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Earlier this year, I decided that we needed a garden. Our home included a 200 square foot flower bed that was moving steadily towards total reclamation by aggressive, thorn ridden, noxious plant life. People who know me weren't surprised by the weed cultivation -- I insisted for several years that the back yard was xeriscaped with native plant life prior to Nat ordering sod. I spent several weekends and evenings digging out the undesirable material, tilling in compost, busting sod, and removing galvanized sprinkler pipe with my trusty sidekick. We started with eleven 9 foot rows over approximately 24 feet of garden.

I discovered that I enjoy playing in the outside dirt almost as much as I love playing in the clean dirt of my (presently mostly hypothetical) studio (e.g., clay). I planted three varieties of lentils (calypso beans, kidney beans, and boston favorite beans), roma tomatoes, tomatillos, yukon gold potatoes, pumpkins (for Cole and Tate) and peppers (jalapenos, seranos, habaneros, cayenne, and red bell). With one thing and another, I seized another 200 square foot section of the southwest corner of our lot for berries. I dithered on the berry decision long enough to miss out on the supply of blackberries at my local garden stores. I planted red raspberries, black raspberries, and boysenberries. We will get blackberries next year along with a couple of fruit trees. I will likely expand the garden to the edge of the driveway before I finish for the year. And, I have started thinking about a compost bin.

Before I started, I chatted with Jeremy of the Rockin' E Country Store and the fellow who runs the East Farms CSA. I knew almost nothing about vegetable gardening. Jeremy gave me some pointers for getting started and recommended a drip irrigation system. Once my berries and vegetables were planted, I spent a vacation day trenching across the backyard and plumbing in an irrigation water spigot at the garden. My sister-in-law is connected with Orbit Irrigation and got me a couple of their vegetable garden kits (Thanks, Mel!). I also set bamboo posts and purchased hemp twine for trellising my vines. I don't know how well the bamboo is going to work, but I like how it looks. If/when it fails, I'll explore other options.

I view the garden as the natural evolution of my lifestyle change back in January 2005. Michael Pollan's books "The Omnivore's Dilemma" and "The Botany of Desire" influenced my thinking as did my research into community supported agriculture (CSA information: USDA National Agriculture Library and Wikipedia's CSA entry) and the local CSA programs (Borski Organic Farms, East Farms, Ranui Gardens, and Zoe's Organic Garden). I was also influenced by discussions with my buddy Jean Wylie -- she's an adept gardner who tells me that the load of shit steer manure she received was the best possible house warming gift her friend Ivan could have given (Jean moved to Colorado at the start of the year to be closer to her children. And probably Ivan. I miss her something fierce.).

Tate made his appearance at 4:25 a.m. on Tuesday Wednesday, March 21, 2007. He weighed seven pounds and one ounce and was 20 inches long. A few photos have been uploaded.

My buddy Chuck popped in for a few hours on Sunday last to set the tile on the back splash beneath the cabinets on the south wall of the kitchen. The results are impressive.

Previous to our back splash session, FedEx finally managed to deliver the cabinets for my island without destroying or losing them. The island is quickly becoming space which I long to use. Once the cabinets were in place, I realized I had room for a bar overhang on the east end of the island. Chuck converted some 8/4 maple into corbels for me. The corbels turned out great and will be even better once I figure out how to stain them. In the near future, Chuck and I will need to set the beveled edge pieces over the exposed cabinet cap (the perforated metal below the marble visible on the island).

On President's Day, my buddy Erik phoned for help moving a dresser he and Debbie purchased from a local furniture store. While waiting for some muscle to pull his order, I found and purchased the hutch below. It goes incredibly well with the rest of the kitchen.

My very good friend Erik married Debbie yesterday in Moroni, UT. I volunteered to make a wedding cake and had fun figuring out the basics of wedding cake production. Debbie selected a cake design and I attempted an implementation.

The kitchen is primed.

I am incapable of creating invisible sheetrock seams. The next floating job is getting hired out. End of story.

Clay, the narrator of Bret Easton Ellis' (1964) novel "Less Than Zero" (1985), drifts through the narrative in an extended series of perpetual presents. He is the epitome of Paul Virilio's (1932) terminal citizen (Virilio, 21), existing through the mediation of input and interaction, eschewing community and communication in favor of serial physical contact, and constantly seeking the acceleration of heightened stimulation in a downward spiral from promiscuous sex with any willing partner to the experiences of death and dying. Ellis captures Clay's descent into the zombie-like terminal state in the opening phrase of the novel, "People are afraid to merge" (Ellis, 9).

Clay returns to Los Angeles after his first semester away at school. Clay's otherness is established on the opening page of the novel. Ellis contrasts Blair's "clean, tight jeans and her pale-blue T-shirt" with Clay's general state of disarray. Clay has mud on his jeans, a stain on the sleeve of his damp and wrinkled shirt, and a tear on the neck of his sweater which he notes is out of sync with the west coast (Ellis, 9). Ellis further reinforces Clay's status as other with repetitions of various characters commenting on Clay's paleness and appearance of unwellness. Blair begins the fortification of this image as she leaves Clay at his house and is followed by Trent and both of Clay's parent's. "What's wrong?" "You look pale" (Ellis, 10). Finally, Clay sees himself lacking a tan.

In the opening of his essay The Third Interval, Virilio quotes Nikolai Gogol (1809-1852), "Without even leaving, we are no longer there" (Virilio, 9). Clay's transition to blond, tanned, Los Angeles zombie begins with two themes that merge in the narrative. Foremost is Clay's relationship with Blair. The reader learns over the course of the novel that Clay and Blair have been together in at least the semblance of a dating relationship. While talking to Blair on the telephone, Clay pulls a shoebox of photographs from his closet that contains the artifacts of a high school couple - Clay and Blair together at prom, together at Disneyland, and together at the beach (Ellis, 71). In a flashback sequence, the reader learns of an extended stay together at one of Clay's parents' houses in Monterey (Ellis, 59-61). However, Blair discloses early in the narrative that Clay did not call her during his four month school absence (Ellis, 22). Though Clay interacts with Blair throughout his vacation in Los Angeles, it is attraction based on mutual rejection (Virilio, 103) and the coming together at a distance (Virilio, 107).

Clay's primary diversions are sex and drugs. Intercourse is used as a mechanism to permit contact without communication, and drugs are used to regulate and mediate his experience. Clay resists the potential complication of interacting with his bed mates by fleeing once intercourse is completed. Griffin propositions Clay at Blair's party. Clay goes to Griffin's house and sneaks out after intercourse. He collects his clothing strewn from the bedroom to the entry with the exception of the scarf Blair had given him (Ellis, 37-9). Sex allows Clay to feel something that seems real; but, Clay is not interested in the reality of communicating, cooperating, or coping with his partners. He carefully verifies that he has his own underwear while carelessly leaving behind the scarf which might bind him to Blair.

Clay takes Blair to his friend Daniel's party. Blair realizes she doesn't know anyone at the party and insists that she and Clay leave. She whispers provocatively in his ear and lays her hand on Clay's thigh. Clay becomes aroused, but holds out for Blair to suggest they go back to her house. Again, after intercourse, Clay dresses and hastily leaves (Ellis, 57-8). It is as though any extended proximity with Blair will result in potentially uncomfortable communication. Though Clay is willing to spend hours on the telephone with Blair, he is unwilling to connect at an unmediated level beyond sex with anyone. In fact, though Blair tells Clay she is naked, on her bed, and home alone, Clay will not suggest sex. A necessary aspect of the physical act is that Clay makes no propositions. For Clay, sex is a reminder of mortality and interpersonal connection is the road to a sensationless purgatory.

A spectral snapshot condensing Clay's relationship with Blair follows in Clay's recollection of an extended trip to the Pajaro Dunes in Monterey. In a way, this trip is akin to a honeymoon. They make the traditional nuptial distancing where, at the start, they explore, drink, eat, and make love together (Ellis, 59-61). It is significant that Clay recalls the sexual act in this instance as "making love." Intercourse in his present is treated like his use of drugs - a necessary activity to facilitate physical feeling. The beginning of the Monterey trip promises connection with Blair. However, the precedents of his parents' marriage and societal norms pull at them with tidal force. Clay finds himself outside while Blair is inside, inside while she is outside. As the trip draws to a close, they don't communicate with each other, but Clay will watch the silhouette of Blair talking on the telephone, playing solitaire, walking on the beach. Clay sees the rift separating him and Blair, but he refuses to take any action to prevent it.

Early on during his school vacation, Clay meets Blair, Alana, and Kim at Du-par's. Conversation between the girls turns to a catalog of who is sleeping with whom. As the list expands fractally, Clay mentally notes whether he thinks he has or has not slept with the people cited, though he is rarely certain. As if choreographed, the girls reveal that Blair has slept with Warren. Blair glances at Clay repeatedly hoping for a reaction, but is met only with his nonplussed façade (Ellis, 27-29). The physicality of sex is vital to Clay, contact without connection, and he holds no double standard for Blair. The rules governing Clay's existence allow anyone to have consensual intercourse.

Clay's third sexual tryst exemplifies the logical conclusion of his promiscuity. Clay is propositioned by an unnamed, blond, sixteen year old girl. He goes to the girl's house, but finds sex is not what she has planned. Each time he tries to touch her, he is deflected (Ellis, 119-22). She has taken Clay's mandate to new territory - contact without contact. They undress and face each other. She insists he wear a pair of sunglasses. In this instance, the sunglasses are mediation of reality toward her fantasy rather than a filter through which Clay views the world. They simultaneously masturbate. Again, Clay dresses and leaves.

The secondary theme centers on Clay's awareness at some level that Los Angeles is to him as the Jacuzzi at his mother's house is to the goldfish his sister purchases (Ellis, 114-5). The atmosphere is too hot, too poisonous for his long term survival and he is looking for a way out. Clay is primarily preoccupied with a billboard he first sees on Sunset while fleeing from his tryst with Griffin. The advertisement simply reads, "Disappear Here" (Ellis, 38). Later, he goes to a sorority slasher film with Blair and Kim. Rather than watch the movie, he spends most of the time transfixed by the Exit signs (Ellis, 97). Clay's quest for a way out accelerates wildly, until he reflects the Saint-Pol Roux poem quoted by Virilio, "Going faster is playing with death, Going even faster is getting off on death" (Virilio, 111).

The counterpoint of sex is death for Clay. Though he is both fascinated and repelled by death and its causal violence, Clay's repulsion diminishes with his accelerated transformation into a tanned, Los Angeles, zombie. When Clay is fifteen and in Palm Desert, he recalls driving at night after a party with his two younger sisters. They come across a Toyota on the side of the road, its engine engulfed in flames. Clay slows to take a closer look, thinks better and speeds away. He wonders why no one has stopped to help without considering offering help himself. In his mind's eye, he sees a burning child on top of the engine. He looks for either confirmation or denial in the newspaper, but finds neither (Ellis, 76-7).

At Kim's, the party goers find Muriel locked in a bedroom. Muriel eventually lets the group in and proceeds to shoot up heroin she has been heating over a candle. Clay is transfixed by the lines of needle marks on Muriel's arm, by the penetration of the needle, and by the injection of molten death into her arm. Here Clay begins his embrace with the proximity to death and his mortality. His hands shake as he lights a cigarette and witnesses (Ellis, 85-6).

Driving home Blair hits a coyote crossing the road and panics. Clay gets out of the car and watches the life drain out of the dying animal. Though he states he does not want to get out of the car, he relishes this near death experience, spending ten minutes watching the consciousness disappear and blood pool. This brush with mortality heightens Clay's physical desires and results in rough, wanton intercourse with Blair. He reports, "I've never wanted her more" (Ellis, 142-3). The coyote's death is the thematic crossing point that supplants sex with death as Clay's primary device for mediation with the reality of Los Angeles.

Though Clay is fascinated with death, he quickly establishes limits to his interaction with mortality. When shown the body in the alley en route to Rip's apartment, Clay is clearly fascinated with the remains of life (Ellis, 185-7). However, the snuff film, to which Trent has obtained access, is an excess in which Clay is unwilling to indulge. Clay expresses no issue with the sadistic intercourse aspects of the film, but follows Blair out of the house when the torture and murder elements become apparent. The film is death and murder mediated in the same fashion as the simultaneous masturbation is earlier in the narrative. However, in this instance, contact without contact is unbearable to Clay. He observes Trent's arousal after the film as well as Blair's distance from both himself and the film. Clay is caught between rejection and acceptance of the film (Ellis, 153).

Finally, Clay is able to take minimal action when presented with the unmediated re-enactment of the snuff film in Rip's apartment. Rip has abducted a 12 year old girl who has been abused to the breaking point. She is tied to the bed and blindfolded, completely transformed into object-woman. Trent responds with the renewed excitement of realizing the snuff film. Clay, however, realizes that something in his world has to be too much, too far, and leaves (Ellis, 188-90). Redemption might have come through taking action to save what was left of the hostage girl, but Clay stops short of this, content to arrest the inertia of his downward spiral. He realizes there is nothing left of interest for him in Los Angeles, and turns the corner to return to school. Though he is convinced of his inability to be home in Los Angeles and though Blair asks him not to go, he assures her he'll be back. His stays in Los Angeles have become a kind of Russian roulette to affirm his life.

Selected Bibliography
Ellis, Bret Easton. Less Than Zero. New York: Vintage Books, 1998.
Virilio, Paul. Open Sky. London: Verso, 1997.

Floating sheetrock is not one of my favorite activities. Given the amount of time I spend dabbling in the kitchen, however, Nat and I are taking as long as the process requires to get the sheetrock seams as disappeared as possible.

And there was sheetrock.

Mark C. Taylor's (1945) essay "Interfacing" (a chapter in "Hiding")(1997) argues that existing analytical tools are grossly insufficient in the networked or webbed existence of the postmodern world. Like a mirage retreating into the haze of desert heat as one approaches, the network/web structure resists absolute classification. Taylor posits ten characteristic rules of operation for a web or network. Though each of the rules of operation manifests within the text of Chuck Palahniuk's (1962) novel "Fight Club" (1996), the Rule of Allelomimesis is perhaps best illustrated in the narrative's cycle.

The Rule of Allelomimesis suggests the possibility of cooperation without the necessity of proximity. The network/web itself maintains both the closeness and the separation that allow mingling without unification, presence and simultaneous absence. Open source software is often developed using this model. Developers scattered around the globe collaborate to produce a functional product without the need to assemble in a single location. They work together while they work apart. Instant messaging, chatting, texting, and email are also prime examples of allelomimesis wherein those involved may or may not be physically proximal, but communication is facilitated.

In the beginning, the fight club is just the narrator and Tyler Durden (46). They/he devise rules of operation and expand. As the weeks pass, attendance skyrockets and the number of local clubs increases, eventually assimilating the cancer support groups at which the narrator previously found refuge. Only Big Bob remains behind to inform late comers of absence and the presence of the replacement group. Eventually, Tyler establishes clubs in each of the cities the narrator visits. Each club is connected by the set of rules and by Tyler Durden.

Tyler's control is maintained by his present absence. The unnamed narrator is often searching for the absent Tyler. They communicate via written messages most often. Tyler scrawls out instructions or messages and the narrator types, copies, and distributes Tyler's will. In this way, Tyler is both kept at a distance and kept very close to increasing members of the fight clubs and to the space monkeys. When Big Bob dies, a significant change occurs in the operation of the fight clubs (178). In the beginning, the manager of the club would stand beneath the single source of light and announce the rules. The manager assumes a Tyler-like role of present absence in circling the ring of attendees in the darkness of the outer circle. When the narrator attempts to shut down the clubs and Project Mayhem, his present presence is rapidly and forcibly corrected. His breach of the critical distance of allelomimesis results in his eviction from the club and with the threat of emasculation from Tyler's space monkeys.

Even the stolen moments when the narrator and Tyler interact with one another are absences of conscious control. Only while the narrator is sleeping, while he is unconscious, can interaction occur. This necessary distance is the trick of the story. Neither the narrator nor Tyler can physically exist without the absent presence of the other.

Nat observed that I had not taken any photos of the current self-inflicted house project as it progressed. I suspect my neglect is likely associated with the hours I've been keeping on the project.

Back in October, I took two days off work during the fall school break in order to lay a new floor in the kitchen. Our previous kitchen flooring was suboptimal. The plan was to uninstall the existing cabinetry, strip the old floor, lay the new floor, and re-install the cabinets. As I cleared the kitchen and started disassembling the cabinets, I noticed that most of the cabinets were is really bad shape, due primarily to design decisions by the previous owner. Before I started, I believed that one of the cabinets was going to require some corrective action while I had it out.

By the end of the first day, I was still convinced I'd have a new floor and the kitchen reassembled by Sunday night. I was, of course, so very wrong.

As day two progressed, I learned that the dishwasher had been leaking for an extended period of time; that there were six layers of flooring above the sub-floor proper; that one of these pseudo layers was a collection of patchy strips of outdoor carpeting; that an 18 inch wide strip of outdoor carpet extended from the dishwasher across the room; that said carpet was soaked and completely overrun with mildew; and that the sheathing had been nailed into the subfloor in a near perfect grid spaced three to four inches between fasteners.

By Sunday afternoon, we concluded the cabinets were going to be replaced and the flooring was finally stripped to the subfloor. The photo above was taken that first Sunday afternoon.

As of Tuesday evening, November 7th, I completed: the rewiring of the kitchen; the stubbing of the plumbing for replacement with PEX and PVC; the rerouting and stubbing of the gas for the stove; the ducting for the new stove hood; the replacement of the old, fairly useless closet with a simple, much smaller box for the flues; installed new sheathing on the subfloor; reworked the high air return for the furnace; and replaced the front door to the house (though I suspect I'll be revisiting the door come spring).

Wednesday, November 8th, the cabinets were delivered a week earlier than estimated. If I had been in a rush to get the cabinets, or if I were waiting to install the cabinets, I can only imagine how long delivery would have taken. I also started hanging the new sheetrock . The photos below are the eviscerated and mostly reworked kitchen space.

The new floor will be carbonized, vertical cut bamboo from Simple Floors.

On a recent business trip to Beaverton, Oregon, I found myself in the Streets of Tanasbourne surrounded by the comfortable and disturbing signs of the Gap, Banana Republic, Macey's, Sunglass Hut, Hot Topic, the Macaroni Grill, and P.F. Chang's. The [dis]comfort I experienced orbits the idea that simultaneously there is something both very wrong and very right about being able to walk into a clothing store, which exists in an eerie echo of our local Gateway a thousand miles from home, and buy the same unbranded, black t-shirt I purchase in Salt Lake City. If the mental conflict is not "right" per se, then it is convenient so extreme as to affect the façade of "right."

One night, after training, I drove in widening circles in search of a local eatery for about an hour, after which, I wound up back at the Macaroni Grill. Earlier in the day, I asked around the vendor's office for recommendations for a good place to go for dinner. The responses returned were all national chain restaurants. I was not of a mind to eat the simulation of ethnic cuisine reduced to the pap of the lowest common denominator. So I drove through the evolution of strip malls until hunger returned me to a known quantity at which I might find the approximation of food within a generously loose definition of my self-imposed eating regimen.

In the early '80s, before the world moved on, and when the Olive Garden was new to Texas, I recall driving an hour to eat at the closest location. Because my wife is partial to the idea of the Olive Garden ("You're family here."), I am reminded how mediocre their menu is a few times a year. I doubt any thoughts or questions of quality would have passed through the mind of me then, before the Wall fell. These days, though, the duality which permits me to both enjoy the unknown or to drift on autopilot through the sargasso gulfweed of the known, is of interest to me, watching myself.

Our culture seems hell bent on forcing the masses into the pyramid's point of Hegelian unification. Anything genuinely new seems to be co-opted into the blender of the world, pulverized, homogenized, and returned for mass consumption, simplified to the single parting line of the simplest of moulds. The evolution of the strip mall from elongated, open boxes to cleverly but uniformly disguised open boxes pushes us in the direction of unification. The gussying up of the building's front seems to have elevated the act of shopping/consumption to the destination and experience of shopping, safely replicated within an extremely narrow band of structural DNA. This makes it safe for anyone from anywhere to walk into any national chain without the fear of the unknown.

Another evening on my Beaverton trip, I drove into Portland to see Powell's Bookstore, and I was glad to find the bookstore laid bare and sprawling over an entire city block. It was good to wander, to refer to a map to find kinds of books in which I was interested, to ask for directions, and to not be in any of a thousand Barnes & Nobles.

Throughout Bret Easton Ellis's (1964) novel "Less Than Zero" (1985), the protagonist Clay drifts through the narrative slowly transforming into one of the legions of interchangeable zombies populating the LA landscape. During his four week, winter break descent, Clay passes from one incident to the next as if a diversion lurking around the next corner might break the momentum of his lethargy. Clay's primary diversion is sex, the repetition and evolution of which become milestones in his metamorphosis into a blond, tanned zombie.

To say Clay sleeps with Griffin (37-38) and later Blair (58) is inaccurate. Clay has sex with each and then dresses and leaves with a minimal of interaction with his partners. It is as though Clay hopes the act of sex will have some saving effect on him, but knows the physical intimacy is a lie. He is propositioned by each of his partners, but the sexual act pushes him further away from any real connection he might foster.

His third sexual excursion compounds the social and emotional separation Clay experiences with a double physical separation that he resists in a nearly out of character fashion. Clay leaves the club After Hours (120-122) with an unnamed sixteen year old girl. The girl's lack of name reinforces her interchangeable zombie status. In her room, the girl gives Clay a pair of sunglasses to wear and produces a bottle of shampoo or conditioner for lubricant. Though both Clay and the girl are naked on her bed, she refuses to allow Clay to interrupt her physical space.

The sunglasses are instances of any number of screens Clay uses to mediate his existence in LA. Though he normally separates himself from the world through the mechanism of windows, television, and sunglasses, Clay tries to repeatedly remove the sunglasses he has been given. The scene suggests "Risky Business" (1983) in an inverted simulation of the film. Rather than indulge in and enjoy the physical act of sex, both Clay and the girl elect to climax within arm's reach, physically separate, in the simulacrum of a fantasy.

Further, this incident is a repetition of Clay's attempt to get a tan at the beach which results in an uncomfortable sunburn (74). Bain du Soleil is literally "bath of the sun" which burns Clay again as he climaxes. Clay is out of sync with both the natural world and the LA zombie simulation. Clay suspects both his mortality and that the trajectory of his current downward spiral is death. His sexual encounters are examinations of death, in that the loss of conscious control at the moment of climax is the little death (la petite morte).

From this point forward, Clay is fascinated by the dying and the dead and he seeks further examinations of death in the eyes of those leaving mortality behind. When Blair hits the coyote (142-143), Clay gets out of her car and hunkers down to watch as its life drains away. Later, en route to Rip's apartment he stops and stares at length at an open eyed corpse in an alley (185-7). However, the mediation of the snuff film (152-4) is beyond Clay because the simulation of the film provides no eyes into which he can gaze and because film is fiction and therefore cannot hold the insight Clay seeks.

In his essay "Simulacra and Simulation" (1981), Jean Baudrillard (1929) writes of "the implosion of meaning" (p31). This implosion is the blurring of reality and illusion to the point where it becomes impossible to disentangle one from the other. The Wachowski Brothers' (Laurence 1965, Andrew 1967) film "The Matrix" (1999) exemplifies this concept. In the beginning of the film, the character of Thomas Anderson/Neo suspects there is something more to his world than appears on the surface. He does not, however, realize the scope of the simulation in which he exists. Because his Thomas Anderson persona exists solely within the construct of the simulation, there is no way for him to differentiate between what is "real" and what is simulation.

Baudrillard posits the implosion of meaning in our reality creates a situation in which it is impossible to determine what is real and what is a copy/simulacrum/illusion. We exist in a series of perpetual presents devoid of any real history or past. The scope of "real" is confined to those elements that are visible, but the gap between subject and object, sign and referent has collapsed leaving only surfaces. Even once Neo has been extracted from his interface to the matrix and becomes conscious of the dichotomy, Morpheus must remind him of the unreality of the surfaces of the computer training programs, "You think that's air you're breathing now?"

Television is particularly indicative of this implosion of meaning. Advertisements are crafted in the guise of news segments, narrative film/music videos, or echoes of "reality". This surface veneer insidiously wriggles into our minds by way of a backdoor, suggesting the need for the commodities being hawked. Where one watching television previously left the room during the two minute intermissions, one becomes less able to determine where the narrative stops and the advertisement begins. The gap between the two has been collapsed.

Further, television reality is transfigured in real time. Technology has evolved to a point where the proof of the eye can no longer be trusted. Advertisers not paying for the television's coverage of their commodities during "live" events find their banners and billboards replaced with television friendly replicants. This real time replacement of reality with a simulation of reality makes the simulation more "real" as it obliterates reality and leaves only the simulacrum visible.

Another television illustration is the scourge of reality shows wherein the makers purport to capture reality. However, what the viewer receives is a watered down, completely mediated, fictionalization of reality. The audience is not subjected to a reality where an hour is 60 minutes but where an hour is no more than 60 seconds. Nor can reality be truly captured when a situation is transformed from its natural state to a production state where events can be captured on video. Even the editing of the raw video strips, streamlines, and simplifies actual experience leaving the predigested pulp of a "reality" devoid of content and custom designed for the lowest common denominator.

A significant segment of Frederic Jameson’s (1934) theorization of postmodern culture centers on several elements of postmodern style, including pastiche, schizophrenia, nostalgia, and surfaces. These elements are illustrated at length in Bret Easton Ellis’ (1964) novel, "Less Than Zero" (1985). In the novel, the protagonist Clay drifts through four weeks of winter break from his eastern university. The narrative opens with the phrase, “People are afraid to merge…”(p9) and a rough description of the narrative’s world as Clay’s high school girlfriend Blair, picks him up from the airport. The opening paragraphs establish the novel as an extended series of snapshots obsessively focused on surfaces, fragmented relationships, and unregulated excess.

The narrative style of "Less Than Zero" establishes an immediate sense of nostalgia through its stylistic referencing of Jack Kerouac’s (1922-69) "On The Road" (1957) and the structural referencing of J.D. Salinger’s (1919) "Catcher in the Rye" (1951). Clay’s voice carries the reader through "Less Than Zero" in much the same way and at the same speed as Kerouac’s narrator Sal. Both narrator’s relate the flow of events in a matter-of-fact manner. The structural similarities of the narrative arc between Ellis’ and Salinger’s works further reinforces this sense of the familiar past.

Ellis taps into Jameson’s concept of shallow surfaces from the first paragraph. Characters, starting with Blair, are described by the facades of clothing. This emphasis on the commodities of the characters lives most often downplays both the makers of the objects and reduces the characters to automata parading through the narrative in the latest fashion. How the people who surround Clay look is paramount, with no time or interest spent on who or how these people are as individuals. The reader is left with a sense of stale inertia wherein the characters do very little.

Jameson’s use of schizophrenia as a marker of postmodern style is evident in the conversations between characters. Conversations between Clay and his LA friends is ambiguous if not semantically null. Blair’s comment regarding the inability of people to merge repeats thematically through the narrative. Characters speak to each other, but most often say nothing of import. Conversations and words have lost meaning.

Another recurrent phrase, “wonder if he’s for sale,” permeates the narrative. Not only are the objects of daily life given preferential treatment, the characters are each available for purchase in various ways. From Julian’s act of selling himself as whore for the compensatory exchange of money and drugs to Clay’s willingness to feel being bartered for visions of death, everyone has a price within the story. Everyone becomes a commodity to be traded, bought, and sold.

In addition to the physically clipped and fragmented nature of the narrative, all of the interpersonal relationships are broken into disconnected pieces. Parents do not function as parents, dealing with their children at multiple removes. Kim and Blair, for instance, track the current locations of their parents in the Hollywood tabloids; Clay’s father recommends the use of astrology in order for Clay to get his life on track; and, both Julian’s and Daniel’s parents are completely absent as they each descend into the quagmire of LA life. The characters have bought into the reification of aimless lives mediated by excessive drug use as normal.

In his 1981 essay, "Notes on Deconstructing the Popular," Stuart Hall (1932) presents a number of tools one may use in the examination of popular culture. Perhaps most significantly is Hall's emphasis on popular culture as a malleable process rather than a fixed state. In Hall's view, popular culture is not confused with mass culture, the culture of dominant groups within society, or the culture of the working class. Popular culture exists on a continuum at the intersection of resistance to and containment by the dominant groups. The evolution of popular culture is a melee fought through the incorporation and commoditization of resistance ideology and signs into the dominant culture and the expropriation, modification, repurposing, recycling, and re-presentation of ideas and symbols out of the dominant culture.

Because the study of popular culture requires simultaneous application of etic and emic approaches, periodization is a vital concept in Hall's analysis. Simply stated, an etic approach to the study of popular culture requires the acquisition of fact and truth through observation, while the emic approach requires an insider's participation and understanding. One must both observe the flow of popular culture in relation to the culture of the dominant groups as well as in relation to society at large, and participate within the specific context of the resistance. The use of periodization provides a control perspective to both one's participation and observation. Hall specifies the period of 1880-1920 as a key segment of our history to serve as the control. The selection of this period is prescient.

1880-1920 was the pivotal time of transfer from an agrarian to an industrialized society. Innovations in technology increased the pace of life, necessitated broader education, restratified and blurred social classes, and created a new middle class with both leisure time and disposable income. One notes the same pattern of change as the world in which we live transitions from an industrialized base to an information base. The power bloc requires a working class both sufficiently educated to manipulate data and adequately mollified so as to facilitate the limitation of resistance to the ideals of the dominant groups. Drawing correlations between the present and a previous period allows one to ground observation and experience together.

In Stephen Crane's (1871-1900) novel, "Maggie, A Girl of the Streets" (1893), the protagonist, Maggie, exemplifies the interplay on the battlefield between incorporation and resistance. Foremost, Maggie, who works as a seamstress in a factory, observes the "well-dressed women" and, rather than acknowledge a rift in classes, desires matter-of-factly to possess the same refinements. In the previous era of agrarian society, such thoughts would most likely not occur. Maggie, however, has been educated to use industrialized technology and time tables at a cost to the power bloc of Maggie using her refined mental capacity for purposes outside of factory work.

Curiously, Maggie seems preoccupied with the appearance of people rather than who the people really are. She is not concerned with the process of becoming something more. Rather, she is focused on the outward appearance and wanting more. She seems to be the model of consumer capitalism. In addition to seeing clothing and social acceptance as simple commodities, Maggie sees herself, and her youth particularly, "the bloom on her cheeks," as a commodity to be invested, traded, and sold. This self commoditization mirrors the power bloc's drive to market everything possible to the working class.

Prep time: 15 minutes
Total time: About six hours, minimum
Makes: 1 free form loaf

Sponge:
1/3 cup starter
1/2 cup water
3/4 cup whole wheat flour, sifted

Dough:
sponge from above
1 cup water
1 cup bread flour
2 1/2 cups whole wheat flour, sifted
1-2 teaspoons salt
3 tablespoons Splenda
3 tablespoons canola oil

Whisk together starter, water and flour to make the sponge, about 2 minutes. Incorporate air into the batter. Scrape down the sides of the bowl and cover with plastic wrap. Allow to ferment at room temperature, 6-24 hours.

Transfer sponge to the mixer's bowl and add water, flours, salt, Splenda, and canola oil. Mix on low speed until a rough dough forms. Mix on medium speed for 10 minutes. Allow to rise until doubled, about 1 and a half hours. Punch the dough down and allow to rise until doubled again, about 1 hour. Form into a loaf and allow to rise covered until doubled, about 1 hour. Preheat the oven to 450 degrees with the baking stone and rack in the lowest position. Slide the loaf onto the stone and bake for 15 minutes. With a spray bottle, mist the oven every three minutes for the first 10 minutes. Reduce the temperature to 420 degrees and bake 20 additional minutes before removing the loaf. Allow to cool on a rack.