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Em oi! #372: But is it Art?

I'm very popular on the internets in my head.

Comic to be filed under: B3209.B583W6 L86 2012, for Philosophy (General)—Modern(1450/1600-)—By region or country—Germany, Austria (German)—By period—Later 19th and 20th centuries—Individual philosophers—Avenarius – Brauer—Benjamin, Walter, 1892-1940—Separate works, A-Z. What a mouthful.

I have been trying to find a good summary of Walter Benjamin’s (say it like an academic: Ben-ya-mean) “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” (or, alternatively, “The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility”) essay. Because it is the most oft-quoted essay of the 20th century (maybe), there are a few available. Wikipedia has a very bare-bones, straightforward summation. Yale’s Modernism Lab (perhaps unsurprisingly) has a much better, more detailed explanation. Finally the (much beloved?) Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy offers some critical notes, not just on that piece (or rather the two pieces, since he wrote two versions of the essay) but on the themes of art and aura in Benjamin’s work.

Basically there are two things you probably need to know in order to understand the essay: The first thing is that Benjamin is worried about methods of reproducing art–specifically, methods like photography and film–and how they change the original. For example, when I was in college, I had a poster of the Creation of Man (by Michaelangelo) on my wall:

And G-d said, “Let there be naked people!” And lo…

Philosophically speaking, there are a lot of differences between the poster and the original version on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. I mean, one is a fresco and one is a photograph printed on (high quality) paper, but also, as Benjamin puts it, “reproduction…[places] the copy of the original in situations which the original itself cannot attain” (21). In other words, the Sistine Chapel would never fit in my dorm room, while the poster will. So reproducing the image creates this loss of authenticity, or what Benjamin refers to as “aura.” In his words,

It might be stated as a general formula that the technology of reproduction detaches the reproduced object from the sphere of tradition. By replicating the work many times over, it substitutes a mass existence for a unique existence. And in permitting the reproduction to reach the recipient in his or her own situation, it actualizes that which is reproduced. These two processes lead to a massive upheaval in the domain of objects handed down from the past–a shattering of tradition which is the reverse side of the present crisis and renewal of humanity. Both processes are intimately related to the mass movements of our day. (22)

By “the present crisis,” I believe Benjamin means the rise of fascism, specifically in Germany. And by “mass movements” he means both fascism and Marxism. That’s the second thing you have to understand about Benjamin: he was a German Jew who escaped to Paris in the early 1930s, from whence he published this essay; eventually, he committed suicide while trying to escape France to the US via Spain when the situation looked grim [edited to add: or perhaps he was killed by Stalin’s agents in the area!]. He had a brother who was killed in the Camps. Beyond this, he was a Marxist. So while his discussion of aura, as the Stanford Encyclopedia suggests, has been accused of being overly nostalgic, I don’t think that’s really the case–he doesn’t seem nostalgic about the changes he’s describing, more just trying to explain how he thinks art has changed since the advent of (specifically) the moving picture.

So as a good Marxist, Benjamin when confronted by film suggests that it is the masses who essentially control film–more than perhaps any other art, it has a clear economic driver behind it. “While [the screen actor] stands before the apparatus [camera], he knows that in the end he is confronting the masses. It is they who will control him” (33). This changes the relationship between the masses and the art (36). Here he leans heavily on some psychological theory (Freud among others) to suggest that because of the way film acts on the mind (conscious and unconscious), it can act as an “immunization against…mass psychoses” (38). However that means, in a sense, that film can also brainwash people.

Now, fascism (which Benjamin views as Marxism without the dissolution of property/class), is not the first political movement to have used that old lie, “Dolce et decorum est pro patria mori.” Sparta comes to mind, and Rome (that phrase comes from Horace), and the Vikings/Norse all glorified death in battle, to say nothing of the Crusades, the Samurai, WWII-era Kamikaze units (maybe?)… However, fascism’s “logical outcome…is an aestheticizing of political life” (41) which results in war. “War, and only war, makes it possible to set a goal for mass movements on the grandest scale while preserving traditional property relations” (ibid.). In essence, the fascists create an aesthetic glorification of war in order to promote this agenda. If you have ever seen Triumph of the Will, you will know exactly what Benjamin was talking about.

Benjamin concludes, famously:

“Fiat ars–pereat mundis,” [Let art flourish and the world pass away] says fascism, expecting from war…the artistic gratification of a sense perception altered by technology. This is evidently the consummation of l’art pour l’art [art for art’s sake]. Humankind, which once, in Homer, was an object of contemplation for the Olympian gods, has now become one for itself. Its self-alienation has reached the point where it can experience its own annihilation as a supreme aesthetic pleasure. Such is the aestheticizing of politics, as practiced by fascism. Communism replies by politicizing art. (42)

I have occasionally had reason to read Benjamin–his essay “The Task of the Translator” is another classic–and I often have this problem where I will have issues with the particulars of his argument but on the whole, I cannot refute his overall point. After reading this essay, I wondered if I could justify watching films that continue to glorify war.

I’m still going to see Skyfall. But one interesting problem to address in my own writing (as I think the more recent Bond writers have tried to do) will be to examine the non-glorified outcomes of violence.

References

Benjamin, Walter. “The Work of Art in the Age of its Technological Reproducibility.” In The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility, and Other Writings on Media, edited by Michael W. Jennings, Brigid Doherty, and Thomas Y. Levin, translated by Edmund Jephcott, Rodney Livingstone, Howard Eiland, et al. (19-55) Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2008. (Also found here.)

Owen, Wilfred. “Dolce et Decorum Est.” The War Poetry Website, edited by David Roberts. Last updated 2011. http://www.warpoetry.co.uk/owen1.html. Retrieved 26 December 2012.

Em oi! #371: The Big Announcement

MAGNIFIQUE
This is absolutely true: Vagabondage Press will publish my novella as an ebook in May, 2013. I am very excited. This work was originally composed as my senior thesis for my English/Creative Writing degree in 2006. Since then, it has been through a number of rewrites (and will go through a few more before it is ready for prime time). More importantly, perhaps, I have begun to mature as a writer and I think I have been able to do the story justice.

This is a very brief summary of the story I wrote for my cover letter:

Mara Daniels is a physicist doing cutting-edge research into the nature of reality at the University of Chicago. She’s an astronomer. She’s an amateur student of Chinese philosophy. And she’s still recovering from last summer’s car crash that killed Benjamin Zhu, her fiancé. It’s a slow process; she can walk without a cane now but she still suffers from migraines, nightmares, and she’s seeing Zhou’s ghost everywhere she goes. The Joy of Fishes follows her through the day on which these threads begin to unravel.

To paraphrase Robert Persig, I will say that I am an expert on neither Daoism, nor astrophysics, nor neurology. However some of the bits about ghosts are pretty neat.

In honor of this being my first stand-alone publication, I’m going to file this comic under PS3612.U68 J69 2012, for American literature—Individual authors—2001-—L, subdivided on Table P-PZ40 under Separate works. By title.

To get you all thinking, I’ll add this: If you have a book club in the upper Midwest that would like to read the book and have me come and talk/answer questions, drop me a line and we can work something out.

(ถ้าคุณอ่านภาษาไทยในเรื่องนี้ ฉันต้องพูดขอโทษ เพราะฉันเขียนภาษาไทยไม่เก่งและไม่สวยด้วย)

Em oi! #370: Up to Our Old Tricks

Put a bird on it, guys.
Big Fucking Heroes.

(Click to view an incredibly large version.) And that was how we set off an EMP that foiled an alien invasion and also messed up communications over most of the west coast.

This comic took forever. I think you can tell why. I wrote the script back when we were in Salt Lake City. Actually, I wrote it on the plane back to Madison. Then I started to draw it…and then I started working on preliminary thesis research. B thinks that more abstract comics like this are “the way to go,” or at least what I should be doing more frequently, but they tend to be long and therefore time consuming.

We’ll file this under BF2050 .L86 2012 for Occult sciences—Human-alien encounters. Contact between humans and extraterrestrials—General works.

Hope you all had a good Thanksgiving, at least if you celebrate that holiday. We cooked for 10 people…actually we cooked for 30, but we invited 10. Next year, maybe we’ll make a bit less food (we made: risotto stuffed in a kabocha squash, roasted Brussels sprouts with cranberries and a balsamic glaze, oven-fried potatoes with pearl onions, roasted root vegetables, challah, camenbert en croute, and roasted garlic. Also people brought lots of stuff.). As I realized halfway through, most people are not as excited about Brussels sprouts as I am. (Well, they’re wrong.)

For dessert we wound up with: apple pie, pumpkin pie, chocolate marble cheesecake, caramel brownies, clementines, and strawberries. And frozen yoghurt. It turns out that despite the “live and active yoghurt cultures,” frozen yoghurt doesn’t agree with my poor lactose intolerant intestines. I guess I need to get some lactase pills–the leftover froyo isn’t going to eat itself.

It’s interesting…in Thai, the holiday is referred to as “วันขอบคุณพระเจ้า” literally “The day to thank G-d.” In English we just say “Thanksgiving,” i.e. “Giving Thanks,” without specifying to whom we are giving thanks. Personally I took the opportunity to give thanks to…well, my family, mostly, for coming to my house and letting me cook an absurd amount of food for them.

Em oi! #369: Cold Turkey

During the two week “no caffeine” period, my brother Daniel and I both found that we missed not the stimulant but just coffee itself–the ritual, the warm beverage in the morning. We both began drinking decaf as a result, but I’ll tell you a secret–decaf just doesn’t taste as good as regular. Or at least, I’ve yet to encounter a brand of decaf that could hold a candle to my beloved Trung Nguyen.

I am still caffeine-free though (as far as I know. Like, I ate a cookie called a “mocha cookie” the other day, but it didn’t really taste like coffee and I didn’t feel caffeinated afterward). I actually feel pretty good, and mostly not sleepy in the afternoons like I used to get when I was drinking a lot of caffeine. I don’t know how long I will stay decaffeinated, though.

I have a lot of heart rate data for myself, since I usually wear a heart rate monitor when I run. It would be interesting to do some analysis on it and see if my average HR (while running) has changed now that I am off caffeine. I think it might have…but there are too many other factors to really say for sure. Oh well.

We’ll file this under RC567.5 .L86 2012 for Internal medicine—Neurosciences. Biological psychiatry. Neuropsychiatry—Psychiatry—Psychiatric aspects of personality and behavior conditions—Drug abuse. Substance abuse—Caffeine.

Yesterday I participated in the 21st Annual Literacy Network Run/Walk. Formerly known as the Canterbury Run/Walk after a much-beloved, now defunct bookstore, this was actually the first 5k I ever ran way back when I started running (I finished last that time). I wasn’t really going to write anything about this, but then I won 4th overall among women (results). I finished the 10k in 50:54, which is about an 8:12 pace. It didn’t feel like I was near my VO2 max or anything, but my legs were tired, so that’s as fast as I ran. I guess I shouldn’t have knocked out 12 miles on the dreadmill the day before?

The field was very small this year (101 finishers) because it was absolutely pissing down rain the entire time. Around mile 3, the rain slowed briefly, but then it picked up again. There was not a dry inch on me anywhere when I got done, and I still had to run two miles back to my car.

So for your amusement, here are before and after photos.

I was going to make B take a picture of me, but he was up at 5am with insomnia and decided to sleep in instead of getting up to watch me dither around. So I took this myself in the bathroom mirror.
Back in my car, about to choose between heat blowing on me and keeping the windshield unfogged.

 

I want to add two final thoughts to my race report from the Milwaukee Marathon. One is that both of the photos in the post were taken by MM people/their hired photographers and “borrowed” by me. The other is that twice on the course I heard the song “Gangnam Style” by Psy. I’ve also heard it on the radio recently–the mainstream, commercial, top 40 radio. I am really excited that an Asian pop song would make its way over here…but if South Korea is going to be the part of Asia that finally explodes into mainstream American consciousness, I have totally backed the wrong horse (China, Viet Nam, เมืองไทย).

Milwaukee Marathon

Hey guys, I ran a marathon! And I went sub-4 (in the most dramatic style, 3:59:59). This past Sunday, October 7th, I got to join about 3100 other runners in the 32nd annual Lakefront Marathon in Milwaukee. This was my third marathon (though my fifth race of 26.2 miles or more). But it almost didn’t happen. Take a look at this chart showing my running distances for the year.

As you can see, in June and July, my mileage fell dramatically as I pulled up lame with (what I was told was) a strained (“torn”) quad. By the time I was getting back on my feet (early August), I had only about ten weeks to train (including taper). My PT suggested that I should consider doing a half instead of a full; a suggestion I immediately discounted because: 1. He’s not a runner and doesn’t really understand what is required to train for a half versus a full (to be honest, I’m not sure he believed me when I told him how much I ran), and 2. I was already signed up for Lakefront.

Mid-August, I sat down and made up a training plan. Essentially, I run five days per week: Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday. I planned to run my normal mileage on Tuesday-Thursday (generally eight to eleven miles per day depending on whether B wants to run or not, including a speed workout on Thursday) and then to increase my Saturday long run, ultimately to a distance of eighteen miles, and do a shorter long run of ten to twelve miles on Sunday. This is essentially what I did (though I topped out at twenty instead of eighteen). I also ran a test half marathon at the end of August when I was in Salt Lake City, and I came in at 1:59:26. According to the McMillan Running predictor, this suggests a marathon time of 4:11:21. But do keep in mind I was running at altitude, which can slow you down by about fifteen seconds per mile (I got this figure from my brother; no idea if it’s true or not, but I’ll pretend because then it sounds impressive to have broken two hours).

Photo via Brightroom Photography.

Before my injury, I was attending weekly track workouts. Of course, that had to stop, and once I was back to running, I started to worry that the workouts had caused or aggravated my injury, so I decided to hold off on returning until after the race. Instead, I did speedwork on my own on Thursday mornings.

I have two main routines I do:

1. Lupton 800s. These are my version of Yasso 800s, a workout typically done on a track that involves an 800 at speed x, then a cool-down for time (so if you run the 800 in 3:30, you get 3:30 to recover). Doing 10×800 is often felt to be useful in predicting marathon times-for example, if your average speed for the set was 3:30 per 800, you could probably expect to run your marathon in 3:30:00. My variations are based around not having a track readily accessible near my home, so I run my 800s on a mile-long, flattish stretch of road near my house. My cool-down, instead of being time-based, is distance-based–the other half of the 800 to get back to the “starting line” at the beginning of the mile stretch. I started with a set of seven and worked up to ten, slowly dropping the time I was aiming for. In the end, I was averaging about 3:54.

2. Dual Pace Runs. I read about this in one of the endless newsletters Active.com sends me, and it turned out to be pretty fun. Warm up for a  mile at whatever pace you fancy (I usually do about a 10:50-11:30, because I’m running with the dog). Then alternate between your half marathon pace and your marathon pace, doing half a mile of each for eight miles. Then cool down for a mile. So since my half pace was about 8:50 and my MP about 9:10, I’d run half a mile at 8:50, then slow down and do half a mile at 9:10. I like this workout because the distance is short enough that it doesn’t feel overwhelming. This is also the longest workout I can do before leaving for work.

The Week Before

I posted midway through last week that I was feeling less crazy than I usually do during my taper. This proved true until about Thursday, when stress and other worries combined to turn me into a pacing, bread devouring fiend. Well, maybe it wasn’t that bad. Anyway, the real issue started on Friday, when I woke up with a scratchy throat. I thought perhaps I had just been shouting too much during play practice, but on Saturday the feeling persisted. In addition, on Saturday for some reason I was achy. I don’t think I overdid it on Friday–my exercise level was normal or even reduced for me. This was troubling.

By Sunday morning my throat didn’t just feel scratchy, but had worked its way to painful and swollen. As I hauled my body out of bed at 5:30, I offered it a deal: Get through to noon in one piece, and I’ll give you a long nap and some time off next week. I dressed in the silent house (we were staying at my in-laws) and grabbed a breakfast of two slices of toast with PB and bananas. Then I sat down and tried unsuccessfully to concentrate on my reading until it was time to go. Of course, we left a few minutes late, because that’s the kind of people we are, and then the highway between West Bend and Grafton was detoured and, and, and. B left me near the starting line with about 20 minutes to go (because of how drop off and pickup worked, we didn’t get any pre- or post-race photos, sadly). I immediately went into Grafton High School (i.e., the starting line) and started hunting for a bathroom with a line shorter than ten people. No luck, but I did manage to get through and get out to the actual starting line just as they started playing the Star Spangled Banner. It was an impressively bad rendition, and I spent most of it trying to get my watch to connect to the satellites.

And then we were off! I had originally planned to run at a relatively slow pace–maybe 9:30s–until mile five, then pick it up and go 9:00-9:10 to mile twenty, and finally drop the hammer and see if I could do some 8:50s in the last 10k. But on race day, I started out pretty fast, and wound up staying at about the same tempo overall for the whole race. I had also planned to take a gel every seven miles. I stuck to this plan, had no stomach pains, and felt great. It was nice to pass people at mile twenty instead of bonk and spend two or three miles walking tearfully and in pain. I did have to make two pit stops. At some point, my watch got out of sync with the mile markers on the course, so I hit 26.2 right at the 26 mile marker. At that point, my watch said I had about two minutes to get to the finish line under four hours, so I took off as fast as I could. Final time: 3:59:59, good enough for 41st in my age group. Very dramatic too. My sore throat had cleared up a little ways into the run, or the endorphins hit and I didn’t notice it anymore. I did nap for a couple of hours in the afternoon, and the cold hit me for real on Tuesday night. Now I’m feeling much better. What worked:

  • The speed work. If I’d done more intense sprints, I would have been faster, but for ten weeks I’m pretty satisfied.
  • Nutrition plan. Three (decaf) gels and water at every aid station.
  • The last-minute decision to adapt my pacing plan to how I was feeling.
  • My shoes (Brooks PureGrit) were great and supportive and my socks (Balega) did not give me blister problems. Hurrah.

What could have worked better:

  • Clothes. I dithered about this and eventually went with shorts and a long-sleeved shirt because of the cold. My legs were fine, but my hands were quite chilly at times, especially when we were hit by a headwind off the lake during the last three miles.
  • Pre-race eating. I managed to go into the race a bit heavier than my normal racing weight, and also I ate a huge meal the night before and had to make two pit-stops. Should have taken a loperamide, I guess.
  • Due to a misunderstanding, B met me at the art museum instead of at the finish line, so somehow wound up walking down four flights of stairs to get to where his car was. I would have preferred not to do that.
  • The taper was relatively successful, I’ll admit. I wish I’d toned it down toward the end of week two and taken Friday completely off as well.
Photo via Brightroom Photography.

That’s really about it. I’m quite satisfied with how it all went. The course was great, downhill (and with a tailwind most of the way), and the crowds were enthusiastic. I saw a couple of signs that said “Run, random stranger, run!” and one that said, “Go Emily!” While I was clearly not their Emily, they still held it up and cheered as I went past. Best of all, near mile 18, someone had set up a “Paul Ryan Finish Line.” The last time I ran a marathon, Obama was running for his first term and there were people in the crowd holding signs reading, “You can DO it.” (That marathon was in DC.) It was nice to see something along the same vein here, though with a more Wisconsin-appropriate twist.

Now that I’ve done a couple of 50ks, it’s easy to forget how big a deal running a marathon is for almost everyone. I’ll admit it, this was kind of a big deal for me too.

Flowers from Mormon Central

I took this picture at the Mormon Holy See in SLC a few weeks ago. Tonight my brother Daniel helped walk me through the process of making it “less red” (per B’s request). I think it looks pretty good now.

Say what you will about the Mormons (and I’m sure you will), they certainly have some nice gardens in Temple Square.

 

Em oi! #368: I guess maybe I am, actually

“Gold Digger” by Kanye West (feat. Jamie Foxx) is actually a pretty good song, using a back riff reminiscent of Ray Charles (I cannot claim that this came to me spontaneously; I heard an NPR program on Ray Charles the other day and the song got mentioned). Before the other day, I’d only heard it made fun of on the Daily Show. Anyway, I thought maybe I would try to write some lyrics that were a bit less…demeaning? (Actually I haven’t decided if I think the lyrics are demeaning or just kind of cynical. Hah.)

Clearly, I’m bound for the big time with this lyrics-writing business.

I have now completed the paper that was preoccupying me for the last two weeks (actually the last six months, but there were times I wasn’t actively working on it). Hopefully by December I will have finished all my revisions and submitted it for consideration for the printed volume from the conference, and then I can stop thinking about it before it turns into a dissertation. Because it is that way headed. Feh.

I’m on taper for the Milwaukee Marathon next week, which is great fun. Um, sort of. In general, I am feeling a lot less taper madness than usual, possibly because I am using a different tapering strategy (something more like this). But with the stress for the conference, I did wind up running (reduced) mileage every day last week, instead of taking off Monday and Friday like I am supposed to. And I am feeling fussy about my weight again…this is something I go through about a hundred times per year, and I know I will be back to normal within a few weeks of the race, but man. But as B put it this morning, the week before a marathon is not the time to decide to lose weight. And I have noticed, with an increase in sleep and in calorie intake, that my running is faster and that I feel stronger. So maybe I’ve put on some muscle and it’s not a bad thing.

I am going to go do my work now. I’ll be back next week with a race report, and hopefully a new comic too. Maybe some photos later in the week if I’m lucky. Lots of exciting things* have come up in the last couple of weeks, but most of them I can’t talk about yet. But watch this space.

We’ll file this comic under TN420 L86 2012 for Mining engineering. Metallurgy–Ore deposits and mining of particular metals–Gold and silver ore deposits and mining. Precious metals–Gold ore deposits and mining–General works.

* Exciting things in a professional capacity. I’m still not pregnant.

Em ơi! #367: SLC Diaries, part 1

Oh my friends, I have been busy. I have so much I want to blog about, including other comics and a book review I’ve been sitting on for two weeks, but it all has to wait until some mythical time “when my other work is finished.” Yes. Well. I’m off to Montreal for the weekend, and I’m hopeful that I will at least get another comic sketched out.

This comes from a trip B and I took two weeks ago to Salt Lake City to visit my brother and his wife. I will confess that I–like, I think, all dog owners–think the breed of dog that my dog is (shiba inu) is the best breed. Consequently, when I meet other dogs I usually think, “Well, why didn’t you get a shiba?” But Mac immediately became one of the animals I care a lot about, bypassing that question entirely. He was entirely sweet and amazing. He’s also very relaxed. The difference between an almost two year old dog like Maya and a ten year old dog is incredible.

Filing this one under: SF429.C3 L86 2012 for Animal culture–Pets–Dogs–By breed, A-Z–Cairn terrier.

Here are a few photos from the trip. Click to embiggen.

The Thai actually says something like, “Cruelty is not silent.”

I ran over some of those mountains on the left there. I don’t know which one specifically. It was called Little Mountain.

Em oi! #39, 78, 90, 94, 147, 149, 158, and 162: Running Jokes


GV529 .L86 2007 (Recreation. Leisure—Physical education and training—Gymnastics. Gymnastics exercises—Heavy exercises—Jumping exercises.) Guest appearance by Ly!

GV498 .L86 2007 (Recreation. Leisure—Physical education and training—Gymnastics. Gymnastics exercises—Calisthenics. Group exercises—Rope jumping or skipping.) Guest appearance by Chandra!

GV1061.8.P75 L86 2007 (Recreation. Leisure—Sports—Track and field athletics—Foot racing. Running—Other special topics, A-Z—Psychological aspects.) Guest appearance by my sister-in-law, Claire.

GV1061.8.P75 L86 2007a (Recreation. Leisure—Sports—Track and field athletics—Foot racing. Running—Other special topics, A-Z—Psychological aspects.) Same deal, pretty much. Guest here is my brother Daniel.


RC553.M36 L86 2008 (Internal medicine—Neurosciences. Biological psychiatry. Neuropsychiatry—Psychiatry—Specific pathological states, A-Z—Masochism). Daniel again. He actually owns a ton of shirts with stripes on the front, in case you were curious. Or maybe he owns only one shirt like that and I just have some weird belief about his wardrobe. That could also be true.


GV1065.17.T73 L86 2008 (Recreation. Leisure—Sports—Track and field athletics—Foot racing. Running—Distance running—Marathon running—Special topics, A-Z—Training). I think that when I drew this, I was actually training for my first half marathon. I remember telling B when we met that my memoir will eventually be called I Wish I Were Eating Curry Right Now. It’s a recurring theme in my life.

GV1062.5.M3 L86 2008 (Recreation. Leisure—Sports—Track and field athletics—Foot racing. Running—Distance running—Individual races, events, etc., A-Z). Here, M3 is the Cutter number for the half marathon at the Madison Marathon.


HD9993.S952 L86 2008 (Industries. Land use. Labor—Special industries and trades—Recreational equipment. Sporting goods—Special products, A-Z—Swimming pools—General works. History.) The pool in question is at the Princeton Club West. In case you were curious. Now I mostly swim at the local Gold’s, which has solid lane lines. I miss the Roschach-like tiles on the previous one.

A ton of people have come up to me in the last two weeks to tell me they want to start running. Even my mom is getting in on it. (Hi, Mom!) So to celebrate, here are some of the comics I’ve drawn about running. Not all of them, even–I have drawn a lot of comics about running I guess.

Anyway, I am not feeling especially funny this week and I need to take some time off. I’ll be back next week with new stuff.

Em oi! #366: The Fountainhead, a summary

B, who has not had the dubious pleasure of reading Ms. Rand’s works, looked at this and said, “Does Francon really marry half the men in the novel?” Yes, she gets married three times, the last time to Roark, who previously raped her. And that is kind of why I have difficulty taking The Fountainhead seriously. I haven’t even gotten to the part where Roark talks about “Prime Movers” and how he shouldn’t be punished for blowing up a building because he is more special than everyone else.

Seriously, Rand is like if you took Nietzsche and put it through a sieve so you only got the overman (aka uberman) stuff out and forgot all of the compassion. Nietzsche, who once threw his arms around the neck of a cart horse to stop it being flogged, who wrote to a friend (after he’d gone crazy, admittedly) that he was having all the anti-Semites shot.

So yes, she missed the boat somewhere. Though I do think that Paul Ryan’s particular blend of Catholicism plus Objectivism makes him much more Swiftian than Randian. I do wish the media would stop saying that we here in Wisconsin like him; the man is a total tit and we are aware of it. He keeps getting elected because his district includes all the horrid little white flight suburbs outside of Milwaukee.

Filing this under B945.R233 F6 L86 2012 for Philosophy (General)—Modern (1450/1600- )—By region or country—United States—By period—19th and 20th centuries—Later 19th and 20th centuries, 1860-2000—Individual philosophers, A-Z—Rand, Ayn—Separate works, A-Z—The Fountainhead.

This isn’t the first time I’ve done Rand, by the way: #352 also features her crazy-looking cheekbones.

Also, here are three great pieces of trivia I found out while researching this comic:

  1. Ayn Rand took her first name from the Hebrew word “a‘yin” (עין) meaning “eye.”
  2. She eventually signed up for both Social Security and Medicare.
  3. At her funeral, someone brought a wreath of flowers in the shape of a dollar sign.

Moving on, I ran a race yesterday. It was the Run for Snow 14.5 km trail run in Elver Park. I was very excited to be racing again.

Of course, I was so excited that I forgot my camera, so I only have two photos, both taken from the organizer’s website.

Waiting for the gun. Photo by CXC Skiing.

The race had three distances: 5.5km, 9km, and 14.5km. I signed up for the longest of these.

It was a very small field–about 14 women and 18 men in the 14.5km, with the same or fewer entrants in the other two distances. I seeded myself toward the front (why not) and so when they shouted “Go” I was almost immediately passed by everyone.

My legs were pretty cashed from my long run (13 miles) the day before, it turns out. I still have all my cardiovascular endurance, but I’ve lost some running-specific strength over my little vacation.

The 14.5km course was in three sections: a three-mile (ish) loop, a four mile (ish) loop, and then the first loop again. I say “ish” because my watch went a bit crazy and only recorded part of the race (about 8 miles of it?) so I’m not entirely sure how long each loop was. Here is the map it came up with:

I have circled the actual location of Elver Park and the run in blue. We did not cross the road (Gammon) at all.

The first section seemed to be mostly uphill, but long, gradual climbs, very run-able. I enjoyed it. If I’d been on the first three miles of an ultra, I might have walked, but I didn’t have to. The second loop had a number of sharper climbs and some very technical sections of trail (i.e., trail with rocks and tree roots on it) that make one pay close attention. It was at this point that I realized another woman was behind me by maybe 50 feet or so. As we went into the third loop, I had to pull myself out of my head and actually race to make sure I didn’t get passed. It was hard (at one point my stomach started to cramp and I thought I was done for, but it resolved without issue), but it was a great final section, and I managed to hold my position! I finished in 1:22:47, good enough for 4th woman overall and 2nd in my age group. Out of three. So not that impressive, but I had fun.

I look strong! Nice. Photo by CXC Skiing.

Upcoming races include:

  1. Salt Lake Emigration Canyon Half Marathon–2 Sept.
  2. Lakefront Marathon–7 Oct.

I’m hoping to do a couple of local races I do every year (Literacy Network 10k, Berbee Derby 10k) and I’m hoping to head to Lake Forest for the Dream for Eileen 5k. But that’s it. Maybe something bigger in the spring, once I’ve gotten my mileage back up.