| Another strange dream |
[Jun. 30th, 2009|11:10 pm] |
| [ | Current Music |
| | Encrimson'd - Red Boar Inn Revolt | ] |
Here's a dream I had last night. I left out some details for various reasons and my terse descriptions don't do capture the vividness of the dream. It was a real strange night of dreams, folks, and this was only one of them.
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) otimus, apoplecticfittz and I were sitting at a bus stop and chatting with some other pals when a police car slowly drove buy. A mean looking cop, overweight, with stubble on the dome of his head and stubble for a beard on his round face, started bothering us. We didn't do anything in return, yet he arrested us three. The rural police station he brought us to was far from the area we were arrested in. I mentioned to him that he was probably out of his jurisdiction, but he told me to be quiet. The police station looked like a big country house. otimus and apoplecticfittz were taken down into a side area below the house that looked like a very large, well maintained police station. I was taken by the awful cop up to the part of the building that seemed like a regular house. He left me near the kitchen. I talk to his Latina maid who said he's crazy and that I should try to leave. I considered it, since my handcuffs weren't very tight, but I also considered waiting to be released. In the meantime, I ate dog food (which tasted like Fruit Loops) to keep up my strength.
Somehow I managed to escape, but on leaving the building some sort of scientific instrument told me that apoplecticfittz and otimus were already released from the regular prison. Upon stepping out of the structure, it was like I was in a German World War II military camp. A dozen or so feet away I see my friends approaching me, dressed in German military attire. Clearly they had waited for me upon their release. As we slowly made our way to the exit (the camp and the surrounding area were configured exactly like my neighborhood and apartment's parking lot), a German tank came up and its gunner called out to us. I could understand a bit, so I went over to see what he wanted. I couldn't quite make out all of his German, so I explained my deficiency by saying in German that I was born in America but that my parents were German and that I was a volunteer for the Reich. He didn't seem to object, so I started addressing him in English. He had a newspaper clipping from the 1980s showing a Crashed German played somewhere in the area of New York City. He wanted to know where he could find it, since in the 1980s there were rumors of the pilot still being alive in the area. I told him that the chances were even better of the pilot being alive in the 40s, which pleased him, and he went off.
We three continued our march onwards out of the parking lot. We wondered whether to steal a civilian or military vehicle. If we were going to take a military vehicle, this was perhaps our last chance. As we were pondering, somebody came and told us that "the Americans are invading!" Since a pond was nearby, I realized that this was nothing other than the Bay of Pigs invasion. We got down to the beach, whereupon we came across an American patrol dressed in WWII style. Members of Pantera were in the patrol. We shot and killed a few of them. The rest retreated up these narrow stone steps towards wherever.
Then we found a submarine on the beach. We got in it and realized it was Starfleet issue. Getting it to work properly was difficult, since you had to balance the use of power. One of our first goals was to use it to build more people. In a few short moments we got the crew up to seven.
But then a problem happened. Another Federation watership attacked us. It was much larger - its crew was maybe 40 - and it was clear that it was going to overtake us. By carefully balancing everything and focusing all our power on depth charges, which we spewed out behind us, we were able to disable that ship in short order, all the same. When their vessel was crippled, we bordered them. The captain was surprised to see that we were fellow Federation officers. Had she known, she said, she wouldn't have fought us, but because she had told her crew for so long to be aware of the tricks of the Russians, she still had to suspect that the federation ship that she saw had been commandeered. Her ship was about to sink but she didn't want to leave it. As we left it, she was still on it. I think she went down with the ship.
That's the end, as far as I can remember. |
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| (no subject) |
[Jun. 12th, 2009|05:54 pm] |
The Many Icons of roter_terror and associated blogs
My good pal esmeralda_m showed me a pretty cool LJ icon today about holocausting "emos" and such. It got me thinking about all of the offensive (and usually stupid) icons that I've made or used over the years. And since none of you have been here since day one -- back in the summer of 2003, as rote, the great martyred blog -- here are most of the icons that I've used in the span of six years, in as close to their actual order of appearance as I can arrange them:
( real long, and kinda NSFW ) |
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| (no subject) |
[May. 19th, 2009|02:17 am] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| | productive | ] |
| [ | Current Music |
| | Youtube: Voyager 046-The swarm 3/5 | ] |
For some now-unfathomable reason I wanted to declare this news with pomp. Since I don’t know how to do that, I’ll just give it to you straight: since fall I’ve been in graduate school, earning my master’s degree in library studies. It’s not as interesting as it sounds, and know to most of you it doesn’t sound that interesting.
But for some people librarians apparently possess a certain mystique. I talked with one fellow who was sat in on a class to see if he’d like it before he applied. He peppered me with many questions, most of them banalities about the coursework and the workload, but then, having exhausted his supply of sensible questions, he said, “So, is it true – are librarians really radical?” “No… not really” was the best I could do.
Where’d he get that idea? Most of my classmates were vocal supporters of Obama, but that was true of everyone on campus – and it certainly didn’t make them radicals. Many librarians are also fanatical (and naive) opponents of the Patriot Act, but again, there’s nothing radical about that. There was a motion in the American Library Association a few years back to have the association make a public statement against the Iraq War that was eventually defeated, but that wouldn’t have been radical either. Really, I don’t know where he got that idea. I imagine the most radical thing most librarians are willing to consider is trading in the Camry for a Subaru, but whatevs.
Weeks later, during a class tour of one of the libraries, I noticed a cubicle with a small poster of Che (the in/famous Korda photo, of course) and another cubicle with a “Hands off Venezuela!” sticker. Was this what he meant when he asked if librarians are “radicals?” Because if it was, and I had known that, I would still have answered no, but with the addition that Venezuela and Cuba (in particular) are state capitalist societies, which is to say that they are capitalist societies in which the state has a greater role in coordinating capitalist production (i.e., exploiting the working class than it does elsewhere), and that, as a consequence, supporters of such regimes are not “radicals” but bourgeois naifs or ardent counter-revolutionaries, and probably both. Bah!
Speaking of those who confuse state capitalism and other “democratic” reforms of the bourgeois state with radicalism, let me say that I just read Paco Ignacio Taibo II’s Life Itself. A fine novel, one I put off reading for too long just because it’s not one of his Héctor Belascoarán Shayne stories. Probably the best novel I've read this year. The only complaint I have is that the politics start to wear thin after a while. The premise of the story is that a “popular organization” defeats the PRI in a municipal election in some sleepy backwater city and establishes a “popular government.” That works splendidly in setting up the plot, but, problematically, the electoral defeat of the PRI is practically equated with “the social revolution.” Aside from campesinos seizing land, not a whole lot changes. Sure, there’s a cultural program or two on the radio, but life itself seems to carry on as before.
At any rate, Paco Igancio Taibo II isn’t the only mystery writer whose politics rankle. I present to you Qiu Xiaolong, author of the Inspector Chen mystery novels. The political message in his novels is that the Cultural Revolution was a tremendous tragedy – and I don’t disagree with that. The problem is that he has to mention the tragedies and deleterious effects of the Cultural Revolution in every other paragraph. It gets old. Fast. Still, I’ll probably be reading the next book in the series sometime soon, as I have read an inspector Chen novel every May since 2006 as a sort of unwinding ritual after finishing classes.
Also, I've been watching Star Trek: Voyager for the last week or so. It's much better than I had lately thought (though I liked it well during its original run). Compared to TNG (the show most similar to it) there's only a few shortcomings. The characters are blander. The aliens aren't steeped in 30 years of ST lore, since Voyager is in a totally unexplored part of space. The stories rely more on action than thoughtful moral or political dilemmas. The writing and attention to detail seems a little looser. It was the first time since TOS that a Star Trek used sex to sell a show (and it did it in a more transparent, dated way). Even so, it still manages to surpass TNG in several respects. It's less episodic – there are story arches that span several episodes or even multiple seasons. For once a Federation ship is surrounded by enemies it can't easily outwit; other times its at the mercy of hostile governments. The crew is less unanimous that any Starfleet crew seen before it. Never as certain in her decisions as Kirk or Picard, and less resolute than Sisko, Janeway seems like a a normal captain. Plus she has a background in science, something the other captains seem to lack (they don't seem to have any particular skills, in fact).
But yeah, Seven of Nine kind of ruins all that. But I know that there's at least one person who hates her -- a guy on youtube who called Kes a "whore."
And finally, let me mention another odd line of reasoning I witnessed in youtube's comment sections. This has to be the strangest conspiracy theory in history: that the USSR didn't really lose that hockey game to the U.S. in 1980 because the USSR team wasn't even there. The CIA, in order to prevent a civil war in America (low morale and all), rigged the game by bribing the Soviet team to sit it out. The cost? They promised these young Soviet players NHL contracts for whenever the Iron Curtain fell. When Herb Brooks (the American coach) was about to come public with the hoax a few years ago the CIA killed him.
Right... |
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| Merry Spring |
[Mar. 24th, 2009|06:32 pm] |
Depending on where you're at, it might be hard to believe that Spring has officially arrived (or not). Here in Wisconsin, we seemed to be in something of a limbo. The snow melted, but it left behind dead, brown grass. If it wasn't so warm, you could easily mistake the scene for late fall. Only today's heavy rain and my spotting of a tree with beautiful crimson blossoms convinced me that Spring might finally make its presence felt. And to celebrate that, I present to you two thing. The first is an excerpt of the 14th centutyr Middle English poem "Gawain and the Green Knight," as translated by W.S. Merwin. In the part from which this is excerpted, the poet skillfully describes the transition of seasons from one Christmas to the next. Here is what he wrote about Spring:
After Christmas came crabbèd Lent
That chastises the flesh with fish and plainer food.
But then the weather of the world makes war on winter,
Cold cringes downward, clouds lift,
The shining rain comes down in warm showers,
Falls on the fair meadow, flowers appear there,
Both the open land and the groves are in green garments,
Birds hurry to build, and they sing gloriously
With the joy of the soft summer that arrives
on all the hills,
And blossoms are opening
In thick hedgerows, and then the noblest
Of all songs ring
Through the lovely forest. From W.S. Merwin's translation of the 14th century Middle English poem "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight."
( If you want to read it in the Middle English )
The second thing I have for you is a recording from the 1920s of the 13th century song "Sumer is icumen in." (And no, I'm not mistaken in posting it; despite what Wikipedia says, "sumer" in Middle English means "spring", as should be obvious from the lyrics.)
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| TOP BOOKS I READ IN 2008, IN NO PARTICULAR ORDER |
[Mar. 20th, 2009|11:45 pm] |
| [ | Current Music |
| | Mordaehoth - Laatste Dagen Van en Oud Panth | ] |
Fiction
Growth of the Soil by Knut Hamsun.
Don't be deterred by Hamsun's later ties to Nazism -- apart from its rejection of "modernity," there's nothing in this book that suggests that it was inevitable that, almost 30 years after its publication, Hamsun would eulogize Hitler as a "warrior for mankind." This is a great book for anyone who likes multigenerational sagas, stories about settling wildernesses, women's issues, and so on. This one the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1917 or 1918.
The Once and Future King by T.H. White.
Have you seen Disney's The Sword in the Stone? Well, the first book of T.H. White's tetralogy is similar in substance and spirit to that work, but the rest of the books share a completely different tone -- darker, fatalistic, meloncholy. Heck, the second book begins with the murder of a unicorn and the subsequent abuse of its head. White's liberal prejudices are a bit annoying at times, but on the whole I think it's a fine work for kids and adults, and one deserving of praise for its sympathetic portrayal of the Middle Ages. (There's an entire chapter describing what Guinevere and Lancelot see as they stare out a window one day in their autumn years; White really conveys the virtue and darkness of the Middle Ages here in a beautiful way.)
Titus Groan / Gormenghast by Mervyn Peake.
Just read the sample text on Amazon. I can't think of another author with such a deep and keen knowledge of our language.
The Fionavar Tapestry by Guy Gavriel Kay.
Not brilliant like the above works, but still worth far more mention that it seems to receive. Here are three or four fantasy novels that tell a huge story in maybe under 1000 pages. The pace is fast and the story is intricate. It's also unusually touching for a fantasy series. Recommended to the utmost!
The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson.
Ok, so if you're looking for a cheap thrill, this isn't the book for you. But if you want a plausible ghost story with a good deal of complexity, this is the one. (It's comparable, say, to Mark Z. Danielewski's House of Leaves, only readable.)
Nonfiction
The Victorian Internet: The Remarkable Story of the Telegraph and the Nineteenth Century's On-line Pioneers by Tom Standage.
Name the most important development in communications since writing. Go ahead, try it. If you picked the internet, radio, or TV, you're probably wrong.
No, in terms of the qualitative improvement in the speed of communication, all of those innovations pale in comparison to the telegraph. Consider that before the telegraph (or the railroad), it took months for word to reach India from Britain. Then, with the invention of the telegraph, that time was cut to minutes. The implications of the reduction of communications time from the speed of a fast sailing ship to the speed of an electrical impulse are well-covered by Standage, as are the precedents for the telegraph, but where the book really shines is in his comparison of the telegraph to the internet.
Think long-distance friendships or dating are new phenomenons? Not by a long shot, Standage points out. Telegraph operators would 'chat' with other operators in their downtime, and sometimes they even fell in love. (Such affairs even inspired an 1880 novel -- Wired Love: A Romance of Dots and Dashes.)
Think the internet was the first technology to shake-up the newspaper game? Again, not by a long shot. The telegraph positively chagrined newspaper men. With the instant delivery of news to all corners of the country, newspapers couldn't acquire stories before their rivals by means of horse relays and the like -- and what else would set apart papers but the speed with which they obtained the latest news? Many newspapers expected to go out of business.
And so on. Do yourself a favor and spend a few bucks to pick up a used copy.
Twelve Who Ruled: The Year of the Terror in the French Revolution by R.R. Palmer.
Considered to be the best book on the French Revolution ever written by an American, and with good reason. Its strongest points are the author's evenhanded appraisals of the major players (he doesn't adore or villify Robespierre and in fact spenda more time considering the abler members of the committee), his thoughtful observations, and a careful presentation which makes this both an important academic work and also a downright enjoyable history for popular audiences. Most important to me was Palmer's assesment of the politics of the radicals of 1793-94; Palmer explicitly points out the bourgeois prejudices of the Committee and often mentions this or that measure or idea as proof of the committee's unsocialistic character. For instance, regarding the Jacobins' refusal to repudiate the debts of the Monarchy, Palmer wryly states that such moves show just how far from socialism the Jacobins were. Likewise, he explains the Jacobins' overtures to the poor as motivated not by ideology but rather by the fact that the poor were rather more ardent revolutionaries than the rich; conversely, their disdain for the rich had more to do with intolerance for the uncommitted than any class perspective. What's more, Palmer says that even the left-most members of the committee (such as Collot d'Herbois) envsioned a society of small commodity producers rather than a socialist society. And so on -- time and time again the author provides evidence to refute the notion that the Jacobins were anything but the radical wing of the French bourgeoisie. So, even though Palmer was a liberal, by and large his conclusions regarding the class nature of the revolutionaries are similar to those of the Marxist historians Lefebvre and Soboul.
The Socialist Party of America: A History by David A. Shannon
Is this the best book on the Socialist Party of America? I don't know. But it is witty, engaging, and accurate.
More importantly, the subject matter is fascinating. One anecdoate should demonstrate my point: in 1917, when the U.S. entered WWI, poor Oklahoman farmers, party members, rose in armed rebellion, having heard rumors that other workers across the country were doing the same. They intended to march on D.C. and overthrow the government. This quixotic episode is no more than a footnote today, but it shows what a serious and widespread socialist millieu existed in the U.S. in the first two decades of the 20th century.
The party's slide towards reformism and the emergence of a revolutionary wing within the party, with strong ties to the German and Dutch "ultralefts," and armed with the understanding that capitalism was entering a new phase in which traditional forms of struggle such as parties and unions were outmoded (something since lost on Lenin's epigones), are ably chronicled by Shannon. The suppression of the party's left by the state in 1917-1918 is also well told, confirming the Socialist Propaganda League's prophetic statement of 1916 that "in the class war, all constitutional rights and perogatives of the people are ignored or abolished and the capitalist class, abominating Liberty and supported by guns, meets the working class with the armed power of the capitalist state. When the workers seek shelter in constitutional guarantees and essay to use these rights for the betterment of their conditions, they too often find that rights and guarantees are mere 'scraps of paper.'" After this and the October Revolution, the party's left went on to form the Communist parties (yes, there were multiple); unfortunately, since Shannon wrote a history of the Socialist Party, the book's second half is filled with dull figures like Norman Thomas and Victor Berger.
Another exellent book on the Socialist Party of America's revolutionary wing is Allen Ruff's We Called Each Other Comrade: Charles H. Kerr & Company, Radical Publishers.
Books that I hated or that left me very confused
The Tombs of Atuan by Ursula K. LeGuin.
This is the second book in her Wizard of Earthsea series. The first one was great; this one was awful. The variety, the adventure, and the characters of the first book are all tossed out in favor of a handful of dull characters all confined to a single setting, more or less. If I learned one thing this year about LeGuin, it's that she's inconsistent -- both in terms of the quality of her works and in terms of her politics (she backed Barack Obama despite having been masqueraded as an anarchist).
Starship Troopers by Robert Heinlein.
Is it Fascist? I don't know, and I don't particularly care. The worst thing about the politics is the clean-cut, 1950s style tone. Heinlin's characters sound like Ward Cleavers with axes to grind. And it sure is boring. But at least it inspired Joe Haldeman's Forever War, right?
Dune by Frank Herbert.
For the first 2/5ths or so, I was convinced this was truly one of the best sci-fi novels ever, just as everyone had said. Then about 80% of the cast and 90% of the suspsense disappeared and I was left rather bored. Still, it's a fine book and the backstory is unusually interesting, though it's not all it's cracked up to be.
Tales of the Dying Earth by Jack Vance
This book's really a compilation of three novels and a bunch of short stories all set on, well, a dying Earth billions of years in the future. Technologicall advancement and time haven't marched hand in hand, however, for the Dying Earth is a primitive world where magic and science are synomyous (or something like that -- I'm paraphrasing the blurb on the back). The first section of the book, the collection of short stories, introduced a very interesting world and showed Vance to be an imaginative author, yet the stories themselves really didn't go anywhere. I was disappointed, yet intrigued, so I checked out novella that makes up the second part and was pleasantly surprised ... but I'll leave that for next year's iteration of this list. |
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| (no subject) |
[Feb. 16th, 2009|02:58 am] |
| [ | Current Music |
| | Bach - Sheep May Safely Graze BWV 208 | ] |
My thoughts at 4:04 PM on Friday: Why is it that as soon as I fix one problem with my car, another develops? Specifically, why on Friday did I go through getting my battery jumped (and cleaning my car's interior while waiting on AAA), then taking my time to fill the air in my tires, all so that as I left the gas station my car could make some ominous high-pitched noise -- "squ!ee!!squeee!!!ee!elch!!!" Is the god damn air hose stuck to my tire, am I pulling it from the station? I don't see how it could be... I'm a block away. Argh!
My thoughts at 4:06 PM on Friday: Hey, wait a minute, now that that shitty old Volvo* is on my left side rather than in front of me, the sound doesn't seem to be coming from my engine anymore -- in fact, it's coming from my left! That prick's the one that's gonna die before he gets home, not me!
As if to make this Volvo even more obnoxious, the car had an IWW sticker on the bumper and an Obama/Biden sticker on the back windshield. hmm.
In other news,
I need help picking a pair of foot-cages. Which of these looks best?
My feet are in desperate need of better shoes. It's been about a year since they've been in anything approaching comfortable. At first they just had my old, broken down shoes that were okay at one time. Last summer I replaced my decaying New Balances with a pair of "Starbury" shoes that literally cost 7 dollars. Have you guys seen these? They're sold exclusively at Steve and Barry's, a retailer that caters to an, erm, 'urban' audience. An incredibly cheap urban audience, apparently. Now if a pair of Air Jordans sells for 200 dollars yet only costs 30 dollars to make, there's a huge discrepancy between the cost of production and the sale price. Not so in the case of the Starburys. If all you care about is not getting ripped off, they're a great shoe. But since they use maybe 3 dollars worth of material and labor, you're getting a "deal" but not a shoe that is safe, comfortable, attractive, or durable. I mean, look at them:
I thought I was the world's best shopper when I bought them. I also thought they were awesome as a 'joke,' to prove to my friends that I'm even more frugal and less fashion conscious than they had thought. But the joke was on me once they started to peel the skin off of my feet after a month or two of use. And that bit about safety? Well, since the soles are essentially flat planes of rubber wit narrow, thin grooves carved in them to make a useless pattern, they offered no traction whatsoever. Not so good for work.
Once I realized I needed a new pair of shoes, I waited until 8:30 on the night before the day I needed them. Since I wasn't feeling up to any serious shopping, I went to a store called "ShopKo." Obviously that was my first mistake. Their selection of shoes wasn't very good, but they did have a range of larger shoes (I wear a 14EEEE, apparently). Before long I found a pair that I figured would work well enough. I spent 24.99 on them -- nearly 4 times the cost of my previous shoes -- and left, thinking I got a good deal.
The next day I found that I could barely walk up stairs at school. This was partially because the University of Wisconsin is stingy and built stairs with steps so narrow I can barely fit half of my foot on them, but mostly because my shoes were SHAPED LIKE A GOD DAMN BOWL. Look!
I don't know about you people, but the front of my foot doesn't bend upward. So why does the front of this shoe? Probably because they're NEVADOS from SHOPKO. Anyway, after a week or two I finally felt okay wearing them. But now the plastic in the back of the shoe is coming loose and digging into my heel every step I take. So that's why I'm asking your opinion on new shoes. All four pictured there are New Balance. New Balance is pretty much the only company that makes shoes for people who aren't midgets. Some company called Propet does, too, but their shoes remind me of the episode of Seinfeld where Kramer's mouth is anesthetized and he's wearing strange shoes, leading Mel Torme to conclude that he's retarded.
I've been playing a lot of Tetris lately. Relatively. I often thoughtlessly profess to hate it, but now that I actually think about it I see that I've played a lot of Tetris in my life. There was a black and white Tetris I used to play on Macintosh back in my elementary school days. There was also a color version called Super Tetris that I played on those computers (and which I've begun to play again thanks to emulation). I played Tetris on my brother's gameboy. After I bought that from him for 80 cents, I played Tetris on my gameboy. Once I got a gameboy pocket my parents bought me Tetris Attack for Christmas. I forgot about that game for the longest time, despite playing it a whole lot for the first while after getting it.
Do you people like Tetris and other puzzle games? I only realize it now, but I guess I'd say I'm something of a puzzle gamer. I really like that Puzzle Fighter game on PS1, Columns on the Genesis is great fun (though I only played it once), and Yoshi's cookie is something I've always enjoyed.
I have watched the first four and a half seasons of Babylon 5. A very good show. Frequent comparisons between it and Deep Space Nine aren't very fair, at least in my view. The similarities are obvious but superficial. The most important similarities are their high quality and use of story arcs. satanscientist, I know you're something of a Trekkie. Get on this show. The first two seasons and the pilot are on Hulu.
Also, what's with me having a man crush on every cool male character on sci-fi shows? Picard, Riker, Sheridan ... I also have a man crush on Elric, of all people. And Boromir. And Theoden, I suppose.
Well, that's it for now! See you in a few days. |
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| Ahoy! |
[Dec. 17th, 2008|02:53 am] |
| [ | Current Music |
| | Bathory - In Conspiracy With Satan | ] |
In the since I started listening to black metal more, I've seen a lot of amazing album covers. Now, it's not a genre given to ostentation, so most album covers are forgetabble. Others are remarkable only because of how bad they are (example). Maybe it's because I don't pay close attention the covers that I've only been able to identify to "themes" common to many covers. The first is the use of photos of wooded, often wintry landscapes -- what Forsth referrred to in typical black metal English as "snowly mountains" (examples 1, 2 and 3). I really like this type, but there's another that is even more striking, at least to me. These album covers contain images of birds, usually ravens, in varying degrees of prominence. It might be my inordinate fear of birds that makes me notice these album covers, granted, but after collecting 50 album covers with birds on them I think it's safe to say that, for some reason, metal people love them some birds.
What is the importance, the meaning, of the bird in Western culture? I don't know. With regard to metal specifically, I know that in the ancient Germanic faith -- which black metal often drawns on -- the raven is important. References to Hugin and Munin, for instance, are common enough in viking or black metal songs. Thus Einherjer sung
From the sky
your ravens watching me
Both of them I see
Thank you Father
For letting me know
You watch over me
and Galar have a song titled Hugin and Munin. Does the association of ravens with the heathen past explain the frequent appearance of birds in black metal? In part. Other kinds of metal use other species of birds in their imagery. Perhaps the bird, in general, has some appeal to metal as a whole, even if each genre has its proclivities for certain kinds of birds or certain represntations of birds?
Well, I don't know, but birds, as terrifying creatures, are as suitable for metal album covers as anything. Take a look and judge for yourself.
( 50 album covers of avian grimness; not necessarily suitable for the ornithophobic or the bandwidth challenged ) |
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| How Could 120 Million People Be So Stupid?, or the Democratic Myth Rejuvenated |
[Nov. 4th, 2008|10:50 pm] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| | sickened | ] |
| [ | Current Music |
| | MSNBC's election coverage (CNN's streaming shit was using second-stringers before) | ] |
I won't say much (I'm saving that for a leaflet I plan to give out on campus on Jan. 20). It seems many of you "radicals" forsook the class perspectives that you flaunt when it's fashionable in favor of liberal GOPhobia, feel-goodism, and plain naivety. But whatevs. Moving on...
Barack wins. First president that's not a rich white man. Now it's a rich black man. Same capitalist program in either case.
Still, I hope it makes black folks and others happy.
The other positive outcome of this election is that now I have got four years to show liberals how little difference there is between Obama and Bush. For the first time in four years, liberals aren't going to be able to shift the responsibility for the crimes of capitalism onto the "facists," "conservatives," "neo-cons," etc. On the other hand, it's a wash, though, because to liberals not a single bad thing's going to happen in the next four years.
Anyhow, let's start hammering those liberals. I'll go first.
"According to the Center for Responsive Politics, a Washington group that tracks campaign contributions, military contractors have given 34 percent more to Obama than to his Republican opponent, Senator John McCain." Makes sense. As Robert Kagan wrote, "Obama talks about 'rogue nations,' 'hostile dictators,' 'muscular alliances' and maintaining 'a strong nuclear deterrent.' He talks about how we need to 'seize' the 'American moment.' We must 'begin the world anew.'" and"according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a Washington group that tracks campaign contributions, military contractors have given 34 percent more to Obama than to his Republican opponent, Senator John McCain."
The last thing I'll say out of bitterness is that this moron has about twice the political sophistication of some people I've seen tonight. (In this case, my bitterness isn't directed towards any of you on my f-list but towards the morons who promise every four yours to move to Canada/Europe.)
I got it from a rough-looking guy who asked if I wanted some "pro-life literature." I politely said yes because, you know what, I respect people who can stand out there and disseminate and defend unpopular views. The same feeling led me to want to tell the McCain folks that I respected their bravery. The Nader people, though, I just wanted to stand in front of them and point and laugh for hours.
ETA: OBAMA JUST PROMISED HIS DAUGHTERS A NEW PUPPY. A PUPPY! A PUPPY! BEST PRESIDENT EVER.
ETAA: "The workers cannot overcome this capitalist contradiction, their exploitation and slavery proceeding from their legal liberty, as long as they do not recognize the political contradiction of middle-class democracy. Democracy is the ideology they brought along with them from the former middle-class revolutionary fights; it is dear to their hearts as an inheritance of youthful illusions. As long as they stick to these illusions, believe in political democracy and proclaim it their program they remain captives in its webs, struggling in vain to free themselves. In the class struggle of to-day this ideology is the most serious obstacle to liberation."
- Anton Pannekoek |
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| Strange comments from the internet, part I. |
[Oct. 23rd, 2008|08:04 pm] |
| [ | Current Music |
| | Hedningarna - Tina Vieri | ] |
So, about in January '07 I was googling for John Crump, a Briton who wrote some pretty decent stuff I was interested in. I don't remember just what I was looking for, but what I found was that Mr. Crump died in January 2005. This sad news was tempered by a search result that led to the discovery of an unrelated John Crump, responsible for some of the strangest and funniest comments I've ever seen on eBay.
This John Crump left 159 items of feedback on eBay. At first, these are remarkable for their incoherence and irrelevance (he comments on his opinion of the product rather than the seller), but some strange patterns emerge when you look carefully.
GIBSON LES PAUL EPIPHONE: it is nice & i realy like it a lot thank's a lot.
GIBSON LES PAUL EPIPHONE: i like it a lot it has good sound & blance.
RCA VCR: it is nice i like it. You did an exahlent job in packing it.
RCA 7" PORTABLE DVD PLAYER: i sure will use it & enjoy i.
THE ELTON JOHN GREAT HITS CD: i like it sound's good. CD case i like & will use.
ENYA (2005,CD): I like enya she is a good aerite's.
THE BEATLES: I do like the beatles. I have on LP's beatles albums. I may sell.
Original Kodak Ni-mh Battery Pack: real small. nice price. i can use it. thank's
10 PSP MOVTES NEW: I do like them all. I do have some on dvd. Thank's
Queen-A Night at the Opera CD: I like it. it sound's good in stero sound.
Camera Bag: Nice. I cam
MY PLAYBOY MAGINZE HAS ARIVED: glad to be back with playboy. Thank's a Millon. [!?]
"POLICE FLASHLIGHT": a real good deal. I sure can use it. Thank's a millon.
BELOW HOLESALE 80,000 BB'S: Real nice deal. I can use these. Thank's.
Home sharping Dirll Bits,Knifes,etc.: Real nice. I think i can use it. Thank's What the heck? Up to this point he seems like your run of the mill idiot. Repetetive, sure, maybe even a bit creepy, but normal enough. His more recent purchases tell a different story...
( Mr. Crump's big 'proget' ) |
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| Rant, or Why It Was a Good Thing When I Don't Blog Much |
[Oct. 16th, 2008|03:01 am] |
| [ | Tags | | | politics | ] |
| [ | Current Music |
| | Hedningarna - Tuuli | ] |
With few exceptions, the response to Congress's economic "Bailout" has demonstrated the utter stupidity of ... well, just about everyone.
- Says Sam Donaldson, "Yes, socialism has now washed over free market capitalism and only a very brave, or foolhardy few would protest."
- A commentor on the website of the Rutland Herald tells us that "When the state takes over a business that is socilaism [sic]."
- "Progressive" columnist Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post writes "It's pathetic to hear right-wing talk radio blowhards try to associate Barack Obama with 'radical' or 'socialist' views when a Republican administration is tossing aside 'Atlas Shrugged and speed-reading 'Das Kapital.'"
- John Farmer of New Jersey's Star-Ledger News echoes that statement: "The Bush administration has come full circle -- from Karl Rove to Karl Marx."
- Dean Takahashi (known otherwise as a videogame industry analyst) weighs in on the bailout in a posting to the VentureBeat blog: "When they write the textbooks when this is all over, I’d like to see how they describe the U.S. economic system. Is it capitalist? Not at the moment."
Just when it seemed that this chorus of intellectual mediocrity would drone on, unchanging, for ever, Señor Chavez of Venezuela chimes in with a few new (sour) notes. Addressing a group of intellectuals, Chavez half joked that "Bush is to the left of me now ... Comrade Bush announced he will buy shares in private banks."
Happily, at least a few people in the newspapers still know what socialism means. Hence this witty remark from Mark Steel, British comedian-cum-Trotskyist: "But just because the Government is taking over banks, that doesn't mean it's socialism. Certainly none of the founders of socialism, such as Karl Marx, appear to have written anything along the lines of: 'Workers of the world unite! It is time to pay every penny on the planet to bail out bankers who've cleaned the world dry with greed, and make sure they get a few million quid pay-off as they must be quite upset. Only then, toiling masses, will you have broken your chains!'" Bravo!
Still, it was the very people who claim the mantle of the Marxist tradition that perpetuate the lie that capitalism is an economy without state intervention, with nothing but private ownership, and that anything else, but chiefly the presence of the state in the economy, is socialism.
The inability to see capitalism clearly is a defining feature of the left. For them, like their counterparts on the right, capitalism is defined as 'private' ownership of the means of the production. Often the lack of state intervention is stressed, evidence by the left's fanatical hatred of neoliberalism but their relative acceptance of equally capitalist Keynesian alternative (to say nothing of their enthusiasm for Stalinsm). The problem with this approach is that private ownership is only an external characteristic of capitalism in certain historical circumstances. Equating capitalism with private enterprise is like equating dogs with curly tails; sometimes you can have one without the other.
Contrary to the leftist understanding of capitalism, the Marxist approach looks at capitalism from the core outward. It is like defining a dog by its genetic sequence rather than some variable characteristic. Marxism sees capitalism as a system of production marked by the production of commodities, the existence of wage labor, the accumulation of capital. These are features present whether the means of production are owned by individual citizens or by the state representing the entirety of the bourgeoisie. Engels was crystal clear that state intervention, even state ownership, has nothing to do with socialism:
But, the transformation — either into joint-stock companies and trusts, or into State-ownership — does not do away with the capitalistic nature of the productive forces. ... The workers remain wage-workers — proletarians. The capitalist relation is not done away with [my italics]. The left's fetish for state involvement in the economy has led to some queer positions. A segment of the Socialist Party of America were enthusiastic proponents of American entry into WWI because total war dictated state control of war production, and a need for efficiency, which these folks thought to be the opening moves of a socialist transformation. The obsession has also led to horrible, tragic positions, such as the defense of Stalinism and all of the "socialist" modernizing regimes that followed in the footsteps of the USSR, from China to Cuba to Romania to Africa. Today fresh-faced state capitalist ideologies like Zapatismo and Bolivarianism are the rage.
Anyhow. I wonder if there were any so-called Marxists who supported that dirty Socialist Reagan when he ovethrew American capitalism in 1984?
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| (no subject) |
[Oct. 10th, 2008|09:36 pm] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| | indescribable | ] |
| [ | Current Music |
| | Triakel | ] |
This post is a bit tardy now that the Large Hadron Collider (known to its critics as a black hole creator) was activated. Those predicting doom have since shut up, and the LHC has disappeared from the popular consciousness as quickly as an evaporated black hole, but none of this diminish the greatness of the "scamp" I pulled a couple months, playing on the fears of a cowardly, gullible LHC-phobe.
The setting: backroom of a grocery store; dingy, drab. Surveillance and sporadic managerial presence precludes elaborate set-ups. A radio is the sole luxury.
The victim: a co-worker of many years. Intelligent but gullible, knowing enough about the LHC to understand its operations and potential implications, but not enough to know its schedule.
The occasion: my last day of employment at the store (after eight years).
THE PRANK: Sort of a copy of the famous War of the Worlds radio broadcast. I took a few songs that the local classic rock radio station plays, a station identification I recorded from an online stream, and an Emergency Alert System tone, and (what I thought would be) an official-sounding message created by a voice synthesizer. I then arranged them all in the right order and burned a CD. At work, I cut short my break so as to get to the back room first. I turned the CD on. When the mark arrived a few minutes later, he had no idea that he wasn't hearing the radio.
Then, as we were enjoying the enjoyable 'Heat of the Moment' by Asia, the EAS alert tone began. He shushed us all and told us to listen. Then the tone ended and the message began: “ This is an activation of the Emergency Alert System. Within the last 35 minutes contact has been lost with the area surrounding the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva, Switzerland. The likeliest explanation is that today's initial testing of the supercollider has unexpectedly resulted in a worst case scenario, the creation of a micro black hole. Due to the catastrophic nature of this occurrence, the President has ordered a curfew...” [Listen to the mp3 I used for this.]
Initially dazed, my coworker quickly realized what (he thought) was happening. His eyes bulged, his face blanched. He started moving around without any objective other than to stifle the panic (the same way you might get out of bed at night when you ponder the vastness of eternity). He started to run.
And here is where fortuity and planning coincided to create a perfect vortex of malice and prankster goodness.
He got a series of texts at the very moment this 'warning' was playing on our stereo. As he stumbled around, terrified, he was fumbling in his pocket for his phone. If his inability to get his phone from his pocket to his hand was any indication, his mind was not working well. And as my two coworkers and I stood watching (in on the prank, they pretended not to understand the import of the message), the victim yelled, “DO YOU KNOW WHAT THIS MEANS? WE'RE FUCKING DEAD!”
I couldn't contain my laughter another second. I burst out laughing, called him a moron, and explained what happened. He was a bit miffed, understandably, but he appreciated the joke and congratulated me. But for the rest of the night I swear he was jittery and short of breath. He even said I took years off his life!
Well done, me!
Artist's rendering: A black hole sucks pulls in atheletes, spoiling Sunday pigskinnery as it devours the Earth.
PS: I haven't blogged in a few months? hmm. Well, I'll make up for that by posting at least weekly from now on. |
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| Blasting open the Dam on Lake BackloggedBlogPosts, part one |
[Jun. 25th, 2008|03:08 am] |
| [ | Current Music |
| | Svartnatt - Kung Vinter | ] |
In the days of my youth I was fastidious about burning all my downloaded albums to CD. But as disks became more spacious and my zeal for, well, anything, waned, I gave up on CD-Rs. At first I told myself I'd burn them later. I even kept a list of albums I hadn't burned. As this list grew longer I decided the only easy way out was to finally switch over to storing my music . This only makes sense in the days of mp3 players. And I'm a hermit that doesn't need to listen to music anywhere but in my room. Anyhow…
The only problem I've encountered in switching to a digital collection is that now I'm left with hundreds of unused CD-R albums. (Audiophiles, skip this parenthetical remark: I ripped these CD-Rs back to my computer a long time ago, even when they were missing tracks or had strange audio errors).
Now these CDs are only collecting dust (literally), but I can't bring myself to do something so wasteful as throwing them out. You, my friends list, have been asked repeatedly if you'd take any of those CD-Rs. There were no takers. I tasked you with finding a way to creatively dispose of them. Nobody came up with one. And nobody I know "IRL" (as opposed to in "IRC" – in real chat) wants them.
The problem was left up to me. I feel like a nuclear power plant that's got no Western state to dump my waste in. But I'm also determined; like the nuclear waste producers in Snow Crash that ditched their barrels of glowing green goo in rented storage lockers, I found an unorthodox way to dispose of my rubbish.
My plan is so simple I can explain it in a single sentence (as any plan for getting rid of plastic discs should be): I will take a batch of CD-Rs and strew them in my wake as I tend to the day's business.
My first foray into Social CD Recycling happened one night when I took the wee dog for her walk. I knew that our route we would some benches between two tennis courts on the grounds of the local junior high school. I also knew that 13 year olds should like free CDs, even, or especially, when they're warning against intervening in 1980's Nicaragua (Sacred Reich's Surf Nicaragua), telling of Rob Halford's nightly "looking for meat" (Judas Priest's Grinder), or exclaiming "Chopped in half!" (Obituary's Chopped in Half).
The Chosen Few and the spot from which they were to launch their ambush of free goodness
Well, I left the CDs there, took a picture, and went home. I wondered what those 13 year olds would think of bands like Yes and Obituary. Probably not a whole lot, I conceded. When I walked by again a few days later I noticed that the little Vandals hadn't even given the CDs a chance. They massacred them. It was a horrible site. CDs sprawled on the tennis court, on the grass.
The incident left me daunted but undeterred. I won't be so naïve next time. I'll tailor match every CD to its recipient. 'Viking Metal' CDs will go to a library's section on Vikings, Deep Purple CDs to the liquor store's shelf, and the Death Metal will go to the junior high schoolers as a grim warning. |
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| (no subject) |
[Apr. 23rd, 2008|12:26 am] |
Since most of you on my friends list are acquainted with the Marxist analysis of the environmental crisis, or some other analysis roughly equivalent to it, I’ll spare you the displeasure of having to see it restated in a crude, inferior form on your friends list. Instead, and primarily for those unfamiliar with that Marxist analysis, I give you two links which summarize it quite well.
1. Environmental Debate: “Do you have to be Red to be Green?” by the International Bureau for the Revolutionary Party.
2. Inconvenient Truths About Environmentalism by the International Communist Current.
So that's my Earth Day gift to my friends list. I hope you like it.
1. In other news, the Huffington Post contained a blog posting today that somehow managed to be stupider than their usual fare. Film director Nora Ephron argued that "this is an election about whether the people of Pennsylvania hate blacks more than they hate women. And when I say people, I don't mean people, I mean white men." She continues on, saying that white men are all-powerful because... they make up an electorate so large that it can select who wins. We'll get to the problems with her argument in a minute, but let me first say that I don't take anything like this seriously anymore. It's another example of a rich, powerful white woman bashing white men who are, in many cases, less influential, less affluent, and less educated than them. If I wanted to engage in the same kind of scurrilous racism as Ephron, I'd point to her and say it's another rich Jew, powerful in the media, whining about her invented oppression. I don't think she'd like that.
At any rate, let's consider some things. First, anyone who uses "white men" as a pejorative is an idiot. Usually it's a liberal white middle class woman whose own privileged background has taught her to ignore or disregard class. Zweig, in The Working Class Majority, notes that 46% of the working class is white men and that while the job of janitor is the largest and second largest occupational category for hispanics and blacks respectively, it's also the sixth largest employment category for white men. Conversely, if salaried manager is the #1 category for white men, it's also #6 for white women, #7 for Hispanic men and #8 for African Americans. So, yes, there's a degree of disparity between white men and everyone else -- but to portray all white men as socially superior to everyone else is to make some, I feel, unwarranted assumptions about the nature of class.
In Pennsylvania, according to Ephron, white men can choose between a black male and a white female. True. But if you add class to the equation, you'll see that white proletarian men are choosing between a bourgeois black man and a bourgeois white woman vying for the job of the representative of the oppressing class who will represent and repress them, to use Marx's phrase. Puts it in a slightly different light, eh?
Now, probably the white working class will go with Hillary. Ephron and her liberal elite ilk will spin this as proof of whites' racism. Here they are actually injecting class into their analysis, since obviously they don't mean the white middle class -- which has voted heavily for Obama. They mean the working class. Now, Hillary isn't any better of a choice than Obama or any other politician, but she's the one that took the time to talk to them and to address their concerns. These are people living with economic insecurity, with their jobs disappearing or disappeared. They can't afford to vote for "hope," for somebody without any semblance of experience or a plan. And while Obama has been praising Ronald Reagan and cozying up with the center-right, Hillary has stuck more or less to the issues the traditional working class base of the democratic party cares about.
If white workers break for Hillary, it has far more to do with class than with defending their "white privilege."
I think that explains the white working class's aversion to Obama. (It would be interesting to see how the black working class compares to the black middle class when it comes to Obama versus Hillary).
What, then, is behind the white middle class's support for Obama? Why have affluent, educated, urban whites voted for Obama? For part of that demographic, it's simply because he's the moderate. But almost by definition affluent, educated urbanites are liberal bunch; why has it swung for Obama? Frankly, I think white guilt explains a bit of it. Who wants to be the target of vitriol like Ephron's? Vote for the black and you'll never have to feel bad, I figure their reckoning goes. At least until the "feminists" find out you're a traitor for not voting for Hillary!
( one more rant )
3. My gray cat Shadow was put to sleep last week. As much as I cared for her, I don't feel bad about it now. She had incurable cancer that, by the time it was diagnosed, substantially lowered the quality of her life. (Basically, she had a tumor on her mandible that made it difficult to keep her mouth shut. Spit ran out of her mouth and she couldn't lap it back in. I can't say whether she was in pain, but she had lost most of her skittishness in the last few days, preferring to be by people and in places she never would have.) The manner of her death was humane and could possibly even be said to be pleasant for her. And death itself isn't anything I should feel bad for her about. As a matter of fact, she doesn't exist anymore!
When she died, I choked up, some tears came down, but I didn't feel like I cried enough. I think that was the last time I felt very emotional about her death. Now I don't miss her in the least. I don't feel guilty about that, either.
Anyway! I'm not universally cold or uncaring. I just wasn't very close to her. I do feel bad about one thing, and that is not making more of an effort to make her last days better. I've rationalized my failure as a result of my feeling that once she was dead nothing about her life would matter, but maybe I was just lazy too. The one thing I did do before she was taken to be put down was to pet her some and take some last pictures to remember her by. Thinking back on that, I guess it turned out nicely because our other cat, who she's known all her life, sat beside her a last time. Even Bera came down and managed to squeeze in for a last photograph of the three pets together:
Not to sound like Bob Barker, but please do spay and neuter your pets. Shadow was one of the lucky strays that found a home, albeit after an early separation from her mother and a traumatic kittenhood that left an indelible scar upon her psyche.
I have more pictures of and text about Shadow at this old entry. |
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| News, volume #1 |
[Mar. 31st, 2008|07:18 pm] |
| [ | Current Music |
| | Empyrium - The Franconian Woods in Winter's Silence | ] |
A couple months ago I made a pair of custom feeds on Google News that shows stories with the term socialism in the text.
It's done two things for me, mostly: first, it's taught me to shrug my shoulders whenever the word socialism is used in some strange way. I used to feel like banging my head on the desk before when the left used it to describe some capitalist society with high taxes and social spending, but now, with google news showing me every small town newspaper editorial that uses the term, I've realized it's just best to give up combating the ignorance of both the left and the right on that front. In the end, there's more important things than semantics to worry about.
That leads to my second point: to keep track of the stupidity I uncovered on google news, I created an aptly-named "important news articles" bookmark folder. Some of these articles exemplify the misuse of the word socialist, but most of them are substantially more import and interesting.
So let's go through what I've found to be "Important news articles" over the last few months.
These first ones pertain to the "socialist" states of Cuba and Venezuela and the recent "left turn" in South American politics:
Chavez to farmers: Sell within Venezuela or it's 'treason'Chavez said it cost some $3.7 million and is being relaunched as a "socialist business" by the state. ... he threatened to take control of banks that fail to meet state-imposed requirements to set aside nearly a third of all loans for agriculture, mortgages and small businesses at favorable rates.
Price controls and promoting small business and a national market? Meet Chavez the Jacobin, Chavez the anachronism. Cuba opens tourist hotels to citizens
HAVANA, Cuba (CNN) -- Cuba will allow its citizens to stay in hotels previously reserved for foreigners, the latest in a series of decisions to lift bans on goods and services that the average Cuban can't afford. Nicaraguan leader calls Obama's campaign 'revolutionary'"It's not to say that there is already a revolution under way in the U.S. ... but yes, they are laying the foundations for a revolutionary change," the Sandinista leader said Wednesday night as he accepted an honorary doctorate from an engineering university.
Ortega deserves two awards: one for dumbest statement ever, and another for hypocrisy, as you'll see below. Daniel Ortega's two faces of economic changeSuch has become the pattern with Ortega. One day he is denouncing yanqui tyranny, and the next he is shaking hands with U.S. investors who are building a massive free-trade textile plant north of Managua. At one moment he preaches the importance of socialist revolution, yet behind the scenes his government is signing free-trade accords with Panama and Taiwan and negotiating with international lending institutions. There's been an abundance of articles on global warming in the last year and a half. For a keen reader, every one of them should show that Capitalism's fight against global warming is either a quixotic struggle or artful posturing, depending on how Pollyanna that reader is. I'll show you what I mean:
Madison Avenue Sells S.U.V.’s. Can It Sell Climate Action?Now Mr. Gore is going Madison Avenue. He and a team are launching a three-year, $300-million climate ad campaign aimed at recruiting 10 million fervent followers willing to push for everything from strict laws capping emissions to aggressive programs for boosting energy efficiency.
Earth has 300 million dollars for the ad campaign to save itself -- Microsoft has 945 million dollars to sell XBOX 360s. But the real flaw in Gore's effort is that saving the planet is a desire that has to be cultivated in everyone individually when 95% of those people have no say over how society operates. The coal-burning power plants can pollute so long as the conscience of their owners is unmoved, but you, if you feel a need to save the Earth, you use a recycled toothbrush! What Did Bill Clinton Mean By "We Just Have to Slow Down Our Economy" to Fight Global Warming?"The only way we can do this [reduce carbon emissions while not being outpaced economically by China and India] is if we get back in the world's fight against global warming and prove it is good economics that we will create more jobs to build a sustainable economy that saves the planet for our children and grandchildren. It is the only way it will work." Pollution Is Called a Byproduct of a ‘Clean’ Fuelthe ribbon of oil and grease being released by the plant — it resembled Italian salad dressing — was 450 times higher than permit levels typically allow, and that it had drifted at least two miles downstream. ... The discharges, which can be hazardous to birds and fish, have many people scratching their heads over the seeming incongruity of pollution from an industry that sells products with the promise of blue skies and clear streams. Studies Say Clearing Land for Biofuels Will Aid WarmingClearing land to produce biofuels such as ethanol will do more to exacerbate global warming than using gasoline or other fossil fuels, two scientific studies show. Finally, let's conclude with some of those strange editorials on socialism I was promising you:
How to use your tax rebate
I understand that the "rebate" is designed to stimulate the economy and pull us away from a possible recession, but it sounds a little like socialism to me – and that's just the opposite of capitalism. Corporate socialismHe's at it again in his book, "Free Lunch," in which he goes after what he calls "corporate socialism." He particularly questions subsidies of retail corporations. Mortality Socialism: We Should All Live Exactly The Same Number of YearsThe New York Times on Sunday accidentally introduced a new concept to readers: mortality socialism. For those unfamiliar ... the Times feels that something has to be done to make sure that everybody's life expectancies are exactly the same regardless of income, wealth, or lifestyle. CPM -- crypto-capitalistsSocialists of India, unite! You have nothing to lose except a few crypto-capitalist super-pragmatic Marxists. ... The only hope the Indian masses have is the socio-economic freedom from feudal-colonial submissiveness. New socialist organization hopes to spark change on campus"We need socialism now, economically speaking," Currie said. "Socially speaking, we're not equipped to handle it [at this time]. People aren't ready for the idea that socialism will tax you out the nose. If we tax higher, more people will have better things."
Currie said socialism will not completely level out the economic playing field, but it would narrow the gap between classes.
"At the very least, we won't have people starving; we won't have people homeless," Currie said. That's all. |
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| (no subject) |
[Feb. 18th, 2008|10:42 pm] |
I trust you had a good Presidents' Day. Between the bickering, on the one hand, and the reading and gaming on the other, my day averages out to be good, though poorly used.
At any rate, it's Presidents' Day and if we're going to talk about anyone's day, we should talk the days of those whose lives were ruined by Presidents. And since Presidents' Day is in fact only the informal name of what's actually Washington's Birthday, let's limit our inquiry into the evil, wicked ways of only our first President. And, to focus even further, let's pass over the terrible things he did that are, unfortunately, the standard practice of American presidents. Washington was an illegal land accumulator, a fearsome landlord, an Indian butcher, and pretty much an iron-fisted American aristocrat, eager to put the rabble down whenever necessary. Specifics aside, the tenor of his character and his crimes should probably come as a surprise only those whose knowledge of American history was gleamed only from a middle school textbook.
Those things - killing Indians, exploiting Farmers, etc. -- are bad, but among presidents they're hardly unusual. No, probably the most shocking of Washington's misdeeds is that he routinely killed puppies:It was a common belief at the time, based on the appearance of puppies of different coloration and size, that a litter could have more than one sire. While that can happen, it is a rare event; most of the variation arose because dogs were not being consistently bred to close relatives to create a uniform appearance, as they wold come to be just a few decades later. Washington achieved relative uniformity by drowning puppies that did not match his conception of what his hounds should look like.
- Mark Derr, A Dog's History of America, page 77. Grim, though at least it rational. It wasn't done for fun or malice, but to improve his kennel.
It was this same thoroughgoing efficiency that ordered him to have adult dogs killed as well:Washington took a draconian approach toward unwanted dogs. ... Washington complained about the constant loss of sheep and other livestock to marauding dogs. He then told Whiting to killy any dog that killed sheep on his plantation and to kill strays that had no apparent purpose or owner. He further declared that, based on his observations of the control slaves exercised dogs ... they must raise and keep dogs only to steal livestock. He closed with a "a positive order, that after saying what dog, or dogs shall remain, if any negro presumes under any pretense whatsoever, to preserve, or bring one into the family, that he shall be severely punished, and the dog hanged."
Ibid., pages 84-85. Anyway, I realize that killing and enslaving people is probably worse than killing dogs. I just thought it was an interesting aspect of the man that I don't think people would have considered. On the other hand, if you're a crazy liberal, maybe it's not worse. Indians, after all, are animals just like herons, orangutans, and turtles.
There's a simple way to solve this problem of puppy-killing presidents. Simpler than drowning-proof puppy suits. It's called socialism and it's the end of politics. |
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| (no subject) |
[Feb. 5th, 2008|01:46 am] |
| [ | Current Music |
| | Bak De Syv Fjell - De Siste Tanker | ] |
To those who are considering making the trip out to the polling booths and caucuses tomorrow: stay home. Your candidate -- and the will your choice once you read this -- is not to be found in the ranks of either party holding nomination contests tomorrow. In fact, you won't find him in a party at all.
He's Mel Moench and he's "not another corporate candidate."
In a contest dominated by the Baracks and Mitts comes a refreshing candidate with a regular name: Mel. Mel Moench.
In a contest shaped by money, entrenched political interests, and the media's king-making comes a simple fellow without the glamor and glibness of the major contenders: Mel Moench.
Mel Moench is the only candidate to state his positions on every issue without first considering the polling numbers. In his own words, Mel believes he is applying for a job. Instead of telling you what you want to hear, he lists his qualifications and what he'll bring to the table and then lets YOU, the American people, decide. He's not going to go to the convention and name his running mate and cabinet picks to stir up media attention -- he's not even going to a convention (and anyways, he's already picked who will fill those positions).
He's not a Washington insider. I'm couldn't tell you if he's even ever left Minnesota.
He doesn't have career politicians or policy experts to advise him. Instead, he reached out to prospective advisers in true democratic, American fashion: through an advertisement in the Minneapolis Star Tribune's classifieds (no email queries, please).
What kind of policies will these everyday joe advisers come up with? Well, needless to say, Mel Moench has a fresh take on things. Established wisdom and common sense? -- phooey! Mel is the only candidate willing to take principled stances on the following issues:Crime
"A 'World Crimes' Category should be added/strengthened to include people who create computer viruses, people who hire computer hackers, and merchants of child pornography. (see Crime section) I believe that these special crimes against all of humanity should carry the death sentence. ... I would go as far as requesting approval for precision air strikes to enforce the "virus" law outside the US. (See also “World Crimes” section) Note that computer viruses are threats to anyone with a computer and internet connections--and the number is rapidly growing."
"Push for death penalty for all 50 states. Eliminate "Death Row" and execute sentence immediately after it is handed down from the judge and jury. I believe "Death Row" classifies as cruel and unusual punishment--as the authors of our Constitution had originally intended. (See Illegal Immigrant section above as well)"
"Build more barracks-style prisons to save money."
Pit bull dogs
"I would favor national legislation requiring wwners of Pit Bull dogs to post $100,000 bond to be able to keep them (Law enforcement and military would be exempt.) "
Immigration
"Any non-US citizen apprehended illegally crossing the southern US border will be immediately returned to Mexico. If this is impossible for some reason, they should be transported to special holding areas pending their return. (See Opportunity Zone section) Other options for illegal aliens may include helping construct/maintain the US-Mexican border fence system."
"Work with Mexico to establish an 'Opportunity Zone' inside Mexico's northern border or US southern border for illegal aliens/deportees. Allow/encourage a community/economy to exist within this controlled space. Establish a section of this zone to house volunteers for US border construction. Food, medical services, some education, and mandatory English classes should be provided. Further options for illegals may include military service in combat zones."
"If any non-US citizen is convicted of a crime, they should be sent to a special part of the 'Opportunity Zone' pending deportation. Illegal aliens convicted of a second felony should be treated similar to a terrorist and should face the death penalty."
"I favor instituting a significant "freedom tax" for the first 7 years of US residency for legal immigrants as well as 2 weeks of community service. This community service could be similar to the military or to help construct the US border fence."
Health Care
"Encourage 'eye exercises' as well as physical education in schools--similar to the Chinese system."
"Emphasize/stress TCM (Traditional Chinese Medicine) treatments such as acupuncture and other illness prevention techniques. "
"Repeal laws that limit or discourage herbal remedies such as saw palmetto and astralagus. (Saw palmetto is more widely prescribed/used in Britain than pharmaceuticals for prostate issues.)"
Gay Marriage and Homosexuals
"Gays can enter into contractual relationships of similar vehicles (such as 'unions' or 'personal corporations'), but not specifically called marriage."
" I believe that TV/Media programming should voluntarily limit news/program coverage with homosexual content to roughly the same percentages as in the general population. This policy is intended to both avoid endorsement AND prejudice at the same time."
Transportation
Create an expanded system of point-to-point "speed shuttle" service from nodes on the light rail and railroad system. 'Speed shuttle' vehicles should move faster than ordinary traffic by using the same white light signal system as emergency vehicles to stop traffic as it approaches an intersection. Additional and flexible pickups could be called in with a credit card system with quick opening doors similar to the underground subway system. Driver’s license requirements must include a test of understanding North, South, East, and West directions. I'm sure by now you'll all realize what a good idea it is to stay home tomorrow. Why pick another party's candidate when your vote already is pledged to Mel Moench? I'll add that he ran before for the state legislature as a Democrat. |
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| Rambling |
[Jan. 19th, 2008|01:35 am] |
| [ | Current Music |
| | Sculptured - Bodies Without Organs | ] |
I don't know the god damn first thing about hipsters. Only that I hate them and want them all to die. I'll tell you why below, but I'm sure the best way to kill them all is with this:
Wheeled Balrog pulled by Vikings
This hipster-killing contraption is best suited for taking out parades and carnivals -- basically anything with a road and people on either side. Since hipsters hate parades and carnivals, let's find a street with lots of thrift shops. I wrote a poem that describes how it best functions and the feelings it gives me:
I like to sit
and think
of that thing
speeding down a street like a chariot
with the balrog whipping left and right
Anyways, I hate hipsters because they're just fucking rich white kids (and sometimes black kids or asian kids or mexican kids or whatnot) that think they're really special. They think they're special because they like music that, say, Pitchshifter or Metacritic tells them to like. They pretend this stuff is really underground, but it's not. Because 50% of young people are hipsters and listening to the same shit. And that shit is what they call "indie music," regardless of how very much this music is formulated to find audiences. What's worse is that these hipster bands take names like "To Kill a Petty Bourgeoisie" [sic] and so on. They also try to dress distinctively, but in a picture of a local hipster band that I saw, like 80% (4 out of 5, or 5 out of 6!) of the band members where wearing those flimsy, overpriced shoes they call "chuck taylors." what idiots.
We've already established that they like shitty music (I didn't mention that all this music has a lot of poorly strummed guitar and whiny vocals with teenager lyrics) and like to dress alike. Another aspect of their dress I hadn't mentioned is that they spend a lot of money and time to look bad. Sometimes they shop at thrift stores, but more often than not they hit up the local mall when they don't think anyone will be looking. But I am. I always am. I'm like Heimdall, or Hrothgar's warden in Beowulf:
Now saw from the cliff a Scylding clansman,
a warden that watched the water-side,
how they bore o’er the gangway glittering shields,
war-gear in readiness; wonder seized him
to know what manner of men they were.
Straight to the strand his steed he rode,
Hrothgar’s henchman; with hand of might
he shook his spear, and spake in parley. f'shiz. I watch for 'em just like that when I read the Scene section of the paper.
On the matter of dress, I'll add that these villains sometimes wear non-prescription eyeglasses. It's impractical and vain. And it's offensive. It's like going in blackface, I suppose, only not racist. But they are racist. Bryon Crawford's blog quotes one hipster, who organizes hipster parties where "the worst of black culture" is mocked, as saying:
"I'm throwing this party, and it's obvious that I'm white and I'm kind of appropriating this culture but in an ironic way, kinda poking fun at myself and my origins and white people in general. I'm trying to kill the whiteness inside." Lame, man. If we further examine their politics, so far as they exist, it can be said that hipsters are liberals. They put Democratic candidates pins on their messenger bags. That's bad enough, but to some of these liberals, it looks even cooler to be a "socialist." Of course, they're still liberals, so we'll just call them leftists. If they can't find on campus a Trotskyist offshoot of the Society for Creative Anarchism like Socialist Alternative, they become "anarchists" and infest ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif) anarchists and talk about shitty music and shitty musicians like that guy who raped that girl (or so I heard) but got away because he had anarcho-cred. OR they became Maoists. Every Maoist in the "first world" is a rich white person = just about a fact.
A hipster "socialist" would cry if they saw this happening.
Also, in accordance with my new LJ profile, it is now illegal to be a hipster and remain on my friends page. As far as I know, that doesn't apply to any of you. Nor, I suspect, would a hipster ever add me. |
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| some severely disjointed notes |
[Dec. 6th, 2007|08:07 pm] |
| [ | Current Music |
| | Iron Maiden - Brave New World | ] |
Michael Zweig's The Working Class Majority: America's Best Kept Secret addresses a phenomenon I've noticed but couldn't convincingly account for. Whether this is an explanation or a restatement of the situation, I don't know, but here it is:
In the 1960s even much of the radical left became estranged from the working class. No better symbol of this estrangement exists than the day in 1970 when construction workers beat up demonstrators who had gathered at New York's City Hall to protest the war in Vietnam as it escalated into Cambodia. Images of the City Hall beatings were broadcast around the world and became emblematic of the mutual hostility supposedly between all unionized workers and all student activists. ...
Much was made at the time of the reactionary worker, enemy of social progress, or, from the other side, the patriotic worker, true to the American cause, standing against the communist foe. With anticommunist leadership, the labor movement moved to the right. As class-conscious workers' voices were silenced, the simple-minded right-wing characterization of the working class was more easily picked up by the media and came to dominate the thinking of many young sixties student radicals. They, in turn, often came to think of themselves as outside the long tradition of progressive intellectuals' support for the working class.
The new movements of the sixties developed radical critiques [sic] of society and in their analyses often challenged capitalism itself. But, for many, the working class came to be identified as only reactionary white men. Activists in these movements, and those who developed social theories to understand and guide them, often dismissed the working class as a backward, hostile enemy, and recast politics solely in terms of race and gender. Radical politics of the 1970s and 1980s were increasingly dominated by identity politics.
Yet on the campuses, despite the anticapitalist and anti-imperialist talk, the working class tended to disappear from the map, replaced in the theories of many radical opinion leaders by a combination of race and gender. This has happened in one of two ways. Sometimes the working class has come to mean White Men. This is most often the case among those stuck with the images of workers on the construction sites of the sixties and seventies. Other times, in the triumvirate "race, class and gender," class has come to mean "the poor," who are in turn said to be Women and Minorities. In these formulations, white men are either irrelevant or the enemy, and white working class men are stripped of their legitimate standing among those who suffer wrongs in this capitalist society. This type of politics is a recipe for alienation and anger among white men, dividing the working class and creating needless hostility towards the justifiable demands of women and minorities. Zweig notes that that among those who haven't forgot the existence of white proletarians, probably liberals have done the most to stereotype workers:
The media attack on workers has not been the work of conservative political forces alone. In a process paralleling the retreat from the working class by sixties radicals, liberal media personalities have also abandoned or stereotyped workers. The television show that most lampooned the working class in the 1970s and 1980s was produced by Norman Lear and starred Carroll O'Conner, both active and influential in liberal political circles. All in the Family's Archie Bunker was the worker-as-reactionary-white-male, disrespecting his wife from opposing the anti-war, anti-racist ideas of his sin-in-law, whom he called Meathead. Although Meathead was from a working class family, he was never presented as another way for us to think aobut workers. He had progressive ideas; he became a student. Archie's buffoonery give him a certain charm, perhaps, but in the popular culture of the time he served to dismiss the working class as a serious or reasonable force. Note that these perceptions don't necessarily reflect reality. Zweig, through official statistics, paints a picture of the working class as heterogeneous. For instance, while the largest occupational category for white men was salaried managers, this category was also in the top ten for black men, Hispanic men, and white women. Truck driving was the #1 category for black men and #2 for white men (this includes my father!) Zweig writes that "the privileged titles usually appear higher and more often for whites, especially men, but there's no shortage of awful jobs for white folks either."
One can see the New Left's abandonment of the working class in the U.S. as a process parallel to its exchaning of Lenin and Stalin for Mao and Che. For the latter, the peasantry became the revolutionary agent (to bring around the development of capitalism) rather than the working class; in the U.S., as the working class was written off by the left as reactionary or complacent, revolutionary potentiality was transferred to "oppressed nations" and other groups that didn't constitute social classes. If the U.S. working class could be explained away as the consequence of discrimination, it was easy to see the majority of the American population as bourgeois. Thus the world was divided into imperialist and proletarian countries. In the "imperialist" countries, the working class, insomuch as it exists (which the Maoists deny), it is irretrievably bound to capital by its unwillingess to part with the comfortable life it enjoys thanks to the high wages paid by companies earning "superprofits" in the Third World. Anyone who thinks seriously on this will realize it's pablum. A member of the British communist group Wildcat hit the nail on the head when condemning Lenin's notion of a labor aristocracy: "What infantile, petit-bourgeois rubbish! The ruling class in all countries pay workers as much as they think they have to, calculated from a) the need for workers to stay alive and, to a greater or lesser extent, healthy, b) the shortage or otherwise of workers capable of doing the job, and c) the class struggle. Where does a wage rise gained by struggle end and a bribe begin?"
As a situationist group on the 60s said, for all the left's prattle about imperialism, they miss a fundamental point: "The ideology of anti-imperialism makes but a partial critique of imperialism by seizing only upon one of its fragments, failing to recognize the colonization of everyday life by capital the world over; the most significant colony of the U.S. being the U.S. itself."
At any rate, Zweig's book raises some interesting points and, surprisingly, attempts to define class in a more sophisticated manner than most of his bourgeois peers. On the other hand, these moments of lucidity are drowned in his inability to see the true function of unions. Far from the working class's "only form of organization," unions are capital's best weapon for domesticating the working class. (For the record, every one of my immediate family members, myself included, is in a union. My father belongs to the IBT, my mother to SEIU, and my brother and I belong to the UFCW.) |
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| (no subject) |
[Nov. 27th, 2007|02:54 am] |
| [ | Current Music |
| | my headphones are seriously messed up | ] |
I'm approaching two months without a blog entry. That might be a personal record. Anyway,
I scored quite a few deals at Goodwill today, namely a 1958 hardcover edition of T.H. White's Once and Future King tetralogy, in very good shape, and for only a dollar; a book advocating Eugenics, whose dust jacket reviews came from a previous Russian translation; a book on the Irish language that I bought with half a mind to read and half a mind to resell; and lastly, an A to B USB cable that I paid 7 dollars for. A ripoff, but much more reasonable than the 35 dollars the Radio Shack next door wanted for their "premium" cables. Which brings me to my next point: why pay more for "premium" digital cables? If a digital cable made of yarn and trash bags could work, it would work every bit as well as one made with gold connectors and emblazoned with the Monster logo.
Oh well. Some people deserve to be ripped off. Case in point: parents willing to bid 500 or 600 dollars on a Nintendo Wii on eBay. I'm excited to see what these desperate, shallow parents will pay for the Wiis I procured the other night during the 20 minutes Amazon had them in stock.
Now to segue from my commercial (ad)ventures to matters political.
For the most part, I feel despairingly isolated especially amongst those whose politics are supposed to be so close to mine own. From the so-called anarchists I hear about repairing bicycles and cooking vegan meals, on the revolutionary import of having sex with lots of different people, and on blaming corporations or the 'tyranny of brands' for the worlds problems. From the so-called marxists, and the more serious anarchists, I hear about the necessity to end U.S. imperialism (i.e., to open up a country to the imperialism and colonialism of its own bourgeoisie), the progressive role of state capitalism (though for most this is a revolutionary end in itself), the value and necessity of unions, and so on.
For 95% of "socialists," that's what it's all about. That 95% is called the left.
(Words are tricky things. Although some communists may use the term in some fashion to describe themselves -- left communists, for instance -- none actually use it to claim membership to the actual 'left' and thereby make common cause with Stalinist, social democrats, and so on. What's really important here is that communists have nothing to do with the left in the historic sense. "Left" was a term that arose to describe the radical factions of the bourgeoisie in the 18th and 19th centuries. Where communists attack the political and economic program of the bourgeoisie -- hence Bordiga's statement that "Marxism in fact demolished medieval idealism, bourgeois liberalism and utopian socialism with a single blow" -- leftists further it. Thus one of Chomsky's ill-considered statements is to the effect that council communism and anti-Leninist marxism is an inheritor of classical liberalism, to paraphrase.)
In such a position of encirclement, with the enemies having the numbers, it's easy to despair. Yet here and there there's a ray of light., something to tell you that you're not alone and never were. That the same battle between revolutionaries and bourgeois recuperators is as old as socialism itself, and that it hasn't been lost yet. Just such a welcome reminder was one of the books I recently read, William Morris's News from Nowhere. More clearly and directly than any socialist work of the 19th century (even better than that of the early Marx, who envisions such a world, but obscures it in his philosophical language), News from Nowhere expresses what has been called the 'communist tendency in history:' "the search for a world where there will exist neither laws, nor property, nor the State, nor discrimination which divides people, nor wealth which distinguishes some people from others, nor power which oppresses some of them."
The rest of this post will be a collection of some of my favorite passages from News from Nowhere. (It helps to know that the narrator is like a socialist Rip Van Winkle, waking up 100 years into the future and in a socialist society.)
( here they are )
P.S. I just finished Robert V. Daniels preface to his Documentary History of Communism. It was extremely refreshing -- but more on that in the future.
ETA: Read the words of the idealistic young bourgeois from Thomas Mann's Buddenbrooks and compare it to the politics of the left. The resemblance cannot go unnoticed.
"'We are the bourgeoisie -- the third estate, as they call us now -- and what we want is a nobility of merit, nothing more. We don't recognize this lazy nobility we now have, we reject our present class hierarchy. We want all men to be free and equal, for no one to be someone else's subject, but for all to be subject to the law. There should be an end of privileges and arbitrary power. Everyone should be treated equally as a child of the state, and just as there are no longer any middlemen between the layman and his God, so each citizen should stand in direct relation to the state. We want freedom of the press, of employment, of commerce. We want all men to compete without any special privileges, and the only crown should be the crown of merit."
- Morton in Thomas Mann's Buddenbrooks, page 134. Vintage International, 1993. Emphasis mine. |
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| Billy Bragg's version of the Internationale |
[Oct. 11th, 2007|10:00 pm] |
| [ | Current Music |
| | Xentrix - For Whose Advantage | ] |
Like Solidarity Forever, that fiery anthem of industrial warfare that today's trade unions have outgrown but won’t give up (and which has been co-opted by bourgeois political parties looking to embellish their credentials), the revolutionary message of the Internationale and the practice and ideology of those who lay claim to it were separated by a huge chasm -- that is, until Billy Bragg redid the song so that Social democrats and reformed Stalinists could have something to really relate to.
I think a side by side comparison of Billy Bragg’s 1990 version with a 1910 English translation of a German version illustrates that point beyond the need for further explanation. Yet I shall comment for those interested.
Arise you damned of the earth,
you prisoners of starvation!
the right like a volcanic glow
is about to erupt with force.
Clean out the oppressor!
Arise, you army of slaves!
Bear your nullity no longer
Become everything--unite!
Chorus:
Peoples, hear the signal!
Arise, for the last battle
The International
Fights for the Rights of Man!
No higher being can save us,
No God, no Kaiser, nor tribune
Saving us from misery
we ourselves alone must do!
Empty phrase: "Rights of the poor!"
Empty phrase: "noblesse oblige!"
Dependent, servile they call us,
Bear that shame no longer now!
Chorus
In town and country, you workers,
We are the strongest of parties.
Push the loafers aside!
This world must be ours;
Our blood shall no more feed
the crows and mighty vultures!
Only when we've driven them out
will the sun forever shine!
- Luckhardt's 1910 lyrics |
Stand up, all victims of oppression
For the tyrants fear your might
Don't cling so hard to your possessions
For you have nothing, if you have no rights
Let racist ignorance be ended
For respect makes the empires fall
Freedom is merely privilege extended
Unless enjoyed by one and all
Chorus:
So come brothers and sisters
For the struggle carries on
The Internationale
Unites the world in song
So comrades come rally
For this is the time and place
The international ideal
Unites the human race
Let no one build walls to divide us
Walls of hatred nor walls of stone
Come greet the dawn and stand beside us
We'll live together or we'll die alone
In our world poisoned by exploitation
Those who have taken, now they must give
And end the vanity of nations
We've but one Earth on which to live
And so begins the final drama
In the streets and in the fields
We stand unbowed before their armour
We defy their guns and shields
When we fight, provoked by their aggression
Let us be inspired by like and love
For though they offer us concessions
Change will not come from above
- Billy Bragg's 1990 version |
( comments )
Anyway, what do you guys think? How does it compare? My position, in short, is that Bragg stripped the song of its revolutionary and proletarian elements. Class disappears from the song, as does any notion of revolution. |
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