my column
SereneBabe
my new column's up -- do y'all mind me posting when I put the
new one up? a couple other newsgroups want me to, but I've never
asked in here...
Heather
****************
"It's All About Me!" a weekly column by SereneBabe
http://members.aol.com/serenebabe/index.html
July 21, 1999: "Untitled"
BER
hope
everything turns out OK - DC needs more folks like you. :-)
-BER
klaatu
>
>
> SereneBabe wrote:
>
> > my new column's up -- do y'all mind me posting when I put the
> > new one up? a couple other newsgroups want me to, but I've never
> > asked in here...
> Reading your columns and just wanted to say keep up the good work and
> hope everything turns out OK - DC needs more folks like you. :-)
>
> -BER
Ahem. Pondering my very bad (if not undeservedly so) attitude of the last
few days, I guess I will have to side with BER here, and go a few pages back
from Genesis 19 - there's this part where YHWH is talking to Abraham, saying
something to the effect of "for 100 righteous men We shall spare Sodom".
DC _does_ need more righteous people. For every decent person who comes and
stays and isn't either incapacitated nor driven mad nor co-opted nor
perverted, it's probably one less space in town for the ones who have
created, as it were, "an outcry to the Lord against the place".
Now I don't want to seem like I'm thumping the bible which wouldn't be too
appropriate since I'm not exactly Christian in the usual meaning of the term
-- but what kind of people would oppose an increase of righteousness and
decency throughout the region? I don't mean getting the place overrun with
bible thumpers or religious freaks of any stripe, nor do I mean having the
place be overrun with the sort of falsely-righteous who think that because
they never break the law that it's okay to be greedy and ruthlessly
overcompetitive.
So here's the silly question: What can be done to make the DC region
someplace that you wouldn't mind entertaining angels unawares, knowing that
they'd not be overly displeased with their visit.
> >
> > Heather
> > ****************
> > "It's All About Me!" a weekly column by SereneBabe
> > http://members.aol.com/serenebabe/index.html
> >
> > July 21, 1999: "Untitled"
--
"We look through a glass but darkly:
What we see is more colored by our beliefs,
than what we believe is colored by what we see."
BER
tho I myself am somewhat religious, I'm just fed up with church doctrine
klaatu wrote:
>So here's the silly question: What can be done to make the DC region
>someplace that you wouldn't mind entertaining angels unawares, knowing that
>they'd not be overly displeased with their visit.
Still mulling over your questions in "DC Dementia", but I'll get to this one...
I'll agree with Chavous for now, though, we need to stop trying to solve
all of downtown developers' problems while neglecting neighborhoods...
I also think people gotta start crossing 14th street more often and interacting
with
the people on the other side. For me, this means visiting Bethesda, but...
-BER, Lapsed Lutheran on Maple, Takoma Park
klaatu
>
> Hmm, looks like we've got three pseudo-christians posting on this thread -
> tho I myself am somewhat religious, I'm just fed up with church doctrine
Eh, I'm EcoPagan. You know, "love my homeworld, fear the thoughtless
humans". But I was raised reading Scripture and see no reason to stop now,
it's especially useful to be able to thump a bible back at bible thumpers.
>
> klaatu wrote:
>
> >So here's the silly question: What can be done to make the DC region
> >someplace that you wouldn't mind entertaining angels unawares, knowing that
> >they'd not be overly displeased with their visit.
>
> Still mulling over your questions in "DC Dementia", but I'll get to this one...
>
> I'll agree with Chavous for now, though, we need to stop trying to solve
> all of downtown developers' problems while neglecting neighborhoods...
Um, speaking of thumping bibles, who _was_ that who said something to the
effect "should be a house of prayer, but you have made of it a den of
thieves"? One of Barry's political opponents maybe?
Chavous does have a point. I keep dragging up this metaphor of a face-lift
for DC. Lessee, what was that exact phrase... ah yes. it being sunday I
think it's time for a nice rant, um I mean sermon.
" The monuments are all still there, and they're even being spruced up
here and there... but like a surgeon plastering a fresh new face
on a savage and diseased ancient hag of a whore, it doesn't matter
how it looks, it's what's inside that counts.
"
While it may be all well and good to dress up the facade, the parts of the
city that the tourists see, if only to convince them -- like dinosaurs
before the meteor strikes -- that "everything's just fine" and they should
continue to pay taxes and disarm because Washington's all fixed now, any
tourist that stays for more than five days is eventually going to wander off
of the beaten trail and if they've got a lick of sense they'll go back home
and tell the folks "they ain't done nothing but yet-another typical
Washington white-wash job". Chavous is absolutely right.
Washington has experienced at least one full generation of utter moral
decay, inevitably leading to the physical and systematic decay so evident
four years ago; you can't expect the shiftless or the criminal or the
barn-raised to tend to cleaning, much less building. Blame the 60s, blame
the 70s, blame the Johnson Administration and subsequent generations of
well-intentioned career democrats paving the road to hell the better for the
indigents to arrive in the projects, blame who you will. Many if not most of
the neighborhoods are well into their second generation where the majority
of children are the children of children's children. In many of those
neighborhoods, one of the most unusual sights you might possibly see is a
black man in his 40s who's clean and sober and has never been locked up and
who gladly goes home to his first wife. (In fact, I think they just elected
the only one, Mayor.) Some ridiculously large percentage of what men you do
see are just hanging out between stints in prison or you don't see them at
all because they were gunned down. Without a man in the family, any woman
who's working (and all of the decent ones do, or they're looking for work)
doesn't have the time to spend with her family and kids just aren't being
raised right and when they somehow are raised right, that ubiquitous and
essential second parent, the public school system, is slacking as badly as
any layabout getting sloppy drunk before noon and whatever momma has done
right for her kids gets ruined by the schools.
What I'm getting at is that there is a leadership vacuum so tenuous that the
sucking sound can be heard right through the new facade. There are little
matters like the closing of most of the schools which provide often the only
nutritious meal a child will eat during the day. Nobody's starving (yet) but
they're not far from it. Kids who probably ought to be at home studying are
locked out of their own house so that they can't let their riffraff friends
in while mom is off working her second job, and they've got noplace to go
and nothing to do but hang out and be forced to look up to the local toughs,
learning their ways that are probably gonna sooner or later send 'em
straight to hell, or worse, toughen them to the point where they won't mind
sending someone else straight to hell. It's bad enough that there's no order
nor discipline that doesn't come worrying about getting capped, the worst
thing is that there are almost no good examples... and half of the kids who
_are_ staying out of trouble are doing it 'cause they're wacked out on
religion that they're getting from some fire-and-brimstone preacher laying
it on thick as the skin on a junkyard dog -- or worse, are getting it from
someone whose message is about 50 percent racism billing itself as
submission to god.
The neighborhoods need more leadership. Lots more. And they need someone
who's successful, but who finds the time to do as much of their work in the
community as they spend in their business. That is hard to do. The only
possible solution I can see is having businesses which are not only in the
community but whose business (or a large part thereof) _is_ the community.
There are a lot of non-profit organizations that have made huge differences,
such as the assorted coalitions that have been reclaiming old rundown
properties, acquiring the grants, and converting them into affordable
housing for first-time buyers who otherwise would be sitting around waiting
for their Project to be torn down when Welfare closes out. There's got to be
some way to not only make money on this, but to reinvest it in making money
in and for the community, establishing a locally self-sustaining
neighborhood economic base.
I think the city Council, now that it's got the budget business out of the
way, should get out into the community in their off-season and, August or
not, go pound the pavement and search out anyone they can draft into a
leadership role, even if it's only part-time. Maybe I'm dreaming and maybe
there just isn't any available pool of good men to be good examples. Maybe
there's nobody who can go out and exemplify with their deeds. I really could
easily believe that but I would dearly love to be proven wrong on this
score.
The neighborhoods need a lot more storefronts with doors that aren't welded
shut. Even if they only open once a week, they need to open. Neighborhoods
need places where people go to do business, instead of places where people
go to stand around wishing there was something open. And I do not mean that
the city needs more liquor stores, either. Also, kids need playgrounds where
there's something to do besides dodge bullets and watch the rust creep
across broken dangerous equipment.
And sure this is all going to cost money. But the money is there, the
nonprofits can tell people where to get it, from US Housing and Urban
Development, which is presently flush with money for development grants.
There is no better time than now for local leadership to stop delegating
responsibility to elected officials who can only do so much with their time.
Local leaders should seek out the grants and perhaps even loans, and get
some storefronts open, borrow some cars to get some of the free food from
the Food Bank out to where it can feed hungry kids, take it down to the
playgrounds and pass it out along with some experience of grown men who not
only work for a living but take the time to be an example to the kids who
aren't blessed with good men in their own lives. A little bit of
volunteerism by the moral will go a very long way in reversing the amorality
and moral decay that infests Washington. Kids learn by example, and if all
they see is gangstas and rot, that's what they'll think is expected of them:
gangstas and rot. It's time to show 'em something else and I'd guess it will
start when many many more of the working men of Washington take the time to
take their families out for an afternoon here and there giving a good
example of what serving your community is, and is all about. It's happening
now, but it needs to happen more... and by the next generation, it won't be
a chore for the parents, it will be a way of life for their kids... their
and everyone else's kids.
Okay, sermon's over, you can all wake up and go home now.
>
> I also think people gotta start crossing 14th street more often and interacting
> with
> the people on the other side. For me, this means visiting Bethesda, but...
>
> -BER, Lapsed Lutheran on Maple, Takoma Park
--
"We look through a glass but darkly:
What we see is more colored by our beliefs,
than what we believe is colored by what we see."
Be kind to your neighbors, even though they be transgenic chimerae.
Whom thou'st vex'd waxeth wroth: Meow. http://www.clark.net/pub/klaatu/
SereneBabe
>
> Hmm, looks like we've got three pseudo-christians posting on this thread -
> tho I myself am somewhat religious, I'm just fed up with church doctrine
>
>
> >So here's the silly question: What can be done to make the DC region
> >someplace that you wouldn't mind entertaining angels unawares, knowing that
> >they'd not be overly displeased with their visit.
>
> Still mulling over your questions in "DC Dementia", but I'll get to this one...
>
> I'll agree with Chavous for now, though, we need to stop trying to solve
> all of downtown developers' problems while neglecting neighborhoods...
>
> with
> the people on the other side. For me, this means visiting Bethesda, but...
I'll have no suggestions until I get there and witness what the
troubles are.
After that, you won't be able to shut me up with my big ideas.
:-)
klaatu
>
> BER wrote:
> >
> > Hmm, looks like we've got three pseudo-christians posting on this thread -
> > tho I myself am somewhat religious, I'm just fed up with church doctrine
> >
> > klaatu wrote:
> >
> > >So here's the silly question: What can be done to make the DC region
> > >someplace that you wouldn't mind entertaining angels unawares, knowing that
> > >they'd not be overly displeased with their visit.
> >
> > Still mulling over your questions in "DC Dementia", but I'll get to this one...
> >
> > I'll agree with Chavous for now, though, we need to stop trying to solve
> > all of downtown developers' problems while neglecting neighborhoods...
> >
> > I also think people gotta start crossing 14th street more often and interacting
> > with
> > the people on the other side. For me, this means visiting Bethesda, but...
>
> I'll have no suggestions until I get there and witness what the
> troubles are.
With all due respect, it may take you some time once you're here to truly
discover what are the roots of whatever problems there may be.
>
> After that, you won't be able to shut me up with my big ideas.
Excellent. Most people are afraid of opening their mouths for fear of
getting killed by the entrenched interests, which are quick to react and
practicedly lethal and blessed (if you want to call it that) with excellent
sources of information emplaced throughout the local
police/intelligence/media community, which community (there really is no
separation hereabouts) enjoys manipulation of local criminal and political
combines to achieve their objective, which is (as best I can tell)
destruction of the American Capital.
I'm a suicidal mime on prozac (none of which is true but that's how they
categorize gothic people hereabouts so I will let it lie) and in any case I
am in no way other than my vote enfranchised, so I open my "mouth" on the
internet with great abandon.
Feel free to raise heck. I'm getting exceptionally tired of doing it all
alone.
You'll note that most of the folks are singing the praises of how wonderful
it is hereabouts; it's all whitewash and the more genuine heartlanders we
can have sending reports back to the voters, the better the chance of
reclaiming our Capital. I'd surely hate to witness the consequences of any
of the alternatives to that.[1]
Some wag once labelled me "the most dangerous thing they [I presume he meant
the aggregate American people; contextually that would be a reasonable
assumption] have ever sent against Us." [whoever or whatever "Us" meant. At
the time, had someone declared that they were alien vampires from hell
masquerading as reptoids disguised as renegade intelligence agencies in
cooperation with international organized crime under the influence of
assorted fraternal organizations, or any permutation of the above concepts,
I might have readily accepted the statement. Now I know it's much more
complex.[3]]
I hope you're lots worse and bring a lot of friends with you, each worse
than the last.
Until and unless it changes radically, "Carthago dalenda est".
cheers, and pray as you pass the "ammo"...
>
> :-)
> Heather
Footnotes:
1. Once again, don't even get me started.[2]
2. Once again, see Genesis 19.
3. Didn't I say somewhere to never get me in a mood for hyperbole, much less
post-surrealist hyperbole disguising itself as surrealist/dada prose? Or was
that the other way 'round...
wrob
and "Death is suddenly seems much more real to me, with Definable Features!"
God, I forgot how many great lines were in the greatest movie critique
of Postomodernism. Klaatu, the producers of the "Howard Beale show"
would just eat you up. They love to subvert surrealism. Just watch out for the
Ecumenical Liberation Army and you should be safe. >:-)
Remember, "Prolong! Prolong!" *
(*The "punk" way to play golf according to Schwing! magazine)
Or, to analogise with deconstructionism, "More layers of subtext!" "More!"
The only answer for surrealists, is, as you say, dadaism:
The surreal must have no meaning outside the thing-in-itself.
After all, is there not enough surreality in the world
for people to draw their OWN associations?
-BER
wrob
thot I'd share my impression. there don't seem to be many dadaists around
to complain
-BER
klaatu
>
> Klaatu, you're scaring me. I just saw the movie Network,
> and "Death is suddenly seems much more real to me, with Definable Features!"
>
> God, I forgot how many great lines were in the greatest movie critique
> of Postomodernism. Klaatu, the producers of the "Howard Beale show"
> would just eat you up. They love to subvert surrealism. Just watch out for the
> Ecumenical Liberation Army and you should be safe. >:-)
Actually, I am more fearful of well-intentioned reformers doing exactly all
of the wrong things for exactly all of the right reasons. I must really
recommend a re-reading of Camus' "The Plague".
>
> Remember, "Prolong! Prolong!" *
>
> (*The "punk" way to play golf according to Schwing! magazine)
>
> Or, to analogise with deconstructionism, "More layers of subtext!" "More!"
>
> The only answer for surrealists, is, as you say, dadaism:
> The surreal must have no meaning outside the thing-in-itself.
> After all, is there not enough surreality in the world
> for people to draw their OWN associations?
Actually, though I'm no art historian, surrealism was a _response_ to DaDa.
But I expect that it's an ongoing dialectic. But what will be the synthesis
hereabouts?
If as you say, surrealism is its own goal (I'm not buying it, need I say
"Guernica"?), and DaDa is purely an art attack ridiculing the surreality in
the political surround, I would have to place myself in the DaDa camp,
except IMHO it's reality itself that had gone DaDa, but not at all
constructively so. Thus I must attempt to counter the DaDaism of local
politics, and I am not quite sure what to call it. As DaDa got its name from
the burbling sounds of a drooling infant, and I'm hoping to bring not only
articulation but cognizance and rationality to a scene which appears to
thrive on disorganization and inarticulate disunity, I am tempted to oppose
this DaDa-made-flesh with an artistic concept of a peaceful assault through
appropriately placed words expressing memes with sharp edges. So is
"Logosian" taken as a concept? Unlike surrealism, it isn't meant to be
purely self-referential; unlike DaDa, it's not meant to be a pointless
barking at dysfunction simply as mocking ridicule: I'm not content to point
to the canker in the heart of the rosebud, but hope to strike at the roots
of the rose in such a way that for some time the air is filled with a
delight of petals all floating on the breeze, while people question whether
or not the bush needs to be there, or whether it might not look better if
you took it out of the windowbox and planted it on the fertilizer pile. And
that would be just for starters.
It would appear that the Brookings Institute is taking the deconstructionist
approach, which is always welcome as it's a very factual mode and prevalent
and comprehensible to most readers. Please see
http://www.brookings.edu/es/urban/dc/dcinitiative.htm for the Washington DC
Initiative "A Region Divided".
From their blurb page...
--------
How is this region growing? What are the consequences of this growth? A new
Brookings report, "A Region Divided," attempts to answer these questions.
The report, the fruit of a year-long research project finds:
1) The Washington region is divided by race, income, jobs, and opportunity,
with the eastern half of the region carrying the area's burden of poverty
and distress, while the western half enjoys most of the region's fruits of
prosperity. These polarizing trends hurt fast-growing counties and the
places left behind.
2) The Washington region has the resources to bridge this divide, because of
its high overall prosperity and relatively few units of local government.
3) The Washington region can grow smarter, and must do this now. If our
regional divisions widen as growth proceeds, it will be difficult, if not
impossible, to create a region that is competitive, prosperous, and livable.
---------
Hmmm, I think I'll go read the thing, and see if anything they have in there
supports my assertion that the Edge City phenomenon (and lack of planning in
some sectors and advantageous anticipation in other sectors) has contributed
to this, and whether or not Brookings concurs with my longstanding
assertions that only a limits-to-growth strategy in the suburban areas
combining with an intelligently-directed recycling/revitalization of
downtown areas can possibly prevent a general descent into rot such as is
seen in many other postindustrial cities.
I bet they do.
>
> -BER
>
<snips of mostly my own blathering>
wrob
My beliefs, are mostly faith-and-metaphysics stuff that isn't easy to synthesize,
but anti-Postmodernism can be easily described:
"Everything is outside the Text except the Text itself. this goes for all texts."
The idea is that the Text has a very tragic surreality. It exists in and of itself,
but it
does not "refer" back on anything; it is what consciousness-research people call
an epiphenomenon.
Hence, there is no need to inject purposeful irony or extraneous surreality.
-BER
klaatu
UseNet where interspersed text it considered good Netiquette, so I moved his
text en-bloc to the bottom.:
> >
> > Hmmm, I think I'll go read the thing, and see if anything they have in there
> > supports my assertion that the Edge City phenomenon (and lack of planning in
> > some sectors and advantageous anticipation in other sectors) has contributed
> > to this, and whether or not Brookings concurs with my longstanding
> > assertions that only a limits-to-growth strategy in the suburban areas
> > combining with an intelligently-directed recycling/revitalization of
> > downtown areas can possibly prevent a general descent into rot such as is
> > seen in many other postindustrial cities.
> >
> > I bet they do.
> >
> > >
> > > -BER
> > >
> > <snips of mostly my own blathering>
> > --
> Well, as an anti-Postmodernist, I have my own agenda.
>
> My beliefs, are mostly faith-and-metaphysics stuff that isn't easy to synthesize,
> but anti-Postmodernism can be easily described:
>
> "Everything is outside the Text except the Text itself. this goes for all texts."
>
> The idea is that the Text has a very tragic surreality. It exists in and of itself,
> but it does not "refer" back on anything; it is what consciousness-research people call
> an epiphenomenon.
>
> Hence, there is no need to inject purposeful irony or extraneous surreality.
That would be the case if I were writing purely for the purpose of writing.
I do like to write and thus I try to craft a work of art, which can stand on
its own as such -- yet is is definitely intended to reference outside
events, and ideally to influence them. Think of it as an example of Chaos
Math -- a mandelbrot fractal design is pretty all on its own, yet it also
serves as a reminder of how much can be changed by ending time, by the
slightest of changes in the initial conditions. I hope to write text that,
however artsy, grossly effects initial conditions for the rest of the
exercise in external reality. This of it also as judo, where the properly
placed balance point allows the exertion of very little energy to tumble any
opponent, and the bigger they are the harder they fall.
I suppose you could call this anti-anti-Postmodernism. But I'm really less
concerned with how my stylistic approach will be classified; even those who
have traditionally simply dismissed me as some mad wacko howling on a
soapbox have to admit that in many respects, that howling on a soapbox has
amounted to a "voice crying in the wilderness, shouting 'prepare ye the
way'". My habits of speech and stylistic approach may seem clearly
indicative of all sorts of disorder, but whan my topic is disorder,
corruption, and disgrace, that's probably quite appropriate. Before the
first water alerts came around, I was howling about the water, before the
cops and INS closed down the "Rat Park" vendors of high-quality forged
citizenship and immigration documents, I was howling about La Raza, before
the DCFRA came to be I was howling about the need for overwhelming oversight
just so that the District residents would not merely suspect, but actually
_know_ just how bad things were -- and when the management consultant's
reports became public, almost everything I had ever alleged
(unsubstantiatedly) was substantiated in overwhelming and sickening detail
sufficient to cause heads to roll all over the District governmental estate.
So maybe it's not postmodernism, anti-postmodernism, nor
anti-anti-postmodernism. It looks surreal and it sounds surreal in many
cases but the fact of the matter is that I am writing wacky truth in a wacky
place, as crazy as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs and
for about the same reasons. There are reasons that cat is yowling. There are
reasons I'm yowling. It's not singing 'cause it likes the sound of its own
voice, and neither am I. When I stop getting my tail crunched I'll stop
yowling, though probably when I see a rocking chair headed my way I will
resume with the bloodcurdling screeches.
And, armed with the data from the Brookings Institute and its contributors,
who are letting out a few bloodcurdling screeches of their own in their
staid and scholarly manner, hopefully the raucous yowling will cause someone
somewhere to wake up and take notice and do something constructive ahead of
time, instead of waiting until the place is once again, however unnoticed,
teetering on the precipice of doom with the vultures circling and giving
cheerful advice to the effect that gravity is an unsubstantiated allegation
and should be considered a myth.
>
> -BER
wrob
I mean, I don't think ideological bonafides are necessary here
("gasp! You mean you're not a dialectical materialist?")
I for one see a potential approach to describing your situation: "protest Modernism"?
I am in a similar situation in my studies in the field of Architecture. (Just studies so
far)
What I'm trying moving towards is recognition of art and architecture as progressive
social forces in themselves, if necessary "destroying" our present definitions
in the process. So what I 'm actually working on is "fractal architecture" so I'm glad
you mentioned that.
I don't feel "elite" Postmodernism is capable of properly absorbing surrealism
or accepting the validity of any sort of established "gonzo" journalism
(SOMA - speaking out my ass again) as reality.
Whereas we share some common sense that words can express reality (I hope :-)
Which, unfortunately, the power elite does not share in this country.
All we need to demolish to reform society is the superiority of our own postmodern notions.
This means of course that I must ascribe no meaning as of yet to the phrase
"protest modernism", but it could represent something important as defined
by your posts.
klaatu wrote:
> wrob wrote
> corruption, and disgrace, that's probably quite appropriate. ...
klaatu
<original snipped, backtrack threads or see http://www.deja.com/ >
>
> Well, I don't think we are in too much disagreement here.
> I mean, I don't think ideological bonafides are necessary here
> ("gasp! You mean you're not a dialectical materialist?")
>
> I for one see a potential approach to describing your situation: "protest Modernism"?
>
> I am in a similar situation in my studies in the field of Architecture. (Just studies so
> far)
> What I'm trying moving towards is recognition of art and architecture as progressive
> social forces in themselves, if necessary "destroying" our present definitions
> in the process. So what I 'm actually working on is "fractal architecture" so I'm glad
> you mentioned that.
I'd have to say that architecture has the _potential_ to have massive
beneficial impacts on both personal and social psychology. The simple
introduction of greenspaces in the surround has an impact, as does ensuring
that the greespaces -- while permitting a visual boundary between property
domains -- don't become threatening as hiding places for criminals, etc.
People can do wonders, especially in older suburbs, simply by trimming their
hedges to within no less than three feet of sidewalks and trimming from
gorund level _up_ a foot or two, also by trimming trees so that there's
unbroken line of sight along roads and sidewalks. And that's just dealing
with the stuff outside of houses.
BTW, fractal bounding between property domains, or landscaping as if there
were fractal bounding, does a lot to recreate the ambiance of a natural
surround, which in this region is meadows and oak woodlands. Nothing in
nature is laid out on a grid pattern, other than possible insect
decorations.
Art in any field has always been very reflective of the society in which the
artist lived, however, in the case of visionaries alone, art show what the
society is becoming, or what it might be, or perhaps should be. Are we Deco?
Not really. Or are we Futurismic? Remember, Disney _still_ is about ten
years behind in Modernizing "TomorrowLand".
Sadly, I think those visions which best apprehend the future of the Sprawl
are necessarily dark, very involved and perhaps involuted, gloomily
optomistic but expectant only that there will be a pretty fractal pattern in
the end, but expecting the interim iterations to quite possibly be
exceptionally vacillative while progressing from the present conditions
towards final terms.
>
> I don't feel "elite" Postmodernism is capable of properly absorbing surrealism
> or accepting the validity of any sort of established "gonzo" journalism
> (SOMA - speaking out my ass again) as reality.
If that's the case, Postmodernism wouldn't know if a snake bit 'em on the
crotch on network TV in slow-motion replay.
As for me, I'll be doing the voice-over on one hand, while on the other
hand, painting the pretty shades of brown and black on the viper's back, on
the third hand suppressing a sad sad sob for the stupid fools who wouldn't
listen to the "crazy man, everyone knows you don't find rattlers on couches"
when he told them to not sit there.
>
> Whereas we share some common sense that words can express reality (I hope :-)
> Which, unfortunately, the power elite does not share in this country.
Talking to the power elite is like talking to the sort of idiot who keeps
kicking bugs out of the air the whole time you're trying to converse with
them. You can pretend that you don't notice how fast they are about it, and
you can pretend that they're actually listening to you. But actually, all
you're doing is giving them an excuse to practice doing leg-lifts, they're a
lot more interested in proving that they can do something that you can't
than they're interested in anything you have to say. Speaking to this sort
of idiot or speaking to the power elite is as a rule merely a waste of time.
The proper approach is to make sure they're standing on grease, and you
should tell them only that they're standing on grease, and when they resume
their practice of speedily and slyly kicking bugs out of the air instead of
paying attention to what you say, they will fall and bust their ass and you
have one less idiot in a position of power.
>
> All we need to demolish to reform society is the superiority of our own postmodern notions.
I beg to differ. Being conceited does nothing to remedy external factors. I
am not interested in any case in demolition of society, nor even
particularly of reform if reform merely has the same effect as giving
antibiotics to a dying tyrant, to have him rise whole and hale to oppress
again for another score of years. I seek a revolutionary transformation of
perception and active style. Call it "judo and the art of self-government".
The revolution will be partly retrogressive, for there are certainly
elements of past culture which deserve promotion to a higher level, which
would be such things as civility, honesty, and diligence; partly the
revolution will be very forward-looking in terms of creating new playing
fields where anyone who follows the rules can win games which reward not
competition but cooperation yet disallow the monolithic. Partly the
revolution will be people opening their eyes and realizing that their
personal-best use of their own potentials isn't to be found in a lifestyle
sold canned via the advertising media. Partly the revolution will be those
with opened eyes making sure there's a lot of grease under the feet of the
power-elite so that when they ignore the warnings and start kicking bugs out
of the air rather than listen to the People, they will fal land bust their
ass.
First, we must do something about the irony-deficiency locally...
>
> This means of course that I must ascribe no meaning as of yet to the phrase
> "protest modernism", but it could represent something important as defined
> by your posts.
eh, screw my definitions or any handly classifications, the motif is
evolution and rapid adaptation of form to always strike at the original
conditions; think of it as a textual "low intensity conflict in urbanized
terrain" with the sort of casual non-weapon that gives people art attacks.
Like I said, first we have to do something about all of these people with
irony deficiencies.