Last Days of a Great City

And One of Them is Fish

2006-07-07T15:44:00-04:00

P O S T E D B Y E N R I Q U E

As a gay pre-teen, I had only an inkling of why I was so strangely attracted to the 1960s TV series Flipper. I wanted to call Sandy and Bud Ricks on the telephone, wait until they answered, then hang up, giggling like a little girl.

Little did I know that dolphins hold the key to “time shifts and global healing events (and even miracles).”

Elevated Noon: A Nanoplay

2006-07-03T11:52:54-04:00

P O S T E D B Y T O N Y

Link

Characters:

Marshall Phil Kane
Deputy Marshal Dario Pell

Deputy Pell: Gonzalez and his men will be here any minute, Marshall. [The bell in the church tower tolls once.] What are you aimin’ to do?

Marshall Kane: The stakes are heavy, Pell, you know that, as light as one might try to make them seem. [The bell tolls a second time.]

Deputy Pell: He’s a killer, Marshall, one of the best shots in the Territories, an’ he’s got an old score to settle.

Marshall Kane: Yeah, well I figger he won’t be expecting a gun barrel-full of satire and other literary techniques. [The bell tolls a third time.] It’s Horatian that got him convicted, it’ll be Juvenalian puts him away once and for all …

Text Messages From Gotham

2006-06-28T21:17:32-04:00

P O S T E D B Y S A L L Y

	Hello, Auntie. I’m in Times Square. I like it here. Here’s what I see: A black man with earphones, in his late thirties, holds up an arm and shouts, “There is no word, fool!” A middle-aged white woman talks into her cell phone. “If you don't know,” she hisses, “just say you don’t know.”
I walk past the My Way Nails and Spa where a bearded man is getting a pedicure. A boombox in the doorway blares the latest Hip-Hop anthem.
A old couple wanders past. They’re plugged into separate iPods. Each has a different soundtrack for the moment they share on Gotham’s streets. I begin to wonder how people manage to meet and fall in love in this confusion.	A woman sitting at a restaurant booth waves a sheaf of yellow papers covered with rows of numbers. She lays them down and writes more numbers, dating each one as she does. You can tell she’s as crazy as a jay.

There’s a surfeit of consciousness in Times Square. One consciousness begins to push against another. People cope by transferring some of it into machines and other objects. As I write this, a woman in a trench coat and a headscarf looks up and talks to one of the buildings.

Doesn't Pay to Sit in the Front Pew

2006-06-26T14:06:13-04:00

P O S T E D B Y T O N Y

News item: The pastor of a Mount Airy, NC church accused of pulling out a gun as part of his sermon is free on bond after being charged with possession of a firearm. He was using the gun as an illustration.

Preacher: Now lissen up, sinners! [He fires two rounds from a pistol.] You varmints know that in Matthew 26 verse 52 the Good Book tells us that he who lives by the sword, dies by the sword. But 'taint say nuthin' 'bout guns, do it? No it don't. [Fires two more rounds.] What's that ma'am? Looks like nuthin' but a flesh wound to me. Stick 'round and I'll do ya a healin' service after the sermon.

Rachel's Guide to Commenting on Blog Posts

2006-06-23T22:18:24-04:00

P O S T E D B Y R A C H E L

No. of Martinis	Commenting Strategy/Tactics
1	Read the post carefully. Try to get a feel for the values, beliefs, and desires of the author. Assume the best about the author: he, like you, is trying to find his way in the world. Leave a comment that respects his intentions but extends the discussion in some interesting way.
2	Skim the post. Wonder why the author is indulging himself by taking so long to get to his main point. Entertain the suspicion that if you met him face to face, it wouldn’t be a completely pleasant experience. Leave a comment that gives the author a snap of the towel on his partially exposed conceptual buttocks.
3	Try to hold one or two key words from the author’s post in your quickly dissolving consciousness. Does he care? Does the fucker really care what you say about his barely comprehensible screed? You don’t, why should he? The stupid fucker is quoting fucking Husserl for chrissakes. Fuck him. Write something that subverts the author’s intended meaning. Laugh out loud at your funny comment and pour yourself another drink.
4	Ignore the post completely. Try to focus on the stupid shithead thing you’re writing. What is it? You don’t even know, you stupid fuck. Wha wha wha. b b b …
5

Where Reality is Enhanced by Exquisite Amenities

2006-06-21T20:26:24-04:00

P O S T E D B Y R A C H E L

“It’s a nice room, James, but … it’s filled with water.”

The Post-Ironic Swimsuit Special

2006-06-17T23:41:25-04:00

P O S T E D B Y E N R I Q U E

The February 2006 issue of Out Magazine seeks perfection in the malformed and gravitas in the patently silly. Although the editors playfully dubbed it the “Swimsuit Special,” they could just as accurately have described it as a transformative hermeneutics applied to the nature of contradiction.

A Diesel ad (the brand that brings you “Successful Living”) pictures the apotheosis of our militarist culture, when the earth and everything on it is camouflaged for War. At this key moment in our history—now, one assumes—we can most effectively counter the ravages of the military-industrial-academic complex by purchasing knit shirts and distressed jeans. Missiles are peacekeepers. Arbeit macht frei.

An ad from Abreva asserts that “Nobody looks HOT in a cold sore.” But the model who appears in the ad would be attractive even if half his body were covered with lesions, leading one to conclude that the ad is a kind of koan whose meaning is inaccessible to rational understanding, a post-postmodern deconstruction of the HOT/not-HOT binary that moves the reader to abandon whatever good judgment is left to him. Not likely? You’re reading this screed, aren’t you?

Finally, in an article on his new line of Hot Nude Yoga DVDs, Aaron Star declares that “[g]ay men—or men in general—need to celebrate the erect penis. It is a point of power for one’s masculinity.” Star’s neo-phallogocentric statement once again privileges the male signified even though, as Aristophanes made clear over 24 centuries ago, the phallus is a silly structure, made even sillier when it’s dressed up with hats and small sweaters.

God Hates Fag Wars

2006-06-16T14:21:56-04:00

P O S T E D B Y F E L I X

The House of Representatives approved a Republican-sponsored resolution today defining the Iraq War as between a man and a woman.

Congressmen speaking in favor of the resolution argued that it would help preserve the sanctity of killing people.

I’m glad they got this off their chests before the fall elections.

_____

Image source: bartcop.com

Crime Does Not Pay ... As Well As Politics

2006-06-06T14:14:22-04:00

P O S T E D B Y D O C T O R D R E A D

CEO: Leaving this lavish, privately-funded golf junket so soon, Senator?

Senator: Yes, I need to get back to Washington to address an important national security issue.

The New Miscegenation

2006-06-04T15:39:33-04:00

P O S T E D B Y F E L I X

On the eve of Senate debate on an amendment to ban gay marriage, I adapt the verse appearing on a racist postcard of the 1900s …

Not Particular

I know you’re not particular to a fault
Though I’m not sure you’ll never be sued for assault
You’re so fond of sex that even a mensch
Attracts your gross fancy despite his man-stench

Robertson Leg-Presses for the Lord

2006-05-27T15:22:35-04:00

P O S T E D B Y T O N Y

Pat Robertson’s age-defying protein shake enables him to leg press 2,000 pounds, beating the all-time record by 665 pounds.

What would Jesus have pressed? The mute button, most likely.

Size Queen

2006-05-13T19:43:55-04:00

P O S T E D B Y E N R I Q U E

From the Washington Post:

At Saturday’s commencement ceremonies, McCain and Falwell marched side-by-side onto the stage in the university’s basketball arena. After a sometimes raucous faculty processional, in which students and faculty doused one another with aerosol cans of string, Falwell warmly praised his guest, saying, “The ilk of John McCain is very scarce, very small.”

But did Jerry Falwell actually see John McCain’s ilk?

They Do It With Mirrors

2006-05-13T19:01:39-04:00

P O S T E D B Y E N R I Q U E

Creeds and schools in abeyance,
Retiring back a while sufficed at what they are, but never forgotten,
I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard,
Nature without check with original energy.

Walt Whitman, Song of Myself

Or to put it metaphorically: the bracketed matter is not wiped off the phenomenological slate, but only bracketed, and thereby provided with a sign that indicates the bracketing. Taking its sign with it, the bracketed matter is reintegrated in the main theme of the inquiry.

Edmund Husserl, Ideas

Got Wood?

2006-05-08T11:02:41-04:00

P O S T E D B Y E N R I Q U E

Should straight men find Condoleezza Rice sexy? All right, she’s arguably on the dog side of the beauty spectrum. But her looks don’t cause people to flee in panic, and many women find even ugly men sexy if they’re wealthy or powerful. So if you’re a straight man, shouldn’t you get wood thinking about Condi sprawled out naked on a bear rug?

This is essentially the question raised by Pete Wells in the May 2006 issue of Details magazine. Without so much as the benefit of a straw poll, Mr. Wells assumes that the wealth and power of older women like Hillary Clinton, Martha Stewart, and Oprah Winfrey fail to get a rise out of most men. It’s an odd non-argument, appearing in a magazine brimming with fashion photos of hunky shirtless guys. One might assume the magazine’s readers would rather be thinking about something else.

Like all mortals, we gay philosophers experience the power of sexual attraction. Yet despite all our warnings about the unexamined life, we seldom think about sex—in a philosophical way, I mean. These are, after all, very, very hard questions.

1. If women are from Venus and men are from Mars, where is Eugene Levy from?

2. Why is it, if men raised in the Judeo-Christian tradition care so much for sex, that it’s missing from their descriptions of heaven?

3. Eros, agape, philia. Is there a fourth kind of love that makes it possible to find Madeleine Albright attractive?

Outline Of A Proof That P

2006-05-05T20:21:50-04:00

P O S T E D B Y S A L L Y

I keep turning up new treasures in my father’s old philosophy papers. Last time I looked, I found what looked like a lost fragment of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. My father knew Wittgenstein, so I assumed it was genuine. Last night I found a dusty old monograph attributed to Saul Kripke. I reproduced the full text below. Although unusually short (even when you include its extended footnote), it’s fairly typical of arguments in the tradition of analytic philosophy …

Some philosophers have argued that not-p. But none of them seems to me to have made a convincing argument against the intuitive view that this is not the case. Therefore, p.*

___

* This outline was prepared hastily—at the editors’ insistence—from a taped transcript of a lecture. Since I was not given an opportunity to revise the draft before publication, I cannot be held responsible for any lacunae in the published version of the argument, or for any fallacious or garbled inferences resulting from faulty preparation of the manuscript. Also, the argument now seems to me to have problems which I did not know when I wrote it, but which I cannot discuss here, and which are completely unrelated to any criticisms that have appeared in the literature (or that I have seen in manuscript). All such criticisms misconstrue the argument. It will be noted that the present version of the argument seems to presuppose the intuitionistically unacceptable law of double negation. But the argument can easily be reformulated in a way that avoids employing such an inference rule. I hope to expand on these matters further in a separate monograph.

The FOX News Report

2006-05-01T22:43:28-04:00

P O S T E D B Y F E L I X

Roving Last Days reporter Rachel Tension watched FOX News for fifteen minutes today and filed this report …

“Well, Felix, it’s looking pretty Right Wing on FOX News tonight. The lead item on Iran was clearly written to stir up anti-Iranian sentiment. FOX News reported that Iran had essentially dared the United Nations to impose sanctions. ‘Prices at the pump will rise,’ taunted the Iranian Foreign Minister. Looks like they’ve got us by the balls.

“There was a story on the ‘Day Without an Immigrant’ protests planned for May 1st. As you know, Felix, pro-immigration activists urged immigrants and their supporters to stay home from work on May 1st to underscore the importance of immigrants to our national economy. FOX News reporter Adam Hauser pointed out that ‘May 1st is also a Socialist-Communist holiday, and that may not be a coincidence.’ It isn’t every day you hear reporting of this caliber.

“I sat through the commercials at the break, Felix, and I noted that sponsors included Ditech Financial Services, Bayer Aspirin, a dietary fiber company, and the manufacturer of a product for head lice—giving the impression that FOX News viewers are constipated, heavily indebted neuralgics with head lice.

“Back to you, Felix …”

The South American Way

2006-05-01T20:27:50-04:00

P O S T E D B Y F E L I X

An eye-catching item from the May 1, 2006 New Yorker:

In the ongoing South Americanization of political culture north of the border—a drawn-out historical journey whose markers include fiscal recklessness, an accelerating wealth gap between the rich and the rest, corruption masked by populist rhetoric, a frank official embrace of the techniques of “dirty war,” and, by way of initiating the present era, a judicial autogolpe installing a dynastic presidente—what has been dubbed the Revolt of the Generals is one of the feebler effusions.*

South Americanization. It’s a wonderful conceit that will no doubt make the rounds of dinner parties and earnest discussions of the failings of the current junta. Of course we can expect our overly sensitive neighbors to the south to object to this characterization. They’ve not forgotten, like we have, Allende, Arbenz, and the other democratically-elected Latin American leaders we removed from power—all of this before we sank into the depths of our South Americanization.

But what progress this new political culture represents! Before we were South Americanized, “dirty war” was out of the question and we had to resort to killing people like the Vietcong by tidier means. When we enslaved the Africans and interned the Japanese we were no doubt forced to use a purer, more nuanced North American form of state brutality.

But now it’s cojones all out, people. Ay, caramba!

From my vantage point here in the heartland of America, I see, quite frankly, more signs of Disneyfication than of South Americanization. I see field after field of anaesthetized, consumerist sheep only vaguely aware of the nefarious forces that maintain the flow of corporate profits and, by logical extension, our American way of life. The Devil may doff his hat and show us his horns because we’re simply much too sated to care. Baaaaa!

If our country is headed South, it simply doesn’t have far to travel, so let’s enjoy the ride because detrás de nosotros viene the fucking lluvia.

_____

* “Rummyache” by Hendrik Hertzberg.

Herzog at the Beach

2006-04-29T19:15:09-04:00

P O S T E D B Y D O C T O R D R E A D

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.*

_____

* 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!

2006-04-26T15:51:07-04:00

P O S T E D B Y F E L I X

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

2006-04-16T18:03:11-04:00

P O S T E D B Y R A C H E L

Dialogue Concerning Samuel Beckett and Snakes on a Plane

2006-04-15T15:08:46-04:00

P O S T E D B Y E N R I Q U E

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

2006-04-14T23:18:56-04:00

P O S T E D B Y F E L I X

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

2006-04-11T22:02:06-04:00

Message in a Bottle

2006-04-09T10:39:11-04:00

P O S T E D B Y S A L L Y

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?

_____

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

2006-04-06T19:42:24-04:00

P O S T E D B Y D O C T O R D R E A D

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

ANTM as a Source of Moral Wisdom

2006-04-02T14:14:57-04:00

P O S T E D B Y E N R I Q U E

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

2006-04-01T13:34:11-05:00

P O S T E D B Y T O N Y

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.

Believing Passionately in the Palpably Not True

2006-03-31T16:35:04-05:00

P O S T E D B Y F E L I X

This item from the March 31st Washington Post:

Greeted by anti-war protesters at almost every stop in a tour of working-class England, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Friday that the Bush administration has probably made thousands of “tactical errors” in its handling of the Iraq war.*

_____

* “Rice Admits Thousands of ‘Tactical Errors’ in Iraq” by Glenn Kessler, Washington Post Staff Writer, Friday, March 31.

Picture the Rhine as an American River

2006-03-28T21:19:38-05:00

P O S T E D B Y T O N Y

I recently heard Francesca Zambello described as “a superstar among opera directors,” and I wondered what that meant. For me the experience of opera is like wearing a thick woolen coat inside my grandmother’s overheated apartment, minus the pictures of the pope. But I was curious enough to accept an invitation to see Zambello’s staging of Wagner’s Das Rheingold at the Kennedy Center. Would a superstar among opera directors finally convince me that opera does not suck?

Here’s what’s going on: Wotan, king of the gods, commissions a big palace (Valhalla) from two giants who demand his sister-in-law Freia as payment. He agrees to the terms but later reneges on the deal because he likes Freia’s golden apples. Meanwhile, some troll king has forged a magic ring with gold he stole from some half-naked river nymphs. He’s using the ring to take over the world, and I don’t know how it goes from there because by this time I’m hunched over in my seat, dead asleep, drooling into my pants.

The story sounds promising, right? Problem is that soon after the opera begins, they start singing. And they don’t stop until three-and-half hours later.

I don’t know what it is—I think my brain works too fast for opera. At one point Wotan asks, “How shall we go to Valhalla?” It takes him sixteen bars to formulate this simple question, and that’s excluding the annoying little cadence the orchestra always tacks on at the end. By the time his wife answers, “Lo! A bridge,” my mind has already wandered to Valhalla, hired a gay decorator, and printed the invitations to the housewarming.

Then there’s all the attitude. The furs and the wallets, the half-dead old ladies thankful they didn’t have to put up with the stimulation of an Italian opera. When my mother was young, they would gather around the hi-fi every Sunday to listen to the great Caruso. It was about family. In this country, opera’s the kind of music that looks at you sideways then suggests you put on a nicer pair of shoes.

Madonna and Other Scattered Objects

2006-03-26T08:54:00-05:00

We invited Enrique the Gay Philosopher to guest blog on White Courtesy Telephone. In this installment, he uses the latest issue of OUT Magazine to explore the BIG QUESTIONS that exercise the minds of people in the gay community …

There’s a cover photo of Madonna, then this photograph, six short pages into the magazine: a beautiful man, strong-jawed, bearded and most noticeably dirty. But why? The most compelling explanation I’ve heard is that it’s a visual pun: Acknowledging that we have succeeded in sweeping aside many barbarous stereotypes, the editors of the magazine now ironically encourage sex with a miner.

The interview with Madonna raises new questions. No one will stop calling it the Eiffel Tower if I replace one of its beams. But what if I replace ten? or a hundred? or all of them? At what point does it strain our sense to identify it with the structure built by Gaustave Eiffel? Philosophers call this the problem of identity conditions for scattered objects, and it arises with other historic structures like Cher. We might remove a rib here, enhance a breast there, replace her nose entirely, so that over time we’re left with only a few ratty bits of the original Cher. Would the creature then really be Cher? I should mention that Madonna claims her supernaturally youthful appearance was achieved without plastic surgery. Yeah, right, and I’m the Eiffel Tower!

Downtime for the Veep

2006-03-25T08:58:10-05:00

P O S T E D B Y D O C T O R D R E A D

They set up Cheney's room, but they forgot the small child. And the chalk for drawing a pentagram on the carpet.

The Other Bell Curve

2006-03-24T11:49:09-05:00

P O S T E D B Y S A L L Y

My nephew, who recently dropped out of college in California, submitted this as his final paper for Psychology 101 …

Many psychometric studies have explored the psychological structures associated with conservative thought and behavior. The Authoritarian Personality (1950) by Theodor W. Adorno, et al., correlated fascist and anti-democratic attitudes with a personality structure characterized by an aggressive attitude toward groups that threaten traditional values, a tendency to accept and obey social conventions, and other related qualities. Correlations like these are supported by Robert Altemeyer in his seminal work, Enemies of Freedom: Understanding Right Wing Authoritarianism. In a study conducted in Israel, Fibert and Ressler (1998) found that measures of intolerance of ambiguity were significantly higher among right-wing students than among their moderate and extreme left-wing peers. Whiny babies grow up to be conservatives, and scientific study after study shows that conservatives are generally a bunch of stodgy, selfish, unempathic shitheads .

Evidence for a high heritability (H) for conservatism comes from the fact that these fuckers tend to cluster in families and breed with one another.

This author recommends that we send all these fuckers to Kansas.

How to Play The Game®

2006-03-23T13:10:32-05:00

P O S T E D B Y F E L I X

Hey kids, don’t miss out on the hottest electronic reality game on the market! You might have heard it described elsewhere, but here’s how The Game® is really played.

On “Level One: Money,” grab that steering wheel and navigate Senator Lucre down K Street at breakneck speeds as he collects bribe after bribe from Well-Heeled Washington Lobbyists! But don’t get too greedy: You need to hurry back to Congress in time to water down proposed Lobbying Legislation! In the Big Bonus Round, help the senator sink as many putts as possible during his Golf Junket in Scotland! Loads of fun!

On “Level Two: Drugs,” use your joystick to direct Nancy, the anorexic wife of a Prominent U.S. Politician, through a Pac Man-like maze. Nancy gobbles Painkillers as she goes (prescription, of course!), pursued all the while by four members of the Liberal Media! Because Nancy leads the national “Take a Pass on Grass” campaign, you win big Hypocrisy Points for each painkiller she ingests! At the end of the round, a Mario-like character with a southern twang hops across the screen shouting, “But I didn’t inhale! I didn’t inhale!” Oh boy! …

Cheney as Text

2006-03-20T12:12:21-05:00

P O S T E D B Y F E L I X

The only thing missing is the white Persian cat.

All Hail the Fuckers at LiveJournal

2006-03-19T22:23:00-05:00

P O S T E D B Y R A C H E L

I visited livejournal.com and printed a list of Live Journal interest areas. These are tabulated automatically when these bitches write profiles that tell the world what they’re into. If one of them lists “pizza” in her profile, pizza gets one vote in Live Journal’s list of what’s hot.

Pizza was #116 on the list, by the way. Take a minute to think about all the things in the world that are interesting. Now try to absorb the fact that these losers can’t find 115 things more interesting than pizza.

The fuckers like cheese (#34 on the list) better than Nirvana (#41). In fact they like cheese more than beer, baseball, sushi, and God (#140). Sure, people get all Rosemary’s Baby about God, and cheese is a mysterious substance. I mean, is it a plastic, or what? But what kind of fuckhead finds cheese more interesting than Bjork (#234), or dreams (#103), or New York City (#351)?

Sleeping is more popular than laughing, boys are more popular than girls, reading more popular than writing, and eyeliner (#160) tops Moulin Rouge (#296). OK, the bitches got something right. Ewan McGregor’s hot bod couldn’t rescue hour after insufferable hour of Nicole Kidman pretending she could act and sing. I can’t stand watching her smug mug on TV talk shows. She looks like an overcooked piece of white asparagus with lipstick.

Most puzzling to moi is the fact that drugs, #313 on the list, rated far lower than Harry Fucking Potter, Starbucks, and shoes. Dear one, if you mainline a shoe, will you see a thousand tiny red faces floating a foot above your head, smiling and saying that everything will be OK? Will your body shrink to a tenth its size while you stand in front of an open closet door, pushing aside enormous shirts on enormous coat hangers? Will the subway car rattle you like a coin in a glass jar as you strain to understand how heads go completely bald? Will it? Well then, go fuck yourself if you think shoes are more interesting than drugs.

I mean it, go fuck yourself.

Contributors to Last Days of a Great City

2006-03-09T01:02:21-05:00

P O S T E D B Y S A L L Y

It was Felix who brought us together. We had little in common before that. One thing that united us—Black, White, young, old—was an abiding skepticism about received wisdom. Felix saw this and invited us to blog together, to inflict our clashing perspectives on one another and the world.

Each of the contributors to Last Days of a Great City has blogged on issues relating to the Culture Wars, sometimes openly and often under an assumed name. Each continues a dialogue that began with Dionysus and Apollo—a dialogue that has little resonance in the waking dream induced by contemporary market forces. Last Days owes allegiance to no school of thought, no political party, no religious creed. Individually and collectively we aspire to Truth, Beauty, and Justice, although Rachel Tension still thinks that's a big load of bullshit.

We talked amongst ourselves to find a cultural product that we could all endorse. This took more than a month of e-mailing back and forth—long e-mails filled with didactic nonsense. We finally lighted on this speech from Nagg in Samuel Beckett’s Endgame:

Let me tell it again.
(Raconteur's voice.)
An Englishman, needing a pair of striped trousers in a hurry for the New Year festivities, goes to his tailor who takes his measurements.
(Tailor's voice.)
"That's the lot, come back in four days, I'll have it ready." Good. Four days later.
(Tailor's voice.)
"So sorry, come back in a week, I've made a mess of the seat." Good, that's all right, a neat seat can be very ticklish. A week later.
(Tailor's voice.)
"Frightfully sorry, come back in ten days, I've made a hash of the crotch." Good, can't be helped, a snug crotch is always a teaser. Ten days later.
(Tailor's voice.)
"Dreadfully sorry, come back in a fortnight, I've made a balls of the fly." Good, at a pinch, a smart fly is a stiff proposition.
(Pause. Normal voice.)
I never told it worse.
(Pause. Gloomy.)
I tell this story worse and worse.
(Pause. Raconteur's voice.)
Well, to make it short, the bluebells are blowing and he ballockses the buttonholes.
(Customer's voice.)
"God damn you to hell, Sir, no, it's indecent, there are limits! In six days, do you hear me, six days, God made the world. Yes Sir, no less Sir, the WORLD! And you are not bloody well capable of making me a pair of trousers in three months!"
(Tailor's voice, scandalized.)
"But my dear Sir, my dear Sir, look—
(disdainful gesture, disgustedly)
—at the world—
(Pause.)
and look—
(loving gesture, proudly)
—at my TROUSERS!"

We invite you not only to look at our trousers but to comment freely and otherwise keep in touch. Click here for profiles of the contributors to Last Days of a Great City.

Under Construction

2006-03-07T18:43:18-05:00

Egregious pabulum coming soon!