POST-PUNK: A POST ABOUT PUNK

(This was originally three different posts, which I have consolidated into one entry so that it reads chronologically.)

I.
When I was home over Christmas break, I was showing my dad some bulky sweater that I wanted to buy, and after viewing a series of bulky sweaters online, he summarized them: "Oh, so kind of a hipster look." Now, whatever. Who knows what he thinks that means. But what it definitely meant was, "Ah, this set of stimuli, I hereby file away under category X, never to disturb me again." It didn't mean, "Oh, I could see myself wearing that, if only I were younger," or, "I can see how that would be fashionable in New York but not here in the suburbs." I would liken it to the part in the Terminator movies, where you see behind Arnold's "eyes" and see the computer run through the series of possible identifications and responses. The computer doesn't "see" things--it categorizes them; the kind of categorization I am describing files things away so precisely *not* to see them. And something as innocuous as a bulky sweater!

My dad's response to this criticism was (partially) that I do this more than anyone--with all my subgenres and critical -isms, and of course my favorite category, "bourgeois." However, the infinite variety of different "cores" and "isms" at least testifies to a willingness to open up new categories when so demanded, and I will have something more to say about the bourgeois in a moment. My point is, the world is infinitely more various than our comprehension of it. To have a fixed number of categories guarantees confusion. This is the cause of nearly every argument I have with my dad. When he asks me a question like, "Is that in the Village?" when I have been describing something in New York, I have to allow that his conception of Greenwich Village is and will always be a term that encompasses probably 1/2 of Manhattan (this is a made-up example). But really, everything has to be filed away like this under a heading he is aware of. For example, my dad (in this fictional example) doesn't know NOLITA. Therefore, it is in the Village. Of course, to any one instance of this, I am "overreacting." I don't think so. Not only because it isn't just one thing, and it isn't just my dad.

My definition of the bourgeois, to be given in a moment, is completely unsurprising and I think we will all agree with it. It is not a Marxist definition, although I certainly see that behind it. It could roughly be given as: "the status quo," but that is so boring and not quite what I mean. And this is a category I make use of A LOT. But, unlike my dad's use of "hipster," I don't mean "bourgeois" ever as a "case-closed" recognition of a phenomena, but it is always something slightly cryptic and only partially descriptive. It is, basically, a poor adjective for most things. It isn't a subject heading, and is so vague as to be almost useless. But here's my definition: The bourgeois is that which does not want to be disturbed.

Now, let me give you another quote, from Flaubert: "Hatred of the bourgeois is the beginning of virtue." The bourgeois, of course, returns the favor. All of my favorite thinkers, Freud, Derrida, Baudrillard, Nietzsche, Marx, etc. are universally despised by our conventional wisdom. Freud is "discredited," Derrida's death was greeted with the nastiest obituary in the NY Times, Baudrillard is a lunatic, Nietzsche retrospectively a Nazi, Marx "works only on paper," and so forth. It's so ludicrous. But this enmity, this stubborn, mudslinging, empty (yet white-hot) hatred from all corners of respectable society...this is what you get. Why not embrace it?

To me, that can be the only definition for punk--in this moment, in this socio-economic order, in countries like this one--taking upon oneself the onerous and ugly position you already will have been given by hating/disturbing the bourgeois. "You're already going to hate me, let me make it easy for you, and clear for everyone else."

A problem immediately arises: this could be only an empty gesture. What if you are harmless, and yet you take on this aspect? You are easily IGNORED. In fact, this is what we see. No one sees a punk on the street and thinks "Oh, this person wants to DESTROY ME." This should be the case, unfortunately that ship sailed long ago.

Nonetheless, I refuse to admit what many have conceded to the bourgeois in a kind of postmodern defeatism-- that resistance, hatred, disturbance of the existing order is *already* "empty" and "co-opted" and a "floating signifier." Not that these things aren't true, but what is the logic here? That because "Nothing's shocking" anymore, we all should be content to let critical thought die out? This seems to be the argument.

This is probably why punk has such a low retention rate. It promises disillusioned kids a chance to change the world, to piss off their parents, to have crazy adventures, read Chomsky and go to protests, have an obnoxious diet, stupid hair, etc. And it should be all those things. But it can't be all those things ONLY, because then you realize 1) you haven't changed the world, 2) you don't even care about your parents, 3) you aren't having interesting adventures, 4) protests are dumb, 5) your stupid hair is getting in the way of meeting girls or getting a job, etc.

So, what are you left with? Some vague politics and being vegetarian. And some mp3s. Well, that hardly seems worth the effort. And here is the, "Well, what now?" question.

II.
OK, so this goes on--but not without a caveat or two first. This blog is really for people who know me, who I saw the day before (in which case, I have probably stolen our conversation and put it in blog form), or friends who I don't see that often and we only communicate by reading each other's blogs, or my parents and other well-wishers.

Of course, it is definitely ALSO for haters, but I feel like reading my blog without knowing me (or without giving a wide berth and confidence that I will end up somewhere), is probably just to get back your own message in return: duh. This isn't an academic treatise--I'm sure you noticed--there are gaps everywhere that I haven't filled in, that will be much easier for someone with some patience or knowledge to fill in. This is why I try to make everything fairly personal and evidently self-involved--not because "it's all about me," but so that no one will ever forget that there is a definite *perspective* from which this is originating.

So, my last post began by talking about my dad. That's something I'd like to return to here, for two reasons: 1) so that no one will EVER forget that everything I say comes from a certain place, certain things about my family and my upbringing that I love, certain things I want to destroy, and--if one were to forget that--then to get upset about what I'm leaving out/getting wrong/etc. Let's just say, I'm writing about me. I hope you learn something about you, but that is really up to how you read.

So, my dad. The first Black Flag album originally carried a "warning" sticker with a quote from the president of MCA records saying: "As a parent, I found it to be an anti-parent record." If there was ONE THING punk meant to me as an unpopular, dorky kid, it was Black Flag's ultimate dictum--don't become your parents. Now, I love my parents. Whatever. Hi, Mom.

To me, what was great about punk was that it wasn't just to "piss off" your parents, since anything can do that. It's the message: "don't BE your parents." Now, I know kids from high school who are already married, have kids, etc, so that at least literally, they already ARE parents (if not yet their own). But punk, to the extent that it is "not just a phase" and that it will have an eventual meaning in this discussion, is--wait--precisely that: that punk is not just a phase and will mean something IS in its not-being-just-a-phase.

Savvy?

All other youth culture is just that...youth culture. Punk, which of course everyone grows out of to some extent, in a way--and defining that will be the important thing--is something more irrevocable. It's something life-changing. It sticks with you. And of course, I'm not talking about people in bands or the rare few who can make a living within punk, and therefore don't have to leave or even step outside of it. I mean, obviously I've chosen to step well outside of punk for my chosen career. And maybe someone's answer will be, "oh, you blew it--if you aren't living in a squat and doing politics and making hardcore and eating communal dumpstered pasta, and instead are reading Barthes in your ivory tower, you lost it, you can't be punk anymore." And I TAKE THAT VERY SERIOUSLY. In the most literal sense, it's obviously true. Fact. Ok, so let's all take a deep breath and see that I am not trying to put together my life with *that* particular vision, which has its charms but really is not for me.

And here we arrive at the furthest I will dilute any definition of punk. As Gerard Manley Hopkins writes, "Enough!"

To recap this detour: not being one's parents, and making a new life out of that--fine, but that can't be everything punk is: I go to an Ivy league school, I live in New York, I read XXXXXX author, I listen to XXXXXX shit bands, I'm vegan, I don't have a real job, I live in a room the size of my laptop-- none of those things really have anything to do with punk, they just are things the complete opposite of my parents' existence. Punk HAS to be something else than just being a grad student, wearing tight pants, talking to Talya, and buying records I don't have the time to listen to. Duh. But really, some days, I'd like to pretend that is all it is.

I need to go to bed right now, and I want to get this post up, but let me leave you with one unsatisfactory answer, and one open question that I'll get back to. My interests, my personality, my style of thinking, my writing, my general disdain for humanity, my politics (such as they are)--these things aren't going anywhere. I am no nearer to being a normal, functioning member of society than ever. And that's not, in itself, punk. But I feel just as far away from everything as when I was 16, and yes, in a more complicated way, but really just in a sadder way. If I don't relate to DOA's lyrics anymore, and if Crass' politics seem a bit rickety, well-- that doesn't mean that I've found anything better: it's just all the sadder. But that makes it sound like punk is just "one more thing I can't relate to." But so is Victorian literary criticism, so are my best friends. Which is just to say, I hope that I have done some growing up, but all the procedures of growing up are just as full of shit as anything when I was younger---I mean, I thought high school was stupid, but it has nothing on the "real world"---and I guess I am still not willing to make those compromises. Not only that, I still despise people who do. If I am at all "better-adjusted" (which is by no means certain) than when I was a kid, it only makes clear that I will never be *well*-adjusted. And, again, that itself isn't "punk."

This is where we need to think some more about it. When I was a kid, simply being upset about all this was enough. That's what loud music is for. Now, it's like...well, here I spend 16 hours a day reading and thinking about "big ideas," and on the other hand, I have a completely alienated experience from everyone around me--maybe that is not a coincidence which I should just overlook. Maybe it's precisely that I am not thinking the same things which is *the thing* here.

So, I am still a person upset at the world, maybe more than ever, definitely in a more difficult and complicated way than before--and now that I've diluted the definition of punk where it maybe looks like I am willing to say that somehow MERELY being unhappy and listening to the Yardbirds somehow counts towards being punk, I'd like to say, OF COURSE NOT--and this is what I will reconstitute in the next post.


III.
So far, I've ruled out the following things as being the definition of punk, although some of them are obviously important, and we may want to define punk by a combination of these ideas, or set them off against each other:

- pissing off your parents
- being politically active
- fashion
- diet
- being sixteen

And now, I'd like to unveil the two things I find most important in punk: DIY, which I have left out of the argument until now, and that which I began with, the self-imposed stigma of being anti-(whatever). I am inclined to say, anti-bourgeois, because for me, that says it all. That may not be the case for you. I am not inclined to define it here, but let's just say that I see both major political parties in America as bourgeois parties, and so by default I am talking about 98% of the electorate. To that, I would add nearly all of corporate culture (an oxymoron if ever there was one), the latently racist, sexist and homophobic, the religious, law enforcement, and everyone complicit in disseminating the falsehoods which prop up the illusion that any of this is worth preserving. AGH. So, it's a broad definition, and if clearly 98% of America is not technically "bourgeois," I want to let stand the more troubling implication that the problem of class in our country is precisely what we don't want to know about.

If you'll recall, this is a kind of circular logic-- earlier, I defined the bourgeois as "that which doesn't want to be disturbed" by any knowledge, and here I am saying that class is precisely that knowledge that we don't want to know about. So, here I can only give you the tautology, the American bourgeois fantasy is only sustained by repressing the knowledge that it IS a fantasy.

Punk, as conventional wisdom never tires of pointing out, shatters this fantasy. At the most basic level, punk wants no part of self-congratulatory, teleological liberal utopias nor in the comforts of religion and regressive order. And punk can only be punk if it disturbs, criticizes, agitates, and brings down upon itself the ire of the keepers of this fantasy.

To which I will add, THAT is the message. And the medium is DIY. That's punk--and it should sound like The Ramones, Discharge, and Black Flag.

I think that rules out everything that would either try and "sneak in" or those things which a vague definition would accidentally include: mere fashion, hippies, Foucault, burnouts, hipsters, metalheads, Nate Treadwell, indie-pop, emos, computer programmers, etc.

As far as what this has to do with me, I can only say, a) DIY is an ideal. It is not always possible, but as much as I can, my life-ideal is to work with it and through it. No kidding; b) On the other count, I think no one will begrudge it to me if I say that I expect to bring a great deal of ire down on myself before it is all through.

allegory

One of my friends has been writing her undergraduate art history thesis about allegory, and the more I have learned about this project, the more upset I get and the more clearly I can define my own critical goals (in opposition).

Let us grant: 1) the validity of Freud's discoveries in psychoanalysis. 2) the existence of "real" allegories-- in renaissance painting, Dante's DIVINE COMEDY, etc. 3) "postmodernism."

In Freud's INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS (yes, I am capitalizing all book titles now), he strongly refutes the notion, still preserved in our mainstream ideas of both dream-interpretation and Freud, of the dream-book, a kind of dream dictionary. This is, of course, precisely *not* what Freud's book is. In such a book, water would "mean" desire, dreams of being naked would "mean" you are concerned about security, etc. etc. This is what Freud warns against-- a one-to-one correlation between a dream-event and a meaning (a premonition of what will happen, for example). What Freud shows us is how dreams are wish fulfillments that are not apparent as such. The whole book is full of elaborate interpretative contortions to show how absurd, contradictory, seemingly-irrelevant dreams in fact show us our desires-- through the medium of their "revisions" (the "dream work") and in fact their reception and re-telling. The meaning of this is that the latent content is not to be found in interpretation from the manifest content by a simple decoding of the elements. What gets in the way is 1) secondary revisions, 2) overdetermination, 3) transference in the analytic situation, and 4) the context (of the psychic past but also of the language that tells it). The unconscious (in a Lacanian formulation) is "what *will have been* spoken" in a dream. This means, the dream, like the Freudian slip, comes out at any opportunity, and if it is not one thing, it will come out in another. The dream is no exception. I think we all know what a Freudian slip is, so it will be helpful to think of a dream in the same way-- it "comes out" in the telling.

All of this means, there is no dream book--there is too much interference that has to be worked out. This explains two famous psychoanalytic aphorisms: Lacan's "There is no metalanguage" (ie: a dreambook), and Freud's "Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar" (meaning relies on more than just symbolism, there is no guarantee that a cigar will always (or only) mean "penis").

This guarantee of meaning, if I have taken a while to get to it, what allegory intends. The OED definition is "Description of a subject under the guise of some other subject of aptly suggestive resemblance." So, a dream about driving through a tunnel would really be a dream about having sex. One thing stands in for the other, as long as the resemblence is "apt" enough to be decoded. This, I think, is the philistine understanding of all criticism: XXXXX is really about YYYYY. I would say, this isn't even what we call "meaning." If I were to allegorize Super Bowl xxxii as a medieval tragedy, once everything was decoded back out to the events of Super Bowl xxxii, there still wouldn't be a meaning--just a football game. This method can also be forced on just about anything. If you want to make THE GLASS MENAGERIE be about the recording of Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon, you could probably write the world's worst paper proving that.

This, of course, is not advisable. Nor is it criticism.

Hence my dismay at the idea that postmodern art (or say, le nouveau roman) can be taken as "allegorical" because it is "meta." For one, we already have the word "meta," so there is no need to drag in a perfectly good word like "allegorical" to explain something we already have a word for. Secondly, the justification for this seems to be that these works are "allegorical" because their meaning is about their failure to represent/capture meaning/etc. So, calling attention to the inadequacy of the frame, how the frame is contained within the subject, makes the works...allegorical.

Please note that this makes no sense. For one, this is not a new idea. Art has always been doing this. Ditto, literature. Look at fucking Hamlet, for Christ's sake: "What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba!" Secondly, it makes the *subject* under the guise of another *subject* something like this: failure of mimesis, flux of meaning, temporality, artificiality of representation under the guise of a painting, sculpture, etc. . So, in the way that THE WIZARD OF OZ warns about the folly of William Jennings Bryant's economic program (see footnote to this post), although some may say that is really a parable--in this way, all "meta" art would be demonstrating/representing the subject "failure of mimesis" under the guise of another subject. And here I say, this is actually just what "meaning" is---because failure of mimesis is an inappropriate subject for allegory.

The confusion, I believe, arises in that, by commenting on the existence of shifting meanings, one is believed to have introduced the elements of time and multiple themes necessary for an allegory--because the allegorical "subject" is necessarily represented either as a series of events (a narrative subject) and/or the presence of numerous elements (as in a mannerist allegorical painting).

My point here is: IN FACT, ONE HAS ONLY THEMATIZED TEMPORALITY AND MULTIPLICITY. The allegorical "subject" occurs over time and has multiple themes---whereas the "meta" artwork only makes reference to this single, unchanging notion.

"Real" allegory works like this: A number of elements/narrative in the artwork--->stand in for--->a number of elements/narrative in the true subject.
To see the meta artwork as allegory is to say: X artwork ---->Allegorizes--->the multiplicity of meanings and play of time in representation.
BUT, all this is really doing is this: X artwork--->THEMATIZES---> the single theme of multiplicity and temporality.

That is to say, the subjects here are not parallel. All you have is a theme-- a representation, if you will. And this makes meta artwork seem very boring, which I don't see that it need be.


________________________________________________________________
WIZARD OF OZ:
Oz is short for ounce, the measure for gold and silver.

Dorothy, hailing from Kansas, represents the commoner.

The Tin Woodsman is the industrial worker, rusted as solid as the factories shut down in the 1893 depression. The Scarecrow is the farmer who apparently doesn’t have the wit to understand his situation or his political interests. The Cowardly Lion is Bryan himself; who had a loud roar but little political power.

The Good Witches represent the magical potential of the people of the North and the South.

muppets

This post is about the film "A Muppet Christmas Carol" (which I just saw for the nth time).

I had to take this out of a paper the other day (because it had nothing to do with my topic), but it might fit nicely here:

Speaking reductively, there will be only three authors in the English Canon: Shakespeare, Austen, and Dickens. Their works have all lived up to the real measure of canonical texts: their capacity to be reinvented, made relevant again, for latter-day audiences. Recent years have seen a number of films transposing Shakespeare and Jane Austen's plots into high schools (Clueless, Ten Things I Hate About You, and O retelling Emma, The Taming of the Shrew and Othello), and in turn, high school drama departments around the nation sense the urgency that could be conveyed by an "update" of Shakespeare into period analogues. Dickens sits less easily in this trend. It is impossible to conceive of a "mod" Bleak House or a Civil War Our Mutual Friend. Because the specific British reforms of the nineteenth century which Dickens tackled do not universalize well, and so much period and local detail transcends the incidental to become integral to the plot, his novels are almost unthinkable outside their Victorian context. Two obvious exceptions are A Christmas Carol, so capable of being universalized that it jumped over the category of human as to be acted out by Muppets in A Muppet Christmas Carol , the definitive orphan narrative Oliver Twist, which became the orphaned-kitten cartoon Oliver and Company. You will notice, however, that these children's versions, however clever, are still more juvenile than the high-school adaptations that crown Austen and Shakespeare's careers in reinvention. To which I propose that Dickens' real, serious achievement of universal appeal lies in Great Expectations--a statement borne out by Pip's sharing with Prince Hamlet that dubious apotheosis of universality, being portrayed by Ethan Hawke in a modern adaptation.

So, I got home, I rented A Muppet Christmas Carol, and I just watched it. It's great. I cried a few times. Having only one major role played by a human is PERFECT for Charles Dickens, because his characters are so incompletely-developed and yet freakishly memorable--like muppets. I mean, Tiny Tim is far too maudlin a character to be convincingly played by any real human child; he would be insufferably cute and tear-jerking. Recall Oscar Wilde's famous quip about Dickens' "Old Curiosity Shop": "A man would have to have a heart of stone to read the death scene of Little Nell and not...laugh." But Muppets really solve this problem entirely. They are deformed yet instantly likeable.

Also, by having Gonzo play Charles Dickens, the movie keeps in a great deal of the actual prose from the novella, without reducing it to weird voice-over narration, which really would not have fit in. And although not all of the songs are good, a few are really funny--the opening scene, the one with the Marleys (played by the two grumpy old men), and the song with the ghost of Christmas Present, are all good fun.

The two parts I cried at: when Scrooge rewatches the scene where he first meets his lost love, and then begs the Ghost not to show him the later scene, when their relationship falls apart. I guess there is something heartbreaking about having to see the pointless acts of self-loathing we drive ourselves toward--that, with the remove of years, become retroactively inevitable and constitutive, and so lose some of their smart. Having to experience such senseless waste *as if* it were possible to then undo it...seems very cruel. The other part is when you suspect that Tiny Tim might die. This would be the most awful thing imaginable, to me. Why should the probable death of a FROG PUPPET upset me so? I think the answer is precisely not that Tiny Tim is so sweet, so cute, so helpless, etc. That would be be the dumb route, and I think Dickens (or Henson) is so much smarter for making it the case that this misshaped green blob is actually what the whole family is based on--their whole crappy lives are lived in this above-board cheeriness so that Tiny Tim won't have to know otherwise. Hence, what appears to be his innate goodness ("God bless us, every one") isn't 1) that he is young and doesn't know better, or 2) that he is a perfect angel who doesn't know better, but rather--that this unsustainable hope in the goodness of people is exactly what his family and everyone else have to act out around him, so that for as long as he is alive, he won't see the truth. And if he were to die, there just wouldn't be any point. SAD.

Someone tell me what this means

Nietzsche Family Circus

This website pairs a random Nietzsche quote with a random Family Circus cartoon, with hilarious results. I love the internet.


"Thoughts are the shadows of our feelings -
always darker, emptier and simpler."

oh no

Heidi Klum has released a Christmas single, "Wonderland," which I hope does not have a Pavlovian effect on me where I will no longer find stunning blonde models attractive. This has to be the least sexy song EVER (just edging out "Oklahoma!")

jokes to be made:
- Referring to "Wonderland" as "Wonderbra-land."
- Pronouncing it "VUNDER-land."
- Combining the two. Calling it "VUNDER-bra-land."

new Deicide album

So, I just bought this album and it is instantly the stupidest record I've ever heard.

First of all, this is the cover art:


YEAH.

So, with a title like "Stench of Redemption" and songs like "Death to Jesus," you know you are in for an IQ-raising experience. Actually, ok, typing this in my room, and having listened to death metal for the last five years, I started laughing out loud at "Death to Jesus." It's maybe the stupidest thing I've ever heard.

On the other hand, I do not have an ironic relationship to this album.

Although Deicide have been a running joke for the past ten years, since every album they put out seemed to be worse than the next (although mercifully, their previous records are ALL under 35 minutes long). Not to mention, that Glenn Benton publicly announced that he was going to kill himself and then DIDN'T (wuss). But after hearing the last Vital Remains record ("Dechristianize"), with Glenn Benton (from Deicide) on vocals, everyone in the "metal community" suddenly had to wonder, could the new Deicide album be good?!

Well...I mean...it's a Deicide album, so when you say it's "good," you have to take into account what that means. The guitarists in the band quit (they were brothers), and so Benton has drafted INCREDIBLE talent in the form of a dude from Cannibal Corpse and a dude from Iced Earth (yes, the band which wrote a concept "suite" about the battle of Gettysburg and features former Judas Priest vocalist "Ripper" Owens, the person portrayed by Marky Mark in the film "Rock Star"). So, while the music is still mostly the same weirdly slow and redundant Deicide riffs, on *top of* the normal material is extremely fluid and beautiful guitar melodies and leads. It doesn't exactly "fit" because the duhn-duhn-duhn-duh-duh-duh double-bass plod is so very unmelodic, that every time these sweeping solos come on, you have to switch into a totally different mode of listening.

In conclusion, the new Deicide album:
-is retarded.
-has the coolest guitar playing on a death metal record maybe EVER. (obvious exceptions for Death and Morbid Angel)
-has a bonus Deep Purple cover if you buy the vinyl.
-makes me want to buy a pair of white hi-tops.
-is not parent-friendly.
-is still not as good as the Vital Remains 2xLP...

Democracy (in Mexico)

By way of a clarification of my points in the last post, here are two quotes from the New York Times about the swearing-in-to-office of Mexico's new President:

The courts determined Mr. Calderón, 44 years old, won the election last July 2 by about 240,000 votes out of 41 million ballots cast. But his principal rival, Andrés Manuel Lopéz Obrador, has insisted that the official results are tainted and has never conceded defeat.

Mr. Calderón reached out: “To those who voted for other political options, I will not ignore the reasons and causes for your votes,” he said. “And I ask you to let me gain your confidence with acts.”

I think it is time here to make clear the subversive point about democracy that I was trying to make in the last post: it is about LOSING. Democracy is not a rule by majority. It is about the losers accepting the will of the majority. I am not "for" democracy. This is why the question of a one-party rule (update from Gourevitch's book-- Uganda ended its "non-party" system in 1995, allowing semi-competitive elections which kept Museveni in power) is interesting, because the difference between a rubber-stamp parliament and a strong majority in a party system is to be seen in the willingness of the opposition to continue to participate and legitimate the system after their loss. So, I would say, with no interest in "finding out" whether the Mexican election was legitimate or not, that they will have a democracy only when the leftists concede defeat, and that if there is never a support by the left constituency of the new political order, there will be a huge problem--half of the country would be "outside". Democracy is not just counting votes. Here we see why the definition I am giving is not a happy definition.

Democracy

Naturally, this is an ongoing topic.

Let me start by saying that I sometimes jokingly wonder what would happen if I were stopped by a cop for a traffic violation, and when I rolled down my window, said something like, "Hey, thanks, but I don't believe in police, so I guess thanks but no thanks. Have a nice day." This is illustrative in a couple ways: 1) that police are the last people on earth who could wrap their heads around their own irrelevance, and 2) that it is ludicrous in America to state that one is outside of the system.

Let's historicize. There has been one great challenge to American democracy: the secession of a number of states from the Union in 1861, on the grounds that: [Secession] illustrates the American idea that governments rest on the consent of the governed, and that it is the right of the people to alter or abolish them at will whenever they become destructive of the ends for which they were established. (Jefferson Davis). Basically, the slave-owning states, when Lincoln was elected, saw that the national government was irreconcilably opposed to the core beliefs of their fucked-up white asses. So the argument of the Confederacy is, "We came into the union of our free will, and we can leave when we please." Or: "Since we are already outside of the democratic system, and the majority will be turned against us, we will make this officially the case and truly exist outside the American democratic system by seceding."

Eventually this was settled, but to my knowledge there has never since been an "outside" of the American democracy. This despite consistently pathetic voter turn-out, widespread corruption, fraud, disputed ballots, and repeated demonstrations that party politics are only nominally beholden to their constituents. So, I would say, the real success of American democracy is the shared illusion that everyone is equally represented, that there is only one legitimate government of our land, that the law is the law, that hundreds of millions of middle class or midwestern voters are capable of providing a legitimate and reconcilable counter-balance to my vote, etc. One country, one law, one government, no "outside".

Compare this to our prickly friends in Iraq. The celebration over their historic voting was short-sighted, because when people don't vote in Iraq, it has a very different meaning than when people don't vote in America. If you don't vote in America, you still acknowledge the legitimacy of the traffic ticket. If you don't vote in Iraq, you might be at war with the authority giving traffic tickets. In a way, George Bush was right when he stressed the way that ordinary Iraqi voters braved the terrorists who wanted to stop them from voting, because what is at stake in Iraq is not (as much) the specific ideological/political direction of the country, but the desperate attempt to have a consensus government-- one where even if you disagree with the specific administration, you see yourself as inside of the system and subject to the laws of the present and future governments. So, in a way, everyone who voted (and was willing to accept the result if their party lost) was on the same side. What George Bush misses is the non-incidental nature of this "outside" of "democracy".

What Democrats in America don't understand is that there is no "real" position for them, historically, as a Left party; that American democracy depends on vacillations and reversals in power, that if the entire country moved to the right, and Democrats lost in a landslide, there would 1) be no question of the ballots' legitimacy, and 2) that any political rigidity can lead easily to a one-party system which "we" hate on principle--- although ironically one-party systems can be extremely flexible (see: China).

My question, then, arises from the example of Uganda as described in Philip Gourevitch's We Wish to Inform You that Tomorrow We Will be Killed with Our Families: why can't there be a one-party democracy? (The Ugandan ruling party is "all-inclusive".)

So, a list of questions:
-- Can there be a one-party democracy?
-- What is socially/historically necessary for universal inclusion to take root?
-- Can there be (has there been) a democracy that is not universally inclusive?
-- Is there a benefit to "holding off" on democracy when the result of voting will be a non-inclusive sovereignty? (ie: if an anti-democratic or exclusionary group came to power in Iraq)
-- Is it completely meaningless to not vote in America, given that not voting is interpreted as tacit acceptance of the legitimacy of the result?

SILK NOG (not infant formula)

OH YES. THAT TIME OF YEAR.

TIME TO BUY SOME BOURBON

Hulk Hogan (democracy (post) to-come)

So a couple days ago, I was drinking coffee and watching some TV before I went to the library. There were two shows on at the same time, so I didn't really see the entirety of either episode, but I watched a good 12 minutes of "Hogan Knows Best" and probably 10 minutes of "House of Carters". (Luckily, they are re-running the Hogan episode AS I TYPE, so I am going to be able to watch the rest of it.) For those of you who don't know, "Hogan Knows Best" is a reality show about the ex-professional-wrestler Hulk Hogan and his family. His daughter, Brooke, is a monstrous 6-foot bleached-blonde (like if Christina Aguilera were on steroids instead of...uh...crazy pills?). I can only imagine grizzly bears getting in bed with this girl, and even they might still get the worse of it.

Anyways, Brooke is an aspiring pop-star, for seemingly no reason (she is hideous, can't sing, is not creative, etc), but the family somehow muscled (yes) Scott Storch, a famous producer, into signing Brooke to his label. To date, she has released a song, featuring a phoned-in rap from disgusting Houston sub-retard Paul Wall (his name itself raises the question whether he could remember his own name if it didn't rhyme), which no one on the planet could possibly have heard and enjoyed. To further her career, the family then moves to Miami, into an ultra-modern (but unfinished) house, where the new season has started.

In this episode, Hulk and his hulking wife are going around meeting the neighbors, carrying a plate of cookies. Afterwards they describe the neighbors as "very stiff...they didn't want to take our cookies." Because almost ALL their neighbors are JEWISH. But somehow, even though they are wearing yarmulkes and prayer shawls, this has not occurred to them. So when they get home, they tell their kids that these people are "kosher." Prompting the following conversation:
Brooke: "Dad, Kosher means Jewish."
Hulk: "Oh, like how sausage means Italian."
Brooke: "It's so funny to say 'kosher', because we just say 'oh, that's kosher, like... that's fine.' "
Hulk: "I thought Kosher was like...pickles."

There is a really sickening moment where the mom, who is this over-bronzed, over-boobed giant, is talking to these Jews as if they were from outer space, making this weird grimace, talking really loudly, and saying things like, "My daugh-ter, Brooke, wants to be like Brit-ney," while these Jews are clearly terrified of her and waiting for her and the cameras to leave.

Nonetheless, they plan an entire party for the neighborhood, but the mom insists that they have Kosher food because "Do you know how many Jews live here?" and stressing that she invited "all" of the neighbors to the party. So, they have a discussion about where to get Kosher food, and even what means:

Mom: "There's a whole grocery store called 'Be Kosher.' "
Brooke: "Mom, that's probably just the name of the store."
Hulk: "It's like an underground society I didn't even know existed."

When Hulk Hogan finally goes to Kosher World, he asks the world's friendliest person (who just happens to be working at the counter), what Kosher is, and takes this information back home:

Hulk: "Sounds like Kosher food is probably better than what we've been eating... I'll be eating Kosher all the time. It's much better quality food than what we've got."

When explaining that the animals "don't feel pain" and are taken care of and disease free, the mom puts her hands over her ears and shouts, "Let's not even talk about that!!" and makes this grotesque squeamish face.

At the party, Brooke is going about networking, and tries to shake hands with a Rabbi, who refuses to touch her (for which, who can blame him?) and IN SUBTITLES (even though he is speaking English), tells her he is a Rabbi. She concludes, "Rabbi means 'no touch'. "

Eventually, it turns out that the Kosher food is not Kosher, that Hulk has prepared it on a grill with the non-Kosher meat that he bought, but a younger Rabbi congratulates him on making an effort to reach out to his neighbors and is jovial about the whole event. Still, the younger Rabbi asks Hulk (unironically) if the grill had been put in a mikvah (a ritual bath), which has to be the most clueless question anyone has ever asked Hulk Hogan.

******
Two concluding notes:
1) The other show I was watching at the time, "House of Carters", is a reality show about Nick Carter (formerly of the Backstreet Boys), and his family (including 'tween sensation turned awkward-teenager Aaron). They have been deserted by their parents, who are divorced, and live in a palatial beach house together, getting drunk and having emotional breakdowns non-stop while all working on horrible (truly horrible) pop albums in their respective studios. But the show is almost too heartbreaking to watch the second the dad comes on the screen, dressed in expensive summer-wear, driving a sports car, gold watch, etc.-- all bought with his children's money, and is a complete VILLAIN. He lies, he teaches horrible lessons, he guilts everyone, he demonizes his ailing ex-wife (their mother), forces displays of affection, shouts people down, won't let anyone cry. Ugh. So this is actually more profound "human drama" than the Hulk Hogan show, but is far too raw.

2) What's really noticeable about the Hulk's encounter with Jews in Miami is not (only) his complete fucking ignorance--the man is a multi-millionaire who is in his late 40s and has traveled all over the world but doesn't know what a Jew is--or his surprisingly non-chalant understanding that it is just a different, more-or-less-wacky group with more-or-less-wacky beliefs than his own and (except for one mean-spirited moment where they contemplate buying non-Kosher food and passing it all off as Kosher) presumably only a few questions away from being accommodated and welcomed.

And I was reminded that probably half of my friends in high school (in Texas) were Jews (from New York), who now have all gone on to Law school and who I really don't keep up with. But watching this episode, I was reminded how appealing Jews are (have to be?) in places like Dallas or Miami: compared to Hulk Hogan, the Jews appearing in this episode are modest, witty, charming, intelligent, self-deprecating, understanding, well-spoken, ironic, etc. I don't want to say I grew up surrounded by Hulk Hogans, but yes, in Texas, someone being ironic, witty, able to explain their difference with some compassion on your behalf, is quite rare. And so I really saw this episode from the perspective of deep-compassion with anyone who had to explain anything complex (Kosher) to Hulk Hogan (a moron), and was reminded why (and this is not sarcasm) Billy Crystal and Jerry Seinfeld were two of the most popular comedians of the 1990s, especially with middle America, whereas Hulk Hogan's "Mr. Nanny" was one of history's great bombs.

top five 90s sitcoms

1. The Simpsons (first ten seasons)
2. Seinfeld
3. Married...with Children (pre-Ted Mcginley)
4. Newsradio
5. Frasier (pre-Daphne & Niles sex)

hon mention: Everybody Loves Raymond, Just Shoot Me

Obviously these fall into two categories: the classic family sitcom and the "ensemble" sitcom.

It is hard to look back now--after Friends ruined everything for everyone, and when Sex and The City, The Office, and Arrested Development (none of which I've seen) have evidently changed sitcoms (again) forever--and see how revolutionary Seinfeld must have been. Like a few other cultural vocabularies, Seinfeld's has been completely reabsorbed into our lives, and in its wake, so many shows took after its template that it is hard to spot its innovations from its 90s-isms and conventions.

Which is to say, of course there were ensemble sitcoms before. Three's Company and The Golden Girls come to mind. What I think is secretly revolutionary about Seinfeld is that there is NO PREMISE. In Three's Company and The Golden Girls (for example--or for a family example, The Jeffersons), the premise is, "these people now have to live together, and maybe they don't want to, and their personalities will be brought into close contact." This is also 2/3rds of the logic behind Friends (Monica and Rachel live together, Joey and Chandler live together). On Seinfeld, there is no premise. George and Jerry have always been friends, Elaine is Jerry's ex-girlfriend but this is not a new development, no one lives together, there is no reason why the first episode should be the first episode and not the twelfth... Kramer is not in the first episode, but he is not "structurally" new-- he is not a premise. And, up until the last episode, Seinfeld resists premises: George's fiance dies, Jerry and George's pilot is a bust, Elaine and George are always getting new jobs, Kramer's schemes don't go anywhere, no one has a consistent romantic partner, etc. All the reasons that a show might "jump the shark" are new, usually permanent developments (Daphne & Niles having sex changes everything and is irreversible, Ted McGinley as the neighbor's new husband), and Seinfeld never makes anything permanent (Newman is kept to a minor character, for instance) while successfully spinning its own mythologies and sagas.

As far as family comedies go, The Simpsons follows a dysfunctional line from All in the Family through Mama's Family, but really is rooted in animated sitcom The Flintstones and its forebearer, The Honeymooners. In a way, The Simpsons is less interesting to talk about than Seinfeld, because it is so much more of a universe, and because, unlike Jerry Seinfeld, Matt Groening does not know when to quit (or does not care to), and the show has declined irrevocably for no reason other than the writing no longer produces winning jokes. But if Seinfeld is "situational", The Simpsons' strengths are in its immense quotability and the unrivaled nuances of its characterizations. Edmund White writes about Proust that he combines the Dickensian and Jamesian methods of characterization-- you only get one "catchy" bit at a time, but the sheer volume of these bits adds up to an extremely shaded and memorable "round" character. Has anyone read an American novel from the last 30 years with any character that could stand up in characterliness to Homer Simpson, to all of his shames, nobilities, weaknesses, memories, repressions, aims, principles, loves, and secrets?

As far as the honorable mentions, Everybody Loves Raymond is probably the best traditional sitcom since The Cosby Show, but I haven't seen more than 1/2 of its episodes, and Just Shoot Me is hon. mention for the David Spade character alone. South Park is not a sitcom, and probably Dr. Katz is not, either, although both those shows are great.

y'know, i haven't thought Nicole Kidman was attractive since I was about 12, and there was a little movie called "To Die For", but here ya go:



maybe it's that she just looks like a kind-of older hipster?, like one who would run the cool bookstore in your town and always wear cool vintage dresses

"to infantilize"

I was saying to someone earlier today that I found some aspect of school to be "infantilizing"--or someone was saying this to me--and I stopped to think how much I love this word. As a transitive verb, it just means "To reduce to an infantile state or condition" or "to condescend to as if still to a young child". What neither of these definitions capture is the long transitive form, that infantilization is not accomplished at the flick of a switch, and even more subtly, that infantilization is not a simple transitive at all. The infantilization must be taken on by the subject.

Like Foucault's sense of discipline and surveillance, where the object of knowledge learns to discipline ITSELF, infantilization is something you perform on yourself on behalf of an outside subject. So, "I abuse you" is different from "I make you feel worthless," but both of these forms of transitivity (the active v. the assumed) are captured in the splendid to infantilize. One assumes one's own infantilization.

Other verbs like this would be like, to subordinate, to convert, etc.

best records from the record fair

Necros- Conquest for Death
This has long been a favorite of mine, so I was stoked to pick up the original, since I already have two bootlegs of it (an LP and a CD). This band is perhaps most famous for the extremely rare "Sex Drive" EP (limited to 100?), which you will recall was the name of my last band. But Conquest for Death is the album I think kids should hear before the Minor Threat LP, because it is not totally mind-melting like Negative Approach, but still captures hardcore in a melodic mode without being wishy-washy.

Led Zeppelin- iii
Uh...so, I like Zeppelin's hard rock stuff, but this record is mainly devoid of that (although "Immigrant Song" has to be one of their toughest), and is totally cool bluesy folk that is played really fast, with aggressive strumming (see "Gallows Pole") and one torch-song ("Since I've Been Loving You"). I dunno, I think normally the acoustic Zeppelin songs (on side B of IV, for example) are throwaways, but maybe because they were basically writing an entire record of non-heavy songs, they still found a way to make these songs punchy and diverse because of the narrowed range.

David Bowie- Man who Sold the World
This is another totally weird record-- it is half a weird psychy-folk record like Tyrannosaurus Rex, and half a metal album-- kind of the missing link between "Sabbath Bloody Sabbath" and "Sad Wings of Destiny". As with all (good) Bowie, the hooks are there, but here they are spread out among weirder and weirder arrangements. The first listen, I just tried to find the hooks, but once you know when they are coming, you can sort of settle into the uneasy blend of hard-rock, prog, and strange folk that I'm sure is extremely "in" right now, but I don't know what else sounds like this. Recommendations, please!

King Diamond- Conspiracy
The fourth King Diamond record is, I believe, a sequel to "Them", and I actually like it a bit more. "Them", as far as things go, was a fairly normal King Diamond record (whatever that means), whereas the first song here is nine minutes long! The other noticeable element is an overwhelming amount of "spooky" riffs, or at times even the "riff" to the WEDDING SONG. Also, there are a few Frankenstein-ish mosh parts (just imagine Frankenstein's monster moshing and a chunky riff), and times where the vocals are completely out of control and theatrical, having no relation to any melody/rhythm and just throwing the whole thing off balance. Then there are the obligatory Euro-metal solos, and lyrics like "you'd better stop kissing her! the doctor is the devil!" sung in three different voices. This has to be up there with The Birthday Party and Rudimentary Peni in the "I hope they sought therapy" genre.

pretention/ taste arbitration

The weird thing about the word "arbitrary" is its relation to arbiter/arbitration--that is, to decision making. So that "arbitrary" actually means "subject to individual will or judgment without restriction; contingent solely upon one's discretion". Might one then say that "discretionary spending" is "arbitrary spending"? (discretionary: "regulated by one's own judgment). And then you get into the quagmire of defining spending which is discrete but not discreet, etc.

I digress.

In matters of taste, arbitration can seem arbitrary: why this trend and not another? And although in this short blog I am unable to go into matters such as snobbishness, class-determinations, a history of high and low culture, the hegemony of the bourgeois, the curious (demographically aproportional) ascendency of Jews and gays in determinations of culture (at least in New York), hipsterism, the legacy of the 1960s, and other factors that arbitrate what is cool, please consider these the background and future topics of this blog: to remove the "arbitrary" from arbitration of taste, to "expose it for what it is."

The other day in my Scholarly Writing seminar, we read James English's "Economy of Prestige". I also spilled teriyaki sauce all over the copy I was borrowing, and had to drack down the last hardcover copy in New York City so that the person who loaned it to me would not think I was the world's biggest jerk. In the class discussion, I thought my smartest comment was that, as in Borges' "The Lottery of Babylon," the lottery stops being a system of monetary prizes with clear winners, and becomes an extremely obscure, universal system resistant to ideas of winning/losing or even of an obvious outcome, until the lottery becomes indistinguishable from LIFE, so I thought that the system of prizes in English's narrative has become essentially synonymous with culture. There is no "outside".

However, something like the Criterion Collection has a prestige that is not about prizes, so I dunno... that probably also should be investigated later.

My point for today is this: the word "pretentious" should be used correctly. There is a great moment in Zizek's "Looking Awry" where he calls A River Runs Through it "pretentious". This is the precise meaning of the word. Of course, this example is doubly ironic. One, to cite a prominent philosopher to define the word "pretentious"--- secondly, that this philosopher's "slumming it" by discussing this garbage film is in its own way pretentious.

Nonetheless, I think we may use A River Runs Through it as our definition of pretension, and from there go on to discuss taste. What A River Runs Through it, or, to switch our examples, Schindler's List demonstrates, is a certain paranoia of being unable to distinguish between the "actually good" and the merely "pretentious" (that is, a paranoia which would have saved the Oscar from going to Forrest Gump instead of Pulp Fiction).

Ironically (in the sense that here taste is not discretionary but overheard--and thus arbitrary in an entirely different way), many seem to think that the only way to avoid falling into a trap of "bad taste" is to have an exaggeratedly refined set of "good taste" which ends up being altogether predictable and pretentious.

To simplify:
1) Schindler's List is a wildly successful film by an acclaimed director, about a serious subject, featuring several great performances, based on a literary novel, of an appropriately epic length, a winner of numerous awards and accolades, etc.
2) At the same time, I would be completely shocked to hear anyone (in 2006) cite Schindler's List as being anywhere near a great film, on their list of great films, a film by a great director, of anything approaching artistic relevance, or even a second look, etc.
3) In order to be cool, to have good taste in movies, one must not like Schindler's List. But, this demands a certain paranoia-- should one not like any films similar to Schindler's List? is all of Spielberg off limit? all holocaust movies? all Hollywood movies? all American movies? all 90s movies?
4) If one closed out all spielberg/hollywood/American/90s films, you would certainly weed out a lot of garbage. On the other hand, you would weed out some good stuff.
5) That "good stuff" on the other hand, probably is more popular and therefore susceptible to 'contamination' by uncool teenagers, as in the case of Rushmore, Reservoir Dogs...
6) The easy, paranoid solution, then, is to simply stick to the pretentious-- foreign, canonized, or experimental films which will never have the whiff of popularism or uncoolness. At worst, they will be slight and irrelevant. One risks nothing.

I find this to be absolutely unacceptable. Take the superior movie "Reds." Nearly all the same things (as in #1) could be said about Reds as about Schindler's List, and while Reds is probably going to have a comeback with its recent DVD release, I can imagine a good number of snobs having to wait another 10 or 20 years to realize how great this movie is, until it takes its place among (deservedly canonized) movies like "Dog Day Afternoon", "The French Connection," "Bonnie and Clyde," etc.

The point here is that being PRETENTIOUS (in avoidance of the obviously pretentious hollywood dreck and anything paranoiacally associated with it) means, not that you are avoiding all criticism ("at least i didn't accidentally like schindler's list"), but that you are infantilizing your taste, and are exposed to the critique (by me, at least) that there is actually no taste to be discerned in such an obviously defensive move.

You may also take the above as an indictment of hipsterism. Rather than being cutting-edge, in the negative sense hipsterism is a cowardly retreat behind unassailable categories of elitism, the avant garde, the imported, the sheltered. It waits around for something to be deemed "safe" (latest: doom metal, which would have been the least cool thing in the world ten years ago) while always repeating the same mistake (as with "Reds", which is totally under the radar).

This, you will notice, is the opposite of cutting-edge. It would be better termed as "waiting around". And, as an effort to esablish oneself as having "good taste", it accomplishes quite the reverse: the plainly pretentious exposes itself as having no taste at all.

Marie Antoinette

Executive Producer, pitching this movie to studio exec: What I really love about this project is that the first 50 minutes of the movie revolve around someone NOT wanting to have sex with Kirsten Dunst. It's genius.

Studio Exec: That sounds great! Here's 10 million dollars. Don't worry about a plot, either.

So, this movie is boring. There's no payoff to either of the build-ups in the film: waiting around for Kirsten Dunst to get boinked by the King, and waiting around for their heads to get chopped off. Both these things happen offscreen, so...what is this movie about? I don't know. A lot of languid arms draped over really nice furniture...a horrendous (high concept?) montage of shoes and cake while blaring "I Want Candy".

I thought Sofia Coppola was racist for not developing a single Japanese character in Lost in Translation. Now I realize that she just cannot develop character. This movie is like that movie, only without Bill Murray to hold everything up, and this time, not a single French character is developed (Marie Antoinette is Austrian).

I dunno. The whole thing should be stupid and boring, and it is, but the film only tries to be pretty and inconsequential, and at that it succeeds.

The Fugitive (no proust)

So I just wrote a presentation for my Derrida class, which anyone who knows me, knows this class has overtaken my life, has five times as much work as any of my other classes, all the kids are taking it, etc. And so I went over the same information several times: I read it. I re-read it. I wrote down what I had underline. I made an outline from that. Then I wrote a paper from that. And then I went down and wrote a summary of it in my notebook for safe-keeping. And so then I read my presentation to make sure it was under the time limit. It made no sense!!! But I had literally JUST written it.

Have you guys seen the Fugitive? The movie with Harrison Ford. (I should say, Proust's sixth volume of A la recherche... "La Fugitive" was disastroustly translated into English as "The Sweet Cheat Gone," and I really really really really really wish that the Harrison Ford/ Tommy Lee Jones film were called "The Sweet Cheat Gone"). Anyways, when I saw this movie when I was 10, I was obsessed with the TV show, which I had seen every day at 2pm when I was in bed with mono. Now, this is a great action film, probably the equal of that other 1990s juggernaut "Terminator 2: Judgment Day", and definitely better than "Time Cop", a film starring Jean Claude Van Damme which tried to combine the two (cops, time travel) with a sprinking of nudity (this is all I remember, except that someone MELTED when they ran into their time-double.) So, "Terminator 2" and "The Fugitive" were both massively difficult to understand, "Terminator 2" in an existential way, where how can you get rid of the future if you need someone to be sent back to the past to make sure that events turn out the same way, but you have gotten rid of the possibility of being able to send them back? Also: did ROBOTS invent time-travel? I think this is the claim of the film, but why would robots want to time-travel?

"The Fugitive" was impenetrable on a more "who did what and when?" level, because the one-armed man's motive was based on a covering-up of something that somehow necessitated murdering Harrison Ford's wife, but to my 5th grade mind it made sense only for like FIVE SECONDS when I somehow got all the elements in my head, thought "a-ha!" and then instantly collapsed back into a muddle when I tried to reorganize it.

This is what my Derrida paper reads like. I understood it while I was writing it, but reading it ten minutes later, (and let's be fair, it's 2 am and I'm sick), it reads like it was written in Martian. I know that I what I wrote is "true", but I'm not sure it makes any more sense than the impenetrable Derrida piece. Which is to say, next time you bash theory, or if you think my paper is boring, just remember: it's exactly like Terminator 2. That's just how exciting it is.

ny times publishes words of idiot

Yesterday in the Times was this AWFUL piece on how Starbucks is selling CDs, books, and a "lifestyle" to its millions of coffee-drinkers. What astounds me is that this works, because the logic is seemingly self-defeating: coffee shops have been playing jazz for decades, so why is Starbucks going to succeed in moving a new Herbie Hancock CD where others have failed?

Now, there is only one answer, one which this (ridiculous) article does not provide, but which I can easily give you: *not* that Starbucks has pioneered a new logic of selling culture to the educated, $90,000-a-year crowd which they were incapable of finding elsewhere, but rather that Starbucks has turned into a CONVENIENCE STORE. Like a 7-11 on route 9, where you can buy Travis Tritt's greatest hits along with a Big Gulp, Starbucks is making laziness (one might say: the opposite of even middle-brow culture) the rule of the day.

That is to say, there is a perverse irony that the "aesthetic" that Starbucks sells is, to my thinking, already that of mainstream bourgeois pretension. The Ray Charles CD was actually an inspired product, because that is something most people "know" but don't own-- having been Pepsi's image in the 90s-- but the other examples in the article are actually kind of trashy: Mitch Albom is an Oprah author (Oprah representing the pinnacle of mainstream bourgeois pretension), and "Akeelah and the Bee" was a clear take-off on the sleeper documentary hit "Spellbound". Which is to say, what Starbucks is selling people is what they already know they want: but locating it under one roof.

Another shit-move by the article is not to discuss how Starbucks GOT its cultural currency from association with Barnes and Noble bookstores. Barnes and Noble actually includes the coffee house WITHIN the logic of the bookstore-culture, so that Starbucks selling books and CDs along with coffee is already pre-determined by Barnes and Noble selling Stabucks coffee along with its books.

So, I have compared Starbucks to a one-stop, selling people what they already know they want. But what really gets me is that these "educated" customers who make "$90,000 a year on average" are SO BAD at being snooty, espresso-drinking multiculturalists. To wit, when Starbucks recently started selling the Frank Sinatra classic “In the Wee Small Hours,” sales of that CD went up twentyfold. What moron arrives at the age of 50 (say), with a huge disposable income, a suburban home, an Audi, and a lifestyle involving $5 lattes, harbors a secret desire to listen to Frank Sinatra but is unable to fulfill this wish because Frank Sinatra CDs are SO HARD TO FIND? And so, when they pop up at a Starbucks, he/she thinks "at last! I've been looking for this forever!"

Or even stupider: that someone does not even KNOW that they like Frank Sinatra (maybe the most popular pop musician of the last century) until they hear it at Starbucks. This, more sadly, is probably the case.

“If I hear a CD playing [in Starbucks], I generally like it,” Bette Gottfried, back in the Ardsley store, said. “It’s who I am — baby boomer, upper middle class, a little hippyish, rockish.”

Starbucks stores don’t carry “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” the Beatles album everyone’s mother could name; they carry “Revolver,” a critical darling without the same overplayed name recognition.

Let's look at that fact that most people would probably be happy just owning a "Greatest Hits" of any particular artist. What is being (unironically) put forward here is that THE BEATLES and FRANK SINATRA are CULT ARTISTS. What is sad is that this obviously WORKS. People clearly buy a Frank Sinatra album or a Beatles album and go home feeling like they are possibly a bit slyer, more cultured than their neighbors. A bit jazzier. A bit more "critically astute".

Starbucks is so much better at selling these things to its customers than I would be, as I would adopt an ironic/meta/condescending attitude towards the buyers. The (evil) genius of Starbucks is not to say, "Oh, hey you should have this Frank Sinatra album, because you are sophisticated and it is essential to that pose." But RATHER, to say to SUV-driving, sweatpants-wearing, Robin-Williams-movie-renting middle-executive SLOBS, with total ingenuousness, "Hey, fellow coffee-drinker...yeah...this music *is* good...what is it?... oh man, Frank Sinatra...yeah, I love the old guy, "old blue eyes"... I have "Duets" and it is really great...oh, you have the CD here in the store...yeah, just throw it on the bill, b/c I'm paying with a credit card anyways...oh, it's his EARLY stuff...oh man, this is so cool."

See, being ironic and spiteful, I would try and capitalize on people's innate pretensiousness from MY perspective of what that means. Starbucks is so successful because it recognizes that, to the clueless idiot, what is really "new" and "culturally sophisticated" is just a variation that has been completely played out elsewhere for everyone but them.

ny times publishes picture of french fries

The caption is: "french fries discovered in a deep-cleaning of a Delta 767"-- which raises the question, do you need a "deep-cleaning" to find an open box of french fries in an overhead compartment?

But you know what? I would eat those french fries. They look pretty good. I bet they are soggy, since (according to the article), they may be up to 18 months old, but they aren't soaking in ketchup, and while they are undoubtedly from a restaurant in the airport, I bet it was like Bennigan's. So yeah. I think the moral is, if "deep cleaning" can unearth such delicious-looking (read: edible) fries in unexpected places, I wonder if some more close investigations of nooks and crannies in my daily routine could unearth maybe some still-edible popcorn, peanut-butter filled pretzels, or baked Lays?

recent jamz

Deadstop- "Done With You" LP
doesn't sound as much like Negative Approach (or...uh...AC/DC) as you might like... kind of has a Youth of Today meets Cro Mags (YEAH) vibe that is not as blatantly dumb as that implies. It's totally hard-as-shit, but never panders.

Dodsdomd- "Seven Deadly Sins" EP
This record came out in English and Swedish versions, I actually got the Swedish version, but I put up the English title, because I don't feel like walking four feet to read the title in whatever goofy "spooky" font they have on the cover. This is a big improvement from their LP: more memorable, no longer sounds like Sweden via USA.

Katatonia- "Dance of December Days" CD
For some reason, they changed the art on this album to look like some horrible I-don't-even-know, but suffice it to say there is a baby looking sadly at a grim reaper, and they changed the band logo. It was so much better when it was just these dudes with moustaches hanging out really close to each other, wrapped in purple smoke. Anyways, this is really over-emphatic "doom metal" before that whole style got co-opted by the Southern Lord crowd and some drone/ambient idea.

Mountain "Nantucket Sleighride" LP
Sounds like Lynyrd Skynyrd. Songs about Moby Dick.

Stan Getz "Sweet Rain" LP
This is one of those examples of someone who is REALLY GOOD at doing a popular version of something showing that their genius in the popular format (bossa nova) is actually based on a real understanding of forms, that can be demonstrated at will. Of course, I also appreciate the converse of this, the abstract understanding being masterfully put to use in a popular form.
examples of the former (rarer): The Beatles "Abbey Road", Beckett "Waiting for Godot"
examples of the latter: Judas Priest "Point of Entry", The Cure "Head on the Door", Velvet Underground "Loaded" (albeit less successfully).

Normally, the Stan Getz move-- "look, I'm sophisticated"--- backfires, and is just pretension. "Sweet Rain" is incredible, but one need only look at the career of Metallica and see their disastrous relation to their avant-garde roots in NWOBHM, a relation they seem incapable of drawing on for inspiration, thus blacking out their entire 80s career from proper context. So when Metallica try to write "sophisticated" music now, it sounds like it comes from Mars (in a bad way).

A flyer I found in the library today

In the library today, I found this flyer about Islam, which I excerpt here:

Islam has of late been accused of being a violent religion. A quick glance at events around the world, however, leaves little doubt that Islamic violence is due largely to US and Israeli policies. The events in the following regions demonstrate this:

Kosovo: Islamic radicals burn down churches and persecute Christians.

Uganda: Muslim rebels in the north, aided by Sudan, have challenged the government.

Algeria: Islamic guerillas continue to attack a government dominated by fellow Muslims.

etc. etc. [there are a bunch of other countries, similar stories].

Do you see how the above states of violent Islamic unrest are due to US and Israeli policies? You don't?! Then you've read this correctly. They have nothing whatever to do with the US or Israel.

Whether you want to call Islam a peaceful religion or not is irrelevant. The fact is that the great majority of unrest around the world involves Muslims--- and has nothing to do with the US or Israel. It has to do with a violent people who have perpetrated some of the most heinous atrocities upon mankind, and convinced a great number of "useful idiots" (mostly on college campuses) that they have a "cause". ....this is not a "cause"-- this is evil in its purest form.
And please stopd the worthless nonsense of calling this note propaganda and racist. You're in college--- you should have the ability to research this easily verifiable truth.

The time to stop Muslim violence is now, the place is wherever you happen to be.
************************************

Obviously I am above debating this note. It begs so many questions, it dismisses in advance any criticism of it as "propaganda" or "racist", etc. There is no debate to be had here.

BUT I am going to investigate (in this extreme case) a lot of bad argumenative practices that are indulged in nearly all public, political discourse.

1) Why shouldn't this note be called "propaganda"? Because propaganda has a pejurative connotation, of course. Because it might imply that this is reductionist and one-sided? Because it considers itself a reasoned, multi-faceted, fair account? Surely this is not the conception the authors had of it, and a leaflet like this is definitively propaganda. Which is not, as the author assumes, to dismiss it. It is to give it a GENRE.

2) Why shouldn't this note be called "racist"? This is another prohibition. My first response is, they are not talking about a race, they are talking about a religion. In this way, warning off charges of racism *raises* the very question it is dismissing-- whether the assumptions about Islam have more to do with people of color (in general) than with the religion (in specific) that it is openly questioning. So, I would say, what is "racist" is perhaps invisible to the authors, and so in the sense *intended*, they are correct-- it is not racist. But in the assumptions (as I'll show) that the logic depends on, there is a definite white, Western prejudice at work.

3) The examples by region. Each of these lacks any citation, although informing me later that because I am "in college," the "truths" they demonstrate are "easily verifiable." Could be. But none of these examples gives a context, either. The violence is presented as part of an endemic violence rooted in Islam. I'll grant that Muslims have engaged in some violence in recent years, and that their outrage is at times unsettling. But in order to prove that this violence is a result of Islam's nature, it would need to be shown:
-- that this violence within Islam is a relative constant throughout history and place
-- that the violence has to do with being Muslim, and has no mitigating history
-- that the violence has to do with being Muslim, in the sense that it is not an internal violence having to do with economic conditions or by subjects who *happen* to be Muslim
-- that the current violence in Afghanistan has "nothing to do with the US". I imagine this is an impossible assertion to prove, and yet the note calls this the "correct reading".

So, this is one long fallacy. If you replace the word "Muslims" with "people over 5'11'' ", you will see how there is no substantive proof LINKING violence to the state of being over 5'11'', although that is precisely what you would be led to assume about being Muslim.

4) That a "great majority" of violence in the world "involves Muslims". As no citation is given, we are not obliged to believe this, and yet even if it were true, the United States and Israel certainly must NOW be dragged into the discussion (which this note is at every effort to prevent), in the context of the great number of examples left out where the United States and Israel have aggressively asserted their policy in the face of a (supposedly unified) "Islam".

5) That there is any relation (having to do with Islam) between Indonesia and Kosovo--- other than the Koran, about which no proof is furnished that there is any incitation to violence.

So. Please consider this an exercise in argument and proving claims, rather than an actual "clash of viewpoints" with this drivel. I think liberalism and bourgeois ideology, and any number of debates, are based upon such disastrous reasonings. As Stuart's blog repeatedly shows, the claims of the Atlantic Yards project backers are contradictory, assert solutions to problems which are never shown to exist, and present numerous false binaries and strawman arguments. This post happens to attack a particularly easy (read: dumb) target, but I think this lazy, bullying style is so widespread that it is basically the Law of the Land.

ipods

So. I don't have an iPod. I want one. But I would use my ipod as an arena in which mp3s I download would battle for my attention, for the honor of being purchased on vinyl as part of complete albums/singles. I buy music. For me, owning music is important, and not because of copyright issues. This is an increasingly outdated viewpoint, it seems, but I hope to show why I think it is the only way for someone who really enjoys music beyond background-noise.

This will seem condescending, I think. No one wants to hear that they do not "truly appreciate" music. So I hope to show the advantages TO listening of NOT downloading, which might seem counterintuitive.

1) It is easy to have "good taste" when you can download anything in the world for free.
...and yet! How rarely is this the case! Normally when I scroll through someone's ipod, it is a collection of inoffensive, friendly, unremarkable music that could be gotten with no research and less than an expansive taste. I remain unconvinced that downloading music broadens one's tastes, although it certainly has that possibility. I would say that it is because there is no risk to downloading something. Because you have not spent any money on it, you can simply send an album to the recycle bin after listening to one song. This makes for a conservative taste.

2) There is no reason to put in any time with an album/artist in mp3 format.
Separated from album art, lyrics, band photos, any sense of a discrete form, the mp3 really makes no demands on the listener to be absorbed, reckoned with, debated, "acquired" (as a taste), etc. So you end up with this completely ephemeral aesthetic, which demands instant attention and instant approval, and I would say that most tastes are acquired tastes-- songs, albums, artists, and styles which require some effort to "get into". I guess that is up for debate.

3) In an infinite space, there is no way to hierarchize one's preferences.
That sounds more boring than I really mean it to. What I mean to say is that our attachments to music are normally located around a "favorite song," or a memory, or something having to do with an experience/emotion we want to play over again and again. No one's *original* favorite song would be an abstract Eno noise-scape. It is probably a Temptations song, or something we can really latch onto-- catchy, good lyrics, easy to relate to.

So, if in point #1, I argue that downloading music makes for conservative tastes, here I am arguing that downloading music onto an infinitely capacious hard drive makes it impossible to ever have again the experience of listening to "Ain't To Proud to Beg" a million times in a row just because you just got the Big Chill soundtrack and are compelled to listen to it over and over. It is not just one spot on an infinite playlist.

4) But, Ben, don't you buy more records than you can possibly listen to very closely?
Fair enough. And I'm sure that some people listen to mp3s in ways that I would completely approve of, too. But there is something about the RECORD that is so much more endearing. It has an identity of its own, you physically interact with it, you have to take care of it, you can show it to other people, you can skip songs but you can't just get rid of them, you can play the same side over and over again, read the lyrics along with it, but mostly: you are responsible to a record. It is not abstract. If you treat it badly, it will sound bad. If you don't listen to it, you will have wasted your money. If you lose the art, it becomes contextless. And I think this is what taking music seriously is about: having some relationship *back* to the music. Knowing that "if I don't preserve this (melody, context, aesthetic), maybe no one else will."

FUCK THIS MOVIE

Oh great. What the world really needs is this constipated character study of an inbred nincompoop, rendered as a deep meditation on progress and tradition. Let's be honest: there is almost no way that Elizabeth II can even read. Her IQ is probably hovering in the low 80s. Her portrayal in the Naked Gun seems far more accurate to me:



But TONY BLAIR is the voice of radicalism in this film? Or his wife? Can someone just drag a rake over my eyes? I feel like I am on crazy pills reading the reviews of this film. Are we supposed to take seriously the ultimate artificial event of our time, the pathetic finale of Princess Diana? I'm sure this film thinks it is like Noh theater or something, and that every small reaction in the throne room is a monumental event in the world, but I almost vomited watching the trailer, and dwelling on the fucking Kings and Queens of Merry Olde England and Their Grand Furrowed Brows seems like a desperate bourgeois attempt to chastise sovereignty while at the same time lavishing affection on its "good" representation (Diana) and imagine that retrograde, drooling idiots like Queen Elizabeth II are capable of the same profound reflection as we have come to expect from President Martin Sheen.

a few more comments

Well, since it's my blog, I figure I don't need to only make comments in the "comments" section of my posts, but please see the last post for some more on that topic.

But here's more:
-- I think I can trace a genealogy of hipster lingo to jazz song titles (unlike pop song titles, don't need to "mean" anything or say anything about the song---mostly arbitrary) and dadaism. This is to draw a line between dadaism and surrealism. Magritte (a surrealist for our purposes), writes "This is not a pipe" (in french of course) underneath a picture of a pipe. Famously, this is true and false at the same time, because literally, it is not a pipe. It is only a PICTURE of a pipe. Duchamp putting a urinal in an art gallery, however, requires no caption. ("Fountain" is metonymic, it's the same thing once removed. It's not necessary.) The reference is to the viewer's expectations- it is a provocation. Magritte is not provoking you: he is telling you the TRUTH. It *is not* a pipe.

-- In a comment in the last post, I discuss the circular defense this lingo puts around itself. To quote TS Eliot, these are "fragments shored against the ruins" of an identity. It is not new; I am not impressed. I am replying to a poster who writes that to reference something outside of oneself is to admit that the self is absent, that saying "Misfits Fan" is substituting for something absent. I dunno. Surely that line has to be drawn somewhere. I would argue, with a certain amount of eye-rolling, that maybe my interests (Proust + the Misfits, to be reductive) DOES add up to something new. But it seems to me that the comment overstates identification. You don't need Freud to tell you that a lot of "becoming" takes place by processes of "identification" and "recognition." And that what is different (in the other) exists only in relation to a difference in you. So, the space between the self and what it identifies with is clearly important. That is why I wonder what has happened in hipsterism, where identitification is either missing or ironized, as if there were a fear that the space left between identification and identity wouldn't be enough.

I realize a lot of things can be reduced to unenlightening truisms or platitudes, or disposable "advice" such as, "mean what you say, and say what you mean." On the other hand, taken to heart, that is probably the most important advice you will get today (and I am giving you this bit of advice).

In class today, someone said the word "equates" when they meant "relates" or "indicates" or "reflects", etc. This is an innocent enough mistake. It is hard to think of the right words, so we rush past the exact right one, to make our larger point. As baffling as Derrida has been, this has been the lesson I (and now you) can learn from it: mean what it is that you are saying. Say what it is that you mean. There, you have one of the most terrifyingly difficult French philosophers, brutally summarized, and in a perfectly useless way. Surely this example ("equates" instead of "indicates") has not hit home with you.

This post is an attack on laziness. On linguistic laziness (now), on laziness in thought, and (finally) laziness in identity. I am not arguing for a humorless "sincerity", nor do I have my mother's professed opposition to people "being fake" (because there is no true self, DUH). But I think it is worth thinking through the difference between "equates" and "relates", if what you mean to say is the second one. Let's be rigorous. For one thing, *I* do not want to be summarized incorrectly (see a few posts back) as having "equated" something, when I only "related" something. This is a terror I have. I am a decent enough writer, I can stop and start over a sentence if it is not going well, if I realize that I am going to have to fudge a verb or a metaphor or a preposition. In a blog, in conversation, often enough I'll just leave it sloppy, so that my meaning is clear, though it comes out as badly written. This is especially true when you are setting up binaries, which is a common rhetorical approach (parallelism and contrast), but halfway through the sentence you realize this isn't a real opposition, or your metaphor is wrong, or you even chose the wrong first word ("although" when you really mean "regardless")--- this is all a sort of rhetorical autopilot.

What this leads to, in large enough quantities, is an imprecision that makes what we are saying nonsense. I think this is a) too obvious, and b) too hysterical a point to dwell on here. What I would like to talk about instead is the laziness, not of ideology or politics, but of people's self-formation. I was lecturing someone about this earlier, in the context of people's internet profiles, which are a really good and a really bad way to form opinions about someone. Good, because how people represent themselves is important. Bad, because people almost always represent themselves poorly.

What I cannot stand is people COMMITTED to ironizing, delaying, obscuring, and creating a nearly-universal language of avoidance, in these forums. I think we are all familiar with a hipster dialect of mystical animal/improbable verb to construct a record title or internet handle. This may also include adjectives like "awesome" or questionable signifiers like "AIDS".
So, "AIDS Wolf" is a band, but also "Awesome Color" and "Japanther". Presumably all of this will sound incredibly dated in a few years, just as the two words "Surrealistic" and "Pillow" now clearly reek of a precisely-dateable pretension. On the other hand, at least you know what you are getting ("surrealistic" might as well say "psychadelic").

Here, as a counter-example, I would cite my two of my own internet "names": "Misfits Fan" (my email) and "S/s", my name on myspace. The Misfits are my favorite band, and S/s (signifier determines subject) is probably the most important concept in philosophy for me, and a key part of my favorite book In Search of Lost Time. Nuff said. I mean these things. "Japanther" means nothing. And also, fair enough--it doesn't have to. We're all postmodern here, right?

My contention would be that, yes, we are all being postmodern here. There is irony in "misfits fan" (it makes me sound like a 15 year old), and in "S/s" (what the fuck does it mean?), but at the same time, these are two VERY important things to me, rendered as if they were just floating signifiers. They aren't. But I am pretending that they are, since I am using them to "name" me. So, for me, I would say, this is my huge critique of the Hipster: get a self. Stay with it. Play with it, by all means. Have fun. Use language and images and signifiers, as freely as you like. But at the end of the day, MEAN something. You don't have to "stand for something"; I am not being political here. Be a person. Consolidate your objects and your desires into something that goes beyond evasion and posturing. I have an idea of what it is like to mature and to get into new things; this doesn't have to be everyone's. I do not ask anyone to be twee and wear their hearts on their sleeves, or to be humorless, or worst of all to be ME, but more's the pity if you turn 30 and you realize you have merely been rotating your self out on a 6-month schedule.

more on the "three point turn"

here is the original post I made

and here is Frederic Jameson explaining it much more clearly (but essentially repeating me):

The old stereotype is that Hegel works according to a cut-and-dried progression from thesis, through antithesis, to synthesis. This, Zizek explains, is completely erroneous: there are no real syntheses in Hegel and the dialectical operation is to be seen in an utterly different way; a variety of examples are adduced. Still, that stupid stereotype was not altogether wrong. There is a tripartite movement in the Hegelian dialectic, and in fact, Zizek goes on, he has just illustrated it: stupid stereotype, or the ‘appearance’; ingenious correction, the underlying reality or ‘essence’; finally, after all, the return to the reality of the appearance, so that it was the appearance that was ‘true’ after all.

here's some more bullshit

There are two articles in the Times today about how religions are not subject to the law in the same way as other corporations/organizations. One is about how churches are not subject to the same regulations about land/supervision of programs that a secular body would be, and the other is about how employees have little recourse against churches if they are fired.

The obvious thing strikes me is that christians want to have their cake and eat it, too, as regards the separation of church and state. So, religious types want to put prayer in public school, keep the word "God" in the pledge of allegiance, pursue their political agenda, demand money for faith-based programs, etc. And then they demand that the government not tell them how to use their land. And as long as an overwhelming majority of congress-people are religious, this is probably just the way it will be. We live in a democracy run by Christians. If you want to let these people vote, you have to follow their rules. Deal with it.

The second thing is that I really don't care if churches fuck over their employees. The reason I think everyone (including me) gets upset about priests abusing kids is, they are KIDS. Their parents put them in this situation, and they have no good way to speak out or defend themselves or escape, and their parents drive them to church week after week to get molested. But I have no such sympathy for, say, a Nun who gets dismissed from her order because she has cancer. If some whack hospital thinks that collective bargaining and unions "defy Christ’s admonitions that behavior must be directed by individual conscience” and “is inherently disruptive” of the church’s healing mission, you know what, that is splendid. KEEP CRAZIES OUT OF THE 21st CENTURY. Churches marrying gay people, women becoming priests, unions for religious institutions, any kind of respect for human decency--- if you belong to some religion that frowns upon these things, it is your own stupid fault that you expect to enter the 21st century and get married/become a nun/have a union. Mainstream religion is not like Scientology. The Catholic Church is not a bait-and-switch. You know what you are getting into. If anything, it is *more* liberal now than it promised to be in the previous century, which is why you have Mel Gibson-style wingnuts.

The same goes for Islam, Hinduism, Judaism, as for Catholics. Bummed out that your two-thousand-year-old beliefs don't gel with your progressive attitude? GET A CLUE. I am not interested in redeeming or reforming or hearing complaints about your religion. Unless some new scroll gets unearthed, if you are Jewish, and you don't like what is in Deuteronomy, TOUGH LUCK. Unless the virgin Mary appears in an english muffin telling you to be a woman-priest, I don't care. The one real virtue of Religion is that it is UNDISGUISEDLY STUPID. Arguing about whether bread turns into bloody-flesh in your mouth, and an intelligent discussion of collective bargaining: these things need to be kept separate.

It is very distressing to me that this great achievement of Western Civilization, representative democracy, which gives the US the moral superiority to battle for freedom against "Islamofascists" worldwide, and in the name of which our civil liberties have been foreclosed, comes down to WHAT EXACTLY?
-- the Democrats now stand a good chance of winning back one of the chambers of legislature, because some Republican sent creepy, sexual-predator emails to boys.

Is anyone happy about this? Sadly, yes. All the Anybody-But-Bush people of 2004, whose candidate pretended not to be able to speak French in order to get elected (which shockingly did not work), now see this as a perfect moment to win political influence by trading on a sexual scandal and alleged cover up.

Now, I thought this was inappropriate in the case of Clinton, and I find it inappropriate now.
1) There is a really unpleasant flavor of homophobia to the whole thing.
2) Undoubtedly this happens with female pages/interns/etc. all the time as well
3) We elect these retards to VOTE IN OUR NAME. On which this has no bearing.
4) Given all that the Republicans have done in the past 14 years in Congress, this is a pretty fucking weak reason to finally overthrow them.

Now, I care about as much about what happens in Washington as I do about which channel of NFL commentators I watch on Sunday mornings (very little, but I have my preferences). That these 400 or so retards, almost uniformly white, Christian, and bourgeois, mostly male, make some claim at running our country, while really just waiting around for lascivious instant-messenger conversations to come across their desk to a) make a scandal or b) cover it up, is so pathetic. This is really even a step down from when Al Gore tried to get elected Leader of the Free World by wearing more earth-tones.

Anyways, if I ever hear anyone talk about our national democracy again, excuse me if I vomit.

Not that you would ever know it, because I don't often have time to post here, but I think written-out opinions, in a set context, are soon the only one I will stick by, and even then I have fear of being misunderstood.

I remember one time I was trying to draw a comparison between Bush and Reagan, and say that Reagan brought a sort of grand old-timey-ness to the office that one is even nostalgic for when faced with this desperate, sketchy, sweaty administration. The example I gave was Reagan's speech on the event of the Challenger exploding: `We will never forget them this morning as they prepared for their journey and waved goodbye and slipped the surly bonds of earth to touch the face of God.' My point was, 'Can you even imagine Bush saying something like that?!' But all my dad heard was 'Reagan Reagan Reagan' and the conversation didn't go anywhere because he was still too pissed off at Reagan to admit that there was at least an attempt at dignity in that decade.

Another argument I got into with my dad was about "Million Dollar Baby" (no shit), and whether shitty movies won Oscars all the time or not. Or something like that. Anyways, I'm not sure what we were arguing about, because my dad was trying to impart wisdom about the Oscars at the same time as I wanted to point out that he had liked this overblown film. So we were completely at cross purposes until my mom broke us apart.

Things you say in seminar, even longer blog posts (see below), anything relayed to another person, any message board post, virtually every single thing I think-- once you say anything, other people are only going to hear what they want, and then when your message finally gets back to you, it no longer at all resembles what you meant. This is why, if you've ever argued with me, it goes on FOREVER--- my belief is that we aren't really in an argument to begin with, that we've just misunderstood each other, and that if we really separate out our emotions from "what we are really saying," we might turn out to disagree, but at least we'll know, and we'll probably understand each other better. This is why I have a reputation for loving to argue; but to me, I just want to be sure there is even a need to. I think a good deal of the time, we are "just saying the same thing" as the person we are arguing with, and neither of us wanted to think so.

If one thinks of how one gets information, it is either in a chaotic way (conversation, the internet, cultural absorption) or in a uni-directional way (TV, "the news"). Think about politics. The "debate" in politics is conducted by pundits. It is staged for us. There is ZERO attempt made to provide the raw material of decision-making-- firstly, because no one actually wants this, and secondly, when there is a "backstory" given, it is usually some human interest story and not a dialectical/historical process. What this means is that the circularity of political discourse generates its own (detached) conventional wisdom, but then EVERYONE outside of this circuit is invited to join in (on November 2nd) on the basis of having accepted this conventional wisdom as THE discussion about politics. So, doing one's civic duty and voting are coded in specific ways by this discussion, so that not voting is demonized: remaining outside these endlessly-generated arrangements is demonized. As it should be, by the logic of the political circle. It is always *conversational*, and the essence of conversation is the agreed-upon premise, which allows us to talk to one another. Our words mean one thing, this is the definition Newsweek and both the Right and Left agree upon, now we can talk. That is why there is no philosophy of politics which anyone IN politics engages in. Which is why the Judicial, which has this kind of self-philosophizing, is so baffling to Congress. The judicial is NOT conversational.

Anyways, writing. When my book comes out, it will get summarized, people will reference it without having read it, and make assumptions based on the cover and who else has liked it, but in order to SAY anything about it, one will have to have read it. And while that opens up inevitable misreadings, I think this demand of going back to the source is so much less violent in the case of a book, than in, say, an argument. I guess that sounds obvious, but given the fact that the current administration a) functions entirely by miscommunication in news briefings and never "puts it all on the table," and b) the president does not read books; I think it merits a bit further thought.

And no, this doesn't mean that I'll be talking any less.