tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36847382012-01-27T07:01:00.256-05:00Thanksgiving Is RuinedThe Personal is Political.
The Political is Personal.Louisehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05641491627625730253noreply@blogger.comBlogger7821100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3684738.post-57534786476438363462012-01-27T07:01:00.001-05:002012-01-27T07:01:00.289-05:00success strategies for the 21st century*One possibility: 1) the sneaky and gradual release into everyone's collective environment of something toxic (e.g., chemical, virus, software, discourse, economic policy, financial investments/instruments, ideas);2) after you, the releaser, have already inoculated, strengthened, protected or otherwise safeguarded yourself; 3) to sit back and wait for TiRnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3684738.post-70768835297296812862012-01-15T07:01:00.003-05:002012-01-26T02:16:06.500-05:00Johnny Hallyday returnsTiR notes his return, at least, to the English language translation of Vaneigem's Rev. of Everyday Life. . . . as seen in a freshly revised translation by Donald Nicholson-Smith, chapter 6 of which recently appeared here.So, whereas the familiar 70s-era version by Sieveking & Fullerton has:The ideological spectacle keeps up with the times by bringing out harmless plastic TiRnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3684738.post-58849954932859456542011-12-31T07:01:00.002-05:002011-12-31T07:01:00.493-05:002011 goesWe're here to go. That's what we're here for. We're here to go.Gysin quoted by Burroughs on the latter's Dead City Radio album (Island, 1990).further context, from J. Geiger's Nothing is True - Everything Is Permitted: the Life of Brion Gysin (p. 219-20):[John] Hopkins' Tangier Diaries capture flashes of Gysin's radiant charm. Visiting at Bowle's house, stoned on kif, Hopkins and [TiRnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3684738.post-28442684163789419832011-12-14T07:01:00.003-05:002011-12-15T21:57:44.424-05:00Why does Google correct my miss-spellllyngz?Frédéric Kaplan had some thoughts about this, and the topic of "linguistic capitalism," in last month's Le Monde Diplo (here) (below, roughly):When the search engine corrects on the fly a word that you have spelled badly, it does not to render you a service: more often, it's transforming a raw material without much value (a misspelled word) into a TiRnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3684738.post-49825506095157531072011-12-12T07:01:00.002-05:002011-12-15T02:55:16.435-05:00urbanism and nostalgiaFlorent Morellet, beloved (former) restauranteur, now turned full-time artist (& son of this fellow), in a recent interview (here) given on the occasion of his just-closed solo exhibition:Q:You were so gregarious at the helm of Florent. Are you different now?A: I have stayed very private lately, because when I go out people are always asking the same questions: "What are youTiRnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3684738.post-36159001688717353372011-12-08T07:01:00.001-05:002011-12-08T07:05:16.353-05:00the underemployed cynics' holidayNew holiday gift idea for the workplace (i.e., those who still have one of these to go to, i.e.the new, post-union, casualized workplace of precarity):a new breed of mistletoe to hang above the boss's desk or in front of their office door(brown in color)for kissing buttTiRnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3684738.post-39270081766420829922011-11-30T07:01:00.003-05:002011-11-30T22:22:43.683-05:00weird bohemia's got talentLast night, TiR watched* an episode of a reality TV talent-search contest program in which a contestant performed an instrumental version of the VU's "Femme Fatale," on a handbells set-type instrument made up, not of bells, but of variously sized and shaped squeaky toys. *(while asleep, in a TiRnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3684738.post-89326452758337235952011-11-24T07:01:00.004-05:002011-11-24T07:01:00.637-05:00#OWS #OTiR?Each year at around this time, TiR attempts with fear and trembling to interrogate its namesake proposition: Is it really true? If so, how true is it? How deep does it go?We look around this year and wonder whether the proliferating Occupy and indignados movements have anything to reveal, on this question. Thus, TiR returned to reread a locus classicus text of the year, the TiRnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3684738.post-22500406487794353582011-11-07T07:01:00.007-05:002011-11-11T05:24:19.511-05:00What was his secret?How exactly did W. Benjamin organize the countless citations from myriad sources mosaicked into his Arcades Project masterpiece?TiR wonders about the intricate system of dozens of icons that he invented and meticulously inscribed on bookmarks/cards, multiples of which are shown in a perceptive and thorough post on the Le Divan Fumoir Bohémien blog, here. The cards are among TiRnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3684738.post-81891011112893842602011-10-31T07:01:00.005-04:002011-11-01T08:09:48.384-04:00This is what democracy reads likeThe excellent and wide-ranging Occupy Wall Street library has an on-line catalog that lists over 3700 volumes as of this writing. TiR reviewed the entire list. Most of the books are unsurprising.Below however are some of those listed that most amused, delighted or puzzled us, or made us pause and wonder.T.A.Z.: The Temporary Autonomous Zoneby Hakim Bey(1st TiRnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3684738.post-57568148445434005042011-10-30T07:01:00.002-04:002011-10-31T19:16:29.936-04:00favorite new word of the month?quite possibly:morambouzevezengouzequoquemorguatasacbacguevezinemaffresséattributed to Rabelaisby Jean-Charles Monferran, herein[Monferran fails to identify where in Gargantua and Pantagruel this word appears.TiR's (ever pointless) research identifies its location as Book IV, chapter 15, which features an increasingly over the top, comic description of what might beTiRnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3684738.post-68614083312575145412011-10-09T07:01:00.003-04:002011-10-10T08:05:16.894-04:00Steve Jobs, father of punk?Some nice connections, made by Sylvain Bourmeau, here:Apple was without a doubt, in 1976, the most subterranean but also the most decisive contribution to the emergence of the punk movement. Born, just like the groups in this new scene, in a garage . . . As long as we don't take Bourmeau's point too literally (after all, as popularity of internets search engine hits TiRnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3684738.post-32561524546606643322011-10-01T07:01:00.002-04:002011-10-02T22:32:57.766-04:00L. Feininger exclamations(from the cartoonist years)Mother of Moses!Be jabers!Daddled again, begosh!As discernible in the fine print of the works in room 1 of this exhibition.Useful to note because useful to utter when beholding astonishing and delightful items in later rooms, e.g. this, andthis, this. Lawks![How slight can the posts here be before they disappear entirely, but haven't yet? What TiRnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3684738.post-49471942461024833132011-09-30T07:01:00.003-04:002011-09-30T23:20:40.247-04:00we dream all the partsWhy exactly is sleep so pleasurable? One theory: Dreaming gives us "a new degree of intimacy with the traumas that define our deepest individuality."Huh?"The Dream invents the way we can wake up."As per Éric Laurent, in a Lacanian style of admittedly profound "whatever!"-ability for many, at the opening night podium of this event.TiRnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3684738.post-36080774124384738932011-09-28T07:01:00.002-04:002011-09-28T14:09:10.083-04:00some "life span data"on George Maciunas:total sounds heard: 3.14 x 107total words spoken: 3.07 x 108total food intake at Smörgåsbord restaurants: 2.85 tonsabove taken from Fluxus Editorial Council's insert to "Maciunas Dies" issue of a V TRE Extra (1979)Item currently on display among many other wonderful ones in this exhibtion.TiRnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3684738.post-39445230791188166772011-09-21T07:01:00.002-04:002011-09-21T21:36:44.166-04:00his many childrenalleged co-parent:& Coca-Cola& "Pepsi" cola& Ecstasy& Maxim& Macaulay& Kafkaand now. . . & MicrosoftTiRnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3684738.post-62872955187162789992011-09-18T07:01:00.002-04:002011-09-19T02:22:17.815-04:00good morning Voltairehereherefrom Jean Huber's Voltairiade, discussed a bit here and hereTiRnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3684738.post-30522698549146285732011-08-28T07:01:00.002-04:002011-08-28T15:26:40.027-04:00riots, hurricanes
What might both of these have in common?
Emily Dickinson had some thoughts on this.
See her # 1745 ("The mob within the heart"), here.
This poem may the best that alludes to two of the major phenomena of August 2011.
TiR believes that ED's 1745 was first brought to our attention through John Moore's essay "Toward a Cultural Ecology of Anarchy," here.
TiRnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3684738.post-37387107428376928362011-08-17T07:01:00.001-04:002011-08-17T08:19:41.075-04:00progressing backwards
John Armleder's work often pleasantly confuses and eludes us (TiR has liked it best when it's made us think, "This artist may be quite the packrat at home"), but the following stopped us:
There are no settled definitions. Each move we make changes our tastes and ideas. Things look alike. If they don’t, step back, and they will. Step back again -- they won’t just look alikeTiRnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3684738.post-57984488630035845002011-08-05T07:01:00.004-04:002011-08-05T14:37:36.863-04:00problematic pigs persistently purveyed and purchased throughout central and eastern EuropeAmong the many life-affirming, admiration-inspiring or hilarious moments in the obituary tribute to the late Adolfas Mekas, here, is the following quote from him, contributed by Pip Chodorov:Why filmmaking has to be so difficult technically? Only the devil knows. In Lithuania we had a saying: A woman had no TiRnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3684738.post-31170092224908750512011-08-02T07:01:00.002-04:002011-08-03T18:50:49.762-04:00interpersonal diplomacyFor purposes of (pointless) record-keeping: In the midst of the WikiLeaks hubbub last winter, here was the passage from an interview that triggered the exact moment at which TiR grudgingly halted its applause in mid-clap, for a moment at least, and wondered whether it should think afresh and perhaps applaud Assange's effects more critically, or only with one hand:There is,TiRnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3684738.post-66162437798016977432011-08-01T07:01:00.002-04:002011-08-02T16:11:39.814-04:00Stakhanov had it easierLabor law prof Jean-Emmanuel Ray demonstrates pertinent knowledge also of the laws of physics, as he rightly laments that e-mails are not much, much heavier:In the past, work was defined by a unity of time, place and action: Leaving the factory, the worker was transformed back into a citizen. Today, with the checking of e-mails and Facebook, there is an invasion of TiRnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3684738.post-69488634554607400542011-07-29T07:01:00.006-04:002011-08-20T11:23:44.041-04:00Today's example . . .
. . . of why reading an e-book can never entirely replace the examination of the paper page, at least for researchers:Hélène by had been invited to come and see some of the finest manuscripts of the National Library: those of Baudelaire ("I had the sense of a purging of poison," remarked Cixous), of Saint-Simon ("What a feeling, to see on one of the pages a line TiRnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3684738.post-73073702927389205792011-07-28T07:01:00.005-04:002011-07-30T01:36:51.086-04:00the duty of youth: ungratefulnessAuthor Julien Green, at age 26:Q.: Who are the writers who have influenced you the most?A.: I know of none. I have never had the awareness of being like anybody else. I admit that I have never wanted it. I'll go even further. I will say that I have never read a fine book without having the desire to make something completely different. Moreover, I have TiRnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3684738.post-30154697878248467692011-07-07T07:01:00.005-04:002011-08-02T08:41:10.267-04:00hiddenThose who stuck only to the print edition of a recent Charles Bernstein interview missed the following two gems, viewable on-line, here:1) The perfection I’m sometimes seeking in satire is when the irony disappears into the social real. So you’re not saying the opposite of what you mean but also what you mean, albeit in quotes: a 360 degree turn.The above dynamite quote seems to have been TiRnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3684738.post-32374583299659828362011-06-27T07:01:00.003-04:002011-06-28T04:00:48.425-04:00the shrinking of unbridgeable gulfsThe past not merely is not fugitive, it remains present. . . . And yet the older among them might have reminded themselves that in the course of their lives they had seen gradually, as the years bore them away from it, the unbridgeable gulf between what they considered a masterpiece by Ingres and what, they had supposed, must remain for ever a ‘horror’ (Manet’s TiRnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3684738.post-9547344753373130572011-06-14T07:01:00.004-04:002011-06-15T16:27:50.998-04:00B♭Here's the great and timeless Alan Vega, speaking about his artistic practice, as he segues into discussion of his favorite musical note:. . . It's like listening to one sound of music, continuously. [sculpts arc in air, with right hand] And it just changes on its own. [sine wave motion] It never changes, but it changes in your mind. I used to like to do that when I was TiRnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3684738.post-79445206369089244732011-06-12T07:01:00.002-04:002011-06-13T16:40:24.814-04:00best ever . . . . . . use of a Thunders classic (even if accidental)? When Pete Wilson signed off his WRVU show Tuesday afternoon with Johnny Thunders' "You Can't Put Your Arms Around a Memory," he didn't know it would be the last song a 91 Rock dee-jay would ever play on the air. But maybe the late Johnny Thunders knew better. In an announcement that dashed the hopes of TiRnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3684738.post-88384544507170273552011-06-11T07:01:00.005-04:002011-07-30T02:37:13.770-04:0057Jean-Baptiste André Godin, founder of the 19th century cooperatively-run factory and utopian community known as the Familistère, was a detail-oriented guy:Godin's other great undertaking was education, considered, like housing, to be an "equivalent of wealth." To such an extent that he drafted up a dissertation of 57 pages on which benches were best suited for the backs of schoolchildren.As TiRnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3684738.post-70625192076205198972011-06-09T07:01:00.004-04:002011-06-12T03:33:18.305-04:00Kantian vocabulary word of the week(could be "of the month"? which is young yet)"allotrio-episcopia"often seen rendered as "a mania for spying on the morals of others"[die Ausspähungssucht der Sitten Anderer]see § 43 of The Metaphysics of Morals (1797)A case for the present applicability of this word was made last week, by one Mathieu TiRnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3684738.post-53412851426698600682011-06-07T07:01:00.002-04:002011-06-07T21:16:54.955-04:00"(beat)"Zygmunt Bauman has a nice sense of theatrical timing.Bauman: I, who came from emptiness and solitude . . . At the beginning of the war, our family had been sent to the extreme north of the Soviet Union, where we had no one to talk to. That is to say, no one Polish. We were alone. Everywhere we were alone. Take some croissants, they'll get cold . . . Interviewer: Thanks, yes.Bauman: TiRnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3684738.post-53346589622569227212011-06-06T07:01:00.003-04:002011-06-07T08:18:45.820-04:00"Avice Benner Cho"Alice Becker-Hocute.(can it really be that no one else immediately noticed this?)TiRnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3684738.post-65393722947105237692011-05-31T07:01:00.011-04:002011-06-07T08:16:49.808-04:00two dozen questions. . . that TiR was unable to answer comprehensively during May 2011Why is more notice not taken of the pentagram on the side of the current US president's head?What exactly does it mean to say that 1/3 of Africa is now "middle class" (.pdf)?How important is the principle "dead people can't revolt" in the politics of global disasters?Where will the formerly coastal PC etc. TiRnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3684738.post-77273024397453848712011-04-25T07:01:00.007-04:002011-04-25T22:23:48.507-04:00caught in the audio sievesome artifacts lodged there from recent weeks:Max Romeo defines love (1974): hereD.L. Menard's classic "The Back Door," but with German subtitles: herethe Steel Tips on the CBs stage (1977): herethe Nils' "In an Instant" (1983): here Catherine Ringer, sings her own words set to Mahler's Symph No. 5 adagietto, last month: here Thor Modéen and the wonderful Alice Babs TiRnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3684738.post-87830100604717520452011-03-29T07:01:00.001-04:002011-03-29T19:26:08.606-04:00⇔"To work, one must be angry. One must continue to work, to control the anger."Pierre Bourdieu, quoted in the last sentence of a 2002 obituary posted here.TiRnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3684738.post-39391948781900214012011-03-27T07:01:00.003-04:002011-03-27T12:59:48.815-04:00"anti-austerity movement"For the past few months, TiR has been doing an informal, unscientific survey of the shifting fortunes and popularity of the above phrase, through a regular check on its number of Google hits. The results we've found so far are as follows:date number of hitsDec. 6, 2010 2240Dec. 15, 2010 3530Jan. TiRnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3684738.post-58426924730840686962011-03-25T07:01:00.003-04:002011-03-27T13:02:06.074-04:00going backwardsTo 1911?Yiddish poet Morris Rosenfeld's howl of a memorial written in the wake of the Triangle fire appears in whole or part in a number of places on-line, like here and here. However, the following stanza sometimes gets omitted:Drape yourself in black, you golden land!Too severe your tresspass, too terrible your shame,Too deaf your awarenes, too blind your laws,Too devilish your TiRnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3684738.post-25265042161111236132011-03-24T07:01:00.008-04:002011-03-24T13:26:21.768-04:00R. Prince vs. JahJah winsanalysis hereIghteous smackdown delivered through the instrument of one Hon. D. A. Battsas per here (.pdf):"bad faith is evident""Defendants shall within ten days of the date of this Order deliver up for impounding, destruction, or other disposition . . . all infringing copies.""the Court GRANTS Plaintiff's Motion for Summary Judgment.""not even the dog that piss TiRnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3684738.post-48292311649709243082011-03-21T07:01:00.004-04:002011-03-22T04:23:11.434-04:00the pyramid of starsHere's the immortal Jeanne Moreau, in a new biographical piece, on how New Wave cinema caused unemployment:Freedom came with the New Wave and new films. The New Wave made extinct the hierarchy, all those drivers, makeup artists, personal assistants, chamber maids, who watched over the stars, the Gabins and the Fernandels; it was unheard of, everyone that they had as their TiRnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3684738.post-5276383908519069652011-03-20T07:01:00.005-04:002011-03-22T04:22:51.206-04:00planning the cityBy the late Robert Fitch:Someone looking for a fundamental point of departure to contrast Soviet and New York regional planning in 1929 would be poorly advised to seek it out in doctrinal differences between socialism and capitalism. . . . [W]hile the Soviets rely to a greater extent than the Manhattanites on mobilizing popular support, both plans are formulated and executed in TiRnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3684738.post-73917296607712975112011-03-14T07:01:00.005-04:002011-03-14T20:02:42.172-04:00ah, now we get itIt took us a little while, but TiR has finally figured out the universe's theme for this month: to follow all of the positive news and optimism from January and February with a March that delivers a continual string of events designed to cause only gloom, mourning and pessimism, i.e.:Japanpassing of Bob FitchJapanLibyaJapanpassing of Danny StilesJapanBahrainJapanetc., TiRnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3684738.post-13445384761410710772011-03-01T07:01:00.003-05:002011-03-24T14:41:30.088-04:00they have a-changedThe late Suze Rotolo described her childhood home:My parents . . . [l]ike several of their friends who had joined the American Communist Party in the 1930s . . . moved to a complex of apartments called Sunnyside Gardens specifically designed for working-class families . . . [T]he residents in general were politically all over the map, a mix of new and old Americans of various TiRnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3684738.post-88861331326272995372011-02-26T07:01:00.002-05:002011-03-01T16:52:14.929-05:00physics (acoustics) vs. chemistryThe new Jean Daniel column about certain current events, here, leads us to a recent A. Badiou column, here. The latter includes the following quote:"Revolutionary movements do not spread by contamination but by resonance. Something that is constituted here resonates with the shock wave emitted by something constituted over there." AB attributes the quote to TiRnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3684738.post-31739939256793790572011-02-23T07:01:00.003-05:002011-03-24T14:42:41.775-04:00"I can haz contracts?"Also: "Error 404: contrats not found"Tech worker organizing slogans for the 21st century?As photographed here and here, and explained here.TiRnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3684738.post-51303502055800306662011-02-21T07:01:00.002-05:002011-03-01T15:52:47.450-05:00the dead hand of historyor is that "homicidal"? Weighs heavily, either way:per the inestimable Robert Fisk:"We are getting shot by American weapons fired by American-trained Bahraini soldiers with American-made tanks," a medical orderly told me on Friday. "And now Obama wants to be on our side?"TiRnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3684738.post-31340346806109194832011-02-20T07:01:00.002-05:002011-03-01T16:00:05.544-05:00high school punk band song title"I Can't Just Go to Midterms and Close My Eyes"by Smashed Grillworkas back-announced by college radio DJ last night in dreamTiRnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3684738.post-84537326736178013722011-02-18T07:01:00.002-05:002011-02-18T16:33:23.116-05:00They sang the ______ flag, they wore the _______ one.A. Breton's prose style is worth banging one's head against the wall to slog through, in part because you get to find little gems like this one:The fact is that above art, above poetry, like it or not, a flag alternately red and black is waving.[C'est qu'au-dessus de l'art, de la poésie, qu'on le veuille ou non, bat aussi un drapeau tour à tourTiRnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3684738.post-72956245549421262062011-02-12T07:01:00.002-05:002011-02-12T10:37:02.351-05:00permanent vacationThe website of Elite Property realtors in Na'ama Bay, Sharm el-Sheik, Egypt says:"When You Visit Sharm, You Will Want To Stay Forever!"Excellent idea.TiRnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3684738.post-53171272327014662462011-02-10T07:01:00.007-05:002011-02-12T10:40:09.029-05:00pessimism's antidote: pessimismIn the face of hopeful developments, how best to maintain today's obligatory jaded style, one's cynical persona? Perhaps by trying to cop a formula like this, maybe in some artistic form:You don't lose much when the landlord's house burns down. Another landlord will always turn up . . . . What difference does it make, seeing you've got to pay . . . (formula taken TiRnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3684738.post-62044886002677365982011-02-09T07:01:00.001-05:002011-02-10T00:15:47.981-05:00commodity lustJameson:History progresses by failure rather than by success, as Benjamin never tired of insisting . . . [T]his elaborate anatomy of commodity lust might spring from some inner distance from it rather than the sheerest complacency. But this is the very ambiguity of naming a phenomenon and designating or foregrounding it: once isolated in the mind's eye, it becomes on object for TiRnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3684738.post-30625658433251103772011-02-08T07:01:00.002-05:002011-02-10T01:54:33.498-05:00"the oatmeal of contentment"Ashbery, here:An egg is a puzzle. A tree is a piece of that puzzle.In addition, one must applaud the nerve of anyone who composes and publishes a cento derived entirely from the index of titles in a Leonard Maltin film guide, as noted too here.TiRnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3684738.post-61040611786655837232011-02-03T07:01:00.003-05:002011-02-03T07:01:00.501-05:00bread, circuses, thymosDigging into the recycling pile of TiR's material read two months ago, we find Sloterdijk's (then-) new essay, in a form currently readable here (.pdf)[i.e., found via Courrier Interational No. 1047, but originally from Der Spiegel, here], & we find . . . . after Sloterdijk's somewhat elusive employment of the concept of "thymos" (puzzled out by others here and here), & TiRnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3684738.post-68873394862139232752011-02-02T07:01:00.005-05:002011-02-03T14:23:08.591-05:00dispatch from the Dept. of CoprophilosophyHere's Simon Critchley, from a fun panel last week:Now that's one approach to philosophy . . . I'm against this. This is an idea of what I call, technically, a philosophy of constipation. Where you, as it were, hang onto a little bolus of -- something, for years and years and years. And eventually you squeeeeze it out, in a prominent journal. That's TiRnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3684738.post-71237186950610975822011-02-01T07:01:00.003-05:002011-02-03T14:29:27.085-05:00Kant's 3rd Critique: Who cares?A terrific new article by Oxford Prof. Jim T. J. Reed does a fine job of conjuring up the radical sociopolitical implications, for their time (& even ours), of Kant's aesthetics:Kant's thesis allowed the inference that the authorities could legitimately neither demand that art help inculcate belief and morals, nor criticize and prohibit works or art for failing TiRnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3684738.post-14902448752833103822011-01-27T07:01:00.004-05:002011-01-27T19:33:39.450-05:00Under the paving stones . . . . . . . Facebook?Journalist Taoufik Ben Brik draws an intriguing parallel, in an essay in the current Courrier International:In January 2011, the mobile phone [/laptop] has been in Tunis what the transistor radio was in May 1968 in Paris.[En janvier 2011, le portable aura été à Tunis ce que le transistor fut en mai 1968 TiRnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3684738.post-9297103176637863892011-01-23T07:01:00.003-05:002011-01-23T07:01:00.602-05:00the threat of Continuous Partial Attention disorderHow possibly to defeat it?One means: punctuation:The use of commas, semicolons, and brackets, supplies the place of inflections, and enables us to introduce, without danger of equivocation, qualifications, illustrations, and parenthetical limitations, which, with our English syntax, would render a long period almost unintelligible unless its TiRnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3684738.post-10289082956794684132011-01-21T07:01:00.003-05:002011-01-21T18:14:10.551-05:00Virilio on algo tradingor time in the age of "turbo-capitalism":This time eludes those who have neither the hardware, nor the software, nor the mathematical models. They are no longer competitive; they can no longer anticipate. And yet anticipation is a quality essential for the functioning of capitalism.(quote is from an interview last spring, nicely mentioned today here)TiRnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3684738.post-22268530662728567682011-01-20T07:01:00.008-05:002011-01-21T23:00:05.902-05:00meet Ben Ali's teargas supplierSofexipart of "a worldwide industrial group designing and selling uniform and equipment solutions for public authorities and companies."(as uncovered here, & related here)under the same corporate umbrella (Marck) are sister companies that offer "clothing for security forces" and "civil and military accessories," all "in accordance with demanding and prestigiousTiRnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3684738.post-86244006623642192832011-01-19T07:01:00.002-05:002011-01-21T18:13:37.916-05:00Why so silent? (be)Maeterlinck:"'We do not know each other yet,' wrote to me one whom I hold dear above all others, 'we have not yet dared to be silent together.'"from his essay "Silence," at p. 14 of Treasure of the Humble, herein, an 1897 edition translated by Alfred Sutro (thanks to this piece for reminding us of the essayTiRnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3684738.post-50680975205664579502011-01-14T07:01:00.002-05:002011-01-26T10:57:53.981-05:00Unbelieveable.[update 1/26/11: likewise]TiRnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3684738.post-43996706790401108182011-01-01T07:01:00.006-05:002011-01-07T07:58:14.610-05:00TiR Annual Report for 2010TiR hereby calculates and reports, with the help of WordCountTool.com, that in 2010 the total number of words it published was 16,423.TiR hereby identifies the major words that it most frequently published during 2010, as set forth below, listed with their corresponding number of uses, as calculated with the help of Writewords.org:1059 the 114TiRnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3684738.post-66658807788307566842010-12-25T07:01:00.010-05:002010-12-27T08:49:30.361-05:00revolutionary mix-n-matchCan you match column A to column B?ABTrenton (1948)3Chicago (1968)3New Haven (1969)4New York (1969)4Fort Dix (1969)5Harrisburg (1970)6Milwaukee (1970)6Wilmington (1971)6San Quentin (1971)7San Francisco (1971)7Birmingham (1974)8Guilford (1974)9Tottenham (1985)9Ogoni (1995)9Charleston (2000)10Thessaloniki (2003)21Tarnac (2008)38 (partial cheat sheet here)TiRnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3684738.post-35685469774607985322010-12-01T07:01:00.016-05:002011-01-05T20:30:42.996-05:00Unblogged by TiR in November 2010Once again this month, TiR tiresomely aspired to have it both ways, both blogging and not.Partial list below.Bah!==================================================on the question, "what came first?" (part 1): answer: the pen!Dr. M. M. M. I. Ghaly makes a fascinating observation: As far as literacy or the written dimension is concerned, some Muslim commentators TiRnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3684738.post-41424911756961881512010-11-25T07:01:00.007-05:002010-11-28T11:06:04.537-05:00What the hell happened?During the past two years, TiR, has wondered, as has everyone: What caused The Crash®? Could The Crisis™ have been prevented?Perhaps if persons of power and influence had been more sensitive to certain unavoidable, fundamental principles of reality, much needless misery could have been avoided?What does hindsight tell us?What relevant forces might become apparent now, TiRnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3684738.post-35010891115800010172010-11-01T07:01:00.015-04:002010-11-18T14:26:41.943-05:00unblogged by TiR in 10/10(partial list) (latest in a monthly series this year)on the 25-year trajectory of the current US economy in a nutshell?Hollywood, post the '87 crash:"The most shocking thing to me is that a week after Black Monday it was business as usual in Los Angeles," said Jeffrey Katzenberg, the chairman of Walt Disney Studios. "It was like this little cocoon world so TiRnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3684738.post-50243635889087157292010-10-01T07:01:00.007-04:002010-10-01T17:57:12.312-04:00TiR's unwritten blog posts for September 2010Once again, this past month we were too bored with the sound of our own voice to post anything. So below is another oblique partial summary list connected with some of what we would have posted about, but didn't."Bo [Diddley]'s a Lumberjack" (Checker label, 1960)this fascinating "Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker" post, here, which includes TiRnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3684738.post-46487086982583378392010-09-01T07:01:00.018-04:002011-03-03T16:12:33.740-05:00blog posts unwritten by TiR in August 2010 (a partial list of topics) :on the likely next step, in the USA, beyond last year's sometimes tiresome & predictable speculations about the "optimism gene": speculations about a "tea partier gene"idle & gloomy reflections on:Darwinian politics; the TiRnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3684738.post-66269462022662593902010-08-01T07:01:00.020-04:002010-08-20T10:59:28.674-04:00TiR's unwritten blog postsfrom april through july 2010(a partial list)on the passing of Jimmy Dean; his song "Big Bad John" (1961); and a proper consideration (i.e., thus herein is recounted an unwritten follow-up to an unwritten blog post), from Wagner through the era of Sam Cooke (i.e., mike stand as percussion), of musical compositions that incorporate the sound of metallic clanking on GBS on TiRnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3684738.post-72988801118701944432010-07-01T07:01:00.020-04:002010-07-13T12:53:16.447-04:00America Sings of Bolshevism! (part III of III)the 1930's (through 1938) time constraints/terminal boredom w/ the material ----> outline/bullet point post here of imaginary contents in final section some indispensible secondary sources here: Michael Denning's masterpiece, The Cultural front: the Laboring of American Culture in the Twentieth Century (1997) American Folk Music and TiRnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3684738.post-48551950936059851372010-06-01T07:01:00.025-04:002010-06-09T10:41:56.536-04:00America Sings of Bolshevism! part II: the 1920s. . . continued from the previous post.The (we are already starting to think, increasingly boring) subject matter here, again, is a selective survey that TiR involuntarily imagined[The reader rightly may stop reading here, and ask: What is more self-indulgent or tiresome than a blog post based on a dream? Especially someone else's dream?Then TiRnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3684738.post-11866281976645500012010-05-01T07:01:00.019-04:002010-06-07T16:12:50.760-04:00America Sings of Bolshevism! The Russian Revolution in American Popular Song, 1917 - 1938The above is the title and subtitle of a book that, last Christmas eve, TiR dreamed existed. We dreamed that we were in a library, and stole a copy from the stack of another patron who removed it from the shelf but disregarded it, unread.TiR awoke to discover,TiRnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3684738.post-165884898353209242010-04-01T07:01:00.003-04:002010-04-14T16:22:21.126-04:00partial list of topics of blog posts unwritten by TiR in March 2010Fluxus, Dick Higgins & musical "superboredom"a survey of painters whose works depict paperback book coversNorth Korea, Cambodia & the ravages of the global sand tradethe uses of college / "negotiat[ing] the authorities"translating Search for a Method: ideas that merely "act on" the future (H. Barnes) vs. those that "bite intoTiRnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3684738.post-71969566186191473202010-03-01T07:01:00.020-05:002010-03-03T10:44:56.080-05:00partial list of topics of blog posts unwritten by TiR in February 2010:on the use of metallic clanking for percussive effect in the very cool 1963 B-side "Dingbat Diller" by the Chuck-a-lucks (on Motown's Mel-o-dy label) on people* who met their spouses at the species of multi-purpose public space that back in ancient history used to be known as a "bookstore" (*most famously, Ray Bradbury) TiRnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3684738.post-28096955555417751172010-02-01T07:01:00.002-05:002010-02-01T18:52:45.940-05:00more unwritten blog posts (Jan. 2010)Rosa L. on satirereading & autointertextuality/automarginaliaon Google, 3 ways: on art that cannot be appreciated without use of Gon art that would not exist without use of GGuilbaut updated, or how G stole the idea of western cultureon the health dangers of "shuttle-kissing"Stevens' Citz United dissent on "too much speech," & Dewey's problem of "too much TiRnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3684738.post-39689841537026495682009-12-31T07:01:00.011-05:002010-01-04T09:46:04.987-05:00TiR's Unwritten Blog Posts (for 2009) (in the spirit of George Steiner)as per TiR's (ever pointless) notes, from the past year:January:lessons from Charles S. Peirce's "How to Make Our Ideas Clear" (1878) on the relationship between "[cheerful] hope" and scientific methodFebruary:the totally overlooked TiRnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3684738.post-68737086560166297952009-12-15T07:01:00.000-05:002009-12-16T07:43:19.555-05:00when snl ='d wtf30 yrs exactly since this live television broadcast performed some serious rewiring of certain brainsTiRnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3684738.post-80278350646847872009-11-26T07:01:00.005-05:002009-11-26T07:01:00.460-05:00is runedExperience has taught TiR that if we closely investigate the "ruined," then we are sure to find at least a little "i" somewhere, usually near the heart of it. But what if TiR could get rid of the "I"? Then we'd have: "runed." If we correctly interpret the guidance on various webpages about runes, like this one and this one, then the wordT H A N K S G I V I N Gwould seem to be TiRnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3684738.post-91598426479854046172009-11-09T07:01:00.002-05:002009-11-09T10:07:54.091-05:00"Es ist eine Falle!!"Exactly twenty years on, the fresh reminders of context & background that Andrew Curry presents in his new "Before the Fall" piece are terrific. TiR especially liked:For the dissidents who had been filled with hope at the sight of East Germans rallying to their cause, the fall of the wall was initially seen as a huge setback. "We were disappointed," [Uwe] Schwabe admits. "WeTiRnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3684738.post-7718360957285495162009-11-08T07:01:00.023-05:002009-11-09T09:48:47.711-05:00every comma countsBehind the glass doors that seal the shelves along the walls in the most perfect space of this room, in this museum, among the colorful spines of the items in the children's book section, stands a slim volume by one "Leinstein" with the curious title, Punctuation in Verse.What on earth is it?One guy found out. George Burnham Ives [b. 1856, Salem, MA; Harvard man, lawyer, then TiRnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3684738.post-60322545177693777372009-10-30T07:01:00.002-04:002009-11-03T18:27:02.470-05:00Die Expropriateurs werden expropriiert.What was TiR wondering about, a year ago today? TiR's pointless internal records reflect that among the numerous links saved that day were a few that suggest our asking, "Is theft from thieves not theft?"The abovementioned alleged "wondering" (in fact monkeyesque websurfing, as usual) seems to have ricocheted from Proudhon ("le propriété, c'est le vol", etcTiRnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3684738.post-4768987088628301452009-10-02T07:01:00.002-04:002009-10-02T16:46:56.432-04:00obituary hidden within an obituaryFrom an appreciation of the late Irving Kristol, by Joseph Dorman, the person behind the most excellent "Arguing the World":One day, I walked around the corner from the building in which I worked and picked up a copy of Kristol's "Reflections of a Neoconservative" at the old Coliseum Books. To pile digression atop digression, obituaries for the TiRnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3684738.post-30908436067902460462009-09-18T07:01:00.001-04:002009-09-18T09:00:46.899-04:00so wrong, so badly, so oftenSearle, recently:It is much easier to refute a bad argument than to refute a truly dreadful argument. A bad argument has enough structure that you can point out its badness. But with a truly dreadful argument, you have to try to reconstruct it so that it is clear enough that you can state a refutation.Yes. Where even to begin?TiRnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3684738.post-10086420098821949732009-09-10T07:01:00.008-04:002009-09-18T09:02:21.420-04:00great moments in heckler responseFor a moment, we imagined BHO channeling Zimmy in Manchester in 1966, turning to face Biden & Pelosi and stage whispering (sic):"Play healthcare reform f--king loud!"===========================================================Meanwhile, David Kurtz flags an analysis that situates the (more recent) heckle within the decisional calculus of what we think of as a sort TiRnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3684738.post-17917588325408848572009-09-08T07:01:00.001-04:002009-09-08T19:25:25.580-04:00Steelythe ability of the nyt to get thru the whole obit & discussion of the context of s&c's contribution w/out appearance of the phrase "sleng teng" appears a bit astounding . . . . . . otoh, the bdp connection is astute, & the story itself tho sad is a reminder that contra stereotype not every post-marley figure in ja music dies of gunshot . . . TiRnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3684738.post-42129775586858109702009-09-03T07:01:00.006-04:002009-09-04T11:28:56.585-04:00monosyllabismRick Perlstein now has reiterated, here, a point that perhaps cannot not not not not not not not be reiterated enough:Much of what passes for analytical discussion about politics on American TV resembles celebrity gossip -- the celebrities just happen to be politicians.TiR idly wondered about the American overlap between the realms of entertainment & political media coverage two TiRnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3684738.post-37106076381955280312009-08-26T07:01:00.008-04:002009-09-01T18:04:25.353-04:00the "inverse Sprezzatura" strategyMs. Dowd counsels that pseudonymous bloggers check themselves before giving offense, and mentions almost off-handedly:The great poet Fernando Pessoa used heteronyms to write in different styles and even to review the work composed under his other names.However she then fails to pursue the thought to its logical [or "logical," as in TiR "logic"] conclusion, TiRnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3684738.post-28691340264113518192009-08-18T07:01:00.006-04:002009-08-27T10:09:51.642-04:00if it ain't braked, can't fixe itSpeaking of burgeoning fields of research & inquiry (esp. fields that do not yet realize that they're fields), TiR appreciates new contributions to the field of Fail Studies, like this one. Nevertheless, we are not entirely sure we'd like to work under this fellow, who may represent another case worthy of study:In Florida, Fugate was notorious for what he called TiRnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3684738.post-70860756032549358232009-08-17T07:01:00.003-04:002009-08-27T10:32:34.669-04:00gaze upon my b'dum b'dum, ye (pointless) update to this: tho note, if everybody always is creeping everybody else out,then everybody always is paranoid vis-a-vis everybody else, andeverybody is always looking at everybody else -- & must look, & be looked at.Hence one of the most haunting sentences that TiR stumbled onto in the past month:If Lionel Trilling was right, if the property TiRnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3684738.post-14011932565105914882009-08-11T07:01:00.002-04:002009-08-11T14:27:03.483-04:00dust 5Everything looked clumsy and improvised in the days after the vote: the top-down way the outrageous results were announced; Khamenei's appeal to Ahmadinejad to be the president of all Iranians, followed immediately by a radically polarizing speech from his disciple dismissing all those who didn't vote for him as hooligans worthless as "dust" . . . Slowly they marched, students and TiRnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3684738.post-12986606294144307312009-08-10T07:01:00.005-04:002009-08-10T19:32:44.613-04:00What's so funny about Wille, Macht und Übermenschen?Simon Critchley has a newly republished essay about humor. His funniest line in it, TiR thinks, is this one:[O]ne must obviously acknowledge the extraordinary difficulty of writing anything interesting, let alone funny, about comedy. The essay appears in one of these new Radical Thinkers volumes. The title is (no joke): "Comedy and Finitude: TiRnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3684738.post-54141908743414987562009-08-07T07:01:00.006-04:002009-08-26T07:42:59.990-04:00dead wordsA column in last week's Yated Ne'eman newspaper [generally & among other things an illuminating source for certain scandal coverage & opinion] mentions an amazing story:The Gemara describes that after R'Eliezer Ben R'Shimon died, his body lay in the attic of his home. Two people who had a financial dispute would bring their case before him, and a voice TiRnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3684738.post-55731397213458634892009-07-29T07:01:00.007-04:002009-08-18T08:33:18.388-04:00Graeber watchCheckin the scene in Ssangyong& elsewhere, as per recent podcast heree.g. (circa min. 22):It's an interesting moment. . . . In Europe, we've had this huge explosion. In Greece . . . . It' like everybody who's between the ages of 16 and 26 in Greece has now declared themselves an anarchist. They're all trying to figure out what that means. They're expecting something very similar TiRnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3684738.post-71889327151833551252009-07-21T07:01:00.003-04:002009-07-21T14:43:06.082-04:00newly published hey, that was fast: http://www.amazon.com/Ya-I'll-Speak-to-Your-Momma-Outside!-Henry-Louis-Gates-Jr./ (if only)TiRnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3684738.post-47134943570355838572009-07-15T07:01:00.001-04:002009-07-15T16:59:20.667-04:00the econ of hascheezburgerismOr, as writer and Gawker contributor, Melissa Gira Grant . . . puts it: "People will sign over their proprietary rights to a post or an image because they don’t see a picture of a hamburger as having cultural value unless it’s published in a book alongside 300 other hamburgers. They can’t see the aggregate form." from Sarah Hromack's "In Print We Trust," hereudpate toTiRnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3684738.post-4490867876436078282009-06-30T07:01:00.003-04:002009-09-17T16:59:07.251-04:00he's right you knowLast fall, Michael Tomasky included the following footnote in a book review: . . . Go to the Google Maps homepage, with the view set on "map." In the search bar, type in Whitesville, WV. You'll be automatically directed to a close-in view of that town. Next, zoom the view out two clicks. Now change the view from "map" to "satellite." You will be stunned by what you TiRnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3684738.post-67620711145550375612009-06-29T07:01:00.001-04:002009-06-30T09:17:07.457-04:00hold back the nightBaudelaire knew its dangers:Twilight excites madmen. -- I recall that I had two friends who were made very ill by twilight. One of them was driven to disregard all bonds of friendship and all politeness, savagely abusing the first person to come along. I once saw him throw an excellent chicken at a head-waiter, because he thought he read some sort of insulting hieroglyph in TiRnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3684738.post-44401113241918142932009-06-26T07:01:00.006-04:002009-08-31T07:06:27.895-04:00"Once upon a time . . . and they lived happily ever after."How many books or children's stories ever actually began and ended with the above pair of phrases? How widespread was this supposed storytelling tradition, really?Where did the tradition begin? How far back does it go? To what first text? After all, every cliché starts somewhere, right? And sometimes it starts for a good reason, orTiRnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3684738.post-81133218810249897592009-06-23T07:03:00.007-04:002009-06-29T14:08:21.231-04:00this wk's fave photohere[context links: . . . .. . . .TiRnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3684738.post-29672761577740043772009-06-23T07:01:00.001-04:002009-06-23T15:24:39.668-04:00last wk's fave phrasewas eine allgemeingültige Aussage erschwertrendered asIt is therefore difficult to come to an overall statement on the matter which applies to all.from exhibition wall text, PergamonmuseumTiRnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3684738.post-80065891457921372192009-06-05T07:01:00.007-04:002009-06-23T15:38:37.921-04:00g stein staged. . . in a rare production clearly not for the taste of everybody . . . "A Family of Perhaps Three" is from Stein's intensely "repetitive" phase of language, circa 1908-12James Wagner seems absolutely correct in calling the staging a "miracle" tho we might be predisposed . . . .Are we alone in tending, when reading her headlong repetitive texts, to hear them as if TiRnoreply@blogger.com0