Collective security for surety

Last year, I wrote a piece called On the Future of Small Blogs... which turned out to be fairly prescient. Blogs like mine are closing shop right and left, even as the number of feverishly-self-involved Tumblr-blogs, which I admit I don't really get, expand exponentially as we speak.

Even though I don't get Tumblr, I do understand the reason for it (see link to last year's meanderings). It is a totally ungoverned, anonymous, proudly-mean place, like Reddit. When there are too many 'gated communities'--as the late genius JG Ballard often reminded us--people become hungry for chaos. And the stronger the gates, the more toxic and damaging the chaos will be.

The internet keeps splitting into more and more subcategories, subdynasties and sparkly-new social media sites ... I am reminded of the end of THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING MAN, in which our beleaguered protagonist realizes he is not going to die after all, but will instead get smaller and smaller and tinier and tinier... until he is microscopic. But he will still be here. I feel the exactly same way as a blogger.

The last line of the movie is every old-school bloggers cry into the night: I... STILL... EXIST!!!!

~*~

Lately I've been enjoying the fabulous Dubatomic Particles on Sunday nights.

Sharing the words of the prophet. He was right, you know.

Rat Race - Bob Marley and the Wailers



When you think is peace and safety:
A sudden destruction

Collective security for surety
Don't forget your history
Know your destiny

In the abundance of water
The fool is thirsty

~*~

PS: Speaking of small blogs, linking my friend Virgil's new blog. Wish him your best!

Yearly round-up: books, movies, etc

At left, DVD cover, George Harrison: Living in the Material World





I just loooooved Martin Scorsese's documentary about George Harrison, my favorite Beatle, incredible talent and just plain awesome individual. George introduced that old-time religion to the West, and for that, he got more karma points than you and I put together. The mind boggles.

I appreciated the film's emphasis on George's spiritual journey, which was given all proper and due respect; possibly for the first time I can recall. In most accounts, it's always been some variation of "ohhhhh there's goes dreamy George off with his Indian gurus again..."

What does it mean when someone has more money, fame, attention, sex, etc than most of us can contemplate in our wildest fantasies... and yet, still feels that something is missing? George's life is an enduring testament to spirituality-as-direct-experience, that I have always found very moving and intense.

"GEORGE!!!!!!!" -- screams, squeals; Daisy momentarily reverts to childhood.

~*~

After viewing the somewhat-interesting Another Earth, I watched the second movie from screenwriter-actress Brit Marling, titled The Sound of My Voice. Great premise, as with Another Earth... but my grandmother's phrase, too clever by half, comes to mind. The movie tries to have its cake and eat it too... the ending is something of a cheat, in my humble opinion... although very clever (too clever by half). Describing the movie further, is to jeopardize the story and the ending, although lots of people have.

Both of these indie movies are similar in that they are 1) weird, and 2) ponderous and thoughtful. But more than that, one gets the impression that everybody sat around brainstorming, figured out the boffo endings first and then WORKED BACKWARD. Both movies seem to work up to the 'surprise' endings, stacking the deck in ways that seem overly obvious in retrospect.

One of the strengths of truly surprising, beloved and inventive film-endings, is NOT stacking the deck, and hitting you upside the head all at once: BAM. Think: The Sixth Sense, Fight Club. You DID NOT see it coming, or only glimmers of it, and those delicious glimmers made you sufficiently curious to continue watching. In addition, these movies were not ALL ABOUT the endings, and in fact, people continue to talk about both movies without even referencing the endings. In short, you do not have to love the endings to enjoy both films, and plenty of people disliked the endings who nonetheless greatly enjoyed the movies as a whole.

I don't think that is possible for either Another Earth or The Sound of My Voice, in which one continues watching just to see their respective endings. The actual content of these movies tends to disappear into some kind of cinematic vortex, and the END is the whole thing. The tension is ratcheted up so high, one is watching just to get to the resolution of the grand puzzle; this viewer-disposition is likely due to the fact that they imagined the ending first, and worked backwards, filling in the blanks.

To briefly summarize, The Sound of My Voice is about a cult leader who claims to be from the future. Is she? Well? And you keep watching to find out. Do you actually find out? That is the pertinent question: I think it cheats and you don't, or do, or sorta-kinda both. Huh?

If this plot-line interests you, check it out. Apparently, this was originally planned as the first film in a trilogy, and I'd be lying to you if I said I wouldn't watch the sequels. In fact, the film makes sense as one of a trilogy, in the sense that it might not (in that case) be a total cheat, but I was still a little pissed. Excuse me, but that's 85 minutes I'd like to have back, if you are not going to answer the fucking question. Hmph! (And at this point, it is not clear that they will even be able to make the sequels.)

Hello, lovely Ms Marling and company, this is what SERIAL TELEVISION is for. Maybe you should go to HBO or somebody like that next time, instead of seeking all that attention at Sundance.

~*~

I was sufficiently blown away by Damien Echols' amazing prison memoir, "Life After Death", that I did most of a podcast about it. I certainly cannot do it justice. If I had to recommend one book for the year, this would be it.

How does one keep from losing one's mind and/or being eaten up with fury, while spending 18 years (half his life) on Arkansas's Death Row, for something you didn't do? Another deeply spiritual testimony. His repeated use of the word "magickal" (for those things that transcend everyday-life and take us elsewhere), is just perfect, and aptly conjures up that momentary experience for us. If not for the magickal, some of us would shrivel up and die... and Damien was forced to cultivate the magickal in small, seemingly-inconsequential things (correspondence and pencil-sketches) and almost-forgotten memories, such as old mud puddles and songs he hadn't heard in decades.

A lesser-soul would have been completely destroyed. Many men (and yes, they are men) are completely destroyed, and he tells us all about that, too.

An uncompromising, poetic, breathtaking account. Go read it. Now.

~*~

Ayn Rand and the World She Made was some great reading, providing us with a detailed year-by-year account of Rand's life. Biographer Anne Heller obviously admired Rand, and that gives us the kind of intensity an Objectivist would deliver. The sexual abuse of starry-eyed-young-acolyte turned self-esteem-theorist Nathaniel Branden, is offered here in bright primary colors, so all you fellow scandal-mongers take note. (PS: And who knew that the former Nathan Blumenthal changed his name to one that had Rand's name embedded within? The book is full of GREAT GOSSIPY DETAILS like that.)

I came away convinced that Rand was a lifelong amphetamine-addict, which explained many of the awful extremes in her personality, particularly her ongoing personal paranoia. The fact that she surrounded herself with idolizing sycophants means that nobody challenged this facet of her character; to challenge her was to be consigned to the outer darkness, and few of her Objectivist cult/crew dared to go there.

And therefore, like so many other famous people we can name, she just got worse.

The book succeeded in making me compassionate for Rand, both as an intelligent woman who was often not taken seriously and/or understood, and as a drug addict who did not realize what was happening to her.

This doesn't mean she wasn't a horrific and selfish person; she was. But now I understand why.

And speaking of karma, Rand has plenty to answer for. Her influence on our government and economy has been widespread and damaging, starting with her acolyte Alan Greenspan getting his bullshit ideas taken seriously (while Rand herself could not) and getting himself repeatedly hired and promoted as some kind of economic genius. You can easily clock the deep influence of Rand on the Republican Party, including the fact that one of her fanboys recently ran for Vice President.

If you are interested in a thoroughly fascinating individual, a cultural touchstone and influential life--check out the Heller biography. Of all the books I have read about Ayn Rand (several), this one is the most comprehensive, descriptive and fair.

~*~

Sybil Exposed: The Extraordinary Story Behind the Famous Multiple Personality Case by Debbie Nathan, is indeed extraordinary. If you are a baby-boomer who read the popular SYBIL by Flora Rheta Schreiber in the 70s (and it seems that everyone did) and/or watched the TV-movie starring Sally Field (ditto), THIS IS FOR YOU.

Nathan's investigative account is about the genesis of the book; the psychiatric fraud/fakery and therapeutic-abuse propagated for the sake of money (and goodness, it poured in like water!). One fascinating subplot includes the details of how various psychological 'syndromes' are popularized and then streak through the population like wildfire. (Remember how "multiple personality disorder" became all the rage, with respectable stories on "60 Minutes" and so on?) Hey, when there is big profit to be made, people always materialize to make it. When the student is ready, the teacher will appear... and we might add, when the disease is invented, the doctor/cure will likewise appear, right on cue. For a fee, of course.

I am often reticent to talk about my ongoing skepticism concerning various hip diagnoses going around: bipolar disorder, ADHD, ADD, Aspergers, and so forth and so on. Everybody is depressed all of a sudden. And I see commercials for drugs, drugs, drugs, and dollar-signs are all over them.

This book renewed my skepticism, and made me feel okay about it. Psychobabble and hip mental-states/Dx go through recognizable phases and turn into fads (especially if there is profit at stake)... and somehow (just like religion) psychology always manages to renew itself and stay above the fray it creates. These charlatans never have to answer for themselves, and thus, they never do.

This is one such amazing tale. Highly recommended.

~*~

Other good books I enjoyed this year--

[] We Are Anonymous: Inside the Hacker World of LulzSec, Anonymous, and the Global Cyber Insurgency by Parmy Olsen, was really wonderful. I picked it up and did not put it down; all deep-internet (as in DEEP SPACE) junkies will enjoy it immensely.

[] As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh: Diaries 1964-1980 by Susan Sontag (which I first mentioned here) has continued to shape my thoughts, months later.

One incisive quote concerning the change-in-consciousness wrought by television (and of course, even more accurate in the internet-era), which I scribbled down:

As the images multiply, the capacity to respond diminishes.

Yes.

[] Inside Scientology by Janet Reitman, is well worth your time. Short version: it's even worse than you think it is.

[] Millennium People, one of the last books by my favorite author, JG Ballard, which has only recently been published in the USA. WE MISS YOU, JAMES GRAHAM BALLARD!. Another excellent, related volume is JG Ballard: Conversations edited by V Vale, which has also been quoted here on DEAD AIR, at some length.

I return to it at regular intervals, to keep my sanity.

~*~

I am currently reading Teachings from the Medicine Buddha Retreat by Kyabje Lama Zopa Rinpoche, which is some rather dense and heavy reading... the kind of density that makes you read and re-read the same few pages, until you are sure you get it. And even then, you probably won't get it.

This encyclical contains lots of what the Baptists would call vain repetitions. The litany-reading, rosary-reciting ex-Catholic in me grimaces at still more verbiage that I must repeat. (sigh) Seriously, is there NO END to it?

Then again, it got George Harrison through. He faced his death on his own terms, unafraid. And it got Damien Echols through 18 years in solitary confinement.

And who could ask for more?

Getting to know you

Its been awhile since I participated in a fun meme, and so here we go! These are "Getting to Know You" Questions from the Blogging from A to Z Challenge.

1. What is the most daring thing you've done?

Hitchhiking to New York City from Ohio, twice. And back! Also hitchhiked out of Candlestick Park after the Rolling Stones concert, and considering the acidheads who picked me up, that was rather daring, as well.

Speaking of which, I've also done my fair share of LSD, and probably your share, too.

2. What is your favourite article of clothing?

I love my vintage 'Doris Day coats' from the 50s, lovingly salvaged from estate sales, attics and such, but of course, I rarely get a chance to wear them. One is far too fragile to wear (although I did wear it for one season); the stitching holding the lining together has nearly turned to dust, and it really does need to be properly restored... the other is bright red and doesn't go with anything, but it's nice during the holidays.

But it is rarely cold enough in SC to wear these kinds of old-style heavy coats.

3. What is your favourite monster?

I love all the vampires in THE HUNGER (David Bowie, Catherine Deneuve and Susan Sarandon), and Jeff Goldblum in THE FLY.

4. If you had to dress up as your favourite literary character, who would it be?

Hmm, not sure. I guess I could be one of the women from JG Ballard's COCAINE NIGHTS, but who could afford those designer-duds? I'll 'dress' as one of those characters after they become addicted to morphine, and just be naked in the back of a limo, perpetually confused.

5. What is your favourite fairy tale, urban legend or nursery rhyme:

I am terribly fond of all GREAT conspiracy theories, particularly the most outrageous and ridiculous of our time. I like the 911-truthers a lot, that is some highly-entertaining stuff, and there appears to be no end to it, regardless of the dedicated-debunkers.

Of course, as an ex-Yippie, I know all the JFK-assassination theories by heart, and I like to concentrate on Jack Ruby's role, as regular readers know. I also believe Roman Polanski was tipped off before Charlie's girls dropped by for a visit... that sudden trip to France has always been suspect to me. (I believe the worst of Polanski, always, and he has never disappointed.)

My favorite conspiracy theory these days is CHEMTRAILS: those "tracks" in the sky that are rendering us sterile. I urge you to study and learn and read all about it! I used to hear this story every day (for about 3 yrs) when I sold supplements, and then the overall popularity of the theory seemed to fade a bit. But I am still all about the CHEMTRAILS and I love hearing people talk seriously about them.

I also love Wilhelm Reich's ORGONE theory... not a conspiracy theory, but amazing and wonderful and certainly worth mentioning here.

6. What is a cause near and dear to your heart?

I am a lifelong activist, so there are many... right now, I want to continue the work Occupy Wall Street (and Occupy movements throughout the country) have started, particularly the strengthening of local networks (especially here in conservative SC) and progressive communities. Occupy and its various accompanying social networks have given us the tools, and we must stay connected and involved. KEEPING PEOPLE'S SPIRITS UP (in the face of unbridled right-wing attacks) is crucial right now, and that is something I am concentrating on too.

When people are in jeopardy, I tend to put animal rights on the back-burner, but animal rights ARE near and dear to my heart, also.

7. What is the strangest item you've used as a bookmark?

I famously destroyed a book by using a leaky-pen as a bookmark! YIGH!

8. Do you have any nicknames? What are they and how did you earn them?

Daisy IS my nickname, which I took from my late grandmother.

9. Name one habit you want to change in yourself?

Various food addictions that wax and wane. When I tackle them, I veer off into ORTHOREXIA, and when I don't, I can easily chow down on Reese's Easter eggs, one right after the other. No healthy and sane in-between seems possible for me in the area of food. I am usually in one mode or another (or on my way to one or the other). I chalk this up to a lifetime of evilll dieting, as well as having gone without food (unwillingly) for long periods as a child.

"Feast or famine" is something I have deeply internalized, unfortunately. (sigh)

10. Tell us something interesting or shocking about yourself.

Is there anything I haven't fessed up to on this blog? If I haven't, rest assured, I HAVE fessed up somewhere and I expect somebody will re-print it one of these days. ;)

I once dressed up as the antichrist for Halloween, with a bright "666" etched on my forehead in red-and-black paint, with upside-down crosses on both cheeks; swathed in black, with a black shawl. People took my photo at various parties, all night long, and if I ever run for office or get famous as a talk-radio maven, I expect to see these dreaded antichrist photos re-surface and posted coast-to-coast. (I guess I will have to plead drug abuse, which is true enough.)


Thanks to my beloved Deadhead friend Jojo, for this meme. THANKS JOJO!

Hello America

I filed for an unemployment-benefits extension today, which I did not know was even possible. I learned of my extension-eligibility from a very helpful state employee at the Greenville-area One-Stop center yesterday.

And so, I girded my loins and prepared for today's long bureaucratic process at the unemployment office, where I have not been since November.

I am always somewhat obsessed with bean-counting the minute I enter the unemployment office. It is just so glaringly obvious. Today, about 50 people, give or take (very hard to count precisely, since people are constantly entering and exiting)... with only three white men in attendance, and they all appeared to be over 40. The rest of us, women of all colors and ages, and black men, all ages.

As I said, interesting.

Ever since I started counting, the results have been more or less the same.

My question: Are the young white men really staying employed en masse during this economic crisis, or are they too proud to apply for unemployment?

~*~

At left: Interior of Greenville Mall, around the time I worked there. (from Deadmalls.com)




The One-Stop center is in an old shopping mall, McAlister Square, that has been utterly transformed--you might say the building was recycled. I used to take my daughter there when she was a child; I recall St Patrick's Day and Halloween events that she loved. And now, when I walk in, it is still jarring to me that it is no longer a shopping mall. But I am so glad they managed to find some good purpose for it.

There is a website that I find fascinating, Deadmalls.com, since I am one of those people who actually worries about the proliferation of big-box stores and malls. I often wonder WHAT ON EARTH we will ever do with them.

Ever since I read JG Ballard's Hello America, I've wondered what these entities will be in 100-200 years from now. I imagine the enormous suburban office buildings chopped up into tiny apartments; I see the big-box stores turned into homeless shelters for hundreds of people... or possibly turned into hospitals, schools, or condos. What else could you do with them? Simply knock them down when they are no longer needed?

Greenville Mall, where I worked for awhile and had one of my fender-benders, is now gone; torn down some time ago. It was once the big deal around here, and now it is history. I think of it as a symbol of the fleeting nature of fads and fashion and why it's futile to try to be cool. (Buddhist aside: Empty malls that once attracted the moneyed young, filled to overflowing with hustle and bustle, are a good subject for anicca [impermanence] meditation.)

Cool lasts for a week or a day, and then something else is cool. I always tell people, I was totally cool for about an hour in the late 70s, during which time I visited both Max's and CBGB's. But the hour passed, and I descended back into my usual uncoolness.

It was a nice hour while it lasted.

Dead Air Church: Deity meeting, part one

Left: Buddha statue at DIVINE CONNECTION, Black Mountain, NC.





SETTING: The various major deities, saints, and other characters in Daisy's personal theology/head/belief system/etc, have decided that they should have a meeting to discuss possible layoffs and related employment issues stemming from Daisy's ongoing theological crisis.

~*~



Our Head Deity, The Blessed Mother, calls the meeting to order, and first says the Amina Christi.

Immediately, there is dissension. St Francis asks if it is appropriate, under the circumstances. Buddha rolls his eyes, but says nothing.

Blessed Mother (herein known as Maria): I beg your pardon!? (narrows eyes) *I* am in charge here! I'll say whichever prayer I please, thanks.

St Gertrude: (smugly) You'd better SHUT UP, Francis!

Francis (seemingly allowed to do anything he wants) starts singing Grateful Dead songs: Just a box of raaaainnn, I don't know who put it there...

As if summoned, Jerry Garcia enters the meeting-place, and nods at Maria and Buddha, "Hey!" he says, good-naturedly.

St Gertrude: (eyeing Jerry suspiciously) And when did YOU get out of purgatory? I don't remember signing the transfer order!

Jerry shrugs, lights joint, passes it to St Francis, who inhales deeply. They shake hands in some odd familiar way; they are obviously old friends.

St Francis: Look, me and St Stephen sprung Jerry, okay? It was a long while back and I didn't see any reason to argue with you about it.

St Gertrude: (eyes flash disturbingly) I see. (glares at the two of them) I should have known! (mutters to herself, obviously angry)

Jerry passes joint to St Gertrude, who declines with a flourish: None for ME, danke schön.

St Francis (to Jerry): She runs purgatory, which is a really shitty job. She is always in a bad mood. (pauses, exhales) They needed a German to do it.

Jerry: Well, that makes sense.

Maria: CALLING THE MEETING TO ORDER, lets settle down, peeps! (cheerfully ignores pot smoke) Is anyone else coming? Buddha? Any of your fellas? Who is this---Shanti--what?

Shantideva enters the room, does not look at anyone but Buddha.

Buddha: My friend from the 8th century, Shantideva!

The meeting-room inhabitants look Shantideva up and down, in a mix of curiosity and skepticism.

St Francis: So why is HE the big shit all of a sudden?

Maria: (sighs) I only work here.

Buddha: He has answers to her questions, Francis. Now, come on, you know the drill. You were the big shit once. Daisy still adores you, so learn to share. (rolls eyes again) Honestly, I expected more from you, Francis.

St Francis: (chastened and defensive) I just wondered. (addresses Maria) And how come you always get to stay in charge, no matter what shake-ups happen in management?

Maria: Daisy and I go way back, further than the rest of you. (primly) And besides that, I always ANSWER HER PROMPTLY. (looks at Shantideva) And in... may I say it?... understandable language!

Shantideva: (stoically) She is ready to move on. She needs more than the Christian tradition can provide.

Maria: Oh, well, aren't WE special?!? (sniffs in superior fashion) Actually, I am also the High Priestess of the Tarot, Saraswati, Guanyin, Isis, Spider Grandmother and closely related to Maya, Buddha's mother; as you can see, our names are almost the same. Maria is merely my most recent, Latin name. I cover a LOT of ground. (to Buddha) Isn't that right, Siddhartha?

Buddha: (sighs) I'm afraid so.

Shantideva: (thoughtful) Oh well, in that case... I had no idea. (smiles at Maria, then bows deeply)

Maria smiles beneficently.


At this juncture, a conservative-appearing, slightly-spooked New Englander with a bow-tie enters, looks around nervously and sits, uncomfortably.

Maria: HOWARD! I am so glad to see you! It's been ages.

Howard: Oh well, you know how it is... (mumbles)

St Francis: Oh, not HIM again. He gives me the major creeps.

Jerry: Who is that guy?

Maria introduces Howard Phillips Lovecraft to the group. Buddha keeps his distance. Shantideva appears fascinated.

Howard: Sorry to be late. (takes out notepad) What did I miss?

St Francis: Where is JG Ballard? Now, him, I could get along with!

St Gertrude: Ballard will be in purgatory for QUITE A WHILE! (sneers for emphasis) It will take longer than a couple of Earth-years to get him out of there!

Howard suddenly recognizes St Gertrude, lets out a scared squeak.

St Gertrude: You disgusting, ungrateful, repellent, sick-ass little WORM! (torrent of Teutonic invective follows)

Maria: Gertie, careful, he served his time! Go easy on him! (unrecognizable cuss words, probably Middle German, flow unbidden from the mouth of St Gertrude) Gertie! Easy!

St Gertrude stands up, dramatically: You know, this is serious business! We may be out of a job, here! THOSE TWO! (points accusingly at Buddha and Shantideva) They are going to mess up OUR JOBS! They are DISPLACING US!

St Francis: Nah, not me, my job is safe. Like Maria says, me and Daisy go way back. Remember that time I called in that miracle and told her that her kid was safe? That was great magic, no? (chuckles proudly) She told everybody about it.

Maria: (indulgently) Yes, Francis, we know... you and Daisy have talked about it hundreds of times...

St Francis: Well, it was some of my BEST WORK.

Jerry: (nods vigorously) The really good part was when Daisy's customer asked her about the prayer of St Francis, so Daisy KNEW the miracle was straight from YOU ... dude! That was some awesome shit! It was like the icing on the cake of the miracle, just in case there was ANY doubt. (Jerry high-fives St Francis) Freaking awesome! (takes out second joint, lights it, passes joint to St Francis)

St Francis beams in satisfaction: Yeah, that last part was a nice touch. Daisy appreciates that stuff. (inhales deeply, passes to Howard, who pauses... then, looking fearfully at St Gertrude, inhales and coughs)

St Gertrude, glaring at Howard: You are responsible for most of Daisy's nihilism, you know! You and Ballard! I intend to SQUEEZE Ballard for that.

Howard pales, gulps, visibly quivers, brushes invisible dust off his black suit.

Jerry: (smiles beatifically from cannabis intake) Lighten up, Gertie!

St Gertrude: (livid) SHUT UP! (points at Jerry) YOU are the reason she picked up THAT--- (points at joint) after abstaining for 23 years! You should be ashamed of yourself!

Jerry: Me? What? I just play music, okay?

St Gertrude sputters in righteous indignation, once again lapsing into Middle German. James Dean enters, dressed exactly as he was when he struck oil in GIANT.

Shantideva: Wow, cool. I had no idea HE was gonna be here.

James Dean: How's it going? (waves at Buddha) Wow, its been awhile!

Buddha: Hasn't it? (the two embrace warmly)

And finally, St Jude and Elizabeth Taylor enter; Liz gives note to Maria from Jimi Hendrix, explaining that he couldn't make it. Liz immediately asks if there is caviar.

Shantideva: (visibly shaken) I thought this was a VEGAN meeting?

Liz: Ohhh, sorry! (giggles) No cheese either?! But DAISY--?!

Maria: Yes, Liz, I know... Daisy loves cheese, but we are being polite for the sake of Shantideva.

St Francis: (rolling eyes heavenward) Who is THE BIG SHIT with Daisy right now.

Liz (covers mouth in her famous naughty-little-girl manner, notably used to excellent effect in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf): Uh-oh! Somebody is jealous! (giggles again) Is there any... wait, no alcohol, right?

All meeting participants shake their heads in unison. St Gertrude is suddenly indignant again and snaps at Elizabeth: I can't believe you don't KNOW this stuff!

Liz: Excuse me, ladies, but I go to a lot of these things, you know? Just like Jerry does. (waves at Jerry) It's hard to keep up.

St Gertrude: You should have stayed in purgatory LONGER, but like HIM (points at Jerry), you had friends in high places to spring you early. (glares at Liz)

Liz: (winks at Gertrude) Deal with it, sister! (sits beside St Jude, who appears to be an old friend) I paid my dues!

St Jude: Yea, O dearest Gertrude, verily I say unto you, she hath paid the ransom.

St Gertrude: Oh so now you are going to go all King James on my ass?

Maria: ORDER PLEASE! Let's try to get along!

St Gertrude: That's easy to say when your job isn't in jeopardy!

Buddha: Oh--stop being so histrionic, Gertie. That melodrama might work on those desperate burning souls in purgatory, er, uh, I mean samsara, but it doesn't go over so well with the rest of us.

Howard nods emphatically.

Liz: Purgatory is a DUMP, I couldn't WAIT to get out of there.

James Dean: I'd have to agree with you on that.

Liz: Jimmy! (squeals delightedly) Haven't seen you since we filmed GIANT! (the two hug and start a long catch-up session, as the other deities start chatting with each other.)

Maria sighs, and realizes this meeting has been mostly a waste. Too much socializing.

AND she will have to manage Gertrude better next time.

~*~

And so, our very first DEAD AIR Deity meeting gets off to a rocky start. Thus, we will have to revisit our deities at a later date.

This post was inspired in part by the good Doctor Jay's post. Thanks for inspiring me to write about these things, instead of simply wringing my hands over them.

This is the way the world ends

At left: Street preacher at Bele Chere unequivocally informs us we are destined to hell, as the fellow at right advertises "Sexy Man Dance $2"... and do I have to tell you what kind of huge wad of bills he had by the end of the day? Priceless entertainment, my friends. (More of my Bele Chere photos HERE.)



Yes, I have numerous excellent excuses for why it has taken me two weeks to update. ((hangs head in shame))

But damn, I am not sure why I should feel guilty for not updating a blog that it appears no one reads any more (according to Sitemeter, et. al.) Lately, whenever I go to the library, I make sure to give my own blog a hit, that's how pathetic the situation is. Beyond that, I have been thoroughly confused regarding which writing goes where.

For example: I have been chastised many times here on DEAD AIR that ____ (whatever it is I wrote) does not belong on this blog, but on a (pick one) 1) Livejournal 2) Tumblr 3) Dreamwidth 4) Facebook, Twitter or MySpace (etc etc etc). It does? And who decided that? I am afraid I simply do not understand the protocol, as usual.

Roughly speaking, the guidelines are that "personal" stuff is not supposed to be on a blog, unless you have a "personal blog"... but then they get upset with personal bloggers when they blog about politics or religion. If you have a "political blog"--then you are not supposed to write about "personal" issues. Further, if you have a quarrel with someone within Blogdonia, you are supposed to go to Tumblr or one of those, to air your differences. (Got all that?)

As I said, I am unaware of who wrote all these nosy-parker rules, and when. But they have left me confused, wondering if I am doing it wrong (again) and so forth. Even after four years of blogging, I become hesitant, but of course (as you see!), not for long. But I absolutely hate the fact that all of these dumbass, informal "rules" have wormed their way into my head. Bah.

And so, the personal and impersonal will continue to be all mished-mashed together on DEAD AIR. Sorry about that, rule-keepers and protocol-enforcers of Blogdonia!

~*~

I devoured Margaret Atwood's "The Year of the Flood" (2009) in one sitting. I did not realize this novel was contemporaneous with the totally-fabulous "Oryx and Crake" (2003)--I had mistakenly believed it was a sequel. And I refuse to read sequels to end-of-the-world tales... either it's the end or it isn't. I have always found "Oryx and Crake" to be the most believable and realistic version of the End of Days--and I have read a parcel of em.

Yes, this is the way the world ends.

I loved "The Year of the Flood"--the apocalypse as told from another group within the same time-frame and using the same motifs (and some of the same characters) as "Oryx and Crake." The religious cult in the novel, God's Gardeners, is the best fictional religious cult I've ever come across; I would most assuredly be joining if I was there. The sermons and hymns in the book are fantastic. Atwood's idea that in the future, rather than the Litany of the Saints, we will have litanies of extinct species, is one that will stay with me forever.

Margaret Atwood is a genius, straight up. If she wrote a bunch of these books, I would read them all; she needs to set up shop and do a whole series, like Narnia or something. It would turn a lot of us into junkies, and she would get very rich.

Okay, but what, you sensibly ask, does this have to do with not updating your blog?

Well, because as with JG Ballard, I started thinking seriously about the end of the world and how it would happen. And then, the Tea Party began (continued?) their major economic fuckery, and it was suddenly as if the book was being acted out right in front of me, or at least the earliest stages. Are we going to end up privatizing the police forces and prisons? How can we pay for government if these "budget cuts" keep continuing? Will a huge multinational corporation, Manchurian Global or one of those, run the world at last? Will we put the worst criminals into something called "Painball" (possibly a nod to ROLLERBALL), organizing them into gangs and providing them with laser-like weapons and then broadcasting their deaths on TV? (And WHY shouldn't capital punishment be profitable also?)

In short, the President has surrendered on the Debt Ceiling issue, putting all of our futures at risk... this is crucial not just to us oldsters who are rapidly approaching decrepitude, but to the future of our environment as well. Nero fiddles, as The Tea Party continues to mouth their well-calculated fibs. My favorite article-title in this debacle, hands down, quoted Missouri's Democratic congressman Rep. Emanuel Cleaver: The Debt Ceiling Deal: 'A Sugar-Coated Satan Sandwich'

You just can't get any more to the point than that, now can you?

I dunno about yall, but I am thinking of starting a God's Gardeners parish, or cell, or whatever they are going to be called.

We won't give pause until the blood is flowing

Photo of the greatest writer and philosopher of the 20th century, JG Ballard, from The Northern Light.







I have been trying to articulate what I dislike about mass-market holidays. In particular, the mass market holiday that Christmas has become.

And I find myself going to my late guru to explain; may his soul rest in peace. I miss him like he was my own father. Maybe he was, in a way.

From V. Vale's quite invaluable J.G. Ballard: Conversations, some excerpts that say it far better than I can:

People use mental formulas that they've learned from TV. Even in ordinary conversation, if you're talking to the mechanic at the garage about whether you need new tires for your car, you and he probably talk in a way that his equivalent thirty years ago would never have done. You use--not catch phrases, but verbal formulas. Suddenly you realize you're hearing echoes of some public-information, accident-prevention commercial. It's uncanny.

[...] What's interesting [about Reality TV shows like Big Brother] is that almost nothing happens. There's a certain amount of bitching and gossip and sitting around the supper table talking in a sort of half-hearted way, but there's no drama. Nonetheless, the audiences are riveted. And they're riveted by very similar programs where TV producers put people on desert islands and see how they survive; a series called Survivor did just that. I think this reflects a tremendous hunger among people for "reality"--for ordinary reality. It's very difficult to find the "real," because the environment is totally manufactured.

Even one's own home is a kind of anthology of advertisers, manufacturers, motifs, and presentation techniques. There's nothing "natural" about one's home these days. The furnishings, the fabrics, the furniture, the appliances, the TV, and all the electronic equipment--we're living inside commercials. I think people realize this, and they're desperate for reality, which partly explains the surge in popularity of "adventure" holidays. People think that by living on some mountainside in a tent and being frozen to death by freezing rain, they're somehow discovering reality, but of course that's just another fiction dreamed up by a TV producer. And there's no escape.

Holidays like Halloween and Christmas are spectacles that people engage in, because they are on TV. Working retail, I consider a certain type of existential-shopping (wherein people don't really know what they are "looking" for) part of this Ballardian phenomenon.

There are so many fabulous quotes in this book, I will be blogging lots of them. For instance, about the disparity between rich and poor:

In England [this conversation was recorded in 2003], we're getting unprecedented disparities of wealth. The people who run our biggest corporations have begun to affect life in London primarily by buying up property, and the old middle class (doctors, civil servants, teachers, salaried professionals) can no longer afford to live in central London. Now there are whole areas of central London given over to the rich. I've often thought that in due course all these very rich financiers are going to leave very large sums of money to their children. Then you'll get a sort of New Leisure Class who never work, but have huge spending power--like the ancien regime in France. Supposedly, the same thing is happening in Manhattan: the middle class has been forced out...

V. Vale replies that the same thing is happening in San Francisco; New York and San Francisco are the two most expensive cities in the USA. I would add that it's even true in lil ole Greenville; the 'centers' of towns/cities are now priced out of range for the actual natives of those towns/cities. Most of the people moving into the new high-priced condos in downtown Greenville, for instance, come from someplace else, often from Europe or the coasts. The rich colonizing the cities and leaving the outlying suburbs to the poor and the rabble, is the exact reverse of what happened in the 60s, when the rich moved to the suburbs and left the inner-cities to rot. Now that they crave authenticity, they have moved back to cities in droves. However, they still aren't getting the authenticity they crave, since the only people who can afford to live in cities are rich, affluent people who are all just like them.

In the cities, a bizarre new class-based uniformity has taken hold, while in my suburban apartment building, every race and age and nationality and economic status is well-represented.

Authenticity has been priced out of the market.

Speaking of which, here is Ballard on the future of sex:

[The] time is going to come when no young woman will regard penetrative penis-and-vagina sex as real sex, because it isn't deviant enough to be considered "real sex." These days, magazines for teenagers sold openly on newsstands have headlines like, "Interested in S&M sex? Junior Cosmo explains all you need to know." And this is a magazine that's going to be bought and read by 14-year-olds. The period of conventional, penetrative, penis/vagina sex will be over by the time you're about 15, and then you'll move into the area of conceptualized sex, S&M, and whatever--and that's what will be regarded as real sex. To me, this seems like a daunting thought.

Ballard on the future of reading:

People don't use libraries as much as they used to. One thing I miss terribly--I don't know if the same thing applied in America, but over here in the Forties and Fifties when I first came to England, what I loved were the second-hand bookshops. Every small town had a second-hand bookshop, which was constantly being stocked up... when someone died, the family took their books to the second-hand bookshop and got sixpence each for them. There were a lot of unserious materials, popular novels and the like...but there were a lot of very serious books. You know, one serious collector in a lifetime could produce enough books to keep a second-hand bookstore open for a year.

I did most of my reading in second-hand bookshops. I remember when I was living in London somewhere I used a local one. Also, serendipity came into it [...] You made accidental discoveries all the time. And this sort of refreshed one. You were constantly being surprised, constantly making discoveries. All this is gone now, of course. There can't be more than a half a dozen used bookshops in the whole of West London, if any.

What we've got now is a new kind of literacy. We've got people who are expert at reading the labels on products, expert at reading instructional manuals that come with a new kind of vacuum cleaner, or a computer or what have you. They're expert at that kind of reading, but not at anything else. Not with a more traditional book.

I don't know if the internet has affected that. I have very high hopes for the internet, which I think could be the sort of--if we're entering a New Dark Age, the internet could help to keep the lights on!

I'll be revisiting these Conversations often, which Ballard would be pleased to know, I found by browsing bookstores in the serendipitous manner he has described so well.

I miss you, man.

~*~

Ballard would have understood this song/video, which is where we get today's blog-post title. Caution, may trigger, may offend, watch out, yada yada.

(Not for the faint of heart or the oversensitive. Really.)

Vicarious - Tool



Note: Well, damn, there is some argument over exactly the lyrics I was going to quote. I always heard:

We all feed on tragedy
It's the virtue of empire

Other listeners report: "It's the virtual vampire," and still others, "like blood to a vampire." (Does anyone know the official lyrics?)

I guess you can still understand the concept, though.

Put another way:

Blue Jello Daze: A Back-to-School story of the suburbs

We wanted our young Delusional Precious to have the very best education in the county, although we could not afford to send her to a private school. Besides that, we didn't really think private schools were a good idea from an egalitarian point of view. So, we sent her to the"best" school in the county, which of course, turned out to be the "richest" of the public schools. The volunteer ratios were nearly 2-1; unemployed moms to students.

My first lesson in the new school was what this actually meant.

During test week on the West side (poor side) of Greenville County, we got a flier telling us the kids would be taking all of the official, federal standardized tests. Okay, that's nice. Typically, I didn't think much of it and just made sure Delusional Precious (herein referred to as DP) got a good night's sleep. However, in the days after testing was over, DP complained that the old lunchroom where the tests were taken (in a building that has since been condemned, BTW) was by turns drafty and too-hot. South Carolina Autumn sunlight (blinding) was shining right in her eyes at one point, and she couldn't concentrate. At another juncture, she had to pee, and there wasn't enough time alotted. She apologized for the tests, and said she knew she had not done her best.

And then, DP was tested at her NEW SCHOOL; the East side (rich) school with air conditioning, tinted windows and carpeting. No sunlight in the eyes there, no sirree Bob! In fact, between each test, there were copious bathroom breaks and stretching exercises, supervised and conducted by legions of stay-at-home moms. They did rousing cheers, as in sports ("WE'RE #1!") and practically engaged in Cultural Revolution-style calisthenics, right there at their desks. The kids were also plied with healthy snacks and juices between the tests, to keep their blood-sugar levels high. (Who paid for all this? Who do you think? The legions of volunteers, of course.) They were STOKED, and yeah, their tests scores were phenomenal. DP's scores were about 20 points higher. I was astounded!

I joked to people that my kid's IQ had been raised one standard deviation just by moving to the East side.

I should have known, this meant LOTS MORE WORK for me, but I really hadn't thought it through. But after awhile, I was carting her everywhere for all kinds of specialized activities. I was footing the bill for all manner of pricey field trips; some of which I could not afford (i.e. trips to Quebec) and she had to sit out. We were out of our league, financially, but I hoped this meant she was getting a better education.

The assigned school projects were enormous. A mere child could never execute stuff so intricate; they seemed to require people with engineering or graphic-design degrees. In addition, it seemed understood that the parents would certainly chip in... or maybe do the whole thing. Certainly, working mothers could never find the time to work on these gargantuan undertakings.

I found reasonable ways to cut time-expenditures on these projects, but discovered that this would be judged (by teachers) as "cutting corners" and would negatively influence DP's grade. The projects had to LOOK like they had been duly fussed over, and some seemed worthy of the Martha Stewart Living Christmas edition. When I visited the school to drop off the (increasingly huge) projects, I would see what the other parents had done. DP and I would exchange dumbfounded looks: Jesus H Christ. I would never be upset with her for whatever grades she was given on these things--realizing that a good grade in such a situation was simply impossible to obtain. But of course, she wanted the good grades too, and felt that she was being cheated and unfairly penalized (which she was) since her mother could not take whole days off work to execute these complicated, long-ass projects.

I realized, once and for all, that we had made a big mistake on the day I call Blue Jello Day. It was my moment of truth. We do not belong here. I realized, moving to this side of town for the sake of a better education, was a huge error. What were we thinking?

It was the Blue Jello.

The project was a Native American project. The kids picked a tribe and made something that was emblematic of that tribe. I was relieved that this was an easy one. I actually duplicated something I had done as a child: a warrior's necklace. I regret to say I now forget the tribe(s), but most tribal warriors wore these, rather as charm bracelets are worn in the present day. They collected pieces of arrowheads, colorful beads, animal bones, shells, etc and displayed them, as military medals or girl scout badges might be displayed. So, we made one based on a photo in Encyclopedia Brittanica, and I was happy with it. I figured it might at least get a B.

On this auspicious day, there was MORE THAN ONE PROJECT DUE (do you believe?), so there I am, hauling in some humongous hand-made poster about the habitat of the North American Lynx on the same day I brought in the necklace.

And, taking up about half the room, was an "Indian village"--on what seemed to be a very large, burlap-covered ping-pong table. There were little teepees and little people. PEOPLE. They were all dressed appropriately, I noticed. Little tiny braids on the little tiny people. Little tiny papooses on the backs of the little tiny wooden women... and...

There it was. In the middle of the village, well, what do you suppose was there? What WAS in the middle, usually? Historical accuracy! Yes, a POND. A very nice POND was etched out of the burlap, and it was .... made of blue jello.

Stunned, I actually reached out and touched the jello. My suburban Epiphany!

What the fuck am I doing here?!?

I pointed at the blue jello, and attempted to say something to Delusional Precious. Speechless. She looked at it and rolled her eyes. Even though she was only in the 5th or 6th grade, she exclaimed "Shit!" and I did not chastise her, because she had correctly spoken my thoughts aloud.

Yeah, shit!

Did the mom come and set this whole thing up IN THE CLASS? Well, I guess she had to, huh? How else could she get all the little people lined up just so? She must have brought the blue jello in some tupperware and dished it out, after carefully placing the burlap and teepees and tiny wooden Indians and teensy stuffed buffaloes (really) and teensy arrows made of painted toothpicks all sticking out of the miniature stuffed buffalo. I just stared, and as I often do, I wondered what JG Ballard would say.

Okay, that's it. I can NOT compete with this.

And it was then that I stopped trying to. I did not worry that my kid could not keep up with these people. I realized, well, we made a mistake, but we will attempt to deal. And we dealt with it pretty badly, actually, and things did not always go as planned. But after I saw the Blue Jello, I had a point of reference.

Every year, when I hear all the moms worry aloud about their kids going back to school, I think of my Blue Jello Daze. And frankly? I would not repeat those years for ANYTHING.

My love, good thoughts and novenas are with all of you feminist, progressive moms, as you attempt to navigate this territory, keep your sanity, and yet do the right thing for your babies.

Namaste, and know that I love you. :)

Library Thing is cool

I love my new LIBRARY THING widget! (see lower right of blog) I'm afraid I got very obsessive, and easily composed my 200-book list with nary a second thought. They allow listings of 200 books per free account; you can pay a premium to list your entire library. (PS: That's another thing that happens when you get old--I figure I've read thousands and thousands of books by now.)

You can match the widget to your blog colors and craft it to show however-many-books-you-want per page load. (Any more than 9 at a time seems to make the covers virtually microscopic, and that's no fun.) What's neat about LIBRARY THING is, if you are poor, you can change the book-display to a nicer cover, and no one will know you read it second-hand for 10 cents. Then again, some of the new covers are shit, and you can also keep the old ones if you like them better. (I also chose at least one cover of a foreign translation, since I thought it was prettier and showed up better on the widget.)

I didn't know if I should list books that changed my life, or just books I love since I eat up certain scandals like ice cream, or what. So, I went in several directions at once, and tried to make my list fairly representative. However, some aspects of my identity got decidedly short shrift; I think there is only ONE vegetarian book listed ((guilt)) and that is probably because it's the official cookbook of Michael Stipe's restaurant. Since this is ostensibly a feminist blog, I listed several now-forgotten Second-wave feminist books that I think are terrific, as well as important. I tried hard to keep the celebrity bios to a minimum, but sometimes, you simply must include certain people.

Library Thing also lists other members with your books in their catalogues. I have already noticed there is significant overlap in various cult-followings, particularly those of Philip K. Dick, William Gibson and J.G. Ballard (RIP, dearest one!) and I find this fascinating; I am trying to figure out why and how these writers' sensibilities are similar...or are the READERS the people who are similar, and our attraction to these writers ideas is about US, not them?

Some books have a mere 6 followers*, and some, of course, have followers numbering in the thousands. I have not yet reviewed books or participated in any of the conversations, but I hope to do so at some point. Right now, mere escapism. (I haven't had as much time to myself since one of my co-workers decided to walk off the job and I have taken up the slack.)

It's lots of fun to browse old books in musty second-hand bookstores and public libraries, and it's fun online, too.

~*~

*Nan Goldin's I'll be your mirror is also reviewed here.

Carl Edwards goes airborne at Talladega

Dramatic crash at Talladega this weekend, which I just saw:

Seven spectators at the Talladega Superspeedway in Alabama sustained non-life threatening injuries after a car being driven by Carl Edwards went airborne, hurling debris into the stands.

According to track medical director Bobby Lewis, two of the injured were flown by helicopter to nearby hospitals, one with an apparent broken jaw and lacerations on her face. Reports on the other were not available, but neither were believed to be seriously hurt.

The wreck happened just as drivers were approaching the final lap of the Talladega 500 on Sunday. The car driven by Edwards reportedly clipped a another racer, causing Edwards’ car to spin out of control, careening into a safety fence. Edwards was not injured, however, his car was destroyed, as were sections of the safety fence.

Here is the wreck from several different vantage points:




*This post is lovingly dedicated to JG Ballard, RIP again, my friend. We miss you already.

J.G. Ballard 1930-2009

The greatest living writer of our time has passed.

There is nothing else to say.

And now he belongs to the ages.

~*~

Ballardian contains many pertinent links remembering Ballard; Simon Sellars writes:

Ballard articulates clearly to me the implications of living in an age of total consumerism, of blanket surveillance, of enslavement designed as mass entertainment. But he also speaks to me of resistance through irony, immersion, ambivalence, imagination -- of remixing, recycling, remaking, remodelling.

His work embraces dystopian scenarios, including the archetypal non-space often characterised as a deadening feature of late capitalism. But this is not simply a call for nihilism. Ballard's characters are not disengaged from their world. Rather, they embody a sense of resistance that derives from full immersion, a therapeutic confrontation with the powers of darkness, whereby merging with dystopian alienation negates its power. This is predicated on concurrency: Ballard's writing turns objectivity into subjectivity, opens up gaps where there is room for new subjects. His scenarios are what I term 'affirmative dystopias', neither straight utopia nor straight dystopia, but an occupant of the interstitial space between them, perpetual oscillation between the poles – the 'yes or no of the borderzone', to use a phrase from his work.

Here, dystopia becomes the real utopia, and utopian ideals, typically represented as a stifling of the imagination, the true dystopia. He reinhabits the frame to present a clearinghouse in which corporate and national governance is overthrown and regoverned as a 'state of mind'.

To read and to understand Ballard, then, is to be gloriously, finally liberated.

To James Graham Ballard: thank you.

Amen.

From Iain Sinclair:

“Everything that everybody else was bored by or appalled by, he was excited by. He wasn’t really interested in English literary parties and kept himself outside that.

“He was bored by the heritage of Central London and, unlike other writers, never wanted to talk about what he was writing. He preferred to talk about ideas, or some weird news cuttings he had brought along.

“Living out in Shepperton for so long, he was one of the first to understand that the psychosis of suburbia was a fascinating thing to pursue.

“He loved the edges of cities: shopping complexes, motorways and airports. He was very taken up with Watford because of its multi-storey car parks.

“Where other people were terrified by the consumerist culture he saw it as exciting, something he could manipulate, shredding it and making his own world out of it.”

One of my first addictive tastes of Ballard was The Crystal World, one of the quartet of disaster novels described here by Tim Martin:

From the peerless science fiction of his stories in the Sixties, to the later dystopian satires on middle-class England, Ballard's fictions circled relentlessly around the most troublesome of modern preoccupations: tribalism, self-immolation, the fiction of belonging. Assisted by a peculiarly unliterary style that was heavy on aphorism and jargon and light on character and dialogue, Ballard created a literary microcosm all his own: a place where everyday life is a nest of competing psychopathologies, where human dreams and desires are reflected in their physical environments and where the workings of the mind become indistinguishable from external reality.

Ballard's work seized upon the vocabulary of marketing and the media, mixing them with techniques learnt from surrealism to create a new kind of fiction. His first quartet of novels told the story of four apocalypses, as the Earth was variously reclaimed by air, water, drought and a strange creeping crystallisation. In each novel, the world's changed circumstances were mirrored in the mental landscapes of Ballard's small group of characters. These complicated, troubling works, which included The Drowned World and The Burning World, began the games of repetition and identity that would resurface in all Ballard's subsequent writing, as well as giving first proof of his uncanny capacity for prediction.

Surreal though the early novels undoubtedly were, they paled beside The Atrocity Exhibition, a collection of stories and fragments that may prove to be Ballard's most influential work. Ostensibly a fever-dream taking place in the mind of a deranged psychiatrist, this was a work of violent postmodernism, drawing on the war in Vietnam, the Zapruder film of the Kennedy assassination and the world of advertising to create a terrifying and uproarious new form of satire. Prescience was everywhere at work: he noted Ronald Reagan's habit of using "the smooth, teleprompter-perfect tones of the TV auto-salesman to project a political message that was absolutely the reverse of bland and reassuring", while a frightening comic piece about focus groups analysing the "optimum sex-deaths" of female celebrities in automobile accidents not only looked forward to his later novel Crash but ensured that the newspapers besieged Ballard for comment when Diana died.

More:

How JG Ballard cast his shadow right across the arts (Guardian)

JG Ballard remembered (Sameer Rahim, UK Telegraph)

J.G. Ballard, 'Empire of the Sun' Author, dies at 78 (Huffington Post)

J.G. Ballard (Scriptorium)

Odds and Sods - Sunday Matinee edition

Check out Neil Sinhababu's Six Reasons Why Clinton shouldn't be Obama's VP over at Cogitamus. Speaking personally, I thought a joint ticket was a pretty good idea until reading this. Hmm. (Great discussion, worth price of admission.)

Also: I need to calm down (formerly known as Vox Ex Machina) writes about Racism in the Voting Booth.

~*~

A Very Public Sociologist reports on the Gender, Law and Sexuality postgraduate symposium at Keele University (UK). Feminist researcher Wei Wei Cao's presentation was especially interesting:

Where bioethics are concerned feminism opposes legal obstacles placed in the way of women's access to (reproductive) medical services. But, Cao argued, there has been a tendency for feminism to place emphasis at different times on legal arguments, and at others ethical arguments, instead of a more coherent approach. This failure to combine them effectively can lead to the enshrining of progressive legal rights on paper, but in practice, serving to perpetuate the patriarchal structures they aimed to combat. For example, in Cao's native China, abortion law is very liberal. But far from enhancing women's reproductive rights, it has strengthened patriarchy's hold over women's fertility by "encouraging" the abortion of female foetuses, particularly in rural China. Taken with the one child policy this has resulted in there being somewhere in the region of 50-60 million more (mainly young) men than women.

And as we know, in the more liberal societies of the West, abortion is still taboo. Many women who undergo the procedure often have to deal with the difficulties of doing so in silence.

Therefore, Cao suggests that while the fight for reproductive autonomy remains a key feminist objective it needs to be more sensitive to women's experience.

~*~

As I have stated before, my favorite author and the greatest living genius of our age, JG Ballard, is very ill with late-stage cancer. BALLARDIAN offers us a Spring 2007 interview in an unnamed German scifi publication, titled “I really would not want to fuck George W. Bush!”: A Conversation with J. G. Ballard, conducted by Werner Fuchs and Sascha Mamczak:

Ballard: I’m very interested in social pathology, in what really drives us on in our everyday lives. My newest novel Kingdom Come raises the question of whether the consumer thinking of the present day might not at some point suddenly turn into fascism.

A very trenchant thesis.

Yes, but just take a look at what’s going on in these huge shopping malls. Evidently not much more than shopping is left for us. That and sport. That’s where we get our kicks, those are the new religions. I already believe that one of these days we could end up in a kind of leisure-time dictatorship.

But don’t events like the attacks of the 11th of September or the catastrophe in New Orleans remind people of the hard facts of reality?

I’m not so sure about that. I think it was difficult for many people to distinguish the picture of the collapsed World Trade Center from all the other images they know from Hollywood. It’s such a binary matter: real, unreal, real, unreal… And as for whether the current American administration finds itself brought down to reality or not, I very much doubt it. No, I think we live in dangerous times.

~*~

Left: A boy and his dog, outside the Greenville County Library yesterday.

From the Roanoke Times, comes another puppy mill conviction. And once again, no time will be served. (Why do they bother?)

This one is notable in that Carroll County (VA) animal rights activists intervened and alerted authorities:

Junior Horton, who operated Horton's Pups in Hillsville where more than 1,000 dogs were discovered in November by local authorities acting on a tip from the Virginia Partnership for Animal Welfare and Support, had been charged with 14 counts of animal cruelty, 25 counts of animal neglect and one count of failing to obtain a license tax for 125 unlicensed adult dogs.

700+ dogs were rescued. The Humane Society has called it the largest canine rescue operation in the USA.

Veterinarians working with the animal welfare advocates filed reports to the office of Carroll County Commonwealth's Attorney Gregory Goad. The charges accused Horton of depriving dogs of necessary food, drink, shelter or emergency veterinary treatment, and of failing to adequately house, feed, water, exercise or care for animals in his possession.

~*~

And finally, this just in--by way of Renegade Evolution. Pornographer Nina Hartley was hacked by some Islamic extremists. As reported by Ernest Greene on The Blog of Pro-Porn Activism (you've been duly warned as to content):

Nina.com was hacked by a couple of young guys in Turkey who characterize themselves as "Islamic cyber-warriors." They've hacked hundreds of other sites all over the world that they regard as suitable targets for their jihadist fury for whatever reasons and make no secret of their intention to go right on doing so. Indeed, for a couple of days after the fact, they were all over Turkish media trumpeting their great triumph at shutting down the site of the "Jew whore" Nina Hartley. And they got pretty far with that too, even making it onto the TV news back home. This will get them more views for their clumsy gangsta-rap vids on youtube (you can see their collection of laptops in the background as they bust their moves) and presumably sell more of the malware they peddle on their own site. Great heroes of the coming caliphate are these two twenty-nothings. May they be welcomed into paradise by those 72 virgins at the earliest possible date. Given the TNP's impatience with swaggering braggarts who like to stir up trouble, that date may come rather sooner than they expect.

But those of us over here are stuck with some troubling questions whatever fate may hold in store for these pathetic low-lifes. The unpleasant fact remains that the hate they feel for Nina and all she believes is shared in equal measure among right-wing Christian evangelicals, left-wing anti-porn feminists and their fellow Islamic fundamentalist fanatics all around the world. Even though these extremists all despise each other, they agree on something basic about human nature - their deep-seated distrust and dislike for it. Where they find common ground is in their abhorrence of personal freedom and individual liberty.

Indeed.

----------------
Listening to: The New Pornographers - Twin Cinema
via FoxyTunes