A Gilded Planet

I Blood, blood, innumerable arms All of the people yielding at once to the force of these feral stones Brain? a blowfish, a squash, but knotted with blood that threads round after beating is done Not the bloody days of books and years I fascinate the man on the street, 'Of course,' he says 'You curved your body to be played and trounced' II Once in awhile we'll idealize It is what it is, we don't get it yet We reshape to fit an identity cast in agony III At the bargaining table Be artless and demure Let your arms quake  If we don't get what I want IV Blood, blood, innumerate terms The views of another found lifeless out of many one brain chasing itself through open doors and windows just as we were about to close them The paroxysm had begun. 'Give in, give in.' 'We're doing this for you' I said with one voice 'I can't bear disobedience' His face black as ...

Over at Digby's place, David Atkins has argued against any cuts to Medicare or Medicaid as part of a laughably unnecessary "grand bargain" meant to avoid the largely mythological "fiscal cliff," by referring to increasingly depressed wages of working people in the U.S. But in a recent post , he repeated a myth about how globalization has factored into the downward pressure on the livelihood of the vast majority of Americans: Now, it's certainly true that we live in a brave new world that structurally advantages the wealthy: labor is global and expendable, jobs are increasingly mechanized, the world is flattened, vertical integration and economies of scale are commonplace. But as Hacker and Pierson persuasively argue , this is also a product of intentional public policy, including (as I have frequently argued) an obsession with  inflating assets over wages . Atkins correctly points out that a major part of the story that explains the stagnation of m...

John Carter 2012.  132 minutes. USA. Directed by Andrew Stanton . Watchdate: 3/10/2012. John Carter was a lot of fun. It's much more engaging than Avatar even if the visual spectacle of its world isn't nearly as fantastic. The Disney marketing wizards really screwed up, their advertisements seemed weirdly confused and even ashamed of the movie's story. The movie is just a really well-executed adaptation of the precursor to Star Wars , Avatar , Indiana Jones and all those kinds of adventures. That shouldn't be hard to market. Instead, they removed everything distinctive about the title and went as generic as possible with the trailers. Dumb move, Disney. Dumb move. But anyway, leaving aside this obsession with money that often consumes mainstream "entertainment journalism" (if you can think of a more odious term please don't let me know), I probably would have suggested cutting or refashioning the opening scene but other than that I have no compla...

Many political junkies are fond of a modest proposal for electoral reform known as the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact , often referred to as NPV for short. NPV evolved out of consternation at the result of the 2000 Presidential Election, in which George W. Bush famously won the presidency even though he didn't receive the most votes due to an archaic feature of our democracy known as the Electoral College along with a friendly ruling from the Supreme Court. It would be admirable to institute the NPV and move to a system in which getting the most votes guarantees a victory in the presidential election. But why stop with the presidency? Last week, Democrats won more votes than Republicans in the elections for the House of Representatives, yet Republicans will maintain a solid majority in the "people's house." And this is not an uncommon result: in 1996, the same thing happened. Democrats won the House elections in terms of votes but were still in the minor...

It's that Eissales was ambushed by abstract warriors in the dead of a dog on a foray (Yilmaz told me it was a visit to kin) Their plan was to sell Eissales to his mortal enemies (for a price, of course) Stripped down to the body, tied with leather and stuck in tents (with only a greenhorn guard idling outside) Eissales chewed through the straps Knocked over the guard with a two-finger jab between his head Stole the knife and scalped the youth and cut off one of the boy's legs (all in what Yilmaz related to me as "one swift movement") After escaping into the Dark Forest Eissales survived on the leg 'til he reached the cabin of his strapping partner (a sojourney that would have been two hundred miles in those years)

17.4.22 Today confusion and cynicism are at a high level. There is little mention of the Manufacturing Warrens. A great deal of neurotic chatter is focused on the rumor of further shortages. 1. Today the reaction is probably darker than at any time since the Collapse. 2. There are signs of desperation appearing, for the first time a definite sense among some quite ordinary people that now we cannot possibly recover. As always, many people are trying to be optimistic. They express their faith in an ultimate redemption. Only a few still express that it will be possible to emerge from recent events back to a higher level. 3. It is on the whole assumed by most people that the network backbone will fall. There is doubt and anxiety as to whether or not this would indicate the total breakdown of communication. As usual, there is a lack of opinion leadership from above to guide the people in this grave affair. 4. The Manufacturing Warrens are scarcely mentioned today. Nearly everyone is so ...

Alice 1988.  84 minutes. Czechoslovakia. Directed by Jan  Švankmajer . Watchdate: 5/7/2012. The sound effects in this movie might be the most unpleasant noises I've ever experienced. Even if I leave that aside, along with the annoying device of showing Alice's lips speaking "he said, she said" every few moments for the entire running time, I still find that I like this movie better in theory than in practice. Sure, there's some inspired bits of stop motion animation, sure, this story deserves a dark, fucked up interpretation like what Svankmajer attempted, but it's faint praise to say this is much more interesting than the mostly disastrous Tim Burton version. I did absolutely love when Alice crawled into the desk though.

"Comic opera." - Lancaster Dodd From left to right: Whining White Pieces of Shit Behold the outrage generated by that most outlandish breed of reactionary, the Whining White Piece of Shit: When I'm at the Wal-mart or grocery story I typically pay with my debit card. On the pad it comes up, "EBT, Debit, Credit, Cash." I make it a point to say loudly to the check-out clerk, "EBT, what is that for?" She inevitably says, "it's government assistance." I respond, "Oh, you mean welfare? Great. I work for a living. I'm paying for my food with my own hard-earned dollars. And other people get their food for free." And I look around with disgust, making sure others in line have heard me. In response to President Obama's reelection yesterday, the Whining White Piece of Shit quoted above plans to boycott any business that accepts food stamps among other measures intending to show his absolute contempt for all Obama support...

Larry McMurty recently  auctioned off a sizable portion of his collection of 450,000 books , most of which resided in Booked Up, the book shop he owns in Archer City, Texas. This has inspired me to confess to my increasingly unstable obsession with book stores in general, and finding all the good ones in the San Francisco Bay Area in particular. This syndrome is closely related to a condition known as book lust . The motherlode book shop in the Bay Area, so far as I've encountered thus far, is Green Apple Books on Clement Street in the Richmond District of San Francisco. I finally made it over to Green Apple over the summer and was quite overwhelmed by their vast and varied collection. I felt some anguish when I had to leave before being able to explore their second floor. Green Apple is not quite as historically or culturally important as City Lights Books in the North Beach neighborhood of San Francisco, but somehow it feels even better to browse Green Apple's seemingl...

FETHIYE 5/30/12 - We are on a dolmuş, a small, cramped, hot little rocket to Kayakoyu. Kayakoyu is a Greek village in southern Turkey that was abandoned after a 1923 "population exchange." We are with Brandon, an Asian-Australian fellow who had been living in London for the last couple of years. Shortly after Turkey, he's taking a 5 month trip to South America. He's been out of university for at least five years now, so it sounds like it's possible to do such things after starting a career. Kayakoyu, Turkey Sitting in the ruins of this 17th century Greek Orthodox High Church, I am reminded of the pictures I have seen of the bombed ruins of World War II era Europe. Yet this city wasn't bombed, rather its population was deported almost ninety years ago. Since then, nature has taken its toll. Staggering.