Friday, September 29, 2006
Why all politcal debate is essentially null
Oh man, this is so depressing. Really, the title says it all: in the end everyone's bought into the ideology, despite any surface differences. :(
Wednesday, September 27, 2006
Jumpstyle!
Oh man this is so cool. Totally restores my faith in techno to keep pumping out wack shit well into the future. There's a whole bunch of videos of very euro kids doing this dance to crazy hardcore gabber on youtube, all under the tag "jumpstyle" which is apparently what the dance is called.
This one in particular is really neat, just the setting alone, in some random school yard/town square in either belgium or holland somewhere with a crowd of people around is kinda interesting. I also like how they're all just standing there calmly, with their hands in their pockets, and then all of a sudden the beat drops and they go MOTHERFUCKING KICK DANCE! and just fucking bust out the dancing like nothing else.
The music is great too, btw. But you knew I'd say that.
Monday, September 25, 2006
Idiots!
The White House, while reiterating its traditional stance of not commenting on classified reports, said The New York Times story "isn't representative of the complete document." [from here]
How the hell do you write that sentence without your brain exploding? I mean, had he completely forgotten about the first half of that sentence by the time he got to the second half??? Man, journalists are dumb.
Monday, September 18, 2006
OMG NOT SO LOLZ!!1
| S E V E R E Driving off the road: 254,419 Falling: 146,542 Accidental poisoning: 140,327 |
| H I G H Dying from work: 59,730 Walking down the street: 52,000. Accidentally drowning: 38,302 |
| E L E V A T E D Killed by the flu: 19,415 Dying from a hernia: 16,742 |
| G U A R D E D Accidental firing of a gun: 8,536 Electrocution: 5,171 |
| L O W Being shot by law enforcement: 3,949 Terrorism: 3147 Carbon monoxide in products: 1,554 |
Mortality rates, by category, in the US since 1995. From this Wired article. Where is the war on walking down the street?
Tuesday, September 12, 2006
NYC Unviels 9/11 Memorial Hole
Yesterday being 9/11 Part 5 obviously necessitated endless bullshit parades from the jackals that sit barking at us from our televisions. Amongst the jagged braying and "grief porn" money shots of teary-eyed mothers there were occasional moments of relative sanity and insight, but the oppressive weight of Remembrance and Mourning was hard to escape. It must truly be hard to have lost someone in 9/11, your grieving process forever hijacked by ideological narratives, dredged up every year because WE MUST NEVER FORGET those patriots who died that day, those worthy victims. Oh to have a son who died of AIDS, his death would be swept so nicely under the rug, referred to only obliquely through the occasional statistics-quoting talking head.
But this is getting away from what I wanted to talk about, which was Slavoj Zizek's article in the Guardian. Now firstly if you haven't read Zizek's piece written right after September 11, you really should get on it. It's a very insightful take on the symbolic importance of the attacks on the American psyche, and is quite readable despite the occasional forays into Theory-speak. In Zizek's article yesterday he continues his description of 9/11 in terms of Hollywood fantasies writ Real (and then consumed as fantasies once more). The one specific point he makes that really struck me though was one concerning the two recent 9/11-based movies United 93 and World Trade Center. These movies were praised upon release for their realism and lack of sensationalism. But, as Zizek explains:
This, it strikes me, is extremely true. How is it that a movie set in a "bombed high-rise building in Beirut" would inevitably be seen as making a political statement, yet a similarly-made movie about the WTC can be praised for being apolitical? Why are our victims depoliticized, but their's politicized? Sure, racism, yeah, but that seems too reductive an explanation. Similarly, Zizek's claim that the movies' abstention from direct message gives an implicit message of trust in one's government seems to miss the more interesting implications of his posed question.
Obviously the dead of 9/11 have been used extensively for political ends, yet somehow in making these movies they have been presented as just "normal" people who happen to get caught up in this catastrophe. Now I haven't seen these movies, but from what I've read it appears that by avoiding showing the perpetrators of these crimes, or spending time delving into their motivations, the movies effectively depoliticize the events. It can't be argued against that the events took place; however politics enters into the equation when you try to explain why they took place. Did the attackers have some legitimate grievances, and if so, who is responsible for these grievances? Could the attacks have been prevented had certain groups preformed their jobs more thoroughly? These are the two most contentious questions, I would argue, and would almost inevitably be encountered if some of the broader context of the attacks been covered.
In our hypothetical Beirut movie, we could similarly never show the American-made Israeli warplanes dropping bombs from above, never discuss why they were attacking, whether it was justified or not. But still, in showing the required scenes of crying parents and suffering children, the film's political critique would become unavoidable. Because we know who dropped the bombs causing this suffering, and we can't help but ask why we would ever create such suffering. Why does one movie provoke such a questioning reaction, the other not?
Five years on, the events of 9/11 no longer posses the traumatic punch that they once did, they have been fully assimilated into the ongoing storyline of "the war on terror," becoming, if not actually understood, at least absorbed into the culture. (The Real has returned into the symbolic order, Zizek would say, or at least something like that). The Western story about 9/11 heavily involves its victims, the poor innocents killed by savage terrorists. The Western story about the conflict in the Middle East (for example) largely has to do with what the Arabs have done to us (or our allies in Israel). A story about the victims of 9/11 fits nicely into the dominant narrative (or dare I say, discourse?) being espoused by our politicians and media. A story about the Lebanese victims (or Iraqi or Haitian or...) of American violence does not fit into the dominant discourse about these events.
The first thing that is almost always brought up in "proper" complaints about the war in Iraq is the number of American soldiers killed, when in fact this number is far FAR smaller than the number of Iraqi civilians killed (this goes the same for Vietnam too: oh it was a costly war for America was it?). If we are to go by the basic moral standard that the lives of innocents have the same value regardless of race, sex, religion or culture (as Chomsky so often reminds us), then surely the emphasis of these narratives are grossly skewed towards American lives. WTC and United 93 continue with this government-approved bias, while a hypothetical Beirut movie would uncomfortably puncture this communal fantasy, placing the victims of American violence on the same plane as American victims.
Most people, when confronted with the suffering of others will feel compassion regardless of race, religion, etc. Discussion of 9/11 is suffused with mention of its victims, so why would seeing a movie about its victims cause any confusion or questioning among the viewer? However in discussion of America's follies in the Middle East and elsewhere, mention of civilian victims is relegated to a code word: "collateral damage". The confusion one would feel, the questioning that would occur were you to see this collateral damage up close, if only in movie form, comes from the struggle to fit this information into a discourse that leaves this tragedy as a footnote for historians.
I suppose in the end it is just good old racism.
But this is getting away from what I wanted to talk about, which was Slavoj Zizek's article in the Guardian. Now firstly if you haven't read Zizek's piece written right after September 11, you really should get on it. It's a very insightful take on the symbolic importance of the attacks on the American psyche, and is quite readable despite the occasional forays into Theory-speak. In Zizek's article yesterday he continues his description of 9/11 in terms of Hollywood fantasies writ Real (and then consumed as fantasies once more). The one specific point he makes that really struck me though was one concerning the two recent 9/11-based movies United 93 and World Trade Center. These movies were praised upon release for their realism and lack of sensationalism. But, as Zizek explains:
The realism means that both films are restrained from taking a political stance and depicting the wider context of the events. Neither the passengers on United 93 nor the policemen in WTC grasp the full picture. All of a sudden they find themselves in a terrifying situation and have to make the best out of it.
This lack of "cognitive mapping" is crucial. All we see are the disastrous effects, with their cause so abstract that, in the case of WTC, one can easily imagine exactly the same film in which the twin towers would have collapsed as the result of an earthquake. What if the same film took place in a bombed high-rise building in Beirut? That's the point: it cannot take place there. Such a film would have been dismissed as "subtle pro-Hizbullah terrorist propaganda".
This, it strikes me, is extremely true. How is it that a movie set in a "bombed high-rise building in Beirut" would inevitably be seen as making a political statement, yet a similarly-made movie about the WTC can be praised for being apolitical? Why are our victims depoliticized, but their's politicized? Sure, racism, yeah, but that seems too reductive an explanation. Similarly, Zizek's claim that the movies' abstention from direct message gives an implicit message of trust in one's government seems to miss the more interesting implications of his posed question.
Obviously the dead of 9/11 have been used extensively for political ends, yet somehow in making these movies they have been presented as just "normal" people who happen to get caught up in this catastrophe. Now I haven't seen these movies, but from what I've read it appears that by avoiding showing the perpetrators of these crimes, or spending time delving into their motivations, the movies effectively depoliticize the events. It can't be argued against that the events took place; however politics enters into the equation when you try to explain why they took place. Did the attackers have some legitimate grievances, and if so, who is responsible for these grievances? Could the attacks have been prevented had certain groups preformed their jobs more thoroughly? These are the two most contentious questions, I would argue, and would almost inevitably be encountered if some of the broader context of the attacks been covered.
In our hypothetical Beirut movie, we could similarly never show the American-made Israeli warplanes dropping bombs from above, never discuss why they were attacking, whether it was justified or not. But still, in showing the required scenes of crying parents and suffering children, the film's political critique would become unavoidable. Because we know who dropped the bombs causing this suffering, and we can't help but ask why we would ever create such suffering. Why does one movie provoke such a questioning reaction, the other not?
Five years on, the events of 9/11 no longer posses the traumatic punch that they once did, they have been fully assimilated into the ongoing storyline of "the war on terror," becoming, if not actually understood, at least absorbed into the culture. (The Real has returned into the symbolic order, Zizek would say, or at least something like that). The Western story about 9/11 heavily involves its victims, the poor innocents killed by savage terrorists. The Western story about the conflict in the Middle East (for example) largely has to do with what the Arabs have done to us (or our allies in Israel). A story about the victims of 9/11 fits nicely into the dominant narrative (or dare I say, discourse?) being espoused by our politicians and media. A story about the Lebanese victims (or Iraqi or Haitian or...) of American violence does not fit into the dominant discourse about these events.
The first thing that is almost always brought up in "proper" complaints about the war in Iraq is the number of American soldiers killed, when in fact this number is far FAR smaller than the number of Iraqi civilians killed (this goes the same for Vietnam too: oh it was a costly war for America was it?). If we are to go by the basic moral standard that the lives of innocents have the same value regardless of race, sex, religion or culture (as Chomsky so often reminds us), then surely the emphasis of these narratives are grossly skewed towards American lives. WTC and United 93 continue with this government-approved bias, while a hypothetical Beirut movie would uncomfortably puncture this communal fantasy, placing the victims of American violence on the same plane as American victims.
Most people, when confronted with the suffering of others will feel compassion regardless of race, religion, etc. Discussion of 9/11 is suffused with mention of its victims, so why would seeing a movie about its victims cause any confusion or questioning among the viewer? However in discussion of America's follies in the Middle East and elsewhere, mention of civilian victims is relegated to a code word: "collateral damage". The confusion one would feel, the questioning that would occur were you to see this collateral damage up close, if only in movie form, comes from the struggle to fit this information into a discourse that leaves this tragedy as a footnote for historians.
I suppose in the end it is just good old racism.
Thursday, September 07, 2006
RANDOM
So, feeling in a somewhat musically unsettled mood the last few days, I put my entire downloads directory (sitting at about 15 GB, I really need to tidy it up) on random play. These are some of the gems I've forgotten about but in fact really kick ass. [warning to those who care, mostly dan i guess, this post is a fucking gold mine!]
Answering Machine - Call Me Mr. Telephone (Lindstrom & Prins Thomas Remix)
Super long cosmic/beardo disco remix by it boys Lindstrom & Prins Thomas. The best part is around 6:30 were the vocals suddenly get all desperate and haunting with a mean synth somwhere in the background. Other than that, titanic groover.
Liquid Crystal - You Got Me
Essence of Aura - Destiny
Oh man rave music. Oh man. The piano build up in the first track is damn near unstoppable euphoria. And that second track? Pure rave evil. Oh man.
Pineapples - come on closer
Shitty radio rip that I really need to find a better version of, but oh fuck, posibly the best italodisco track ever! How could you not love this? Your heart would have to be a frozen peice of rock with big pointy thorns on it covered with barbed wire and dead puppies or something.
Sudenten Geche - Are Kiss
German new-wave (aka Neue Deutche Welle), big in some necks of the old internet-woods. Sounds like moody 80's electro-pop, at least this one, though others are much more punky.
Public Image Ltd. - Poptones
Classic, classic post-punk from John Lydon's (aka Johnny Rotten's) second, less famous, and perferred-by-me band. Heavily led by a the wonderful bass of Jah Wobble, sounding like punk only in it's attitude, not its sound, thankfully. You should see the performance of this song and "Careering" that they did on American Bandstand, pulling audience members on to the stage to dance, Lydon not even bothering to lip sync, Dick Clark clearly having no idea what to do with these people, it's just mindblowing but apparently Clark had it removed from youtube the fucking bastard. Dick Clark should die, though obviously you can't kill what is already dead.
Isolee - Cite Grande Terre (Luciano's Luck of Lucien Edit)
Last and definitely not least, this absolutely stunning Luciano mix, easily one of my tracks of the year. The absolute calm space and beauty of this track is just enthralling. The beat exists in this weird half-ambient-yet-propulsive realm that keeps you in this kind of pleasant stasis throughout the whole track. Ultra-minimal yet hyper-detailed (just try to follow all the shards of sound comprising what would otherwise be known as the high-hat/snare drum pattern), this one really seems to grow and expand on you as the track progresses, punctuated by the dubbed out echoes of Isolee's original work. Let it sit with you for a bit.
well, let it not be said that ALL i listen to is pop music, eh?
Anyway, I know many of you really prefer the non-music posts, but I don't really have anything to say right now on the politix front that isn't being said elsewhere, and I don't really feel like providing a bunch of links right now, so screw you. :)
Answering Machine - Call Me Mr. Telephone (Lindstrom & Prins Thomas Remix)
Super long cosmic/beardo disco remix by it boys Lindstrom & Prins Thomas. The best part is around 6:30 were the vocals suddenly get all desperate and haunting with a mean synth somwhere in the background. Other than that, titanic groover.
Liquid Crystal - You Got Me
Essence of Aura - Destiny
Oh man rave music. Oh man. The piano build up in the first track is damn near unstoppable euphoria. And that second track? Pure rave evil. Oh man.
Pineapples - come on closer
Shitty radio rip that I really need to find a better version of, but oh fuck, posibly the best italodisco track ever! How could you not love this? Your heart would have to be a frozen peice of rock with big pointy thorns on it covered with barbed wire and dead puppies or something.
Sudenten Geche - Are Kiss
German new-wave (aka Neue Deutche Welle), big in some necks of the old internet-woods. Sounds like moody 80's electro-pop, at least this one, though others are much more punky.
Public Image Ltd. - Poptones
Classic, classic post-punk from John Lydon's (aka Johnny Rotten's) second, less famous, and perferred-by-me band. Heavily led by a the wonderful bass of Jah Wobble, sounding like punk only in it's attitude, not its sound, thankfully. You should see the performance of this song and "Careering" that they did on American Bandstand, pulling audience members on to the stage to dance, Lydon not even bothering to lip sync, Dick Clark clearly having no idea what to do with these people, it's just mindblowing but apparently Clark had it removed from youtube the fucking bastard. Dick Clark should die, though obviously you can't kill what is already dead.
Isolee - Cite Grande Terre (Luciano's Luck of Lucien Edit)
Last and definitely not least, this absolutely stunning Luciano mix, easily one of my tracks of the year. The absolute calm space and beauty of this track is just enthralling. The beat exists in this weird half-ambient-yet-propulsive realm that keeps you in this kind of pleasant stasis throughout the whole track. Ultra-minimal yet hyper-detailed (just try to follow all the shards of sound comprising what would otherwise be known as the high-hat/snare drum pattern), this one really seems to grow and expand on you as the track progresses, punctuated by the dubbed out echoes of Isolee's original work. Let it sit with you for a bit.
well, let it not be said that ALL i listen to is pop music, eh?
Anyway, I know many of you really prefer the non-music posts, but I don't really have anything to say right now on the politix front that isn't being said elsewhere, and I don't really feel like providing a bunch of links right now, so screw you. :)
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