With Feathers

happy halloween

2009-10-31T03:06:00.002-04:00

you're welcome.

cane toads!

2009-09-13T14:00:00.007-04:00

this is a real documentary about real toads and their real australian friends. it is amazing.

my favorite part is the proposed commemoration of the cane toad with a cane toad "bust" that will provide "tourist potential."

also, the part where the little girl plays with her deadly cane toad pet using bad horror film camera work.

also, the part where the van zigzags across the highway in order to run over as many toads as possible.

thought for food

2009-09-12T17:36:00.001-04:00

from nikhil pal singh's black is a country:

the public is less a concrete aggregation of persons than an ethical ideal and symbolic construct that signifies the democratic institution of modern politics itself, to which the watchwords of "publicity," "public opinion," and above all, "publication,"attest. intellectuals in turn can be understood to be among the primary producers of public discourse - theoretical and practical knowledge of the social world - knowledge that becomes a key stake in social and political struggles to conserve or transform that world.

singh's definition speaks to my concerns with academic writing. though singh does not really help me formulate a definition of the "public" that suits my own position and occupation, the connections he draws between the intellectual, the social, and the political are useful in thinking about what "public" really means. not everyone is public. children, for instance, are not public beings - they are socially, culturally, legally, and politically subsumed within a family structure, be it their parents or the state via an orphanage.

the notion of the "public" as a construct also speaks to contemporary concerns with the public as really composed of a number of overlapping yet distinct and often competing publics. in other words, books are written for a number of groups. for instance, roald dahl's charlie and the chocolate factory was written for young adults, parents, and me.

and speaking of food, i would like to refer you to the title of my post. having read this entire post, i now require that you send me edible items as a token of appreciation for having imparted knowledge and wisdom. i am a poor graduate student. this is literally how i feed myself. ta!

wading through judith butler - accessability & academia

2009-09-12T01:15:00.000-04:00

working in any academic field necessitates a decision about what kind of academic you wish to become. will you be a teacher? a researcher? an attempted amalgam, generally resulting (hopefully) in a longstanding position at some little liberal arts place far removed from the reality of american political culture?

these choices essentially represent a spectrum - you choose to be 70% teacher and 30% researcher at middlebury college, or you choose to be 80% researcher, 15% teacher, and 5% really awkward dude at columbia. become and independent researcher and you've jumped off the deep end of the research pool, while community college teachers generally represent the teaching end of the spectrum, as all of their research time is taken up commuting.

i am reading reading ayn rand and judith butler simultaneously, and i prefer reading rand, though i agree much more with butler. what does it say about academia that this is an assessment that most everyone - from the lay reader to the grad student to the tenured philosophy professor - would be very likely to adopt?

butler has encountered numerous complaints about her unreadability, responding to complaints in her 1999 preface to gender trouble by equivocating and then accusing her readers of not being responsible or hardworking enough to wade through her impenetrable kantian wording. apparently, she

think[s] that style is a complicated terrain, and not one that we unilaterally choose or control with the purposes we consciously intend. . . . certainly, one can practice styles, but the styles that become available to you are not entirely a matter of choice. moreover, neither grammar nor style are politically neutral. learning the rules that govern intelligible speech is an inculcation into normalized language, where the price of not conforming is the loss of intelligibility itself. . . . it would be a mistake to think that received grammar is the best vehicle for expressing radical views, given the constraints upon thought, indeed, upon the thinkable itself. but formulations that twist grammar of that implicitly call into question the subject-verb requirements of propositional sense are clearly irritating for some. they produce more work for their readers, and sometimes their readers are offended by such demands.

so let me get this straight . . . impenetrability is subversive. and those who do not throw grammatical constancy and structure out the window are rejecting "radical" (and thus, substantive) solutions to the problems of inequity.

does feel just a tad elitist to you? does it? because it should. a definition of radicalism that relies so heavily on jargon-laden philosophical analysis that apes kant's looping analytic style is both absurd and self-aggrandizing.

butler goes on to query whether

those who are offended [are] making a legitimate request for "plain speaking" or does their complaint emerge from a consumer expectation of intellectual life? is there, perhaps, a value to be derived from such experiences of linguistic difficulty?

thanks for the condescending lecture, judy. apparently, my need for transparent writing is merely a product of my superficiality, a result of my immersion and susceptibility to capitalist culture, which has insidiously climbed into the ivory tower, a la poison ivy. break free of capitalist grammatical nuance! embrace complete incomprehensibility!

after rolling my eyes continuously while wading through this complete crap, i began to think about what good academic writing might look like. academics all too rarely think seriously about the mechanics of their profession. after all, intellectual work is (unfortunately?) frequently aimed at other intellectuals, and when intellectuals are not speaking directly to one another, they are formulating a way of "dumbing down" not simply their language, but their ideas as well. this method of writing produces butler's assumption about simplistic language as a sign of and a vehicle for simplistic arguments.

is this relationship inevitable? are grammatical difficulty and intellectual breadth directly correlated with one another?

i certainly hope not. because there is a larger question here, one that relates to the elitism that i feel is implicit in much of butler's writing and approach to words and ideas. how accessible should academic work be? certainly, there are a number of options here, but again, the question is generally framed in terms of a choice: research or teaching.

this is not simply a kick-off question to an academic career - it is a question within the research option. will you, as a highly trained (over-educated) scholar, write for a scholarly audience or a popular audience? what is the difference? how does the aim translate into the right grammatical and syntactic approach?

i never want to write a book that only academics can understand. what would be the point? on the other hand, i don't want to condescend to a "popular" audience that i perceive as an army of dolts. the reading public is not a bunch of dolts.

so who is the reading public? i throw out the term as if its meaning was self-explanatory, but the question is not one i can answer at this point. to conceive of the people who read (intelligently) as a homogeneous group is a faulty premise.

so i start with a compromise. right now, everything i write is something i might be able to assign in an undergraduate seminar class. this means days of revisions, generally. it is far more difficult to retain nuance without resorting to jargon and obtuse sentence structure. being vague requires two drafts. being clear and concise while retaining the complexity of a scholarly argument requires days of revisions, hours of agonizing over word choice and argument structure.

do i write this way because it is naturally the way i write? i'm unsure. perhaps my mind is just as good as a middle-rate undergraduate student. and perhaps judith butler writes the way she does because she has the mind of a philosophical giant - and she will only speak to those like her. at any rate, i promise to never - ever - assign judith butler in any undergrad courses i teach. ever.

impenetrability is not subversive. impenetrability is a waste of everyone's time, brilliant ideas or not.

hope

2009-09-03T00:11:00.000-04:00

hope is the thing with feathers
that perches in the soul,
and sings the tune--without the words,
and never stops at all,

and sweetest in the gale is heard;
and sore must be the storm
that could abash the little bird
that kept so many warm.

i've heard it in the chillest land,
and on the strangest sea;
yet, never, in extremity,
it asked a crumb of me.

the power of camp novels: reading ayn rand

2009-08-21T11:29:00.010-04:00

a certain amount of flexibility is required in order to become a good historian. this flexibility is particularly important because you will inevitably end up studying the one thing that you promised yourself you would not touch with a 10 foot pole. indeed, you should refrain from making these sorts of promises to yourself. the path to a ph.d. is replete with far more dramatic opportunities to let yourself down.

ayn rand never quite fell into the category of refuse-to-read or refuse-to-study, but i certainly always assumed that i'd have little to no use for her books, given the absolute uselessness of the people i knew who really enjoyed rand.

i am now reading ayn rand. a lot of ayn rand. starting with anthem and working my way forward, i am currently nearing the end of the fountainhead. and i'm finding that i do have little use for rand's books, though not for the reasons i thought i would.

they are pure, unadulterated camp. sure, heavy-handed libertarian moralism infuses the actions, personalities, and personages of every character, but the overall tenor of the fountainhead is that of a politically-charged teen novel - full of melodrama and (forcibly) stolen kisses and clingy dresses and evil geniuses and love triangles.

a definition of camp would include something about an affectation or appreciation of manners and tastes commonly thought to be artificial, vulgar, or banal. this is a fairly broad definition. more specifically, the use of the word "camp" often indicates an appropriation of "high culture" (or what was previously regarded as "high culture") in pursuit of "low culture" ends. there is good camp and bad camp but, as susan sontag notes, the line is fine, and there is nothing worse than camp done poorly: "when something is just bad (rather than camp), it's often because it is too mediocre in its ambition. the artist hasn't attempted to do anything really outlandish."

camp often involves referencing - a signal that the author knows the history of his or her medium and is deliberately choosing to denigrate it, looking to induce either laughs or discomfort (and often both). sontag observes that "camp is a vision of the world in terms of style -- but a particular kind of style. it is the love of the exaggerated, the 'off,' of things-being-what-they-are-not." camp is a stylized form of exaggeration.

in this sense, rand is campy without recognizing the fact. she would hardly lower herself to acknowledging that she has learned anything useful from anyone, though her novels obviously model themselves somewhat on her beloved victor hugo, both in dark tenor and saga-like chapter layout. rand novels are supposed to be gothic novels for the modern (and i mean modern in the early twentieth century asceticist sense) reader.

unfortunately for rand and, perhaps, fortunate for her reader, the careful avoidance of reference or response actually serves to heighten the campiness of the fountainhead and its siblings. and this, i suspect, is what makes them so popular. without reference, one has a much harder time creating depth, and literary depth is the enemy of the uninformed and poorly read pupil. readers work their way up to joyce's ulysses. rand's books, by contrast, sit at the very bottom of the nuance pile. they are accessible in a way that few 700 page books are, and the sheer length of the novels, alongside rand's insistence that they are philosophical treatises, lends an academic aura to writing that would otherwise be considered extremely subpar.

i remember when i first discovered that books had subtexts. i was eight years old, lying in a motel bed en route to my grandmother's house in albany, ny. i was reading a wrinkle in time and, about 1/3 through, realized that the book was a critique of centralized authority, alongside a liberal religiosity. i remember this moment as sudden, ecstatic illumination, the sense that people kept telling me i was supposed to feel in church but never experienced. if you are aware that you are learning something, you can be actively exhilarated by the process and the fact.

i suspect that ayn rand functions in much the same way for the average reader. there is nothing challenging about her books and they feel vaguely taboo, independent, and - for those who misunderstand the term - intellectual. rand's subtexts and philosophical bent floats just under the surface, and the surface is made of saran wrap. you can see her points coming before they reach you, and her heavy-handed application of lessons is never mitigated by allusions to other writers or references to other philosophies. the historian in me is appalled at the lack of literary and ideological contextualization.

but for many readers - and the ayn rand institute's subsidization of purchase of her novels for classroom use inflates their numbers - reading the fountainhead must be akin to my experience reading a wrinkle in time.

reading ayn rand does not necessarily a libertarian make. one must be predisposed through upbringing or rebellion against that upbringing to embrace her flat set of teachings. but the book's ability to spark a recognition of one's own intellectual capabilities is a powerful tool in the libertarian arsenal, because this approach produces incestuous, cult-like followings. reading madeleine l'engle was part of a continual process that i became aware of in a short moment in a bed that wasn't mine along i90. and i go back to it, reading it every year and finding something new to love each year. i have turned into a socialist feminist who does not believe in or trust institutionalized religion, but i reread this anti-authoritarian, nuclear family-oriented, and occasionally heavy-handed liberal catholic on a yearly basis, with wide-eyed, uncritical wonder.

every person cherishes the book that facilitated the recognition of their personal, individual intellect. i suspect that rand's popularity stems from her ability to spark that recognition. books don't have to be complicated or even well-written in order to play this role. sometimes - too often - nuance is the enemy of influence. and perhaps we should look more seriously at rand's demand that every philosopher be forced to encapsulate his or her philosophy in a work of fiction. the caveat, of course, being that the lessons lying under the storyline ought to be clearly visible through all those words.in other words, your book might garner a devoted readership with the inclusion of a little campiness.

as for me, in my post-eight-year-old life i prefer to stick with the resolutely difficult. a wrinkle in time is a benchmark rather than an endpoint. onwards into the abyss!

david lynch embraces america (?)

2009-08-20T00:00:00.012-04:00

david lynch has begun an interview project. his carefully detached delivery maintained throughout, lynch somehow manages to convey a certain sense of caring in this clip - something he generally has a difficult time doing, probably hinged at least in part on the fact that he has spent a career fucking with our collective need to identify linearity in . . . well, everything, including movie plot lines.

and a large part of that queasy removal is strung through these interviews as well. lynch is committed to ambiguity though, so even his most sincere introductory clip has elevator music lilting through the background, and the interview project website hawks a david lynch coffee collection alongside his films.

but this project feels like lynch moving backwards to a movie-making style and approach to humanity more in line with the elephant man, after all these years of twin peaks variations, spin-offs, and shorthands. something like compassion for his subjects lurks underneath lynch's little speeches, and the various clips of interviewees manage to walk the fine, ever-wavering line between voyeurism and genuine curiosity.

not that the very idea of documenting the "real" america by asking questions like "what would you like to do before you die?" and highlighting the little old man who avows that "when i was young, we didn't have toys." pieces of lives that feel like pieces rather than windows into something larger. a distorted real life puzzle resulting not in a whole, but in the amplification of the pieced quality of life and the fact that none of it fits together properly anyway.

but the interview project is not about these backcountry people anyway. this is lynch once again making it known that he is interested in these sorts of stories and people, and the interviews result in a self-deprecating look at who david lynch is, rather than a pastiche of american faces and stories designed to enhance and enlarge the meaning of american life. and david lynch has no interest in helping you to understand him. though he has compared his work (termed "american surrealist" by dennis hopper) to edward hopper's art, for me, francis bacon is always the artist who springs to mind.

lynch is film noir, but the menacing central committee and its shadowed agents and informants have been replaced with something more amorphous and yet personal. an ultimate goal - achieving worldwide communism - has been replaced with a question mark. as a result, you often get the sense that you are in fact to blame, you might be the evil in the world. there is an imperceptible line between waking and dreaming, there is an imperceptible line between sanity and insanity, and there is an imperceptible line between good and evil. so what are you and where are you anyway? even the most accessible of lynch's films explicitly blur these distinctions. lynch is democratic in application as well, for second-rate actresses, midwestern farmers, detectives, and insurance men are all similarly afflicted with realities rife with unreality.

in the end, the most honest filmmaking lynch has done is the daily weather report he gives from his painting studio, a routine of which he says "people are kind of interested in weather. it’s not artistic. it’s just me sitting there in my painting studio."

this observation about observing is perhaps more revealing than it is meant to be. lynch films, art, and absurdist commentary are all designed to merge art, money-making, entertainment, voyeurism, philosophy, and social commentary into one impenetrable mass. short films about death, long red and blue dreams, surrealist serials, and realist parables are all, in lynch's world, predictably impenetrable. everyone falls down the rabbit hole together. good thing lynch makes sure we're all properly caffeinated beforehand.

the insidious creep of star wars

2009-08-19T21:53:00.001-04:00

star wars has, indeed, colonized everything. including burlesque.

i imagine that the audience is a bunch of adolescent boys with large red glasses. much like this guy:

quite frankly, i don't entirely understand the obsession with star wars. but then again, i put fried eggs on everything and have an unnatural fear of orchids, so i shouldn't be one to talk.

latisse redux

2009-08-19T17:53:00.001-04:00

update!

apparently, the ny times concurs with my negative assessment and makes the very pertinent point that latisse is made by the very same people who brought women the equally beneficial botox treatment.

“There is a very large demand for eyelash enhancement. Eyelashes are a very important part of a woman’s beauty regimen.”

lists of lists of lists of lists of lists

2009-07-25T11:15:00.001-04:00

this post is about lists. i am obsessed with lists. a minor case of obsessive-compulsive disorder will get you only so far in life. lists allow you to not only act upon your disorder, but comprehensively catalog its various contours and enshrine these contours in documents, which can be saved and archived and added to over the course of days, weeks, years.

graduate school does not help me fight my addiction. graduate school is an enabler. syllabi are lists. comprehensive exams require lists. dissertations demand that one be able to cross-reference across ever-growing items within lists, creating linear lines of thought through the linking of book after article after speech after book that apparently ought to lead the reader through some sort of argument if you could only put that argument into something explicable.

now there are programs for the list-making addicts. i, up until now, have carefully maintained word documents with lists of books, while remaining devoted to my first list medium, the little red leather notebook. i have a decade of notes on modern art, books, quotes, recipes, and album information, as well as fairly vapid personal thoughts carefully stored away in that little notebook. the handwriting is very neat.

but i occasionally wonder whether my little notebook is obsolete. have i created so many other forms of list that i've effectively listed-over my written notes. redundancies abound. entries cancel one another out.

zotero may effectively replace all my other forms of list-making, condensing, formatting, and expanding data within whatever magical ether aura comprises the internet, which mysteriously extends outwards from my computer(s) into the great beyond.

my knowledge of the internet and technology is so fundamentally underdeveloped that these lists are simply less tangible and real to me, somehow. i still print articles and papers out and write on them. i am a committed book-buyer. i like paper and shelves and boxes. i write too many notes on everything, including napkins and my palms.

in some ways, zotero is too easy to use. because i like lists so much, i find myself essentially shopping for books to read via worldcat, carefully creating new folders and filing away authors and titles. i am collecting. whether the collecting has an end purpose is far less clear and far more important, yet the process is addictive, as are most networking tools on the web. seemingly inexhaustible amounts of information are fed to your computer one manageable piece at a time, obscuring (at least temporarily) the vast network of which the one book title on your screen is a small part.

and people just keep publishing things. this inescapable fact is one of the most infuriating things about academia. there is nothing you can do. people's careers depend upon an apparently limitless production of books that seem absolutely necessary to "the field." your career depends upon the apparently limitless production of books that seem absolutely necessary. suck it up. read the books. write your book. force people to add it to their lists. do a little dance. repeat the process.

not to make the academic process seem overly repetitive. i am a great believer in the infinite nature of interest. i am interested in almost everything, and it's difficult to bore me, so long as you seem like you're mildly interested yourself. a liberal arts education ought to buy you this committed lack of focus. as far as i'm concerned, i can force almost anything to at least relate to something i'm directly interested in, and if it seems like i can't, than the failure can only be chalked up to a lack of imagination on my part.

but this relates to my possible problem with online cataloging systems like zotero - they force you to create linear lists. now, i suppose that i could do the cross-referencing work myself, and i certainly am not naive enough to believe that tech designers far more intelligent than myself will never come up with a handy, easy-to-use, possibly voice-activated system which cross-references my reading lists, folds my laundry, and tucks me in at night. but that, too, involves a loss of control and the need for creative accounting and documentation on my part.

to be entirely truthful, the little red notebook was ordered and out of order at the same time. entries are arranged in the order they were received. they are not alphabetical, they are not organized by topic. topics proceed in a stream-of-consciousness fashion entirely determined by whimsy, which i may possess in over-abundance. like my purposefully never-made bed (an island of unkemptness in an otherwise angular room arrangement), i kept the notebook because it didn't conform to my unbendingly neat predisposition. that notebook is my form of anarchy. it hardly seems fair that a program like zotero is capable of stripping away one of my few sources of disarray, especially given its ease of use. i added about 300 books to my personal list in just one week. articles have pdf files attached. citation data can be exported into endnotes. placing a book in your queue is almost like having read it.

in my head, the topic-specific folders are color-coded, like this totally bizarre real-life example:

the library appears to be more a fashion statement than an organizational approach. then again, simply sitting in that room is probably like going to see the wizard of oz, sans flying monkey encounters.

perhaps my paranoia about losing a lack of organization is premature, though. i have a sneaking suspicion that i'm absorbing ideologies propagated by the libertarian women i'm currently researching, a tendency to identify with anyone i'm reading canceling out reason.

and to be fair, i have read a great number of the books i filed away. many are titles of books i have sitting on my shelves, the books that are spilling onto the floor because there is no more room on my shelves and they have begun to stack themselves upon one another in a book-made bookshelf for more books. i often compare them to a disease.

i have a feeling that this is my new form of intentional disarray. unfortunately, book collecting is a far more expensive method of staving off ocd than is . . . writing in a notebook. but hey, i take what i can get.

i do wonder though - does anyone else ever feel like organization is closing in around you?

at least my sense of humor accords with some list-making, organizing tendencies. the initial photo is the first to appear in a google image search for "lists."

the person you are on the phone

2009-07-05T10:06:00.001-04:00

i really hate phones. well, not phones, specifically. conversations employing phones. there's something creepy and disconnected and fuzzily fake about phone conversations, and consequently, i feel like i'm being creepy and disconnected and fuzzily fake when talking on the phone. and i probably am, just like how i am at parties with people whom i kind of know but not well enough to feel comfortable, impelling me inexorably towards awkward half-comments that land on the ground and just sit there, staring back up at me, unwilling to be entertaining or insightful or even what i meant in the first place.

although sometimes i think that phones are actually an instance in which people become more like themselves than they are normally? do you feel more acutely like you when you talk on the phone? do all of your insecurities and confidences become larger and more inescapable the nearer a phone gets to your face?

perhaps phone conversations are a chance to watch yourself, third-person-like, demonstrate what a caricature of yourself might look and act like. apparently, i am a terrified bunny. this is not a reassuring realization. i will store said realization in the back of my head and hope to god that it gets pushed off the edge of my memory precipice, which i conceive of much like the cliff in far side cartoon of lemmings leaping to their death. let us pray that this particular memory is not the "prepared" lemming with the inner tube.

at least my thoughts are adorable, if not brilliant, right?

this fear of phone calls would not be so problematic if i did not have to call people i don't know very well, as part of my (chosen) career. right now, i'm conducting a series of interviews for a panel paper i'm writing on women in congress. in order to collect information on the inner workings of congress, i have to phone women who worked as secretaries and staffers and interview them while furiously transcribing as much as i possibly can on my laptop writing writing writing and hoping to god that i don't miss anything really excellent amidst nervous overworked shakiness.

i begin to wish that i had learned to type properly approximately 30 seconds into each interview. the wishing takes more time and brain energy than one might expect, immediately setting my transcriptions back and launching me into a panic that generally does not subside until the interview is well past 30 minutes.

i am not trained to do oral histories. i verbally flail around for information at least once each interview, and i generally feel as if i have somehow insulted the person at least twice by the time i'm wrapping up. wrapping up almost always involves an apology.

after each interview, i write a follow-up email that is calm and composed and thankful. it does not resemble the person on the phone at all. the interviewee in all liklihood wishes that the person writing the email had been the person conducting the interview, but all of that is done and over and there is nothing anyone can do about the preceding awkwardness except shove it gently towards the memory precipice. until i go present the information at a conference.

are these two people - writing and talking rachel - actually entirely different individuals? would the world implode if they ever met?

i am coming to realize that my writing and wildly enthusiastic embrace of any and every piece of information i can get my hands on are simultaneously my two greatest strengths and also the qualities that render me potentially volatile amidst the day-to-day interactions that fill my pre-abd graduate years. especially classes. at least once every semester, i nearly break down into a tearful, angry mess in class. it is because i care. it is because i care, and am incapable of controlling myself. conferences are going to be a blast.

so i guess that these two qualities i have are not entirely irreconcilable. they're just generally at odds with one another within the context of daily interactions. i have arranged and cultivated my innate qualities so that i am more at home in and amenable to academic life than daily life with friendly couples get-togethers and coffee shop run-ins and idle chitchat. i only get along easily with those i know very, very well and those i don't know at all and can deal with directly, rather than through some handheld device that will possibly suck my soul out through my ear.

at least interviews are onetime shots in the dark. they are not extensive enough to allow me to launch into anything intensely personal and my role is one of formal listener, rather than talker. i do not talk if i can help it. i have been told that i am a very good listener.

if only i could figure out how to translate that skill to my everyday interactions. exempt from speaking! of course, given an imposed silence, i would immediately want to talk all the time. because being a contrarian is an academically useful quality as well.

i quit.

down with the dictionary

2009-06-06T17:15:00.006-04:00

i am continually amazed that books are still banned. whatever for? the financial rewards and occasionally unwarranted critical acclaim writers reap for getting their books banned ought to outweigh the temporary bad press emanating from insane right-wingers.

it's always the case that some of the books that make it onto these lists come as complete surprises. indeed, any list containing books by howard stern and shel silverstein ought shock and annoy, like the american library association's list of banned books from 1990-2000.

i think the especially insane thing about this particular list is its direct relationship to politics - sarah palin requested that each of these books be removed from the library. yet i wonder what the relationship between religion and morality ought to be. clearly, they are inextricably bound up in one another and always have been, even if institutional religious involvement is a more recent phenomonon.

are we comfortable with combining morality and politics, while religion and politics ought to remain mutually exclusive. given this particular differentiation, it is important to discern exactly what separates morality from religion. is one dogmatic, while the other is more flexible and relationally-defined (subjective)? or does religiosity simply indicate an institutional commitment?

most basically, morality is one of many attributes individuals are supposed to attain through involvement in a religiously-defined community. perhaps stand-alone, self-generated morality might be better equipped to integrate thoughtfulness and openmindedness.

the fear that generates censorship always shocks me - if we are capable of living in a society that allows the ku klux klan to exist and hold yearly rallies, why does a wrinkle in time frighten us so much? can anyone raise children in an environment that shields them from alternative opinions with the internet around? might the internet's existence negate previous arguments for parental and local control over their children's education?

sarah palin's banned book list:

i bolded those i have (surreptitiously?) read. under the blankets with a flashlight. some are quite bad. most are very good.

A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle
Annie on My Mind by Nancy Garden
As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
Blubber by Judy Blume
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson
Canterbury Tales by Chaucer
Carrie by Stephen King
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
Christine by Stephen King
Confessions by Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Cujo by Stephen King
Curses, Hexes, and Spells by Daniel Cohen
Daddy's Roommate by Michael Willhoite
Day No Pigs Would Die by Robert Peck
Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller
Decameron by Boccaccio
East of Eden by John Steinbeck
Fallen Angels by Walter Myers
Fanny Hill (Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure) by John Cleland
Flowers For Algernon by Daniel Keyes
Forever by Judy Blume
Grendel by John Champlin Gardner
Halloween ABC by Eve Merriam
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Prizoner of Azkaban by J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J.K. Rowling
Have to Go by Robert Munsch
Heather Has Two Mommies by Leslea Newman
How to Eat Fried Worms by Thomas Rockwell
Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
Impressions edited by Jack Booth
In the Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak
It's Okay if You Don't Love Me by Norma Klein
James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl
Lady Chatterley's Lover by D.H. Lawrence
Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
Little Red Riding Hood by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm
Lord of the Flies by William Golding
Love is One of the Choices by Norma Klein
Lysistrata by Aristophanes
More Scary Stories in the Dark by Alvin Schwartz
My Brother Sam Is Dead by James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier
My House by Nikki Giovanni
My Friend Flicka by Mary O'Hara
Night Chills by Dean Koontz
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
On My Honor by Marion Dane Bauer
One Day in The Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn
One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Ordinary People by Judith Guest
Our Bodies, Ourselves by Boston Women's Health Collective
Prince of Tides by Pat Conroy
Revolting Rhymes by Roald Dahl
Scary Stories 3: More Tales to Chill Your Bones by Alvin Schwartz
Scary Stories in the Dark by Alvin Schwartz
Separate Peace by John Knowles
Silas Marner by George Eliot Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
The Bastard by John Jakes
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier
The Color Purple by Alice Walker
The Devil's Alternative by Frederick Forsyth
The Figure in the Shadows by John Bellairs
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
The Great Gilly Hopkins by Katherine Paterson
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
The Headless Cupid by Zilpha Snyder
The Learning Tree by Gordon Parks
The Living Bible by William C. Bower
The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare
The New Teenage Body Book by Kathy McCoy and Charles Wibbelsman
The Pigman by Paul Zindel
The Seduction of Peter S. by Lawrence Sanders
The Shining by Stephen King
The Witches by Roald Dahl
The Witches of Worm by Zilpha Snyder
Then Again, Maybe I Won't by Judy Blume
To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare
Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary by the Merriam-Webster
Editorial Staff
Witches, Pumpkins, and Grinning Ghosts: The Story of the Halloween
Symbols by Edna Barth

the dictionary? for serious?

lash out!

2009-06-01T21:40:00.015-04:00

oh my fucking christ there is a drug to help you grow your eyelashes. who the fuck comes up with this stuff? who? shouldn't they, after all those years of hard work in school, devote themselves to curing cancer or figuring out how to raise the dead or something? eyelash growth? for real? maybe these were the kids who stole lab materials to get high and stuck their pens in the lab table outlets.

at any rate, this is just further proof that drug companies are now making up ailments in a terrifyingly successful attempt to sell the horribly undereducated american public shit they don't need during a time of economic crisis, because they are really, really vain. and female. restless leg syndrome? that doesn't even sound real. and for those who are afflicted with "inadequate or not enough eyelashes," you may come out of the closet - for your secret, secret defect can now be named. it's either a twelve step program for dealing with your inadequacy (oh god, how many times have i lain awake at night, desperate for a solution to my imperfect eyelashes, sobbing into my pillow) or it's drugs. pick your poison. seriously. look at this essay on potential ailments stemming from latisse, possibly the most vain and unnecessary drug marketed to the middle class:

The most common side effects after using LATISSE™ solution are an itching sensation in the eyes and/or eye redness, which were reported in approximately 4% of patients. These may occur immediately after use, but should usually last only for a short period of time. Eye itching and eye redness are not allergic reactions, and do not mean that your eyes are being harmed.

LATISSE™ solution may cause other less common side effects, which typically occur on the skin close to where LATISSE™ is applied, or in the eyes. These include eye irritation, dryness of the eyes, and redness of the eyelids. Skin darkening (or hyperpigmentation) is another less common side effect. This condition causes areas of skin to become darker than the surrounding skin color, but has been reported to be reversible after discontinuation of the product.

wha?! are men still making this shit up, or is it women now? is it a heterosocial workspace of devious, greedy chemi gerbils and devious, greedy advertising . . . ferrets? it can change the color of your eyes, for christ's sake!

but just to make a drug that solves a problem that's not a problem seem like a normal - nay, historic - pursuit, latisse's website has given you a fucking timeline. starting in 4000 bc, when the egyptians used a mixture of soot and metal to make their eyes look bigger and thus sexier. or it was used to deflect the sun and prevent glare. whatever.

moving forward, they slide over that several thousand years when wearing makeup was an indication that your were a prostitute and instead emphasize really, really racist filmmaker d.w. griffith's pioneering use of fake eyelashes in the film intolerance.

then we wrap up with . . . latisse! godsend! "and it's about time to make history."

speaking very seriously for a moment, what the fuck? i don't understand! this is the new thing i'm supposed to feel inadequate about? have we run out of functional and significant body parts that quickly? i feel like these sorts of drugs aren't actually meant to be sold and are, instead, marketed in order to discredit my sex's ability to reason. seriously - a dude points out the sex-specific nature of this drug during a news story:

never fear those warnings, though. a recommendation, from latisse's own website, to allay your fears. a testimonial! i'll spare you the mildly hilarious and jump straight to the completely, awesomely insane:

"While pregnant with my second child at 23, I went through a lot of stress, and as a result, I began to lose my eyelashes … to the point where I literally had none! My eyes looked weird. It was embarrassing. I never realized the value of my eyelashes until they were gone.

To make up for the loss, I started wearing false eyelashes all the time, which wasn't always convenient. But I kept wearing them … for decades! I'd pretty much given up hope of ever having eyelashes again.

Then, at age 61, I was asked to participate in a clinical study for eyelash growth by my doctor. He didn't make any promises, but I was hopeful. The results were amazing! Finally, my lashes grew back thick and long! I was so excited. Now I have beautiful long eyelashes."- Jeannie

thanks, jeannie! and if you're not yet convinced, ask stylist anastasia soare - also known as "the definitive brow expert." she went to college for that. clown college.

i cannot emphasize this enough: what the fuck?! admittedly, i have an extreme hatred of commercials aimed at this mythical group "women," which appears to love babies, weddings, low fat foods (and chocolate), and home cleaning equipment. pointing out this absurd stereotyping, i give you sarah haskins:

do i belong to this group "women"? if i do, will i ever be able to bring myself to admit my dirty secret to others? will i ever willingly associate myself with kelly ripa? oh god - i think i threw up a little in my mouth just then.

but if i can ever come clean, latisse helpfully allows me to send an e-card to all my best girlfriends! and tranny buddies? spread the love!

kermit gets homicidal

2009-05-31T20:55:00.003-04:00

writers should not underestimate children. i think it's an enormous pity when people treat kids as if they were all sweet but just a little mentally handicapped. as if they were puppies rather than reasoning individuals, albeit small and still developing ones. now, i certainly don' t think that a 5-year-old has my sense of mental acuity, because i am really, really smart. hah! but that kid is probably sharper and more inventive and interested than my 40-year-old high school english teacher who had us watch the tv version of gulliver's travels starring ted danson instead of having us actually read swift and then (egads!) discuss the book. because he hated anyone disagreeing with him and discussion tended to lead to disagreements, he generally opted for lectures composed of historical facts gleaned from textbooks, arranged chronologically, and then deployed via bullet point sentences clearly designed to smother your desire to learn. this method largely succeeded, unless you took enormous pleasure in disrupting class and making a general nuisance of yourself. which i did.

perhaps i'm just bitter about never getting to talk about the complete and total awesomeness of jonathan swift in a classroom setting. but my point is that kids are active and engaged learners who respond not to condecension, but to challenges and activity and, quite frankly, anything interesting whatsoever. treating kids nicely reveals more about the adult than the child.

which is why i am such a huge fan of morbid humor for children. for some reason, people tend to interpret this assertion as either cruel or irresponsible (or both). in fact, the frequent antipathy this opinion generates has led me to develop a boring person litmus test. if you think that kids should be exposed to flowers and rainbows and kittens until they are 21, you are boring and i want nothing to do with you. if you think edward gorey's the gashlycrumb tinies is both art book and illustrated children's story, i may deign to speak with you again. poor you.

morbidity is intellectually challenging - that is what makes it so good for developing minds. it forces you to think and interpret images, events, and relationships counterintuitively. death is funny. death is funny.

the thing is, people who find morbidity to be unsuitable for children generally think morbidity is simply in poor taste for everyone. which means they don't get it. they don't think death is funny. in the right circumstances. here lies an atheist. all dressed up and no place to go.

even if they didn't deploy gorey's kind of overtly violent and ennui-ridden imagery, the best children's entertainers created work tinged with the depressed and morbid. did sesame street ever seem a little strange to you - entertaining, but kind of unsettling, as if there was something you weren't quite getting?

henson had a wonderful, quite, deadpan sense of humor that i still find enormously endearing, especially when it tips into the vaguely offensive. one should not be too serious and one's not-seriousness should not be too upbeat. you end up launching yourself into ashton kutcher humor, and i start gleefully contemplating your demise, turned into a homicidal kermit myself. which is why i love the complete lack of emotion in the narration of henson's films on these coffee commercials. and their "documentaries."

the wonderful thing about henson's creations and, indeed, edward gorey (at first, they seem to have little in common) is their attempt to create stories and characters that will appeal to children and adults in equal measure. morbidity seems to be a good way of bridging this gap, largely because it reduces an occurance that is often complex and loaded with meaning to something very simple. because death is very simple. you are alive and then you are dead. almost anything could precipitate death, thus the hilarity of gorey.

you are unlikely to be assaulted by bears anytime soon, but that's the point. basil's fate is the same as ernest:

and choking on a peach is equated with wallowing in self-absorption and self-pity:

ennui - like being mauled by a bear! it's funny and unnervingly true, especially when one considers the fact that in the case of melancholy, you are the bear mauling you. gently and quietly. these morbid, occasionally cringe-inducing equivalencies often remind me of biblical lessons, whacking you so squarely in the face with a lesson that you might not see it, focused as you are on the stars circling about your head. details. in conclusion, the bible is horribly, excitedly morbid - and often feels geared very much towards children.

so i encourage you to expose your child to the ghastly baby as soon as it emerges from the womb.

news that makes you look normal

2009-05-29T11:14:00.015-04:00

strange news stories force you to realize that, no matter how strange you think you are, there are much stranger people out there, and their strangeness is impairing their ability to live life on a day-to-day basis. i collect these stories in a little notebook. they are all earnestly written. the misfortune of others shall quiet my own discord.

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"Taste for Gummies Gets Man in Sticky Situation"

ROGERSVILLE, Tenn. -- Police in Rogersville says a man's taste for gummy fruit chews landed him in a sticky situation.

The Kingsport Times-News reports Rogersville police chased 19-year-old Wesley James Hough as he fled on his motor scooter after taking a Life Savers Gummies pack valued at a little more than $1 from a Dollar General store on Monday.

Hawkins County Sheriff Roger Christian said Wednesday police found meth lab ingredients and components stashed in Hough's yellow motor scooter.

Hough was charged with promotion of manufacturing meth and theft under $500.

He remained in the Hawkins County Jail Wednesday evening on $10,000 bond, with an arraignment set for June 8.

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"Authorities Believe Bug Caused Crash"

Plymouth, IN -- A bug that flew into a moving vehicle, frightening the driver's child, is believed to habe caused the driver to strike a utility pole and telephone junction box Sunday morning.

Marshall County Sheriff's Department investigators said teh driver, Jeffery Parenti, 39, of Plainfold, Ill., told them he was driving his 2002 Ford Excursion eastbound in the 8000 block of 3A Road when the bug flew in one of the open windows an 11:20 a.m. Sunday.

Police said Parenti told them his child became frightened and, when Parenti attempted to capture teh bug, his vehicle went off the road, striking the utility pole and telephone junction box. No injuries were reported.

Parenti, police said, told them he stopped and assessed the damage, saying he's glanced the utility pole with his bumper but did not notice the damage to the junction box. He then left the area.

Bremen Police Department officials located and stopped Parenti to make a report. No charges were filed, according to county police.

There also was no word on whether the bug made it out of the vehicle without injury.

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"Notes on the Olympics"

South Bend, IN -- I have been largely bored by the Olympics, but the one sport that has grabbed me is table tennis. Derided by the ignorant as "ping pong," its grace, speed, and athleticism are a revelation.

I was a teenage prodigy at table tennis, but the other kids at school thought I was just a weirdo. It's not cool - but it's a subtle and wonderful game.

If you're still not quite interested enough to pick up a bat, then read Howard Jacobson's wonderful book, The Mighty Walzer - undoubtedly the only great Jewish table tennis novel ever written. It's almost as much fun as playing.

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note: the initial picture is of an austrian art installation by dutch artist joep van lieshout. it is an oversized skull containing a sauna, with bathtubs and showers located on each side of the neck. the sauna fits 8 people and, when in use, emits steam through the skull's eyesockets.

irony and self-abjurement

2009-05-28T23:33:00.001-04:00

the oxford english dictionary defines irony as "a figure of speech in which the intended meaning is the opposite of that expressed by the words used." irony's more specific dramatic meaning includes the "ill-timed or perverse arrival of an event that is in itself desirable . . . a [l]iterary technique in which the audience perceives meanings unknown to the characters."

yet the greek etymological roots of irony point to a worse kind of disingenuity. εἰρωνεία eirōneía which, when translated, roughly equates irony with hypocrisy and pretended ignorance while hinting at an underlying meanspiritedness.

now, i am ironic. not my existence (though that's debatable, i suppose), but irony makes a regular appearance in my general conversation. this often leads to problems. one time, i accidentally convinced a friend of mine that i did, in fact, believe everything pat robertson says. but i never thought about the fact that i simply lived with and among a very irony-receptive audience until i met a girl who did not understand what irony was because she had grown up in spain, where irony apparently does not exist.

as far as i was concerned, this was a vast oversight on the part of the spanish. how could i possibly flee to spain after defaulting on all my college loans now? it's one thing to learn a language and another to learn how to be honest and straightforward all the time and i was, quite frankly, ill-equipped to deal with consistent honesty. fearful, i proceeded to teach quenna how to speak and respond to irony - at her request.

the process began with baby steps - my first directive was to pause whenever anyone said something that sounded . . . untruthful. ridiculous. potentially insulting. if a qualification or a half-hearted, self-satisfied comment did not emerge within 30 seconds or so, the person was either being truthful and was simply weird or they were, in fact, being an unmitigated jerk. potentially, both.

quenna then moved to practicing saying untruths with a straight face. she would wander into my room to tell me that pants were originally meant to be worn on the head as a kind of wrap but migrated south to fend off frostbite. or that the christian right was beginning to make sense to her.

eventually, she graduated to saying the opposite of what she meant, completely deadpan, straight-faced, serious. and then she moved back to spain, where no one would understand this kind of behavior.

so if not the spaniards, who uses irony? i think upper and upper middle-class, college-educated, liberal people are ironic. in that they are ironic and they employ irony to make points, mostly to themselves. fundamentally, i think irony might be a form of verbal and emotional bullying. you're an idiot if you don't get it.

am i a bully? i don't think i come across that way. but i might think you're an idiot if you don't get it.

the brits argue that americans don't understand irony. in that we are far less likely to think that deadpan humor and uncomfortable situations are less funny and more . . . straight-up uncomfortable. this is a fair assessment, i think, if properly qualified. british advertisements employ irony, after all. we've only just begun to steal that particular approach, and our versions of funny-by-not-being-funny ads tend towards existential ennui.

i find that intended american irony falls flat:

whereas unintended irony is mindblowingly hilarious:

though the producers clearly understood the ironic facets of this commercial, the lack of understanding prompted an equally hilarious response:

are americans just naturally funny, in an ironic way? is it because a large number of americans don't really understand what in the world irony is? is laughing at this kind of behavior a way of taking ourselves less seriously, or a method of differentiating ourselves from those who are acting in ways that we perceive as uneducated or heavy-handed or . . . wrong?

the discrepancies between intended and unintended irony would indicate that taking academic courses on irony as a literary device might not be the best way to develop the ironic sensibilities of americans. but just in case, you can now buy papers on irony online:

As the world is becoming more specific, the writing techniques are also becoming more specific. The writers have more variety of literary tools such as allusion, metaphor, symbolism, and irony. Irony is the most common and most efficient technique of the satirist. Since this technique is so popular and being used in many different ways, people do not really understand the true meaning of the word. A clear understanding of the word irony as it applies to literature can be attained by an analysis of its formal, historical, and informal definitions.

alanis morrisette should have read this before asking the world whether rain on your wedding day was ironic.

setting aside the god-awful nature of the language here (this is an a+?), there is a sentence arguing for irony as a "tool," a method of making one's point. and certainly, irony is a literary tool - thus the number of writers who defend it as a necessary and oftentimes immensely illuminating method of conveying information and meaning. david foster wallace is (was) a proponent of irony as a method of stripping away sentimentalism and, in a lot of ways, deconstructing complexity. as he writes, "the great thing about irony is that it splits things apart, gets up above them so we can see the flaws and hypocrisies and duplicates."

this is an interesting observation, although i do not necessarily agree with his interpretation. after all, is irony not also a method of obscuring one's meaning? is it not a veil used to deflect criticism and interrogation, a method of self-abjurement? a way of not taking responsibility for one's opinions and conclusions? and can we trust a man who proclaimed irony to be king and then proceeded to kill himself?

apparently, there are then two versions of irony - using irony and viewing or interpreting events through the lens of irony. i suspect that i tend towards the latter, which is why i find most everything to be at least a little humorous. irony is my way of not taking myself or the world too seriously. as jessamyn west asserts, "a taste for irony has kept more hearts from breaking than a sense of humor, for it takes irony to appreciate the joke which is on oneself." though her differentiation between humor and irony seems a bit like pedantic hair-splitting to me.

instead, perhaps jean stafford is correct in correct in noting that "irony is, i feel, a very high form of morality." although maybe she was being ironic.

the lord knows

2009-05-23T18:53:00.001-04:00

i wonder if the old person who wrote this note apologizes for the sins of others when he or she goes to confession.

in love with elvis perkins

2009-05-20T01:12:00.006-04:00

if you ever get a chance to go see elvis perkins in dearland live, you must do it. it will be an unadulteratedly joyful experience. he writes songs that make your heart feel like it's going to explode.

from ash wednesday:

from elvis perkins in dearland:

part of me didn't want to post this, wanted to keep the music a secret somehow, something that was mine in my pocket. oh, well. silly, since he's been on letterman.

faster, pussycat!

2009-05-18T02:35:00.005-04:00

i love kitsch movies - those b horror films that develop cult followings of both the socially withdrawn and the overly intellectualized collectors of arcane trivia. i am firmly in the latter category, while also occasionally allowing my feet to dip into the former group during fits of self-absorbed melancholy.

as moving (to new york, to london, to virginia) is especially likely to trigger acute feelings of ennui or overconfidence, one of the first things i do post-move is find the weirdest film showing in local theaters and straightaway go see it.

in london, the film happened to be faster, pussycat! kill! kill! this was extremely exciting, since i'd been meaning to see russ meyer's 1965 cult classic for the better part of a decade, having spent hour upon hour watching other b-film horror flicks during a couple high school summers. stuff like attack of the 50 foot woman and plan 9 from outer space and (my favorite title) amazon women on the moon at a tiny family-run theater briefly reopened in the hopes of finally attracting an audience in staid northern indiana. valiantly rallying whenever the weather warmed and weird high school kids began milling around, the theater closed about two months after each opening. apparently, the weird kids were going elsewhere. i generally sat alone, near the front, after having chatted with the elderly couple who practically set up camp in the third row from the back.

london had a much larger weird theater and film selection - so faster pussycat! kill! kill! it was. the south end theater was just as small, but it clearly had a devoted following and, with its red couches, cigarette stench, and basement feel, fit the film. mildly louche!

though faster pussycat! kill! kill! revelled in its disreputability. don't race the fastest PUSSYCATS - they'll beat you - to DEATH! what a tag line!

faster pussycat! kill! kill! begins with a voiceover proclaiming:

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to violence. The word and the act. While violence cloaks itself in a plethora of disguises, its favorite mantle still remains... sex. Violence devours all it touches, its voracious appetite rarely fulfilled. Yet violence doesn't only destroy, it creates and molds as well. Let's examine closely then this dangerously evil creation, this new breed encased and contained within the supple skin of woman. The softness is there, the unmistakable smell of female, the surface shiny and silken, the body yielding yet wanton. But a word of caution: handle with care and don't drop your guard. This rapacious new breed prowls both alone and in packs, operating at any level, any time, anywhere, and with anybody. Who are they? One might be your secretary, your doctor's receptionist... or a dancer in a go-go club!

wherein we turn to said go-go bar, where the three anti-heroines pole dance. but this is not thrill enough - looking for greater excitement, they hop into their tiny sports cars and drag race across the desert. embodying a number of fabulous stereotypes, blonde bimbo billie, vaguely ethnic and agressive lesbian rosie, and leather-clad dominatrix varla are also overtly male. they are violent, domineering, sexual, competitive, and congenitally enraged.

the best part of this film is the snarky innuendo that laces every line of dialogue. check it:

Gas Station Attendant: [staring at Varla's chest as he pumps gas] Just passing through, huh? Boy, that motor's sure hot! You gals really must have been moving on these little machines. Yessir, the thrill of the open road. New places, new people, new sights of interest. Now that's what I believe in, seeing America first!
Varla: You won't find it down there, Columbus!

aaah, the ever-present parallel between women and cars! a lot of "body work" talk, a lot of "look under the hood" suggestions, a lot of "great headlights" commentary. cheeky!

yet also more than simply cheeky. this is a film that equates sex and violence. embrace one and you embrace the other. neither proactive sexuality nor violence was associated with women until the late 1960s - women were simply not as sexual as men, and because men tended to employ violence in defense of the sexual sanctity of their women (as well as their own heterosexuality), women eschewed violence as well.

given rape and domestic violence data, the link between sex and violence ought not shock us as much as it does - and though meyers' film is certainly not feminist, it raises a number of questions about the ways in which depictions and constructions of sexuality are intertwined with the right to violence.

not to over-theorize the film or anything. it's a booberific cult classic, after all. these are former playboy bunnies we're talking about.

the trailer ---->

this is a great movie. i'd rather not reveal the murky and completely nonsensical plotline, but my favorite part of faster, pussycat! kill! kill! is possibly the sexualized fried chicken dinner near the end of the film. it is truly masterful.

you must see this film.

The Old Man: Women! They let 'em vote, smoke and drive - even put 'em in pants! And what happens? A Democrat for president!

hobo chic

2009-05-17T00:20:00.002-04:00

riddle me this - why do strange "fashion" trends occur in a recession? does the recession simply allow women to get more creative when it comes to making imprudent and unnecessary purchases? is it just more of a challenge to our innate instinct to make ourselves look like someone other than ourselves? or does someone out there look more like themselves with fake eyelashed glued to her lids? is there a male equivalent of this tendency? are they simply buying more cost-effective aftershave? did they restrain themselves from purchasing that chicago bulls logo-emblazoned laz-e-boy with built-in cup holders? oh man - i want that chair. but not with the bulls logo. the bulls suck.

enough questions. to the numbers! you can't argue with numbers (social science!), though they are courtesy of the guardian, so we're really looking at the british version of this bizarre phenomenon.

Fashion products flourishing in the downturn:

Selfridges
Sales of false eyelashes are up 30%. Demand is such that it is setting up a lash bar in the London store this month. Watch sales are also up 30%: Toywatch is one of the highest performers.

John Lewis
Accessories are doing great business - branded handbags are selling extremely well, with Osprey and Lulu Guinness bags up 58% and 42% respectively. Gucci sunglasses sales were up 19% on last year.

ASOS
Top sellers for the first three months of 2009 include bow design (£29.50) and jazz-print dresses (£37.50), with 12,000 sold in all. Shoes are also doing well.

Superdrug
Sales of hair dye are up 17%, as are manicure and pedicure tools. Nail polish remover sales have risen 13% compared with 2008.

Harvey Nichols
Fragrance sales are very strong, particularly older heritage brands such as Baghari and Creed, as customers prioritise quality over quantity.

now, there are a few trends that i think i understand. for instance, shoes. everyone needs shoes, excepting members of that crazy cultlike (hippie?) group who refuse to wear shoes - apparently their only protest against modernization and all the accompanying totally awesome stuff you can plug into outlets and play with for hours without speaking to another soul. a woman at grinnell attempted to explain the shoeless rationale to me while i was standing in the dining hall line once, but i stopped listening after about 30 seconds, right around when she was launching into some getting-back-to-nature diatribe. taking off your shoes is hardly getting back to nature. i refuse to take you seriously until you stop annoying people while waiting to get into a cavernous heated dining hall, so you can eat things prepared with electricity-sucking equipment and then stuck under heat lamps. you are not worthy to kiss the feet of the amish. those people are badasses. i once watched them erect a barn the size of new hampshire in three days.

either way, these are not amish consumers. these are regular jills. so what about manicure and pedicure tools? hair dye? sunglasses? are these faceless consumers attempting to disguise themselves in order to escape debt collectors and the irs? are all the new handbags for storing the dozens of passports, driver's i.d.s and social security cards necessary to evade capture by the government? is bernie madoff entirely responsible for the bump in fake lashes sales?

"In the economic downturn, it's important for consumers to look for chic and cheap deals in unusual places. The message to consumers is clear: recession chic is possible. Just take the time to compare prices and make good choices and you can still treat yourself well. . . . The brilliant colours and patterned fabrics in [this] collection will cheer up anyone suffering from the recession's gloom."

sold.

i scream

2009-05-16T13:12:00.003-04:00

summers mean ice cream. it's not that ice cream isn't a part of my life on a year-round basis, but summer means self-churned ice cream, made with my own two hands (and an ingenious little machine). this reasoning differs somewhat from most people's experiences - they remember ice cream trucks. but when i was little, the sound of the ice cream man was heard chortling down the street once a summer at most. apparently, a highway on which more livestock than people live did not garner much attention from selfish, profit-seeking ice cream peddlers.

i can't imagine what ice cream production was like before my little motorized box of whirling frigidity. apparently, the first ice cream parlor opened in new york city in 1776, making american colonists the first group to recognize the awesomeness of what was then known as iced cream. this is most assuredly why we proved victorious in our revolution against the wicked british, who lacked the power, strength, and refreshing coolness of haagen dazs.

actually, some american dude named reuben mattus started haagen dazs in 1960, choosing the name because it sounded danish and clearly, the danish are ice cream experts? oh well. though haagen dazs is unconscionably expensive, at least it's not this kind of crazy:

this is kind of awesome in its insanity. what the hell is the point of saving the glacier if you're only going to continue to decimate it by incorporating its ice into outlandishly expensive sundaes for the rich? thank god the t-shirt is organic, or i might worry about this vacation's carbon footprint. actually, i want this vacation. someone get me this vacation.

after the invention of the continuous process freezer was invented in 1926, mass distribution of ice cream to the american public was off to the races. ice cream for the proletariat!

one of the things that fascinates me about ice cream is its adaptability. it can be pretty much any flavor (avocado! basil! mango wine!) and can be sandwiched, frozen onto a stick, or crammed full of creams and baked goods, ready to be distributed by the friendly ice cream man in his carnivalesque van, which evokes a state fair on wheels:

i've now heard too many stories about child molesters driving these things, evil-minded pied pipers of sugar who might shove your child into the back of the van with the frozen treats. child molesters ruin everything.

there are a number of variations on ice cream - sherbets, gelatos, soft serve, frozen yogurt, milk ices. sorbet is an especially ubiquitous example, and one that i've become obsessed with, since i'm comfortable fiddling with recipes as i learn how to use my extremely discounted cuisinart ice cream maker, an item i am inordinately proud of owning.

sorbets are generally not made with cream, which separates them from ice creams and sherbets. my favorite ones are simple and divide into two categories - rich, and crisp. recipes!

i like chocolate. a lot. this is serious, unadulterated, bittersweet chocolate.

chocolate sorbet
2 1/4 cups water
1 cup sugar
3/4 cup cocoa powder
pinch of salt
6 oz. bittersweet chocolate, chopped
1/2 tsp. vanilla

in a large saucepan, whisk together 1 1/2 cups of the water with the sugar, cocoa powder, and salt. bring to a boil, whisking frequently. let it boil while whisking for 45 sec. remove from heat and stir in the chocolate. after it has melted, stir in the vanilla and remaining water. when it's cool enough, transfer to a blender and blend for 15 sec. chill thoroughly and throw it in your ice cream maker. sometimes it will not flow after sitting in your fridge. let it thaw a bit and then whisk it if this happens to you.

if i want something really crisp and refreshing, i go with a white wine and fruit sorbet. the alcohol from the wine keeps the sorbet from ever completely freezing, creating a really smooth texture.

raspberry wine sorbet
2 cups white wine
2/3 cup sugar
3 cups raspberries, fresh or frozen

in a medium saucepan, bring the wine and sugar to a boil. remove from the heat, add the raspberries, and let cool to room temp. throw the mixture in the blender and puree, then pass through a fine-mesh sieve. chill thoroughly and then throw it in your magic ice cream machine. this can be made using pretty much any wine and is totes awesome using champagne or sparkling cider. you can also swap out the fruit for something like mango or pineapple or apricot, though if you use a citrus you'll want to up the sugar ante.

it is now summer. in celebration - one of the only songs that both my mother and i actually like.

nils olav

2009-05-14T17:00:00.002-04:00

we being well satisfied with loyalty, courage, and good endowment of our trusty and well-beloved nils olav and proposing entire trust and confidence in you, as a penguin, in every way qualified to receive the honor and dignity of knighthood.

the funniest thing about this absurdist scenario is the fact that nils is not really nils - he's the penguin the zoo got to replace the penguin they got to replace nils. in other words, this is nils, take three.

apparently, the original nils was adopted as the norwegian guard's mascot during a trip to the edinburgh zoo, an outing that often punctuates their attendance at an annual music festival. is the norwegian guard really a legitimate branch of the army? do they have real weapons? or are they armed with those little guns with "bang" flags? and do they skip instead of march?

apparently, these guys are the primary defensive line for oslo and are equipped with rifles and totally awesome plumed hats. some woman of royal status decided that the hats on the italian bersaglieri alpine troops were pretty sexy and stole the idea.

this is what happens when you listen to women who wax poetic about uniform fashionability. the fighting peacocks!

the sea is scary

2009-05-13T02:43:00.008-04:00

the ocean is amazing and completely terrifying for someone from . . . indiana. after having spent a number of years in the safety and relative aridity of the midwest, i visited the ocean (pacific) for the first time as part of a two-week california vacation - a college graduation present from my father. i was nearly sucked in. unfortunately, dear old dad didn't recall that a rip tide was something only he naturally adjusted to. look at all of the dangling participles my recalled fear just induced! terror! my not really anywhere near death experience would have traumatized me if i didn't end up thinking that swimming against the rip tide was, possibly, one of the most awesome things ever provided by nature.

i retained a single reservation, however. the ocean contained jellyfish. jellyfish freak the shit out of me. they're spineless, boneless iridescent bubbles with the power to cause intense pain. they travel in packs, gangs, posses. they can temporarily paralyze you. they don't have eyes. their mouthes and anuses are the same hole. possibly . . . maybe . . . they are enemies from outer space. they have lost their space ship, they miss their home country, and they are angry.

look at that. it is motherfucking terrifying. maybe this is one in its natural habitat of space. keep in mind that these things don't have hearts and thus cannot feel guilt over wrapping their slimy glowing tentacles around you in a grip of death.

either way, i spent a statistically significant part of in-ocean time worrying about potential jellyfish attacks, unpersuaded by my father's assurances that his friend was stung once and survived with virtually no emotional or physical scarring. and i began to worry about all the other terrifyingly foreign forms of life creeping, pulsing, and floating through the waters.

this thing, for instance -->

referred to colloquially as a sea squirt, this glowing sucking bubble tube eats its own brain. don't ask me how or why these glowing stems do this. i do not know and do not care to understand.

and this next creature resembles a giant, glowing, see-through sea grasshopper with CLAWS OF DEATH.

will it eat you? this is apparently a strange form of sea insect. insects are fairly innocuous, right? right?

this next one is no insect.

look at that thing. it's so terrifying that it was featured in that pixar nemo movie as the most terrifying moment of the film. craftily duping the ditzy ellen degenres fish with its shiny little nose lamp-lure, the blackdevil anglerfish can extend its body in order to swallow sea creatures (or human appendages, says i) that are twice its body size. there are about 500 species of anglerfish out there in the ocean, wobbling through the water, hungry for your toes.

at least there is some absurdity left in the sea, in order to lighten the mood a bit. i give you the blob fish:

apparently, the blob fish is pretty much a gelatinous mass slightly less viscous than water, allowing it to float around aimlessly off the coasts of australia and tasmania. this is a fish as lazy as it looks - it does not use muscles at all, simply opening its mouth to catch debris and unaware sealife floating by.

this is a fish that might be a lot like your lazy, obese uncle ron, who used to date but gave up on finding a life partner at age 55. he might be a closeted gay. he eats a lot of cheetos and his favorite time of the day is when jeopardy comes on. he went to the star trek movie on opening night, wearing a costume that doesn't quite fit anymore.

the blobfish is hilarious in a depressing way. this little guy is just adorable.

it's like the sea version of a rubber duckie! an oceanic chick! i want one for a pet!

i wish the ocean were full of those little buggers. the ocean would be full of cuteness.

i'll bet the black devil fish of horrific death eats these popcorn balls for lunch, avoiding jellyfish like the plague. next time i'm anywhere near the ocean, i'll have to convince myself that it's worth it to get in all over again.

welcome to our house

2009-05-12T11:06:00.004-04:00

snooker, inscrutable sport of champions

2009-05-11T19:50:00.005-04:00

though i wanted to go to london for my semester abroad, i worried that this decision was a bit of an evasion of responsibility. after all, i didn't have to deal with a different language or vast cultural differences. friends went to india and russia and korea and zimbabwae. friends had to live with crazy families who didn't understand the concept of personal space and friends were joltingly asked to weigh themselves every morning. trials! travails! cultural immersion!

in contrast, i rented a flat with three grinnellians and worked in parliament, site of my most "foreign" experiences. i interned for a scottish member of parliament who, after a few years of americans filtering through his office, had learned to recognize when facial expressions slid from listening to utter incomprehension in the face of rapid words disintegrating into one long stream of scottish brogue. this certainly did not constitute the full-on disorientation i was supposed to feel amidst my exciting semester abroad, though. no forced, fearful engagement with the unknown for me.

but british culture contained a few unexpected deviations from the things i knew.

to whit - apparently, if you don't have a british accent in england, than you are automatically relegated to the category "australian on her gap year; possibly (probably) slutty." thus, about a dozen often sort of drunk men attempted to pick me up in bars, after informing me that they found an australian accent to be "very sexy." me too, buckoos.

another piece of newness was british television. i love british tv. it doesn't have the same polished feel as american tv, which makes it less uncomfortably shiny and consumption-oriented. even when americans aren't selling you something, they're selling you something.

not so with the british. when coupled with afar laxer approach to sexuality and obscenity, the homemade qualities of british tv produce a hodgepodge of brutally deadpan sitcoms, programs that seemed to be a series of jokes requiring physical humor a la monty python (but not as good), hilariously bad soap operas, the bbc news programs i watched religiously, what to american sensibilities would be very poorly made commercials, and hours upon hours of snooker.

now, almost all of these television offerings made sense to me. at least on some basic level i understood them, assisted as i was by my own horribly deadpan sense of humor, which is certainly not politically correct and can often verge on the offensive.

snooker table

snooker was another issue entirely. to those not acquainted with the game (deprived of even my nominal understanding), snooker looks and feels like pool. it is not pool. it is a game evilly designed to trick you into believing it is pool, before it becomes readily apparent that you have absolutely no idea what is going on. then, after having watched a solid four hours of it in an ill-fated attempt to "teach yourself," you realize that you have wasted the best part of the day sitting on your ass in front of the tv, while roommates bustle around you and people move to and fro in the streets. indeed, you are surrounded by a city with the tate modern and portabello market and the british museum, all stuffed full of people who are smarter than you and know that learning the ins and outs of snooker is not the point of a semester abroad. for most people, anyway. perhaps there is a fulbright in this.

but you do it again the next day, and the next. and then watching snooker becomes a personal quest to divine the rules of the game simply by watching hour after hour of coverage, little colored balls knocking around the table.

eventually, this careful deconstruction of play descends into bewilderment. after a few days, i looked a number of rules charts up on the internet, a project that revealed why the rules i had concocted were almost always disproved within a few cue strokes of their construction. a revealing example:

what?! i don't even completely understand how this causal flow chart works, much less the information it is attempting to convey. i spent the better part of a week figuring out what the difference between a foul and a miss was, leaving the repercussions of this distinction well alone. unfortunately, this was an inherently flawed method of determining rules - i was discovering rules through analysis of repercussions.

this approach might have worked better for me if i had realized that snooker is a game which continually offers your opponent control over the parameters of your actions. for instance, a person who commits a foul must reshoot if his or her opponent requests. additionally, there are levels of fouling. one can commit multiple fouls at once, compounding their penalties and thus increasing their opponent's control over the trajectory of play. when the highest level of foul is reached, maximum penalties are incurred. whatever those maximum penalties are. i didn't ever figure that out.

the ability to compound fouls is important, because the game divides naturally into two phases, one in which there are still red balls on the table and one in which they have all been potted and the other colors remain. this is important because you are required to alternate between potting red balls and colored balls. a foul is incurred if you fail to do this. a foul is also incurred if you hit more than one color on a single turn. i am confusing myself just relating the rules.

in the end, i did what any good (bad?) student does in the face of incomprehension - i narrowed my projected thesis. instead of mapping out a range of snooker rules through observation, i would define what in the hell snookering was. this took me a month of watching intermittent snooker tournament coverage. i wrote my definition down in my tiny red journal, alongside a recipe for cinnamon buns and a set of notes on the series of cy twombly paintings on special exhibit in the tate.

my definition:
you are snookered when you are unable to hit any ball on either side of the table - any ball that is legally in play.

the definition given by billiard world:
"The cue ball is snookered when a direct stroke in a straight line to any part of every ball on is obstructed by a ball or balls not on. If there is any one ball that is not so obstructed, the cue ball is not snookered. If in-hand within the Half Circle, the cue ball is snookered only if obstructed from all positions on or within the Half Circle. If the cue ball is obstructed by more than one ball, the one nearest to the cue ball is the effective snookering ball."

yes. i feel that way as well.

okay. so there is always a part of british culture that will remain incomprehensible to me, utterly inscrutable. so i did go to a foreign country for my semester abroad.

goddamn snooker.

phyllis schlafly, harbinger of doom (?)

2009-05-10T11:09:00.007-04:00

phyllis schlafly is getting to me. not in the conversion-to-conservatism way, but in the i'm-beginning-to-understand-you-and-therefore-cannot-hate-you way. if that makes any sense. i mean, who else talks about self-conscious, waifish lauren bacall as an ideal? after all, as schlafly notes, "lauren bacall wasn't lonely. she had humphrey bogart." so it's a good thing that bacall subordinated her career to making sure that bogie had a relaxing island of domestic bliss to return to, if he so desired.

now, i might reply that after bogie died, lauren bacall suffered through relationships with the alcoholic jason robards and the straight-up jerk frank sinatra. meanwhile, her career stalled in a creative cul-de-sac, and bacall was forced to star in a couple broadway musicals, thereby immersing herself in the murky depths of *groan* song-and-dance theater. i don't care if she won a tony. forget waterboarding - forced musicals viewings might be a more fruitful form of torture.

phyllis parries: you foolish little girl. musicals shmoozicals. look at lauren bacall. just look at her.

lauren bacall is a hottie. you know you want to be lauren bacall.

egads, phyllis is right! i do want to be lauren bacall. so okay, phyllis. but if lauren bacall mimicry is not possible (plausible) for me - i mean, let's be realistic here - what are my options?

positive women #2: katherine hepburn.

you're killing me. are you really only going to give me astonishingly attractive actresses (and especially in hepburn's case, astonishingly brilliant ones), phyllis? huh?

oooooh - sciency.

unfortunately, there seems to be a thread running through her positive women greatest hits list - she unerringly chose staunch democrats. and rachel carson was a lesbian on top of her liberality. yet i can't decide whether this is the reason that the power of the positive woman hasn't aged well. after all, none of schlafly's books have aged well; this is the problem with writing for your audience. that audience ages, dies, and is replaced with a new generation that looks at the old generation and mutters "losers" under its breath before skulking off to the mall to hang out in front of the orange julius.

so are phyllis schlafly's details dated, or are her messages dated? is there a difference?

conservative women are extremely concerned with protection from the dangers of men, who will inevitably run off with their secretaries (or sexually loose feminists) if the law allows them to do so. thus, opposition to divorce law liberalization, while liberal women scream "how could you?!" in the background. but can conservative women translate their opposition into direct action? women in politics? elective office?

or was schlafly simply an inaccurate representation of the average conservative women, despite her aptitude for organizing them? are the two functions mutually exclusive? is it impossible to combine political savvy and ambition with a conservative worldview that privileges gender(ed) hierarchy?

i stole these

2009-05-07T02:25:00.008-04:00

jeff wall

2009-05-07T01:32:00.014-04:00

i adore jeff wall's photographs. they're like a little like film noir; something quivers underneath the surface, but not being able to put your finger on where the unease is coming from is what makes them both beautiful and troubling. wall's subjects are vibrantly pensive. they pose not because they have been asked to pose, but because they live life that way. and the colors are astonishing. wall lights his picture window-sized photos from behind, dimming the lights in the gallery so that the pictures glow, illuminating the faces of gallery visitors like the faces in the photos. he creates photos that subdivide into panels, each panel its own perfect composition of color and light. yet each photograph has one source of movement, one disruption amidst placidness.

gorgeous.

scatter, monkey of love

2009-05-06T00:40:00.012-04:00

elvis had a monkey – a chimp – called scatter. scatter was fond of alcohol and looking up women's skirts, and he bit. elvis was wont to refer to him as "you coconut-headed little motherfucker."

apparently, no one foresaw the inevitable trouble that comes with mixing eight guys, 150 girls, and a chimpanzee eager to make his reputation as rock 'n 'roll's ultimate party animal.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------->>>

MARTY LACKER: Scatter was with us on my first trip cross-country. We had him in a cage in the back of the Chrysler station wagon. One night, we checked into a motel in Flagstaff, Arizona. The chimp stayed in Alan and Lamar's room. All night long we heard Scatter going "Ba-dum, Ba-dum!" just running back and forth in the room. The next morning, Lamar said, in this real quiet voice, "You need to come in here and see this." Scatter had gotten up on the drapes and started swinging on them, and they were partially pulled down. And he'd shit all over them. Oh, God, it was a mess. Lamar said Scatter was just throwing everything he could find. He'd even shit in his hands and thrown it on the walls. I said, "How do you think we're going to get out of here without paying for this?" Lamar said, "Don't worry about it." So we closed the door and went and had breakfast at the restaurant across the way.

LAMAR FIKE: Just about the time our food came, I looked out the window, and I said, "Oh, my God!" The Mexican maid was knocking on the door. We all jumped at the same time and tried to yell at her, but it was too late. Before we could even gt out of our chairs, she'd walked in and closed the door to start making up the room. It was early in the morning, and the room was dark.

Well, you can picture what it was like for a Mexican maid to open a motel room door in Flagstaf, Arizona, and find a chimp inside. Scatter ran across the room and latched onto her, and she went bananas. She started screaming the most blood curdling yell, I've ever heard. We ran over there, and God, That was the funniest sight. That maid came flying out of that room with Scatter wrapped around her like a damn boa constrictor. He'd jumped on her back, and fastened his legs around her waist, and put his hands over her eyes so she couldn't see.

We peeled Scatter off of her, but then he bolted out the door and went tearing out across the porte cochere which ran over the shed in front of the hotel. He went right up the drain-pipe and over the top. The maid was still screeching. And Scatter was on the damn roof, just dancing up a storm--laughing at us.

Alan said, "What are we going to do?" I said, "Go get in your car, and I'll go get the station wagon. I'll leave the back door open and the window down, and the door to the cage ajar. Just slowly drive off."

Well, that car hadn't rolled ten feet when Scatter was on that sucker. He thought we were going to leave him. He stuck so tight he looked like adhesive tape.

MARTY LACKER: We'd paid when we checked in, so we took the keys and threw them on the front desk, and just took off before anybody discovered how bad it was.

LAMAR FIKE: As much of a terror as he was, Scatter was also capable of behaving like a gentleman. Alan used to love to take him for a drive in the Rolls Royce. He'd buy little suits for him, and sometimes he'd stick a chauffeur's cap on him and balance him on his lap. When they'd meet a car, Alan would duck down to make it look like Scatter was driving. One guy drove right off the road.

MARTY LACKER: We came home one night on Bellagio Road and found that Scatter had bitten Jimmy, the butler, real bad. Elvis was furious. Jimmy and Lillian were all upset and yelling and threatening to quit if Elvis didn't get rid of him. Scatter was upset too. We kept him in the basement, underneath the steps, and Alan tried to get him to go downstairs to his cage, and he wouldn't. Elvis finally calmed down, and he walked up to Scatter and he stood over him. Scatter was on top of his cabinet, and he looked up at Elvis with those innocent eyes, and all Elvis did was stare at him, trying to keep a straight face. Finally, Elvis said, "You coconut-headed little mother fucker, you'd better get downstairs in your cage. And you'd better not bite anyone anymore, either."

Scatter hopped off the cabinet, and he slowly walked downstairs like a man going to the electric chair, with his hands folded in front of him. We all followed him. Alan put his hand out for Scatter to hold it, but he wouldn't do it. He had too much pride. He just marched down to the basement and right into the cage. We came upstairs, and Elvis fell on the floor laughing.

LAMAR FIKE: Elvis hit him with a cue stick one night. He hit him so damn hard that chimp just saw stars. And then he ran up the curtain. I said, "God Almighty!" I came downstairs with a gun. I said, "Elvis, if you'll lead him about two yards, I'll shoot him."

LAMAR FIKE: Another time, the damn monkey had bitten me, and caused me a lot of problems, and tried my patience every which way but loose. So I went out and got a Hot Shot, a kind of cattle prod. I knew chimps hate water, so I ran a tub full and forced him into it. And he landed in that water, and he started going, "RUUUUUH!" I said, "Okay, you little bastard," and I jammed that cattle prod into him, and I promise you, every hair on his body stood straight up.

Everybody came in, and Elvis said "You're trying to hill him!" And I said, "Yes, I'm going to kill the son of a bitch right here!" I hated that damn chimp.

MARTY LACKER: Elvis used to wait until the den was filled with girls, and everybody was real comfortable and having a nice time. Then he'd whisper, "Okay, boys, let him out!" We'd open the door from under the steps, and Scatter would come out whooping like crazy and scaring a couple of people so bad they almost had a heart attack. Because he could make some noise. He was about three and a half or four feet tall, and he made an impression. And he would just naturally gravitate towards the girls.

BILLY SMITH: Alan taught him a lot of things, but he learned some on his own. When a woman got up to go to the bathroom, for example, he'd run and hide behind the bathroom door. And in a minute, we'd hear this godawful scream and this frantic grabbing of the doorknob. It was like jerking the door off the hinges. The girl would bolt out of there screaming her head off, and Scatter would come waddling after her.

One time, this big, tall girl named Pat Parry was over at the house. Well, she didn't know about Scatter, and this sucker made his entrance. He come in with that screeching and with his hands up, and she thought he was going to attack her. He didn't, but then he kept trying to look up her skirt. She told him to stop, and then when he wouldn't, she said, "You do that one more time, and I'm going to knock the hell out of you." They were both in front of a couch by the bar. Well, naturally, Scatter did it again. And Pat came off the floor and hit that monkey under the chin, and he did a back flip and landed on the couch, dazed. He looked at her like he couldn't believe it. He had a head like a bowling ball, and she put a dent in it.

MARTY LACKER: One of Scatter's favorite pranks was to line on his back on the edge of the couch, so he was be half on the couch, and half of. And when a girl walked by, he'd crook his finger under the hem of her skirt and stick his head up there. He really had a thing about that. You can imagine how it went over. And sometimes he'd masturbate in front of everybody. Believe it or not, we did not teach him to do that. But Sonny and Alan would put him in a bedroom with a couple who was making love, and he'd get excited and jump on the guy's back. Scatter was the real life of the party.

BILLY SMITH: We knew a woman named Brandy Marlow who'd come to the parties. She made her living as a stripper, but she didn't come to the party as one. She was just a guest. But she liked to play around with the chimp. She thought he was fascinating.

One night, the monkey got in her lap, and she had on a low cut blouse. And Scatter kept running his finger down her cleavage. Elvis said, "Is he bothering you?" She said no. So Elvis said, "Well, if you don't mind, see how far he'll go." And the monkey went to unbuttoning with both hands.

Scatter started off with somebody's drink one night. Turned out, he was a damned suds-head. He liked beer, but he could down a fifth of liquor before you knew it. He'd get so damn drunk that he would fall off the couch onto the floor and just slide.

He got loose in Bel Air once, and the next-door neighbors were real upset. The final straw came when he went over there again. They were having a fancy cocktail party, and Scatter went roaring through their house with his hands up and all the hair standing up on his back. He went, "Whoo-whoo-whoo!" Loud as a freight train, you know.

When he screamed, God, it would just send chills down your spine. And it scared the hell out of the party guests, especially when he ran towards 'em. He just wanted attention, really. They didn't know that once you saw him, he'd let down and go on about his business. But, man, they went nuts! They said people went up on the back of couches and on the tables. He cleared the house. So that did it. Scatter was banned from Bel Air. We had to take him back to Memphis.

LAMAR FIKE: Scatter met a sad end. We put him outside behind Graceland. He couldn't stand being left alone after all the attention he'd gotten. He died out there by himself hanging on to the side of the cage.

BILLY SMITH: When we took Scatter back to Graceland, the maids had to feed him because we were gone so much. One day, a maid named Daisy went out there, and she had her wig on, and that damn chimp grabbed that wig right off her head. It scared a couple of years off her life. We always thought she poisoned him. And it wouldn't surprise me. Because not long after that the monkey come up dead.

MARTY LACKER: It happened to be out in the backyard when they took him off. He was hard as a brickbat, just frozen dead. Two guys came from the animal shelter and each guy had one arm, supporting him, because he was upright, with his long arms out and his legs bowed. It was eerie. It kind of shocked me. They just carried him out to their truck and hauled him off. Poor old Scatter. Alan cried and cried.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------->>>

oh cruel world. will michael jackson's monkey bubbles meet the same fate?

not the barbie of your youth

2009-05-05T22:58:00.005-04:00

i've gone through exactly two barbie fazes. the first faze lasted until i was around seven and involved much brushing of crimped barbie hair and arranging of tiny barbie furniture. i have to admit, i always liked barbie accoutrement, primarily because miniaturized things are so eternally fascinating.

fascination is not always so peaceable, however. barbie faze #2 was war. i spent a large part of my childhood strongly disliking anything that could be categorized as conventional, and barbie fell solidly into the category of "conventional."

retaliation against such unabashed normalcy was unrestrained. and given my penchant for pyromania, barbies fell by the wayside in a variety of ways, most involving melting various barbie parts in my driveway. my sister helpfully assisted by disassembling barbies, but the she-devil dolls proved surprisingly fire-resistant, requiring lengthy exposure to intense heat before succumbing to her wicked witch of the west fate. some barbies endured immersion in kool-aid beforehand, meeting the fire with blueberry or raspberry-colored and flavored hair.

thereafter, the only interaction i had with barbie-related materials was loading my totally awesome (and fast!) barbie jeep with small toys before launching it across the playroom, gleefully watching the little vehicle smack into the opposing wall and violently discharge its contents in an explosion of tiny plastic playthings. i always liked the thump-crack-bop-bop-bop sounds this set of collisions created - and the intentional disarray that resulted. intentionality was key for a kid who carefully vacuumed her bedroom in straight lines, working backwards so that no visible footprints marred uniformly and linearly arranged carpet strands.

after most of the barbies were abused beyond all recognition, i committed myself wholeheartedly to various forms of construction - buildings and spaceships out of legos and tables and chairs out of 2x4s hammered together with my little person hammer and nails nicked from my father's basement store of home improvement materials. i even built my own version of a tree house, composed primarily of perches nailed into branch cruxes and connected by an intricate rope pulley system of buckets, which i used to ferry equipment, books, and tootsie pops from perch to perch. i am more proud of that makeshift treehouse than most other things i've done.

from there on out, i adamantly refused to consider involving myself with anything that could be construed as "girly." i hated dresses and skirts and abhorred pink anything, frilly anything, sparkly anything. i didn't start voluntarily wearing dresses until the end of college. girl stuff was out!

but i might have made an exception for hooker barbie.

racy! indeed, in my flash search through google images for any barbies i might have actually liked in my post-girly, pro-fire and destruction faze, i found a strangely logical snapshot progression for the barbie who lived life on the edge. so onwards in badass barbie's life! obviously, std barbie wouldn't look much different from hooker barbie, though she might have a facial expression that more clearly reflected her fall from grace. but pregnant barbie - two toys for the price of one! look see!

it's like a barbie matryoshka! it's like a barbie transformer!

i appreciate that manufacturers have conformed to proper anatomical baby posture, head aimed towards mummy's feet. kudos for realism, mattel.

but barbie is too young. how will she be able to finish high school and go to college? what will her peers think of her, after this obvious indiscretion? will she still be able to fit into her prom dress? what to do?

solution:

the coat hanger is a nice touch, no?

feminism: tentative definition(s)

2009-05-04T10:36:00.037-04:00

i am obsessed with the central paradox of feminism - the fact that it's a collective fight to be treated as individuals in a society free of sex hierarchies. the word "individuals" is key here. there is no single group "women" that agrees on everything. black women focus on certain aspects of their gender and status, working women on other realities, etc. that's the point. the diversity of feminism is what makes it an effective tool.

the recent publication of jennifer scanlon's biography of helen gurley brown, founder of cosmo, has forced me to swing around and confront what i mean by second and third-wave feminism again. this is a life-project, so i figured that i would post some older thoughts and slowly update them in the future. given brown's approach to feminism (she defined herself as a feminist), i think it best to begin with the third wave and work my way backwards, in the hope that my musings will make a semblance of sense. into the deep, dark depths!

the third wave is often called a movement when, in fact, it is actually a body of feminist thought - a rather expansive and often contradictory body of thought, designed to counteract the "oppressive" definitions of feminism propegated by the second-wave women's movement during the 1960s and '70s. the traditional second-wave narrative is one of two national feminist strands: (1) radical cultural feminists who sought to undermine a pervasive patriarchy linked to capitalism, commodification, and a narrowly-defined "proper" family structure and (2) political feminists who worked for legislative and legal sex equality through primarily institutional means.

third-wave feminists argued that both of these strands were populated by upper and middle-class white women whose tactics and successes were of little benefit to minority and working-class women. while this is true to some extent, recent scholarly efforts on grassroots feminist activity before, during, and after the women's movement has unearthed a far more racially diverse movement. additionally, the black feminist tradition is much longer and more important that most acknowledge. black feminists of the first wave defined themselves as "womanists," who dealt collectively with racial and sex inequality. womanism is a thriving intellectual and political tradition that provided a model for second-wave feminism. it is also a model that third-wave feminism completely ignores. if you actually read bell hooks, she references this stuff, as do historians of black women.

sometimes equipped with this scholarship, feminist theoreticians in the early 1990s took the idea of interracialism to a whole new level, and sought to create a women's movement that spanned countries and continents. thus, you get campaigns against genital mutilation, etc. now, i'm totally on board with these sorts of campaigns, but i certainly do not think they constitute a u.s. women's movement. and i'm extremely annoyed by the literature that calls itself "third-wave" feminism.

additionally, the third-wave focus on the need to accomodate differences between women leads to an emphasis on gender, rather than sex. judith butler is the obvious citation here. while i certainly agree that gender is a socially-constructed category, until men start having half the babies in this country (there are other problems too, but this is always the best example), there will continue to be a fundamental structural problem with achieving sex equality. i'd like third wavers to take that seriously. federally mandating flexible minimums for maternity/paternity leave and treating housework and childcare as work is absolutely essential to achieving sex equality, as is seriously rethinking this country's legal and medical approach to rape and domestic violence. women are not equal yet, but the third wave tends to spend a great deal of time belittling women for focusing too much on these issues instead of taking hold of new freedoms (and admittedly, there are many, courtesy of the second wave) and asserting themselves as individuals. in other words, there's a libertarian streak in the third wave that i greatly resent.

needless to say, a focus on gender rather than sex leads down an unfortunate path (in my mind). third-wave feminism tends to emphasize individuals, rather than dealing with women as a collectively discriminated-against group. although motivated by good intentions of open-mindedness and concerns about letting minority women define what feminism "means" for them and how they might best "act out" their own brands of feminism, the third wave ultimately leads to sloppy logic and and an overemphasis on individual women battling sexism in their own worlds and in their own ways - this is not a women's movement and often isn't even feminism. the nancy cott quote i always remember here is her insistence that feminism is women's "ability to say 'we,'" to think and act collectively to overturn sexist law and practice.

third-wave logic ignores the institutional, legislative, and economic barriers to women's equality, and often results in women thinking that feminism is either a scary (second-wave) diatribe against some nebulous patriarchy or the (third wave) emphasis on playing with gender through individual, everyday performance. in its worst incarnation, third-wave feminism results in women thinking that sex and the city is feminist. seriously - there are quite a few books out there on this. by scholars. well, by "scholars." these books make me very unhappy. letting a man buy you a drink will never be a feminist act, in my book. i don't care if you still feel free to walk off without letting him have sex with you. and this is exactly the kind of thinking that helen gurley brown promoted from the sixties onwards.

now, i don't think that there's really a definition of the third wave that's any good right now, largely because it's not a cohesive concept - it's more like a cyclic dialogue about how malleable gender is. i find it to be intellectually and methodologically lacking, but certainly can see its appeal and subscribe to a number of judith butler-isms. i just think it primarily distracts from more important issues - issues of domestic violence, of unequal political representation, of declining reproductove freedom and stigmatization of welfare mothers.

a lot of this boils down to my absolute devotion to the idea that politics is important and strategies for women's advancement need to define women as a collective group and fight for institutional change. judith butler tells me that you can't define women as a group. i think you can, and must act collectively based on this premise in order to achieve sex equality.

a large part of my problem with third-wave feminism is that none of these "feminists" realize that individual choices are not actually individual choices. patriarchy is fundamentally a system and women must confront that system as a group. otherwise, you have a conversation. and while conversations are nice, they don't get you much of anywhere. i'd prefer a nice big movement, myself. those tend to accomplish things. otherwise, all this theorizing is intellectual masturbation, and i have absolutely no patience for it.

goals and categories are not necessarily limiting, and i really wish that third-wave feminists would actually read some second-wave stuff, rather than taking what is, quite frankly, the anti-feminist definition of feminism and applying it to all second-wave feminisms. there were multiple definitions of feminism in the second wave - and this "more expansive" conversation that third-wavers think is all their own was borrowed from consciousness-raising tactics of the second wave. those were pretty damned expansive, and gave a lot of women a route to self- expression, in a collective environment.

sneaky, huh? suddenly the dichotomy between collective and individual breaks down, and you're left with a pretty large group of empowered women who tend to be connected to other empowered groups of women, who feel like they might just get up tomorrow morning and set up an organization that lobbies their local government for anti-rape legislation, etc. ywcas used to do this stuff! pidgeon-holing feminism as collective groupthink (thank you, phyllis schlafly) made women afraid to view their sex as a disenfranchised group because such thinking might lead to dictation.

newsflash: this is completely untrue. take a look at jo freeman's article on "the tyranny of structurelessness," her description of the feminist movement as the complete opposite of what third wavers often describes feminism as. women afraid of other women telling them what to do led to an extremely diverse, spider-like movement that was a prime example of bottom-up social change. indeed, sometimes it tended towards the in-fighting and ineffectiveness that i fear so much. but for most of the second-wave, this structure worked really well.

i find that the third wave has very little to say that's new and tends to use the differentiation between gender and sex to justify apolitical individualism, which i think is harmful to both feminism and, ultimately, to third-wave feminists themselves. feminism is necessarily defined as a belief in a collectivity of women. third-wavers negate this with individualism, so i generally don't define whatever they're doing (or, most often, simply saying - action is not a forte of the third wave) as feminism. it's really important to put what these women were saying into the proper context. and it's important to understand exactly what they were reacting against. women have achieved a lot in the past few decades, and it's extremely important to keep in mind the fact that these women were responding to a world that didn't look as friendly to women as your world looks to you today.

additionally, i think that women today don't really understand that our situation might not be as rosy as we think it is, sitting up in our middle-class, well-educated chairs and looking down at the opportunities beneath us. how about a nation-wide constriction in a woman's ability to have an abortion. rising birth control prices, anyone? rising domestic violence stats? women are still around 15 percent of congress. promotion statistics are dismal, and are declining in many professions. welfare rights! don't get me started on welfare rights or tanf. it's become acceptable, indeed it's become non-news when the democratic party (liberals! liberals?) launches an assault on the country's poor women. none of this seems to matter a whit to third-wave women and, quite frankly, it bugs me.

i do want to state, for the record, that i don't believe that women viewing themselves as a collectively disadvantaged group obliterates the ability to have meaningful relationships with men. viewing women as a group makes you just as self-reflective about your personal relationships as contemplating gender performance. indeed, these are not mutually exclusive ways of looking at personal relationships. feel free to mix and match approaches to gender and sex relations, while still believing that women, as a group, are not treated equally in this country and something ought to be done about it.

looking at second-wave feminism more closely renders a tactically, intellectually, and institutionally varied picture of women who all think of themselves as primarily defined by society as the group "women." they defined themselves that way as well, because it was the only way for them to interrogate their societal positions in a way that was both meaningful and conducive to the collective action necessary to actually do something about that inequality. if feminism is to make gains, women shouldn't agree on a specific set of "goals."

i myself am inclined to focus on a woman's declining ability to procure abortions and other forms of birth control. but it's all feminism, because feminism is the ability to look around and say "we" not despite, but because of the plethora of concerns "we" have. the more diverse and wide-ranging the concerns are, the better. diversity makes for change.

feminists need to disagree - that's part of the mobilization process. if we stopped whenever we disagreed, there'd be no point in trying. conversation is what gets people thinking, and thinking is what gets people acting, and acting is what allows groups to achieve change in a society where change is hard to come by. a number of women didn't want the vote. they thought suffrage would undermine their ability to push for better conditions for working women using their sway as inculcators of american morality and selflessness. they thought women might never be entirely won over to political participation. they were, understandibly, often more concerned overturning coverture and institutionalizing women's ability to control their own bodies. suffrage was the most controversial plank in the declaration issued at seneca falls in 1848.

of course, what could be defined as the "big, important battles" change over time. it's necessary that they change over time.

looking at the past lends us a model for success. i don't think it's elitist or naive to learn from our forebearers. certainly blaming elitists for notcoming up with a set of cohesive women's goals is both unproductive and unrealistic. but more than anything, it legitimates not doing anything. and that's the worst thing a feminist can do. women need to find their own version of feminist action and pursue its realization relentlessly. thinking gets you partway there. past successes help with tactics. doing forces you to encounter reality, adjust your expectations and goals, and solidify how you think about women and feminism.

this summer, that biography of helen gurley brown will be purchased and thoroughly read. i'll probably hate it, but it will be good for me. someday, i will come to a more balances position on the third wave (i think having students who think in these terms is helpful), but until then, i will continue to revise and rewrite entire sections of this essay. doing so is an integral part of my own feminism.

ny times review // wash post review // new yorker review

so here is goes - my incessant posting of nancy cott's the grounding of modern feminism

- selected excerpts from the 1987 introduction, in order -

[Feminism] was both broader and narrower: broader in intent, proclaiming revolution in all the relations of the sexes, and narrower in the range of its willing adherents. As an ism, (an ideology) it presupposed a set of principles not necessarily belonging to every woman - nor limited to women."
(and here's where i mess up - i oftentimes use "equality" as shorthand)

"Equality is such a difficult quality to apply to human beings (because it is colloquially taken to mean sameness) that the point is served better by expression in terms of opposition to ranking one's sex inferior or superior, or opposition to one sex's categorical control of the rights and opportunities of the other."

"The conviction that women's socially constructed position situates us on shared ground enables the consciousness and the community of action among women to impel change."

"Men and women are alike as human beings, yet categorically different from each other; their samenesses and differences derive from nature and culture, how inextricably entwined we cannot know."

"As much as feminism asserts the female individual - by challenging delineation by sex and by opposing the self-abnegation on behalf of others historically expected of women - pure individualism negates feminism because i removes the basis for women's collective self-understanding or action."

"The common goal of the ballot harnessed emphases on women's equality to men with emphases on women's difference from men; suffragists argued on both grounds ... [but after the ballot was won a] new understanding was needed, which Feminists proposed by making individuality and heterogeneity among women their principles and yet holding these in abeyance by acting in sex solidarity."

"Feminists offered no sure definition of who women was; rather, they sought to end the classification woman. They posited a paradoxical group ideal of individuality. Insofar as they opposed specialization by sex they gave free rein to individualism; but Feminism relied on a solidarity deeded down from the woman movement by suffragist's emphasis on women's common disenfranchisement."

"This is primarily a study of consciousness - women's willingness or reluctance to say we - a study of feminist intentions and the ways they do or do not materialize."

"What historians have seen as the demise of feminism in the 1920s was, more accurately, the end of the suffrage movement and the early struggle of modern feminism. That struggle was, and is, to find language, organization, and goals adequate to the paradoxical situation of modern women, diverse individuals and subgroups who 'can't avoid being women whatever they do,' who inhabit the same worlds as men, not in the same way."

woody allen: a kind of vulnerable egomania

2009-05-02T12:24:00.013-04:00

for some reason, i assume that everyone in the universe has an extensive mental storehouse of knowledge about woody allen. egomania seems to be the only plausible explanation for this entirely unsubstantiated belief. much like the reason for this blog, i suppose. but i have to recognize that, while most people tends either towards ironic or banefully descriptive blog titles, i have chosen a riff on woody allen's 1975 book, which can best be described as a series of vignettes, strung together only by allen's perpetually ironic, self-referential, self-obsessed, nervous, and utterly jewish new yorkerness.

in the interest of full disclosure, i must note that i can really only claim half of the afore-mentioned adjectives and none of the nouns. falling ar short of allen, i am merely ironic, self-referential, and nervous. i am not, nor have i ever been a jewish new yorker, even when i practically took up residency in zabars, spending my retreat-from-columbia hours fetching things from top shelves for little but loud older jewish grandmothers. i was not employed at zabars - i just lived there. extremely unhappy at columbia, where one chanel-wearing young woman haughtily informed me that she read sds' port huron statement every year because it was "philosophically complicated" and "moved her," i fled to virginia. there are far fewer jewish grandmothers in virginia, and i miss them enormously. but there are also far fewer young self-consciously ironic girls clothed in designer labels and afflicted with the serious misconception that they can (and must) speak authoritatively about "radical" causes because they read foucault one semester and studied the black panthers in the next.

but i digress. explaining woody allen is an important disclosure here, given my high school commitment to knowing anything and everything about him and my continuing reliance on his early films as the equivalent of comfort food. woody allen movies are the movies i can "watch" simply by pressing the play button and walking away. i know all the lines. the characters are so familiar to me that i find them comforting, even if allen has clearly constructed them as grating and awkward individuals with whom no one can identify without absorbing a great deal of their psychoses first. in my head, all his characters have become big-person versions of the kids in ralphie's classroom at the beginning of annie hall. the cutest ones are the ones with severe problems - the girl who's "into leather," the little boy hooked on meth. adorable, no?

but the opening of annie hall best encapsulates the reason why i go back to allen's early material again and again. woody allen is a fake pessimist. the irony, the overburdened chronic depression, the obsession with sex and death, even the nervous hands and the nervous verbal delivery are all there to throw allen's complete and utter love affair with the world and with people - not specific people, but people generally - into relief. and he likes the crazies the best. themes of depression and imminent death are all really annoying because woody allen insists on hitting you over the head with them, but they're effective because they're so wholly untrue by the time you get to the end of the film and are in love with all of the characters anyway. even, oftentimes, woody allen himself.

in manhattan, this sentiment extends to new york city itself, and you begin to fall in love with new york's ability to combine frenetic activity with utterly calm statis, as allen moves between still (often nighttime) cityscape frames and continually active street scenes. the amazing thing about woody allen's cinematography is his ability to merge the inside of buildings with the street - its a fundamental part of new york that few filmmakers get it right, if they attempt it at all. and allen's ability to capture that aspect of the city often forces me to recommit my fundamentally midwestern self to loving new york city because it's so haphazardly yet forcefully alive. though they've kicked all the poor people out, new york still buzzes. i was never as aware of my own body moving through space as i was in new york.

woody allen is also acutely aware of his own body, and he evidences this awareness through a nervousness that is both ego-driven (new york prizes neuroses) and a sign of emotional vulnerability. i think that's why i chose to name this site after allen's book, and i think it's the reason why i still love woody allen, despite his recent raft of horrible and repetitive film flops and despite his oft-noted marriage to his former adopted daughter. quite frankly, i couldn't care less. i care much more about annie hall.

frank zappa plays a car

2009-05-01T20:27:00.000-04:00

i hope this impells dozens of youngsters to "play" cars as well. they are, after all, already equipped with baseball bats. when daddy or mommy says, "go play outside," take heart kiddies. this is your new, fun option. screw mud pies.

now square frank zappa, take 1 with frank zappa, take 2.

how this song was not used in an awesomely horrific '80s movie about how a high school kid from the working class finds himself, finds a hot crimp-haired girl, and finds a way to become prom king is completely beyond me.

ah, but zappa is no captain beefheart. behold:

magic band indeed. rock!

i would like to point out what appears to be half a handle of . . . whiskey? rum? . . . on the captain's onstage table.

and in the interest of full disclosure, i must reveal that i want to look like captain beefheart when i grow up - hat, sunglasses, and everything. just turn off the sound and pretend captain beefheart is teaching you about the history of women in politics. except for that end bit with the horn. that's just captain beefheart "playing" a horn.

the association of autonomous astronauts

2009-05-01T00:36:00.001-04:00

perhaps all anyone needs to know about the association of autonomous astronauts can be derived from their motto:

The days of this society are numbered. Its reasons and its merits have been weighed in the balance and found wanting; its inhabitants are divided into two parties, one of which wants to build its own spaceships and leave this world behind.

that is awesome. do these people have a fan club? does that astronaut have, like, ten pocket protectors attached to his spacesuit?

i, too, am weary of this planet. unlike the aaa, however, i do not trust my own mathematical capabilities enough to build a personal spacepod, fold myself into its tiny interior, and launch the thing in the general direction of the moon, hoping to god that said moon is, in fact, made of cheese. something would go wrong and my cobbled-together space thing would explode, my little appendages flying everywhere. gruesome!

worse might be this cute little guy exploding in a fireball of mechanical ingenuity gone wrong:

is that mesh thing really supposed to protect space monkey extraordinaire? is he saluting, or attempting to escape his permeable suit of death?

the only other thing that the aaa seems to believe in is a trance/future they refer to as "dreamtime," which i'm pretty sure they could achieve with a lot less trouble by smoking some weed. being high is like forming an autonomous community in space where everyone is on the equivalent of an anti-depressant, yes? no?

but wait! a twist - an evil twist. the autonomous astronauts believe in the power and the (trancelike) majesty of disco. perhaps i cannot join them in their quest for trascendence after all. i have musical principles. they're possibly the only principles i still possess. is mighty monkey actually doing a disco move?

i need more information. . .

The sands of Present Time are running out from under our feet. And why not? The Great Conundrum: "What are we here for?" is all that ever held us here in the first place. Fear. The answer to the riddle of the Ages has actually been out on the street since the First Step in Space. Who runs may read but few run fast enough. What are we here for? Does the great metaphysical nut revolve around that? Well, I'll crack it for you right now. What are we here for? We are here to go!

are you blown away? i am blown away.

so is nasa. apparently, in 1997, they decided to launch "starshine," a 48cm ball covered with 900 highly-polished mirrors intended to reflect the sun's rays so as to be observable from the ground until burning up upon re-entering the atmosphere after eight months of shining on in space. this utterly useless but really attractive object was launched by the space shuttle discovery. linda ham, a nasa flight director, says: "essentially it’s a disco ball" (BBC Online News, 5 June 1999).

a new space race for the 21st century, i hope.

alice in wonderland and guy debord

2009-04-30T09:25:00.000-04:00

i read alice in wonderland when i was twelve, then proceeding to fly through everything carroll ever wrote with an intense (and correct, as it turns out) belief that things would only get weirder. this fortuitous merging of lewis carroll weirdness with a current architectural history class theme actually seems to normalize carroll's story . . . as much as would be possible.

i must admit that the bit with the queen of hearts might actually be a more appropriate dubbing opportunity. of course, i may believe this simply because i used to have nightmares about the queen chasing me through the hedge labyrinth, only to trap me in a deadend. falling down a rabbithole ensued. dérive!

irrational fears

2009-04-30T01:11:00.002-04:00

i often wonder where my irrational fears come from. this is pertinent to my first post because i have an absolutely irrational fear (and hatred, as fear and hatred are frequently doled out in tandem) of the word "blog." it's an unnecessarily ugly word, a monosyllabic grunt that makes me cringe a little each time i hear or think it. i try to avoid hearing or thinking it. in a sense, then, this new project is one small, babystep attempt to conquer my fear of fat, squat words that i immediately connect to fat, squat ideas, and possibly fat, squat people, lit up like solitary lightbulbs and ponderously banging out posts in the middle of the night, when normal people are sleeping. this image is, of course, a stupid opinion of something that has become ubiquitous. I approach bloggers like bigots approach minority groups. the ones i know are exceptions. inventive people with inventive minds and wittiness not evidenced elsewhere in the - brace yourself for another truly awful word - blogosphere. so total immersion is the only path to an even cursory understanding of what in heavens this vast network of words (and people, i suppose) really is. off i go!

i'm going to use this blog to talk about things i like . . . and i like most everything. this is the standard first line for a first post, i guess. but as a lifer student, i don't get to write about most of these things that interest me, since the range of potential paper topics narrows with every year you spend in academe. this blog is me cheating.

i often reveal something strange about myself that no one else knows when i meet a new person. i've told people that i still hold my nose when i swim because i'm terrified of drowning. i've told people that i became obsessed with stanley kubrick and spent an entire summer writing him (meaning me) a lengthy letter about camera angles and lighting in a clockwork orange when i was a freshman in high school. i've told people that, for an entire year of my childhood, i pretended i was a spy and had a number of hide-outs around my house, equipped with flashlights, fresh batteries, ritz crackers, and books about spys and spying. this was the same year i learned how to hollow out a book to create a secret box/book in which to hide valuables and secrets and sensitive material. i never had any of these things, but i made several bookboxes, so i filled a number of them with my extensive collection of neat buttons, as well as various macaroni and cheese recipes.

so, as if with a new friend, i will now tell you that i am afraid of my own teeth. teeth are mysterious - they appear impossible to injure. little bastions of enamel. but they have nerves inside of them. they are utterly freakish things that reside inside your mouth and they will turn against you at any moment.

i also give you my favorite photograph of late - from my admittedly strange collection of people posing with vacuum cleaners. i wonder if captain magic (as i refer to him) is still around and, if so, whether he remembers this photograph or the circumstances under which someone felt impelled to take it. the captain doesn't seem weirded out by this pose, nor does he seem particularly excited by the chance to pose with a cleaning appliance in what is probably a halloween costume. i'll bet his childhood was not normal. i wonder if he was also afraid of his own teeth.