No, not Zombie Day–Zeitgeist Day.

Last Sunday, my friend Kelly, whom I play D&D with, put together a meet-up at a local bar. Kelly has gotten quite interested in this organization called Zeitgeist, which you can read about here. You can also find their free-for-download movies here, and I can quite recommend them if you have a couple of spare hours–very thought provoking. In short, I would describe Zeitgeist as a mostly-harmless utopian movement that believes that outmoded ideologies are blinding us to the grave danger that the world is in, and that we need to cast off irrational thinking and join together in a eco-techno-anarchist world society that rejects money and ownership of property.

At this point I should make clear that while I find these guys very interesting, and even admire much of what I know about them and agree with many of their ideas, I am not endorsing them, nor am I a member.

Anyway, Kelly wanted to show the most recent movie and get some discussion going. He invited me not in spite of but because he knew I had some criticisms. Eight people showed up, which I was surprised at–I had expected maybe one or two others besides Kelly and me. It was in the afternoon on a Sunday, so I think the bar owner just let us use the place for free since he wouldn’t normally be open at that time. (Most of us bought drinks, so he made some money off it.)

The filmmaker and head of the movement (to the extent it has a head–and by the way, I have so far detected no indications that he might be a cult leader, no claims to divine inspiration or worshipful talk about him by members or anything like that; the whole thing seems about as individualistic and anarchic as the society they’d like to build) seems to be doing a better job of framing the message with each film, responding to criticisms by clarifying and better supporting the thesis. The first one, Zeitgeist: The Movie, was frankly pretty nutso; the second, Addendum, pulled back from that a lot, and the newest one really focuses on the message instead of dumping tons of conspiracy theories on you.

And it was good company–I already knew half the people there, but I met several new ones, people from Argentina, Japan, Britain, Australia, and Canada, with the rest being Americans.

Good drink, too–that barman poured me a simply huge dram of Laphroaig, so much that I wasn’t sure I could drink it all and still hold a coherent conversation. (Managed by nursing it over the course of an hour.) I’ll have to remember to go back there…

Anyway, interesting utopian meet-up, right here in Fukuoka.

Now that my final exams are over, I thought it might be fun to post the questions from some of them here. Keep in mind that my students are not (for the most part) native speakers of English, and in some of the classes, are not English majors, so the questions are often, well, a lot simpler than they might be in an American course.

British & American Culture: The Modern Fantastic in Britain & America
Short-Answer: Answer these questions with one or two complete sentences.
1. In “The Faery Handbag” (Kelly Link), why is the game Scrabble important?
2. In Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (Susanna Clarke), what social class are the members of York society of magicians?
3. What are some of the things that Galaad does to show Mrs. Whitaker that he is a good man in “Chivalry” (Neil Gaiman)?
4. At the end of “Troll Bridge” (Neil Gaiman), why does Jack give his life to the Troll?
5. What are some of the things about Arnold Friend which make us think that he may be the Devil, in “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been” (Joyce Carol Oates)?
6. In “Godzilla’s Twelve Step Program” (Joe R. Lansdale), what is a twelve-step program?
7. How is the America of “The New Atlantis” (Ursula K. Le Guin) different from today’s America?
8. How is the London of “Looking for Jake” (China Miéville) different from today’s London?
9. In “Objects of Desire in the Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear” (Harlan Ellison), why does the Boss worry about Jacobs (the main character)?
10. Why does the main character shoot the girl in “Crossing into Cambodia” (Michael Moorcock)?

Essay: Write a short essay (about one or two paragraphs) on the back of this sheet. Use examples from some of the stories to support your statements.
Compare the role of women in traditional fantasy stories or fairy tales, with the role of women in some of the modern fantasy stories that we read in class.

American Literature X: The American Gothic Story II
Short-Answer: Answer these questions with one or two complete sentences.
1. In “The Enormous Radio” (John Cheever), why does Irene become so upset?
2. In what way is the futuristic house in “The Veldt” (Ray Bradbury) gothic?
3. Why does the narrator of “Johnny Panic & the Bible of Dreams” (Sylvia Plath) worship Johnny Panic?
4. What causes the transformations in “Shattered Like a Glass Goblin” (Harlan Ellison)?
5. How does Vollmer change in “Human Moments in World War III” (Don DeLillo)?
6. In “The Temple” (Joyce Carol Oates), what is the temple?
7. How does Louis save the Freniere sisters in “Freniere” (Anne Rice)?
8. What does Stella finally do that she had long refused to do in “The Reach” (Stephen King)?
9. What are the creatures of “Replacements” (Lisa Tuttle) replacing?
10. Why are people disturbed by Lissy’s pregnancy in “The Girl Who Loved Animals” (Bruce MacAllister)?

Essay: Write a short essay (about three to five paragraphs) on the back of this sheet. Use examples from some of the stories to support your statements.
“Change” has been a winning political message recently, but in gothic stories, change is often a source of unease and fear. How is change used as a gothic element in stories we have read?

American Culture II: America & the Search for Utopia
Short-Answer: Answer these questions with one or two complete sentences.

1. Who would be the rulers in Plato’s utopia, and why?
2. In what way is Thomas More’s Utopia a utopian satire?
3. What are some of the utopian characteristics of the Land of Cockaigne?
4. Why did the Shakers keep men and women apart from each other?
5. Why did the Oneida Community practice “complex marriage”?
6. According to Marx and Engels, who are the proletariat and who are the bourgeoisie?
7. How did the narrator of Bellamy’s Looking Backward: 2000-1887 travel to the future?
8. What do the women of Gilman’s Herland think of the American practice of keeping dogs as pets?
9. What are the utopian characteristics of Odo’s philosophy in Le Guin’s “The Day before the Revolution”?
10. According to John Lennon in his song “Imagine,” how can we create a utopia?

Essay: Write a short essay (about three to five paragraphs) on the back of this sheet. Use examples from some of the things we’ve read to support your statements.
What is the use of utopias?

So, anybody want to take a crack at answering?

Friend Jay Dugger sent me this link to a very interesting post on Overcoming Bias, which may well be my new favorite blog.

I was on Amazon.com, adding Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars trilogy to my "Save for Later" list because my copies are falling apart–I keep lending them out to friends–and among those little discussions at the bottoms of pages there I saw a thread titled something like, "Recommend any utopian movies?" Somebody was making an Amazon list of Utopian/Dystopian movies, and he couldn’t find any utopian ones.

I’ve had the same experience. I want to end my course in American Utopia next week with some clips from various utopian and dystopian movies, but while I can find plenty of the latter (I’m using Blade Runner), the former are rare as hen’s teeth. I’ve decided to use Zeitgeist: Addendum (the torrent download is free and legal, by the way), but it’s a documentary, not fiction (even if a lot of it is pretty unbelievable).

My theory is, utopia is a lot harder to pull off in movies than in some other media. Look at Star Trek: the Federation is a utopian society in many ways, but while this is brought up in the various TV series now and then (and probably in the books, though I haven’t read many Trek novels), the movies totally ignore those aspects of the setting. I think movies just don’t have time to deal with utopian aspects, which require a quieter (more boring) approach to portray them properly.

Because utopia is pretty boring. That’s kind of the point, really. Utopia is all about not living in interesting times.

What do you think?

Just sending out my well-wishes right quick, it being the 24th here.

But it does call to mind the utopian ideas tied in with Christmas–the idea that, on this one day, Peace reigns all over the Earth. As adults, of course, we realize that this is ridiculous. Most people around the world don’t even celebrate the holiday. But I do remember, as a kid, being told (and believing) that on Christmas Eve (starting at midnight, maybe?) and Christmas Day, the entire planet plunged into peace, like it had entered some kind of interstellar peace-inducing energy field or something. That’s kind of how I pictured it, anyway. I don’t remember anyone telling me that that was a beautiful dream, and not, you know, reality.

Now wouldn’t that be something if it were true? Generals would order their troops to fight harder as midnight approached on Xmas Eve, desperate to capture the objective before their soldiers all laid down their arms and started hugging each other. Videogame consoles would allow you to play only Wii Fit and Little Big Planet. And you’d think everyone in the world would convert to Christianity after witnessing a miracle like that every year, but I doubt it. It would certainly become the holiest day of the year for every religion, but they’d all be claiming that it was their god who did it. Even non-believers would claim that maybe it was some kind of interstellar peace-inducing energy field.

But like I always say, dreams are important. Without them, society would never change, and D&D sessions would be really boring.

Merry Christmas to all. Have a peacefully joyful holiday.

Anybody who’s ever participated in a Mac-vs-PC flamewar, or simply witnessed one (and who hasn’t witnessed dozens?) knows that Mac fanatics (as opposed to mere Mac users) are utopianists at heart.

Well, I have bought my first Mac. One of the pricier ones too: a 15.4" Powerbook Pro, with, for some reason, two video cards. Apparently I can switch to the slower one to save battery life. Weird. Well, of course I’ll be bootcamping Windows into it, as I am not a utopianist but merely a student of utopias, and I have plenty of programs I use in Windows. I wouldn’t mind sticking a few games on this either, to run the higher powered video card through its paces.

But I’m finding the Mac OS pretty easy to get used to so far–a lot easier than a few years ago, pre-OSX, when I tried and gave up.

Anyway, my bank account is pissed at me, but it does seem like a fine computer.

Sometimes utopia is defined as a world of true justice, dignity, and equality. But can it go too far?

This year’s Ig Nobel Peace Prize goes to the Swiss Federal Ethics Committee on Non-Human Biotechnology, which got a law passed in their homeland which recognizes the innate dignity of plants. Their paper is entitled, "The Dignity of Living Beings With Regard to Plants. Moral Consideration of Plants for Their Own Sake."

Ars Technica has a good run-down of the major prize-winners, or you can go directly to the site of Improbable Research, whose wonderful journal I subscribed to for years.

Personal-favorite title: "You Bastard: A Narrative Exploration of the Experience of Indignation within Organizations," David Sims, Organization Studies, vol. 26, no. 11, 2005, pp. 1625-40. I can’t believe it’s only 15 pages long.

China is building a microwave-based space drive, developed by a British scientist, that most physicists claim is impossible.

From what I can tell, it’s basically an electric drive that uses no propellant at all, and also uses about 1/4 of the power that NASA’s ion drive does. Since the ion drive also uses a small amount of propellant, this would be a phenomenal savings in mass, and potentially spark a revolution in space exploration.

But communist (and other extreme-ideology) nations have a long history of pursuing whacko pseudoscience projects. You already have to believe in the impossible in order to create a utopia, so believing in impossible science comes easy.

On the other hand, China has done a pretty good job of living in the real world for a few decades now, so I’d be kind of surprised if there’s nothing to this.

A couple of days ago, I received the Bluray version of the Blade Runner Ultimate Edition (the 5-disk one with all the different versions and documentaries). I had already had the DVD version–the super-duper one that comes in a little Voight-Kampff briefcase, with a Hot-Wheels-like flying police car model and an origami unicorn–but I had never watched it. When we got our HDTV and PS3 recently, I decided I had to get it in Bluray, and I wasn’t going to watch no steenking normal-def DVD until then. (Also, the non-briefcase Bluray version was only about $25 to order.)

Yes, I’m a geek. I used to be quite the completist-collector, and though I’ve largely given that up since moving to Japan (limited storage space), there are still a few things where I’ve got to have EVERYTHING. Blade Runner, one of my Top Three Best Movies of All Time, is one of those things.

I watched the Final Cut version the day the disks arrived. Absolutely amazing. Not quite the experience of watching the Director’s Cut version in a small theater in Columbia, Missouri (where I was going to grad school at the time), but pretty damn awesome nonetheless.

I’m tempted to go into the dystopian elements of Blade Runner, but come one–if you’ve seen it, you know. Maybe later, when I’m not running on fumes.

Actually, I want to compare it with another dystopia, Half-Life 2, which I just finished a couple days ago. Why compare? Because I think HL2 is a good example of, not a dystopia, but an anti-utopia, and it’s a good chance to explore the subtle difference and get it straight in my own head.

I noticed just now that the new US edition of Iain M. Banks’ Use of Weapons is available and in stock, no longer just for preorder. It had been out-of-print for years in America, which was too bad, as I think it’s one of Banks’ best Culture novels. In fact, I remember reading somewhere that it was the first one he wrote, but the structure just didn’t work until Ken MacLeod suggested trying an experimental, interleaved alternating chronological/anti-chronological organization of the chapters that made it all come together. It’s a little confusing at first, but it makes the plot unfold perfectly.

Highly recommended.