The untimely demise of the Türkmenbashy has led to a slightly confused inflationary rise for the Ruhnama. Amazon offers used hardcover editions valued between USD 12.50 and 44.95, with a new edition going for 56.51. Ebay, meanwhile, is rasing the bar with opening bids starting at 69.- and 129.- for the Buy It Now™ option.
On a relatively unrelated note concerning another cultural low point of '06, Athenian philosopher Michael Stipe noted that "habeas corpus disappearing kind of sucked."
2006-12-28
value in manat.
2006-12-19
sec-prog attacks in the wox.
Just à propos of the calendar: As a "secular-progressive," I confess to be an insurgent in the War on Christmas (or WoX). I purposely respond to people's good wishes with "Happy Holidays" and "Season's Greetings," while cynically humming "it's the most wonderful time of the year" and instigating lawsuits against holiday displays in public places on the grounds that any Christmas displays such as crèches or trees should be curtailed to their proper house of worship: shopping malls.
2006-12-05
2006-11-29
caveman, meta-redux.
Whenever I'm confused about the direction our culture is going, I start to pay attention to television commercials again.
So, leave it to the hard-sell boys on Mad Ave to deep-focus my attention span. The whole Geico carpet-bombing campaign that by now has seemed to be inundating us for decades - i'nn'it? - is a fantastic product pitch. What's sold is the convenience of "switching." Forget about safety or peace of mind. A legally required nuisance is turned into an independent consumer's choice. This non-issue, of course, needs its appropriate fictional crisis in order to mask the fact that the choice is fictitious to begin with. (Oh, T-Dub Adorno, stop turning!) Enter the caveman and his indignant reptilian criticism. The clip up there is the perfect encapsulation of contemporary marketing strategies and shows how meta is not the new paradigm.
UPDATE:
The beauty that is this commercial derives from the fact that the scenario only works if you are already willingly predisposed to understand the reference to our indignant caveman in transit (muzak feat. Eliott Lipp). Haunted by the ignorant slights against his position, cavedude attempts to remove himself from the controversy by going on a leisurely vacation, whereupon he is confronted by his own stereotype and painfully realizes the limitations of identity politics once more. This recognizable frustration is what the commercial emphasizes in order to offer a sentiment of safety: I see what's happening as well, but I am not helpless. There is a number I can call without extreme prejudice. Thank Geico for God and the way things are.
2006-11-20
if it was packaged wisdom.
A few tidbits were frightening and edifying at the same time last week. The Wall Street Journal reported on the growing problem of rampant plagiarism by pastors. Across denominations, sermons are retrieved and recycled online to be fed to unsuspecting parishioners. Quoth one unrepentant pastor: "We need to get over the idea that we have to be completely original with our message." As long as you stay on-message. While the full-length Borat movie was uploaded in ten-minute increments on the "Goog-Tube," only to be taken down post-haste, the Chinese Wikipedia became mysteriously accessible again and logged in a record 1200 new-user registrations per day. The genocide in Darfur has its own MySpace page now, but the "I am African" campaign hit a snag with the appearance of Gwynneth "Mbgwuini" Paltrow. In related colonialist news, it will please you, no doubt, though, to find that the first edition of Ian Fleming's 1957 From Russia with Love is being offered at $ 4,500.-, which is a cool two grand more than a first-edition copy of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged from the same year. All this while Kramer went nuts.
2006-11-14
critical mass.
I do not exempt myself from our period of relentless pragmatism and a collective urge towards stupidity enabled by a permanent state of partial attention, but it will become necessary to think about the masses again.
Or, to paraphrase the brilliant CitiPremierPass credit card commercials currently broadcast on terrestrial and cable television, "revolting - very, very, very revolting."
2006-11-09
2006-11-04
over and over again.
In keeping with its tradition of disdainful middle-brow ressentiment against academic thinking, the New York Times has enlisted a (Stanley) Fish bowl view for its blogs features that intends to challenge “preconceived ideas about politics, education and society” entitled Think Again. While I welcome any rhetorical flourishes of this insouciant idiomatic expression, I deplore its programmatic implication, as if repetition could make a difference. Conversely, are we really back to thinking again? Mostly, though, these "challenges" amount to aggressively middle-of-the-road assertions of common sense. A useful corrective to the unconditional celebration of the wisdom of crowds in this respect can be found in an article exploring Digital Maoism, with the Times already reporting on 'net mobs in China.
2006-10-31
contradiction in terms.
I will refrain from any snickering comments. I will refrain from any snickering comments. I will refrain from any snickering comments and embrace the fact that there may be people out there who have sought such inspiration for a long time.
Roam Confidently With the Cultured Class. From the book description: "Millions of Americans keep bedside books of prayer and meditative reflection collections of daily passages to stimulate spiritual thought and advancement. The Intellectual Devotional is a secular version of the same collection of 365 short lessons that will inspire and invigorate the reader every day of the year. Each daily digest of wisdom is drawn from one of seven fields of knowledge: history, literature, philosophy, mathematics and science, religion, fine arts, and music. Impress your friends by explaining Plato's Cave Allegory, pepper your cocktail party conversation with opera terms, and unlock the mystery of how batteries work. Daily readings range from important passages in literature to basic principles of physics, from pivotal events in history to images of famous paintings with accompanying analysis. The books goal is to refresh knowledge we've forgotten, make new discoveries, and exercise modes of thinking that are ordinarily neglected once our school days are behind us. Offering an escape from the daily grind to contemplate higher things, The Intellectual Devotional is a great way to awaken in the morning or to revitalize one's mind before retiring in the evening."
2006-10-27
nomads in da house.
The cultural self-imagination of the US and A in the 1970s and early 1980s was frequently spelled out through the figure of the foreigner, whose grotesque attempts to adjust and assimilate to American social habits and their attendant vicissitudes would mark the outlines of its ideal instantiation. We chuckled at “two wild and crazy guys,” Mork and Mindy, "the Coneheads," or Balki Bartokomous. How utterly appropriate then that this mode of representation should return with a retro-character straight out of a Paleolithic state of mind: Borat Sagdiyev, the intrepid Kazakh reporter. The latest rumors indicate that 20th Century Fox is scaling down the film’s
2006-10-19
boundaries redeployed.
In the open space that defines the so-called marketplace of ideas let us take note that in the name of freedom, the US government "has recently denied, delayed, or revoked visas to a group of seventy-five South Korean farmers and trade unionists opposed to a free-trade agreement; a Marxist Greek academic; a Sri-Lankan hip-hop singer, whose lyrics were deemed sympathetic to the Tamil Tigers and The Palestine Liberation Organization; a Bolivian professor of Latin-American history who had been offered a position at the University of Nebraska; a Basque historian; a former Sandinista minister of health; and nine thousand five hundred Burmese refugees." At the same time, the news agency Reuters has now established a Bureau Chief in the virtual world of Second life, who reports on the work of an Indiana University professor working to recreate a virtual world of Shakespeare.
2006-10-17
this is our anthem.
This is our country, according to the new Chevrolet Silverado commercial entitled "Anthem," which you can see here in its full-length but slightly infringed version:
Nothing like Rosa Parks and Hurricane Katrina to sell a pick-up truck with 15 miles to the gallon. An American revolution indeed.
Naturally, an edited response has already been posted here.
UPDATE: It figures. The previous link has been removed. Here's a new one.
2006-10-03
narrative template.
One of the few eggheads with his own fan site notes in his review of Pascale Casanova the following characteristics for a global literature prototype: it features "a trauma-and-recovery story, with magic-realist elements, involving abuse and family dysfunction, that arrives at resolution by the invocation of spiritual or holistic verities."
2006-09-29
burnt blogs.
Belatedly travelling the scorched net you will find the ones with wisdom. Recently reformed sprezzatura offers this in the New York Times: "Seriously, the blogosphere strips argument of logic and rhetoric down to the naked emotion behind it" and notes that bloggers "vent out of the pain of being unacknowledged." Much more humbly and beautifully, this one bids farewell with "I will leave this post as the tombstone for this ugly little blog that brought out the vilest in me and has now left me in deep shame for the rest of my life."
2006-09-27
for 'transgressive' insert 'edgy' throughout.
Why does the entelechy of the force of critical thinking invariably turn into its own caricature? In our triple-dub times of World War "W" the strategic values of deconstruction are being used to dismantle the very idea of democracy and our C-in-C condescends to practice a Brechtian sense of politics as the arrogant theatre of performative artifice. Oh, that ancient Chinese curse - may you live in the most "interesting" of times. Will it ever not be true?
2006-09-19
meanders.
To get lost in this world means looking for le temps perdu while muttering obscenities in Esperanto: "Fragmented and splintered into incomprehensible facets of nothing. As well as this, alongside, comes a sense of complete loss. All suddenly becoming none, it as not. Though awareness persists: the absence of death, of, of, of. Intangible, alright, but when it is yourself, are you not allowed? Of course not, how stupid and infantile that would seem. To take yourself apart, to examine that which isn't, to realize what is of the essential importance. To watch it depart. Is it a route." Bujholej, putinfilaĉo - what in the dickens is this?
2006-09-15
nothing, and so be it.
Oriana Fallaci (1929 - 2006)
The second death that leaves me wistful and saddened this week. She was such an important figure in the art of journalism - a sharply critical, compassionate, and brilliant woman, whose skills of observation we would desparately need now. Unfortunately, it seems that she, like so many others, could no longer comprehend the difficulties of our age towards the end of her life and just plain lost it. But her book on Vietnam (Niente e così sia, translated as Nothing and Amen, which is a must-read if you can find it) and her Un uomo on Alekos Panagoulis remain masterpieces of 20th-century journalism. Both had a tremendous impact on me. This woman was fierce.
2006-09-07
look at what passes for the new.
"Begin again. It is like Homer's catalogue of ships:it fills up the time. I speak in figures, well enough, the dressesyou wear are figures also, we could not meet otherwise. When I speakof flowers it is to recall
that at one time
we were young."
This from William Carlos Williams, Asphodel, That Greeny Flower.
2006-08-23
one small step.
Technically and with mind-numbing accuracy, the prosaic first words spoken on the moon were "Contact light. Shutdown. Engine stop. ACA out of detent. Out of detent. Auto. Mode Control, both Auto. Descent Engine Command Override, Off. Engine Arm, Off. 413 is in. Engine arm is off."
This was then followed by the slightly more famous "Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed." Likewise, the last words spoken on the moon were not, as is generally reported, "America's challenge of today has forged man's destiny of tomorrow," but rather, "Let's get this mother outta here."
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)
