B. (because there's no v in Japanese)

[John Bailey]

Have I ever mentioned the play Grounded by George Brant here? It's
worth reading or seeing if you get a chance. About an F16 pilot who is
grounded after she falls pregnant and is forced into the "chair
force". The way it contrasts her earthy, dirty, fecund humanity with
the abstract and ethereal transcendence of her new role is absolutely
gripping when performed right. The drone eventually takes on aspects
of a Rilkean angel or something that would definitely be at home in a
Pynchon novel, and the production I saw did things with lighting and
afterimages that really made credible the possibility that we were
witnessing a divine transfiguration.

Highly recommend. Apparently there was a Julie Taymor NY production
recently with Anne Hathaway of all people:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/27/theater/anne-hathaways-solo-turn-as-a-fighter-pilot-in-grounded-at-the-public-theater.html?_r=0

On Sat, Aug 29, 2015 at 3:47 AM, ish mailian <ishmailian at gmail.com> wrote:
> We know. Ironically, the use of dummies to simulate life saving, may retard
> our natural life instinct and advance the death instinct. Like my chatting
> here with you as I neglect my friends and family who are sitting right here.
>
>
> On Friday, August 28, 2015, ish mailian <ishmailian at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Took classes in childbirth and learned how to hold, feed, bathe, etc. a
>> new born, and yes, we were given dummies, and I took classes in CPR and AED,
>> and, we practiced with dummies. Though we learned the skills to preserve and
>> even save a life, we may have unlearned how fragile, vulnerable, dare I say,
>> sacred (?) life, human life especially, is. A doll is a dummy; it is so much
>> plastic and manufactured parts, engineering, bereft of the miracle of
>> nature's billions of years of unplanned generations. The toy, the dummy or
>> doll, the I-Pad has a built in obsolescence, and we know it, and we know
>> that a baby, a man choking on the floor, a woman suffering congestive heart
>> failure, is not a factory good, a complex machine like Man, but is only his
>> project, his compilation of junkyard parts, his Carl Barrington not his V..
>>
>> On Friday, August 28, 2015, John Bailey <sundayjb at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> Last night I stayed at the "robot hotel" about an hour outside of
>>> Nagasaki. Staff are almost all automated.
>>>
>>>
>>> http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jul/16/japans-robot-hotel-a-dinosaur-at-reception-a-machine-for-room-service
>>>
>>> Got me thinking how the contention in V. about humanity using whatever
>>> is its current level of technology as a metaphor through which to
>>> understand itself is such a wonderful one. The uncanny valley crap is
>>> 1% of it. Anyone who says with a straight face that we're hardwired to
>>> freak out at the sign of something close to but just a little
>>> different to us should be invited into a discussion of race,
>>> disability, transgender, and so on.
>>>
>>> But the "robots" there were just automata, not AI, and not much more
>>> technically advanced than the automata of Europe and Japan 200+ years
>>> ago. They're objects of delight, the same way.
>>>
>>> On the plane to the airport, back in Melbourne, I was sitting opposite
>>> two Middle Eastern kids who were cradling a robot baby. I'd heard
>>> about these - automaton infants that cry etc to teach youngsters what
>>> it would mean if they got pregnant as teens. They were as embarrassed
>>> as all hell to have to be carrying this thing around in public. They
>>> obviously came from a refugee family, too, given our neighborhood.
>>>
>>> The robots V. warned us about are none of these but, to me, are more
>>> like the drone pilots that carry out missions in the Middle East.
>>> 12-hour shifts in a dull portable in the Nevada desert, disconnected
>>> from the acts they're carrying out on a muted screen, and forbidden
>>> from discussing any of this when they get back home each day. That's
>>> humanity driving itself into the deathkingdom.
>>> -
>>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
-
Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l