No Millennium

Genital Lexemes

Tue, 15 Jul 2008 10:44:52 GMT

In Yiddish, Schmuck (which means "jewel" in German) is slang for the male organ.

But in French, Bijoux ("jewels") means the female genitalia.

So, it seems that at least two languages imagine these 'parts' as precious, ornamental, pretty -- but detachable -- things. Interesting.

Our modern Olympia

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 09:44:45 GMT

If history repeats itself first as tragedy then as farce, the third time it's -- Art History.

Yesterday, while leafing through a book of photographs of the early days of the U.S. occupation of Iraq, I found this arresting image:

Does Infantrywoman Felicia Harris, posing in Uday Hussein's palace in 2001, know that she is imitating Manet's Olympia? Compare:

A high tolerance for dissonance

Sat, 14 Jun 2008 05:21:45 GMT

I am always surprised when reviewers describe some piece of music as intolerably dissonant anti-musical noise, when to me it seems pleasant, interesting, and certainly very musical. Cases in point: Lou Reed's "Metal Machine Music"; most of the work of Coil, Throbbing Gristle, Boyd Rice; many avant-garde aleatory experiments.

Why, then, do I find Jazz, which reviewers love, unlistenable, like the squawking of angry birds?

Crypto-Fascism

Fri, 13 Jun 2008 06:54:38 GMT

I am practically convinced that most historians of religion -- and historians of hermeticism, etc. -- own hidden copies of the works of Julius Evola.

Therein lies their charm.

Arty porn

Mon, 28 Apr 2008 06:31:03 GMT

We need more of this:

"It was a large room, full of people, all kinds . . ."

Fri, 25 Apr 2008 07:11:54 GMT

If you want a bear (particularly those on Livejournal) to perk up and take notice, toss him a Laurie Anderson line. I don't know why, but it works.

All bears love Laurie Anderson.

Fucking hot

Wed, 23 Apr 2008 09:24:00 GMT

Damn . . . just, damn . . .

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tcT_AOQlrvw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZaXCs02Hms&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YC-gKZFIZIk&feature=related

My face has a mind of its own

Mon, 21 Apr 2008 07:01:32 GMT

Sometimes my face rebels against me. I don't know why or how, but the fact bothers me, perplexes me. For instance, once, in the midst of a seminar, a fellow student paused while speaking and said, "I can't go on with him looking at me that way." I wasn't aware that I was looking at her in any particular way. I took it as a sign that it was past time for me to leave that university, that discipline, and that community, which in fact was true.

More recently, one of my coworkers informed me that I was wearing an expression of utter, violent hatred. But nothing could have been further from my mind.

Perhaps my default expression -- if you will -- is putting people off. I've been called "intimidating", though I think I'm basically a friendly sort. Maybe I need to spend more time in front of the mirror, practicing expressions. My father used to tell me that I was "incompletely socialized", that I didn't know how to interact with others. He was an asshole, but maybe he was right.

"Revolutionary women are the most beautiful"

Mon, 21 Apr 2008 06:35:25 GMT

That's what it said at the top of the page, above a crude sketch of a buxom woman in paramilitary fatigues.

And it's true. Consider the young Angela Davis, Afro-enhaloed, fist raised, beaming proud defiance or jubilance. Or consider Patty Hearst, a.k.a. Tania, immortalized with beret and machine gun in that famous bank-robbery photo. I think all women should be required to don khaki and carry little red books, if only for my visual delight.

We are the strange

Sun, 20 Apr 2008 09:35:57 GMT

I've never cared much for video games. But if there must be an experimental film based on the video game aesthetic and Toho-style monsters, surely one could do worse:

The too-bombastic trailer suggests an action movie, but the actual 88-minute animated film (also available on You-Tube) is lugubriously paced and more dense with weird imagery and non-sequitors than anything by David Lynch. I can't recommend it unreservedly, but still I admire the director's labor and vision.

Sudden disorientation

Sat, 19 Apr 2008 06:59:45 GMT

My god! Where am I? And how did I get here?

This strange city? Yet I seem to know my way around it.

This new job, which somehow I could do even in my sleep?

What happened to everyone I used to know? These new people -- where did they come from? They seem to know me.

Who am I now? Who was I then? Do I even recognize myself?

How did I get here?

I hate hipsters

Mon, 14 Apr 2008 06:23:51 GMT

I despise hipsters. At one time, I might have been mistaken for one, but I would have told you I was -- ahem -- bohemian.

I hate the way, though basically very shallow, they pretend to great profundity.

I hate the way they drive up rents and property values in formerly affordable neighborhoods. They're the advance guard of gentrification.

I hate the way they believe a passing familiarity with Bukowski and Kerouac makes them literary intellectuals.

I hate their attitude of smug superiority. I hate their disdain.

I hate the fact that they are really yuppies in disguise.

I hate the way they appropriate things that matter to me and turn them into mere fashion statements.

I hate their trust funds. After a few years of romantic pseudo-poverty, they join the bourgeoisie in daddy's law firm or on Wall Street.

I hate the fact that they think organizing a dance party is somehow a meaningful act of cultural subversion.

I hate the way they've reduced most contemporary art to a dreary parade of faux-naive stick figure doodles and pseudo-Japanesque graffiti.

I hate their pretense of leftism. They may name-check Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky, but in the next breath they shamelessly whore themselves to the culture industry. Outside of Hip-Hop, I've never seen such worship of name brands! But they see no contradiction.

I hate the fact that they think fashion design is of the utmost interest and importance.

I hate the fact that the only poor people they've ever encountered are in fiction. And fewer and fewer of these as the publishing industry narrows its sights and tightens its belt.

I hate the fact that they are incorrigibly provincial and basically incapable of introspection, with no historical memory to speak of.

I hate the fact that they don't know they've been had. Or don't care.

It gets harder to he hip after age thirty. Eventually life catches up with you. Nowadays, people whose chief interest seems to be what is cool or au courant infuriate me, as you can see. But if some shaggy-haired ingenue, vintage duds worn with oh-so-studied ironic nonchalance, were to offer me a publishing contract or a gallery show -- well, I wouldn't refuse.

You know the "Bear" thing is working when . . .

Mon, 14 Apr 2008 05:32:15 GMT

Recently a complete stranger called me "Bubba". Not 'buddy' or 'bud' or even 'bub', but 'Bubba'. Maybe it was a slip of the tongue, but it left me feeling -- well -- kind of proud.

Odd, that.

I've been pretty quiet about it -- the bear thing, that is. Partly its my principled aversion to any ready-made subcultural community, to any identity assumed earnestly, unironically, uncritically. (Like Groucho Marx, I wouldn't want to belong to any club which would have me as a member.) Partly, its because I find the whole thing in questionable taste. And, to be honest, partly its a matter of shyness and insecurity. So I've never been to a bear event or dated a bear-identified guy. The word 'woof' has never crossed my lips in any but a canine sense.

Yet the fact remains that I am a large, hairy gay man. And I find others of the same description (but not only them) wildly attractive. Bear blogs, websites, and mailing lists -- and bear porn -- are part of my regular online itinerary. Maybe they're rubbing off on me. Lately I've become larger, hairier, perhaps a little more butch in my self-presentation. So when a stranger addresses (interpellates, for you Althusserians) me as 'Bubba', I figure -- or hope -- that others are starting to notice.

Never mind the hypocrisy or even the unplumbed nasties of class, race, region and gender so casually invoked. 'Bubba' is fine with me.

I never thought I'd say this, but I wish I lived in a gay ghetto

Mon, 14 Apr 2008 04:30:33 GMT

. . . because I get so tired of always having to explain myself.

You know you're getting fat when . . .

Sun, 13 Apr 2008 07:38:37 GMT

I work in a bookstore ("the only respectable branch of retail", quoth somebody whose name I forget). I've done so for many years and I like it. But this line of work, for all its joys, does mean putting up with a certain amount of shit from the more demented members of the general public.

Not long ago, an elderly ~~gentle~~man maneuvered his walker (tennis balls stuck on the ends of its legs) to the register where I was working. As I was tabulating his purchase, he commented loudly, while pointing a bony finger at me, "That young man had better do something about his obesity!" Taken aback, I feigned polite indifference, but no doubt my surprise showed. "I'm a doctor, so I know," he continued, "He's asking for diabetes, as obese as he is. I've seen people die of diabetes. I'm a doctor . . ." Purchase completed, his (long-suffering) wife showed him the door.

Besides the weird third-person form of address, I couldn't believe the effrontery that a complete stranger should find my corpulence a matter of public comment. Now I know what the "fat is a feminist issue" theorists mean when they point out that a fat person's body becomes, somehow, public property.

I could have mentioned Paul Campos and others' skillful meta-analysis of the clinical literature, which shows that weight, per se, is generally not a health risk independent of, say, diet and exercise. I could have pointed out that the BMI tables, treated as holy writ by the medical profession, are actually arbitrary standards virtually devoid of clinical import. I could have mentioned that, according to various standards (blood pressure, blood glucose, cholesterol, etc.) my doctor professes me healthier than most. I could have pointed out that you can't judge a book my its cover.

In the end, the truth is that I prefer my body with a little beef on it. I feel better, more attractive, and more myself, that way. It goes with the whole "bear" thing, I guess. I've tried dieting, but my body always seems to find a happy medium.

In the end, I'll go home and eat a (no doubt taboo) dinner. Maybe later I'll lift some weights. Meanwhile, my erstwhile interlocutor can scarcely propel himself put the door.

Je me souviens . . .

Sun, 13 Apr 2008 06:11:48 GMT

I had spent the evening reading Leonora Carrington. In the morning, I went outside to find, flattened to the sidewalk, an empty and discarded cardboard crate which once had contained -- Carrington Apples.

Things seen

Sun, 13 Apr 2008 05:25:25 GMT

I need to remember to carry my camera with me. For instance I really ought to have photographed for posterity (or at least this journal):

The sign reading "S & M Funeral Home" on Wayne Avenue in Dayton, Ohio. Sadly someone must have informed them, since they've removed it.

An establishment in Tipp City, Ohio, called "Dee and Kelly's Hair and Gifts", where presumably the hairstyles are dictated in an angelic language. (Those familiar with Renaissance magic know it ought to be 'Kelley', but spellings weren't standardized in those days anyway. Look at Shakespeare's signature.)

The inimitably apt graffito painted below a viaduct in Grant Park, Chicago, which read,
Drag Queen
Creature
Skeleton Girl.

One never knows when the marvelous will strike.

Livejournal gripes

Sun, 06 Apr 2008 04:30:37 GMT

So, I'm just starting to make sense of this Livejournal thing -- and hitting snags along the way. Being the impatient sort, I started blogging before filling out my profile. The other day I began enumerating my (many) "interests", only to find that apparently I am limited to just five. It would have been nice to have known this before I did all that typing. I guess the designers couldn't be bothered to indicate a word limit! Is intuitive, considerate web design too much to ask? Probably the limit is buried somewhere in inaccessible documentation. R(ead) t(he) F(ucking) M(anual)? It is to laugh -- nobody does that anymore! (At least I don't.) Maybe paid accounts get more space -- but I know I have seen several free accounts with more than five interests listed. Perhaps that was before the Russians took over.

Speaking of Russians, this issue of poor interface design, plus all the recent controversy over changes to Livejournal (ceasing to offer new free accounts, censorship) has me wondering whether I have chosen the right medium. But since Livejournal is the largest blogging service, I suppose I'll stay, for now. This reminds me of similar complaints about the personals site Bear411. Once these online enterprises reach a certain critical mass of users, they seem to figure they're the only game in town, and the users can go to hell. A mass exodus might prove them wrong.

But I suppose I'm a case in point for the contrary, since I'm staying . . . for now.

Uncannily prescient

Sun, 23 Mar 2008 11:14:55 GMT

Recently I came across a copy of Melville's Moby Dick -- a book which, it is embarrassing to admit, I had not revisited in a long time and which in fact I had never read all the way through. It opened, unbidden, to this passage:

And, doubtless, my going on this whaling voyage, formed part of the grand programme of Providence that was drawn up a long time ago. It came in a sort of brief interlude and solo between more extensive performances. I take it that this part of the bill must have run something like this:

"Grand Contested Election for the Presidency of the United States

"WHALING VOYAGE BY ONE ISHMAEL

"BLOODY BATTLE IN AFGHANISTAN."

. . . which would date Ishmael's voyage to some time around the year 2001.

The real reason

Wed, 19 Mar 2008 11:29:03 GMT

The real reason Republicans, as good capitalists, favor the travesty called abstinence-only sex education, now afflicting our youth:

People have so many problems with love, always looking someone to be their Via Veneto, their souffle that can't fall. There should be a course in the first grade on love. There should be courses on beauty and love and sex. With love as the biggest course. And they should show the kids, I always think, how to make love and tell and show them once and for all how nothing it is. But they won't do that, because love and sex are business.

-- Andy Warhol, The Philosophy of Andy Warhol