Dead Frenchmen

Arthur Rimbaud

The next Dead Frenchman in our series is Arthur Rimbaud. the symbolist poet participated in Paris Commune of 1870, became a majo influence for both modernists and surrealists, and most importantly for our purposes had a relationship with Paul Verlaine. (Verlaine shot him, not mortally, in a jealous rage once, so don't ever complain about your significant other). Read the post below to see my rage at the Alabama State Legislature and their pig ignorance. Now some people, apparently elected officials among them, feel you should not read the poetry of Arthur Rimbaud, or Paul Verlaine for that matter, because you might catch The Gay. So we're going to try an experiment.

Read this excerpt from the beginning fo his most famous work: A Season in Hell.

Once, if my memory serves me well, my life was a banquet where every heart revealed itself, where every wine flowed.

One evening I took Beauty in my arms - and I thought her bitter - and I insulted her.

I steeled myself against justice.

I fled. O witches, O misery, O hate, my treasure was left in your care !

I have withered within me all human hope. With the silent leap of a sullen beast, I have downed and strangled every joy.

I have called for executioners ; I want to perish chewing on their gun butts. I have called for plagues, to suffocate in sand and blood. Unhappiness has been my god. I have lain down in the mud, and dried myself off in the crime-infested air. I have played the fool to the point of madness.

And springtime brought me the frightful laugh of an idiot.

There. Did you get The Gay? I didn't. In fact, do you care? Yeah, neither do I. So Arthur Rimbaud, Dead Frenchman, to you I say: "Salud!"; or I would if you weren't dead.

P.S.--I don't actually think that the no gay authors bill will pass, even in Alabama, if only because I would lead to drop in university acceptance from Alabama high schools and Alabama would then have to fund their own universities better to stay economically competitive and they sure as hell won't do that. But still, for people in positions of responsibility to even propose this sort of filth makes me both angry and sad, and those--gentle reader--are bad fellings that make we want to SMASH!
Way to go South: doubtless Faulkner would be proud.

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Please, please tell me you're kidding...I beg of you.

Dear God, look what they're doing in Alabama. So no more gay writers. First off, why don't we just call this the "Colleges Will Begin to Refuse Admission to Students from Alabama Act of 2005". Secondly, WTF? So no Rimbaud, no Capote, no Gertrude Stein, no Walt Whitman...just to name a few. Cause that Breakfast at Tiffany's book about a beautiful woman and all the men who were infatuated with her, even in love with her, that was some serious gay. Or Walt Whitman with his insistance on celebrating democracy and the nobility of the American experiment...yeah that shit just own't fly in Alabama: they hate America down there. And yes, all of these people wrote about some gayness, but you know what? Grow the fuck up. If the fact that Oscar Wilde wrote one of the gayest books ever when he created The Portrait of Dorian Gray. It's also really, really good. And you should read it. So suck it up. Here take a look at the list.

Actually no, don't suck it up. If you're going to be this damned pig ignorant...if you think that the "homosexual agenda" (whatever the fuck that means...not being beat up by rednecks?) should stear you clear of the works of Langston Hughes or Marcel Proust, then fuck you. If you have to suck it up and hold your nose to be this close to great art because Christopher Marlowe liked dudes then you are an ass. You don't get to read them. I've said it before, and I'll say it again...I like my crazies stupid, so no education for you. Work at the fucking Piggly Wiggly and wonder what could have been douchebag, wonder what could have been.

This shit just pisses me off. Oh, and who the fuck is the state legislature to decide anything about what books are in the library other than to decide to shut the fuck up and allocate the money to pay for them?

You know what Alabama? You'll stop being a joke when you stop acting like such a fucking joke. Why is it that the so-called defenders of Western Civilization (fight the Islamic enemy, promote Christianity, fend off decadence, whatever else they come up with) seem to hate Western Civilization so much? Now we have to burn the books to save them?

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Fafblog!

Fafblog interviews The Constitution...and the situation seems dire:

CONSTITUTION: A right to privacy? My goodness gracious, Fafnir! The Founding Fathers didn't want Americans to have a right to privacy! Privacy was what the British were trying to force down the throats of good patriots!
FAFBLOG: I can't believe I had it wrong all this time! What about all that stuff about search an seizure an troops in your house?
CONSTITUTION: More judicial tyranny! Police searches don't require probable cause, Fafnir - they require the officers present to call "dibs." And not only does the Third Amendment require you to quarter troops in your home, it requires you to serve them punch and cookies. Do you have punch and cookies for your troops, Fafnir?
FAFBLOG: No I don't! Oh no - I am unconstitutional!
CONSTITUTION: It's not your fault, son. You've been deceived and tyrannized by activist judges! Ever since the War of Judicial Aggression, your true Constitution has been oppressed and dishonored, abused for foul purposes like the gay agenda, the New Deal, and the civil rights movement!

It's a dark day indeed here in 'Murika. Go read the whole thing to expose the horrible truth about Constitutional issues an' stuff. I'm glad I read it because graduate level instruction at a top university did not prepare me for the awful truth.

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Oh, don't forsake me...

I'm not feelin' to well, so I reckon I'll have to mosey on over to the ol' corral an' wrastle a buffalo. Yep, since my grandfathers came to this land from the north, whenever we're feelin' blue, we wrastle a buffalo. Buffalo don't seem to mind it much. Mostly they jes like the excercise...buffalo can get real fat ya know, if'n they don't get a proper cardio vascular workout. I blame the doggone high carb diet m'self.
Well, the bufflo ain't gonna wrastle themselves.

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Music from The Captain

Shatner, The Captain.

Best. CD. Ever. Enough said.

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Dead Frechmen redux: Dead Frenchwomen

Simone de Beauvoir who was famed for her relationship with Chicago novelist Nelson Algren...alright Sartre was more famous, but that dude was an asshole.

La série des français morts continue... This time, we balance the ticket with a dead Frenchwoman, as promised. Simone is a very apropos choice in this attempt to gender balance. Simone de Beauvoir was an influential existentialist and feminist writing The Second Sex, a book which has a pretty good claim on being the greatest of feminist texts. She also chronicled the literarteurs of her age along with their triumphs and foibles in The Mandarins. She carried on a life long affair with Jean-Paul Sartre, and your humble blogger has heard that those two were real assholes when they got together. But then again, I've heard through third-hand literary gossip in the New Yorker and Harper's as all dilletantes must. So take that with a grain of salt. Seriously though, check it out...Simone de Beauvoir wrote some really good stuff, I think she was much more lucid and deffinately a better writer than Sartre.

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The Daily Howler

I've added a link to The Daily Howler at the left (just below the medieval painting of Justinian holding a Byzantine cathedral). I highly recommend it. It tackles, better than almost any other resources, the depravity of the Washington press corps. The major reason the national debate is so effed is the media and its complete inability to resist propaganda and outright lies. See, the press corps comes up with a script, and then it sticks to that script no matter what. Often two or more scripts intersect to create a Tarantino-esque melange of silliness and a vacuum of information.

Let's try an excercise. The Bush administration releases a White House report on the environment. That report has several passages excised (blacked out, like in spy movies). those passages deal with Global Climate Change. The Press asks, "Hey, what's this about?" The White House says, "The report accurately reflects administration views." It comes out that those passages were excised because they refer to human causes of Global Climate Change and the White house ran them by the energy industry, who in turn though they were bad for business so the White House censored a public report. What does the White House say to this allegation? The White House says, "The report accurately reflects administration views." Some Republicans get on TV and say that the jury is still out on human causes of environmental degradation. Every reputable scientist in the last 50 years gets on and says, nope, humans are the major cause of climate change. The press says, well there are two sides to every story. The President has a press conference and says that he will not change the report because of political pressure (the report he changed, remember, because of political pressure) after all, "The report accurately reflects administration views." Resulting story: Bush stands firm in face of political pressure on this extremely controversial topic.

Let's analyze. The first script here is the balance script. That's where the lazy-as-all-hell media decides that their responsibility isn't to inform the public, but to blindly report both sides even though one side is clearly false and any tiny amount of digging will reveal that. The second script is the bold leadership script. That's where every time the Bush Administration does something stubborn, it's bold leadership. The third script is the political script. That's where every time a group contradicts another script, they are just playing politics or applying political pressure (which I thought is how we're supposed to do it in a democracy) and that's a bad thing. In this case, scientists saying the report is wrong. After all, as many of you know physicists, chemist, and geologists are for the most part rabid communits who have no respect for slow methodical inquiry. But Republican congressmen from coal producing states are well known for dispassionate scientific analysis. Thus a question resolved by scientists years ago becomes controversial.

Shorter example. Media script 1: Bush is a very popular president with a lot of political power. Media script 2: Clinton was incredibly controversial with most Americans have at best mixed feelings. Reality (found after five minutes on the internet): Bush three months after reelection, 45% approval; Clinton at the same time, 63% approval.

So go read The Daily Howler every day...a great nation deserves as much.

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Celebrity

I rented Ocean's 12 this evening and it got me thinking about celebrity. Which sbject is something of a fascination for me, though I am often taken aback when it turns out I don't know who famous people are, ever since I read Cintra Wilson's book Massive Swelling. The movie is nothing but celebrities as far a the eye can see. And the set was, according to the gossip (or "buzz" if you will, and you probably shouldn't) a storied land of comradery and joking and partying led by George Clooney (who is nephew of Rosemary) and Brad Pitt. So it's giant pot of celebrity a brewin' and a stewin'.

The thing is, I liked it. It wasn't The Godfather or anything, but not everything needs to be a masterpiece. I was suprised because this movie was the sequel of a remake staring only stars who by all accounts just partied between takes, I expected the bloated carcass of a three-day-dead mule left in the sun of Southern California marinated in great gravy boats of egotism and Julia Roberts's ginormous mouth. I tend to hate big Hollywood-ness.

The problem--or so it seems to me--with the sort of Entertainment Tonight, E! Channel stuff is the complete lack of actual fun. Looking at the skeletal vissage of another starved actress (not starving: starved) trundle down the red carpet...just y'know really working it...to take part in a masturbatory awards ceremonies, watching them fuck the room-temperature corpse of their own status...well it makes me sad, sad for America. It's not fun. Ashley Simpson is not having fun...she is working at looking like she's fun. Ben Affleck is not having fun, he's jealously guarding an image like it's the propriatary creation of Boeing and the rest of the world is Airbus. But Clooney and the rest, in this movie at least, looked like it was fun. I like Arrested Development because it's a pun on at least three levels, but also because they look like they're having fun. When Jennifer Lopez does her goddamn NBA commericals (she LOVES this game y'all!) you can see the dark ichor that serves at a facsimile of a soul behind her dead eyes and it is screaming "5, 6, 7, 8, now turn you fat cow, turn!" I work at what I do, I have fun to balance the bad parts of working at something. Worshiping people for making work out of fun, for being so fun they've become demigods saturated in their own effortful effortlessness...well that's like, I don't know, it's just dumb as shit. Rant over.

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FDR: Classiest Prez Ever

Those who know me know that I enjoy a cocktail from time to time (...to time, to time, ad infinitum). But I bow before the master.

While FDR cannot compare to the sheer tippling power of presidents like Grant, Truman (shot of bourbon before every meal--including breakfast), or Nixon. FDR was the truest of all: the Cocktail President. I mean, this is the man that shuffled us out of the dark days of Prohibition and said to America: You've lost you house and your job, you could probably use a highball.

Apparantly FDR's martini recipe was essentially, a little gin, a little vermouth, a little more gin, an olive, and a little absinthe. Dude, was putting absinthe in his martinis. During prohibition. So, as you can see, I must bow before the master of all cocktails. (Churchill hated FDR's martinis though, he found them to contain more than pure grain alcohol, which is how he drank them: "Pour the gin and look at the vermouth from across the room.") Then again we all knew FDR had to be the master, this was a guy who smoked cigarettes in a long holder piece without it looking like a stupid affectation. He was that classy. One must therefore doubly celebrate the triumph of the Allies in WWII since they appear to have been getting a buzz on the whole time.

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RE: "The Unknown Masterpiece" and Picasso

Recently, in the process of a meditation on dead Frenchmen, I mentioned that Picasso made some etchings for an illustrated edition of Balzac's "The Unkown Masterpiece" (of course Pablo was a Spaniard and thus not within my purvue...as I have explained before, I have not the technical expertise to post the pictures of either Spaniards or the Welsh, I am dedicated to learning however). Well it turns out that one of the 99 extant copies of the artist's book containing only etchings is in the possession of the University of Minnesota. Not, it should be noted, the illustrated story, but just a bound copy of the illustrations. So to all those out there who attend the University of Minnesota I would say: "Bravo!" I would, but I will not, because we all know that Minnesota sucks even if you have a book I'd give my pinky toe to see.

Again, this is clearly the sort of thing that will be on my final exams and so it was totally worth it to try to hunt down a priceless 65-year-old book of which there are few copies extant.

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Miscellany

• Today I slowly, but surely went from studying administrative law to reading the New Yorker to a book about the Velvet Underground and finally to watching TV and eating soup. I certainly hope that soup is on my finals. If it isn't, I think that an essential part of my legal education will have been inexcusably neglected.
  
• I'm watching the VH1 Storytellers with Bruce Springsteen and The Boss is suprisingly eloquent and clever and funny. I mean, I like Bruce, but, you know, I kind of thought that he would be sort of dull (in the manifold senses of that word). But he is engaging and I could just listen to him talk, it's fascinating.
• I'm hankering for some hash browns
  

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Wherefore, Rush?

Is it just me, or do you think of Canadian prog rock when you hear Rush Limbaugh's name? It's understandable--both are bloated, unwieldy, deeply silly, and for the most part only listened to by people who iron their jeans and have very thin mustaches.



Remember the hit song "Tom Sawyer" off of this album? Yeah, I didn't think you did...I was just checking.

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My Recent Purchases

I've recently purchased an argyle sweater-vest (blue). And I must say I am very happy with this particular purchase. It's comfortable and flattering. And I will not be wearing it absent a shirt underneath a la Mark McGrath of shitty band Sugar Ray. That is simply gauche. And not a little bit like the dudes who take of their shirt as soon as the mercury busts 65 ("Oh, it's just so sunny and hot out here I have to take off my shirt! Hey ladies, I didn't see you there over my huge pectoral muscles.") So, yeah, I have a sweater-vest now and it's good stuff. I'm not recommending it mind you, I'd rather you not waste my flavor. Oh yes, I gots mad flava. Yo.

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Honore de Balzac, the ladies loved him

Generally, the open shirt pose is for those with but one chin. But M. Balzac knows better than you, you chien américain.

Today's portrait of a dead Frenchman is Honore de Balzac author of one of my favorite novels Pere Goriot (the protagonist is a disolute law student who slowly abandons his studies for wine and women...hits close to home, it does.) And the author of my favorite short story, The Unkown Masterpiece (of which, there exists in this wide world, an edition illustrated by Picasso in 1927). Also, his name is the subject of several dirty sophmoric puns that we've all heard so keep it to your self. His Human Comedy work consisted of beautifully detailed characterizations of post-Napoleonic French society; what is little known is that they grew out of his early attempts at fiction, publishing historical advetures in the style of Sir Walter Scott (he of the dread Ivanhoe, if you haven't read it: don't). Also I saw a statue of him by Rodin at the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena once. So there you are, my readers--Balzac: libertine, writer, philsopher, dead Frenchman.

Stay tuned for a bonus "dead Frenchwoman". I can't wait, can you?

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Friday Random Ten

1. Lua - Bright Eyes
   
2. The War's End - Rancid
3. Spit and Fire - Rainer Maria
4. Goodnight Georgie - Clinic
5. Jamie - Weezer
6. Waltz 2 from Jazz Suite - Shostakovich
7. Velouria - Pixies
8. Man in Black - Johnny Cash
9. Rouge - Miles Davis
10. No Wow - The Kills

These songs are pleasing to mine ears, unlike your screechy walrus voice...you know who you are.

p.s. - the walrus is you.

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Tilting at Windmills

Why don't we do this in the US?

Yeah, yeah, I know, Americans hate learning and nuance and anything that stinks of weakness like "reading" and "culture" and "everything associatied with a civilized society"...but still a boy can dream. You ever get the feeling that your nation has descended into a profoundly depressing beer commercial and there's just no way out?

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Poor Choices

It was so nice today...so I chilled a nice bottle of Chardonnay...but by the time I pulled it out and set my fish and cold salad out to have with it...well the temp had dropped from 72 to 48...and chilled Chardonnay turned out to be the worst choice ever. My teeth chattered. It had hints of oak, vanilla, clay, and pecan...and it was cold as eskimo snow. Poor choices.

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My inner European

Your Inner European is Dutch!

Open minded and tolerant. You're up for just about anything.

Who's Your Inner European?

My inner European is, apparently, Dutch. Who would have thought, with a name like J. D. Van Wormer? I mean the last thing that name says is "Dutch". I was thinking more Greek or Russian. Seriously, a liberal with a last name that stats with "Van"? definately not Dutch.

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The Names of Things

Names are of tremendous importances...more so than I think seems at first obvious. The names of gods in early cults (including an obscure sect from the Jordan River Valley that worshipped a sky-father called Yahweh) were forbidden to be spoken because the very name of god carries with it the divine power. The Ancient Greek word semantor ("namer") denoted someone of great power to command. The first human action in Genesis was the naming of the animals in the Garden. The names we give things become not merely signs in alpha-numerics that serve as convenient representations, but they become the essence of namer and named together, bound.

So let me comment on one of my favorite aspects of modern America. The naming of African-American children. I was watching a Pistons game and one of the players is named Tayshaun Prince. Tayshaun is such a great name. It is completely taylored to an imagined identity based on aspiration and hope. The name embodies a unique person. People make fun of African-American names like Tayshaun, but I love it. And in a weird way they are becoming standardized...we are withnessing the formation of a primary cultural lexicon in the form of a cannon of new names and naming-forms gaining currency. I'm just saying, nobody in Germany is named Tayshuan, and they are so much the poorer for it. In a way it provides a contrast--and a kind of mirror--to the four other major child-name threads in American history: biblical names (Abraham, Matthew, Mary); classical/mythological names (Horace, Livia, Hector); naming after family (my middle name is my mother's twin brother's name, my father and his father are both William); and naming for weird bourgois ideas of distinctive patrician euphony which often seem to be words from social-studies (the bevy of Dakotas and Madisons and such not to mention Gwyneth Paltrow's--whose name is mythological--choice to name her child [shudder] "Apple"). This last strand is most obviously opposed to names like Tayshaun. The patrician sounding names are attempts to say something about the parents (classy, important) the other is an attempt to say somehting about the child (unique, befitting your notice).

Maybe I'm just jealous because, while I'm happy with it, Justin isn't exactly a unique name. It was, in fact, the most popular boys' name the year I was born. But I have not heard of another Tayshaun...even though now that I hear it, it makes a sort of sense.

UPDATE: Speaking of names: Yes, I know a young man named "Justin Thyme". Sound it out...there you go, get it? Yeah, me too.

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My New Book

You got to keep perspective so I bought a little book to read in the down time so I wouldn't end up in a crazy amount of law school shock. And the book? A little treatise on Led Zeppelin IV by a man named Erik Davis. It's part of The Thirty-Three and a Third series. Now for the most part these days I listen to The Decemberists and The Shins and Calexico and such, as I am an over-educated wuss. But you cannot deny the power of Zep. Every once in a while you just need to have your ass rocked, and rocked hard. I'm not into the mystical stuff, but it's still pretty kick-ass.

We now return you to non-classic-rock blogging.

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Spring is in the air and my nose is in the books

The final exam season has begun, and the spirit of cramming is thick in the air here at stately Hutchins Hall. This is a time of year to look back and reflect on our acheivements and also to look forward to summers of job training and internships and real world experience and new friends, exicting experiences. But mostly it is a time to say, "Eff this, doesn't The New School in Manhanttan have a writing intensive MFA program? Yeah, where can I sign up for that?"

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Well...

My optimism was short lived. Apparently Benedict XVI is particularly homophobic, and is not what you would call tolerent of other religions. Obviously the Pope is going to think that Catholicism is the best way to go, but Benedict XVI opposes the inculsion of Turkey in Europe (despite history, politics, geography, culture, etc.--for example, Turkey? homeland of this blog's namesake) because it is a predominantly Muslim nation. I mean that's pretty hardcore Muslim-hating...opposing secular political and economic partnership because of adherance to Islam. Also, turns out, funny story, as a cardinal he was in charge of the Vatican handling of the American church sex abuse scandal...which was handled, um, extremely poorly and with a thin veneer of contempt for ordinary parishioners.

(Also, CNN is still at it, this time via Judy Woodruff. Apparantly the pope is treated "almost like royalty." Which is to be expected since he is, in fact, royalty. Not hereditary sure--neither was the Holy Roman Emperor--, but he is the absolute ruler of a state, he lives in a palace, and has honorific titles. Sounds like royalty to me. Asses)

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Pope Watch 2005: Habemus Papam

Cardinal Ratzinger is now Pope Benedict XVI. Thus endeth the Pope Watch 2005. Let's all wish the best for the new Supreme Pontiff of the Universal Church and hope that the church continues the long, slow process of moving forward. May he be worthy of my particular favorite papal assignation: Servant of the Servants of God.

Also, let's all hope CNN's Wolf Blitzer loses his voice so someone even moderately knowledgable about the story can take over. I won't get into it all, but Wolf Blitzer appears to have not only avoided learning anything himself about the story he is reporting on (such primary ignorance is always the sign of a good jouranlist...idiot), but appears to have gone the extra mile and avoided even his own network's coverage over the last few weeks.

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What am I watching?

Andrew Dice Clay? Yeah, he's not that great...ba-da-boom!

Well, this is what I'm watching. I think that it most closely exemplifies the words "worthless schlock". And that, my friends is why I like it. It's just pure crap...
And that is the movies. Just 1990 excercising its demons. Featuring Tone Loc!

(I must admit that I admire both his sideburns and his wicked pompadour--I can only aspire to such lengths and heights.)

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From the Daily Show (subheading: Papal Conclave Humor)

Jon Stewart: "The first rule of Conclave? You don't talk about Conclave."

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Pope Watch 2005

smoking, yet no pope.

First smoke comes out...but it's black so, no Pope for you!
Here's the story.
And here is how we Papists chose a new one.
Stay tuned to the Justinain Code for the latest in Pope Watch 2005 [trumpets sound].

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Also, About "The West Wing"

aka: Abby Bartlett

Just saying, the First Lady on "The West Wing", yeah, she's foxy. And she's sixty years old (60!), and she's a Radcliffe grad. Seriously, that's pretty hot. Foxy even.

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I am an inveterate liberal...

...and yet, I have mostly shied away from politics on my blog (which is to say this blog). The only exceptions are, I like to think, mostly where politics and culture intersect: religious crazies, David Brooks' sharp down turn as a writer, and the fact that "red" and "blue" are facile media descriptions of the complexities of American cultural norms. Also, as you know: Alexis de Tocqueville is all about democracy (and foxy). This is because my liberalism is largely due to my cultural allignment and opinions (environmentalist fan of belles lettres from a family of Detroit/Toledo union workers and WWII vets/Roosevelt voters--the liberal Democrat perfect storm.) And so I think what follows is still quite apropos.

The West Wing totally sucks now.

I just re-watched the season finale, and I can say with absolute certainty that the slide off since Aaron Sorkin left is now complete. Yeah, the plots have sucked, and the odd twists are completely implausible. But lets focus on the presidential politics of the West Wing universe primaries. They are silly. The Republican wins the nomination despite the fact that he is pro-choice and agnostic? That is the dumbest shit I ever heard. And now that he is the nominee, he is going to run to the right on abortion? All of this is literally the opposite of real life. Likewise the Democratic convention. Some Pennsylvania governor (who not only doesn't enter the primaries, but was an early candidate and bowed out) gets enough floor support to potentially crowd out the front running nominees? This is the next dumbest shit I ever heard. DNC conventioneers are selected for loyalty above all else. And besides, primary voters are pretty political (to the extreme ends of their respective parties) and close votes just don't happen anymore--witness the Bush '00 and Kerry '04 nominations, they beat all the competition within the first few weeks of primary season...the losers know they lost and angle for more power within the party afterward comiserate with their higher national profiles (McCain '00 and Dean '04).

Now many of you will say that I am missing the point. That this is televised darama, and we should expect the unexpected for entertainment's sake. Well I think you are missing the point. The thing that made the first five years of the show so great was their willingness to use the ramifications and policy issues of a Mexican Peso bail-out or an attempted Medicare compromise in the House as plot points. The fans watched for these reasons. If I want to see 30-40 something professionals negotiate complex love lives or personal crises I can rent DVDs of "Sex in the City". Which I will not do, because I don't like that show. I'm just saying.

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Whereas it is my Brithday

Oh, Molly Ringwald, when will you recognise your love for me (in an alternate universe where it's still 1986 but I'm not 5 years old)? I could use some of your jean jacket love.

I shall get a veggie burrito, a six pack of delicious Tecate and I will watch one of the great birthday movies of this Age of Man: "Sixteen Candles." Which is, in my opinion, Molly Ringwald's finest work...superior even to Pretty in Pink. Let's face it, she wasn't that great in Breakfast Club, that was all about Judd Nelson and Ally Sheedy.

Additionally I may or may not eat an entire pizza, and I may or may not curl up in the shower sputtering "Happy Birthday to me" between the sobs...which is why you do your crying in the shower, so noboy can see the tears afterward.

Kidding, I'm kidding about the sobbing. Even I'm not that dark.

Molly Ringwald Fun Fact: she is devoted to a system of representative government characterized by a bicameral legislature and indirect election of the executive.

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You have GOT to be kidding me.

This kind of crap is what really gets me about religious fundamentalists in this country. (I prefer the more apt term: crazies.) You want to forbid gay people from darkening the door of your house of worhsip? Fine--ignorant and un-Christian, but fine. You want to take your kids out of school and "educate" them at home because that way they won't be exposed to information that might even slightly contradict your world view and thus necessitate the development of even rudimentary analytical skills? Fine. I like my crazies dumb anyway. Building on that point--you want to interpret the Bible (history's greatest compendeum of poetry, song, history, and philosophy) as little more than the dry instruction book of an oddly (and implausibly) quotidian God to be taken literally? Well, that's fine too, I know how much nuance and reasoned argument make your crazy ears bleed.
But when you oppose a vaccination for a nasty virus that causes cancer on the grounds that one of the ways to get said virus is through sexual contact...then you have crossed the line into sociopathy on par with female circumcision and forced sterilization. Once you advocate the denial of a simple vaccine that will save millions you have effectively tapped out of civil society and entered a pseudo-medieval realm of darkness. I wonder if these people's maps have "Here There Be Dragons" inscribed on parts.

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Book Review Madness

Check out this line-up at the NY Times online Book Review section. Do it, I'll wait...okay, back? ready? Good.
This is one of the first times I've clicked over (a subscription is well out of my price range) to the old NYTBR and wanted to read all the articles. Usually you get something interesting--a new translation of Karel Capek, Michiko Kakutani blasting some young turk for presumptuous writing, or a magesterial biography of someone obscure but interesting. But never such things all at once.
Today we get the "Outlaw Bible of American Literature" (which I highly recommend, with the usual caveats about the orthodox rebellion silliness called Jack Kerouac and his imitators); a John Brown bio, a new H.P. Lovecraft collection (HPL is my greatest guilty pleasure and my most glaring literary weakness, I can't say no to the guy no matter how much schlock), and excerpt and review of Kazuo Ishiguro's new book, "Never Let Me Go." ("Remains of the Day" was badass...well probably not badass, but I mean it was a really good read). For a book nerd/lit snobb of good standing, such as myself, I am in highfalutin' heaven.
And the dude at the cafe just put on the Arcade Fire, damn this is a good day. Let's all solemnly hope and furvently pray that I will not, in fact, be required to use my AK.

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Little Black Books

So, I was at the book store, looking through the Classics section, and generally enjoying my Sunday. And I went up to the counter with my intended purchases (which is generally my way, as I am not a dirty common thief, and so I often pay for both goods and services) and what did I see but a three pack of those little Moleskin notebooks. You know the ones at the front counter of book shops that advertise themselves as the note book Hemingway or Picasso or Chopin or some other suitably fashionable artiste of old used. Well, I am a forgetful sort and often have good ideas, or just remember I want to see a certain movie, whilst on a constitutional--or just out walking, depending on the weight of the moment--and I thought that this would be a useful investment. But now I almost don't want to use them because I have this image in my head of kids in army surplus jackets smoking clove cigarettes on the grass at Sarah Lawrence writing in their moleskins about infinite loss or the tragedy of Emily Dickenson's life. You get the idea. So here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to make little notes when they pop into my head as I read my snooty books, and I will try my best not to seem like Rob Lowe's character in St. Elmo's Fire. (If you don't know what I'm talking about, well then, you need to get to the video store and check it out, ASAP).

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Les Hommes Morts

Check out Alexis de Tocqueville...he's foxy, and all about Democracy!

Ah, the next in my projected series of portraits of dead Frenchmen: it's every American's favorite dead Frenchman (as far as that goes these days).
Click below for more.
I went with Tocqueville because The Atlantic has a new essay by Bernard-Henri Levy (also part of a series) that follows in Alexis' footsteps in this modern age. I highly recommend it, even though The Atlantic has been sucking lately. BHL is engaging, but he is no Tocqueville, and the simple fact of the matter is that he seems to seek out some real bad examples of Americana. And by bad, I mean it makes us look like 295 million slack jawed yokels. Again, it's a good essay...but racecars and Iowa Amish? I mean, god forbid you check out a Winslow Homer exhibition, or tour a quiet progressive town like my own beautiful Ann Arbor, MI (he was even on I-94...he drove right by!) instead of Ass-County, South Dakota.
But my complaint is slightly illegitimate, because I guess we are mostly yokels. Ever asked for a NY Times in Truth-or-Consequences, NM? Yeah, well, they look at you funny and don't respond. I guess I shouldn't complain...different strokes for different folks and all. But it just gets me that the rest of world sees us this way--as nothing more than a simplistic national sterotype. Then again, all Brits have bad teeth and Germans are anti-semitic to a one, so it all balances out.
Although, the road side piss is amusing--just read the article.
Lets all remember that young Alexis de Tocqueville originally came to our misty shores to examine the American penal system and was then lead inexorably to a massive study of American public life and politics. Food for thought my friends, food for thought. Well, not really but by saying that I can cover up for the fact that this is an elaborate ruse, all designed to justify my posting of the portraits of dead Frenchmen. I have said nothing of substance, suckers. Oh, and it shall never end, this is my solemn vow.

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Wish I was here

Snow falls on aspens. Peace.

When the dry snow of the Colorado Rockies falls, it makes the air smell like thunder and cold. I can't explain it, but you know it if you have smelled "cold". It is distinct and clean and perfect. When aspen trees lose their leaves and a few weeks later the first winter snow comes there is nothing better. It's quiet and perfect.

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Friday Random 10

Let's see what's on my iPod today

1. Tanscontinental - Pedro the Lion
2. El Scorcho - Weezer
3. TVC15 - David Bowie
4. Interlude - Jay-Z
5. The Answer - Bad Religion
6. I Want to Tell You - The Beatles
7. Quarantined - At the Drive-In
8. Franco Un-American - NoFX
9. Maggie's Farm - Bob Dylan
10. Living in America - The Sounds

Well, as you can see I like much better music than you do. Now grovel...GROVEL, NOW!

Update: Aren't those little flower things cool?

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Now I Think I'm Kant

"Out of the crooked timber of man, no straight thing was ever made."
(At least it's not Dostoyevsky. And there will be no picture for either because neither of them are French.)

I was thinking about purgatory tonight. Specifically the Purgatorio by Dante. And here's the thing about that: at the top of the seven tiered mountain, each tier representing one of the deadly sins, just above Lust, is Eden. There Virgil takes his leave and Beatrice becomes our narator's guide. So I was wondering what that means. Medieval literature, more than almost any other, is laden with sybolic meaning in every image. There's a reason for that, but that reason is properly the subject of a dissertation, not a blog post. Click below for more.


I have thought up two good explanations. The first is that through the expiation of sins humanity slowly climbs the mount unto Paradise and ultimately the Prime Mover, the Divine Presence. The other, though, is much more apt, I think. And that other is this: Eden is built upon our most venial sins. Paradise is the icing on the human cake--a seven tiered wedding cake. There is no Eden but through our Avarice, and our Envy, and our Sloth. The idea of paradise is meaningless without or transgressions. And besides, why would you want to get to Eden unless you had that spark of sin in you? Unless you envied paradise, unless you sought a life of slothful repose, unless you lusted after warm breezes and luxury, then wherefore Eden?
I guess it is ultimately that hoary old argument that there is no light without dark. But I think it is more nuanced than that. Eden is built on Sin. Paradise is founded upon Purgatory, based itself as the cosmological inverse of the Inferno.

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...and les dames

Ladies and gentlemen, Miss Edith Piaf.

It has come to my attention that I forgot that there are women in France as well as men (but not in Arles, it's a long story). Of course, I will also include dead French women as well.

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RE: The Portraits of Dead Frechmen

Look, it's time that I came clean. That last post. Yeah...about that. It was just an excuse to post Stendhal's portrait. Now that I have figured out how to do that, I plan on posting pictures of les chers morts (dead Frenchmen) with frequency. Maybe with long study, I will be able to move onto Spaniards, or the Welsh, but for now: Frenchmen.

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The Red and The Blue

Look, it is Stendhal, and he is confused at your foolish ideas

So I wrote this essay abot the the essential dichotomies between things and why they are mostly bubkiss, so I will share it with you, my loyal (which is to say, non-existant) readers. Click bellow to read more.

Nobody really knows what Stendhal was referring to with the title “The Red and The Black” for his psychological novel of the post-Napoleonic France of the 1830. The popular theories all require that the colors represent opposite sides in a dualistic conception of society, the Army (Black) versus the Church (Red); or the opposing forces in protagonist Julien’s mind, realism (Black) and idealism (Red). I like to think that the desire to symbolize conflict in a dual color scheme is endemic to human thought—we are very visual creatures—and thus eminently appropriate in the context of this supremely human work of art. Examples across histories and cultures of similar schema are as numerable as they are obvious, and I will not trouble with them here. But one current example springs to notice, especially here at a major law school that is almost by definition politically engaged and charged: The Red and the Blue.

“The Red and The Black” is Al Gore’s favorite book according to the answer he gave to a ridiculous question during the 2000 campaign. George W. Bush’s response to the same ridiculous question: “The Bible.” I say it is ridiculous because the idea that a person’s favorite book is indicative of their capacity to lead is a silly idea. But it is an idea that persists in the Red and the Blue. When it came out that 22% of people voted on the basis of “values” in the last election the Culture Wars were reignited on the newly realigned axis of blue and red. The result is the preposterous idea that there are separate and discrete cultures native to Blue and Red states. Silliness carried to an extreme, the idea was pushed further to include the though that those two cultures never overlapped. As a native and voting citizen of a red state I attend a large evangelical church, am a fan of football and NASCAR, I despise nuance as wishy-washy and respond to forceful, moral leadership from “regular guys”. Sadly, none of this is true. I am a lapsed Catholic, I do not really like watching sports (sometimes I do: baseball, and the World Cup is usually good), I dislike simple declarative phrases and instinctively distrust those that would employ them, and I find forceful “regular guys” to roughly correspond with that set of individuals whom I think suck. Also growing up in an around Boulder means I was exposed to a significantly more liberal atmosphere than many of my fellow students from New York or Los Angeles (the traditional Sodom and Gomorrah analogue for American conservatives).

Besides, the stereotypes about the red and the blue are wrong. I had an English professor who deplored generalizations in writing and often claimed that: “All generalizations are false, including this one.” So beware the red and the blue. More people as a percentage of the total go to church in Texas than in Massachusetts, but more people as a percentage of the total get divorced or have teen pregnancies in Texas than in Massachusetts.

The truth is that as far as French novels go “Madame Bovary” is infinitely more applicable. The US is the home to the single largest amount of bourgeois striving and middle-class paranoia in the history of the human species. That is the real culture of America (as separate to the “ideal” of a red and a blue opposition.) We are the nation that loves “The Price Is Right” and no amount of cultural studies theses can say more than that. It’s capitalism and class mobility and the allure of competitive chance and individual triumph; it’s also pure schlock. It is lumpen, garish, and tacky. It is overweight and under-classy. The Price Is Right, indeed. People are looking for sales and watching reality TV in Mobile, Alabama at roughly the same rate as in Santa Cruz, CA. Starbucks, a business Bill O’Reilly shuns as a symbol of liberal elitism, what with the European sounding names of the drinks, in favor of Long Island coffee shops where “cops and firemen hang out,” was where I studied in college. And the Starbucks near the University of Arizona (a red school in a red state) was frequented by—say it with me—cops and firemen. (Of course, Bill O’Reilly communing with cops and firemen is odd in an O’Reilly-ian Universe, given his Harvard degree and multimillion dollar Manhattan occupation and thus, his presumed inability to understand the regular folks, but that is the advantage of being O’Reilly in an O’Reilly-ian universe).

It is the simple fact of the matter that red culture and blue culture are idealized extremes of the main mass of culture to be found across the majority of the United States. Yes many if not most American’s are church going and god fearing in a wholesome down home way (even in godless California—which gave us Ronald Reagan). But an extreme few of those people could be said to at all resemble fundamentalists like the ones who send their children to Bob Jones University. And yes, most Americans support the Kyoto Protocol. But an extreme few support the party platform of the Greens. The fact that these extremes are encompassed in a self-consciously plural society should bring pause to absolutely nobody. It is entirely common and expected. The fact that the fat part of the curve cannot be shoved into two different oppositional camps based on one day’s deed is, however oddly, considered a heresy when it should be a self-evident truth (to paraphrase some guy.)

David Brooks be damned, red and blue America do not exist. Local populations can have unique cultural expression within a larger whole, but the idea that “local population” should encompass an area from the Canadian border to the Florida Keys is truly strange. I would wager that the difference between Los Angeles and San Francisco is much greater than the difference between Bethesda, Maryland and Alexandria, Virginia. You see, culture exists so far outside the narrow political discourse of it that political markers are almost completely meaningless in determining cultural identities composed of a relentless lot of facets. This is one of the reasons that David Brooks is himself relentlessly full of it.

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Hey, It's-a the Pope-a! He's-a Such-a the Nice Guy!

So the Pope died. And I saw Sin City. And I've been thinking about it. [gears click]. The thing about John Paul II is that I like him. I am an adherent of the faith he lead. I personally admire him. But that dude was just wrong about so much. And I think it comes back to the same things that every thing has always been about: Sin and Death. these negations are silmutaneously the supreme acts of self determination that any single human can engage in. All of which is to say that as humans are the children of some blind father, that which makes us such are those same things which we associate as against him.
The thing that strikes me is this: the pope held 2 PhDs from secular universities in Poland. He lectured at Ivy League univeristies in this country back whe he was just Archbishop of Cracow. This was a man of nuance and thought. A man with whom I disagree on some things (birth control, the ordination of women into the priesthood), but with whom I might have engaged in serious debate.
What Sin City shows us is, sadly, the stark reality in the face of the Johanes-Pauline idealism that religion and religious societies (as we surely describe ourselves) aspire to. Sin City is a world of infinite shades of gray on top of the blacks and whites; a place where blood isn't even always red. It is a place where whores, junkies, and convicts are as much forces for right (as God gives us to see the right) as Senators and Cardinals.
All this contributes to great unease. "Nausea" was what Sartre called it, but that guy was an asshole. To balance these things, Frank Miller verus a Pole named Karol, we must find not their differences but their profound similarity. And these similarities (nuance, desire to understand the world as it is and as it might be, through art and philosophy) should be set apart from the profound differences that exemply men like our president. For that man who would say that he knows the right from the wrong in this world by instinct and faith betrays both Miller and the Pope. To say that there is a right and wrong to be negotiated by men alone and not by the nuance inherent in the universe is to deny both the supreme author and the forces of the universe themselves.
Even the pope admitted that Darwin was right.

When I saw the Pope was to be laid in the sepulchre bellow St. Peter's Basilica, I saw the chthonic succession of humanity and the earth that gave us birth and subborned us our sin of life as it became death. When I see Bush smirk, I just get kind of sad.

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Something or Another

I was going to write something, but now I won't. A real Big Topic something, but I haven't the proper things to say. One wants to avoid the sort of ruminations that lead people to title them "Notes From The Underground" or something else equally pretentious. (Yeah, like you're Dostoyevsky, asshole.) But emperors are cool.

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The Tastes of Things in Their Contexts

After a glass of Cabernet with friends before a function, a bottle of Corona on the deck tastes like so much soap in the shower.

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If wishes were horses...

Wish I was here


Ah...Colorado. I have longed for her. This is on the ridge above the cabin outside of beautiful Fairplay, looking out over South Park (yes, it's a real place).

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Friday Random Ten

...on the iTunes today:

1. Dead, Drunk, and Naked - Drive-By Triuckers
2. Maxwell Murder - Rancid
3. Backdrifts (Honeymoon is Over) - Radiohead
4. Help Me Make It Through The Night - Willie Nelson
5. Taxman - The Beatles
6. Kinetic - Osker
7. Number One - Division of Laura Lee
8. Who Dares Win - The Streets
9. Man and Wife, The Former - Desaparecidos
10. Not Even Stevie Nicks... - Calexico

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