6.10.2006
High School Majors
The "A-plus-plus" bill, which is being introduced by Florida governor Jeb Bush, suggests that you're never too young to decide what you want to do with the rest of your entire life. Besides the name, which is clearly insane, is this really a good idea? It took me until my third year of university to decide what I wanted to do for my degree. If I had to have made the decision earlier, I would have gone into a completely different field for all of the wrong reasons (good grades as opposed to potential growth and interest). Choosing my major was only possible when I had a better sense of who I was and what was really important to me, and the process of this discovery was one of the most enjoyable in my life. Young people are intelligent decision makers -- that's not the issue here -- but they should have a bit of time to explore before they're railroaded into a career. Is this plan A-plus-plus or Zee-minus?
AFTERTHOUGHT: How about elementary school majors? The slippery slope of Bush's plan is wacky. Tracing his logic to its extreme would make the majority of men firemen and the majority of women dancers (or you get the picture).
A Doodie to One's Countrymen
I hardly see how this woman should be charged for sending the stink back to the Republicans. After all, we take their crap constantly. It's truly a delight when you see poo jokes enter the academic sphere. Perhaps professor Ensz should take the Kristeva defence, namely, that she was merely reminding congresswoman Musgrave that the abjected never really leaves us. When the Republicans call for better family-values, yadda-yadda, what they're really saying is that I desire to negate all possible worlds in favour of the one that best maintains my status as a subject. Thus, when one's poo chases one, it recalls that frightening time when one could not distinguish oneself from the world around. To be cast back into such a situation would mean that all of life's psychodramas must be replayed again, that indeed reality itself had come under threat. The anxiety provoked by professor Ensz's "statement" is the same underpinnning that old chestnut of a statement implied in every Republican action. Namely, that "my shit don't stink."
The Kidneys of Darkness
What happens when the original American Psycho, Bret Easton Ellis, meets "the band you could take home to meet the parents"? Perhaps a portrait of poseurish pomposity, maybe a menagerie of melancholic moodiness, or, could it be, a credible cure for the cruxes of contemporary life? (Let's not bother asking what happens when a bored English grad student meets Thesaurus.com). An article in the Guardian discusses the return of a new, possibly edgier Keane to the music market after three years of "Hell," also known as a gazillion screaming fans.
Updike Interview
After you get over the fact that, at least as is evident in the photo, John Updike clearly has no soul, this is an intriguing interview regarding his new book, Terrorist. I've only read a bit of Updike's old stuff, and I quite liked it, but I can't get over the fact of how unquestioningly and unabashedly jingoistic he appears in this. The tone could be partially attributable to the interviewer, Mehammed Mack, who seems to have some fairly serious reservations about the novel. He calls it, among other things, "a novel whose title will either roll eyes or raise eyebrows." I would tend to agree.
UPDATE 06/10/06:Globeandmail.com is running an article (reg. req.) today proclaming the relevance of Updike's new novel to Canadians. Because I am a complete conspiracy theorist I will say this: it seems very odd that so much terror news has coincided with the Liberal Leadership race. Michael Ignatieff, Liberal leadership frontrunner and AMERICAN academic, is running almost solely on a "Tough on Terror" platform, and many Candian news outlets are thinly veiled Liberal propaganda sheets. Could Canadians really be duped by such coincidences? Why don't we elect a leader who asks why the terrorists are so pissed off in the first place? And don't give me that "they hate democracy" line. If we're really interested in diminishing terrorist activity, we'll have to do better than that. "Wars" on ideologies will only create martyrs for them.
On another (hopefully the last) note, I will say this: the Globe and Mail article presents a much more sympathetic version of Updike than the LAWeekly one -- it suggests that his novel is not simply one-sided nonsense. For instance, Updike says of his main character, Ahmad: "I saw him as an American much like my younger self, albeit with a different set of beliefs."
The Weird World of Bibliophilia
Who knows what to say about BibliOdyssey which features bizarre manuscripts and visual material from old texts (I found it through Boingboing.net). I think that you sort of have to see it to believe it. In particular, I like the edition of Ovid's Metamorphosis which comes complete with (what I think is) it's own anti-theft chain. It reminds me of a wallet I had back in my punk days...
6.09.2006
When Are You?
Time is one of those things we deal with and fail to deal with every day. Douglas Gordon's current exhibition (reg. req.) at MoMA approaches the relationship between mechanical and organic time in interesting ways. Even if, like me, you cannot make it to the exhibition, this NYT article may start to bend your perception as you read it. I suddenly started pondering the eight hour drive to NYC, the two hour flight, the gazillion hour walk, the instantaneity of reading about it on the internet. Here in Kingston Ontario, we receive the world through this Doppler effect. Maybe the distance to places like New York isn't as important as the time it takes to get there and the travel's effects on the brain and body. Oh to be at the centre of things.
What Women Want
This article by Becky O'Flanahan from TheOnion.com, offers some great advice to all of those twenty-something women out there who just can't seem to come to terms with the grief their fathers gave them: Fuck everyone! Go out and have sex with every person in sight, because clearly that will take away the pain. Only one problem with her approach that I can't seem to figure out, though; it doesn't seem to be working. Maybe I'll have to go back and hit the Freud Reader again. Crap! (anal fixation). P.S. Did I mention that this article is from TheOnion.com?
Once More into the Frey
My personal feelings on James Frey -- the falsifying fibber, the prevaricating perjurer, the now lambasted liar -- who wrote A Million Little Pieces go something like this: way to go! It's so great to see the bourgeoise get its knickers in a bunch over its own flummoxed desire for scandal, spectacle, sensation, sleaze, shock, and scurrility. (It's also great how much alliteration I feel compelled to use this afternoon). We demand lurid lecheries and then when someone bends the truth a little to provide them, we're suddenly morally outraged. Anything that can get Oprah "lambasting the author about the embellishments and fabrications during a fiery episode of her show" seems, ironically, like it has managed to succeed, not fail, as art.
To Mock a Biographer
From this review (registration required) of Charles J Sheilds' biography of Harper Lee -- author of To Kill a MockingBird -- I got the distinct impression that it is a book I would not want to read. From the article: "He used the Internet to take the art of the cyberclip-job to bold new heights." The review itself is fascinating though, focusing on the process of writing a biography of a person who does not want to be written on. What was Shields really to do, when "one of [his] best sources is Ms. Lee's father's caddy"? I suppose his persistence is commendable in some respects. It actually sounds suspiciously like a grad project.
6.08.2006
Careless Cursive Curses Kids
When I was a kid, they used to make us write the same letters in these three stupid little lines over and over and over. When we were finally deemed proficient by our harsh schoolmistress, she would give us our first ever pen, and OH it was sweet. We had officially mastered penmanship, what the little whippersnappers nowadays would call penpersonship. Acually, according to this Guardian article, they aren't calling it much of anything. I feel so vindicated when I read the line, "Children who are not taught to write properly at primary level will struggle at secondary school and university and are also likely to find their poor handwriting as much a handicap in the jobs market as poor reading and numeracy, according to a report out today." Then again, I don't have a job.
Ian McEwan Wins Scottish Fiction Prize
Ian McEwan's 2005 novel Saturday has picked up this year's James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction. The £10,000 (20,679.41 CAD) prize is the largest literary prize in Scotland, and McEwan's victory is particularly unexpected, because, as the Guardian notes in this article, "McEwan's book was not even longlisted for the Man Booker award and was passed over for the Whitbread prize." Of course the most pressing question is, when are they going to give me one of these things?
Pretty Pictures Are Good, Too
My last post was the first official rant of this page, so I’d like to stupefy things a bit with this cool optical illusion thing entitled Big Spanish Castle. It’s important to temper passion with lightness, because it keeps the flames burning longer. (UPDATE 06/08/06: This guy got Slashdotted this afternoon, but it's worth checking back on later.)
An Open Letter to Tony Long
If this guy actually believes what he’s saying and is not being a brilliant satirist of the boomer standpoint, I have to say, that he is the epitome a painful cliché: the nostalgic fifty-something pining for the days of "real" counterculture. Tony Long, I have news for you: the counterculture in the sixties was not exactly "co-opted" by the money-sniffing "Madison Avenue." You and your "organic" cohort bought into the counterculture that was already being produced by Madison Avenue. For example, the advertised logic of your beloved VW Microbus – the official ride of the ‘60s rebel – went something like this: "buy this to escape consumersim." VW was marketing that as early as 1961. How could that be a “co-optation” when it happened before the hippie movement? (If you want to read more on this, then take a look at Thomas Frank’s The Conquest of Cool.)
My point is actually this: co-optation theory itself has become a bourgeoisie institution, which substitutes flimsy, linear logic for actual political engagement. Here’s the faulty syllo-jissom at its core: If MASSES=BAD and I≠BAD and BAD≠GOOD and REBEL=GOOD, then I MUST BE A REBEL! Sadly, the world works in degrees most of the time, and until we stop comfortably wielding Manichean bullshit and judging everyone else from our cozy little walled-in perches, no real change is possible. Or, in terms you might better understand: just because I≠YOU, it does not follow that I=BAD. Who gives a flying fuck if I own an iPod? Who gives a flying fuck if you owned a VW Microbus? Products like these contain no logic of their own, only what we make of them and do with them. Stop treating everyone like children, and positioning yourself as the wise father figure. You’re no voice in the wilderness. You sound more like a flannel-suit wearing ‘50s TV dad for Christ’s sake.
While I’m here I’d also like to identify some other painful clichés from Mr. Long's article that we’ll have to move beyond before we can “change the word”: “[The Bush] administration is using the fear of terrorism to keep us compliant while it pursues its own agenda,” “Bucking the system – real rebellion – requires passion, healthy skepticism and a spirit of self-sacrifice, all of which are in short supply in today's cynical world,” “Conformity through consumption is the name of the game these days,” “This is a nation of sheep,” “Reject the culture you've been force-fed and build a better one…” Oh, hell, why don’t I just re-post a link to the whole article and be done with it? Here is algebraic form, in case anybody missed it: BUSH=BAD, FEAR=BAD, BUCKING=GOOD, REAL=GOOD, PASSION=GOOD, CYNICISM=BAD!, CONFORMITY=BAD, SHEEP=BAD, FORCE-FEEDING SHEEP=BAD!
A part of the problem with the “cynics” these days is that we see through clichés faster than you can jumpstart a Microbus. Seeing through clichés has already become a cliché, and I’m tired of it. Mr. Long may think he’s reporting on the ills of the world, but what he’s actually doing is trying to establish his generation’s superiority, in order to continue the already too-long reign of an antiquated mentality. It no longer suffices to equate THIS or THAT with GOOD or BAD, because doing so actually halts rather than starts constructive analysis and political action. And on that note, don’t be taken in by my clever analysis, because I’ve basically just repeated the pattern of what Mr. Long is doing. I’ve set up my own equation: BAD=TONY, GOOD=ANALYSIS. Instead of listening to me, think for yourself for a change, man. Stop being a sheep and buck the system of square mass society, man. Man, man...
Your pal,
elbeato
Brilliant Scientist Does Things Humanities Style
This fake article from the Onion.com features a real groundbreaker, who solves long-standing scientific problems in the same way science students trying to get their humanities credit solve literary texts. I commend him! His highly unconventional and unsystematic approach can be used to refute hundreds of years of meticulously argued theory, in favour of what he perceives to be the story that everyone else has been missing. We humanities folks, with our picky grammatical rules, and our reliance on “textual” or “historical” “evidence” could learn a thing or two from the fictive and ferocious Dr. Theodore Hapner. Perhaps we already have! This rebel only needs one rule: if his argument doesn’t fit the evidence, rewrite the evidence to make it fit the argument.
TV Networks Finally Get Their Comeuppance
Sometimes a story just warms the cockles of your heart so much, you have to share it with others. I'd like to give a shout out to these brave soldiers of sensibility: woot. Figments or no, these heroes should be lauded for their timely and worthwhile protest against one of the most vile and unacknowledged crimes of our time. Maybe activism isn't dead after all? Or maybe it's not the place where you'd think to look. To quote an old friend of mine, Jack LeCon: "I think where I am not, therefore I am where I do not think." I think that really says it all. What do you think?
6.07.2006
Emily Carr: Painter, Pet Lover, Chair Suspender
Word nerds love a good eccentric. However, kooky as we might be, most of us could still take a lesson from the late great Emily Carr. Here's a great CBC.ca photo essay featuring her mad stylings. You gotta love it: "One of the best stories about Emily Carr is that in order to conserve space and to discourage guests, she would suspend chairs from the ceiling of her studio. If she liked you, she would lower a seat. If she didn’t, you’d just have to stand with Carr’s monkey, cats, dogs, squirrels and rats scrabbling around your feet — her pet parrot usually remained perched on her shoulder — until Carr was finished with you." Squirrels and Monkeys? Check. Chairs suspended from ceiling? Check. Batty B.C. artist whose brilliance outshines us all? Check!
Who Owns the Sky?
This New York Times article (registration required) offers a fascinating look into the evolving relationship between public and privatized spaces. From the article: "There was a time when government took an interest in big urban planning projects... Bigger social concerns, like housing for mixed incomes, equal access to parks and transit, and vibrant communal spaces, which were once the public's purview, now increasingly fall to developers to address or not, as they see fit." The discussion of architects Frank Gehry and Bruce Ratner left me wondering if the most elite designers of space should be accountable to such public interests, or whether their is their role to produce art on its own terms.
Quit Your Wining?
As a connoisseur of the Arts, I also happen to enjoy a glass of fine wine at the end of the day. Or, put another way, as a perpetually exhuasted and underfed grad school slave-monkey, I need booze to take away the pain. But, now, apparently, when I head to the liquor store (booze shack), I may be falling prey to the marketing of a chic young image. This Article from Wired, talks about the latest manifestation of what Thomas Frank has labelled "hip consumerism."
The Idiocy of "Mass Culture"
A big question came up upon reading Ien Ang's essay, "Dallas and the Ideology of Mass Culture" this afternoon. Basically Ang argues that people's common disdain and cynicism towards popular culture is actually an automatic response, which involves very little thought. When we think we're being critical of shows like Survivor or American Idol, all we're really doing is trying to bolster our own sense of superiority. Ang claims that this activity of establishing our superiority replaces an actual critical engagement! So the question is, why do I (you, we) hate TV? Or, alternately, why do I (you, we) like it?
6.06.2006
Lost: One Souvenir of Canada
Douglas Coupland, of Generation X fame (or infamy) has been slowly releasing a film version of his Souvenir of Canada books over the past few months. It keeps on nearly surfacing into the the mainstream media and then disappearing again. A few weeks ago I had the chance to see him reading from jPod down in Toronto, and I have to say he was lovely and drunk. Of his most endearing features was his tendency to upspeak every sentence? You know what I mean? Like everything you're saying is a question? Anyway, if anyone has seen this film, please call its owners for a reward...
Activism: Dead or Obsolete?
Awhile back, I got a kick out of this article from Wired, and I thought I'd share. It got me wondering if protest is generational, or whether this crazy curmudgeon is actually right. Have new technologies really "blinded" us to the swindles of those in power, or have we just found different ways to react these days? Is "the internet... simply too diffuse to effectively galvanize a revolution" or is revolution itself an outmoded concept?
Zadie Smith Wins Orange Prize
Zadie Smith's latest novel On Beauty has picked up the prestigious (and massive) Orange Prize for women's fiction. I can't say I'm surprised after having read The Autograph Man, which was one of the most interesting and vexing books I've ever encountered. This is the third time she's been nominated for the prize, so it's high-time she took one home. For more on this check out this article at CBC.ca.
Grammatical Monstrosities
Here's an article from ZDnet outlining some common grammatical goof ups. It's easy to lament the decay of English into Netspeak -- oh the humanities! -- but I wonder if this trend isn't actually just the evolution of language. The term "Netspeak" does sound suspiciously close to "newspeak" from Orwell's Nineteen Eighty Four, which is a language developed to make it impossible to think certain ways. Is the corrosion of grammar and lexicon an unconscious business strategy to weed out the free-thinking mind, or is efficiency and progress to be valued at all costs?
Wanted: English Nerds
SeattlePI.com is featuring an article on Tim Lemire's new book on the prospects facing the graduating English Major. From the article: "The three big myths Lemire tries to dispel are that English majors' career options are severely limited, that they will never make good money and that they will never find work outside academia. While this book isn't the read for English majors setting out to write the great American novel, those looking to become wage slaves might find it helpful."
Welcome to wordcrush
I've started wordcrush, in the spirit of Slashdot, to find and share news for nerds. Specifically, though, I want to share info with that oh-so-neglected breed of nerds, the one that lusts for composition over compiling, grammar over code, cursive over cursors. I speak, of course, of the word nerd. I happen to be one of the English Majoris variety, but I welcome those across the humanities to come on in, grab a cup of coffee, and realize that you haven't just wasted thousands of dollars on your degrees.
Here you'll find articles, essays, and websites that have interesting things to say about some dimension of the world of words (and every postructuralist worth her salt knows it's only a world of words out there). Because there are numerous high-quality, peer-edited journals to take care of the scholarly side of the humanities, I'd like to focus more on "pop culture" stories: articles about things like procrastination, finding jobs, radical thinking, pedagogy, etc. I will also post a small amount of thought provoking artistic stuff, including photography, poetry and fiction. If you find any great stuff that people in the humanities just must see, feel free to send me links, and I'll credit you. Happy trails wordcrush!
