Trick question.

Anyways, who’s gonna win this dance-fight:

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/new-approach-to-china.html

Thanks to my new-found love of news-aggregating websites, I am among the millions exposed to an excess of information on a daily basis. As a response to over-stimulation and the need for idealist delusion, I refined the mind through some books by chance and intent this year. Here is a list of the top five that changed my thoughts for 2009; I recommend them to everyone and anyone:

5) Dreams From My Father, by Barack Obama. Yeah, I know, this is a very political book. I mean, he is the president, and he wrote it as an emerging politician. Still, I could hardly believe this thinker came to be the most powerful person in the world. His understanding of deeper concepts like ‘power’ and ‘justice’ never felt cliched or deceitful. His narrative, unlike most other political memoirs, was honest, his self-awareness professorial, not presidential. Rather than opening with blanket statements about race relations in the United States, he traces his own path through thought and time to emerge as one who has a very passionate idea of an America that can be rehabilitated. It is also an untarnished mirror to his current decision-making.

4) Pluralism, by William Connolly. This is a very academic text from the renowned political theorist so I won’t pretend to have read it cover to cover. But several essays help untangle religion and politics. First, Connolly addresses what he calls the ‘double constitution’ of religions and existential faiths: the universalizing content of beliefs, and their parochial reality in public life. After skillfully illuminating this dilemma, he asks: how do we make sense of this unavoidable contradiction and what does it mean for politics? Ultimately, Connolly makes a distinction between pluralism and relativism. Whereas relativism tolerates absolute ambiguity in terms of what is or can be a good, pluralism is a political system that protects against any total or universalizing claim that seeks to displace other competing beliefs. Basically he puts pluralism and politics before any singular belief. Also, Connolly points out that secularism has the effect of strengthening reactionary religious fervor: the more religion feels threatened or excluded as a legitimate form of existential beliefs, the more it will continue to rear its head politically. A great book for anyone looking to interrogate the contemporary concept of ‘secularism.’

3) Faces at the Bottom of the Well, Derrick Bell. This book is really devastating for optimists, so I recommend reading this when it is sunny outside. As the subtitle ‘The Permanence of Racism’ suggests, the famous founder of critical race theory walks back and forth between abandoning absolute emancipation for African Americans, and still being slightly optimistic about what small steps can be taken for racial equity. After all, if he really felt all was lost, he probably would not continue to publish books. Still, this forced me to reconsider my thoughts on race and class in contemporary America and the never-ending legacy that history continues to leave. I consider Bell’s book an important read in this last regard because it highlights how the alleged end of racial history serves to justify the status quo. As Bell makes quite clear, this is simply not the case; no one on the receiving end has the luxury of a clean slate.

2.5) Does Ethics Have a Chance in a World of Consumers?, by Zygmunt Bauman. I loved this guy’s earlier book, Liquid Modernity, and his latest fails to disappoint. A social theorist/philosopher/phenomenologist, his arguments are unconventional, cutting-edge, and eloquent. If you’ve read my earlier entries, this book details his concept of ‘pointillist time,’ a nice little metaphor for how consumer life operates. Yeah, I still buy shit that I don’t need. But, I like this idea because the point is to understand what, if any, metaphysical assumption are made in the act of living for objects and against people. While my critical sensibilities have no doubt dulled post-college, I don’t think I will be shaking Bauman’s beliefs from my system anytime soon. My only comment is that he comes off as really preacher-y and overly speculative, likely due to his old age and ability to publish pretty much anytime he puts pen to paper.

2) Regulating Aversion, by Wendy Brown. I am a bit partial to this book because she signed my copy, but her chapter on the discourse of ‘tolerance’ explodes mainstream politics and foreign policy in a way that makes Noam Chomsky look like a toddler. Her framework allows for an effective way to call out states and agents for moralistic bullshit; she says one cannot divorce the language of tolerance from its political deployment, which often facilitates a way to control and smother cultural differences. She also talks about the increasing ‘culturalization of politics, ‘ whereby an individual is lumped in with an ethnic/cultural identity, regardless of other dimensions to his or her constitution; groups deemed ‘more cultural’ are immediately classified as inferior to the ‘less cultural’ mainstream. What I liked the most is her urge for a greater degree of self-awareness towards our own, American politics. Definitely pomo, but not too much.

1) Sources of the Self, Charles Taylor. Not to be confused with the genocidaire, Canada’s foremost political theorist and father of ‘communitarianism’ is a damn impressive writer. It’s a history of ethical thought through a very specific lens. I can’t quite tell if it is Aristotelian, mostly because I don’t know what that term truly entails. But, he takes the reader on a historical journey through the notion of the ‘self’ as a moral agent. While not always explicit, he makes the point that the West has refined and inherited moral language through a long series of debating philosophers, atheist and religious. The upshot is that lots of the contemporary moral debates come from these competing claims to the ‘good.’ So, instead of bickering about what is the right way to justify morals (religion, science, etc.) we (my community) should take stock of what we understand to be ‘goods,’ even ‘hyper-goods.’ Laying waste to procedural ethics, he actually envisions a multicultural society where different goods can coexist alongside one another, where any hypergood like human rights can be realized through intuitions already embedded in language. It is long, and this blog is short. But very worthwhile.

Iraqis number five (4) and they are mute (means no speaking). He is (no) They are (no no no) WE are from Baghdad.  My Haitians numbers one (say like won) and she isn’t (is not) mute(,) but she was two (2) months (in the) past. She (can) speaks Creole and French. Her from is Port-au-Prince. My Burmese is mute (say like miyewt) but is breaking out of (her, not his) giggle shell to spell a home country in BURMA. Her from is Burma. My Congolese is one (1) and she is mute. Today is was the first day of class again. And I say like ask a question with the auxiliary form of ‘do’ before you(r country) do that.

I saw Ong Bak 2 in theaters recently. Yeah, Tony Jaa is still as badass as he has ever been. Less fist-fighting, more weapons, but still some pretty amazing action sequences. Tony takes on waves of bad guys, and uses his environment a lot more to kill pretty much everyone in his path again. One fight takes place on top of a freaking elephant. The story sucks, or at least it was irrelevant. I won’t try and pretend like I went to see this movie for an anthropological exercise in understanding Thai history/culture. The bad guys are straight up bad guys, and Tony is a vengeful do-gooder with demons in his path and anger in his eyes. I highly recommend it for anyone looking to see some absolute expertise in Muay Thai, Kung Fu, Drunken Monkey, Emo Elephant, and whatever other obscure martial arts Ong Bak employs.

Well-written, and politically incisive.

As for the book, a fitting read for Veteran’s Week was Jon Krakauer’s Where Men Win Glory. It’s the story of Pat Tillman, a Homer-like figure in Krakauer’s eyes who died tragically in a fratricidal firefight in Afghanistan. Much of the story details the narrative of this football player turned political football, and how the government covered up Tillman’s death as friendly fire to raise public morale for their bullshit. To be honest, Afghanistan looks pretty pretty screwed, regardless of American presence, and has been for a considerable amount of time given the U.S.-Soviet proxy war fought there. Krakauer’s book hammered this point home pretty hard. Anyways, I am a bit weary to over-analyze the subtle nostalgia Krakauer creates for masculine, Spartan-esque warfighting, so I will just say that the book left me angry and sad at the seemingly hopeless situation over there. And while I disagree with the governmental conduct of war, in both Iraq and Afghanistan, this work develops a deep appreciation for the sacrificing life as a soldier in uncertain times and uncertain places.

Dude, your wife's craaaazy

If anyone is looking for some disturbing images that deal with psychotherapy, sex(uality), and the unconscious, I would recommend Lars von Trier’s Anti-Christ. It was the first movie I can remember in which I had to actually turn my head away for certain scenes because they were so graphic. And I thought Miike’s Audition was a love story the first time I watched it. I don’t know much about technique, but it’s obvious this guy is well-versed. Disgusted, several older people behind me walked out of the theater. But, I sat peering into this man’s twisted universe for the entire movie, never bored. To throw a few other adjectives at it: beautiful naturescapes and slow-mo shots, mind-warping degeneration of characters. I won’t give away any more.

Cool cover art to boot

On a far less Eff-ed note, I would recommend Alex Garland’s novella Coma for a more lax, coma-induced speculation on mental matters. I picked it up at a used bookstore a little while ago, and found it to be a fast, enjoyable read. And it doesn’t make you never want to see a naked body again just to get the author’s ideas in play. Kind of like Eco’s Mysterious Flame – both mix images with word salads (literally) to create the sensation of memory- without the pretension nor the desire to build an entire school of thought off of a single novel. From the same guy who wrote 28 Days Later.

Friday night I stayed up and out until 7 am (details not forthcoming), so after a wild rumpus, three hours of sleep, and a failed trip to a lecture on Faust and Hegel, I found myself off and running to the movies for the first time since summer. Excited and exhausted, I believed this would be a time to rethink my inner child as I fell into the lap of Spike Jones/Dave Eggers alleged masterpiece. What I found instead was more an overexaggerated promo for Xanax and less a reclaimed rendition of a cherished childhood book.

Granted I was cracked out, but the movie was depressing through and through. The filmmakers failed to make me at ease with Max’s brief moments of contentment. From the time he became king of a subconscious islet to the spat with Carol and his voyage back to the Real, I never felt comfort without tension. Rather than a celebration of the child world by exposing the contradictions of the adult one, this seemed more to validate despair and anxiety at all levels and layers of just being a kid.

Carol’s explosive personality is largely to blame, although it was an obvious choice as the emotional focal point of the film. But instead of balancing Carol’s mercurial rage with Judith’s drugged nonchalance or KW’s forgiveness, the flaws of living were heavily skewed towards stress, pain, anger, and despair. At one point I laughed to myself when KW told Max not to worry about Judith because she is ‘a downer’; KW needed to practice a little more self-criticism. She, and every other wild thing for that matter, were all being downers and on downers. The tone and pace of furry voices dragged maudlin language to new lows and slows, and I could barely sit there without thinking back on those childhood problems with friends and family, the inevitable sandbox politics from ages 3 to 15, in any positive light.

The problem here was that there not enough growth, not enough of ‘the sadness’ to be a positive force for self-reflection, spiritual contentment, and maturation. The characters on the screen teetered between a lonely, inexplicable child-world and an alienated adult one. The writer-director duo systematically whittled away the motif of fort-building, which struck a strong memory chord, into some primal shield a person needs when a friend is inexplicably torn away, rather than a moment in time that lasts through life’s social bullshit. Maybe one point of optimism was the film’s final shot, of Max embracing his mom. But the film’s anti-happiness had already trivialized their embrace’s longevity, and by the time it was over, I knew they were back in the sadness.

I am sure that was the point. It seems Dave Eggers and Spike Jones really don’t believe in a multiverse, where people can be and have wild things but also temper those wild things with memorable pleasures and non-thoughts like happiness and bliss. They think we can’t have a Real Pile without the anger, without the inability to permanently quash the fears that make us finite. But I could have used a little more light-heartedness. My memories of childhood don’t have to be wholly consumed by self-absorption and anxiety. For now, I am done with Dave Eggers. I’ll give Spike another shot.

I am not offended, I am lolcatz.

She backed out midway, somewhere around ankle, folding herself out of eyeshot from the warmth of our circle turned ellipse. I noticed she sat down for the rest of class, and stopped engaging our silly escapist activities. When we broke the group down into conversation questions about health and hygiene, she kept a distant face in lock. She was short, wearing a large dark overcoat covering what looked like a t-shirt with a banana. The banana was smiling and laughing. This woman could not smile or laugh.

After class, I asked my coworkers about her, about why she seemed so upset to be in class. I discovered she had depression, undiagnosed, and it was her passage from past life to present that would often choke her unannounced. This was a vagabond past of border crossing and five days of being locked in a hotel with no food or hope, a vagabond past of coyotes and desert walking with worn sandals and rye dirt cracking the leather of her underfeet. This was a vagabond past of barbed wire fences looking down and smiling and laughing that the this of our land remains the that of your land. There was no hokey pokey for her son who stood by her side at age five and smuggled his child self into the United States. In their dual journey across hell, he fasted for five days too. A noble little hunger strike for a child whose mom called him to a new life.

In Chicago, the woman and her son are professional clowns. They go to parties dressed in bright spandex and fluff and make people giggle with antics. They dance around and carve animal shapes out of rubber ballons, stretching them around their heads and hands in a wonder of onlookers. They sing and giggle in tandem characters, a charade for the entertained.

I wonder what kind of purpose laughter had for this woman and her son. After being locked in a room for so long where the walls close tighter and siphon ounce after ounce of life into dry desert air, laughter must have been the only inertia that could push time forward. As hunger beat down on them, they must have pretended to be clowns, who could step outside of themselves in that scorched hotel room and bend their lives like play balloons, across our rivers and around our walls.

Belated shout out to the Renegade Craft Fair in Wicker Park a couple weeks ago. Rainy weather and wind makes me want that sunshine back.