Tuesday, December 2, 2014

advocating the overthrow of the government is a crime overthrowing it is something else, it is sometimes called revolution but don't kid yourself: government is not where it's at





  • Ira the K of Yo La Tengo guest DJed yesterday afternoon on WFMU, played this excellent cover of my favorite Eno song. I still have a ticket available for this Friday's Yo La Tengo/Lambchop concert at 930. If you haven't already spoke up yet you probably won't speak up now, but speak up if you want it.
  • Keeping Kayfabe.
  • Empire on Trial: Forensic investigations have recently gained enormous appeal in popular culture through TV shows like CSI. But this is a forensic gaze that only seeks to solve crimes recognized as such by the state, thereby celebrating state power and its apparatuses of surveillance. Weizman and his colleagues, in contrast, propose to reverse the forensic gaze and turn it into “a counter-hegemonic practice able to invert the relation between individuals and states, to challenge and resist state and corporate violence and the tyranny of their truth”. Forensis reveals that this tyranny is built on “well-constructed lies” and draws on a “forensic architecture” to expose them, understanding architecture not in a narrow disciplinary sense but as a “mode of interpretation” sensitive, as Weizman put it, to “the ever-changing relations between people and things, mediated by spaces and structures across multiple scales.
  • Police lie.
  • NYRB house Democrat reviews 2014 midterm, 2016 prospects, says exactly what you can predict he will say.
  • For the past 72 hours a googlebot has been scrubbing this blog from front to back. What the fuck?
  • Encrypted Fills.
  • For the past 96 hours a microsoft-bing bot has been scrubbing this blog from back to front. What the fuck?
  • On trolls and anonymitySooner or later, we may also be forced to end Internet anonymity, or at least to ensure that every online persona is linked back to a real person: Anyone who writes online should be as responsible for his words as if he were speaking them aloud. I know there are arguments in favor of anonymity, but too many people now abuse the privilege. Human rights, including the right to freedom of expression, should belong to real human beings, and not to anonymous trolls.
  • See, this is another example how power crushes the majority of the decent based on the actions of the asshole few. 
  • The equation of the prose poem.
  • Hey, there are some new joints in the blogrolls, please check them out as they float to the top.
  • Whose boots these are I think I know. Jameson riffs on Van Gogh's boots in Postmodernism too.
  • Helen DeWitt.
  • Denise Levertov.
  • Juana Molina.
  • Yes, I play this Delgados song and this Delgados song all the time, but the below or the below the poem are my favorites too:








REVOLUTIONARY LETTER #9

Diane di Prima

advocating
the overthrow of government is a crime
overthrowing it is something else
altogether, it is sometimes called
revolution
but don’t kid yourself: government
is not where it’s at: it’s only
a good place to start:
1. kill head of Dow Chemical
2. destroy plant
3. MAKE IT UNPROFITABLE FOR THEM to build again.
i.e., destroy the concept of money
as we know it, get rid of interest,
savings, inheritance
(Pound’s money, as dated coupons that come in the mail
to everyone, and are void in 30 days
is still a good idea)
or, let’s start with no money at all and invent it
if we need it
or, mimeograph it and everyone
print as much as they want
and see what happens
//
declare a moratorium on debt
the Continental Congress did
‘on all debts public and private’
& no one ‘owns’ the land
it can be held
for use, no man holding more
than he can work, himself and family working
//
let no one work for another
except for love, and what you make above your needs be given to the tribe
a Common-Wealth
//
None of us knows the answers, think about
these things.
The day will come when we have to know

the answers.



7 comments:

  1. syn on juana (talked with her a little in the past ) ..isn't that the name of the fellow /syn' .. that had a long run ,very, in the comments on io z for few days , on io z ,with others going at him in a tease , the justin follwing/wing following up a little in a' odd , what's up with the link here blac' j. sub way ?

    ReplyDelete
  2. I would so take you up on your ticket offer were I but a thousand miles, give or take, proximal.

    So nice to see the return of at least some lip-service to kayfabe.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I would prefer to interpret the Slate piece thusly: Anne Applebaum is a villager idiot, whose writing cannot and should not be taken seriously, ever.
    As to bots, remind me to explain the Internetz to you sometime, but for now, I'd just prefer for you to think that Microsoft and Google are out to get you.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Re: Applebaum - well yes, isn't that what I said?

      I've always been scrubbed but never before with such through if robotic determination. Just curious why now? As some have pointed out - me, mostly - I write the same post everyday: what's different now? That said, some people have recently started pinging me out from facebook accounts and hits have gone up. My guess is that got the bots attention. Or it was the MST3K Thanksgiving post and Crow and Servo are fucking with me.

      Delete
    2. My guess is that it's related to the time of the month, by which I really don't mean anything snarky.

      And my bad. I missed that you were both in training for your next Olympic medal in conclusions-leaping (more medals than Michael Phelps, you, and without the need for rehab! Well done!) and crediting Anne Applebaum with any power (those black helicopters are actually from the Polish Foreign Ministry).

      Truly, my bad. I will strive to improve the sofistikashun of my thoughts.

      Delete
    3. Applebaum is Power's organ-grinder is all.

      Yes, I don't think the bots represent anything more sinister than normal - I'd just never seen such sustained thoroughness, thought I'd ask why. I'm nobody, after all.

      Delete
    4. Ah. Good catch. Had forgotten that there was a bit about it in the Jameson text. I almost added an "et al" onto that sentence, recalling that others had chimed in on the topic; just couldn't remember who. (It's been a while.)

      Delete