reading sontag on photography and eric wilson's new book on horror,  both mention browning's freaks, wilson more obliquely than sontag--neither say, why the moment in freaks, during the dinner scene, many of us find the one of us sign comforting, mostly because we are the monsters, we are the freaks, and we wish to claim the authority of ownership, why whale's frankenstein and bride of frankenstein are so powerful, because for people who are convinced that they are abject, or monsters, whale tells us that we are the martyrs. maybe cabin in the woods is problematic b/c it is not empathic to the monstrous. (wilson's book begins with the epigram the sinister, the terrible never decieve, the state in which they leave us is always enlightenment by ligeti, and the empathic is part of that enlightenment--whedon's problem is sorting thru the mosterous empathic, which he kind of fails in buffy)

graduaton dinner---beets, pea shoots and black pudding; calf liver, posset and gingerbread. too many drinks to count. wendy, erik, rachel, jim, john, ray, col, DAD AND AMY

Pornography is a fragmented emotion, a natural consequence of a high visual 
gradient in any society. Not unlike sentimentality. - Richard Prince

The same week that I finished my thesis and got the grade back, I finished the first bit of the archival work I have been doing, working through almost a thousand pages of documents surrounding the hall dennis report. I still have the job, and my boss and I will present next month some time, but it's been pretty great for my self esteem.

Delaney reads from his latest novel, and a little from Motion of Light on Water



The great thing about the novel, is that it's this dense family novel, and a novel about the importance of geography, and a discussion of class, and a beautifully noted set peice, and a peice of absoulate filthy porn (i mean not hogg filthy, but filthy none the less)

great article on artists snubbed by the rock and roll hall of fame,esp. sonic youth

28 paint samples from lit, incluing gatsby green, elephant white, and the colour of Rebecca's Smalls from the De Maurier Novel.

tight, righteous argument about resistance and tution via mcgill

this article on dismissing female soilders from the military after they are raped, will makae you angry

There is a new biography on george albert smith, the lds prophet, who spent a lot of his life quite ill--the offical lds discourse is that the illness was physical, and while that may be the case, there is mounting evidence to suggest that there was a severe depression that was operational. It is often true in LDS contexts that the offical discourse around depression is viewed as private, adn the noting of privacy versus closeting is often quite difficult to work through. I have not read the biography yet, but much of the difficult of public versus private is discussed in Mary Ann Wodger's article Cheat the Asylum of a Victim, which can be found in This volume of Mormon History. Must read.(There is also an article about baptising as a kind of faith healing, which is worth reading)

Darren Dochuk's history of Evangelicalism in Southern California is also worth reading. Dochuk's from Perdue, but this AV club review makes it sound like just an important peice of journalism

 and 1 in 7 americans thinnk the world is ending soon.

London Underground Tube Map Cross Stich

Etobicoke, ca 1959.

Cinco De Mayo Pinata Cookie Recipe

a dozen or so photos of the Santa Anna Derby

Great First Nation Parody of a Round Dance Song  It works as music, and works as parody, but you get this idea that 1491 is sort of inside baseball, so what is interesting and amusing for white folks, kills on the reserve.

The House of Commons Committe on Culture lambastes the Murdochs, calling them basically criminal.




Sometimes Lomax does really fantastic stuff, like this recording of a Baptizing Scene, from the Donaldson Congregation, in 1959, amusingly sampled by Kanye and Jay Z in Niggas in PAris--I will let someone who knows the politics better to deconstruct the implications

sexy sexy wall paper

red banadana shirt
dye woven button up in ceruleon 
denim spotted unconstructed blazer

last two from STag in Austin, which makes me want to give them all my money

ibm clock from the mid 60s a highlight of modernism, for sale via the impeccable taste of schoolhosue electric supply.


dee bee monster makes queer and funny remixes of classic horror, including a werewolf is my boyfriend

French, Anon, 1890-1910, full bush and the false modesty of elbow over eye.

taking down magaret wente as a self loathing hypocrite is not the worlds most difficult task, but it sure is satisfying.

as someone whose academic career often features historicisng both queerness and blackness, the consistent, well documented, and well funded attempts to delegitmize the studies as playing victim, risks my future liveliehood, so any attempt to  defend the work as nessecary is important.

this house bill manages to combine the usual misogynst bullshit, the usual anti-immigrant bullshit, and the usual apologizing for violence bullshit, in new and exciting ways

scans of william james correspondance

one of the things about obama. that i appreciate is that i don't think he thinks i am an idiot. 

the last thirty seconds of this carrie underwood album is amazing


Adam Yauch, MCA died today. Here are some realevent links:

11 pbotos from global grind

13 photos from GMA

28 minutes from Charlie Rose, ca 2007

All of Paul's Botique. which I called our generation's pet sounds on facebook earlier today.

 put me in the middle of that, about an hour after the photo is taken, please.

“If many of the people I knew in New York in the seventies were twisted or paranoid or even evil, we all agreed one was a saint: Joe Brainard.  Joe was a writer and visual artist from Oklahoma who stuttered and spelled erratically and was so timid that he danced in place, looking down, if he thought anyone was paying attention to him.  Someone had once complimented him on his chest so he always wore his shirt open to the waist, even in subarctic winter weather.” - City Boy by Edmund White via jonno

Calhoun was married twice and had five daughters, three with Lita Baron, whom he divorced in 1970, one with journalist Sue Rhodes (1971–1999) and one with actress Vitina Marcus. When Baron sued Calhoun, she named Betty Grable as one of 79 women he had adulterous relationships with. Calhoun replied to her charge, "Heck, she didn't even include half of them".

^wiki

Ugly, but not as ugly as the usual wallpaper you send me.

ray

frank

josh and i have been thinking about yr latest lj, and i am not sure if yr correct, we were talking about it, and wanted to make sure that you knew, so we weren't reporting behind yr back--i think the exact opposite problem is happening, anyways here is the transcript, and hope all is well. josh will follow up as well.

much love
ase


frank's thing about lester (linked to by chuck) is pissing me off, but i'm trying to reason past that

http://koganbot.livejournal.com/293215.html

Report · 9:06pm

pissing you off how

Report · 9:45pm

two ways

people ARE having intellectual conversations on a large scale (which i think is what frank means)

nitsuh, maura, various jukbox entries, more

and, i can't tell whether he's talking about conversations with other people or meditations with himself

Report · 9:08pm

i think intellectual discourses makes it difficult to actual write about gut

i think there is too much intellectual discourse and not enough guy

gut

Report · 9:48pm

so i should go tell frank he's pissing me off, is what you're saying

he wouldn't mind, i'm sure

Report · 9:10pm

he woyuld appreciate it

Report · 9:50pm

yeah, he's good that way, which may partly be what he's talking about

Report · 9:12pm

maybe its just me

but i think that one of the reasons pop music exists

is to help people fuck

and i think one of the rarest things you hear in music writing

is the sentence

this track makes me want to fuck

Report · 9:52pm

why did that get a traffic sign next to it?

Report · 9:14pm

i dont know

Report · 9:53pm

but yes, if anything the cumulative effect of most music writing is the opposite

Report · 9:14pm

i think one of the great things about lester

is that he can say that

he can also say i love this and i dont know why

like when he talks about the shaggs

for example

Report · 9:53pm

i should read him on the shaggs

wait, i probably have -- is that in "horrible noise"?

or did he write something longer?

Report · 9:15pm

its in carberator dung

and i misspelled carberator dung

Report · 9:54pm

understood

with empathy

Report · 9:16pm

can i cut and paste this to frank or maybe blog this?

Report · 9:55pm

what, this conversation?

Report · 9:17pm

yea

Report · 9:56pm

this INTELLECTUAL conversation?

just make sure it's clear that i'm totally gonna address frank myself and i'm not chicken

Report · 9:19pm

sure

hooray hooray, the first of may
outdoor fucking begins today

spencer and megan's house, and spencer giving me permission to be the patriach, and sitting with this homosocial group, and having complicated theological conversations with crc's and also about anglicans as their kids are wandering around, and all of this with this cooked hospitality, and this encourangment to be included, and this refusal of estrangement--and then driving to new market, with two kids in the back and talking with the crc pastor about country and metal and kids and calvin and theology and sex

it was one of the queerest, and most joyous and strangest and most welcoming places i have ever been

desert, conversation, wander, with jeff boldt, almost 2 hours, and then time with Col, Kim and Tina--including great burgers and some amazing descants.

happish

V and A is comissionisn g some classic fabric as new products 

and some Hussien Chalayan work as well

who knew that oxblood and electric blue would work so well in classic men's shoes

 7 minor leauge ballparks (its pat's fault im linking this)

yr favourite LA modernist houses in lego



Kevin Fowler, Hell Yeah I Like Beer.

Preview of Francois Moloy's new book on kyboshed New Yorker Covers

Art Install Tumblr

Frank Gohlke  is one of the New Topographers, and he is one who ends up as the least known, which is a bit of a shame, because I think that his work is among the strongest. I think the other workers ended up as pure artists or pure documentarians, and so they ended up talking about formal or about documentary work, but their work reflected a v. spec. aesthetic. I think the difference with Gohlke is that his work was never sure about exactly what he was working through, and so his best work has a historical view and was beautiful at the same time--these shots from the 79 torondo in Tulsa were s ome of the generations best news photographer, but the composition is as strong as someone like Adams.

J Dilla's record collection, about 7000 peices or so, is being parcelled out and sold at UHF in Royal Oak, MI.

Britian was supposed to save collections of colonial history, and give it back to the countries in question. They seemed to have destoryed it instead.

 This is a shot from released Cold War Spy Documents in Checkslovakia. a few more here

17 photos of famous photogs taking mirror shots the best one is a slightly pervy Helmust Newton and Weegee gone silly.

a really elegant essay on the nature of language and how it releated to the 20k pyramid. well worth reading

dozens of photos of paul rudolph houses

a variety of vintage razor blade wrappers.  my favourite is the blue swedish steel. 

Adam Bartos, Los Angeles 1979. I love the colo (the brown and the bronze matching the grass, the silver matching the concrete) r, but i love the line of the car, and the slight say of the concrete overpass, and how there looks like there might be something untoward going on

a few dozen nuculer slide rules

screen caps of the juries during the first season of law and order

John Severin died this week, and i keep forgetting how well he drew a cowboy

Turing c ontinues not to be pardoned

this article on sol lewitt's creation of sacred jewish objects is really nice religious and arts writing

and buy a sol lewitt kippah at the jewish musuem


This 34 seconds of Kinski and Keener might be the sexiest thing i have seen in months.

LIz Phair on Lana Del Ray

fantastic country tumblr

China and Russia's realtionship to Syria is a bit fucked up

fifty one is a french/african photo gallery--they have lots of shots


Sallly O is a fantastic writer, this small essay on Bryan Ferry's covering of Dylan's A Hard Rain Is Going to Fall is just elegant.

I think that the Vicki Leck is one of the least heard and more cogent poltically of MIA'a attempts at being a bourgie revoultionary.

Samuel Morris Brown's book on Josepsh Smith and the early Mormon World View of DEath seems new  

aside from these quilts being called Domestic Construction by Big Cartel, which is amusing, they are lovely simple, well crafted objects

37 photos of people in horse masks

My friend Spencer, who is very Baptist and I often have fights about how to be Christian and Liturgiucal--he notes that there is a recent trend to make ideas about Christianity in Evangelical circles tighter, and less floating freely through the air--that there might even be a tradition of Catholic Baptists, and that the folks his age are picking it up. There is a new book by Dr Stephen Harmon, about these trends, and the history it is deriving from, I haven't read it yet, but t he intereview here challeneges much of what I thought about Christian expereinces.

etsy shop of beautiful banners

irony porn

pythons as alpha predators are eating most of everything in the everglades

some great studio photos of Twombly near the end of his life by Seidener


Paris Review on Sexy Librarians

D and Q is publishing 50s era Pipi Comics soon

10 moments when Letterman is not ironic


Leonard Cohen live in Toronto ca 1993

animal videos random new yorker's response to the question what are you doing tonight

Human Rights Watch publishes academic documents on mental health and solitary confinement


UK Water Gaurd Student group graduation photos 1965

someone made a custom fisher price record that played the portal song still alive

a dozen photos of the Costa Concordia wreck


Sinead O Connor Daddy I'm Fine

Porn Tumblr for Sticky Out Male Ears

Greg Duli Sings Paper Thin Hotel (must listen)

Clip Art of the Michigan SEal


Elijah's Church, Steve Earle. 

When I'm dead and I'm gone
Won't you carry me home
To that little white church
In my daddy's home town
'Cause Lord knows I'm some kind of sinner
But I've done come this far
And it's too late for changin'
When this race has been run
Take me back where I came from
And let me return what I took from the ground
When this body won't carry me no further
Take me back
And lay me down

amy hollywood

first chapter, small outline

define pleasure
a) bodily
b) appetite
c) based on an other, not self directed
d) incontient


recieved ideas

a) fear of pleasure (radical atheists--including schopenhauer and russell, perhaps the hipster set)
b) absorbotion of pleasure into xtc (hollywood)

my idea
a) inabilty to feel

inability for four reasons
a) the primary scene of trauma (irrigay, lacan freud queer theory and the deathdrive)
b) introduction of the ideas of containment
c) failures of containment result in the reaffirming of the primal scene

intro to what we will be doing

(i.e discussion of the problems of containment, the bodily desires resulting from containment, that bodily desire resulting in other attempts at contience, etc)

then moving onto larger discussions

(first chapter 20 pages, chapter on containment 10 pages, chapter on celiabacy/marriage 20 pages, chapter on failures of both 10 pages, conclusion which states explicitly, i have no idea where to go from there 10)

The Holy Bible: King James Version. 2000.

The Psalms

22

A Cry of Anguish and Song of Praise
To the chief Musician upon Ai'jeleth Shahar, A Psalm of David.
1	My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? Mt. 27.46 · Mk. 15.34          Why art thou so far from helping me, and from the words of my roaring?
2	O my God, I cry in the daytime, but thou hearest not;          and in the night season, and am not silent.
3	But thou art holy,          O thou that inhabitest the praises of Israel.
4	Our fathers trusted in thee:          they trusted, and thou didst deliver them.
5	They cried unto thee, and were delivered:          they trusted in thee, and were not confounded.
6	But I am a worm, and no man;          a reproach of men, and despised of the people.
7	All they that see me laugh me to scorn:          they shoot out the lip, they shake the head, Mt. 27.39 · Mk. 15.29 · Lk. 23.35 saying,
8	He trusted on the LORD that he would deliver him:          let him deliver him, seeing he delighted in him. Mt. 27.43
9	But thou art he that took me out of the womb:          thou didst make me hope when I was upon my mother's breasts.
10	I was cast upon thee from the womb:          thou art my God from my mother's belly.
11	Be not far from me; for trouble is near;          for there is none to help.
12	Many bulls have compassed me:          strong bulls of Bashan have beset me round.
13	They gaped upon me with their mouths,          as a ravening and a roaring lion.
14	I am poured out like water,          and all my bones are out of joint: my heart is like wax; it is melted in the midst of my bowels.
15	My strength is dried up like a potsherd;          and my tongue cleaveth to my jaws; and thou hast brought me into the dust of death.
16	For dogs have compassed me:          the assembly of the wicked have inclosed me: they pierced my hands and my feet.
17	I may tell all my bones:          they look and stare upon me.
18	They part my garments among them,          and cast lots upon my vesture. Mt. 27.35 · Mk. 15.24 · Lk. 23.34 · Joh. 19.24
19	But be not thou far from me, O LORD:          O my strength, haste thee to help me.
20	Deliver my soul from the sword;          my darling from the power of the dog.
21	Save me from the lion's mouth:          for thou hast heard me from the horns of the unicorns.
22	I will declare thy name unto my brethren:          in the midst of the congregation will I praise thee. Heb. 2.12
23	Ye that fear the LORD, praise him;          all ye the seed of Jacob, glorify him; and fear him, all ye the seed of Israel.
24	For he hath not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted;          neither hath he hid his face from him; but when he cried unto him, he heard.
25	My praise shall be of thee in the great congregation:          I will pay my vows before them that fear him.
26	The meek shall eat and be satisfied:          they shall praise the LORD that seek him: your heart shall live for ever.
27	All the ends of the world shall remember and turn unto the LORD:          and all the kindreds of the nations shall worship before thee.
28	For the kingdom is the LORD's:          and he is the governor among the nations.
29	All they that be fat upon earth shall eat and worship:          all they that go down to the dust shall bow before him: and none can keep alive his own soul.
30	A seed shall serve him;          it shall be accounted to the Lord for a generation.
31	They shall come, and shall declare his righteousness          unto a people that shall be born, that he hath done this.

http://killingthebuddha.com/mag/confession/communion-on-chemo/

also, i am sort of humilated, about the ect, because i have made such a fuss about it, and nothing has signifcantly shifted, and it just seems tempest in a v. small tea pot.

From The Aesthestics of Disengagement: Cotemparary Art and Depression Christine Ross


In the last three decades or so, pyschopharmacology has made hypothetical suggestions as to what might be the underlying biological cause of depression (for example, serotonin imbalance) following the presumption that a disease is modeled on the medication that treats it. Hence, for instance, when a medication is said to elevate serration (a mono-amine neurotransmitter present in the mammalian brain), it is presumed that patients helped by that medication must have seratonion defiency. Tricylic antidepressents such as iipramines, for example, were found to block the synaptic reuptake of monoamines into the presynaptic neurons. Based on this drug effect, Joseph J Schidkraut postualted in 1965 that depression resulted from insuffifencies of the monoamine neuro-transmitters (espeically norepinephrine and serotonion.) Tricylic antidepresseants were made more widely availble as a result. But research in this area is far from conclusive. According to Brian Leonard and David Healey's study on the differential effects of anti-depressents, although it has been accepted for more than thirty years, "that a reative deifict in noadreliane, seratonion and possible dopamine in the limbic (emotional) regions of the brain is primarily responsible for the symptoms of depression, direct evidence "for a primary deficit in such neurotransmitters in depression is limited" (190)

In contrast to the previous belief (in the 1960s and 1970s) that depression was either reactive--triggered by stressful life events and best handled by pyschotherapy--or more rarely endogenous--biological in origin (the result of a spontaenous neurological imbalance or a  genetic predisposition and best treated with pharmacatherapy--the consens today is that this descriptivei dichtomy is not meaningful and that depression should be seen to be both reactive and endogentous. This means that, although one type of depression has biological features, these features are likely to have been triggered by life events and that although another type of depression, ius crealy related to pyschsocial difficulturies, it will often respond to pharmacotherapy. It is clear, however, that depression is a mental illness with corporeal ramifactions. Many symptoms of depression, such as sleep disturbance, weight loss or gain, faituge, lack of energy, and pyschomotor retardation or agitaiton are phyiscal... (184)

The instution of slow time is both endemic and crucial to depressed subjectivity. As Ehrenberg convincingly argues, depression is a "pathology of time (the depressed is without a future) and a pathalogy of motivation (the depressed is without energy, his movement is slowed down, his parole is slow) (150)

In all these (social, interpersonal and sociological) perspectives, disconnection is a state that amplifies or predisposes a personto depression in one way or another. Yet connection does not, by itself protect one from depression and might, in certain circumstances, provoke it. This is one of the main paradoxies of depressive disorders... (127)

James Coyne:
Defentional problems continue to plague the study of depression, and they are not going to be readily resolved. There remains considerable disagreement as to what extent and for what purpose a depressed mood in realtively normal persons can be seen as one end of a continum with the mood disturbance seen in hospitalised pyschatric patients and to what extent the clinical phenomena are distinct and discontinuas with normal sadness and unhappiness. Should we limit the term depression to those people who are most distressed and seeking treatment. And what do we make of the "merely miserable" that we have defined out of the depressed category? If we agree to make a sharp distinction, where is that to be drawn? What of the differences among the depressed persons? The positions on these questions that one t akes have major implicaitons for who one studies and who one treats and how, what data are going to be considered realvent, and how one organizes data...We cannot pretend to resolve those controversies, b ut we can at least identify them. They are striking differences among depressed persons that invite some form of subtyping...However, efforts to derive such subtypes are generally controversial, and any scheme is likely to be more satiscatory for some purposes then others. Confronted with all of this ambiguity and confusion, one must be cautios and not seek more precision than the phenonomena of depression can afford... (67)

Benjamin Leftist Meloncholia.

10 things that make me happy

1. there is a bar near my place that makes mai tais out of had crafted fruit juices. d and i are going, you should go to.
2. there is a whole bunch of small, cheap, space and mid century tchotke's at my favourite antique store on queen west and roncey.
   
3. there a re few vintage clothing stores that sell a bunch of redneck regalia also in parkdale
4. the toilet is working
5. i still need to work on clairty and flow for the thesis, but tom actually thanked me for interesting and good work, and he thinks that most of the large formating issues are handles, and i am ready for detail work.
   
6. the river, also in parkdale, has about 120 ace doubles, and a similar number of 50s and 60s sf pulp magazines.
7. there are more attractive men with beards then usual of late
8. the usb typewriter amuses me.
   
9. rick kempa is a poet from Wyoming who does very funny very dirty poems, i will show you an example tonite
10. the colour of plums, blueberries, and figs go well together.