://www.azleg.gov/legtext/51leg/2r/bills/sb1062p.pdf

The bill may be partially in reaction to a recent New Mexico supreme court case that upheld a lawsuit against a wedding photographer who refused to photograph a gay wedding, citing religious objections. The law being argued over was the New Mexico Constitution’s Human Rights Act, which extends equal protection of law to those who are not heterosexual. For more information on this case, I suggest checking out an article from last year by Doug Mataconis, and includes many sides to the court’s opinion:

http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/court-holds-that-wedding-photographer-cannot-refuse-service-to-gay-couples/

He is somewhat wrong on one claim, which is that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was necessary to end private discrimination in the south; the truth is that Jim Crow laws created legal mandates for discrimination on the part of private entities. It was illegal to not discriminate. The Civil Rights Act was a monolithic way of paving over those old racist laws. Undoubtedly, some private discrimination would have continued had the laws been discarded some other way, but the fact remains that the bulk of discrimination occurred through government, not in spite of it.

Elane Photography vs. Vanessa Willcock, along with the Arizona law that is partially in reaction to it, is interesting and contentious across a wide array of rights and legalities. This article will attempt to disassemble some of the ethical, philosophical, and cultural issues that surround it and gay discrimination in general. One issue in particular this is being omitted is the de facto equation that the New Mexico Supreme Court made between the statuses of race and sexual orientation. Just how things are equal or not equal requires a bit more analysis, of perhaps a more controversial nature, than is desirable for this article.

I. How Far Do Religious Rights Go?

In a practical sense, there are always limits to the practice of religion in a society whether free or politicized. People do not have exceptions to written or common law simply because they can claim to follow a religion that contraindicates the directives of society. Very few people would argue the right to murder or steal by virtue of religious law, and there are plenty of modern examples of the limitation of religious action. Sharia dictates within small Muslim communities in the United States and Europe are examples of these staunch limitations. Philosophically, most of these limitations occur along one lines: the non-aggression principle, which prohibits assaults and theft. Really, the right to practice one’s religion is limited to the voluntary actions you take as part of it.

What is interesting about Elane vs. Willcock is that the argument does not occur along lines of action, for Elane Photography was initiating no force or enacting no theft, but along a line of inaction, the refusal to render services. In this case neither party suffered damages per se, but damages were civil and to society. Elane Photography refused to photograph the gay wedding and gave a reason in a religious objection, which is where most of the focus has been. According to the court, religious rights do not include the right of refusal once you enter the marketplace. I contend that the religious argument confuses and obscures the real argument, which is about economic, not religious, freedom.

II. Voluntary and Involuntary Transactions

The economic liberty at stake with the Elane  case is a fundamental one, which is the right to sell your services to who you desire. This is a right that is not specifically protected in the US constitution, though I argue there are many rights left out of that particular document, and yet you will frequently see signs proclaiming the right (usually inside gas station snack stops). The right to conduct business with who you see fit is a right so fundamental, so sacred, that it is almost never referred to in written law. More than 800 years of common law support this right, and you legally cannot take a person to court for refusing to give you something in a trade that they don’t like. This, as stated above, is the right of refusal, the liberty to refuse to sell your services or property, which are one and the same.

This right might not be specifically stated, but it is inferred in the US constitution via the specific exceptions to the right mentioned in the text. One is imminent domain, when the government forces you to sell your property to them for their use (public use has been a hot issue in the last few years because of the decision of Kelo vs City of New London,  but this article is too brief to deal with the abuse of this government power). In this case, they must pay just compensation, or market value. The other exception in the constitution is the selected services, or the draft, which applies only to males and does not  pay you market value for services you might otherwise be generating if you weren't forced to serve in the armed forces.

III. Thoughtcrime: Motive and Action-Local Moral Reasoning

Elane exhibits apparently another exception to this basic right (from the government’s perspective; neither the draft nor imminent domain is philosophically valid), which is that you cannot refuse to sell your services or property if the motive for doing so is discrimination. Since the motive itself is illegal (thoughtcrime, as Orwell so famously coined), the right of refusal apparently does not apply. If the photography company had refused because they were booked, or didn’t want to accept the pay the bride was offering, or even because they disliked the bride because of her political affiliation, no law would have been violated, and no party would have suffered any damages, real or civil or psychic.

When considering thoughtcrime laws (much like futurecrime), one must first question the moral reasoning that goes into their creation. The separation between thought and action is an important distinction when operating in a physical, logical world. Contemplating murder is not a crime, only murder is, as much because contemplation has no effect on the physical world as because it is impossible to determine the inner thoughts of a human being. Elane  is therefore also interesting because the thoughtcrime involved only exists because the photographer gave an honest and truthful set of reasoning for her refusal to conduct business. Had she chosen to lie, there would be no thoughtcrime, and therefore no damages.

So the end result is a rather odd situation, in which vendors (which is what the photography company was deemed to be) are still able to discriminate against others by refusing to do business, so long as they do not reveal their motivations for doing so.

IV. Market Forces and Social Consequences

One of the most overlooked aspects of freedom is the constant incentive businesses and individuals have to suppress prejudice. This runs contrary to the mistaken belief that freedom in the market causes greater discrimination against minorities and other marginal groups. Businesses generally exist to make money, and they generally do so by serving as many people as possible for as high a price as the market will allow.

Wedding photographers have a natural incentive not to discriminate against couples who do not fit their ideal, because they are getting paid to do so. To refuse to do business for any arbitrary prejudice is to take a loss. The same applies to the employment of minority or marginalized individuals. To limit one’s talent pool for arbitrary reasons is to damage the business by increasing costs or decreasing productivity. The incentive is to dampen one’s prejudices – to sacrifice them on the altar of increased profits and business health.

Adding to this suppression are the social consequences for outright bigotry, which can include social stigma, isolation, and the refusal of service to the discriminator. As far as non-violent action goes, social consequences for unwanted behavior are some of the most effective. The photographer in Elane  might very well suffer these through her refusal to serve a gay couple. There may be individuals still interested in the service, but may experience social pressure from their own wedding guests not to use the services of someone they consider a bigot. These social interaction eventually translate into negative economic consequences as well.

This creates what I believe to be the typical person as he acts in the marketplace, who has certain prejudices against certain types of people but does not express these because it is better for his business and personal life to serve all.

V. Conclusion: But They’re Still a Bigot!

Ultimately, the mental states and internal prejudices of people are not alterable directly. No amount of force on the part of government or individuals will get people to stop thinking what they are thinking, short of perhaps the final act of 1984. If somebody has hate in their heart, yet treats everybody with respect outwardly, are they evil? Actions are what matters, not thought. Actions are right or wrong, not will. From Orwell’s 1984:

Thoughtcrime was not a thing that could be concealed forever. You might dodge successfully for a while, even for years, but sooner or later they were bound to get you.

Nostalgia Chronicles, Part 1: Berserk

Nostalgia…

For me, nostalgia is always an interesting phenomenon, like the sudden influx of déjà vu and yet clear and tangible. My memories, when I slip into them rather than merely draw upon them for some piece of information, are akin to a waking dream. I can see myself where I was, smell the smells around me, and even feel part of the emotions that I felt when the memory was made. When I am overcome with the images and words of the past, I call it nostalgia. It’s an intense experience, and can create feelings undulating between extreme pain and extreme pleasure, depending on the memory.

I know that for many people memory is not like this, and I am also aware of the limitations of all memory, how the brain edits on the fly to exclude the unimportant bits. When I remember something particularly happy – a moment of joy with friends, for instance – I know that the circumstances surrounding it may not have been so happy. As a matter of fact, when I think of such things, I often take a step back in my mind and remember that overall timeframe of that memory was filled with misery. Perhaps that heightens the emotion of the moment, and island of happiness in a sea of trouble is all the more memorable.

Similarly, sometimes I have a rush of memory for something very painful: an embarrassing moment, a moment of heartbreak or doubt, or a failure. These moments may be surrounding by happiness, but shine out darkly because of their bright background, intensifying the memory process and the pain of recollection. I have to be careful letting myself be overcome with such recollections, for even though the experience was in the past, the way my memory works causes the all the emotions, the pain and disappointment and embarrassment, to become very real in the present.

Like a flashback, Nostalgia is triggered by odd thing. Smells and tastes that I associate with a time period or place, or more often, music and books that take me back to the period where I first heard or read them.

With that in mind, I thought I’d start a series here, dubbed the nostalgia chronicles, of some particularly powerful memories and what they mean to me. Most of these center around certain things like art, games, and entertainment, since these are the things that usually trigger the feelings, but more than few of them are just odd moments.

Nostalgia Chronicles, Part 1: Berserk

Berserk started its life as a manga (a type of Japanese graphic novel) penned by Kentaro Miura, but my first experiences with it were with its televised anime adaptation, and later experiences occurred during several life eras with both the manga and repeat viewings of the anime.

I. Mid 2005

The young man who was rapidly becoming my best friend (Matt Wellman, the man of infinite jest) moved into a house nearby me with another friend of mine named Ryan (I was graduating from Fresno State and still lived in North Fresno with my parents), which increased the frequency of our hang-outs enormously. We were writing metal, drinking Moosehead, and generally having a good time most nights. I walked into Matt’s bedroom one day to see him watching a very imaginative, as well as horrific, anime on his computer.

He let me see the final episode before we went out for more beer (our main activity on a week night). The show made no sense to me and seemed to take place in hell, but intrigued me, probably as a result. Later on, he bought the anime on DVD, and I would come over and watch it with him, sometimes along with Ryan and Gary (the other roommate, who would also become a good chum of mine). In Fresno fashion it was usually hot and muggy inside the house, with Ryan’s dog Jacka constantly panting as she lay on the floor. I remember sitting in Ryan’s chair, feeling the sweat on the back of my calves stick to the reclining pad. That was how we watched it, between parties and music.

I remember first reading the graphic novels after moving into my first apartment, which was a tenement by some standards. I found myself sitting in a brown leather chair, given to me by my friend Darryl, who had in turn claimed it from our mutual employer Patrick. It had several tears on the back from moving, but I enjoyed it as a comfortable reading place, lit by an old jade lamp that belonged to my grandparents. My roommate and I liked to keep the apartment very cold, and remember how much I liked the slick, cool leather on my skin after coming indoors from the heat of Fresno, which, if you have never been there, is substantial and persists from March into early November.

Our apartment was a smattering of things, with a beat-up sectional couch (later replaced by a set of free furniture that looked like it belonged in the waiting room of a dentist from the 1980s), my small tube TV sat upon a tall stand Jabriel (my roommate) and I made literally out of garbage we found on the back porch upon our move in. Draped black curtains hid the contraptions, which was made out of a few wooden boxes and a large piece of plywood, and also served to house our DVD collection. The dark brown carpet, the color chosen as much to hide stains as show its age, I reckoned, always felt a little stiff on the feet.

Even though the apartment was not the nicest, it was ours, and it at least was not painfully small. My own bedroom was large enough that I could put my leather chair in it, leaving the other chair (a funny pink affair Jabriel and I had nabbed from the curb) in the living room. Once or month a so a new English translation of Berserk would come out, and I would head down to Winco and buy a can of “Green Dragon Energy Drink,” a bargain-bin caffeinated beverage from Hong Kong (I think), park myself in my chair, and read the next installment of Berserk, in all its gory glory.

II. Berserk: Violent Paragons.

Berserk is a strange fantasy story, taking place in a world similar to medieval Europe, without magic (except for demons) or guns (though there are cannons from time to time). The central characters are Guts (Gatzu), and his best friend and nemesis, Griffith, who leads the band of mercenaries that fill out the cast. The anime chronicles the rise and subsequent fall of Griffith and his band of the hawk, from mercenary band to exalted champions of the kingdom, to criminals as Griffith’s tragic flaw takes effect.

What was most compelling to me was not the plot, though that was sound, but the characters. In Japanese fashion, the characters involved are not complex, flawed, and redeemable characters that achieve growth as the story goes on, which would be more typical of a western story. Instead, they are paragons; not paragons of virtue, but paragons of their immutable selves, virtuous or viscous. The progress of the story is about the fulfilling of nature, and this informs the central conflict, which is between destiny and will, and the relation between the two.

Guts is a paragon of who he is: the berserker; the struggler; the man who rebels against destiny; the man who cares nothing for life; the man who pursues his own will, even if he does not understand what it is. Guts was born literally from a corpse, his mother hanging dead from a tree, and so signifies an exclusion from the laws of destiny. He alone can act outside of destiny and be free-willed, for he is already dead. He values his life little, preferring battle and slaughter to pleasure, constantly risking his life for outcomes which seem to be meaningless to others. It is, as they cannot understand, the fulfillment of his nature.

Griffith is a paragon of the opposite: the planner; the schemer; the man whose will is destiny itself; the man with ambition. For him, all means serve his ends. He sacrifices his soldiers, his fortunes, and even sells his own body in prostitution to fund his desperate dream. Ultimately, Guts is his only equal, which means they must become enemies.

He seems blessed by destiny in a way that guts is not. He achieved victory on the battlefield over and over, often with the use of Guts, who he forces into service after a showdown – a showdown in which Guts would not submit, even at the expense of his body. Somehow though, Guts and Griffith become friends, as Guts rises to second in command of the Band of the Hawk, Griffith’s army.

Together, Guts and Griffith raise their army to the level of regular soldiers in the kingdom of Midland, and Griffith is even raised to the peerage, becoming a noble and gaining an opportunity to marry into wealth and power. Griffith destroys his opponents in the nobility as well, even using Guts as a brutal assassin, an event that has a profound emotional impact on Guts as he is forced to kill the young son of the target. Indeed, it seems as if all of Griffith’s wild ambitions, seeming to be driven by destiny itself, are coming to fruition, and Griffith will marry the princess and inherit the crown.

The story turns when Guts overhears a conversation in which Griffith describes the Band of the Hawk as “not truly his friends,” because none of them have their own dreams. Guts, hearing this, decides he has fulfilled what he said he would for Griffith, seeing an end to the war, and decides to leave, despite the protests of his other friends in the army. This realization causes Guts to want to leave his friends, leading to another duel between Guts and Griffith, who wishes to keep Guts for his own purposes. Unlike their first meeting, Griffith cannot overcome the skill and strength of Guts. Guts cuts Griffith’s sword in half, ending the duel, and walks away, without ever turning to look back.

This moment encapsulates the conflict, held at bay through most of the first story arc, between will and destiny. Griffith, having been defeated, suffers a mental break; his unwavering belief in himself and his destiny is shattered through the actions of Guts, who, ironically, opposes Guts in order to achieve what he viewed as true equality and friendship. This also sets up Guts’s role through the rest of the manga, which is as an opponent of destiny, the sole actor capable of destroying it. Griffith, in anguish, visits the princess and sleeps with her (in the manga it is closer to rape). He is caught and spends much of the rest of the arc being slowly tortured as a prisoner of the king. His destiny has, in effect, been destroyed by Guts’s free action.

This is ended with Guts’s return and heroic rescue of the broken Griffith, who on the escape journey attempts suicide and unknowingly fulfills the contracts of his destiny with the Godhand, a cabal of demonic gods who take Guts and the remaining members of the Band of the Hawk as sacrifices for Griffith’s ascendancy to their ranks. Griffith does this willingly, and his friends are devoured by demons. Only Guts has the power to resist and survive, and in final horror, Griffith rapes Caska, a woman Guts has fallen in love with, in front of the eyes of his friend turned nemesis. Guts cuts off his own arm in attempt to free himself and intervene, and is in turn saved again by deus ex machina in the form of the skull knight, a mysterious immortal being who represents rebellion against destiny.

The first story arc draws to a close in one of the most brutal ways possible. Guts and Caska are left with “the brand,” a bleeding wound which will draw demons to them as long as they live, and so Guts must begin his own quest, to destroy his friend and overcome destiny, represented in the very brand that tortures him.

III. Final Thoughts

These themes had a big effect on me as a 21 year old, and even today they have significant meaning as I feel like most of the periods of my life have been defined by struggle. When I first started watching, I was struggling to find the next step of my academic career as a musician with substantial hearing loss. I read the manga in my first apartment, struggling to meet rent and progress through graduate school. I watched the series again when I lived in Las Vegas, struggling to finish my first screenplay and arrange the next phase of my life. The idea of suffering through, and overcoming, struggle was a close experience to my heart.

I also admired the characters within it. Guts was cold, single minded, and unrelenting when wielding his sword in the present. I felt like that a lot of the time, and still do: obsessive, driving, lost in the sound of my strings as I played or my keys as I type this very sentence. I had no plans; I just did and did and did, day after day, and built myself a life out of it. When that life was swept away, I found I, like Guts, had very little to carry away with me.

Very few other examples of manga or anime pack quite as much punch as Berserk, both in artistic effect and storytelling. Very few evoke as much nostalgia, though I’m sure there will be other examples to come. The best quote I can remember is this, which has stuck with me for quite a long time:

Man takes up the sword to shield the small wound in his heart sustained in some far off time beyond memory.

Man wields the sword so he can die happy in some far of time beyond perception.

A Visual Guide to Identifying Genetically Modified Dogs

The above is a takeoff of a Facebook page's "A Visual Guide to Genetically Modified Corn," found here:

IFLS 

People are often very misled about what "genetically modified" means. Man has been altering life-forms to suit his needs for thousands and thousands of years through the mechanisms of selective breeding, hybrids, and only lately through direct modification of code.

Corn is a great example of this. It's nature-made predecessor looks nothing like it. The ears are tiny and unusable; the casings of the kernels are thick and chewy. This makes sense for a natural plant, which seeks to spread its seeds, not provide nourishment for man or any other organism directly. The peoples of the Americas, over the course of many generations, turned this wild species into what it is today: a tall plant with ears so heavy they may break the stalks, with easily digestible kernels packed with energy. Modern corn cannot even fertilize any plant besides itself; it is literally impossible for modern corn to grow wild.

What separates this plant from the "GMO" corn of today, created and distributed by Monsanto and other agricultural businesses? The addition of traits is done through direct manipulation of the code, producing specific proteins for specific purposes, rather than through selection of random mutations. Understandably, some people think of this as "unnatural," because it is the result of such direct human intervention, but the host organism itself is unnatural. Actually, direct code manipulation is likely much safer than phenotype selection for traits, as the genes inserted produce known proteins, whereas older methods of genetic modification produced unknown sets of proteins.

How does all this apply to dogs? We have many breeds of dogs, all of them produced by man from a single species: the gray wolf. In fact, technically, wolves are considered the same species as all breeds of dogs because they can mate and produce viable offspring. Dogs are actually a great example of the breakdown of the idea of species as that definition. A chihuaha and a Great Dane are both dogs, but physical mating between the two is nigh impossible. However, it is possible with every breed in between the two, making a range of compatible genetic populations, most of which can also breed with wolves.

If you have a dog (or any domesticated animal, for that matter), you are interacting with a man-made being. You are feeding it man-made food, derived from other organisms created by man out of the building blocks of life - genes - whether the method of design was through careful selection or direct coding.

It not man's nature to adapt to his environment, it is his nature to adapt his environment to himself.

Deep Time, an Introduction

From Deep Time, created by Matthew J. Wellman and David V. Stewart. Written by David V. Stewart. You can find Matt's blog here: http://thespiritualvoluntaryist.blogspot.com/

Malcom Macbeth stood on the iron walkway extending into what he called the “nose” of the ship, likening it in his mind to one of the mechanically propelled airships that humans used before they had made the leap to space. A glass nose, complete with fire turret, and a glass belly and tail, used to defend the mighty airship as it delivered it’s precious cargo of living fire. That time in history seemed so brief to him now, but the flick of a finger before men abandoned armored flight and mass death for speed and pin-point accurate murder. The centuries between the rise of agriculture and man’s escape from his home were a short span of years, yet more intriguing to him than the entire history of planets conquered since. Part of Malcom yearned to see the planet of his people’s birth, to see what had become of the ancient ruins- the castles and cathedrals his ancestors had built- but he knew there was no going back to the waters of awakening.

He loved more and more to stand in the “nose” these days, even though his ship was shaped nothing like the old flying fortresses of the ancients, and this point was just one of many forward-looking positions on the massive clan ship Icarus. The clear bubble surrounding the walkway allowed him a greater than one-hundred and eighty degree view of the cosmos as their vessel pushed its way through deep space. It was beautiful to him, and he breathed deeply knowing how few men were ever permitted to grasp the infinite glory and emptiness of space from such a perspective.

The stars looked strange compared to their dim twinkle on a planet, when one was not hurtling forward at nearly the speed of light. Here they blurred like small streaks around him, and yet they also appeared still and tranquil. They appeared in various shades of blue and indigo, based on how directly Icarus was travelling toward a given star, and as Malcom looked off to the left and right he could see the stars shift to white, and finally red as the ship moved away from them.

The light filled his green eyes, and in the peace he was able to remember… so much to remember, so many millennia of change on countless planets to consider and evaluate, and then predict. When he was younger, Malcom used to retort that the only thing predictable about the human race was its unpredictability. He’d seen dozens of societies rise, fall, and rise again over the course of countless generations since he spoke such, and now he had a different perspective on mankind. One in which, like the weather on a water planet, everything had its cause and effect and everything occurred in cycles, if you could only stand far enough back to see it all. And Malcom had stood back, in a way only the other clan leaders could say they had, and even then, he wondered if they spent as much time thinking on it as he.

He took everything in the human disposition into account when he left a world. Plans upon plans. Contingencies upon contingencies. Even so, like the weather, sometimes there were anomalies, unforeseen events, like a summer storm upon a desert plain. In the centuries between departure and return, he knew almost anything could happen, even if the probability was incredibly low. At the end of every journey, when the quantum gate was completed, and the ship would jump back instantly to the world they had left just a few months earlier from their own perspective, Malcom would hold his breath, wondering, and praying, that he would not pass through to find the old planet had singularized and become a second Earth; stagnant, inhuman… dead. Returning to find a world as such once was too much for him. He had paid dearly for his imperfections, and he still wore the platinum band on his left hand to remind him that he was not a god, even if the planetside people revered him as such. Eventually, clan Macbeth would truly be able to account for all the irregularities of humankind.

It was hard to believe that with all the things he had seen, and all the many years that had passed before his eyes, worlds dying and being made anew, mankind spreading over the stars, that he had celebrated the his sixty-fifth ancestral birthday just two months prior. He felt so much older than that. The life of his race was like a picture gallery, showing slow change quickly. He ran his hand through his short, grey hair and pondered: I watch the whole of man live and die in cycles they are nearly oblivious to, and yet I never noticed my hair turning grey until it was already done doing so.

He fingered the ring on his hand and remembered her. The smell of her hair as if she was in the nose with him, watching the blue and indigo stars streak and fill their eyes with wonder. He would never find another like her again. In all the universe there was only one Deidre, which made their son all the more precious to him. Even if his heart could allow him to find love again, it would never happen. The ships were populated by the clan for a reason. When you spend a hundred years traveling to a new world, you must leave everyone you love behind… or take them with you. Any woman that would come aboard Icarus would have to fall in love with him in the few weeks that he would allow his clan’s vessel to stay in orbit around a world. He could not leave his ship behind. He had to keep moving. Keep traveling.

Live forever.

Minimum Wage: Moral, Amoral, and Practical Arguments; Ad Hominem Non-Arguments.

The minimum wage as a political issue has long been a dangerous one to oppose. Recent trends have included phrases such as “living wage” in addition to a minimum, though the sentiments are much the same as they were when the minimum wage was first enacted back in 1933 (a law the Supreme Court later found unconstitutional). Proponents of wage controls generally make moral arguments, primarily that wages should reflect some correlation to the cost of living at some level of affluence, and that failing to pay such a wage was an immoral act. Opponents, however, tend to focus on practical arguments, noting that minimum wage laws create unemployment among low-skilled and young workers. These arguments do not meet each other very well, for moral arguments require moral rebuttals, and vice versa.

I. Employer and Employee: An Amoral Relationship

Let’s break down the moral arguments for wage controls, whether you choose to define them as “living wages” or “minimum wages.”

Argument: People require a certain amount of money or income to live. As such, denying to any person the level of income necessary to live victimizes them; it is immoral. Therefore, companies that pay low wages are acting immorally.

Rebuttal: This argument makes an assumption that individuals and corporations that employ others for productive purposes have a moral obligation toward some preferable condition. This is not true, for several reasons. Whenever an employer and employee work together it is toward some end of production, either a good or a service that is sold to a third party. Their relationship is voluntary; either party may exit the relationship when they choose. The worker is not a slave of the company, so the company has no moral obligation (in a biblical sense) to see to his end needs.

Businesses pay workers based on the amount of production they bring to the end goal, not based on the needs of the worker. Indeed, it would be very difficult to even determine what the end needs of all the employees are attempt to meet them. The goal is to produce a product for consumers at a particular price point. This is a thoroughly amoral condition.

Attempting to prescribe wages based on the many consequences and costs of life is also a consequentialist endeavor. The act of paying a worker a low wage is argued as immoral not because of some universality of preference in wage, but because the consequence is not a preferable condition. This bad condition is also not universal; minimum wage may be a boon to one person, who has low living expenses, and be a very low wage to another who has high living expenses. It’s not quite future crime, but fairly close to it.

Not addressed in the argument is the option to not hire somebody at all, which is the result of wage controls. If a company refuses to hire somebody at all, are they acting immorally by denying the person a living wage by denying them a job?

Argument: If employers are unwilling to do what is right, the government must step in and force them to pay their employees a living wage.

Rebuttal: The most important moral argument against minimum wage is the means by which it is achieved, justified in the above argument by the fact that companies do not voluntarily pay their workers what they are entitled to. Minimum wage laws make the government a silent third party in any agreement between two individuals, with the threat of force (death) the consequence for acting outside of the wage control. If somebody wants to work for less than the minimum wage, they are legally prohibited from doing so (if you are wondering why anyone would want to work for less than minimum wage, remember that philosophically wants are always part of a realm of possibilities, not part of imagination; an individual with no skills might prefer to work for a low wage rather than be unemployed). In essence, enforcing minimum wage is an act of violence against the worker and employer.

II. “Right to Life”

Behind both arguments above is the concept of entitlement, which can be called a “positive right.” As a matter of philosophy and semantics, I consider all authentic rights to be negative, in other words, “freedom from” things like theft, murder, or interference in your personal affairs. Entitlements, which are sometimes called rights by proponents of such, are usually expressed as a “right to,” such as a right to healthcare, security, etc. Sometimes, as was the case when Franklin Roosevelt was promoting the “worker’s bill of rights,” these entitlements are expressed as reflexively negative, such as the “right to be free from unfair completion,” or the right to be “free from hunger,” and so on. Of course, freedom from hunger really means entitlement to food, not freedom to buy food, as freedom requires no special condition; it is the default.

This concept is important when understanding the moral claim for a “living wage.” Some argue that it is an extension of the “right to life,” in so much as you must be able to eat and find shelter to live. However, an authentic “right to life” really means a freedom from being murdered by others, and if it is extended beyond such, the argument becomes self-defeating; you must threaten murder in order to use state power to tax in order to provide entitlement.

Even ignoring the double-think involved with such a position, in order for something to be provided, someone must do the providing. Wage controls place this blame on companies, organizations whose collective purpose is a good or service, not the welfare of people everywhere, as stated above. This extension of the right is also difficult to determine, or make universal (also stated above), because of the variance of needs across geographic lines and across the myriad of individuals’ choices. Contrast this to a negative right, in which somebody’s right not to be murdered is very easily determined. You have either been murdered or not; there is no grey area.

III. Practicality

If the minimum wage were some cure for poverty, then seventy years’ worth of experimentation in that department should have yielded some claim to that effect. Instead, poverty continues as it always has, though the people who are considered poor today are substantially better off than the middle class when the law was enacted. If it were really possible to help people out by controlling wages, we could just all make 100,000 dollars a year and be perfectly happy. Even those who are proponents of such programs would not go that far, for they know that wage controls cannot have such an effect. That is why minimum wage rates have hovered at or slightly below the market equilibrium base rate for unskilled labor for the past 20 years or so.

The truth is that the minimum wage does not have a great effect at the moment, positive or negative, because inflation has made it mostly irrelevant. Even large “evil” companies like Walmart employ only a small percentage of their workforce at the minimum rate. If wages were actually raised above the market equilibrium, the effects would be mostly negative, such as they are. For those near the bottom, some might see a slight raise. Others, above that wage, would likely see no change whatsoever. The middle and upper classes would not see their wages go up, for setting a market minimum for wages does not cause all wages to go up.

The negative is that those who have low skills, or who are young (these are usually the same group) will find a tougher job market waiting for them. Employers are less likely to hire an employee when his or her productive output will not match his wage for some time while he acquires skills. They may take a chance on an investment of human capital, but they will need convincing.

IV. You Hate the Poor!

First, I can only feel emotions toward individuals, not whole classes of people. Second, if I did hate the poor, I’d be pretty self-hating, as I’ve made far below what the US government considers the poverty line for the last few years (and I’ve never collected a dime in entitlements, in case you are wondering, though I would have if it were possible, given how much I still pay in taxes as a self-employed person). I don’t hate anyone, which is why I am an advocate for freedom. Yet this is one of the arguments given against proponents of freedom, the ad-hominem that we “hate the poor.”

Minimum wage is actually very bad for the poor and the young, who are usually the same category. It makes entry into the job market harder, because when you set a minimum wage, you also set a minimum of production. Workers who do not meet that minimum of production, usually because they lack skills, have a harder time finding work. This is the way in which price controls on labor create unemployment.

A worker can gain skills two ways: through education, or through work experience. The latter must be paid for in advance, or else financed as debt, making the worker start behind when he enters the workforce. Of course, if he can gain training and experience through work itself, he can increase his human capital while making money. Once he has skills, he can demand higher wages from his employer, of find another who will pay him according to his value. The minimum wage, therefore, would only serve him for a limited time while he increases his human capital.

Minimum wage laws are also of note because, unlike things like direct entitlements, they act violently against both the poor person and the rich person, buy preventing the poor person from working for a wage he might find agreeable, at least for a time.

V. Just Like Peter Schiff, You Think the Intellectually Disabled are Worthless

I’m referencing, of course, a horribly dishonest Daily Show feature of an interview of Peter Schiff (an economist and CEO, as well as radio host and advocate for freedom), in which a four hour interview is reduced to a ninety second heavily edited interchange that makes Peter sound like he said “mentally retarded” people are worth two dollars an hour. I could explore the moral problems of the presentation, such as the fact that before that answer Peter Schiff pondered how anyone could have such little value, or how the daily show keeps on interns that are unpaid, but since it is from a comedy show and subject to its own farce I shall make just a single point.

Of the two people sitting in that room, only Peter Schiff sees any value with individuals who have intellectual disabilities. If a company must hire a person with Down syndrome, with its cognitive impairment component present, at some sort of “living wage,” then that person will essentially become unemployable, since he or she may not have the productive capacities to produce that equivalent wage. Schiff, on the other hand, sees them as valuable to the degree that they can produce, even if it is limited by their disability. A free market means that every individual, whether disabled mentally or physically, has the capacity to contribute to society.

With a living wage, many disabled people may become effectively worthless to society, which they aren’t. Allowing disabled individuals to work is good for society, even if production is not great, because it frees up other human capital and also provides a meaningful service to consumers. It is good for the individuals who are hired, who may have the opportunity to develop skills, get paid and have financial goals of their own, and make social connections when they would otherwise be marginalized in society because of their disability. The disabled don’t have to be a charity case; they can contribute meaningfully to society, if only they are permitted.

VI. Walmart as Welfare Queen

I’d like to address another point that is often thrown around by advocates of things like “living wages,” and that is the notion that companies who hire unskilled labor for relatively low wages are somehow gaming the system because their employees consume entitlements. If you hunt you can probably find the practical data in support or rejection of the notion, but as a principled argument, you cannot pin upon McDonalds or Walmart the cost of entitlement spending.

Even if they benefit somehow from programs such as food stamps, companies that hire low-skill workers did not create the law, or carry it out using violence. The fact remains that employees are paid based on their ability to produce; external factors are not relevant. If there were no entitlements, would workers be able to demand more? The answer is no, because their pay is determined by how they contribute to earnings.

When making the argument for a living wage, the question must be also be begged: why should cost of charity (for that is what paying a worker more than he produces really is) be placed wholly on those who choose to employ others in productive activities? We as individuals have the capacity to help the poor directly, no violent state intervention necessary. If violence is somehow justified (for those of you willing to sacrifice the means of violence to the end of egalitarianism), why should it be upon the people who are employers, and not everyone? We could just as easily (perhaps more so) accomplish the same thing using a negative income tax, which does not cast into the role of robber-baron those who wish to employ others.

VII. Conclusion

I hope my points have made you think, however you may value the minimum wage and its role in society. One thing to consider when thinking about the raising of the minimum wage is how much it has been raised in the past, and how much inflation has lowered it over the years, and how much economic efficiency has in turn prevented the devaluing of labor. In 1963 the minimum wage was $1.25, but was payable in $25 worth of today’s dollars in silver (I will provide a useful link to some organized data on the subject at the bottom). It may seem like we are being quite stingy with today’s money, but in the past fifty years the economy has become exponentially more efficient, and that $25 worth of silver will by more goods and services of a higher quality than existed in the past. The free market, with its ability to produce more and more for less and less, has been the saving grace of the poor, not the government regulators, who only have the ability enact violence, even between two people who have already agreed on a price for labor.

External links:

Don't Bother Raising the Minimum Wage

(I'm not linking to the Daily Show, or the Huffington Post. They don't deserve the traffic.)