Tuesday, August 17, 2004
I doubt you come here for political commentary. However, I will lead you to some.
"No, I know, communism, very bad": Jane on Chavez, the constitution of money, and the contention that "in the United States, nothing particularly useful is on offer from either party."
To which I would add: Yep, money is some weird shit. Hey, What if it didn't exist?
"If I have to have a Christian runnning the country, I'd rather it be a Papist": John on the rhetoric that tells us we're doing something more than electing the emptier of two ciphers, then voting Dem anyway for the sake of judicial appointments.
To which I would add: Getting John Ashcroft's jackboot off our windpipes might be nice as well. (As you'll see in the comments below the story, this particular travesty was rescinded, partly thanks to the American Librarian Association. So, it's just a fr'instance.)
(To which The Fonz would add: Librarians are cool.)
"But at least he believes in evolution.": Naomi Klein on progressives' tendency to focus on Bush's doltishness at the expense of something more substantial. She also makes a sort-of-anti-ameliorative argument that the very dullness of Kerry's pursuit, if elected, of "brutal policies" indistinguishable from those of the current administration will hasten the arrival of real social change, or at least the evolution of a substantial Left.
To which I won't add anything, because my attempts to do so were unreadable.
Loose ends: The Ex disc is of course called Turn as in revolve, not Push as in resist. The cover is based on a Wallace Berman transistor-radio Verifax collage. This interests me because the back of OPB's Emotional Discipline appropriated and altered a similar image, as a result of which I had some interaction with Berman's son Tosh (incidentally, the U.S. publisher of Guy Debord's account of his relationship with his publisher). The full story is too complicated to go into here; I'm remembering details I'd forgotten as I write. The short version: He wasn't crazy about the unauthorized usage, but there were no 'intellectual property' threats of any sort -- he's of course aware that his dad's work itself depended on appropriation. We now seem to be on perfectly good terms, when I run into him at Book Soup (which he manages). Anyway, it's possible but unlikely that he was approached ahead of time about Turn -- I wonder if anyone will draw it to his attention.
The plumbing is fixed but the ants are back.
"No, I know, communism, very bad": Jane on Chavez, the constitution of money, and the contention that "in the United States, nothing particularly useful is on offer from either party."
To which I would add: Yep, money is some weird shit. Hey, What if it didn't exist?
"If I have to have a Christian runnning the country, I'd rather it be a Papist": John on the rhetoric that tells us we're doing something more than electing the emptier of two ciphers, then voting Dem anyway for the sake of judicial appointments.
To which I would add: Getting John Ashcroft's jackboot off our windpipes might be nice as well. (As you'll see in the comments below the story, this particular travesty was rescinded, partly thanks to the American Librarian Association. So, it's just a fr'instance.)
(To which The Fonz would add: Librarians are cool.)
"But at least he believes in evolution.": Naomi Klein on progressives' tendency to focus on Bush's doltishness at the expense of something more substantial. She also makes a sort-of-anti-ameliorative argument that the very dullness of Kerry's pursuit, if elected, of "brutal policies" indistinguishable from those of the current administration will hasten the arrival of real social change, or at least the evolution of a substantial Left.
To which I won't add anything, because my attempts to do so were unreadable.
Loose ends: The Ex disc is of course called Turn as in revolve, not Push as in resist. The cover is based on a Wallace Berman transistor-radio Verifax collage. This interests me because the back of OPB's Emotional Discipline appropriated and altered a similar image, as a result of which I had some interaction with Berman's son Tosh (incidentally, the U.S. publisher of Guy Debord's account of his relationship with his publisher). The full story is too complicated to go into here; I'm remembering details I'd forgotten as I write. The short version: He wasn't crazy about the unauthorized usage, but there were no 'intellectual property' threats of any sort -- he's of course aware that his dad's work itself depended on appropriation. We now seem to be on perfectly good terms, when I run into him at Book Soup (which he manages). Anyway, it's possible but unlikely that he was approached ahead of time about Turn -- I wonder if anyone will draw it to his attention.
The plumbing is fixed but the ants are back.
