Monday, September 3, 2012

Our Lizard Boy Merely Flaunts Crusty Skin




  • Friday night there was a carnival on the main lawn of Illtophay, a Welcome Back! for the students, I've been thinking about carnival since: Bakhtin portrays carnival as an expression of a ‘second life’ of the people, against their subsumption in the dominant ideology. Ir replaces the false unity of the dominant system with a lived unity in contingency. It creates a zone in which new birth or emergence becomes possible, against the sterility of dominant norms (which in their tautology, cannot cretae the new). It also encourages the return of repressed creative energies. It is joyous in affirming that the norms, necessities and/or systems of the present are temporary, historically variable and relative, and one day will come to an end. Reading this in a contemporary way, we might say that carnival is expressive rather than instrumental. It involves the expression of latent aspects of humanity, direct contact among people (as opposed to alienation), and an eccentric refusal of social roles. It brings together groups and categories which are usually exclusive. Time and space are rearranged in ways which show their contingency and indissolubility. All of this is done in a mood of celebration and laughter.
  • That's today's bleggalgaze and explains all the twitter-based links below. Consider how much carnival is now digital and the implications, ISAs, protest and surveillance, etc....
  • Strike.
  • Shunning evil.
  • Malaise and third parties.
  • Failure to fetishize the troops or acknowledgment that Romney can't get to the right of Obama on bloodspilling? That's right, the or is an and.
  • Sasha, I think correctly, pointed out that O'Malley is running to be Hillary's VPOTUS in 2016, not POTUS as I suggested Sunday.
  • Metaphor Database. Sweet holyfuck. (h/t).
  • Careening.
  • Insomniac thoughts on blogging and twitter.
  • The Poet Laureate of twitter.
  • Four Points Hotel at BWI Airport is following me on twitter.
  • Twitter and free speech.
  • Hey! Why did you unfollow me on twitter?
  • Pentagon claims it's winning twitter war v Taliban.
  • Don't stop retweeting.
  • Download that Gilius Van Bergeijk deconstructing Schubert above.
  • Lordy, I get it. Strangest days of my life.
  • Houndmouth is a great band name.
  • Eisler.
  • Incredibly delicious Fleetwood Mac cover.
  • Two hours of Hal David songs. I didn't realize how often I heard these when I was a kid.
  • Someone else digs Kate Bush too.
  • Ear Candy from yesterday at work:





A WORD FROM THE FAT LADY

Gabrielle Calvocoressi

It isn't how we look up close
so much as in dreams.

Our giant is not so tall,
our lizard boy merely flaunts

crusty skin- not his fault
they keep him in a crate

and bathe him maybe once a week.
When folks scream or clutch their hair

and poke at us and glare and speak
of how we slithered up from Hell,

it is themselves they see:
the preacher with the farmer's girls

(his bulging eyes, their chicken legs)
or the mother lurching towards the sink,

a baby quivering in her gnarled
hands. Horror is the company

you keep when shades are drawn.
Evil does not reside in cages.


1 comment:

  1. Ronaldo, the human Tragedy, could use some carnival.

    Holy crap, that metaphor thing is another interwebs rabbit hole.

    ReplyDelete