Poll: 57% of Americans still think Saddam Hussein had substantial involvement in Sept. 11. 45% believe Iraq had WMD at the time of the invasion. Juan Cole argues that “the two-party system in the US has produced a two-party epistemology.” The people who should be very worried about this are the Democrats (Cole points out that the poll numbers also indicate a large number of Democrats buy the Republican party line), US journalism and to some degree the US education system. Unfortunately this all appears to be a result of the postmodern-era growth of conspiracy theory; any given report out of the press can be disbelieved as a product of the “Liberal Media” or the “Corporate Media”, depending on one’s party affiliation. That, and the president has never stepped up and said, “we were wrong.” But of course he disbelieves the media too.
If I were the film The Rules of Attraction, I would sue the film The Laws of Attraction. If I couldn’t get them on copyright infringement I’d take ‘em down for dilution of brand. At some point, someone is going to rent The Laws of Attraction thinking “great, a drugged-out, nihilistic college hate-sex romp,” and they’re going to watch “Getting married is a great way to fall in love.” Find your own title, Hollywood lawyer make-believe! “Sex Lawyer” is an awesome title, and it’s totally not taken.
Every once and a while, for love and google, the comments on a thread far surpass the original post. I was just reminiscing with ‘bags about his thread; and now teen lingo has taken on a life of its own, what with Disco baiting the teens and suchlike. King told me about one I’d never read: Bad Zoos, and it’s an incredible read – a real life Bad Zookeeper is actually commenting insanely! Here’s another one y’all might have missed: Dead Barbie, a Barbie Haters support group right under our noses.
We can all think of self-indulgent things: eating your entire birthday cake, John Woo’s penchant for doves in slow motion, Kill Bill.
I was thinking about this criticism, knowing I myself have called stuff self-indulgent on many occassions, but I tend to have a lingering doubt about what it really means. Only way to solve that is to crack out the dictionary.com:
self-indulgent: Excessive indulgence of one’s own appetites and desires
or Indulging one’s appetites, desires, etc., freely
There’s something puritan about these definitions, with their indirect equation of freedom with excess, and their distaste for both. But moreover, from Destroyer’s Dan Bejar who was at the receiving end of the pejorative because of his album This Night (and many more): “This whole notion of self-indulgence baffles me, as if I’m supposed to be indulging someone else.”* Point well taken; in most uses (especially as a description of art), the self- part is redundant, and we should be concerned with the definition of indulge:
To yield to the desires and whims of, especially to an excessive degree
Yet more excess! Even if we are indulging someone else, it seems to be a bad thing. Latin roots, from indulgere “to be kind or tender to one”. From the other definitions we get a strong sense of parenting, of indulgent parents letting their kids run free, unable or unwilling to crack the whip where warranted. In other words, a lack of sternness, and in the context of artistic work one is letting one’s inner child run free; like Fellini and his admitted obsession with enormous whores. It’s all too easy to couch it in psychoanalytical language, so I will: id, meet superego.
There’s an interesting undercurrent to the concept of indulgence that crops up in this definition: “to engage or take part, especially freely or avidly.” There’s another term that has always fascinated me, and that’s “entertainment”, and about the only meaningful thing one can squeeze out of that concept is “that which engages”. We all like entertainment, right? So we like being engaged. But wait, to engage too freely is a bad thing?
If we return to the idea of artistic self-indulgence, the criticism basically means that the artist is engaging himself as opposed to the audience (especially the critic). The critic says, I wanted your album/film/book to engage me, but with your nonstop slow-motion shots of doves in churches, you engaged yourself. You really let yourself go. Possibly that’s what it is. But anyone who creates knows that it’s difficult to ascertain what the audience and/or critics actually will want, even if one wants to give them what they want. Moreover if you cater exclusively to the audience at the expense of your own artistic desires, then you are pandering, which of course is almost the original definition of indulgence: to “minister to the evil designs and passions of another,” which makes you a panderer – that is, a pimp. When you do battle with the English language’s monstrous biblical heritage, you just can’t win!
But surely it’s less sinful to self-pimp? If you follow late-period Freud and/or any-period Brett Easton Ellis, then you believe you will never meaningfully engage with another, that communication is simply projection, that the only person you can know is yourself. Even if you believe in a less cynical world, in which it is possible to engage other humans via artistic media, you must indulge yourself in some way – you can’t remove your needs and desires from the engagement altogether.
I could nudge this burgeoning theory toward my understanding of art as war, as an engagement between two opposed forces, the creator and the receiver, but that’s not the point. The point is to point out that “self-indulgent” is a pointless criticism, yet another way to blame the artist when you don’t like what they did. John Woo’s doves are heavy-handed, This Night is inaccessible, and Kill Bill is too long, but none of them are self-indulgent.
Apple’s recent NAB announcements are pretty significant, particularly the Panasonic partnership. Apple was well positioned to reap rewards from the explosive growth of DV, and now they appear to be doing the same with HD.
HA! Long, flowing, mulleted shame to ratboy Alfredsson and his fellow choking suckmasters! Buy a goalie, shitbags! Guarantee this, losing loser!
But yes, grave concern about the imminent onslaught of Hitchcock’s bruising masters of pain.
I’m back MOTHERFUCKER!!!
NNNNNNN
I’m pleased to see that lots of fake spam people are now reading the old entries and seem to really like what they see. Thanks for all the comments guys!!! After all, someone’s gotta pick up the slack!!! It’s like coming back to my spoken word stage tour only to discover the audience is now 100% pod people. And the odd Matrix-loving teenage moron who must have gone into the wrong room.
& I’m still too relaxed to formulate a cohesive, non-self-absorbed entry, so let me just add: I FUCKING love exclamation points and SWEARS!!!!
I have been scarce, and will get scarcer. I blame work, and work, and work; but next week I blame Cuba. If I have ignored you, dear reader and friend, rest easy – if only in the knowledge that I will right any wrongs upon my return to the grey mulching shit-smelling heck-hole that is Torontopia in April.
“For God has bound all men over to disobedience so that he may have mercy on them all.”
Attention film buffs, especially Kubrick lovers: don’t miss this tour of Kuby’s archives, or the web chat that accompanies it, or the apparently genuine script (PDF file) of his unmade Napoleon film.
Don’t forget to watch Oliver Stone’s Castro documentary this sunday at 10pm on the CBC. It was funded by HBO, and then they backed out (apparently because he was too soft on Castro), and the only people who would take it were the CBC. Soft or not, it’s a motherfucking Ollie Stone film in which he interviews Fidel. That shit should be seen! (via LES)
Because Jost sent me this and because adam is looking for some little ninjas. Ninjas are magnificent!
Upon viewing this film it becomes apparent that the shit-eating and pie-fucking of modern day teen sex comedies withers next to the unbridled debauchery of their 70s forebears. This film contains the following, in what must be adopted immediately as the gold standard content requirements of the genre: cheerleader tryouts; various post-cheering shower scenes including one with janitor peeping; a sleazy dad; a de-virgining; acid and pot; gratuitous lesbianism; a five-minute toe-sucking scene; sex with bikers; sex in a bear costume; and a slumber party that evolves into an all-nite gangbang. Kudos to Ace Baandige et al for their unrelenting pursuit of realism – they have captured perfectly the porno thrillride that is teenage life. Oh and they wrote the line “Jimmy’s on the scene, like Dr. Spock with a cock.”
The windows computer I use at work has gone through one of the typical windows death/resurrection cycles and now the ritual of software re-installation has re-begun. Absent this time around is Macromedia’s Flash. I just said “fuck it.” 90% of what Flash does nowadays is present ads, 9% is shitty movie websites, and 1% is stuff I might actually want to see. Is there any dumber invention than “rich media” ads, i.e. the web equivalent of a midget clown in rainbow colours who jumps up and down and says “HEY! HEY! HEY! HEY! HEY!” right next to your face while you’re trying to read a book? So fuck you, Flash. Sincerely, D. Crankbloggingsley
Dude calls Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle “essentially a post-humanist film” with the sort of against-the-grain bombast that earns a special place in my heart. He’s comparing McG to Kiarostami, for funk’s sake. Unrelatedly, the new Destroyer album is now out, and it sounds like Kurt Weil scored a late-80s videogame, which I’d like to think is post-human as well, if only because it’s so grrrreat to call things post-human.
I’ve been pretty bad at making posts for this here site but I do have some good titles:
– Beyond Failure
– KillRape Corporation is now HappyTouch Partners Unlimited
– Tax Law: the Musical
– The Poor Man’s Samuel L. Jackson? Samuel L. Jackson
– Ass Buddy, the Portable Sub-Woofer
Also, this is d/blog’s 666th post. Dark Lord Incarnate, I salute you!
If I’ve got a problem, a problem’s got a problem.
– Ol’ Dirty Bastard aka Dirt McGirt aka Joe Bannanas aka Big Baby Jesus
First off, he’s out of jail and has a new album coming out. I didn’t follow his transgressions in great detail, but they are legion and come together to form possibly the bestest, most hilariotragic AMG bio ever. [also recommended: Milli Vanilli and Styx] You should read the whole thing, but if you do not you should at least know that he has been charged twice with making “terrorist threats” – before 2001. He also called a female DA a “sperm donor” and then took a nap in court. Pharrell Williams casually compares him to Jesus in this article, which was written during his stint in the Clinton Correctional Facility and which alarmed me greatly when it first was published, as it seems he wasn’t ha-ha crazy as much as just plain crazy, and unlikely to survive jail. Well he did – can’t wait to hear his latest craziness, ha-ha or not.
If ever life gets you down, just think, you could’ve been born a bee. The workers are worked to death, the drones have sex once and die, and the queen must kill her sisters and mother and then lay eggs every second of the day. If she stops for a moment, the workers prepare her replacement. I guess it’s worth it for all the sweet sweet honey, not to mention the sweet sweet mandibular gland secretions.
- Tired, I misread the product’s descriptor as “anti-Semitic” instead of “anti-septic.” Wow, Listerine’s reaching out to the racist clean-freak market, I thought. Clean the Jews out of your teeth! Of course, there’s always something fascist about cleaning products, something genocidal about the advertising copy: eradicate, eliminate, dissolve, purge, remove stains.
- Odd, then, that Mr. Clean is so gay. I thought maybe this was to make him less threatening to husbands. After all, here’s this magical weightlifter who appears in the home while the husband’s away at work. He “helps out” the wife, revlieves tension, dissolves hysteria etc. etc. And he’s always winking at her. But it’s okay pops, look he’s bald with the earrings and the all-white attire… I guess a more logical explanation would be an attempt to connote the gay male’s reputation for excellent personal grooming skills. Or do the ad people know something we don’t: that a straight woman’s ideal mate is actually a gay man? Men prefer lesbians, after all. If we learn nothing else, it’s that someone should release Cleaning Dyke Twins For Men® brand cleanser.
- I should really tie this in with Mel Gibson’s Jesusploitation film or with gay marriage or something. Aw, fuck it. clicks post
in three parts: one, two, three (via mefi).
Oh yeah, why was the site grey today? See here and more here.
It would totally work: Hop on a mechanized army riverboat as it takes you up the river to Cambodia. You’ll pass crazy army surfers! Then Playboy bunnies® dance for you! Then it’s on to Pan Trangh, “The asshole of the world!” Then your tailgunner gets shot, and finally you’re in a room with a bald, fat warlord who recites poetry until you kill him! It’s literally a high octane thrill ride!!!
Its combination of scratch and indie rock aesthetics could have been dreamed up in an ad agency, but nonetheless it’s great music so who cares? There’s the phrase “world’s greatest loser,” too, which you’ve got to love, in an adequatastic sort of way.
If I’m not posting much it’s ‘cause I’m off making a movie – some kind o’ crazy movie. It’s a blast, but takes a lot of time. Instead of reading here, you could go off and found that orphanage you’ve been meaning to found! Or eat that cheeseburger you’ve been meaning to eat!
I followed a comment from ÿ to the excellent Zoilus site and notice he’s using the word “Torontopia”. I know I’ve used it myself recently, but now I’m thinking it must mean more than I know. So I do a search and whaddaya know, an I King page is the first result, on account of a Discourse comment that spells out the entire thing (more here). Short version: Toronto is the best city, fuck Canadian identity insecurities; Toronto should secede; 905ers will be allowed to visit once a month. I’m down. Bring back the city-state!
Does anyone have copies of the unrated versions of those Microsoft Office ads? In which the jubilant office workers get carried away and fuck?