Not shame, but shock.  Shock that I find this interesting.  Rather it’s only a preview of a coming series, but I’m hooked.  The series will be a (week)daily post about an element.  Not all the elements, because then why buy the book?  Enough to get me hooked anyways.  I am a trout.

I cannot stop laughing at Prince’s latest comments about the future of the internet.  It’s a quick read, but the laughter will remain with you all day long.  Or, as Lionel Richie sang, all night long.

I’m not too sure what to make of this.  Very short hilarity.  If you dare!

There was world cup action on to-day.  A flash of World Cups past at the bottom (under the fold?).

An interesting essay by a sex worker in LA.  Some of the commentators think this is about the human condition.  I think they probably live in LA.  This loneliness is total LA, and only LAites think it’s universal, so they can go on with their lonely selves.  Not that the LA condition doesn’t infect some/most of us outside of LA.  It’s a cultural capital after all, Paris’s Vichy.

Bruce Sterling’s keynote speech from The Augmented Reality Event.

Many of the conservatives (I do not mean Republicans as there are plenty of Democrats just as, possibly more so, hawkish) dismiss articles like Beeman’s as ivory tower ephemera.  But those people are not reading the bottom portion of Beeman’s passage.  There is a materiality and empiricism to what the (many within) the academy are saying.  If the risks are precisely as catastrophic as conservatives claim, then shouldn’t they pay attention to all commentary?  This myopia in the face of catastrophe either proves their incompetence or the insincerity of their supposed catastrophes.

Beeman, William.  (2003).  Iran and the United States: Postmodern culture conflict in action.  Anthropological Quarterly, 76(4)

For Iran, Iraq, the Taliban of Afghanistan, and terrorist organizations such as Osama bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda, the United States became the “Great Satan,” to borrow Iran’s epithet. The Middle Eastern oppositionists saw America as an external illegitimate force that continually strove to destroy the pure, internal core of the Islamic World. It was also seen as the inheritor of the mantle of colonialism carried out earlier in the 20th Century by Great Britain, France and the Soviet Union. For the United States, the resistant forces of the Middle East took on a demonic form—that of the “crazy outlaw” nations and terrorist groups whose activities were illegal, unpredictable, and irrational. Every president from Ronald Regan to George W. Bush vilified these forces. In Nader’s terminology, they represented disharmony in an extreme form, because they threatened the international social and political order. Each side’s mythology of itself and its role in world affairs complimented this “mythology of the other.” All of the Middle Eastern forces counted their efforts against the United States as proof of modern success in confronting a formidable enemy. For Iran this was the Revolution of 1978-79 and the subsequent 444 day hostage crisis. For Iraq, it was the Gulf war. For Osama bin Laden and other terrorist leaders, it was a series of aggressive attacks against the United States. These included bombing of the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998 and the horrific attacks of September 11, 2001 on the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York and Pentagon in Washington. These groups thus become not just revolutionary oppositionists; they become the guardians of justice and equity for the people of the world. For the United States, a more complex structure which I term below the “U.S. Foreign Policy Myth” held sway. As I will explain below, this myth sees the “normal world” as a body of nation-states arranged in a dichotomous structure—for or against the United States and its interests. The oppositional forces of the Middle East confound this model. The United States therefore places them in to a residual category, and tries to eliminate them—to purify the world, as it were. The United States therefore becomes not just the guardian of democracy or freedom, but of world order. These mythologies became ideological filters for transmission (or, more accurately, non-transmission) of messages between the two cultural worlds. Such filtering might be sufficient to create the kind of abortive understanding that took place between the two nations with such relentless regularity. However, the ideological problems were reinforced by a communicational structure that was equally conducive to reinforcing the mutual negative images both nations held of each other. A Problem of Discourse The communicational problems can be thought of as problems of mutual discourse which became more and more severe as time went on. The United States and all of the Middle Eastern opposition forces mentioned above have operated with different, often contradictory notions of how discourse on an international level should be managed. This often caused drastic misreadings of the content of communication between the two cultural worlds, and mutual accusations of deviousness, insincerity and bad faith. The formal study of discourse has seen considerable growth during the past two decades. Discourse analysts posit a set of implicit contextual agreements between parties which allow face-to-face conversation to take place in an unimpeded manner. Critical theorists such as Bourdieu, Derrida and Baudrillard have extended the term discourse to include the culturally contextualized rhetorical practices of governments, scholarly institutions and commercial business. The theoretical relevance of discourse studies for this problem will be discussed in greater detail in the following chapter, but I wish to underscore here the need to understand the contextual factors which underlie disturbed discourse as a key to explaining. The United States government is bureaucratically geared to speaking to foreign powers using a set of communicative routines and principles inherited from eighteenth and nineteenth century European diplomatic practice. The practices emphasize face-to-face communication between elite governmental officials at equivalent levels (head of state to head of state, secretary or minister of foreign affairs to secretary or minister of foreign affairs, etc.). Special protocol rules apply for communication between persons who are of non-equivalent hierarchical position. These principles thus imply a universal hierarchy of bureaucracy, and a universal set of understandings about management of discourse parameters within that hierarchy. The routines are widely used because they are implicitly accepted by the international community who learned them from colonial powers.

But…there was a short story by Palahniuk that I read this morning.  If you don’t know Palahniuk, then I suggest you acquaint yourself.  He wrote Fight Club and other books that I like more.  His sensibilities are in the right place.  Sadly, he, like I do, tends to repeat the themes and messages in his ouvre.  So, this short story is “Loser” and it’s sweet.  Below is the money shot, which probably helps explain what is going on.  You should read the story though because the action the protagonist takes is BRILLIANT.

It’s like, if you live a boring-enough life, knowing the price of Rice-A-Roni and hot dog weiners, your big reward is you get to live for a week in some hotel in London?  You get to ride on some airplane to Rome.  Rome, like, in Italy.  You fill your head full of enough ordinary junk, and your pay-off is giant supermodels giving you a snowmobile?

If this game show wants to see how smart you really are, they need to ask you how many calories in a regular onion-cheddar cheese bagel.  Go ahead, ask the price of your cell phone minutes any hour of the day.  Ask you about the cost of a ticket for going thirty miles over the speed limit.  Ask the round-trip fare to Cabo for spring break.  Down to the penny, you can tell them the price of decent seats for the Panic at the Disco reunion tour.  (198-9)

Palahniuk, Chuck.  (2010).  Loser.  In Neal Gaiman & Al Sarrantonio, eds.  (2010).  Stories: All-new tales (194-201). NY: William Morrow.

Germany and Argentina played to-day.  The intersections of these two is rife for more conspiracy theories.  Watched for Noses.  As well as Martin Borrman.

Even though I read a lot of Zizek, I am not intolerant of multiculturalism.  I do see proof of the argument that it’s counterproductive, but rarely.  And it does make us feel better about ourselves; there is value to that.  However.  The emphasis FIFA puts on ending racism seems overly cynical to me.  Racism is a problem among futballers and their fans.  It makes sense to reach out and try to prevent these racist outbursts, but these measures are too demonstrative.  I wonder if they are so demonstrative precisely because those in charge are either racist or see the problem as too big to overcome and so they do it as a distancing move.  I may be cynical, but this distancing move of the over-the-top protest is a more insidious cynicism.

Sarrantonio, Al.  (2010).  The cult of the nose.  In Gaiman, Neal and Al Sarrantonio, eds.  (2010).  Stories: All-new tales (304-312.)  NY: William Morrow.

Ian McEwan.  If you’ve not read him, you should.  A quotation I came across this morning, which has occupied many of my thoughts for the day.  I’ll set it out just to emphasize its perspicuity.

Cruelty is a failure of imagination.

Here’s another one by McEwan.  It’s monstrous in its scope if he is correct, of which I am not so sure.  Measuring it is worthy of a career, let alone a passage on some random blog, ergo… a distraction.

When the Enlightenment was being sort of undermined by the theorists in the academies, that was done with a general sense of security about the ultimate cultural victory of Enlightenment values, and now I think that victory is a lot less assured.  (185)

Smith, Zadie & Ian McEwan.  (2005).  Zadie Smith talks with Ian McEwan.  In V. Vida, ed.  (2007).  The Believer book of writers talking with writers (165-191).  San Francisco: Believer Books.

HULK LIKE DUBLINERS. ANYTHING AFTER THAT MAKE HULK BRAIN HURT AND FEEL RAGE COMING ON.

It pains me to credit genius to someone, as there is then less genius left over for yours truly, but this is genius.  The the #TinyDeclaration hashtag.  People are tasked with in a single tweet summarizing the Declaration of Independence.  My not so brilliant entry:

We’re out. PS. King George, you suck.

Slate will compile their favorites and post it later (I’m guessing on the 5th, unless they take that as a holiday like everyone else.)

Sestina.  It’s a poetic form that seems really complex.  Natch, I feel compelled to try my hand at it.  It is really complex and it has managed to kill an entire Wednesday all by itself.

Not quite true.  I was hungover until afternoon, so it wasn’t completely the sestina.  And the game Spectromancer made by James Garfield and friends.  I have a slight man-crush on Garfield.  He has a big brain and uses it to make the world a more leisurely and fun place.  He has a podcast that is highly recommended, Games with Garfield. If I ever finish the sestina, a distraction unfinished due to other distractions?, then I will post it.  It’s based on a joke.  A good joke, unlike the kinds Nate tries his hand at.

The Blair Witch Project was an okay movie, even though it scared the bajeezus out of me.  Only The Shinning has had more affect on me.  There’s an interesting movie critic gimmick at The Rumpus called 10/40/70.  But the latest piece has branched out to also include House of Leaves, which is not a movie but instead a book about a movie.  It’s easily the most terrifying book I’ve ever read and at the same time one of the best.  I learned a lot.  Let’s just say this piece of criticism is…interesting.

A Bing commercial turned me onto this clip of a Dog Shark versus a Giant Pacific Octopus.  I actually feel badly for the shark.

And this flash from the past.

Entourage is back on.  And I have never been more bored.  Seven seasons and the guys are the same.  No growth or personal development.  There is no subtext, only jokes and gimmicks.  The jokes and gimmicks are great.  The show is entertaining, but oh so predictable.

Gordimer, Nadine.  (1982).  Six feet of country. NY: Penguin Books.

Hartwell, David G., ed.  (1989).  The world treasury of science fiction. NY: Little, Brown and Company.

Haug, Frigga.  (1992).  Beyond female masochism. London: Verso Books.

McQuade, Donald and Christine McQuade.  (2006).  Seeing and writing 3.  NY: Bedford/St. Martins.

McSherry, Jr., Frank D., Charles G. Waugh, and Martin H. Greenburg, eds.  (1991).  Great American ghost stories. Nashville: Rutledge Hill Press.

I’m not sure I want to do this anymore.  My reading has taken a hit.  I think it’s because I have strayed from the ground I enjoy.  Exploring is great, but there’s a reason why some of the explored territory is so poorly travelled.  Palahniuk did become tiresome, but I think I am ready to return.  Chabon never became tiresome.  Instead he became established.  I am ready to return to the safety of popular opinion.  Chabon’s popularity is no marketing ploy, unlike The Last - sooooo effing bad - Airbender, his stories are just legitimately good.  In any case, I am disappointed with my June readings and to keep things going I will return to established safe ground.  It is July, and I am clamoring for fireworks.  It is, after all, July.