ASK TREESHIP whats your favorite gilmore girls episode

stuff like big red son -- how he knows the ins and outs of the discourse surrounding the porn industry so thoroughly that he can't really, or doesn't really, take a stance on it, and winds up being overwhelmed by the sheer number of ways he can think about this issue, this expo, etc -- are really tough for me to read, but i think they are good. he reminds me a little of kierkegaard, who advocated that picking sides -- a clear story -- is just something you have to do at a certain point, even if you can see two, five, seven sides of an issue. dfw doesn't ever really do that in his essays and that is why they are so honest but also why they are suspended in this weird, uncomfortable place of indecision. from what i have read.

crimsonhexagon, i have not seen an episode of gilmore girls for many years but i think i have seen most of them that were syndicated as my mom would watch it often when i was younger.

the reason i ask is because i identify some similar species of eartnestness vs anomie and an attempt at synoptic perspective in your posts. i am not sure that dfw does not always synthesize these multiple perspectives, certainly he does in his essays on tennis (very good) and kafka (not quite so good). maybe he does in those essays where he is confronted with something that he does not really cathect in any serious way, but contemplates it with undue seriousness anyway (cuz he is getting paid? idk why the topics were chosen in some instances). i don't think dfw's illness and suicide derived from his 'personality' in the sense of certain intellectual anxieties and consequent unfulfilments and that such ideas are fed by the morbid interest in recreating the dead person golem-like from the tissues of their writing and thirdparty anecdotes.

he also seems very american, not just the midwestern awshucksiness but his work ethic, clarity of purpose and faith in the essential truth-seeking utility of the essay form or novel form. and perhaps you are similar (if internet-discursive rather than essayistic). maybe i am more interested in the phatic nonsense, idiolect, obliquity elements of meta-ilx these days. so it is conceivable that i have mistaken a degree of strategy about the way you post whereas this is really 'just you' and the ardently expressed wish to understand yourself and the world is not some sort of 'treeship project'.

http://treo.typepad.com/.a/6a0120a6002285970c014e88cc629f970d-500wi

The Treeship Project, now appearing at the Pitchfork Festival on the Orange Stage

xp, in some sense my insistence that my online persona is "just me" is an exaggeration, as there is always a degree of calculation in how people position and present themselves in any social field, especially one like ilx, where most of the posters are quick witted, culturally savvy, and looking to make sure (however unconsciously) that they always come across as being these things. what i mean to say, i guess, is that i don't think that my ilx persona is more calculated than anyone else's and i think it tracks pretty closely to the way i am in real life. there too, the way i behave is probably a calculation: an expression of my convictions on the one hand -- i think it's important to be fair minded and i don't generally like jokes that intend to humiliate people -- and also, less flatteringly, of wanting people to like me/think i am smart/witty, etc. so while i agree that the statement "this is just what i am like end of story" is disingenuous, i also think the degree of speculation accorded to me and how i choose to present myself is something that i haven't tried to encourage by acting in some sort of theatrical manner that is completely unlike how i would act in real life.

in terms of my posts attempting a "synoptic perspective" in my posts, i think that is probably due to the fact that i am basically an academic at heart but who, for various reasons, is not in grad school and doesn't have many outlets to talk about questions concerning art and culture and like to use ilx to do that. so in order to encourage discussions i try to take seriously what people say and respond to that rather than just try to one-up them. so even when i am just posting on the more superficial, chatty threads i don't want to start zingfights, usually, because that's not the aspect of ilx i value, personally.

i hope that is an adequate response to your comments.

i value waterface's zings though. i think he is funny at least 50% of the time.

what is the appropriate amount of tension to accompany an exchange of ideas that ensures that exchange was of value and worthwhile?

it depends. i think discussions with a lot of tension can be good. i personally might tend too much toward trying to find common ground with other posters, although not usually to the extent that i allow my positions to be diluted. more on the level of rhetoric. but really, there are more advantages than drawbacks to this approach if your goal is not just to communicate your own opinion, but to figure out what other people think and why they think the way they do.

it depends. i think discussions with a lot of tension can be good. i personally might tend too much toward trying to find common ground with other posters, although not usually to the extent that i allow my positions to be diluted. more on the level of rhetoric. but really, there are more advantages than drawbacks to this approach if your goal is not just to communicate your own opinion, but to figure out what other people think and why they think the way they do.

― Treeship, Tuesday, July 23, 2013 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

"I think it's much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong. I have approximate answers and possible beliefs and different degrees of uncertainty about different things, but I am not absolutely sure of anything and there are many things I don't know anything about, such as whether it means anything to ask why we're here. I don't have to know an answer. I don't feel frightened not knowing things, by being lost in a mysterious universe without any purpose, which is the way it really is as far as I can tell".

So, this got me in trouble a lot of times. Every kid asks a lot of questions, and I was no exception. So when my teacher once complained that I just ask way too many questions my guardians never thought much of it (which is to be expected). But when writing essays at school or university, and even debating things online or in person, people would say, "What's your point?" And I would say, "My point is we simply do not know". And I've always found it so strange that people seem to get offended or upset about this. They insist on my having an opinion, on choosing sides, otherwise I'm a hack or appear like I do not know what I'm talking about. So I gladly assume the role of the ignorant.

But back to your point. I used to rather challenge all ideas and opinions, and this is sort of a social blunder that sometimes drives people away. People interpret it as divisive, so I understand where you're coming from. But I also cannot be disingenuous. As I get older, I seem to be more passive about it and just, like yourself, figure out what others' opinions are or I am more interested in the person laying out her or his worldview rather than myself getting involved. I think it is a very introverted thing to do: try to understand the world and people without actually participating in it. So I become an observer. I sometimes take the Wilde approach of trying to make a joke or make people laugh while stating a thought that has a truth-value. It hardly sparks a conversation about that particular thought, though, and I sometimes wish it would. It is interesting to see how others react. As you might guess, I was often called a contrarian or accused of "not liking anything". So one learns to be quiet a lot and just write it all down, especially as I get older

I guess both our ultimate goals are similar: to figure out what people think and why they think the way they do. It's hard to tell the difference between how each of us react on our respective ends, though, if that makes sense. I would want all communication to be fluid, for both parties to be active, and not hold anything back, because in that process, it is possible one finds one's own missteps which one thought weren't there (read, conscious of the self and how others perceive us). So I try not to hold on to an idea for the sake of the idea; or to quote Feynman again, I try not to fool myself, even though I am the easiest to fool.

You seem like a cool guy, Treeship.

aw man i was assigned this thread as required summer reading from my school this is bullshit

crimsonhexagon, i often decide to try to be satisfied with saying "i don't know" about certain things as well. i think it can become hard when you are aware of the field of a given debate but are not convinced fully of any side -- or rather, you are convinced by the arguments of multiple, mutually exclusive sides. or at least for me, this can provoke anxiety. that's why some of david foster wallace's essay are tough for me... he has an analytical mind, which is always very much involved in weighing the various sides of the issues he is discussing, but ultimately is too earnest to really get to a place where he can let go of his uncertainties, either by choosing a position or by walking away from the debate and feeling ok about his unsureness, which would really just another position, i.e. the position that we "can't know."

i'm sort of afraid that i am somehow coming across as humorless on ilx, which is weird because in real life at certain times, especially in high school, a big part of my personality was being "funny". this is becoming less important to me as i get older, or rather i find more subtle things funny now than i used to. posters on ilx who i find funny include dmac, sarahell (especially when she posts infographics), and markers. the blink 182 video is alltime imo. the thing i wrote that someone reposted in the "LOLz" thread was kind of a stupid joke imo and not funny.

this is gonna sound self-aggrandizing and blend too preciously w my current DN but i felt like i'd come home when i read ajp taylor saying (well, repeating the alleged old joke) "the historian's favorite hand is the other hand"

haha

...by walking away from the debate and feeling ok about his unsureness, which would really just another position, i.e. the position that we "can't know."

― Treeship, Tuesday, July 23, 2013 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

With regard to humour, I come close to being humourless insofar as I do a lot of jokes that are too subtle. So I guess I'm a bad comedian. At work there is one girl who laughs at every single thing I say, though. She's great! Ha! :^) But I usually have a tough crowd.

women tend to be a better audience for me too. i think they have a more refined sense of humor than most men so they can get my subtlety.

If you're ever in LA, let me know if you want to hang out, dude.

sure thing, man.

i would say the same but i live in a small out of the way town... for now at least.

crimsonhexagon pls go back to your own 'ask' thread

No problems. I missed my chance to go when my dad was working there, so I don't foresee myself visiting any time soon. New York, however, is a whole other matter! It's not uncommon for people to make the trip, no?

Hey, dylannn. How are things? My thread. Hm. What was all that about, anyway?

Whoops. Okay. I won't hijack Treeship's thread.

dylann, do you have any specific ideas for places in bangkok i should go, maybe for live music or particularly good food or something?

i read a bit of the thailand thread and saw that you've been there. i'm going to be in singapore for five days and thailand for like a week and a half in august.

shenzhen airlines is offering 700 rmb round trip to bkk from shenzhen starting this fall so i think ill spend more time there in the future.

i have a good friend that lives there but hes a shut-in so i cant really get anything from him. ill make a short list of places to go based on my own limited experience though, but give me a day or two. im typing this from the front seat of a rental car at a truckstop.

cool, thanks dylannn.

are you living in shenzen currently, or near there?

Oh hey treeship sorry I didn't acknowledge your response to my q above, it just wasn't the conversation-starter I thought it might be

im moving to guangzhou sometime soon
i should be there RIGHT NOW but i had some issues getting a working visa-- i have my visa now and im going to be in seoul for about a week or two at the start of august and in china by aug 20 at least.
shenzhen will be just down the road

treesh how would you feel if, having formed a lumber shipping company called treeship, a tract of land adopted for workers of the treeship corp was anointed thusly, later being the site of a visitation by the virgin mary, and thereafter catholic institutions worldwide became named after 'our lady of treeship'?

this already happened iirc

or maybe it was all a dream

wait, the tract of land formed a shipping company?

to answer your question, it would depend on how big of a deal "our lady of treeship" became. if it became popular to the point of inescapability, or if a parish near me named itself our lady of treeship, that might be enough to make me consider revisiting catholicism. i was raised in a politically liberal but still deeply catholic irish-american family.

there's no suggestion that you had any role in the naming of the treeship township, i'm not trying to impute any notions of megalomania at all, it would have been a corporate decision

do you think you would feel guilt about being associated with a miraculous visitation even though you played no role in it, simply that a name of your invention happened to become linked with it? what would happen if pious widows and terminally ill children treated you as if you were somehow lustrous and holy by association?

you do know that my name isn't actually treeship?

wait

sure but i think if you were going to form a lumber shipping company it would occur to you that your ilx loginid looks a lumber shipping company name, and it would seem apposite and perhaps amusing to use the same name

oh, i formed the shipping company. that wasn't clear to me.

i would probably relish the attention from pious widows but feel guilty about sick children believing i had some sort of connection to the divine.

does your catholic upbringing affect the way you experience guilt?

i think so. the experience of confession is pretty strange and pretty powerful for a child, as is the doctrine that tons of things are technically mortal sins (say... skipping church) that you can only be absolved of through divine grace. i was pretty young when i decided i wasn't a believer though... my adolescence wasn't really marked by religious thinking.

when i was in 9th grade i briefly believed that if i were holy enough and learnt enough then i could have a direct experience of god, and then i was worried that i was going crazy

how holy are u

well i have yet to have a direct experience of god so make of that what u will

i was hoping that a direct experience of god would balance out phillies fandom

Thomas Schnauz, one of the writers on the show, tweeted out a photo of Bryan Cranston, the actor who played White, wearing a Phillies jersey from an unused scene from the show’s third season.

The reason they chose not to use it? According to Schnauz, the writers “realized that would make him too unlikable.”

otm

i have a cousin who is extremely good natured, fair-minded, and intelligent. he reads like four newspapers a day. once at thanksgiving though the subject of phillies fans came up and he sort of transformed, describing them as "assholes". his wife was horrified to hear him make such broad generalizations about a group of people and they kind of had an argument.