.

And by a prudent flight and cunning save A life which valour could not, from the grave. A better buckler I can soon regain, But who can get another life again? Archilochus

Thursday, May 30, 2013

Formulating the Question


Of course, there are Oedipal statements. For example, Kafka's story, "Jackals and Arabs"), is easy to read in that way: you can always do it, you can't lose, it works every time, even if you understand nothing. The Arabs are clearly associated with the father and the jackals with the mother; between the two, there is the whole story of castration represented by the rusty scissors. But is so happens that the Arabs are an extensive, armed, organized mass stretching across the entire desert; and the jackals are an intensive pack forever launching into the desert following lines of flight and deterritorialization ("they are madmen, veritable madmen"); between the two, at the edge, the Man of the North, the jackal-man. And aren't those big scissors the Arab sign that guides or releases the jackal particles, both to accelerate their mad race by detaching them from the mass, and to bring them back to the mass, to tame them and whip them, to bring them around? Dead camel: Oedipal food apparatus. Counter-Oedipal carrion apparatus: kill animals to eat, or eat to clean up carrion. The jackals formulate the problem well: it is not that of castration but of "cleanliness" (proprete, also "ownness"), the test of desert-desire. Which will prevail, mass territoriality or pack deterritorialization? The libido suffuses the entire desert, the body without organs on which the drama is played out.
- Deleuze and Guattari, "A Thousand Plateaus"

Tuesday, May 28, 2013

Is it Friday, Yet?

Spleen

I'm like the king of a rain-country, rich
but sterile, young but with an old wolf's itch,
one who escapes his tutor's monologues,
and kills the day in boredom with his dogs;
nothing cheers him, darts, tennis, falconry,
his people dying by the balcony;
the bawdry of the pet hermaphrodite
no longer gets him through a single night;
his bed of fleur-de-lys becomes a tomb;
even the ladies of the court, for whom
all kings are beautiful, cannot put on
shameful enough dresses for this skeleton;
the scholar who makes his gold cannot invent
washes to cleanse the poisoned element;
even in baths of blood, Rome's legacy,
our tyrants' solace in senility,
he cannot warm up his shot corpse, whose food
is syrup-green Lethean ooze, not blood.
— Charles Baudelaire (translated by Robert Lowell)

Saturday, May 25, 2013

Bait and Switch, the Desiring "Other"

The herded wolves, bold only to pursue;
The obscene ravens, clamorous o'er the dead;
The vultures, to the conqueror's banner true,
Who feed where Desolation first has fed.
And whose wings rain contagion; how they fled,
When like Apollo, from his golden bow,
The Pythian of the age one arrow sped
And smiled! The spoilers tempt no second blow;
They fawn on the proud feet that spurn them as they go.
- Percy Bysshe Shelley, "Adonaïs" (1821)

Thursday, May 23, 2013

Borderline Personalities... and "Other" Disorders

Source
Hysteria has to be comprehended in the complexity of its strategy, as a radically ambiguous protest against the Master's interpellation which simultaneously bears witness to the fact that the hysterical subject needs a Master, cannot do without a Master, so that there is no simple and direct way out. For that reason, one should also avoid the historicist pitfall of rejecting the notion of hysteria as belonging to a bygone era: the notion that today, borderline disturbances, not hysteria, are the predominant form of 'discontent' in our civilization. 'Borderline' is the contemporary form of hysteria, that is, of the subject's refusal to accept the predominant mode of interpellation whose agent is no longer the traditional Master but the 'expert knowledge' of the discourse of Science. In short, the shift from the classic form of hysteria to borderline disturbances is strictly correlative with the shift from the traditional Master to the form of Power legitimated by Knowledge.
-Slavoj Žižek, "The Indivisible Remainder: On Schelling and Related Matters" (London: Verso, 1996 & 2007). The following citations are from the 2007 edition pp. 163-165.

Wednesday, May 22, 2013

Come View the Violence Inherent in the System!

....Help! I'm being Repressed!
No matter where; of comfort no man speak:
Let's talk of graves, of worms, and epitaphs;
Make dust our paper and with rainy eyes
Write sorrow on the bosom of the earth,
Let's choose executors and talk of wills:
And yet not so, for what can we bequeath
Save our deposed bodies to the ground?
Our lands, our lives and all are Bolingbroke's,
And nothing can we call our own but death
And that small model of the barren earth
Which serves as paste and cover to our bones.
For God's sake, let us sit upon the ground
And tell sad stories of the death of kings;
How some have been deposed; some slain in war,
Some haunted by the ghosts they have deposed;
Some poison'd by their wives: some sleeping kill'd;
All murder'd: for within the hollow crown
That rounds the mortal temples of a king
Keeps Death his court and there the antic sits,
Scoffing his state and grinning at his pomp,
Allowing him a breath, a little scene,
To monarchize, be fear'd and kill with looks,
Infusing him with self and vain conceit,
As if this flesh which walls about our life,
Were brass impregnable, and humour'd thus
Comes at the last and with a little pin
Bores through his castle wall, and farewell king!
Cover your heads and mock not flesh and blood
With solemn reverence: throw away respect,
Tradition, form and ceremonious duty,
For you have but mistook me all this while:
I live with bread like you, feel want,
Taste grief, need friends: subjected thus,
How can you say to me, I am a king?
-Shakespeare, "Richard II" (Act II Sc III)

Saturday, May 18, 2013

Decalcomania

If Hua Tuo was reincarnated again
People who blindly worship foreign things will be cured
Foreigners will come and learn Chinese
Stimulating our national consciousness
Semen Strychni
Cassia Tora
Fructus Xanthii
As well as Lotus Seed
Rhizoma Dioscoreae Bulbiferae
Sophora alopecuroides
Szechwan Chinaberry Fruit
I want face (respect)
Use my way
To change history
Nothing much really
Follow me
Read aloud a few words

Common Yam Rhizome
Angelica
Lycium Barbarum
Go
Common Yam Rhizome
Angelica
Lycium Barbarum
Go
Look at me pick up some Chinese medicine
Take a dose of pride

My expression is free from restraint
Jump an approximate
My movement is relaxed and free
You can't learn it
The signboard of the rainbow
Adjusts to a good state
At the gorgeous city
Waiting to wake up
My expression is free from restraint
Jump an approximate
Use calligraphy in the dynasty's books
The inner force spreads
The heroic air wipes away the regular script
Give a punch of dialogue
Ending lying flat on the ground
See who's fierce

Refine what cinnabar
Kneaded into what pill
The slices of antlers cannot be too thin
The technique of the old master cannot be messily copied like this
Turtle jelly
Yunnan white drug-powder
And there is also cordyceps (Chinese caterpillar fungus)
My own music, my own medicine
The quantity is just right
Listen to me, Chinese medicine is bitter
Plagiarism should be even bitterer
Quickly flip open Compendium of Materia Medica
Read more of these rare books
Chansu
Lumbricus (earthworm)
Has already turned over river and lakes
These are the hard work of our ancestors
We definitely mustn't lose
It is this light
It is this light
Sing together
(It is this light
It is this light)
Let us blend a folk medicine
To specially treat your inner injury of fawning on foreign powers
The Chinese prescription that has already been rooted for a thousand years
Have powers other people don't know about

My expression is free from restraint
Jump an approximate
My movement is relaxed and free
You can't learn it
The signboard of the rainbow
Adjusts to a good state
At the gorgeous city
Waiting to wake up
My expression is free from restraint
Jump an approximate
Use calligraphy in the dynasty's books
The inner force spreads
The heroic air wipes away the regular script
Give a punch of dialogue
Ending lying flat on the ground
See who's fierce

Crouch
The little vampire crouches
The little vampire crouches
And crouches
The little vampire crouches
A light is lit in the dark alley
And crouches
A light is lit in the dark alley
Enter Luo Bo Keng (landmark at Zhong Shan)
And crouches
The little vampire crouches
Reading out curses and humming

Tuesday, May 14, 2013

Please Help, If You Can...

Background Info
SOS Venezuela
SOS Venezuela Part 2

When America loses her democracy, THIS is how it will happen.

Saturday, May 11, 2013

Inspirational Founts

We cannot know his legendary head
with eyes like ripening fruit. And yet his torso
is still suffused with brilliance from inside,
like a lamp, in which his gaze, now turned to low,

gleams in all its power. Otherwise
the curved breast could not dazzle you so, nor could
a smile run through the placid hips and thighs
to that dark center where procreation flared.

Otherwise this stone would seem defaced
beneath the translucent cascade of the shoulders
and would not glisten like a wild beast’s fur:

would not, from all the borders of itself,
burst like a star: for here there is no place
that does not see you. You must change your life.
- Rainer Maria Rilke, "Archaic Torso of Apollo"

Journalists, the New Masters of Perspectival Anamorphosis

Gosnell never happened! The Terrorist's who perpetrated Benghazi will be brought to justice! These are NOT the Droids that you're looking for....

from Wikipedia
Anamorphosis is a distorted projection or perspective requiring the viewer to use special devices or occupy a specific vantage point to reconstitute the image. The word "anamorphosis" is derived from the Greek prefix ana-, meaning back or again, and the word morphe, meaning shape or form.

Thursday, May 9, 2013

Olympias

The murder occurred during October 336 BCE, at Aegae, the ancient capital of the kingdom of Macedon. The court had gathered there for the celebration of the marriage between Alexander I of Epirus and Philip's daughter, by his fourth wife Olympias, Cleopatra. While the king was entering unprotected into the town's theater (highlighting his approachability to the Greek diplomats present), he was killed by Pausanias of Orestis, one of his seven bodyguards. The assassin immediately tried to escape and reach his associates who were waiting for him with horses at the entrance of Aegae. He was pursued by three of Philip's bodyguards; tripping on a vine, he died by their hands.
- Wikipedia, "Phillip II of Macedon"

Sunday, May 5, 2013

Friday, May 3, 2013

Emergent from Foam

Only what is granted endures. What endures primally out of the earliest beginning is what grants.
- Heidegger

Wednesday, May 1, 2013

Tamanend, American Saint

"The First of May, A new Song in Praise of St. Tammany, the American Saint- "Tune, The hounds are all out &c.
"Of St. George or St. Bute, let the poet laureat sing,
Of Pharaoh or Pluto of old,
While he rimes forth their praise, in false flattering lays,
I'll sing of St. Tamm'ny the bold, my brave boys.

Let Hibernia's sons boast, make Patrick their toast,
And Scots Andrew's fame spread abroad,
Potatoes and oates and Welch Leeks, for Welch goats,
Was never St. Tammany's food, my brave boys.

In freedom's bright cause, Tammany pled with applause,
And reason'd most justly from nature;
For this, this was his song, all, all the day long,
Liberty's the right of each creature, brave boys.

Whilst under an oak his great parliament sat,
His throne was the crotch of the tree,
With Solomon's look, without statutes or book,
He wisely sent forth his decree, my brave boys.

His subjects stood round, not the least noise or sound,
Whilst freedom blaz'd full in each face;
So plain were the laws, and each pleaded his cause,
That might Bute, North and Mansfield disgrace, my brave boys.

No duties nor stamps, their blest liberty cramps,
A King, tho' no tyrant was he;
He did oft' times declare, nay sometimes would swear,
The least of his subjects were free, my brave boys.

He, as King of the woods, of the rivers and floods,
Had a right all beasts to control;
Yet content with a few, to give nature her due,
So gen'rous was Tammany's soul! my brave boys.

In the morn he arose, and a hunting he goes,
Bold Nimrod his second, was he;
For his breakfast he'd take a large venison stake,
And dispis'd your flip-flops and tea, my brave boys.

While all in a row, with squaw, dog and b__,
Vermilion adorning his face;
With feathery head he rang' d the woods wide,
Sure St. George had never such grace, my brave boys:

His jetty black hair, such as Buckskin saints wear,
Perfumed with bear's grease well smear'd,
Which illum'd the saint's face, and ran down apace,
Like the oil from off Aaron's beard, my brave boys.

The strong nervous deer, with amazing career,
In swiftness he'd fairly run down,
And, like Sampson, wou'd tear wolf, lion or bear;
Ne'er was such a saint as our own, my brave boys.

When he'd run down a stag, he behind him wou'd lag,
For so noble a soul had he!
H'd stop, tho' he lost it, tradition reports it,
To give him fresh chance to get free, my brave boys.

From his quiver he drew forth an arrow so keen,
And seiz'd fast his imperial bow;
It flew straight to the heart, like an Israelite dart;
Could St. Andrew ever do so, my brave boys?

With a mighty strong aim, and a masculine bow,
His arrow he drew to the head,
And as sure as he shot, it was ever his lot,
His prey it fell instantly dead, my brave boys.

His table he spread, where the venison bled;
Be thankful, he used to say;
He'd laugh and he'd sing, tho' a saint and a king,
And sumptuously dine on his prey, my brave boys.

Then over the hills, o'er the mountains and rills,
He'd caper, such was his delight;
And ne'er in his days, Indian history says,
Did lack a good Supper at night, my brave boys.

On an old stump he sat, without cap or hat,
When Supper was ready to eat;
Snap his dog, he stood by, and cast a sheep's eye,
For venison's the king of all meat, my brave boys.

Like Isaac of old, and both cast in one mould,
Tho' a wigwam was Tamm'ny's cottage,
He lov'd sav'ry meat, such that patriarch eat;
Of ven'son and squirrel made pottage, my brave boys.

* * * *

As old age came on, he grew blind, deaf and dumb,
Tho' his sport ‘twere hard to keep from it,
Quite tired of life, bid adieu to his wife,
And blaz' d like the tail of a comit, my brave boys.

What country on earth, then did ever give birth,
To such a magnanimous saint?
His acts far excel all that history tell,
And language too feeble to paint, my brave boys.

Now to finish my song, a full flowing bowl;
I'll quaff' and sing the long day,
And with punch and wine paint my cheeks for my saint,
And hail ev'ry first of Sweet May, my brave boys."