If you're a Marxist-Leninist, you must be an atheist. That means you must say that, "God does not exist." I used to tell them, "Ok, I can say it. No problem. But my people?" *laughs* Not in this generation. Maybe the next one, but not in this one. For them God and revolution, religion and revolution are one and the same. [...] Nat Turner was a righteous preacher. [...] Malcolm X was a rigtehous Muslim preacher. Martin Luther King was a righteous Christian preacher. Jesse Jackson is a preacher. Minister Louis Farrakhan is a preacher. So if you look very properly, you'll see for us Africans, religion and revolution has never had this dialectical break. [...]

I'll give you one example. Once in Greenville, Mississipi. When I was doing a program there, of protest against the police. We had to fill the jails, but there were young kids and the discipline was breaking down. So I had to go into the jail to establish discipline. So I picked some cadre to go with me just to go to jail and made two lines to confuse the police.

I looked up on the line and I hand picked and I see an old woman on the end of it.

I run back there, I said, "Ma'am, you're in the wrong line." I said, "this line is getting arrested."
She said, "I know, that's what they told me."
I said, "You ain't going to jail."
She said, "Yes I am."
I said, "They're brutal in there!"
She said, "I know, they brutalized my daughter, brutalized my granddaughter, now I must go."
I said, "They don't respect age nor sex."
She said, "I know." She said, "You worried about me son?"
I said, "Ma'am, I'm very worried about you up in there."
"Don't you worry son, I got a telephone in my bosom. Soon as they touch me, I'mma call Jesus. He gonna take care of me."

*laughs* What am I going to do with that? *laughs* Tell her take the telephone out her bosom?

Kwame Ture

Eric Church's "Homeboy" made me feel uncomfortable the first time I heard it, because I could not quite figure out the racial politics, I was worried that Church was asking for the kid not to be black. I think that he is asking him not to be a thug, not to be taken in with a media constructed African-American identity that it is problematic for white kids to adopt. I was also worried that it underestimated how dull, oppressive, and frustrating small-town life is for people who are a little more ambitious — but that may be me being from a small town, and not being able to make it there. After I got over all that, it dawned on me how well-constructed the song was — the three small anecdotes over a lifetime does not forecast the last verse, and the last verse will break your heart. It's a smart song, and one that reflects issues of family, class and location that country has been wrestling with this year. —Anthony Easton

one print comment

p1260332.jpg

p1260332.jpg, a photo by PinkMoose on Flickr.

Mitt Romney will NOT REST until you eat a pastry. Here’s an excerpt of a Phil Rucker’s pool report from a flight between Charleston and Greenville Friday:

Before take off, Mitt Romney walked down the aisle with a large box of assorted pastries from Panera Bread to pass out to the passengers (including the governors and press).
What follows is a transcript of his exchanges.
“Come on, Kasie, dig in,” Romney said to Kasie Hunt of the Associated Press. “Pain au chocolat. Smart move.”
“Ashley?” Romney said to Ashley Parker of The New York Times.
“Can you just grab me something?” Parker asked, turning to her seatmate, Kasie Hunt, who was holding the tongs poised over the basket.
“What do you want though?” Romney asked.
“Um…” Parker said. “The popover thing?”
“The popovers?” Romney asked.
“Thank you very much,” Parker said.
“Sticky bun?” Romney asked other reporters. “There you go.”
“Snack time! Nothing? Just, you know, use your fingers,” Romney said, struggling with the big box. “The heck with this. There you go.”
“Come on, Emily, dig in here,” Romney said to Emily Friedman of ABC News. “Fingers are fine. We’re among friends.”
“Sarah, you want one? What do you want?” Romney said to Sarah Boxer of CBS News.
“I don’t know,” Boxer said. “What’s in there?”
“We’re gonna solve problem one here by getting rid of these ridiculous things here,” Romney said, handing two pairs of black plastic tongs to the flight attendant behind him.
“Rucker, come on Rucker,” Romney said to Philip Rucker of The Washington Post. “Oh, he makes a good move for the cheese. Take two.”
“No, no, no,” Rucker said.
“Look it, there’s so much in here,” Romney said. “Come in, take more. No, take more than one. Take two, take two, Ruck-man. Come on.”
“Where’d you get it?” Matt Viser of The Boston Globe asked Romney, referring to the pastries box.
“We found it on the floor up there,” Romney said.
“Do you want another one?” Romney asked Sara Murray of The Wall Street Journal.
“No, I’m good, but thank you,” Murray said.
“Who wants some more of these?” Romney said. “Look at this. This is good stuff. This is from Panera. Very high-end.”
“Pain au chocolat in there,” Romney continued. “Look at the sticky buns. Those are the best.”
“Hey, Rucker, there’s still some more of those cheese cake babies in here,” Romney continued. “No? You only had one of these. Come on, Ashley.”
“Alright,” Romney said. “We’ve got to get seated.”

“Look at the sticky buns. Those are the best”—amazing

Holly Bailey, for Yahoo News.
It always makes me really nervous when the press is this close to these folks.

fantastic little article on the cree/objiway hockey tour, in nothern ontario in the 40s and 50s .

i want all of these cruise or be cruised t shirts, including ones based on Jean Rechy's the Sexual Outlaw, Larry Kramer's Faggots and amusingly, one wiht Nancy saying there is nothing left to be post modernized.

88 photos of Ottawa Punk from the 80s.

10 Pan Am posters from 1971. If anyone bought me the Eastern Europe one, I wouldnt be upset.

11 foot long heavily decorotive photo/digital print of dinasours being destroyed, sort of inspired by japanaese narrative scrolls, michal lidberg.


Witchita Lineman, last week in New York, Glenn Campbell is better than I thot.

the problems of sexual shame, adolesence, and lds bishop interviews, a first person account.

four photos of Jellyfish by Alexander Semenov.

some serious lawsuits are coming for Gaogosian selling work that is not his, with extra ripping off old lady content.

subprime lenders purposefully targeted low income african american communities.


Etta James does RAndy Newman--as much as i love At Last, there is danger to her being caught in amber, her later work, corrosive, sexy, difficult, and often intensely powerful, suggests a set of emotions long past erotic longing.

a google map of warren jeffs revelations.

full text of American Type Specimen, 1912.

Disneyland Monorail Guide, ca 1966

When Chinese New Year and Robbie Burns Day happen at the same time, there is this magical thing called Gun Haggis Fan Chuy--or Lion Dance With Bag Pipes



Soviet Scrapbook from the 70s found in a Tajikstan junkshop.

BPRD training camp for kids, in Portland--how come kids these days get all the cool stuff.

in a seires called Mikenesses, Mike Holmes illustrates self portraits in famous comic book styles, including Herge, Chris Ware, Ed Burns, Charles Schultz, Quinetin blake and Jack Kirby.

On Imitation of Life: “I love to what Sirk did with the myth of the natural woman…and the image of Hollywood as a completely vacuous and dangerous machine. He shows the raw edges of race and class privilege and pretension, but he understood that no matter how cynical and revelatory he meant his films to be, they were always taken as straightforward, as just what the characters are enacting. The Left reviles that film, but I’m always saying to them, ‘Watch the movie!’”

Martha Rosler Imitation of Life

http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2012/01/oscar-nominations-are-here.html

thots

a) when does the oscars not love a sentimental peiceo f disaster porn
b) i was amused that both close and streep were nominated, middle aged cat fight
c) mellissa mccarthy yeah!
d) the artist wll win best picture
e) best movie of the year for me (margin call) did not get acting, directing, cinematogrpahy or costume nods (though it deserved all of them), but it did get a writing nod
f) i haven't even heeard of two of the best animated nods
g) my continual frustration at best costume being just a historic note, continues unabated (bridesmaid, girl with a dragon tattoo, margin call, the skin i live in,
h) it is really bizarre that only two songs were nominated for original music
i) michelle william's better role was missed because of holywoods pure narcissim
j) it was a great year for documentaries (tabloid, page one, cave of forgotten dreams, bill cunningham's new york, all were left out, which is kind of frustrating)
k) i thot that the skin i live in or uncle bommee would be nominated for best foriegn)
l) i am sort of suprised nothing came from young adult

Maggie was ordained today, and for many reasons i was glad (because she's smart, and funny, she works hard, she has an innate sense of justice, because she fosters community, because she is a writer, because she knows simone weil, because of her arrest record, because she knows and perhaps is strange)

but the thing that impressed me the most in the service, and a service i was v. late for, was the use of this poem

John Donne

HOLY SONNETS. VII. At the round earth's imagined corners blow Your trumpets, angels, and arise, arise From death, you numberless infinities Of souls, and to your scattered bodies go ; All whom the flood did, and fire shall o'erthrow, All whom war, dea[r]th, age, agues, tyrannies, Despair, law, chance hath slain, and you, whose eyes Shall behold God, and never taste death's woe. But let them sleep, Lord, and me mourn a space ; For, if above all these my sins abound, 'Tis late to ask abundance of Thy grace, When we are there. Here on this lowly ground, Teach me how to repent, for that's as good As if Thou hadst seal'd my pardon with Thy blood.

2nd year in the row of no pazz and jop comments

The highly sensory nature of (traumatic) memories and the absence of verbal narrative makes them similar to the memories of young children. Yet unlike normal memories from early childhood, traumatic memories (and the associated phenomenon of traumatic dreams) are experienced as involuntary, having a phenomenon of traumatic dreams) are experienced as involuntary, having a "driven, tenacious quality" and a repetitive dimension. Current research suggests in situations of hyper-arousal, particularity those for which the subject is unable to prepare, memory is encoded in a different, more viscerally experiential manner than normal. These bodily memories are not assimilated to consciousness and thus impinge on it in uncontrollable and intrusive ways. The best availble treatment for such memories seems to be narrativisaztion, through which bodily memories are relived and reordered in meaningful narrative forms. (76)

qouting Simone De Bouiver:

"I was more and more persudaded that there was no place in the profane world for the supernatural life. And yet, it was the later alone that counted: it alone. I suddenly received certainty, one morning, that a Christian convinced of a future beatitude, should not attach the least importance t oephermal things. how could hte majority of people accept to remain in the presnet world? The more I reflected, the more I was astonished, I concluded that, in any case, I would not imitate them: between the infite and hte finiste my choices were made: "I will enter a convent". I decided. The acitivites of the sisters of charity seemed to me to be entirely futile; there was no other reasonable occupation than to contemplate to the end of my days the glory of God. I would be a Carmilete, Memoirs of a Jeune Fille, 103-4)


for Beuvoir, Teresa's angency is expressed through her active and self concious sexual response to and desire for her lover, who is God. Beuvoir claims admiraiton for the intenseity of Teresa's faith, in which the absent object is mare present on the body. Unlike the hysteric, Tersa is "not hte slave of her nerves and her hormones: it is necessary, rather, to admire in her the intensity of a fatih that penetrates to the most intimate reions of her flesh" (DS II, 587; Second SEx, 747)
Unlike hte hysteric whose flesh is passively inscribed by her disorder, Tersa writes the body in the intensity of her mystical expereince. Yet despite her admiration for Teresa's faith, Beavoir insists that the value of mystical expereince lies not in the pleasure which which it is subjectively expereinced, but in the object influence it allows its subject to weirld. Beuvoir insists that in the absence of criteria for determeing the authenticity of mystical expereince (she will go futher and claim that mystical expereince cannot be genuine as there is no God, its value likes in its outcome. (129)

...The desire for (divinie wholeness plenititude and the exstantic anguish of hte realizaiton that one cannot be everything stand side by side in Angelas text. Bataille suggests, futhermore that these two conceptions of mysticiism can be found togehter throughout the Christian tradition. This possiblity leads ot the second, more difficult and more pressing formulation of our cquesiton. Why do these semmingly antitheticial expereinces so often emerge in such close proximity to each other. Lacan's Seminar XX: Encore suggests an answer to this quesiton. He describes two tendecnies in language; the first attempts to fix meaning by positing a transcedenal signifier. Understood to be seamlessly united with its singified the transcental signifier assures the stability of language. Yet there is another movement in langauge away from th estability of meaning; for Lcan argues that the transcendtal signifer is always, in fact, empty; its putative wholeness and fixity is an illusion that pyschoanalysis aims to expose. the very site meant to fix meaing becomes the place where it is destabilzed. He argues, even more pointedly, that significaiton--marked by the transcendtal signifer--becomes possible only because of this constituive instability. Hence mysticism, as a quest for the absoulate, for which would ensure meaning, stability, and being, encounters instead that which radicially destabilises subjectivty and meaning---mysticism seeks the tra nscental signifer but discovers the paradoxical interplay of presence and absence through which significaiton is mafe possible. Excstacay occurs in both moments (what Lacan refers to as phallic jouissance and the jousisance that goes beyond) and as he argues in the seminary, if this does not quite make for two Gods, nor does it make for one alone" (149)

The doubless not God is the source of the doubleness of mystiricsim. The split subject sesires an other through which it might become whole, and it conflates that desire wit hthe very operaiton of language through which subjects are constutited as split and other than themselves. Mysticism and pyschoanlaysis after an absoulate other through which it might be fufilled. Yet this unstintiny quest for the abouslate exposes the subjects own lack and the always absent and unattaniable other throug hwhcih it is brought into existeince. Christians, like the pyschoanalysis, Lacan argues, "are horroried by what was revealed to them"; thus the suffering soul exposed by baroque excesses always attempts to cover over its theft of being and the lack from which its ecstatic anguish emerges (Exrits, 103, Seminar Xx, 114) . In the same way, the pretenstions of pyschoanalysis to sciefitic status are both an ineluctable movement toward oneness and fixed meaning and an evasion of hte real. (164)

To avoid the confusion and rancor that have surrounded the debates around essential-ism and to increase the precision of the discussions about Irigaray, the issue might usefully be recast in terms of sexual difference. Thus many feminist theories agree that those identified as "women" within a given culture can be and in fact routinely are differentiated form those defined as "men" (although it is not at all clear, cross-culturally, that these are the only options.) However, how femininity and masculinity are inculcated and lived is not only historically variable, but also intertwined with other differences, salient within any particular culture. In the contemporary United States, race, ethnicity, sexuality, and class are particularly conspicuous and powerful features of subjectivity... (191)

The passages mimed by Irigray concern the expereince sculpted by Bernini, ones thus judged amenable to representation (and, no doubt, attractive ot male viewers), Like Lacan, Irigaray intensfies the moment's visual and visionary quality, and so explodes it, for that which Irigaray names cannot be seen in the baroque excesses of Beriniini's statue. By reasserting the violence of Teresa's expereince, and by emphasizing the site of the transverberaiton as the viscera (stomach or womb) rather than the heart (Teresa describes the arrow as pericing the heart so deeply it reaches into her entrails and pulls them out, Irigary upsets the excesses to the improper entrails of the saint. Teresa's insides literally create her interority as other than and unrepresentable (by man) (202)

Let us pray to god, so that we can be free of God. Miester Eckhart

monks table

cobb salad and 4 ciders.

rachel, erik, tom, dan, wendy, jim, ray, colleen, john, me.

vintage nasa photos

one of the ideas that is sort of central to post modernism, is the idea that the embodied self (and by extension the end of medivialism and the beginning of enlightenment) begins with the dissection of human subjects---medieval folks didn't dissect human beings. Katherine Polk's new book makes a solid arguement that they did, and because they did, our idea of history has changed.

leroy gannis's candids are better maybe than his typical surf shots, i love the one of the three guys, one in glasses, and a broken board.


Bollywood style Havila Nagila.

i need to see tree of life again though it will lose some of it's magic being on the small screen--this anceient essay by alex ross on it's music is one of the reasons why i want to

boing boing used my photo.


jinx monsoon does the drag version of ladies who lunch, and it is exquisite!


great interview with van dyke parkes on the occasion of his new singles colleciton, and the reissue of arrangements.

Ville Hara's modular garden units, in four parts, sold in helesinki.

this sloane crosley essay on xmas in the suburbs has all of the boredom and ennui i remember but little of the isolation. funny though .


Ganymede in Space, 1959.

photos of 80s SF con. (i miss this ersatz home made look)

at the aga today, saw a show on 19th century french fotos, mostly good but one perfect atget, of a rigious 18th century garden, empty of people, perfect conincal conifers--like something out of marienbad.

eleven goals for 2011

1) maintain a 3.4 or higher GPA, with help from tutors, etc.

yep.

2) continue with autitiscats, including finding places, dont let dave deal w all the email)

didn;t happen, though i worked really hard on it, sometimes things die when they are ready to

3) work harder on keeping money until the end of the month (including but not limited to eating out much less) (also, keep the credit card down)

got one credit card paid off, the next one is paid off regulalry, eat out much less, money is still a problem.

4) keep curating, making art, showing art and the like, plus writing (find funding for alaska, find a place for the gull lake project, apply to the residency in syracuse, research other grants and funding locations esp for travel), email st george the martyr, also set up website.

working through these still, had three or four shows, applied for three others.

5) research and start writing the western book, pitch one review or other peice a week.work on the essay for may for the integrity grant, start and keep working on a tumblor project like the 100/100.

tumblr failed, still working on research for the western book, pitching semi-regullary, though not once a week.

6) do at least two peices of major liturgical work (via negativa and pride liturgy, the forum,etc)

i preached three or four times this year, which most likely counts some what.

7) read prayerfully the psalms and think heavily about the nature of my faith

thought about the nature of my faith, though it mostly centered on realising reading the psalms were not part of it.

8) find some fun cardio heavy class once a week so you can get out of the house. (dodgeball, dancing?)

david r and are are going to play basketball in the new year.

9) muck out the old storage locker. yep

10) keep closer notes on which films i have seen this year.
yep.

11) one date a month
well, iain, counts no?

2012 goals:

a) finish thesis
b) find place to stay/granting/etc post may.
c) finish grad school apps for concordia, union, harvard, berkley
d) work on publications for disability, kurt, rachel
e) finish the frog piece
f) pitch tormorden mills peice
g) figure out alaska
h) boston conference
i) pay mom back.
j) pysch stuff
k) tooth stuff

there is a line in the tim minchin song, white wine in the sun that talks about people who make you safe in the world, spent 6 hours with david and spencer today, moving, but also talking, smoking cigars, making small talk, dinner afterwards, i felt essentially safe. megan--spencer's wife, and rowan the kidlet was also there, and it felt a lot like family.

Top Albums

1. Pistol Annies One of the smartest documents about capital in this age of economic dissatisfaction, profoundly feminist, and despite that as entertaining as we could have hoped for.
2. Let England Shake, More Wilfred Owen than The War Horse, as England seems to have disappeared into a corrupt police state, and as the wars away from home and the wars at home seem inseparable, as we all seem unable to be pulled into something resembling order, Harvey returns with one of her best.
3. Book Of Mormon OST As someone who grew up queer and Mormon, this one hit close to home. A broadway spectacle, that made money, telling people that God kicks them in the cunt, there is some subversion left.
4. So Beautiful or So What--Paul Simon. This year's token rockist/boomer selection, like all the little hipsters, I am still drunk on his harmonies.
5. Clams Casino Instrumental Mix Tape Atmospheric and lonely, one of the great documents of urban life. There could be a discussion about how digital culture changes music, or the distribution method, or about what exactly hip hop is, the text welcomes those conversations, but mostly it's just a beautifully isolating work about what it means to be in the city.
6. Rhianna As Ann Powers notes for NPR, it's filthy, but blues and rock have always been filthy, and I love the r and b pull of a free and less anxious sexuality that suggests she has worked out some shit since the last time.
7. Fucked Up, David... A narrative about Thatcherite England, it works well in concordance with PJ. The aggro vocals, the grinding power of the music, and the skill at making instrumental narratives, mean that you have to listen for the lyrtics, but the story telling is just bright.
   
8. All Eternal Deck It's less tight and conceptual than he has been before, and the looseness works for the free ranging, culturally aware stores. Also, the Liza track is fantastic.
   
9. Sulla Sulla Ilaiyaraaja We continue to live in this miraclous age, where it seems we can find collections of everything we ever wanted, or didn't even know was nessecary until this moment. This collection of the Kollywood's master, has pure funk and dramatic intrigue for every moment you could possibly want.
10. This Might be My Last Time Singing. Black church congregation choirs would get money together, and record 45s, sometimes as a gift to the congregation, sometimes as a tool of evangelicalism, sometimes because the idea of an object brings permanence to something you are proud of. Mike McGonigal has been collecting African American Vernacular music for decades, and has put three CDs of it out of these 45s. The thing is, that he calls it raw, but the production values on these church songs are so tight, so well constructed, and so careful that I worry that having Raw on the packaging would preclude people from listening to the sophistication of the texts. These were choirs from Nashville, and Detroit, and LA, so at least some of them knew there way around a studio, and it shows.

Top Singles

1. Lady Saw Matrimony--had one of the great lines this year: "matrionomy, cermony, testimony, alimony--take a hint it's all about the money"
2. Pistol Annies Hell on Heels Unapologetic gold digging as a kind of female liberation has a long, long history--but nothing so charmingly constructed as this.
   
3. Patrick Wolf House He moves adroitly between sexual decadence and domestic comfort, this track is so settled, so joyously happy. Queer domesticity, the after effects of the marriage, or choosing not to be married, is still considered to be exotic, and these "two boys together clinging" show that it is possible.
4. Something About A Truck, Kip Moore I may be rating with my dick, but in this year where country decided boundaries and territories, this argument for localized pleasure got more fun with each listen.
   
5. Adelle Rolling in Deep It's one of my rules, that if i hear it for most of the summer, and still love it, then it goes on the Pazz and Jop list. It's a bit polite, and lacks all grit or strum und drang, especially for a song about drowning, but it's so beautifully sung, and almost unique in it's phrasing--which seems odd to say for someone who has internalized 60s pastiche so completely.
6. EMA California Atmospheric and angry, even the Dead Kennedys thought there were moments and histories worth saving, this one--an anthem for just letting the whole thing slide into the ocean. The inclusion of Camptown Races adds kerosene to the nightmare fuel.
   
7. Big Freedia Almost Famous I am late on the bounce band wagon, but anything that encourages so systematically this amount of ass shaking, makes me happy.
8. Azeillia Banks 212 Hip hop anthem to female superiority, and cunnilingus, fantastic flow, and delightful push into quite lovely singing. Plus it squeeks when it should.
9. Wild Flag Romance Tight and quick, with a monster chorus---it's great to see craftsmen work at the top of their game, mostly for fun.
10. Travis Garland and Jo Jo Paint. The smooth r and b, and the sexual strangeness is pure R. Kelly, but the beat gets in the way, in a way that adds to the mess of what is occuring; JoJo maintaining her own autonomy, which is different than a lot of R and B, the matching of choruses, of desires is appreciated--but where it gets really interesting is a bout a minute in, where electronic noise pushes out the vocals, and it mutates into a barely controlled chorus--it loses it's smoothness. Smart track.

john waters on bad taste

alan helen peterson is a fantastic academic from flordia. writing mostly about popular culture and the meta-contexts of Hollywood, though she is great on scandal, i think this might be her best essay--on how the ideal work of brad pitt is brad pitt playing a variety of brad pitt.

<,a href="http://www.eipcp.net/transversal/1011/butler/en">butler on private and public spaces, bodies, and the aesthetics of protest.

APTN is perhaps the best reporting on the state of emergency in Nothern Ontario.

8 photos of the Polin House, an early one by Lautner in the Hollywood Hills--look esp. for the brick work.

bloomberg reveals more details on the lacernous bank bail outs.



I have been writing about public and private discourse for my god and abuse course, and one of the things i have been thinking pretty hard, is the rhetorical power of not speaking--the eerie strangness of this video, sort of like mourning, something like disgust, nothing like the protest work you have heard--about the Chancellor of Davis going ot her car the day after violent police protest will be part of that essay.


http://www.trade-silver.net/reproductions.htm">Trade Silver was like Wampum for some Prarie nations. These affordable reproductions continue first nations craft, and history.

http://www.avclub.com/articles/what-makes-music-boring,65075/">great essay riffing on Nitsuh's New York Magazine column on Fiest and Wilco as new adult contempary artsits.

http://www.hebrewtypography.com/">hebrew font blog

this might be the smoothest thing you have ever heard.

http://www.heatherrasmussen.com/index.php?/ongoing/destructconstruct-photographs/">Heather Rasmussen destructconstruction, is a set of photographs of cardboard models made of photographs of marine disasters featuring shipping containers. Hyper smart, well made, and just gorgeous--but also about the disaster of capitalism, in a round about way.

http://blogs.getty.edu/iris/new-acquisition-ruscha-sees-la/">7 Ruscha photos from 1977.

http://www.barrelhousemag.com/?p=1692">David Housley's difficult, episodic discussion of what is happening on the ground at State college in Penn after the sex abuse scandals, is just heavy and sad, must read but heavy and sad.

http://www.librarything.com/catalog/OWSLibrary">ows library pre police destruction.

http://www.good.is/post/what-women-want">James Deen as a sexual personae is kind of the opposite of James Dean as a sexual personae, even up to the point that Deen's fucking on film is less erotic than Dean's flirting on film--maybe because I don't find the women in mainstream straight porn hot--but his working on a kind of post-celeb, sex positive, female led fandom, and it's connection to some pretty severe SM has some interesting discussions about what porn means as a text. This profile in Good presents some of the issues.

http://www.joehoganbaskets.com/Contempory.aspx">Joe Hogan makes traditional irish willow baskets, but updates them--they are gorge.

From November 28, 2011

From November 28, 2011

Pan reprints of Highsmith Pulp, 1950s.

http://www.nydailynews.com/blogs/mets/2011/11/source-mlb-adds-sexual-orientation-wording-to-cba">mlb adds sexual orinetation as a protected class--i think this would mean more to back end workers than players, but i wonder if it would help someone come out

http://www.artsonia.com/museum/gallery.asp?exhibit=370172">oxaca animals remade by kids.

http://www.folkways.si.edu/albumdetails.aspx?itemid=1123">smithonsian folkways recordings of office noises from the 60s.

http://www.onthemedia.org/2011/oct/14/real-and-unreal-professional-wrestling/">surpisingly in depth and fascnating history of the WWE and labour, starting with some current story lines about management and ending wiht a discussion about what it would mean for wrestlers to be uninozed as actors.

http://www.theprovince.com/news/Cops+watched+porn+skipped+work+instead+investigating+missing+women+Galliford/5752470/story.html#ixzz1eZ9Iom5w">sexual harrassment cases against officers who worked the trailer of tears cases, keeps bringing up pretty fucked up shit, this time it's a discussion of how some officers would look at porn on duty

From November 28, 2011

Martin, Gratitude, 2001.

The most colourful of Martin's work.

Mastadon, Curl the Burl. Mostly, because i love the phrase Curl the Burl, thought the video is kind of amazing.

two sets of problems given to Moscow university students, about math. One for Jews and one for gentiles. The problems were easy, but how they were constructed in the jewish councils made the soultions nigh on impossible.

excellent article on Der Speigel about the problems of corruption in Vienna.

the national trust for historical perservation in the states makes a smart, and quite important arguement for the persevation of the modernist masterpeice phyllis wheately school in NoLA.

From November 9, 2011

From November 9, 2011

From November 9, 2011

Takuro Kuwata, Striped Cups, 2011, Cermaic. more of his work hereincluding some great crackling.

cops force sex workers to perform sexual ats, in Vancouver. Glad that the commission on missing women is happening, really realyl not suprised.

eric mcsaveney is a young vancouver painter, the seires inland, of smokey/foggy landscapes in vancouver--all green hills and grey outbuildings, takes the romantic long view about what is seen in contempaary architechture. Not sure if they are obvious or quite moving.


The FBI changed it's deft of Rape To: "“penetration, no matter how slight, of the vagina or anus with any body part or object, or oral penetration by a sex organ of another person, without the consent of the victim.” which widens the previous deftion, from 1921, (the prev. deft excluded anything but stranger vaginal rape)

fantastic review of attack the block.

plainly dressed for all yr amish clothing needs.

a history of the log flume (ie the industrial site to get logs down river, not the amusement park ride that was inspired by it)

From November 9, 2011

From the Dublin Tweed Ride.

About Aldean's Tattoos on This Town

Rural pyschogeography, might be deeper, and less tangible, less
ability to be transfered through the action of a flanuer, or through
those who seek to control the flanuer, because the relationships are
interwoven, deeper--i think because the size requires an interrelation
and a depletion of inter-relation to function completely. So less of a
drawing on the city and more of a mark, less decay and more
repair--this permanentness leads to a trapping and a desire to escape,
which country has written about, but also a seeking to further the
history. One of the things that leftist discourse around class around
the Occupy Wall-street, and much earlier--is they fail to realize how
traumatic the economies dissolving of farm and small town ties can
be--how deep that landscape is. I think one of the reasons for the
recent influx of taxonomic texts in Nashville about the south
(anything from the Pistol Annie's Boys from the South to Justin
Moore's Small Town USA to Easton Corbin's Small Town USA to to Miranda
Lambert's Famous in a Small Town to Eric Church's Homeboy to Little
Big Town's Boondocks to Luke Bryan's Country Girl, Shake it for Me, to
Blake Shelton's Good Ol' Boys...and all of these w/i the last year) ,
is an oblique way of working through what the eventual dissolution of
this way of life would look like--there are some explicit works, but
the side eyed gaze to the marks of location on people function better.
Aldean has done better songs about this (and actually his best songs
are slightly nostalgic marks of lived pleasure, which is a different
kind of emergency, and often those songs conflate genre with
geography; the rock and roll of Hicktown, the hip hop choruses of
Dirt Road Anthem, etc) and so the genre purity of this and the lack of
pleasure, or anything really prescriptive, has hints of already giving
up--which is actually sort of terrifying. I am not sure that this is a
good song, but it is an important song. And that matters, more then
the problems I could point out with this track--the guitar is a little
flat, the vocals are not as adventurous, the lyrics don't have the
details that he and his song writers excel at--and one doesn't want to
over emphasize absence as presence. It is smack in the middle of a
geographic and cultural shift that is continually being recorded--and
this records it slightly better then others, not not nearly as well as
his best work. Does that make it a 5?

Side Question--Are there more men hoeing this row, and if so, what
does that mean?