8.27.2009
No One Could Have Predicted
"Conservatives warn of 'Wellstone Effect'" -- remind me again why anyone gives a shit what Congressional conservatives think. They're completely irrelevant.
Tip to Atrios, whose headline I have filched.
Tip to Atrios, whose headline I have filched.
Pelecanos, Price, Friedman, McCullough, and Haruf Step On Down
If you're lucky, maybe you'll even get the magical sticker of presidential wonder. (Ok, I searched for quite some time for the magical sticker of presidential wonder, but basically the newest printing of Netherland has a red sticker with a quote from Obama on it where the "A Novel" sticker is now.)
I Don't Get it Either
Re: John Cole: All I know about Leon Wieseltier is that he's done more disgrace to the English language and logical reasoning than just about anyone this side of Donald Rumsfeld.
8.26.2009
At Least They Didn't Bother With Bukowski
The Times Higher Education supplement submits literary giants to faculty review for department hires. Kek.
Can't Wait for the U.S. Tour
Jello Biafra -- pretty much the musician for whom I have the most respect -- is back with a new band (Jello Biafra and the Guantanamo School of Medicine) touring the U.K. this fall. The Quietus has a great interview with him about the new band, the old band (THE old band, that is), Obama's policies, Bush's legacy and more. Looking forward to hearing these guys live.
Shinies
I've been off the grid for a couple weeks/getting everything through Google Reader, so I had not noticed the lovely redesign of The Millions.
We Just Want Our Single Payer
Gotta agree with Atrios on this -- forcing my generation into the welcoming claws of the medical-industrial-insurance complex isn't a great way to cement our support of the good 'ol DP.
Slowing Down with Charles Baxter
Great Rumpus interview with Charles Baxter on the obsession with speed/acceleration and the consequent distrust of slow life and silence that characterizes so much of contemporary American social culture. I'm not all that familiar with Baxter's work, but this interview definitely makes me more inclined to pick up his collection of essays under discussion, Burning Down the House (any Talking Heads reference is also a major plus, in my book).
Does the Dream Still Live?
I'm really filled with sadness right now because of Teddy... I'm fortunate enough to have become a constituent in the last year of his life, and am grateful that I met him once briefly. He was one of the few who had the courage to stand for a vision of a different and better America, and as the reality of the dream drifts slowly out to sea, I wonder how we will ever replace him.
8.25.2009
8.18.2009
8.16.2009
8.09.2009
8.08.2009
The Unedited Sarah Palin
"The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama's "death panel" so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their "level of productivity in society," whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil."
The horror, the horror!!!
The horror, the horror!!!
Twitter Zombies
Apparently a full quarter of Twitter users lack a pulse... the zombie part applies to all of us, I'm pretty sure
8.07.2009
For an Interesting Holiday Season...
Put on that Bob Dylan Christmas album and bust out the cheese ball!
8.06.2009
The Pains of Being Completely Vapid
Ah New York Times Fashion and Style section, you never disappoint! Whether it's lamenting the psychological trauma of Manhattan parents who can't imagine living on $250,000 a year, the horror of giving up posh private schools for little rich brats, or fawning over the contemporary "standards of attractiveness" that demand outpourings of cash for ludicrous image improvements followed by a helpless shrug of the shoulders that "the culture requires it," you really do encapsulate all that is idiotic and risible about contemporary life inside the corporate media bubble. Your helpless fawning over the bronzed and plucked image with which your advertisers have infected us is a step beyond pathetic. Your exhortations to bodily perfection are pathological, your writers poor mockeries of "journalists." May the ghost of Bernie Madoff devour their trust funds and bless them with psoriasis. And may the death of print hit you first and hardest for fellating your sponsors with anti-feminist and anti-intellectual corporate garbage. You will not be missed.
Indie Rock and Spirituality
Judy Berman has a really intelligent and fascinating look at the treatment of ethereal and transcendent themes in contemporary indie pop over @ The Believer that's definitely worth a read.
I think, however, one has to be careful in limiting the phenomenon of "indie rock's current metaphysical fixation" to the last five or so years. Indie rock has definitely trod this ground before, even if it reached different conclusions. Hüsker Dü's seminal 1984 album Zen Arcade is part bildungsroman, part spiritual odyssey that directly deals with the place of transcendence in music and modern existence (the track Hare Krsna is little more than the prayer, repeated over and over, grinding atonality signifying the cognitive dissonance that results from attempted spirituality, perhaps?)
Or one of my favorite albums, Sonic Youth's 1988 masterpiece Daydream Nation. The transcendent may not appear explicitly in the album's lyrics, but who could listen to the haunting vastness of "The Sprawl" or the atmospheric desolation of "Providence" without considering the metaphysics of solitude or a sort of spiritual heat-death. It may be the reverse side of the hazy spirituality embodied by Yeasayer or Animal Collective, to use two of Berman's examples, but that doesn't mean it doesn't take up the question of spirituality in general.
I think that may be the bigger point -- not that contemporary indie rock has suddenly discovered religion (or something approximating what religion may once have meant somewhere...), but that today spirituality can be seen as something positive -- or at least worth striving toward, whereas during the Reagan era, spiritual desolation and muck were unavoidable. Non-mainstream culture was torn between nihilism and rock bottom depression, and it makes sense that the concept of spirituality was dealt with in a negative way, exploring the seeming absence of any sort of transcendent in the face of messianic Christianity and materialism. Nor does contemporary indie rock escape this sort of negative exploration of spirituality -- Berman mentions the Arcade Fire's Neon Bible as an example of an album that "may also make a grab for our souls by recalling the sounds or harmonic structures of devotional songs, thus reawakening our collective memory of what faith and worship feel like," but it's worth noting that Neon Bible is a profoundly anti-religious album, with the hypocrisies of contemporary Christianity in its direct crosshairs, just to note one example.
If anything, the prevalence of indie music that expresses an open or positive attitude toward spirituality may be seen as a response to the evil perpetrated under the banner of heaven during the Bush years, most likely rooted in contemporary America's multiculturalism and appropriation of positive psychology, meditation, Buddhism, etc. In other words, what's changed is the era's attitude toward spirituality in general -- the music continues to mirror changes in social attitude toward religion and transcendence. The emergence of alternative spirituality and the growing liberalization of some branches of Christianity are reflected in music more willing to engage spirituality and transcendence on its own ground.
I think, however, one has to be careful in limiting the phenomenon of "indie rock's current metaphysical fixation" to the last five or so years. Indie rock has definitely trod this ground before, even if it reached different conclusions. Hüsker Dü's seminal 1984 album Zen Arcade is part bildungsroman, part spiritual odyssey that directly deals with the place of transcendence in music and modern existence (the track Hare Krsna is little more than the prayer, repeated over and over, grinding atonality signifying the cognitive dissonance that results from attempted spirituality, perhaps?)
Or one of my favorite albums, Sonic Youth's 1988 masterpiece Daydream Nation. The transcendent may not appear explicitly in the album's lyrics, but who could listen to the haunting vastness of "The Sprawl" or the atmospheric desolation of "Providence" without considering the metaphysics of solitude or a sort of spiritual heat-death. It may be the reverse side of the hazy spirituality embodied by Yeasayer or Animal Collective, to use two of Berman's examples, but that doesn't mean it doesn't take up the question of spirituality in general.
I think that may be the bigger point -- not that contemporary indie rock has suddenly discovered religion (or something approximating what religion may once have meant somewhere...), but that today spirituality can be seen as something positive -- or at least worth striving toward, whereas during the Reagan era, spiritual desolation and muck were unavoidable. Non-mainstream culture was torn between nihilism and rock bottom depression, and it makes sense that the concept of spirituality was dealt with in a negative way, exploring the seeming absence of any sort of transcendent in the face of messianic Christianity and materialism. Nor does contemporary indie rock escape this sort of negative exploration of spirituality -- Berman mentions the Arcade Fire's Neon Bible as an example of an album that "may also make a grab for our souls by recalling the sounds or harmonic structures of devotional songs, thus reawakening our collective memory of what faith and worship feel like," but it's worth noting that Neon Bible is a profoundly anti-religious album, with the hypocrisies of contemporary Christianity in its direct crosshairs, just to note one example.
If anything, the prevalence of indie music that expresses an open or positive attitude toward spirituality may be seen as a response to the evil perpetrated under the banner of heaven during the Bush years, most likely rooted in contemporary America's multiculturalism and appropriation of positive psychology, meditation, Buddhism, etc. In other words, what's changed is the era's attitude toward spirituality in general -- the music continues to mirror changes in social attitude toward religion and transcendence. The emergence of alternative spirituality and the growing liberalization of some branches of Christianity are reflected in music more willing to engage spirituality and transcendence on its own ground.
Speaking of Apocalypse
Slate's fascinating and disturbing series on how America will end continues today with what, in my opinion, is the likeliest scenario: totalitarian rule.
Death to the Big Box!
The sooner Borders and B&N die, the better. Indies will endure, because we actually give a shit about the products we supposedly exist to sell -- books.
Why Evangelical Christianity is Dangerous
Courtesy of Andrew, this report from Secular Humanism is completely horrifying, if completely unsurprising.
And it's that closing to logic and clinging to antiquated modes of thought despite countervailing evidence that defines fanaticism, and what, dangerously, links the prevailing form of Protestant Christianity in America to insurgent Islam in the Middle East. The salient point is that there is no difference between Christian fanaticism and Islamic fanaticism -- both are contemptuous of modernity and terrified by it, both are willing to murder in the name of their fanaticism (see: Tiller, George, and the Iraq war), and both contort facts to fit their particular brand of eschatology.
The frightening thing is that Bush didn't even seem to be that much of a zealot -- just a fairly unintelligent, uncurious sort who was content to accept whatever ideology suited him best at the moment. Now that the evangelical movement controls all the levers of power within the Republican Party, the possibility of having a true fanatic (see: Palin, Sarah) is greater than ever. No one who views foreign policy through the lens of a 2,000-year old book of fairy tales is qualified to lead the free world.
Incredibly, President George W. Bush told French President Jacques Chirac in early 2003 that Iraq must be invaded to thwart Gog and Magog, the Bible’s satanic agents of the Apocalypse.It would almost be funny that a leader of one of the world's most culturally and technologically advanced nations would invade a foreign country and toss away the lives of over 4,000 soldiers based on a 2,000 year old document, but that, my friends, is what fanaticism does. Having been raised Baptist, I'm pretty familiar with this mindset -- I hear from relatives all the time how we've entered the "end times" and how Obama may be the antichrist. Because their medieval form of religion cannot possibly fit into a modern world order, and because that religion is what they cling to in order to bypass the disorientation and vertigo of contemporary life, the world becomes populated with symbols and dark intimations of apocalypse. Gog and Magog as the USSR and China is so 1980s. There's no need for internal consistency or logic -- somewhere the puppetmaster is pulling the strings in the foretold manner, and all you have to do to get your seat on the Golden Gate Express is shut up and trust what your elders interpret from a really old book.Honest. This isn’t a joke. The president of the United States, in a top-secret phone call to a major European ally, asked for French troops to join American soldiers in attacking Iraq as a mission from God.
Now out of office, Chirac recounts that the American leader appealed to their “common faith” (Christianity) and told him: “Gog and Magog are at work in the Middle East…. The biblical prophecies are being fulfilled…. This confrontation is willed by God, who wants to use this conflict to erase his people’s enemies before a New Age begins.”
And it's that closing to logic and clinging to antiquated modes of thought despite countervailing evidence that defines fanaticism, and what, dangerously, links the prevailing form of Protestant Christianity in America to insurgent Islam in the Middle East. The salient point is that there is no difference between Christian fanaticism and Islamic fanaticism -- both are contemptuous of modernity and terrified by it, both are willing to murder in the name of their fanaticism (see: Tiller, George, and the Iraq war), and both contort facts to fit their particular brand of eschatology.
The frightening thing is that Bush didn't even seem to be that much of a zealot -- just a fairly unintelligent, uncurious sort who was content to accept whatever ideology suited him best at the moment. Now that the evangelical movement controls all the levers of power within the Republican Party, the possibility of having a true fanatic (see: Palin, Sarah) is greater than ever. No one who views foreign policy through the lens of a 2,000-year old book of fairy tales is qualified to lead the free world.
8.05.2009
Deep Thought
Watching people wander about with blinking Bluetooth devices in their ears still scares the shit out of me.
Tough Line to Walk on Ahmadi
Though Robert Gibbs' initial statement that Ahmedinejad is the "elected leader of Iran" was definitely a stupid and careless remark (and his correction and rephrasing necessary even if a bit late), I think it's careful to recognize just how little wiggle-room the Obama administration has on public pronouncements about Iran. It's easy to bemoan Obama's lack of a more assertive position as capitulation or the dreaded "a" word (appeasement) if you see the world in black and white and lack any sense of history (hi neocons!).
What Ahmedinejad and his thugs want more than anything is for the U.S. to take a stand on the side of the Green Wave. That would allow comparisons to 1953 -- however fallacious -- and could reduce support for the resistance among Iranians on the fence, dissatisfied with the illegitimacy of the current regime, but wary of anything tainted by Western involvement. The Obama Administration's response thus far has been impeccable -- express solidarity with the will of the Iranian people while refraining as much as possible from giving the regime anything to use as a marker of Western interference. Obama gets that any sort of change has to come from the Iranian people -- American influence, even if only rhetorical, will end up hurting the nascent resistence.
As icky as it may feel to express neutrality in the face of brutality, repression, and an illegitimate coup, tossing on the cowboy boots and brandishing our big swinging Amerkan dick will hurt a lot more than it helps. The challenge is to remain as neutral as possible, to couch every pronouncement in terms that refer to the will of the Iranian people. Hopefully the administration will continue to use the kind of language Gibbs employed when he corrected himself:
And, as Andrew notes, they have. Remember, the 1979 revolution took over a year to play out. This thing is not over, the regime has lost all credibility to a pretty good chunk of the population, and the rifts among clerics and between clerics and Ahmadi are still there. Let's cool down and let events play out while remaining noncommittal about the legitimacy of Ahmadi's reelection -- neutrality delivers the same message as heated rhetoric without the potential costs to the freedom of the Iranian people.
What Ahmedinejad and his thugs want more than anything is for the U.S. to take a stand on the side of the Green Wave. That would allow comparisons to 1953 -- however fallacious -- and could reduce support for the resistance among Iranians on the fence, dissatisfied with the illegitimacy of the current regime, but wary of anything tainted by Western involvement. The Obama Administration's response thus far has been impeccable -- express solidarity with the will of the Iranian people while refraining as much as possible from giving the regime anything to use as a marker of Western interference. Obama gets that any sort of change has to come from the Iranian people -- American influence, even if only rhetorical, will end up hurting the nascent resistence.
As icky as it may feel to express neutrality in the face of brutality, repression, and an illegitimate coup, tossing on the cowboy boots and brandishing our big swinging Amerkan dick will hurt a lot more than it helps. The challenge is to remain as neutral as possible, to couch every pronouncement in terms that refer to the will of the Iranian people. Hopefully the administration will continue to use the kind of language Gibbs employed when he corrected himself:
"I denoted that Mr. Ahmadinejad was the elected leader of Iran. I would say that’s not for me to pass judgment on,” Gibbs told reporters aboard Air Force One. “He’s been inaugurated. That’s a fact. Whether any election was fair, obviously the Iranian people still have questions about that, and we’ll let them decide about that.”
And, as Andrew notes, they have. Remember, the 1979 revolution took over a year to play out. This thing is not over, the regime has lost all credibility to a pretty good chunk of the population, and the rifts among clerics and between clerics and Ahmadi are still there. Let's cool down and let events play out while remaining noncommittal about the legitimacy of Ahmadi's reelection -- neutrality delivers the same message as heated rhetoric without the potential costs to the freedom of the Iranian people.
8.04.2009
Offworld Pulp
This is pretty cool: fictional magazine covers from Blade Runner that were used in the background of a magazine stand.
Thanks Bookninja!
Thanks Bookninja!
Schadenfreude!
Das heisst, a creationist theme park seized by the feds for half a million in back taxes! Oh, and the minister who runs the fun house? In jail for tax fraud: "Saying he was employed by God and his ministers were not subject to payroll taxes, he claimed no income or property."
It's nice when fraud begets fraud.
It's nice when fraud begets fraud.
Wrong Globe, Asshats
What is it about writing mock Shakespeare that makes reporters for second-rate newspapers chortle at their own cleverness? So you read Macbeth in your freshman English seminar thirty years ago and can spell "Alarum." Somehow reducing a complex incident that gets at the very heart of the ambiguities of racism to doggerel doesn't really raise the dialogue or impress much.
Although minor props for referring to Joe Biden as "Fool."
Although minor props for referring to Joe Biden as "Fool."
While we're on the topic of lit trailers...
Penguin has a trailer up for Inherent Vice, Pynchon's new novel which hits shelves today. The actual narrator may or may not be Thomas Pynchon. It may have happened before (the Simpsons), but there is nothing (else) to compare it to now.
I'm sort of torn about whether or not to take the plunge on this one -- Pynchon's pretty much my favorite author, and I'm going to read it eventually, but $28 seems pretty steep for an elegy to the promise of the 60s -- granted, a drugged-out, picaresque, paranoid elegy to the 60s, but still. I'm sure it'll be entertaining, but the evocation of that particular historical moment always makes me think of that one passage in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas:
Even wrapped up in shiny Pynchonian/noir paper, I think Inherent Vice will just end up being... depressing.
I'm sort of torn about whether or not to take the plunge on this one -- Pynchon's pretty much my favorite author, and I'm going to read it eventually, but $28 seems pretty steep for an elegy to the promise of the 60s -- granted, a drugged-out, picaresque, paranoid elegy to the 60s, but still. I'm sure it'll be entertaining, but the evocation of that particular historical moment always makes me think of that one passage in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas:
We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave...It's strange that even though I completely missed out on that era, I can't help but think of the end of the 60s with a sense of loss, maybe even more poignant because the loss is irretrievable. Considered forty years out by someone born in the 80s, it seems that the death of that energy signified a final death of any sort of broad-based challenge to prevailing social and economic norms. From the vantage point of 2009, even ripples seem unthinkable. When the wave crashed, it crashed.
So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark -- that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.
Even wrapped up in shiny Pynchonian/noir paper, I think Inherent Vice will just end up being... depressing.
8.03.2009
Panopticism for the working class
I understand that Britain is a de facto police state, but apparently the brilliant Mr. Balls (that doesn't get old, does it?) has decided to get rid of the artifice.
Somehow placing CCTV cameras in private homes to monitor compliance to social norms and right conduct seems a bit mm... nightmarish? Questions of legality aside, have we already reached the point where nonconformity to normative behavior warrants complete abnegation of privacy rights? Of course it was (and is) inevitable that improved satellite imagery, exponentially expanding data storage capacity, and the rapid proliferation of image-capture devices would (and will) lead to practically ubiquitous surveillance. Britain just got there first.
I would say that Labour richly deserves the bloodbath that awaits it in the next election, but then there's shadow Home Secretary Chris Grayling of the Conservatives, who believes that the videoscreens are "too little, too late."
Somehow placing CCTV cameras in private homes to monitor compliance to social norms and right conduct seems a bit mm... nightmarish? Questions of legality aside, have we already reached the point where nonconformity to normative behavior warrants complete abnegation of privacy rights? Of course it was (and is) inevitable that improved satellite imagery, exponentially expanding data storage capacity, and the rapid proliferation of image-capture devices would (and will) lead to practically ubiquitous surveillance. Britain just got there first.
I would say that Labour richly deserves the bloodbath that awaits it in the next election, but then there's shadow Home Secretary Chris Grayling of the Conservatives, who believes that the videoscreens are "too little, too late."
Electric Literature Gets it Right
A new promotional video for Jim Shepard's story "Your Fate Hurdles Down at You" from the inaugural issue of Electric Literature. High quality content + innovative marketing + multimedia could just equal the new model for literature, post-print.
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