* "Back in the Day"—of the Internet

Back in my day {get off the grass, punk!}, when the Internet was young—the early 90's—there was email, there were USENET groups (of specialized interests), and there were web pages written with the textual content paramount—since graphics, etc., were pretty bandwidth prohibitive. It was then that a person {get off the grass!} measured his/her words, to make them worthy verbal entries in a Brave New Digital World; it was then that "written" discourse (if you will) still mattered. {Get off the grass!} Sure, acronyms soon became rampant (e.g., ROTFLMAO) and type-emoticons were popular (   :-{  ). But, given the bandwidth investment, an email was often more an essay than some toss-off casual affair, and a web page was an original contribution to the world of knowledge, not a mere digital appendage to a capitalist enterprise, or a report to the world on one's children and pets.

Now I can barely READ my email, without a plethora of misspellings, comma splices, et al. (and oh, yeh—sex for sale). Now I can't access a web site for information purposes, without gaudy & mindless graphics, commercial banners (and misspellings & comma splices), etc., etc. {Get off the grass!} Supposedly, the democratization of the 'Net has been a good thing—that is, if Fortune 500 companies and pornography are your forte. They're not mine. {Get off the grass!}

So—humankind IS the "rational animal"?! Some sociologist should do a content analysis of email spam and/or web pages to document once again—what Nietzsche & Freud already well knew—that we are ultimately arational and, above all, animals.

And then there's the irrational stupidity of the boxing match I just saw on ESPN2 tonight: a "bloody, brutal TKO win!"—as the announcer said . . . and I loved it, ANIMAL that I am. (But isn't this also the human sacrifice that many of the world's religions require?)

* Tornados and Fires and Drought—Oh, My!

Gaia lives! (And "she" is pissed.)
Uh, listen to the news—er, the WEATHER—and tell me that the planet Gaia is not angry with us all. . . . (Go ahead and call this statement a personification of an inanimate being; I don't. There is more "animism" in the universe than was ever "dreamt of in your philosophy," Mr. Dead-Matter Business Man.)

* Mormon = Christian? = ?

A new poll out today (regarding Romney's candidacy) says that a good third of Americans don't believe that Mormons are Christian; another third do; and another third don't know/aren't sure. This correlates well with my own experience with college undergraduates, who—Christian or not—have little notion of the history of (even Western) religion. Thus I often get comments from well-meaning Protestants that not only are Mormons a wacko non-Christian sect-of-a-nut-job, but so are—Catholics! (And never mind any knowledge of the history of Protestantism.) Maybe I'm thankful that I don't get so many student essays quoting the Bible as their only source anymore—but maybe not: this new generation of Christian irrationalists seems to have acquired its entire ideology from parents and conservative media—and they have little idea of the actual tenets of whatever sect they adhere to, short of "I'm anti-abortion," "I hate faggots/queers," and "I'm 'agin' all that evolution-monkey talk." (Recall that, at the recent Republican presidential-candidate debate, when asked who DIDN'T believe in evolution, three of the ten old-white-males actually raised their shaky, Bible-toting hands.)

Likewise, my students also have written me, on occasion, that the Lakota Sun Dance is an inhumane cruelty of a ritual—usually the same students who claim that The Passion of the Christ is one dang fine edifying movie. . . . (I remember that at least one Christian web site was selling commemorative "spikes"—to be worn around the neck—during this movie's heyday; I also recall that I didn't buy one, however tempted. [Wait, my wife did buy me a cheap "facsimile" thereof for my birthday or Christmas—it was "so kewl."])

* RADIO RANT: Metaphors Are a "Rush"

Readers of this blog (BOTH of you, and both related by blood or marriage, I'm sure) may be surprised that a certain R. Limbaugh has hardly come up in my frequent "Radio Rants." Well, he's been on the radio so long that his shtick has lost all its shock value; moreover, he's so obviously a shill & "water carrier" for the Republican party line that he seems passé to even some other conservative talk-show hosts. (Savage, for instance, irreverently calls him "Lush Limbo," or something of the sort.)

But, busy on the computer the other day, I endured his opening for a few minutes before changing the station. And I was taken back to the late '80's, when I first heard him, and when I first wondered, "How can people who are fairly articulate actually think this way?" But his shtick hasn't changed a bit, as he still rehearses his formulaic intros: here I am, the Great Limbaugh, with "talent on loan from God"; and—by God, I can stick it to you godless liberals with "half my brain tied behind my back." Now, I admit that the refrain "talent on loan from God" is semi-tongue-in-cheek hyperbole, as is the in-your-face egoism of the "half my brain" phrase. And I won't even rail, for once, against the current "Sea of Faith" that, to my deep chagrin, inundates my daily consciousness. But I will get to my point, then: "half my brain tied behind my back" is an utterly ridiculous, botched figure of speech that reminds me of Joyce Kilmer's "Trees" poem, and Cleanth Brooks' marvelous critique of its awful series of mixed metaphors. The point of a metaphor is to make more "real" & concrete & sensual a more abstract concept. But just try to visualize half your brain bound behind your back. Rush, you better get that other half of your brain back in your "head"—the right half, I assume, which more righteously handles analogous thinking—and start using it, rather than letting it remain an idle appendage dangling somewhere down your backside. . . . (Maybe then you can feel some empathy for others who aren't cigar-chomping white male capitalists.)

* "The owl, for all his feathers, was a-cold"

These are four [reduced in size] photos from this January's snowstorm in Lincoln, NE, of a Dark-eyed Junco, a Blue Jay, a Northern Cardinal, and a European Starling (damned immigrants!). I'd laid out a "ground feeder" on my 3rd-floor-apartment balcony, and the juncos were there a good 50 minutes out of every daylight hour; their ten-minute absence?—usually a Blue Jay or two insisting upon a morsel. The photos are so murky because 1) it was usually overcast, and so poor lighting (but for the junco pict); and 2) my patio-door window was/is filthy!—and it was too wretchedly cold to leave it open. (Talk about "through a glass darkly": I feel an extended metaphor for my own existence coming on, but I'll resist. . . .)

* RADIO RANT: "All Praise, American Woman"!

With Mother's Day coming up, some local morning talk show fellow mentioned "American Woman" as a song glorifying good ol' U.S. womanhood—that's why it's also such a popular song on the 4th of July, he added. (I didn't know this, if true.) To his credit, the fellow noted the irony of the fact that it was written and popularized by a Canadian band, the Guess Who (in 1970; their guitarist went on to form another popular band, Bachman-Turner Overdrive). To his discredit, he (and apparently many Americans) have never listened to, or understood, the song lyrics, which pretty much slam that "American Woman," and tell her emphatically to "stay away from me." One might cleverly argue that this is ironic, too, that the fellow really loves her desperately and is "protesting too much." However, the following lyrics belie such a possibility [Quot. of the Day]:

I don’t need your war machines—
I don’t need your ghetto scenes—
Coloured lights can hypnotize—
Sparkle [in] someone else’s eyes—
Now woman, get away from me—
American Woman—mama, let me be—

Now there's a song fit for a 4th of July parade. . . . So: play along! (preferably, w/ a little "tube-screamer" fuzzbox effect)::::

 B5 D5     E5         D5 E5
------||------------------------------------|------------------------------------||
------||------------------------------------|------------------------------------||
------||o-----------------------------------|-----------------------------------o||
----7-||o--9-9-9-9-9---7-9---9-9-------7----|---9-9-9-9-9---7-9\------------7---o||
-9--5-||---7-7-7-7-7---5-7---7-7---9---5----|---7-7-7-7-7---5-7\--------9---5----||
-7----||---------------------------7--------|---------------------------7--------||
 4  &      1   &   2   &   3   &   4   &        1   &   2   &   3   &   4   &

* "Oh, Pioneers!"

Regarding the Kansas tornado, George W. Bush said this morning that "[t]here's a certain spirit in the Midwest of our country, a pioneer spirit that still exists. . . ." On the one hand, one must feel sorry for those East-Coast people who never got the "spirit" (paralyzed by some old-world ennui, perhaps) and for those West-Coasters who got all the way to the Pacific Ocean—and to the blunt-dead-end of Manifest Destiny. (Bummer.) On the other hand, the Native American in me feels rather appalled by such an ongoing discourse of imperialism, a celebration of a pioneering spirit that was thoroughly complicitous in land-grabbing and cultural genocide. Indeed, I must confess to being none too proud of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln's relatively recent change to a new slogan: "Pioneering New Frontiers." And so here is my editorial from the Daily Nebraskan (March 2004):

In response to [Professor X]'s critique of those who are unhappy (as I am) with UNL's new tagline invoking "Pioneers," I would first readily acknowledge that the "American" in both "American Indian" and "Native American" is a thoroughly Western linguistic imposition. But the whole issue of naming and identity politics boils down to Audre Lorde's perception that the colonized, in any debate regarding political justice, are stuck with the "Master's tools": i.e., the language (English) of the colonizers—the pioneers.

And of course, "Indian" is a complete misnomer for those peoples on this continent before Columbus's—uh—pioneering voyage. But it was the Euro-American discourse accompanying all subsequent pioneering efforts to the "New World" that interpolated the native as "Indian," and (I would argue) "American Indian" and "Native American"—all linguistically enforced identities that the native has had to adopt by necessity or has been relegated to an ontological void. In sum, following Gerald Vizenor, the "Indian" (and "Native American") was and is the recuperative creation of a Western worldview insecure in its "pioneering" and "progressive" venture of land theft and ethnic cleansing.

Professor [X] wonders, "Should the Sioux change their name ... ?" Well, in line with my main argument—and as a Lakota myself—"Sioux" was never the name of the Lakota, the Dakota, or the Nakota: all three tribes "changed their name" long ago. If the Lakota Standing Bear nearly a hundred years ago employed the term "Sioux," it was as a necessary obeisance to the "Master's tools," the awareness that Anglo society would only recognize him as a person through this god-awful Anishinaabe-French-English appellation. (A viable remedy in "naming," then, might be to refer to each indigenous people by the best English transliteration of their native name [Lakota, Dine, etc.]—and lose all this "Indian" and "Native American" nonsense altogether.)

But as for "PIONEER": yes, one can find completely innocuous denotative definitions thereof, but [X]'s own call for historicism begs one to appeal to the cultural-historical context. Close your eyes, and IMAGINE a "pioneer." I would think most people of the United States, and especially the Great Plains, might well picture a prairie fleet of covered wagons, or Lewis and Clark, or some lone white explorer surveying the plains from the highest butte available. Denotative definitions are fine, but it is the connotation, the undercurrent of ideology, that carries the day.

"Perhaps these insensitive people [others who already protested the slogan] should change their name [emphasis added]," Professor [X] says by way of conclusion. Or perhaps other insensitive people should change their worldview, which continues to see the "unknown"—including the human and natural Other—as eternally fit fodder for conquest.

P.S.: I feel the same way towards recent blithely positive academic conferences concerning "homesteading."

* Human = Rational? (redux)

In the Republican debate last night (5/3/07), Rudy Giuliani stated that Iranian President "Ahmadinejad is clearly irrational." Uh, by Western standards. Uh, but even by "Western standards," how rational has U.S. foreign policy been? (And as for "rational," as for "REASON" itself as a bogus Western project, Derrida has already laid all that to rest. . . .) In sum, Giuliani's statement means nothing, connotes only irony, and falls off the cliff of "rationalism" upon which it so precariously pretended to perch.

Oh, by the way, it's also another fine example of Said's "Orientalism," in which the non-Westerner is othered as a less-than-"rational" being. (Now where's my cell phone [referring to the just-previous blog entry]? I gotta call someone about this, as self-and-other acknowledgement of my very existence. . . .)

* Cell-Phone Youths

In response to my wife's blog entry, on the subject of new technologies and student communication (oh, there's a picture of her there: "pretty hot, for a wasicu (winyan), en'uh?"), I would like to comment upon the cell phone as an pretty much an entirely novel habitus. This techno-phenomenon has created a whole new sense of "place" for, say, the college students on this campus—and for me. Besides being personally irked by the person behind me yelling "Tom"—and turning around to see that the person is talking to a "Tom" on the phone, I must note that, in general, the cell phone has created a strange breakdown of "borders," a weird going-public w/ one's own personal life. For instance, I can recall at least two instances, in the last year or so, of students sitting on a campus bench or stoop, bawling their eyes out w/ phone to ear, obviously having just learned—on their cell phone—that a significant other has just died. (Hey, in "my day," we at least had the courtesy of doing that initial mourning in the privacy of our homes.) More petulantly, I also can't get over walking into a campus bathroom and hearing a student talking on his cell phone while he was taking a shit. It was bad enough that I knew of such multitasking: my biggest question was—did the person on the other end know it?!

I guess my biggest/general beef is with the erasure of any time "alone," and/or with one's immediate environment. I can understand necessary calls; I can't understand how 2/3's of the students on the UNL campus seem to have to have a phone (or iPod) at/in their ears at all times—as the cardinal and catbird are waxing eloquent with their wonderful courtship songs; as the trees themselves "stand" for something more wonderful than all human discourse. . . . That's what I have trouble stomaching in this whole botched human scenario.

(Yes, I have an iPod myself—but I use it mostly as a backup for my iTunes and iPhoto[s]. When I need to "crank the [I]tunes," headphones thru my PowerBook work just fine, thank you. [Geez, I sound like such an old fogey.])

* Republican = Religious

The Republican debate tonight was, in part, a love-fest of religious "faith": as Mitt Romney put it, "everyone who's a person of faith holds values deep in the heart," whether one is Mormon, Catholic, etc. But I know that such a grand "blanket" hardly covers the Lakota on the Rez doin' the Sun Dance, or the "pagan" deep ecologist, or the Wiccan, all of whom "worship" the natural processes that maintain this planet. I, too, perceive the wonderful mystery that is the cosmos around me every day—and feel awestruck—and treat my fellow humans and other species accordingly; but I suspect that such a "religion" doesn't count in the quarters that are a Republican primary precinct. But then, they called P. B. Shelley an "atheist" (and he had to call himself such, as a youth), who was, I would claim, one of the most truly "spiritual" people of his day. . . .

* "And I'm, LIKE, . . ."

The interminable, like, use of like as, like, an interjection is, like, a simile for a society of, like, simulations.
Quot. of the Day:

The interminable use of like as an interjection is, like, a simile for a society of simulations.
    --TCG [from a March 2005 journal entry]

(In sum, it's an unconscious deconstruction of one's own identity and reality? In my best Eric Cartman voice: "kewl.")

* Literature = "Lies"; The Shortest Epic Ever

Quot. of the Day:

All literature: the left brain's lame attempt to verbalize (and so botch) the right brain's non-verbal truths.
    --TCG [based on a February 2004 journal entry]

. . . And so I appreciate all the more the following poem—the shortest "epic" ever written (quoted entire):

         EPIC

Book I: Oh, Goddess[,] help me sing of Nothing.

Books II-XI:

Book XII: Thanks a lot.

    --[(20th-c.) anonymous poet]

* RADIO RANT: ELLinois & SAYRicuse

Another sportscaster bugbear of mine is the pronunciation of college names. I'm not even qualified to comment upon the regionalist phonemic vicissitudes of (the Universities of) Missouri, Louisville, and New Orleans; but what does bug the hell out of me is how Illinois so often becomes "ELL-uh-NOY" and Syracuse becomes "SAYR-uh-KYOOZ" in mainstream sports-media discourse. Maybe some new "great vowel shift" is occurring that I'm unaware of, and maybe even the majority of the people at these institutions/places actually pronounce them this way, but it still grates upon the mind's ear. . . . Hmmm, the phrase "ELLinois and SAYRicuse" is so lilting that it begs for a song lyric; e.g.—

DAH-duh-DAH—gotta pay their dues
At ELLinois and SAYRicuse—

—but who's got time to even pick up the guitar (then GarageBand) nowadays? . . .

* Of Space and Time

Moving to a larger town makes you realize how much one's "geography" is based upon perception & subjectivity. Those few days/weeks driving in Lincoln (NE)—why, it took forever to get anywhere! . . . because I was noticing every little novel thing. But a few months later, and hell, that 10-mile drive to Wal-Mart takes no time at all. It's habituation: one simply stops paying attention. . . .

From space, then, to time: just so is the "habituation" of childhood to adulthood. As a kid, everything was so new and full and vibrant—and it seemed to last forever; but to the adult (for whom the "world" has been "too much with us," for whom the "glory & the freshness" of those first days have fled), time itself goes so much "faster," as whole decades fly by the "driver" who scarce bothers to look out the car window anymore. [based on a January 2004 journal entry]

* RADIO RANT: Beck & G.M.; Savage & Reality

I imagine a smoke-filled caucus room in D.C., of Democrats hunched around a hookah, muttering, "We gotta get outa 'Nam, man."
Glenn Beck, conservative compatriot of the "let's pooh-pooh global warming" movement, had to tread gingerly as he did an ad for one of his corporate sponsors yesterday (4/30/07). It seems that General Motor's new PR campaign emphasizes its enviro-friendliness, its great number (a relative term) of new vehicles that are flex-fuel capable and/or get > than 30 mpg. Beck's distancing from the (original) campaign's obvious attempt to address the global warming problem led to such embarrassing waffling as "For those who believe in global warming"—well, shucks, folks, these are the cars for you! Beck's own tone thus became a rather strange New Critical rhetoric of ambiguity and tension, as if unsure how far to take his own eternally cutesy ironic tone regarding a product/message payin' him the big bucks. (Of course, and maybe more disingenuous yet—given Beck's brainwashed listenership—GM probably doesn't even mind such waffling. . . .)

But at least Beck is semi-amiable in his non-pretentiousness. Michael Savage's tirades against the "Left" last night found him in especially fine form. For one thing, I don't even know what to make of his assertion that "[m]ost Democratic politicians are using psychotropic drugs"—if not "marijuana," then at least pharmaceutical depressants, etc. (Thank God Rush L. got off the pills so that Savage can't confuse him with the "mental illness" that is liberalism.) I imagine a smoke-filled caucus room in D.C., of Democrats hunched around a hookah, muttering, "We gotta get outa 'Nam, man—I mean—Iran. Er, Iraq. Yeh. Iraq. . . . Hey, Doritos and brie go pretty good together!"

But this is all status quo for Savage, a mere toss-off by the "good Doctor" that he can perform on auto-pilot. What really set me off last night was how his intolerance & hypocrisy achieved a notable crescendo that epitomized his modus operandi. He defended his own right to be controversial (indeed, incendiary) by giving his brow-beaten audience a lecture on "FREEDOM OF SPEECH"; and "if you don't understand that [concept], you can move to Somalia or [another third-world country]." (Your tolerance, Michael, of my freedom to question your definition of "freedom of speech" is stunning.) Furthermore, the ACLU and other seditious liberal activists "need to be thrown out of the country." (Ah, we'll have true freedom, then—an oligarchy of reactionary talking heads & their dittohead acolytes.) Hmmm. Psychotropic drugs are startin' to look pretty good right now. . . .