No seriously I moved to Tumblr

No seriously I moved to Tumblr. Go there not here.

ready set go

I have this fantasy of writing essays that explain phenomena that don’t exist. But you'll have to read the premium edition 'Second Balcony' to know more.

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Because I watched not-many films throughout my adolescence, and six of them had ‘London Calling’ playing, and custom makes us expect, for the future, a similar train of events with those which have appeared in the past, I grew up believing ‘London Calling’ was the soundtrack to a thousand films. I heard ‘London Calling’ play on ‘Friends’ when I was twelve and in ‘Billy Elliot’ when I was fourteen. Then on the new Bond when I was sixteen, and in the airplane movie on my NY flight at seventeen. Then a zombie movie the year after, and another zombie movie on the next. Discovering that ‘London Callin’ only ever featured in nine films was like discovering the sun is only up when I am looking out my window.

[Also on Tumblr]

From now on

From now-on also on tumblr. From sooner-or-later-on only on tumblr.

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If Derrida was alive and more interesting he would have published an essay right about now about how last month's John Mayer thing embodies the primacy of writing in that if the interviewer were to transcribe "...call it "a nigger pass"" rather than "...call it a nigger pass" there couldn't be a scandal, even though the two transcriptions differ not in what they indicate about the speech-act that they document but only in what writing-act they assign to be the speech-act's signified.

dear edgy critics

your article does not get twice as clever every time you say 'white people' for no reason. please fucking die already.

exhibit a

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i intend to do a project where i interview people for no reason. do you want me to interview you for no reason? e-mail me.

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clarified butter

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"I feel about conversation like some people feel about sex: it's the highest expression of love and a loveless (affection-less/enthusiasm-less) conversation denigrates our humanity."

'Contra' and How We Read Lyrics

My essay on Vampire Weekend, lyrics, and pop-talk is up at Elif Batuman's.

goodbye ethos hello dianoia

sitcoms don't invent new personalities anymore but the good ones invent new cognitive profiles. what really makes a character memorable nowadays is an interesting nuanced map of areas-of-quickness and areas-of-slowness.

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These days I read mostly to try to find a book that can't exist: it's gotta be as cold and infinite and scary as reading-avant-garde-literature-and-not-getting-it is and as dazzling and free and telepathic as reading-avant-garde-literature-and-getting-it is. And yes, even I don't believe that this isn't transference.

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Reading Hipster Runoff makes me feel like no one's ever gonna die. After I stopped reading I got freaked out recalling the fact that I'm going to die [I'm not kidding, this actually happened]. I love Andy Warhol a lot and I kind of dislike Hipster Runoff, but I never got this full effect from 'From A to B & Back Again' so this godawful kid is evidently talented.

triptych

1.

i'd love to write a short story where we discover earth18, a planet that's exactly like 18th century earth, and some anthropologists write a defense of the earth18 british, saying we shouldn't criticize the 'primitive' british imperialists from our 'enlightened' post-imperialist discourse.

2.

i don't want to contest the performative necessity of these it's-not-as-bad-in-context defenses of african female circumcision or whatnot. but i shudder at the underlying supposition that it's dumb to think that one society is safer/freer than another. the supposition is of course meant to deter from synchronic comparison (us vs. them) not diachronic comparison (us now vs. us then), but the diachronic implication is inevitable and a huge fuck you to anyone who ever fought for anything.

3.

problems of multiculturalism are co-extensive with problems of multi-sub-culturalism, or else you're a racialist asshole. i take pro-ana self determination seriously.

more recreation

Title for future Gossip Girl episode about Jenny Humphrey: "Oration on the Dignity of Meth"

tswift

me: if i had to bet who is the one person who actually exists and everyone else is just a part of that person's dream, i'd bet taylor swift rather than me. that's a possible phd topic: proof that taylor swift is the red king

[try to imagine]

that the wittgenstein/anscombe 'not a mind in a body but a minded body' thing is really to make us not feel bad about taking hot people's emotions more seriously

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it's not that i want my lit avant-garde it's that i want it thorough; i want the negative space around each artistic choice [to be] avant-garde.

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imminent extinction can be kind of exhilarating. isn't it good to know the work you do now will never not-be-on-the-cutting-edge?

[redux]

1.

The very you are very different.
They have more to them.

Architects also raise dogs but they know not to think much of it they
can't look out in NY it was made with a lake for a heart and a taste for the uncanny.

Old resources have it going for them still. In the continent's strong air

your personality on tape uncomfortably high-pitched,

thin chance at eluding psychology drawn from the world famous smoke of tobacco. The very very you are.

Very different from the very me.
All the objects left Europ we looked at the tan-lines

left after them by the sun of the mind

it is not tired to do this it is almost new



2.


Dear acquaintances your second language.

First europ Dear acquaintagonists after

the money's gone and you're as good. The best of your ridiculous powers all there

after a sleep so good that it was practically unverifiable. Get stabbed in the habitus once

and me as a culture is over it [and out

and over ]


3.


Leaving in bad faith from x-ing to trying-to-x never looked or
aside. So much theater left in this old piece of junk.



4.

years after years that it took us to solute the difference. grone-over. speak soon. miss yours
and yourare. age-
ing ag-ain-'t to far. to here's and hers
lookit up

akrazors. run out.

5.

but but-an-after-dinner smoke.
but-we-have-standards. but the details will speak on their own.

work

a formalist explanation of a foucauldian explanation of a formalist explanation of marlowe's doctor fuastus

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old question: are dreams object-oriented or pure output?

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after enough years you start thinking of your migraines as a personality trait

collected

Allusion Unto Title

The Cultural Logic Of Academic Allusions

Allusions And The Individual Paper

The Birth Of Allusion From The Spirit Of Laziness

Why I Am Not A Person Who Can Make Up New Titles

How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love Allusions

The Advantages And Disadvantages Of Allusions For Titles

On The Very Idea Of An Original Title

How To Name Papers With Allusions

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XkcdExplained is funny but also the latest instance of terror-by-recognition. 'haha i know what types of things you enjoy; aren't you ashamed to enjoy types of things'.

dragon blues

ending a video game is like being born only no one's going to accommodate that

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me: which is a problem. i'm very good at doing a really good job thinking about things, but my savvy for knowing what things to think about is average plus at best.

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Julie Stone Peters' idiom for the medievalist [Bakhtin's?] take on comical violence works for me: 'the body bouncing back to life'. It's uniquely good at explaining why
























is hilarious but








































is meta-funny at best.

list of persons i feel i have a secret deep natural personal understanding of

edward said
jay-z
viktor shklovsky

(28 November 1908 – 30 October 2009)

[can't stop almost crying over lévi-strauss. now a fuckton of present's switched into past and there's no one around anymore but us chickens]

!

the humanities aren't a marketplace where you hawk answers they're a marketplace where you hawk question+answer sets. i trained wrong.

today's presentation:

futurist theater invented it's-so-bad-it's-good, as an adaptation precipitated by the encounter with commercial audiences.

?

Are parties good narrative closure cause weddings are parties, or are weddings good narrative closure cause weddings are parties?

The topic of my future dissertation:`

When is there a there there.

best game ever

"... or upper-middlebrow favorites like Musil ...."

"... or upper-middlebrow favorites like Stein ...."

"... or upper-middlebrow favorites like Pound ...."

"... or upper-middlebrow favorites like LeWitt ...."

"... or upper-middlebrow favorites like Heraclitus ...."

"... or upper-middlebrow favorites like Marx ...."

"... or upper-middlebrow favorites like Breton ...."

"... or upper-middlebrow favorites like Marinetti ...."

"... or upper-middlebrow favorites like Jarry ...."

"... or upper-middlebrow favorites like Swedenborg ...."

"... or upper-middlebrow favorites like Wittgenstein ...."

"... or upper-middlebrow favorites like Zukofsky ...."

"... or upper-middlebrow favorites like Proust ...."

"... or upper-middlebrow favorites like Satie ...."

"... or upper-middlebrow favorites like Brakhage ...."

"... or upper-middlebrow favorites like Jakobson ...."

"... or upper-middlebrow favorites like Spinoza ...."

"... or upper-middlebrow favorites like Schönberg ...."

"... or upper-middlebrow favorites like Büchner ...."

"... or upper-middlebrow favorites like Malevich ...."

"... or upper-middlebrow favorites like Woolf ...."

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The first works we encounter are gonna frame our view of an artist* indefinitely. These sequences of consumption can make the difference between flawed idol and half-redeemed nemesis.

[Did you know that the late, great historian of metaphysics Michel Foucault also wrote a history of sex? That the author of Pnin coined the term 'lolita'? That David Bowie was briefly involved with the glam rock movement?]

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knowledge acquisition is the worst form of escapism

alternate version

'The Siege of Numantia' [Miguel de Cervantes], in which we learn that horror burns thru every pretense 'till Man is revealed as he is: passive-aggressive.

=

The Siege of Numantia [Miguel de Cervantes] = Battle Royale [Kinji Fukasaku].

contra

i'm developing a nasty pop-hegelian affectation in my pop-culture consumption. to wit: vampire weekend as the synthesis of the painfully autarkic liberal-arts-kids-culture of the early 00's with the sickeningly parasitic liberal-arts-kids-culture of the mid 00's. but vampire weekend don't make me pained or queasy.

pop culture yay

taylor swift has a genius for walking the line. that song is half abstinence-only, half about how the worst disease sex can give you is inertia-unto-marriage.

please

let's make a law that people can't quote the humpty-dumpty-alice-'glory' paragraph anymore
ever

all in all

political snobbism is the new aesthetic snobbism.

guess:

few to non in the very-arts are nominalists. the worse the metaphysics the higher the art.

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i only love art that embodies desire. i only respect art that doesn't [tries not to]. this is not sustainable.