met hotel; edmonton: perfect marcel bruer/le courbsier/van der rohe chairs; in perfect three point settings, between them a large laminated tree hunk to express how nature can never be conquered, and to aesthically contrast machine and nature, set apart in pods, the distance enough to mean that all were really alone--v. modern, v. sexy--except the carpet resembled a tawdry casino somewhere b/w reno and tahoe--a cheap one that gets you lost and hides bodily fluids, might be there from the beginning. (ie when the building thrusted up mid70s)

“In a slowed-down, depressed world economy, America’s propensity to consume more than it produces ends up being viewed by the rest of the planet as something positive, even meritorious…
“We behave toward the United States like Keynesian global citizens who are expecting the state to jumpstart the economy. Indeed, according to Keynes, one of the purposes of the state is to support demand through consumption. In his General Theory Keynes has a kind word for the pharaohs who built the pyramids, big spenders who thereby regulated economic activity. Our pyramid is America—kept intact by the work of the entire planet…

“From an economic point of view American society has become the ‘state’ of the entire planet. It often expresses its own hostility to the state, however, an attitude that it puts into practice through efforts to limit the state’s role in the national economy… Paradoxically, the negation of the state in the society has ended up making a ‘state’ of the society. Moreover, it is an entity that has, on the one hand, the negative characteristics that classical or neoclassical economists attribute to the state (namely nonproductivity and financial irresponsibility); and on the other, the positive potential the Keynesian economists concede to the state, namely the capacity to stimulate demand in times of depression.”

—Emmanuel Todd, After the Empire: the Breakdown of the American Order, Gallimard, France, 2002, tr.fr. the French for Constable, London, 2004, pp.70-71, (and re-punctuated by rfn for clarity, sense etc)


via sinkers blog.

if anyone can help these people do so, prison libraries are so scant its disturbing, and there are cosntant limits in attempting to educate prisoners, and education is pretty much the key to limiting recidivism.

Ashcroft and co. hate yr freedom, create an alliance and seek too increase limits on porn

first steps towards other things, my dears, first steps towards other things.

shouldnt be attaching ashcrofts name automatically, sorry--here is there web site

Ashcroft and co. hate yr freedom, create an alliance and seek too increase limits on porn

first steps towards other things, my dears, first steps towards other things.

this is a third hand source, so keep that in mind--but apparently there is footage of a soilder raping a 15 yr old in iraq

tintin becomes a symbol for us all, much more in its way then mickey mouse, because tintin had to find its way, and because tintin visited more places as a human--real places, so the dissoance b/w a russian reading tintin in russia in russian would be almsot the first notice of what was real and what was fiction.

this article, indicated a history of tintin in iran, esp the censorship

tintin becomes a symbol for us all, much more in its way then mickey mouse, because tintin had to find its way, and because tintin visited more places as a human--real places, so the dissoance b/w a russian reading tintin in russia in russian would be almsot the first notice of what was real and what was fiction.

this article, indicated a history of tintin in iran.

robot fucking

England is overhauling their education system--this makes me a slight bit nervous.

thrillers are like porn, both expect a money shot, things to end with certain ejaculating rituals, douglas upends that.

this is a useless but fun meme.

If you had to choose

1. Fred Astaire or Gene Kelly?
Gene Kellys pure athleticism, his attempts at making dance come from the real-- (ie w. a broom)
2. The Great Gatsby or The Sun Also Rises?
gatsby. more sexually confused and morally ambigous.
3. Count Basie or Duke Ellington?
ellington
4. Cats or dogs?
cats
5. Matisse or Picasso?
matisse.
6. Yeats or Eliot?
yeats
7. Buster Keaton or Charlie Chaplin?
Keaton, meloncholy w/o being maudlin.
8. Flannery O’Connor or John Updike?
o connor.
9. To Have and Have Not or Casablanca?
have i told you how little i like casablanca. To Have or Have Not
10. Jackson Pollock or Willem de Kooning?
de Kooning's women, jacksons early drawings
11. The Who or the Stones?
stones
12. Philip Larkin or Sylvia Plath?
larkin
13. Trollope or Dickens?
trollope, barely
14. Billie Holiday or Ella Fitzgerald?
disintergration, blackness (of both caliberes)--holiday
15. Dostoyevsky or Tolstoy?
cant abide either, but for the gambler fydor
16. The Moviegoer or The End of the Affair?
moviegoer
17. George Balanchine or Martha Graham?
graham
18. Hot dogs or hamburgers?
at least i know where the meat comes from in burgers
19. Letterman or Leno?
foir the explicit surrealist run in the 80s, letterman
20. Wilco or Cat Power?
power, see holiday
21. Verdi or Wagner?
verdi, if i have to
22. Grace Kelly or Marilyn Monroe?
monroe, cause of andy.
23. Bill Monroe or Johnny Cash?
cash as singer, monroe as player
24. Kingsley or Martin Amis?
martin for the war against cliche
25. Robert Mitchum or Marlon Brando?
mitchum, he did jail time.
26. Mark Morris or Twyla Tharp?
twyla.
27. Vermeer or Rembrandt?
vemeer
28. Tchaikovsky or Chopin?
29. Red wine or white?
red
30. Noël Coward or Oscar Wilde?
oscar--enourmously difficult question to answer, cause i think that cowards career is much more complicated, much more sophisticated and longer/better then wilde--its wildes personal intergrity that did it, but even there comes this level of earnestness i cant abide.
31. Grosse Pointe Blank or High Fidelity?
gpb
32. Shostakovich or Prokofiev?
if he was really taking the piss shostakovich
33. Mikhail Baryshnikov or Rudolf Nureyev?
nureyev, for that horsecocked avedon photo
34. Constable or Turner?
turner, except for the skystudies of constable
35. The Searchers or Rio Bravo?
searchers, for that one shot where everything is in shadow, john wayne and the praries, for that i can excuse the politics.
36. Comedy or tragedy?
comedy as tragedy
37. Fall or spring?
spring
38. Manet or Monet?
manet (hard edges, harsh light)
39. The Sopranos or The Simpsons?
simpsons
40. Rodgers and Hart or Gershwin and Gershwin?
for my funny valentine, rodgers and hart completey. (one work can be so seminal)
41. Joseph Conrad or Henry James?
at least i can read conrad
42. Sunset or sunrise?
was this the little girl i married.
43. Johnny Mercer or Cole Porter?
mercer, cause i always go for the underdog.
44. Mac or PC?
mac
45. New York or Los Angeles?
i think im starting to fall in love with la
46. Partisan Review or Horizon?
partisan
47. Stax or Motown?
stax, see johnny mercer. (stax is also less
48. Van Gogh or Gauguin?
who doesnt fall in love with warm oceans, white sand and half naked native girls, and which stock broker doesnt want to see this love as philosophical.
49. Steely Dan or Elvis Costello?
elvis costello
50. Reading a blog or reading a magazine?
which blog, which magazine
51. John Gielgud or Laurence Olivier?
acting or fucking (danny kaye vs hyde park bogs ?) Gielgud
52. Only the Lonely or Songs for Swingin’ Lovers?
onley the lonley
53. Chinatown or Bonnie and Clyde?
bonnie and clyde
54. Ghost World or Election?
election
55. Minimalism or conceptual art?
minimalism
56. Daffy Duck or Bugs Bunny?
daffy
57. Modernism or postmodernism?
post structalism
58. Batman or Spider-Man?
batman for the comix. spider man for the myth.
59. Emmylou Harris or Lucinda Williams?
harris cause of dolly
60. Johnson or Boswell?
boswell, always been a fan of gossip
61. Jane Austen or Virginia Woolf?
woolf, cause depressives are always more fun then snobs
62. The Honeymooners or The Dick Van Dyke Show?
dick van dyke. the entrance of mary tyler moore, who was good for a few years
63. An Eames chair or a Noguchi table?
eames.
64. Out of the Past or Double Indemnity?
double indeminty. fred mccurry
65. The Marriage of Figaro or Don Giovanni?
don giovanni, for the who i fucked aria)
66. Blue or green?
green
67. A Midsummer Night’s Dream or As You Like It?
midsummer, cause of puck
68. Ballet or opera?
ballet
69. Film or live theater?
film
70. Acoustic or electric?
acoustic
71. North by Northwest or Vertigo?
vertigo, cause i have no idea whats going on.
72. Sargent or Whistler?
sargent
73. V.S. Naipaul or Milan Kundera?
naipul, except for his racism
74. The Music Man or Oklahoma?
oklahama
75. Sushi, yes or no?
yes (and anything else on the menu)
76. The New Yorker under Ross or Shawn?
ross
77. Tennessee Williams or Edward Albee?
albee
78. The Portrait of a Lady or The Wings of the Dove?
save me
79. Paul Taylor or Merce Cunningham?
80. Frank Lloyd Wright or Mies van der Rohe?
van der rohe's rooves dont leak
81. Diana Krall or Norah Jones?
krall
82. Watercolor or pastel?
watercolour
83. Bus or subway?
subway
84. Stravinsky or Schoenberg?
schoenberg
85. Crunchy or smooth peanut butter?
crunchy
86. Willa Cather or Theodore Dreiser?
cather, drieser makes my eyes shrivel from boredom
87. Schubert or Mozart?
schubert
88. The Fifties or the Twenties?
20s
89. Huckleberry Finn or Moby-Dick?
miby dick
90. Thomas Mann or James Joyce?
joyce
91. Lester Young or Coleman Hawkins?
lester young
92. Emily Dickinson or Walt Whitman?
dickinson, though i do like the barabic yawp
93. Abraham Lincoln or Winston Churchill?
lincoln
94. Liz Phair or Aimee Mann?
phair
95. Italian or French cooking?
french if provence, italin if tuscan
96. Bach on piano or harpsichord?
gould played piano
97. Anchovies, yes or no?
oh, god yes.
98. Short novels or long ones?
short
99. Swing or bebop?
bebop
100. "The Last Judgment" or "The Last Supper"?
judgement

does this work now

if the arch bishop of boston is to be listened to...being prochoice is hersey, and kerry may be guily (and excommed)

if the arch bishop of boston is to be listened to...being prochoice is hersey, and kerry may be guily (and excommed)

another thing about moore, he is paranoid to the extreme, some justified (i think that some people did not want to get his movie distrubuted) and sometimes not (it should have been rated r). he seems to be one of those leftists who thinks that no one should disagree with him, of if they do its his own personal failing that they havent

he doesnt seem to belive that he has made it (an oscar is a pretty good sign the establishment wants to give you handjobs, once you get the number one movie at the box off, the establishment will give you blowjobs)

It’s answerable — to me anyway — bcz it can be turned on its head: if yr pro-war, then how squalid and inept does a war have to get before it just undoes all the hoped-for, the “necessary” good? How bad does it have to get?

Sinker on Radio Free Narnia

i saw 9/11 today and the problem i have is the emotional manipulation, the dead babies heaped on trucks, the weeping widows (sept 11 widows, iraqi widows, one extra special all american michigan house wife catholic widow), the cheap stunts that used to be debordan deconstruction but now arent, the collusion b/w the bin ladens and osama, the assumption that family ties suggest a certain closeness, the absoulte surity that bush didnt win the election and even if he didnt, the constant harping on the fact while ignoring other things, the senseless, almost pornographic violence, the random and rabid editing (that overshadowed interesting stuff like the Caryle Group and Haliburton), the not taking a side about the war really, the assumption that bush was stupid when he most likely isnt, the twisting of facts when the shit is so bad facts dont have to be twisted (ie making a big deal that the saudi ambassodor visited bush for dinner 4 days after that date in sept--the whole thing was saudi, if it was belgium i would want the same talk, and the only way to get answers and oil was politeness), the assumption that the only way to tell a story is pure bombast because apparently america is too stupid to listen to anything else, the pretending to be working class while taking money from disney, winning awards at cannes and sending his girls off to their tony private school from his multimillion dollar upper west side apartment...

and the fact that if a good leftist (and come on, im a good leftist) says these things he is considered pariah.

everyone says that hes catering to swing voters, to his mass media fed audience...if this is the audience thats winning, an audience who cannot understand intellectual debate, who demands bread and circuses, then america can get what they deserve.

one more thot about the amish, i wonder if the methods that they have used to prosecute crimes, the shaming and disfellowship and excommunication and shunning and silence and extra work, are effective against recommitting, or even work therputeically. i belive that different cultures need different legal systems, and law is devolped orgaincally as a reaction to the structures of a community- what are the legalsitc implications (not ethically or morally) to the idea of an amish court.

can we compare it to a native healing circle ?

astonishing artifacts by ray beldner, modern art masterpieces made of dollar bills (the pop ones, esp. the warhols are great, in the sense of how they show the tension between craft and object, betweent money and art, between concept as clever and concept as intellectually valid.)