wordcrush

My posts have been getting a little high-minded and heavy-handed lately, so I offer up the following to the gods of frivolty. I think the product's disclaimer really says it all: "Renova Black is an elegant 3-ply, fragrance bath tissue paper that has been tested under dermatological and gynecological control. It is a biodegradable, non-toxic, soothing tissue and does not bleed any color when wet. Renova Black luxury bath tissue complies with all US and European health/code requirements. Renova only uses ECF and TCF pulps (Elementary Chlorine Free and Totally Chlorine Free, respectively). Renova Black is made of 100% biodegradable, virgin pulp and it is entirely recyclable." I know how I'm spending MY money this summer.

Meet my new hero, Chris Davis. Davis claims that Darwin had it all wrong when he posited the universe as a fundamentally competitive place: "The more perfectly adapted to its environment, the less an organism would need to struggle. The organisms that are struggling are by definition having trouble with their environment. Human beings have, over their history, gradually struggled less. They developed tools that speed up the work needed to fulfill basic needs for food, clothing, and shelter." What this increased efficiency has in theory produced is more idle time: "It is in this idle time that humans can do as they wish, rather than as they must, and they can think, talk, and play — i.e., act as free moral agents."

In the article he doesn't really talk about people's obsessive need to fill this idle time with productive behaviour, but it turns out that there's an entire community devoted to "Idle Theory" called whywork.org. Their basic point is that "the cult of the job" subscribes to a false logic that "automatically equates having a job with making a living." As shown in the article, Davis' own life exemplifies the argument that an alternative to wage slavery can exist.

As best I can figure, the indie film Shortbus, which premiered at Cannes a few weeks ago, is causing quite a ruckus because of the audacious fact that it co-stars CBC darling, Sook-Yin Lee. At first glance, it may appear that the film's "actual" sex acts are the source of buzz, but, really, if it didn't feature the beloved Sook-Yin would anyone really care? As my old philosophy teachers would say, the sex may be necessary, but it is not sufficient. I actually took a quick look around the "internet of computers" and apparently there are many, many films out there that feature actual sex (776 milion hits, weird). And we never even hear about most of them!

Oh, right, but this is a Cannes film. Reading some of the commentary, the whole thing becomes almost parodic: "'We were all impressed with how natural and normal and comedic the extreme sex became without being offensive,' Mark Urman of ThinkFilm told the Hollywood Reporter." Oh come on -- since when has anyone in the film industry been a reliable judge of "natural"? And from the director: "We couldn't get Bush out in 2004, so a lot of people put their ideas into their artistic work." Thank god. Now that it's 2006, a Cannes film can finally "get Bush out." Hi fives for that one.

The real question is will I be seeing this one? HELL YES! It has Sook-Yin Lee and sex!

I never know quite what to say when I look at Haida art, which I have had many opportunities to do having grown up on the West Coast. It's definitely powerful, but I want to avoid some sort of exoticizing or fetishizing gaze. I suppose that could be said of any artist's work, really, but the fact that native art appears more frequently in museums than art galleries has historically given it a kind of different, not necessarily positive, status, and this, I think, affects the way I see it.

According to this CBC review of the Haida exhibit at the Vancouver Art Gallery (VAG?) "the Haida themselves don't differentiate among land, the sea, politics, art and culture." This claim seems to put their art in quite a different sphere than someone like Andy Warhol's at first, but upon closer inspection actually may not. I think Warhol's work could definitely be read as poltical and cultural, and it deals with the urban landscape, and yet it also seems strangley depoliticized because its only viewable in highly specific, moneybags settings. Does the same go for native art? What does it mean that I know exactly one native artist, Bill Reid, by name? These are just thoughts. I have no clear answers.

I also definitely don't want to primitivize native artists' work and say some dumb thing like its essential difference is that it's always closer to nature, because that is a way to potentially limit its political efficacy, to keep it at a distance. Maybe limiting its efficacy is exactly what we want. Maybe it's closer to the urban landscape and the political sphere than we'd like to think, and so we Euro-descendants relegate it to museums where we can safely comment on its mythic, magic "power" and ignore its ongoing, highly current political significance. Is the switch to the art gallery just another containment strategy, a way of finally giving some deserved economic power to native artists, but not necessarily political power? I'm probably a dimwit for raising these questions, but I think it's better than my initial impulse to just shy away from them and talk about dead white guys.

The series of photographs that they posted on Swapatorium today features shadows of the photographer. Collected as they are, they look like some sort of postmodern art meant to call into question the usually safe role of viewer. Or they could be read as making a comment on the rebellions of technology in middle class life and relaity. Between these two, you could situate the whole fetishizing "retro" aesthetic -- swapatorium itself -- as being produced when genuine nostalgia meets a desire to assert a knowing superiority over the past. You could do a lot of things, but I included them because I like the stories and Swapatorium is sweet.

Over on Metafilter I found this cool video ad (I know, I know) for some Turkish bank. Unlike the vaguely similar coke ad which unhealthily fixates on the product, this incorporates amazing choreography and actually makes you hate the advertiser less. Besides, if you live in North America it's not like you could run out and start an Akbank account even if you wanted. So you're safe.

Following Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, a new educational model -- chartered schools -- has been set in motion in New Orleans. To quote the NYT article (reg.req.) where I first found out about this, "The schools are paid for with public money but are usually operated by nonprofit groups or parent organizations." Supporters are impressed by the fact that the schools can even exist right now, calling it a "testament to their ability to cut through red tape." Those on the other side might argue that the rapid rise of these schools only testifies to the loss of educational standards, citing among other things a "lack of citywide coherence." SOMEBODY GOTTA TESTIFY! CAN I GET A... nevermind.

I'll set aside my frankly knee-jerk judgements about the Bush administration's support of the program for now. What really interests me instead is the potential for this educational model to develop into an anarcho-communistic utopia. It seems fairly clear that New Orleans' citizens were abandoned by their government at the time when it was most needed, and now, rather than having the government rebuild their educational system, they're again being left to their own means (or lack thereof). Will the flatlining economics in Louisiana enable a sort of citizens' collectivism or will it merely necessitate vicious competitivism? Will the rebuilding at the community level facilitate a decentralization of federal power or even a federalism at the local level? At what point do New Orleans people stop paying taxes? For answers to those burning questions, stay tuned (for about fifty years.)

P.S. I'll judge now: Bush and his administration are puppy-killers, every one of them.

Though I'm still buried in the research phase of my dissertation, I can feel in myself the welling nutty bliss driving this fellow grad student's now-quasi-famous blog. In honour of her site, my best sentence today will go to "I hate that nasty pack of writers out there, with their lupine group mentality." What wins for you?

In the early nineties, regardless of whether he wanted it, Richard Linklater was a highly influential figure in the media bonanza known as Generation X. Linklater's first major release, Slacker (1991), was largely responsible for popularizing the title term that still annoys us (me) today. (His 1996 film subUrbia also happens to be my favourite of all time.)

In this AV Club interview Linklater talks about his two newest flicks A Scanner Darkly and Fast Food Nation, which are appearing at Cannes. Throughout the interview he seems to have a weird ambivalence towards the economic side of filmmaking. On one hand he complains extensively about Universal's shoddy marketing of Dazed and Confused, and on the other he says things like, "I'd be fine to make movies and have them never come out." What gives, Rich? At least he talks about his appreciation for "Guys with hard-hats and boots. Yeah, yeah. The real world."

Good lord it took a lot to make that title work, but I would say it's worth it, since the theme of this post is "awkwardly cramming bad things where they don't belong." You see, after many tortuous and heartbreaking "hoops" the downtrodden mom and pop company known as "Starbucks" (have you heard of them?) plans to open yet another store in a site of historical significance. It's as if erasure of the local (keep clicking on things) is a fun pastime for these people. Who needs public spaces? Actually -- given America's own historical narrative -- the progression of this building from a tavern where historical founders used to gather, to an angry jazz club rebelling against the strictures of society, to a transnational consumerfest, seems appropriate. It's funny that the 'Bucks isn't saying much about this one on its site. Regardless of the politics, it is important that somebody is always there to make my latté. No foam please.

P.S. Is "Starbucks" a synonym for Astronomical Prices?

P.P.S. Check out the rack that original, now greenwashed, logo.

Though the recent hullabaloo over the Joyce estate's refusal to allow certain writings of his to be published smacks a bit of academic novelism, it's easy to appreciate Carol Shloss' point of view as a reasearcher. She has completed an entire volume concerning Joyce's inspiration for Finnegan's Wake and now finds herself in the unenviable position of being censored by his successors. Do they really have that right? While they argue that her work is defamatory to Joyce's image because it focuses on the influence of Lucia Joyce, James' mentally ill daughter, Shloss claims that her use of copywrited material is legitimate because it works in "a scholarly transformative manner." Regardless of where you fall on this issue, there's one claim in the article that we can all definitely disagree with: that Finnegan's Wake is "impenetrable." That's clearly baloney -- Joyce is renowned for being an easy read.

It's interesting that the move by Cover Girl to advertise in an upcoming youth novel is being touted (by itself) as a "narrative experience which breaks out of the book itself in unprecedented ways." I'll say! For starters, you have the Proctor and Gamble marketing machine taking the place of responsible critics, with results like this: "Cathy's Book...' is just the kind of project that sets Running Press' upstart YA publishing program apart from the pack," added Jon Anderson, Publisher of Running Press. "This highly designed, heavily illustrated, interactive and hip project is just the kind of publishing we like to do. And P&G's unique support will allow more readers to find the book and makes the story even more believable for its audience." Wow! apart from the pack, you say? I hate that nasty pack of writers out there, with their lupine group mentality. We need alpha writers to lead the hunt for believability by incorporating product placements, otherwise books would be nothing more than, well, literature.

My japes aside, perhaps this is actually an understandable trend. Writers like Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club), Douglas Coupland (jPod), and Bret Easton Ellis (American Psycho) have all fetishized commodities in various ways, and at times their critiques seem to get lost in the dazzling spectacle of the product (think the "Planet Starbucks" scene from Fight Club). As a cliche-spouting PR person would say "no publicity is bad publicity," or as Michel Foucault would say there has been a "veritable discursive explosion" of product-in-literature in the past twenty years. The more ways that you resist consumerism, the more fields it has in which to respond on its own behalf. Perhaps this move by Cover Girl could merely be read as a reframing of an already eazily, breezily, beautifully convenient aspect of contemporary literature.

Salon.com has just introduced their new Literary Guide to the World (ad. req.). The idea is that people can consult the guide when they are travelling to a place to find out about and read its various literary representations. Salon journalist Hillary Frey further explains her motivation for creating the site: "I wanted to take in something that seemed better suited to my destination. Not a travel guide -- those I had already read and dog-eared. Rather, a book that could thrill and educate me all at once, a book that would enhance my visit rather than distract me from it." This is brilliant! A few years ago I took a grad class on the literature of New York, and it gave me this great insider's perspective that made my subsequent trip so much better. Getting hopelessly lost in the subway was a much more meaningful experience.

Oh how I love BoingBoing! I would just like to let everyone know that it was the link to the following video, which officially made me place a link to BoingBoing on my sidebar. This video may have nothing to do with humanities, and yet we are a non-causal kind of bunch. If I can help inspire just one person out there, just one, then my work here is done.

Pre-emptive worrying about the coming apocalypse seems to be a far more important phenomena these days that any actual apocalyspe itself. As this LA Weekly article suggests, regardless of whether the world may or may not end in the next five minutes, life itself must be enjoyed. Actually there's a Zen koan that sounds suspiciously like this article:

"A Man travelling across a field encountered a tiger. He fled, but the tiger ran after him. Coming to a precipice, he caught hold of a root of a wild vine and swung himself down over the edge. The tiger sniffed at him from above. Trembling, the man looked down to where, far below, another tiger was waiting to eat him. Only the vine sustained him.

Two mice, one white and one black, little by little started to gnaw away the vine. The man saw a luscious strawberry near him. Grasping the vine with one hand, he plucked the strawberry with the other. How sweet it tasted!"

Mmmm. Strawberries.

According to this McMaster University study (reg.req.) being reported by the Globe and Mail only 62% of Canadians have a regular, 9 to 5, Monday to Friday, work schedule. The article claims that "weekend work is an unsocial schedule that can be disruptive to personal life, affecting leisure time, time for pursuing personal interests, time spent with family and socializing with friends, neighbours and within the community." As if that doesn't suck enough, what the Globe article fails to adequately draw attention to is the gender divide which is the key focus of the McMaster article. I'd also be curious to know more about the generational divide. What's a "regular" work schedule for the lowly beasts just entering the workforce? Regardless of the answer, I think it's important that there's always someone there to make me my latté. No foam please.

This guy's photos of N. Korea, which I found on Metafilter, provide a fascinating and somewhat frightening portrait of a culture that has has only partially modernized and has had little contact with the outside world. Monumental governemntal and cultural structures blend together with broken-down 1950s apartment blocks, and a sense of being closely watched haunts the narrator's and his guide's every gesture. Reading the captions, it's also hard to conceive of what it would be like living in a place that did not constantly and rapidly communicate with the rest of the world. People are in awe, for example, when they see a white person. If it wasn't for the constant threat of being spied upon and reported, the lack of technological and consumerist insanity might be kind of appealing. As a bonus you'd always get to look at statues of the fabulously nutty Kim Jong Il.

It's almost becoming more of a cliché to criticize nostalgia than to produce it, so I thought I'd give you this nostalgic Salon article (reg. req.) without the usual homage to my superiority. As it turns out, this is actually almost impossible to do, because the images themselves (see right) are so consistently reproduced as examples of that ironic retro-chic that they ironize themselves. Will irony itself some day be the mark of our generation's nostalgia? I doubt anyone's going to pine for the good ol' 1990s days of tapered jeans and The Spin Doctors, but I could see a bunch of Gen-X-geezers, in twenty five years or so, pining for the days when ironic 1950s retro images were young. How confusing.

In what is sureley the best news ever to meet grad students' eyes, a new study (reg. req.) is claiming that the regular consumption of coffee can reduce the risk of booze-induced liver damage (cirrhosis): "In a study of more than 125,000 people, one cup of coffee per day cut the risk of alcoholic cirrhosis by 20 per cent. Four cups per day reduced the risk by 80 per cent. The coffee effect held true for women and men of various ethnic backgrounds." Coffee? Alcohol? Equality? Tap, tap, tap, tap. That sound? Those are my caffeinated happy feet, dancing their way to the liquor store.

I can't quite understand why no other newspapers are picking up the hot news story, but once again, The Onion seems to be on the cutting edge of the internet of computers. From the article: "The long-standing economic, political and social divisions between blacks and whites in America at long last ended Monday with a TV producer's casting of a black actor in a bit part as a teen computer-whiz archetype." Imagine! Imagine the adversity and that young black actor would have had to overcome to trick producers into letting him into the studio in the first place -- all that white face paint? Truly an homage to the indomitable, nay undomitable, will of the human spirt. And then, once he was there, he had to "make it seem like he's smart, too." It's just like an episode of The Cosby Show. I'm headed to Compton to celebrate!

P.P.S. I said that other one was my only post for today and I lied.

After looking at some paintings by burgeoning L.A. artist Chris Johanson, I think you could add to the title above: "...is monstrous." This is not meant as a criticism, but rather an observation on the work's weird blend of joy, exuberance and discomfort. He reminds me a bit of that pomo supergod Jeff Koons, but with a highly topic-appropriate lack of dimension. To hear Johnson speak of his motives reveals little (or perhaps everything) : "I couldn’t possibly give you an honest answer about anything I’m doing, because I’m doing it... Everybody has an amazing amount of denial. I don’t think I know what I’m doing at all. I mean, on some levels, I could tell you about my heart, but at the same time, there’s so much ego involved when you’re dealing with something selfish like . . . your survival. I could tell you more honestly about my love for my wife, or my dog, or my family and friends, but with my art, probably all I could really tell you is that humor and hatred and love are why I do it." It hardly seems like one could accuse Johnson of having too much distance from his subject matter, though looking through some of these works, I wonder if at times he gets too close. Perhaps the whole point is to seduce us into the traps of our own lust for luxury. That was an overly seductive way of putting it, but you get the picture.

P.S. This will be my only post today because I'm out of town.

In this crazy day and age, the ability to baffle seems well nigh impossible. Every second we interpret and survive a mayhem of ideas, information, images flying at us faster than would seem conceivable even five years ago (hell, five minutes). But in this weird wired wacky world Jason Nelson manages to succeed where networks, advertisers, and spammers all fail. Though they vie for our attention at an evermore frenetic pace, and in the process multiply confusion faster than communication, Nelson's work puts them all to utter shame. For the makers of Rice Krispies and Iraq Wars, for the progenitors of Prozac and the brazen humanities students who think thay've seen it all, interpret this!

The discovery of a new Samuel Beckett play, and its utter pertinence to postmodern living, suggests that the phenomenally gorgeous Irish playwright's ability to continue interpreting the world hasn't diminished, regardless of his death in 1989. As the narrator of Molloy (who may or may not be Molloy himself) says, "water rises in proportion as it drowns you and you would do better, at least no worse, to obliterate texts than to blacken margins, to fill in the holes of worlds till all is blank and flat and the whole ghastly business looks like what it is, senseless, speechless, issueless misery." Clearly this new play could easily be or not be the work of Molloy himself, who may or may not remind us of Beckett, at least in the sense that Beckett is a playwright of some capability and the narrator of Molloy may also be named Molloy! If you get my drift.

To quote again: "In other words, or perhaps another thing, whatever I said it was never enough and always too much. Yes, I was never silent, whatever I said I was never silent." I think that really says it all.

The other day I posted an article on the SOCIÉTÉ ANONYME, and their collective, artist-driven approach to patronage in the arts. Though I admire this appraoch greatly, the life of Ken Thomson, a phenomenal contributor to the arts in Canada, has exemplified all of the benefits of the top-down approach. Upon his passing, his collection of over two thousand works, including a $117 million Paul Reubens painting, will now go to the Art Gallery of Ontario, making it, along with its new face lift, a truly world-class institution.

John Cleese, legendary comedian of Monty Python fame, has announced that he will be "retiring from writing and performing sitcoms because he believes he will never top the success of Fawlty Towers." Now for something completely different, according to this Guardian Blog, Cleese has decided that he will become a "professor of comedy." If all comedians were as amazing as Cleese, then I wouldn't consider them to be evil incarnate.

Once again, to compensate for the rantiness of my previous post, I give you mindless entertainment, passed to me through digg.com. If we could get some Japanese-English translation on this one, I'd be grateful (the woman speaking on the track sounds so weirdly calm, given that the world is coming to an end and WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE!!!).

If you've ever driven in L.A -- and I only have once -- it may be a lot easier for you understand why the mythic cowboy West has played such an ongoing role in the imaginations of writers. You are thrown into six lanes of wild, stampeding traffic and forced to fend for yourself (often with guns blazing). When you emerge, you feel lucky to be alive, and also, strangely, a sort of withdrawl kicks in, compelling you to go go back for more. Then you swill some whisky at the saloon. The mythic West, as a place of perpetual rebirth, is a gripping, striking place that can still break the backs of mountains and leave woods dead in its path. It's that primal. No, really.

Of western writing: "The elements will dominate here, and a spare, elemental language, with now and then a touch of elegance, will suffice." The question, I ask, is whose West are we talking about? This article from Salon.com (reg. req.) is correct in postulating the need for recognition of writers in the West, but I think the West Allen Barra represents may need some re-examination. A movie about a couple of cowboys having sex in the mountains is hardly "such a shock to the system," when, believe it or not, men have been having sex with other men in the West for quite some time. The only shock I received when I watched Brokeback Mountain, was that anybody made such a big deal about it.

Now I realize that Barra's talking about shocking the "Western" system, but, beyond speculating on the potential for some cowboy-indian porno action, he fails to mention where the biggest shocks have resided: in the fact that the west is not solely populated by repressed white men trying to live out their fantasies of freedom. Of western writers: "There isn't enough of an audience in their own environment to support them, and it takes a long time for the nation's literary nerve centers to find out about them." Perhaps the lack of audience should be a cue that the wrong West is consistently being written.

If we go back to my car-car story and rewrite "wild, stampeding" to read "insane, racing," and "whisky at the saloon" to read "cocaine in the Viper Room" we suddenly have the urban story that Bret Easton Ellis writes over and over. Moreover, if we actully add the perspective of a non-white character we may accidentally tap into the rich tradition of Asian writers that has developed in the "West" over past thirty years. For them, the West is the East.

And then there's where I come in, and that's from the North. Although I currently reside in Ontario, I am from B.C. and am spending quite a bit of time thinking about what the West means. Candian writers like Wayson Choy, Joy Kogawa, Douglas Coupland and Daphne Marlatt have mercifully decentered the outmoded and nostalgic notion of the American Wild West. Often these writers don't even bother to mention the myth, which as best I can tell, seems to lose its vision somewhere in the Colorado Rockies. If you want to talk about the "New True West" it had better be urban, inclusive, and not simply pandering to a vision that only makes sense when viewed with a longing, Westward looking gaze.

P.S. In case I haven't made it clear here and everywhere on this site: I HATE "THE SYSTEM"! Anyone caught speaking unironically about the system on this site will expelled and ejected and banished for ever until the end of time.

The first time I visited Simon Fraser University, I felt like I had landed in some futuristic madhouse. Rules of inside and out, past and present, and culture versus nature had all been thrown somehow askew, and upon some investigation I learned about the guy responsible for the design, Arthur Erickson. Apparently I'm not the only one so inspired by his edifices, as they have appeared in a variety of futurustic film and television settings, as well as certain key political and promotional contexts. This recent CBC.ca photo essay and its accompanying commentary shed light on the wide variety of work that Erickson has done over the years.

For a review of the ultra-cool blog Swapatorium, please see my title. It's right there, two centimetres above. I originally saw a posting on Boingboing a couple of days ago, but since then I've been scouring the gimcracks and frippery and finding some of the oddest things. The "Junk from the Past" sidebar, which is, to the best of my knowledge, the first ever garage-sale simulator, is a particular stroke of genius.

Pearl Luke -- the Award-winning writer whose second novel Madam Zee debuted in April -- speaks in this CBC.ca article about what it's like trying to fictionally flesh out a historical "stick figure." Writing Madam Zee, known to most B.C. historians only in her capacity as wife to West Coast cult leader Brother XII, sounds like it required some unconventional methods: "Luke found herself talking to psychics, studying the tenets of Theosophy, reading the writings of Brother XII and his disciples, and even tracking down the sorts of plants that grow in an English meadow." You can read an excerpt from Luke's novel here.

Okay, so maybe my focus of the following short film is somewhat skewed. I suppose there are some other elements like a heroin addict and God-as-a-DJ, but man it's good to see one educated in the Classic arts get some bank in the pocket. I guess I'm just more interested in texts than metaphysics, but then maybe, according to the film, God holds favor with those who still see value in musing over non-discursive forms of things like Truth and Justice. Maybe the Philosophy major's quest for Truth has given him grace (and bank), while the English major (me) is only left pondering the ambiguities (then again, maybe I perceive God's tricks here; maybe I am, in effect, better than God). Either way, they should definitely start including breakdancing in those "Jobs in the Humanities" days. As a side note, I wonder, do philosophy majors bear an undue burden of society's mockery, or do they relish in the bliss of being above it all?

Perhaps, given its name, it shouldn't be surprising that many have never heard of the work from the SOCIÉTÉ ANONYME, which is currently being featured in the UCLA Hammer Museum, but this LAWeekly article provides a stunning glimpse into an alternative modernism that was taking place in the 1920s. In the review/historical overview, Doug Harvey discusses "the thousand artworks the S.A. managed to amass over the years" and how they constituted "nothing less than an artist-curated, nonhierarchical, spiritually tinged alternative to the history of Modern Art in America as understood through the megalomaniacal Rockefeller-sponsored filter of MoMA’s Alfred Barr." Imagine a world where talent overruled the interests of the wealthy.