On 1/3/03 10:33 AM, "Georg Birkner" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> 2. We'll kick out any obnoxious drunks or troublemakers. > Who's we? When does someone start to make trouble? Is Ann Klefstad still > allowed of writing "If Eric and IPUT had ever contributed anything that > wasn't a snotty putdown, colored by arch pissy self-interest(...)" or "You > smell of old belgian undershorts, and your mother used to hide your shoes to > see you cry."? There's probably no place where the air is as fresh as in > Celebration (http://www.celebration-florida-celebration-usa.com/). But is it > really fun to live there? > No one is talking about living in Celebration, and no, I'm sure the air is not at all fresh there. Too much synthetic carpet offgassing, SUV emissions, and stifling uniformity. No one is talking about imposing uniformity on this list. And my invective was launched at insulters, people who, without provocation of any kind, call people "boring" or "liars" or "fakes"--these are serious slanders. To refer in what I thought was a transparently humorous way to insult in general (after all, I have not met mr tamas, so I cannot make judgments as to his actual personal-type odiferousness or otherwise, and hence cannot be taken seriously when I refer to it) is not the same as launching true insults at people who are not deserving of same. The thing is, I wonder if the Europeans on the list are not perhaps more appreciative of what they see as a sort of nice stringent nastiness because their daily lives are really quite insulated from such behavior. Living in some parts of northern Europe, for instance, is quite a bit like living in Celebration. Everyone is neat and clean; almost every aspect of the appearance of one's dwelling is regulated (in my ancestral town in Norway, for instance, one can only paint one's house in one of 3 approved colors). Even private names can be regulated: one can only name one's child legally from names on the official list. Gun control is stringent. Only the wealthy can hunt and fish and gather. Those aspects of life that are not regulated by law are often effectively regulated by custom. In America, by contrast, one can own a machine gun and drive around in a Humvee--our governor just bought one to leave office in. You can, in most places, paint your house any damn color you want, make plywood cutouts of old ladies bending over showing their underwear (very popular in my neck of the woods), have drunken parties, throw up on your neighbor's lawn, skinny-dip in the lake, name your kid Rebel Anger or whatever obscenity you miht choose. You can buy a decommissioned Russian submarine or an American Army surplus tank. And the thing is, people do behave in these sorts of unbuttoned ways (and many more serious ones--seen American assault statistics lately?) fairly often--no doubt admirable from a "freedom" point of view but a big pain in the ass to live with all the time. So American artist-types may not valorize rudeness as "freedom" as much as Europeans, having grown up in much more chaotic circumstances. That's why "Celebration" was created--as a haven from the fear of getting your ass shot on the sidewalk in front of your apartment: a much greater danger in LA than in Bern or Bonn or Bergen. (Happened to 3 of my neighbors while I was living on Vendome street just south of Sunset.) You don't need any "Celebration" in Europe: you already have it in spades. (Although as the homogeneity of the place is changing, perhaps the weird picture-perfectness I remember from 20 years ago is changing? I hope so, and I hope you welcome it.) Freedom is damned complicated. One person's "freedom" can be another person's silencing, as they are driven away or cowed by insult and slander, or simply tired of bile and self-indulgence. AK
