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

[Dave Monroe]

http://georgebrant.net/plays.html

http://oberonbooks.com/grounded-brant

http://www.samuelfrench.com/p/17376/grounded

On Sat, Aug 29, 2015 at 10:20 PM, John Bailey <sundayjb at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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
-
Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l