civilizationsdying

update

2007-06-22T23:03:00.001-04:00

New postings? Perhaps. If time allows. We shall see.

Dave Matthews and birth control

2007-02-11T18:59:00.000-05:00

So for a week or two, Planned Parenthood was running these print ads in alternative weeklies. I think I must have come across these ads when I was back in Seattle, since here in Indy there really isn't an "alternative weekly" worth the name (but don't get me started on this topic). Anyway the ad was mainly annoying (but a little clever): on the left-hand column it listed a bunch of apparently common (?) "male" habits (pissing in the shower, calling girls "dude," etc.) that females (some anyway) find quite annoying. In the right-hand column, it said something like "proactive birth control," which of course meant that "if you do these things, guys, you're never getting any action" or something along those lines. All of which of course was meant to be cheeky and something that could generate laughs (or at least tepid chuckles) among members of both genders. Or at least the twenty-something readers of these alternative weeklies who wouldn't find the ads extremely lame (i.e. nobody I know).

So where was I going with this...? Oh yeah. This weekend at a very fine club was a very fine benefit for an organization I support: Planned Parenthood. What's wrong with this picture? The headlining band looked ok, but supporting them was an act that claimed Dave Matthews as an inspiration. Uh-oh. Immediately I thought back to the ad in the Stranger: "proactive birth-control," and so forth. The thought of someone actually having sex, or even THINKING about sex while listening to Dave Matthews makes me almost....ill. Surely they're the most unsexy band in the world. Well, maybe behind Styx.

And the most sexy band in the world: Kraftwerk.

Wow -- how long has it been?

2007-02-10T17:22:00.000-05:00

Ahem,
OK yes it's been a long time since the last post. I've been very busy and working on lots of other things: a book review, an article, my job, improving my 5k time (my new slogan: 5k a day). Also, it's not like I have millions of readers. I'll probably put this blog to bed at some point in the near future, but till then at least one more post. Probably more, even.

1. On pain: on my 5k run today my quadriceps muscle just gave out. It was hurting the whole time anyway, but I'm stupid and I tried to ignore it. About 3/4 of the way through the run it just tore, and I had to hobble off the track. My time this week is now under 25 minutes. But right now I can barely walk. Ugh.
2. A friend of mine here is having girl problems, which deepens my cynicism even more about the possibility of any lasting harmony between the sexes. But of course this is the material from which fine novels and great songs are made, so I won't theorize too much about it here. The best that can be said about this tension, perhaps, is that it makes things interesting. But I sometimes wonder whether others feel so deeply skeptical and cynical about the whole enterprise, or (conversely) whether I just flatter myself for thinking that I'm the only one who thinks this way.
3. Goddamn my leg hurts!
4. Spring Vacation a few weeks away. A respite from the cold is becoming necessary. It's only 14 degrees right now I think.

blog neglect

2007-01-24T21:00:00.000-05:00

Yes I know, no posts in a while. It's not like I'm getting millions of comments anyway.

Thinking just now of something I remember, from Transformer (the excellent biography of Lou Reed). This is something that Moe Tucker also mentioned in a VU documentary I saw a while back. Lou is one of these big record collectors, and apparently well into the 60s he'd saved up all his old 45s of doo-wop, Johnny Ace and other R+B, Ornette, god-knows what else. Some awesome awesome stuff I'm sure. Mostly doo-wop I guess though, and other early rock and roll. Anyway, of course at this time Reed was living dangerously down on the Lower East side, and someone broke into his place and stole *all* of his records. It boggles the mind. Can you imagine what kind of value this would have today? Right now? Lou Reed's record collection?

equipoise

2007-01-19T12:31:00.000-05:00

In the ancient world, the Epicureans valued a state of self-containment and autonomy, freedom from strong passions (whether positive or negative). To them, this was "happiness," properly understood. Equipoise, or something like it. For them, this was something always attainable by the human person even under extreme pressure, and yet it seems to me (an ordinary person) pretty hard to achieve and fleeting. It's also linked pretty closely with events and how they turn out. Perhaps I'm just a bad philosopher; I know I'd make a pretty bad Buddhist for this reason (because as hard as I try, I can't think of appetites and desires and fears as something that can reasonably gotten rid of).

word of the day, from wordsmith.org (Thanks Anu!)

2007-01-09T15:01:00.000-05:00

"malkin (MO-kin, MAL-kin) noun 1. An untidy woman; a slattern. 2. A scarecrow or a grotesque effigy. 3. A mop made of a bundle or rags fastened to a stick. 4. A cat. 5. A hare.[From Middle English Malkyn (little Molly), diminutive ofthe name Maud or Molly/Mary.] A related word is grimalkin, referring to an old female cat or an ill-tempered old woman" (my italics).

-Anu Garg (garg wordsmith.org)

Hmm. Old female cat and ill-tempered old woman. Those both describe Pico.

brass tacks, etc.

2007-01-04T21:22:00.000-05:00

Back to Indy. Survived the flight and all, although very choppy over Chicago. The lady next to me was reading a prayer card and I have to say I was saying my Hail Marys too. My Catholicism comes back strong when I'm flying. I'm not proud of it, but it's true. But at least I don't reduce all religion to what John Locke called a "salvation society." That's another story.
1. I had a three-hour layover so I spent a lot of time in bookstores reading over management strategy books. I find this stuff fascinating: it's good to see what the enemy is doing, and also to remember that these ideas come from somewhere. Marx would be very proud of this interest: he was always immersed in this kind of detail.
2. Working through Althusser as well. Surprisingly readable stuff.
3. Already looking forward to next summer. Think I want to go to Japan.

More pictures soon.

(Almost) back

2007-01-04T03:14:00.000-05:00

Well in a few hours, it's time to make the trip back. Time to check the mail that's piled up for almost three weeks, clean out the house as best I can, unpack, find the cat and reassure her that I won't leave again for a long time. As usual, it's been an amazing vacation.
1. Took the train across the state of Washington last night, and became completely convinced that there is absolutely no better way to travel. Reminds me of the many times I took the train down from Vancouver to Seattle, and the one long trip I made from St. Paul to Spokane back in 92. Way back then the trip was a kind of escape from an unhappy relationship. Train-decompression is slow and natural and healthy.

2. I watched more television than I have for a year or so, and I'm not proud of it. But I figure an immersion in crappy pop culture for a week or two is necessary to see what I'm missing for the other 51 weeks.
3. I also read the first part of Marx's Grundrisse, and much of Louis Althusser's On Marx. On the train last night sat next to a girl who after getting seated and situated began reading a bible. We had an interesting conversation. She looked at the book I was reading (Althusser), and asked what it was and I said "it's for school." What else was I to say?: that I was reading a French Marxist-Structuralist who went mad and ended up spending the last ten years of life in a mental hospital/prison? No. We ended up talking about Paul, which was just fine.

the best new word of 2006

2006-12-25T02:04:00.001-05:00

Rarely do I celebrate the advent of new words. They usually have more to do with the hype generated by fifteen-year old pop music fans, or American Idol devotees than anything that has to do with my life. For example, I must have heard the phrase "that's hot" about a quarter-million times before knowing that it had anything to do with Paris Hilton. This doesn't mean I'm old: it just means I'm not stupid.

But I'm for once overjoyed. This is by far the best neologism of 2006 (from Frank Bruni, New York Times Week in Review, "A Buzzsaw of Buzzwords," 12/24):

"And what, on a lighter note, of 'sanctimommy'? It went beyond deft wordplay, vaulting into the realm of social commentary. Self-beatified and eagerly censorious mothers were everywhere, shaming anybody who dared question their noble callings or unimpeachable judgments. This witty tag for them took because they were itching for a takedown."

Takedown indeed. Perhaps my sensitivity to sanctimommies is acute because of my aversion to parentage (see below). But how brilliant: sanctimony + mommy = sanctimommy. Brilliant!

Marx for the holidays

2006-12-24T21:15:00.000-05:00

"The process, then, is simply this: The product becomes a commodity, i.e. a mere moment of exchange. The commodity is transformed into exchange value. In order to equate it with itself as an exchange value, it is exchanged for a symbol which represents it as exchange value as such. As such a symbolized exchange value, it can then in turn be exchanged in definite relations for every other commodity."
Marx, Grundrisse, “The Chapter on Money,” 145.

When I read this a couple days ago, I was struck by the passage that Marx italicizes. This is because much of my recent research involves the modification and transformation of time under market forces. I'm engaging now in a genealogy of this story, and it is complicated. Marx said it best in that passage in the CM: "everything that is solid melts into air." All values, all assumptions about the natural world and human nature, all manifestations of power, everything becomes transformed by the market. The only problem: the transformation occurs much earlier than modernity, or rather it begins there. We can see inklings of a concern of the "derealization" of economics and trade as far back as Aristotle. My current work involves the circuit between Aristotle/Augustine/Marx.

But the passage above: the derealization of the product that occurs under commodification means a transformation from something spatial into something temporal. The object becomes a moment. Or to be more specific, it becomes a "moment of exchange."

"0 comments"

2006-12-21T21:53:00.000-05:00

For the most part, I enjoy blogging. It keeps me writing. But the idea of a blog is that it's a conversation with other readers. So: if you read, comment. That's all.

xo,
Ringo

Weird holiday post

2006-12-21T21:34:00.000-05:00

Went to the big Christmas bash last night. I'm just in town for a few days, and so I caught up with a lot of the old friends and mostly we discussed how the past year went. Consensus seems to be that it was a rough year. "06 sucked" is what a lot of them said. There are reasons for this, which I won't go into. I respect my friends' privacy.

Holidays don't affect me one way or the other, positively or negatively. I'm mostly indifferent to them. But I always read about all kind of bad things happening during this time. People are already desperate I know -- and the market makes them feel even more desperate than they really are -- and it seems that the holiday season just pushes some folks over the edge. I think maybe part of it is the insanely cheerful tone of omnipresent Christmas music, the fake emphasis on themes of brotherhood and caring (in a ridiculously competitive society), not to mention the crass consumerism. With all of these things in your face, it's hard not to feel cynical or even hostile. At least *I* can sympathize with this tendency, but maybe that's just me. :)

more vacation

2006-12-20T14:05:00.000-05:00

Some scores from the thrift store:
1. A bunch of old Duran Duran pins. I purchased these for .20 each, and gave them all away to the girls I know here in town. Merry Christmas!
2. LPs: Bobby Fuller, I Fought the Law and Richard Pryor, Black Ben. One dollar each. An old Hank Williams 45: fifty cents. I can't wait to play these when I get home.
3. A cool old western shirt: 1.50.
And so on.

Have engaged in a self-imposed news blackout over vacation, although I am still reading lots. Working my way now through Marx's Grundrisse, which runs to almost 1000 pages. It's not easy going either: it's basically a notebook that Marx wrote in one winter (1857), addressing the structural characteristics and logics of money and capital. To think that he wrote a thousand pages in one season: both inspiring and depressing. What's also amazing is the fact that while he wrote about money he was consistently impoverished: the editor writes about how Marx stayed indoors during the season because he couldn't afford a coat, and how he depended entirely on Engels.

vacation post

2006-12-18T13:20:00.000-05:00

Ah yes vacation... Eight hours in the air, and here I am. Back to my former home state to visit friends and family. Some thoughts and observations on traveling...
1. Overheard conversation in the Indianapolis airport: some guy reading Plato, and asking another: "What's the difference between carrying and being carried?" I think this comes from the Meno. Weird: you expect people to talk about sports, the weather, anything but philosophy in the airport.
2. Strange how the mind meditates on danger. When I'm on the ground, I never think about plane crashes. When I'm driving, I rarely think about crashing. But when I fly, I always think about plane crashes: what it would be like, people I've known who have perished in accidents (1), movies etc. etc. Morbid stuff. Remind me to travel with someone else next time.
3. I know that millions of people pass through airports over the holidays, and so it is strange that I almost always run into or see someone I know when I travel. Yesterday was no different. While sitting there in the dread middle seat (15b), I saw a girl I had a fling with several years ago. Awkward moment, but then I realized that I wouldn't say anything because there wasn't much to chat about. It was a long time ago.

disturbing conversation overheard

2006-12-14T09:25:00.000-05:00

Went to coffee this morning at my usual spot. Couldn't help but hear a conversation next to me: two evangelicals were debating the merits of Santa Claus-as-tradition and American myth (especially in relation to religious belief and practice). One guy was standing, and pretty much dominating the conversation. At one point: "When I have kids, I'm going to tell them that Santa Claus is like a game we play. When the holidays come around, we're going to play the Santa game." Why did he make this argument? Because, he said, if children are taught that Santa is real and Jesus is real, then becoming disabused of one means becoming disillusioned with the other.

This is madness.

One flaw in logic is obvious: if kids are taught from an early age that Santa Claus is a game, then (oh no!) what's going to prevent them from thinking that Jesus is a "game" as well? We play the one game to get presents at Christmas, and we play the other game to get into heaven when we die. Wittgenstein would have loved all this game-playing! And even a child could follow these ramifications.

There's part of me that just feels disgusted with the reduction of religion to a system of costs and benefits. Perhaps this is the ultimate result of the logic of the Reformation: the foregrounding of the individual's soul, the emphasis on inner discernment and "faith," Locke's idea of religion as a "salvation society" which looks just like his social contract but which refers to heaven rather than earth. I want no part of this kind of "religion."

Jandek (again)

2006-12-11T15:21:00.000-05:00

The "J" on my hand? For Jandek of course. Post-show at Radio Radio.

Jandek

2006-12-10T20:00:00.000-05:00

Wow -- so I'm one of maybe a thousand people who have seen Jandek play live. He came to Indy last night. Indy! of all places -- hardly a center of music weirdos (even Bloomington would be better). But what weirdos there are were all present last night: nearly everybody I saw plays or played in some indie rock band locally. And my buddy Mike, well he plays in a band and he talked me into buying a ticket and going to the show even after I had cold feet. But hell it was worth it.

Jandek had a backup band of jazz musicians, and thus I realized that his music is no worse or weirder than Ayler or other ESP stuff. It's about the same. Made me want to see more jazz shows in fact -- stuff like Ornette though, who as far as I know never comes through here.

But for those of you who are going to read this and rush out to buy a Jandek record, be forewarned: he comes across live much better than he does on disk. At least that's what I think.

ps: this is *not* a picture from last night's show. We weren't allowed to take snaps (thanks to "eternal summer kitten" for the pic:http://flickr.com/photos/11871727@N00/132442498/)

An anagram a day...

2006-12-07T17:39:00.000-05:00

After a long tough day, an ANAGRAM or two.

Ringo's boring:
BORN GOING SIR ("I was born going, sir")
BROS IGNORING (the bros were ignoring my blog)

Where's that girl?
WEALTHS RIGHTER (for the bourgeois girlfriend)

Civilization is dying
SOCIALIZING DIVINITY (huh?)

I "heart" hurt (Thanks John K)
URETHRA HIT (oucch!!!!)

I won't smile
ELITISM NOW
MEOW INSTIL

Still more anagrams!

2006-12-05T21:57:00.000-05:00

Bobby Pollard -- PROBABLY BOLD
Tobin Sprout -- ROBOTS INPUT (I don't like this one, even if it's funny. Sprout is great.)
Pabst Blue Ribbon -- PUBERTAL BOBBINS
Pat Smick Rocks -- CRACKPOTS SKIM (his record collection).

Thanks again to the wordsmith.org anagram generator!

more ANAGRAMS!

2006-12-05T14:44:00.000-05:00

Thanks (and thanks again) to wordsmith.org anagram generator.

Ringo is luv:
LIVING SOUR
RIVING SOUL
VIRGIN SOUL
LINGO VIRUS (my OED obsession)
GIRL VINOUS
VIGOURS NIL (indeed my work suffers)
LOG IN VIRUS
RUG VIOLINS (this sounds vaguely obscene)

Ringo's blog:
BORING SLOG (ouch!)
BRING LOGOS (to the fashion party)
OBLONG RIGS (this sounds like a guided by voices song)
BONGO GIRLS
GOB GIRLS ON (hey hey gob girls!)
GOB GIRLS NO (gob girls only want to say no!)
BROIL GONGS (mmmm... broiled gong)
LOB GRINGOS (over the border)
SLOB GRINGO (yes that gringo is a slob!)
SNOB GIRL GO (indeed -- I couldn't have said it better)
ROB GOSLING (sounds like the lead singer of an emo band)

ANAGRAM madness!

2006-12-04T20:14:00.000-05:00

Wow do I love anagrams. And do I love rock and roll. Put them together, and you get....rock and roll anagrams (Thanks to thisdayinmusic.com):

Kate Bush - Shut Beak
Mariah Carey - A creamy hair
Michael Jackson - Manacle his Jock
Whitney Houston - Shut it now, honey!
Tori Amos - I'm a torso.
Bruce Springsteen - Bursting Presence
Thom Yorke - OK To Rhyme

And the winner is....:
Britney Spears - Best PR In Years

No wait, this one's better:
Eric Clapton - Narcoleptic

Brrrr....

2006-12-03T19:00:00.000-05:00

So winter finally got here. No snow yet, but wow it's cold. I'm taking pictures out my window while driving. Full moon tonight, and cold sky.

LPs and CDs

2006-12-02T17:13:00.000-05:00

I don't like cds. But I like this one.

Seriously -- the cd was supposed to be an improvement on the lp, and ironically everything "advantageous" about it has problems. It's smaller, and more portable, but it's undeniably ugly: the little plastic cases are chintzy and the artwork ends up being small. It just feels cheap and mass-produced. Of course we know that cds skip, and the noise they make when they skip is much more jarring and grating than the repetitive scratch of a skipping record. I will burn cds for my friends (sorry Nick -- yours is coming), but I will not buy them.

But I love this cd. My Bloody Valentine, Loveless. My favorite scene in Lost in Translation is when Bob and Charlotte are driving home in the cab after karaoke. "Sometimes" plays in the background.

The only thing I don't like about the movie is it makes me feel wistful afterwards. Charlotte reminds me of somebody I once knew. But I guess that's the point.

Not much time...

2006-11-30T13:32:00.000-05:00

Yes it's coming to that part of the semester. Not much time to blog or do anything else for that matter. I am listening to music though as always. Heavy rotation:
1. Ray Davies, Other People's Lives. Wow -- this is such a great record. His first solo after the Kinks. Much of it written and recorded in New Orleans, and a reflection on America rather than his usual Brit-centric outlook.
2. Strokes, First Impressions of Earth. When I heard "juicebox" I thought it was crap. The video was annoying too. Turns out the record isn't bad.
3. the Eat, Live. Recorded in 1981 or something. If you're not a fan of the Eat, then you won't care too much about this record. It is really good though if you like early 80s punk of the KBD variety. It's hand-silkscreened and comes with a bunch of baseball cards inside.
4. Live Fast Die, Bandana Thrash Record. This is my favorite record right now. It totally rules.
5. Destroyer, Streethawk: A Seduction. Marijke, I want my copy of this cd back along with the Clinic cd.

I miss winter

2006-11-26T20:00:00.000-05:00

This is crazy. It's almost December, and it was almost 70 degrees today. Global warming is not making me very happy.

Still, hot and polluted skies make for good pictures. Here's another shot of the steam plant, November 07. My hope is that we'll eventually get some snow to go with these holiday lights.

Ruins -- a flaneur in the rustbelt

2006-11-25T17:07:00.000-05:00

Went to the Quad Cities this weekend. Damn -- old river towns are great. Especially the thrift stores: you can find things there that would go for $$$ in shops on either coast. But don't ask me where I went for my thrift scores. It's secret.

Anyway I went for a run on the Mississippi River and got a shot of this ruin. Turns out it was the only part standing of a factory (John Deere?) that was once a quarter-mile long. This picture doesn't really do it justice: it just looked so ominous standing there in a field of empty concrete space.

2006-11-20T11:19:00.000-05:00

Looking for a realistic assessment of what's going on in Iraq? Read the following story, from today's New York Times. It's horrific.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/20/world/middleeast/20revenge.html?hp&ex=1164085200&en=438b8e8a360603e9&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Also, thinking briefly about some comments made by Bush over the weekend, in Vietnam of all places. Someone asked him about parallels between Vietnam and Iraq (he had to have known that that would happen), and his response was typical: the only way we'll lose is if we withdraw prematurely. We're basically guaranteed to win if we can just remain resolute, etc. A kind of reduction of war to the willpower of an occupying army. This is patently ridiculous, and it ironically affirms what Bush was trying to deny: that winning or losing depends all on us. If this isn't a rerun of Vietnam-thinking, I don't know what is.

Read the article quoted above, and you'll see that war unleashes forces of violence that "resolution" cannot restrain. It's not a matter of willpower or staying the course now: Iraq is out of our hands.

2006-11-18T21:39:00.000-05:00

Last night. The Magnetix from Bordeaux, France. This guy's guitar made the most hellish racket -- it was wonderful.

al Jazeera English

2006-11-16T10:34:00.000-05:00

Ok, so the al Jazeera English service started up yesterday. This is an unqualified good thing. For those who want to know more about the station, the documentary Control Room is an excellent place to start. As soon as you see the movie, you begin to realize that the journalists for the station are not anti-American automatons but deadly serious journalists with a decidedly pro-democracy bent. The only thing: their vision of democracy doesn't square with the vision pushed and pursued by some in America. Let's be clear too: it *is* America that feels unhappy and threatened with the station's English service: there are five cable companies in Germany for example that are running the station while none in the US are.

Maybe they should run ads on other stations like the old "I want my MTV" commercials from the early 80s? To show my age, I actually remember those commercials.

2006-11-14T15:06:00.000-05:00

Here we are again.

bonfire shot

2006-11-13T18:18:00.000-05:00

Here's another "experimental" shot done at the party last Sat.

OED!!!

2006-11-13T17:33:00.000-05:00

I mentioned that I'm a geek right?

I just got the whole set of the OED, unabridged. It's twelve volumes long. It weighs a ton. It won't fit on my bookshelves.

I am so excited. Now when my students come to me with some citation from wikipedia, I can point them in the right direction.

I mentioned that I hate wikipedia right?

weekend post

2006-11-12T17:28:00.000-05:00

Long and interesting weekend. Saw a friend's band play on Friday. Here's a shot from that night. Fountain Square is pretty cool.

Reprieve

2006-11-10T10:31:00.001-05:00

Read Krugman's piece this morning, and I have to agree: I'm feeling pretty good. One thing that's crucial to remember however: THE WAR'S NOT OVER. I mean this in the broadest Schmittian sense possible: the momentum generated by these elections needs to be sustained and aimed towards 08. If the race really was a "referendum on the President," then what really matters is the next presidential election.

STEAM PLANT -- 7 pm

2006-11-08T11:48:00.000-05:00

Here's a shot I took with my Canon 530 last night, on the way to the reception. Pollution does some interesting things to light.

feeling a little better

2006-11-08T10:50:00.000-05:00

So yes things are better than I'd expected. Surprising -- the front page of the Times yesterday had a long article about Bush's attempt to shore-up support among his base, and a few days prior was a poll showing that the Rs were catching up. But no: Dems won handily. What does this mean?
1. Americans like the Constitution. The Constitution means divided government (remember my Pol 101 kids?)
2. The Democratic victory is actually bigger than it seems. I'm not talking here about registration and polling irregularities (like the arbitrarily strict ID policies here in IN and elsewhere), or other structural advantages (the bully pulpit, etc), although they do matter. If you combine the 28 seats the Ds won in the HR, and add that to the Senate (which I predict the Ds will win once the votes are counted and re-counted), and add that to the governorships, this means an impressive majority of voters supported change.
3. "Change" here means a lot of things, but most importantly it refers to Iraq. The best thing Bush could do right now would be to fire Rumsfeld. The Dems can take heart that he won't, however. This bodes ill for the country (and especially for the troops), but it bodes well for Democratic chances in 2008. Rumsfeld is the face of failure, and both parties know it.

prepared to be disappointed

2006-11-07T10:04:00.000-05:00

Pessimism -- ah yes, you're my friend.

Another election day, and I've imposed a 12-hour news blackout on myself. I'll tune in tonight after all the polls have closed and probably call a couple friends, but I'm not feeling good about things. A reading, therefore from a fellow left radical about pessimism and patience and failure:
"Pragmatists make success a criterion: what failed was bad and false. For his part, Nietzsche the anti-pragmatist understood that the decadent sometimes choose what is bad for them, propelling them along the path of decline. Unintended consequences and reverses have their perverse reasons. Moreover, for those who observe the radical labor of the negative, failures are not only failures: since Hegel and Marx, we have known that things also progress by the 'bad side'" (Henri Lefebvre, Critique of Everyday Life III, 36).

Acceleration and politics

2006-11-05T14:10:00.000-05:00

Attended/presented at an academic conference this weekend, and one of things discussed was time and its implication for democratic politics. An interesting problem, and yet it would be a mistake to think that the acceleration of life is an entirely technological phenomenon. From a political standpoint, the current state of exception defined by ideas like the "unitary executive," and by practices like presidential signing statements, preemptive war, the ongoing GWOT, the practice of defining prisoners of that war as "detainees" without Geneva conventions protections, etc. etc. is animated and reinforced by a sense of urgency. Urgency implies speed. The idea is that we have to "act before they strike first." That we have the technological means to allow this spirit of urgency to be concretized in acts is merely contingent: it's not the technology that drives the policy but the other way round.

Also, consider the role that technology and the speed of communication have played in undermining the sense of exceptionality and urgency. The photos at Abu Ghraib for example.

another postpunk post

2006-11-01T10:54:00.000-05:00

A few days ago watched the movie "Kill Your Idols," about the whole New York No Wave scene of the early 80s. I came away unimpressed and in fact a little depressed: I mean I certainly like the destructive *idea* of stripping rock and roll down to its essence, but in practice it ends up being a bunch of pretense. What's wrong with Chuck Berry? In the film, all these no-wavers (Lydia Lunch especially) went off about the fact that punk bands were just ripping off early rock and roll, but then again so what? If you actually *listen* to the guitar work of Bob Quine or Lou Reed or John Morton, there's nothing "bluesy" about it. It's scratchy and angular and spare. And yet it rocks too: give me the rock any day. If I want to think about music, I'll read Richard Meltzer. If I want to get away from rock, I'll listen to Ornette.

2006-10-30T09:07:00.000-05:00

Much talk in one of my courses about the nature of originality and its relationship to authenticity. Here's a quote in that context:
"Is there room for a conception, an elaboration, which gives the conceptual and the experiential their due, which is not reductionist, but draws them both on to an expanding track, enriching them while critiquing them by one another? Submitting both to a creative activity comparable to that which produces works of art, without thereby aligning oneself with an aesthetic theory?" -- Henri Lefebvre, The Critique of Everyday Life Volume III, 34.

transmission (below) and politics

2006-10-28T10:51:00.000-04:00

More on the transmission idea, posted below:

This concept applies also to politics and globalization. Think of a state as an enclosed system sustained by the will of a particular people, and consider the transnational nature of globalized capitalism. The state's policies in this sense stand between the destructive forces of the market and individual human beings: it either exposes them or protects them. The state moderates the power of the market like a transmission does.

What's interesting is the very different policies that states have towards globalization, if one considers that these policies at some point are an expression of the people's will. Americans, for example, are extremely exposed and vulnerable to the forces of the market. Europeans, on the other hand are less so: this is in fact what the debate over the EU Constitution was all about. Given this contrast, it begs the question as to why Americans allow themselves to be exposed and vulnerable to the marketplace, when other people in other states do not. Americans for example work longer weeks, take fewer vacations, and have fewer benefits than the citizens of almost any other industrialized country. Why is this, when they could definitely have otherwise? I find this baffling and troubling.

2006-10-26T15:05:00.000-04:00

I'm actually gasping for breath in this picture. Pico weighs a damn ton.

Heavy rotation at chez ringo

2006-10-26T11:18:00.000-04:00

This is what I'm listening to right now:
1. Shoes, Present Tense lp
2. Cars, Panorama lp
3. Wrists, Freak of Natures 7" ep
4. M.O.T.O., El Stop b/w She's Gone Nuts 7"
5. Human TV cd

transmission

2006-10-25T22:06:00.000-04:00

In my Murakami class, we've just finished Sputnik Sweetheart and in it there's a passage where Sumire (one of the three main characters) talks about the power of narrative as a kind of "transmission." That is, like a car's transmission. I know this seems weird, but her point (it actually comes from the narrator of the story who thinks it up) is that the world around us is full of hostile and chaotic forces, and the stories we tell about the world moderate those forces in the same way that a car's transmission directs the engine's raw power into something that can turn a drive train and move the wheels. Get it? I think it's a pretty interesting idea. It certainly relates to a lot of experiences that seem to make sense only in retrospect: when they're occurring, they're often painful because they seem random and meaningless.

This reminds me too of something Hannah Arendt said: narrative makes life endurable. The problem? People seem to be losing the ability to tell interesting stories.

Pictures of pictures

2006-10-25T15:22:00.000-04:00

Got a new toy -- a Canon 530. Too tired to write much today, so here's a nice shot of a nice shot. Pico and me.

Another OED

2006-10-24T11:48:00.000-04:00

brumous, a. Wintry, foggy. [f. L bruma (=brevima shortest day f. brevis) + ous]

Avoiding parenthood

2006-10-23T11:20:00.000-04:00

I have to admit: parenthood is completely baffling to me. It's misunderstood too. Someone once argued that being a parent is the least selfish thing one can do, when in fact it seems to me the most selfish. From my (contingently) middle-class existence, as soon as someone becomes a parent they start to obsess about distinctly bourgeois kinds of concerns: what neighborhood am I going to live in, what kind of house do I have, how can I get my kid into the best schools, etc. Doesn't this exclude other people?

Being a good parent depends above all on "safety" at all levels and at all times. And there is perhaps no more bourgeois notion than safety. Are safety and happiness compatible?

Dogs and cats -- a feminist (!) post

2006-10-23T11:09:00.000-04:00

As I mentioned before, I'm a cat person. I have a theory about affinity for animals, and the way it breaks down according to gender. Men who hate cats also hate women, because somehow (subconsciously?) the feline represents the feminine. Men like this are controlling and they resent rebellion: they don't like cats because cats don't "mind." They're disobedient. The converse of this is not that men who love cats are feminine, of course, but that they appreciate the feminine. This is something I've talked about with a lot of my friends -- all of whom love cats, of course.

Why would anyone want a dog? They're obsequious.

Benjamin on Marx

2006-10-20T16:57:00.000-04:00

"The experience of our generation: that capitalism will not die a natural death" (Arcades Project, 667).

"Schiller: 'Common natures pay with what they do; noble natures, with what they are.' The proletarian pays for what he is with what he does" (Arcades Project, 659).

word geek

2006-10-19T13:55:00.000-04:00

There are word geeks and then there are number geeks. I'm a word geek. As such, I was pleased as punch to get a discard copy of the OED (abridged). I'm first in line also to get a copy of the unabridged OED (all 100 lbs of it in 9 or ten volumes). I can't wait. I'm gonna read that sucker from start to finish.

Word of the day: barmy, a. Full of barm; frothy; (slang, also b. on the crumpet) wrong in the head, cracked. (OED abridged, 88).

From Found Magazine, "Find of the Day," May 23, 2006. Brilliant!

2006-10-18T14:21:00.000-04:00

2006-10-17T15:06:00.000-04:00

Watching another movie, again about 9/11. This time it's "DC in Crisis," a Showtime production that came out a couple years ago, with actors playing the roles of the administration inner circle. The acting is alternately wooden and ham-fisted, with actors sometimes reading their lines as if cue-cards are placed in front of them. What went wrong with this movie?

Part of an answer is that it was produced by Lionel Chetwynd, a prominent (and rare) Hollywood conservative. The point of the movie seems to be less about aesthetic impact or experience, and more about apologetics (which usually isn't beautiful or even logical). The movie is there to convey a message, that is, and nearly everything else about it is pointless. It's sort of like those afterschool specials that we all used to watch as kids in the 70s: watchable only in an ironic way, laughable, obvious. But this goes back to my question below: wasn't 9/11 too important to be instrumentalized in this way (as a mere means to tell a larger story about the rightness of the neocons)? The work just seems to cheapen a collective trauma.

Greengrass movie -- United 93

2006-10-16T14:34:00.000-04:00

Watched the Paul Greengrass movie last night -- United 93. It raises the important question of the representability of suffering. Actually it revisits this question, which has already been raised a lot in light of Holocaust books and films and even cartoons (Spiegelman): what can properly be represented, what is in good taste and what is tacky or in poor taste, what amounts to exploitation, etc. How do we represent such horrific and truamatic events with justice? Is the proper response just to leave an absence where there might otherwise be a (tacky, tasteless) presence? To my knowledge, no book has yet tackled this question with respect to the 9/11 commemoration industry. And trust me, it is an industry: someone's making money off all those plastic yellow ribbon decals.

2006-10-15T19:38:00.000-04:00

"Cats are punk rock. Dogs are Dave Matthews Band."

-- Ringo

http://flickr.com/photos/29057634@N00/236023258/

sleepy post

2006-10-14T13:33:00.000-04:00

Benjamin:
"Rites de passage -- this is the designation in folklore for the ceremonies that attach to death and birth, to marriage, puberty, and so forth. In modern life, these transitions are becoming ever more unrecognizable and impossible to experience. We have grown very poor in threshold experiences. Falling asleep is perhaps the only such experience that remains to us" (Arcades Project, 494).

Oh yes -- I'm a cat person. More on cats and cat posts later.
(pic info: http://flickr.com/photos/zamario/64571920/)

More Benjamin

2006-10-12T13:30:00.000-04:00

"The flaneur is the observer of the marketplace. His knowledge is akin to the occult science of industrial fluctuations. He is a spy for the capitalists, on assignment in the realm of consumers" (Arcades Project, "M: The Flaneur," 427).

"The idleness of the flaneur is a demonstration against the division of labor" (Ibid, 427).

The Postpunk Post

2006-10-11T13:27:00.000-04:00

I recently finished Simon Reynolds' "Rip it Up and Start Again." Would recommend to any reader interested in postpunk. It's a bit too Anglocentric, but beyond that excellent. Check it out.

More on "Rip it Up" later, but for now, here's Reynolds' blog:

http://blissout.blogspot.com/

Cheers!

2006-10-11T11:15:00.000-04:00

I'm putting the final touches on a conference paper that addresses the role of doctors in interrogations at GTMO. I came across this bit of ironic fun, at the expense Dr. William Winkenwerder (Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs). I'm sure he really didn't mean to say this (or didn't understand fully what it implied):

"Winkenwerder, who formerly worked in the insurance industry, argues that most of the detainees have never received better care than they have been getting at Guantanamo. The Pentagon, he told me, took extraordinary pains to insure that detainees were treated in compliance with medical ethics and American values, and he presented statistics showing that last year Guantanamo detainees got more frequent medical treatment than most Americans." Jane Mayer, "The Experiment" (The New Yorker, July 11 and 18, 2005) 63.

I *know* this is meant to be a defense of GTMO, but it ends up being an indictment of our own health care system. For all I know, it may be true that most Americans see a doctor less often than those poor yobs in orange jumpsuits, but that's because millions of us are uninsured.

2006-10-10T14:48:00.000-04:00

Remember Gary Condit? Didn't think so.

What's the connection between this fellow and Mark Foley? Only a tangential one, dear readers. But it's an interesting tangent.

Condit was a suspect in the disappearance of Chandra Levy. She was his intern (and some suspected, his lover): the story was all over the papers and of course the TV news back in 2001. But then 9/11 happened, and Condit was forgotten. What ever happened to the guy? I don't even remember (except that he was found completely innocent -- but that's another story).

Anyway, here's the angle, and the provocation: Republicans want to Condit-ize Foley. How? By foregrounding the fact that North Korea has nukes, that the "axis of evil" is alive and well, and that we need to securitize ever more aspects of life both domestically and internationally in the GWOT. The best and safest way of doing this is by keeping Rs in office. Never mind the fact that Bush's policies had a good deal to do with the mess we're currently in right now (remember dear reader that under Clinton, NK was regularly and meaningfully monitored by a system of cameras that reported back in real time, what they were doing and how). What matters now is to conjure up an enemy -- even better if that enemy represents somewhat of a real threat -- that can serve as a distraction from Mark Foley's mess. All they have to do is keep Foley off the front page for four more weeks.

Every day Foley's off the front page (and NK is on) equals one to two points in the polls. Trust me on this. The Rs may be down by 20 points in some places, but there's plenty of time to catch up. Democrats are going to have some unpleasant surprises in November unless they counteract this.

Progress and Catastrophe

2006-10-09T22:18:00.000-04:00

A thought from Walter Benjamin: "The concept of progress must be grounded in the idea of catastrophe. That things are 'status quo' is the catastrophe. It is not an ever-present possibility but what in each case is given. Thus Strindberg (in To Damascus?): hell is not something that awaits us, but this life here and now" (Arcades Project, N: "On the Theory of Knowledge, Theory of Progress", 473).

I plan on posting Benjamin quotes/thoughts/images here in part because their fragmentary nature lends itself well to the blog format. Also, we live in a time where the observation that "status quo is the catastrophe" certainly seems relevant.

2006-10-09T14:59:00.000-04:00

Dear readers,
Take a look at the following article from the NY Times.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/06/technology/06tube.html). Useful in juxtaposition with the excellent extended polemic by the Retort collective (Afflicted Powers: Verso Press, 2005). Here's what the Retortists say, with respect to Debord's "society of the spectacle" in particular:

"The notion 'spectacle' was intended, then as a first stab at characterizing a new form of, or stage in, the accumulation of capital. What it named preeminently was the submission of more and more facets of human sociability -- areas of everyday life, forms of recreation, patterns of speech, idioms of local solidarity, kinds of ethical or aeshtetic insubordination, the endless capacities of human beings to evade or refuse the orders brought down to them from on high -- to the deadly solicitations of the lifeless bright sameness of the market" (Afflicted Powers, 19).

It is fascinating how both state and terror are entwined and entrapped in the spectacle. Witness how one of the readers quoted in the NYTimes piece liked the video and found it compelling because he "liked to watch stuff blow up."

completely, absolutely new

2006-10-09T11:42:00.000-04:00

Greetings,

This is something completely new for me: a novel experience if you will. My hope for the blog is to synthesize my disparate interests in a way that's readable and relevant. If you care about politics and punk rock (and who doesn't?) then you'll want to stay tuned.

xo, ringo.