Last Days of a Great City

Herzog at the Beach

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She:  Oh, Werner!  This is beautiful!  Look at those swaying palms!  Listen to those lovely songbirds!  It’s simply perfect!

Herzog:  The trees are in misery, and the birds are in misery.  I don’t think they sing.  They just screech in pain. …Taking a close look at what’s around us, there is some sort of harmony: it’s the harmony of overwhelming and collective murder.*

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* Actual text spoken by celebrated German film director Werner Herzog not at the beach but in Burden of Dreams, a 1982 documentary about the making of his film Fitzcarraldo.

Introducing Smell-o-Blogging!

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A new concept in blogging!  Here’s how it works:  First, go for two days without bathing.  Next, read the sample earnest political post, below.  When you encounter a boldface number in brackets, refer to the handy chart at left, then scratch and sniff the body part corresponding to that number!  Hours or even days of fun for the entire family!

There’s this item, from the April 24 Wall Street Journal:

Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez [1] is planning a new assault on Big Oil [2], potentially taking a major step toward nationalization of Venezuela’s oil industry that could hurt oil company profits, reduce production and put further pressure on global oil prices.

Historically, left-leaning populist governments have not fared well in our hemisphere.  Previous democracy-loving U.S. administrations [2] have toppled democratically-elected regimes in Chile, Nicaragua, and the Dominican Republic, to name a few, and Mr. Chávez’s cheeky desire to have the Venezuelan oil industry benefit Venezuelans will likely, uh, fuel the anti-Chávez sentiments of U.S. administration hawks [2].

Roving Last Days reporter Rachel Tension spoke with Mr. Chávez by telephone and asked him if he feared being crushed under America’s democracy-loving heel [3].  “Que pinga,” he replied.  “I recently acquired a Sweater of Invincibility from Evo Morales, President of Bolivia [4].  He’s no friend of your microcephalic president [2], but he seems to be doing alright.”

Read it in the News

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Dialogue Concerning Samuel Beckett and Snakes on a Plane

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I’m sitting with Raul (another gay philosopher) on my front porch, and we’re celebrating the Samuel Beckett centenary by exchanging silences.  We had been discussing the second act of Beckett’s Happy Days, in which Winnie, a middle-aged woman is buried to her neck in a mound of dirt.  Raul reminded me of Not I, where the stage is in total darkness except for the character Mouth, “about eight feet above stage level, faintly lit from close-up and below, rest of face in shadow”:

“Winnie has an obsession with her gewgaws, but she can’t manipulate them.  Mouth is worse off.  She has a shattered consciousness that she tries to reintegrate without the assistance of her own corporeality,” says Raul.

“I'm totally into your corporeality …”

He ignores me.  “She’s just a mouth floating in the void.”

“You’re saying that Beckett turned the stage into some ghoulish specimen jar.”

“No, just the opposite.  The fact that the characters are constrained makes their struggles more poignant.”  Raul pauses to dab a tear with the corner of his Kleenex.  He’s getting agitated.  “Popular media go the other way.  It’s all about the possibilities inherent in excess, not constraint.”

“Endless, inane chatter; quick-cutting of images; ever bigger explosions—”

“Right, but we can't sustain that.  I think the Blogosphere’s overwhelming response to Snakes on a Plane signals a newfound regard for constraint in art.”

“As in the constraints on the agency of the creatures that would terrorize the passengers?  Is that what you mean?  Like, where are the snakes going to hide—the beverage cart?”

“Yeah, like Samuel Jackson yelling into his radio, ‘We got motherfuckin’ snakes!’”

Ambience

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For a time advertising tried to sound like the voice of authority.  Then it became, simply, a loud voice.  Soon it will be no voice.  Ambience.  No more intrusive than the air you breathe.  Ambience.

For Your Summer Reading List

 

Message in a Bottle

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M.J. sends a message to A.J.  “Please find me in the States!  Not a day goes by that I don’t remember your gentle touch & soft kisses.”

How far has this message traveled?  Is it a stunt? a beachside dramatization that ironically incorporates the message-in-a-bottle motif?  Is it little more than the unlikely chronicle of an unlikely event?  Or is it a heartfelt statement about the irreducible impossibility of human communication? 

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Wittgenstein in the Philosophical Investigations:

Expectation is, grammatically, a state; like: being of an opinion, hoping for something, knowing something, being able to do something … We say “I am expecting  him,” when we believe that he will come, though his coming does not occupy our thoughts … But we also say “I am expecting him” when it is supposed to mean: I am eagerly awaiting him. … The feeling of confidence.  How is this manifested in behavior? … What is a deep feeling?  Could someone have a feeling of ardent love or hope for the space of one second—no matter what preceded or followed this second?——What is happening now has significance—in these surroundings.  The surroundings give it its importance.  And the word “hope” refers to a phenomenon of human life.

_____

Groping neuron to neuron toward that homunculus within, I find a child who speaks no English; an ocean rising up in anger; a tape of that rebellion playing to an empty house; a limitless space created by a clever trick of words; our vaunted speech, wrought in common, failing to rise above the herd now silent, now braying each to each.

The First in a Series of LDGC Mood Enhancers

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Here is a door.  Your flesh shall be the key.

ANTM as a Source of Moral Wisdom

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Background: America’s Next Top Model (ANTM) is a reality television show in which 13 beautiful young women compete against one another to be crowned “America’s Next Top Model.”  Each week, one contender is eliminated.  The last model left standing (in six-inch heels, of course) wins a lucrative modeling contract.

In episode 5, the girls were joined by aging supermodel Janice Dickinson, a former ANTM judge who was thrown off the show a while back for being too harsh on the contestants.  Ms. Dickinson has an intimidating presence.  Her super-sized lips and botox-immobilized facial muscles give her a freakish, somewhat aggressive appearance.  Reporter Steve Rogers picks up the story:

That night at dinner, tempers flared when Janice tempted [ANTM contender] Gina to admit who was giving her a hard time in the house. After gentle prodding from Janice, Gina finally pointed the finger at [ANTM contender] Jade — something that neither Jade nor Janice herself appreciated. “No matter what — Rule #1, we never rat out our bitches — zip it!,” Janice ... yelled at Gina as she told her to go back to her seat at the table. “Zip it bitch, zip it, you’re dead in my book,” she added as Gina tried to respond. Gina broke into tears on the ride home, upset at Janice’s comments.

This episode brings into focus questions essential to the calibration of our own moral compasses:

1.  Is the imperative that we not rat out our bitches a categorical imperative, or does the carefully constructed reality of a reality show permit a suspension of the ethical?  As Jade herself once pointed out, ANTM stands for America’s Next Top Model not America’s Next Best Girlfriend.

2.  Janice—a kind of God figure in the episode under discussion— is legislator, enforcer, and judge of the moral laws that govern ANTM.  But is she herself bound by them?  If Jehovah may ask Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac, may Janice tempt Gina to rat out Jade, as she in fact did?  Does ANTM succeed in motivating the Kierkegaardian transition from the ethical to the religious? 

Discuss.

Scalia's One-Fingered Judgment

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Here's an excerpt from a recent UPI item:

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia startled reporters in Boston just minutes after attending a mass, by flipping a middle finger to his critics.  A Boston Herald reporter asked the 70-year-old conservative Roman Catholic if he faces much questioning over impartiality when it comes to issues separating church and state.  “You know what I say to those people?” Scalia replied, making the obscene gesture and explaining “That's Sicilian.”

Actually, the gesture is not half as obscene as many of his rulings.