It's New Year's Eve.

In a couple of days, the future of this Republic will have its beginning-or its end, in Iowa.

One of the frustrating parts of living in this area that, regardless of affiliation, we are kind of at the tail end of the Pepsi Challenge: Our choice comes in November. We don't really have much of a say in what candidate we will run, just whether we vote for them or not.

At any rate, I'm hoping for the best. I'm listening to Neil Young, and hoping that, by the end of the week, we'll know that this is somewhere...

We'd be interested in hearing who people are backing and why. That is, after you recover from your hangovers.

Fucking Kansas!?!

What the hell is wrong with these people? When you brag, in a democracy, about disenfranchising voters as a strategy, and seem happy about it, then you gotta begin to wonder about who the real threats to our way of life are?

Religion

You know, you never hear about this shit in Mecca.

Well, fuck...

As Wes aptly puts it, this ain't good.

Here's what I see coming: Martial Law indefinately. Facile attempts at justice. Musharraf comes out of the despot closet. We look horrible for supporting him.

Happy new year.

Father Christmas

Okay, this may be one of the most despicable things I have ever seen.

Let's be clear: The message is, plain as day, the the magnanimous benevolence the Hillary wants us to see her as someone who will give some "drippings" to the rest of us peasants. Merry Christmas, here's some presents for you, because I am in a position to give them to you. Never mind that in some quarters, these things are considered rights, and in the case of the war, is considered moral, you instead view these things as a kind of bribe to the American people. No sacrifice required. No need to rethink things or get overheated. No No. Just sit there and be a good little boy or girl. Or you'll get a lump a coal.

The arrogance it takes to make something like this is summed up by the Editorial Board from the Des Moines Register's endorsement of Hillary Clinton:

"Unfortunately, for many Americans, perceptions of Clinton, now 60, remain stuck in a 1990s time warp."

It is not us who are stuck in a time warp, but you, and your sycophants who are desperate to elect one more baby boomer in hopes of somehow proving that your entire worldview of the individual represented in market choices is the meeting ground of capitalism and a more humane world-I'm sorry, but the Fleetwood Mac on your IPod doesn't make you any deeper intellectually than your Complete Murphy Brown on DVD makes you a more tolerant, evolved person. Sorry, but if you worried about what Dan Quayle thought of unwed mothers on a TV show, you are as big a tool as he is (and don't get me started on Designing Women).

Brothers and Sisters, its time to rethink our approach to our Republic, our thoughts on government, and what it means to be a public servant. It's time we rethink the paradigm.

"Give all the toys to the little rich boys".

A Christmas Carol (sort of)

I'm a big sentimental schmuck-I even have Charlie Brown's Christmas on DVD, and I will watch A Christmas Carol, beginning to end, and try to recall when being a callous, selfish, greedy prick was a bad thing-you know, before these so called "Conservatives" took over, and the opposition party became the bitches of this Satan (Ghost of Christmas Past? Tip O'Neil, anyone?).

Anyway, I'd everybody to gather 'round the tree, and I'll read you a beautiful, edifying story-just like the one I read last year...




Update: Evidentally, You Tube took the rest the videos down, as well as this one. No worries, though: I'll finish the story for you.

Godwin's Law

photo manipulation by The_Wizard.

Time has made another scary Fascist Nationalist their "Person of the Year".

You know, the guy who tried to call economic liebensraum on the North Pole. Oh, yeah, and our friend's dealings with Iran. Oh, and the Chenchens...don't forget the gangsterism of Russia's New Economy, the one Reagan promised would put cars in every garage. The Morning in Russia looks like it might shape up to be the Midnight in Europe and Asia...

But don't worry: Georgie looked into his soul with his magical christ-y powers.

God Help Us, Everyone!

The Epistemology of Annointing Hillary Clinton: A Reader Response (Slight Return)

Well Stanley:

Seems as though more than a few people, you know, out here in SOCIETY have decided to take a look at the inevitability of Hillary, and faux liberals like you, getting your way, and it looks like you might be revealed to be the self congratulatory schmuck you really are.

I cross my fingers for this event only because it is the right thing to not only keep the GOP out of the Executive Branch at this point, but to keep Hillary out as well.

And...you're an awful jackass.

Please...Leave the reporting to the professionals...

It goes without saying (only because others in the piece say it) but, garsh, big media certainly have served out interests so well, why would we need to keep an eye on the store?

Where's Iggy?

While its good to see Leonard Cohen getting props, c'mon. Madonna (who should be in, don't get me wrong) gets in before Iggy. Detroit must be burning.

By the way: The Police and Genesis have the top selling tours? I wouldn't read to much into their vitality with this fact. People paid six hundred bucks to stultify their preadolescents with the lip sync stylings of Billy Ray Virus's humunculi spawn, so there you go.

File under Audacity

Oh...I get it.

It's the leftists who are obsessed with Jesus.

via Crooks and Liars.

Pussies

Ah yes...Our majority. Gonna set things right again.

Reflective Essay: Bob Dylan, Joe Strummer and becoming Woody.

At the end of the quarter, things can get a little dew-y, a little melancholy, as you take stock of what came before this terrifying moment, when the revisions fall like snowflakes in the recently chilling air, a stillness just before the avalanche of portfolios, TA paperwork, and the usual spate of departmental and college related faux holiday fun.

Somewhat usually, though not at all, come to think of it, this quarter, which started with budgetary fear and dread (well, uh...if you don't know first hand, let's just say that the numbers weren't adding up, and those of us without tenure [as if we can expect such a dinosaur luxury anymore] were looking at unemployment, loss of health insurance, and the penunurious salaries we had all gotten used to for the purposes of rent paying , food buying , and, most importantly, keeping Al Quaeda at bay with optional purchases).

This fear subsided as Administration announced that, due to the attrition (which means scaring off some of my colleagues with this bullshit) we wouldn't have to be sacked. Allowed to "live" because of the "execution" of certain positions, it is now, and forever, that I may, can and will slap the next dumb motherfucker who runs their mouth about the "liberal/progressive/leftist/communist" academy.

THE ACADEMY IS ABOUT AS "LIBERAL" AS FORD OR CHEVROLET. Understand this. It's like your "liberal media", and for the same reasons.

As a result of the holiday, I was presented with a few of opportunities that I would not have been presented with because of time or location: I was able to watch the Scorcese's Bob Dylan doc No Direction Home in its entirety, as well as watching the new Julian Temple pic about Joe Strummer The Future's Unwritten last Saturday while recovering from a hangover, and the pregnant dread of knowing that they'll be a ton of work next week, yet, none right now. I got the same feeling back when I was in the Pyrotechnic Game. June 25TH, maybe ten people stop in the store...June 26TH, they're lined up out the door and down US 50...

...."Liberal" Media...for the same reasons...

At one time, Joe Strummer, changed his name to from John Graham Mellors to "Woody" in honor of Woody Guthrie, and in this way, paid a kind of tribute to the original populist American Minstral/Rabblerouser, the same as another irrascible poet/guitarist from a previous generation, Shabtai Zisel ben Avraham v'Rachel Riva aka Robert Zimmerman aka Bob Dylan.

Changing names is a personal apotheosis, for the change in the words which signify a person necessitate that what is signified also change. Is David Bowie still "David Bowie" if he's David Jones? Is Freddie Mercury "Freddy Mercury" if he's "Farokh Bulsara" (the most dangerous Persian since Xerxes, I might add)? Is Lou Reed still "Lou Reed" if he's "Lou Reed"-okay, that one's easy, because he's an asshole, he's a genius, and it's a bad example-unless "Lou Reed" is a character, a la Philip Roth (and Lou has said as much in Victor Bockris's Transformer)...

For John Graham Mellors, and for Julian Temple, it is this first choice of signifier that cements the foundation of who Joe Strummer is, because it was a concious decision to align with a tradition, and even though Mellors, and his medium, would become very different than Woody Guthrie or Bob Dylan's, the essential need to, as Allen Ginsberg put it, "to take a subject truth and pin it to object reality" is very much the same. As a matter of fact, it is this that placed John Graham Mellors, also a fan of Ginsberg's (see "Capitol Air" and Ghetto Defendent", both collaborations with the Clash) in the company of poets, which is why the Clash were able to transcend where the rest of the so called punk bands continued jerking off on the same three chords, the same form, humping it until its death sometime in 1988 (sorry, Green Day fans.) For Woody Mellor, Joe Strummer is just a refinement, a synonym for Woody, because it signifies both musician (Strummer) and everyman (the average Joe)-a pose that Woody Guthrie, ever the populist, would have been very fond.

Bob Dylan ben Robert Zimmerman, as invention and as nomenclature, is no less instructive, because we, again, have the platonic thrice removed from the original nomenclature. Bob has a Hebrew name, an anglicized name, and then a constructed self, and all are swirl around that guy-over there, yet, it is difficult to pin down exactly what the words Bob Dylan exactly signify, a point made, I believe because I haven't seen it, in I'm Not There. Who is this Bob Dylan guy? Protest singer? Hippy Prophet? Independent Minstrel? Seller of undergarments?

I believe it was that tool from Peter Paul and Mary who said in No Direction Home that everybody wanted a piece of Bob Dylan, wanted Bob to be their own personal Bob Dylan. Everybody above, aside from Freddie Mercury, owes Bob big time, because he changed the rules of the game, changed what was possible in song, changed the paradigm of rock n roll, changed the paradigm of folk. Who said folk music has to be done on acoustic instruments? Who said folk is the only authentic music, and must be rural. Last time I checked, folks live in the city, too, and though the music changes, stories are stories. Bob Dylan made it possible for Lou Reed to make Urban Folk Records, with electricity from other planets, because Bob did it first. "Maggie's Farm" is a song for quitting your shitty job at Taco Bell the same as a migrant farmer protest.

Joe Strummer knew this as well as anybody, well aware of that power of self identification. We are entitled to define ourselves anyway we choose, because we are all chains of signifiers refering to an sign, each are as authentic as the rest. Is it possible for Joe Strummer/Woody/John Graham Mellor to exist without this synergy. Can we think of Bob Dylan without understanding this phenomenon? I dare say Bob can't.

The thing is, as we've observed during this campaign, there is a gnawing, clawing, desire for an increasingly irrelevent and definately irresponsible media to serve up some idea of authenticity in people while simultaneously undercutting the notion of objectivity. People get this point confused, but let me try to be clear on this: It is possible to look at a person objectively, that is to say, looking to merits, etc. However, it is impossible then to declare this objective view as being authentic, because you are, even from this safe distance, you are looking at a version of a person, not the person in and of themselves. Proclaimations of "authenticity" are attempts to control the discourse, and therefore, are fascist. This goes for applies to all cultural constructions, really, from Barack to Punk Rock. The minute you start talking about authenticity, you are really talking about an ideological purity, and when you start talking about ideological purity...it's a just a whistle stop on the midnight train to Belsen.

....Editions of You(me)...

Anyway, it is something that these artists were aware of, because everybody was vested in some version, some signifier of the sign Dylan or Strummer, that touched them and they feel is authentic. This is vexation of all artists, because the flattery, and the accolades from the adoring is certainly tethered to another fine signifier of you, or them, or us.

This Wizard is moved by the poignancy of both and all, and set me to thinking about the nature of my business. This quarter was a giant heaping shit sandwhich that I, and many of my colleagues, had to take steaming bites like some offal manwhich, chunks of the past colleagues, chunks of University College, chunks of the hangovers that come with living idealistically in a Machiavellian Machine that is the contemporary university.

I think the most poisonous thing here is that the facticity of the situation made me a hell of a lot more mercenary, made a lot of us more mercenary. See, I'm not a mercenary. This pedagogy is not for the green, yet I had to think about the green, being one small step past contigent on administrative whims. Thus, I feel that I was phoning it in a bit, that I wasn't bringing my A game because, frankly, I was too goddamned disheartened most of the time to do so. My weekend of independent minstralry, social activism and pure fuck you-ness of these two artists have, plus some well placed cheerleading, have helped me re-order the chain of signifiers, to the originary notion, articulated by Nietzsche in his discussion of Schoepenhauer:

EDUCATION=LIBERATION

Teaching= Indoctrination=Status Quo=Plump Happy Consumers Consumering....

To educate is to liberate an individual by liberating their thinking, liberating their epistemological sense of what is possible and thus, liberating what is ontologically possible.

To teach is to read from a text book, and thus, to instill the corporatist ideology of the textbook manufacturers, whose sole purpose is to make money with half truths, bald faced lies, and the continued supremacy of dead white guys, many of whom were only marginally talented. All are controlling the discourse, circumscribing reality, providing students with an identity that makes inquiry impossible.

In is in education that I find Dylan and Strummer (let's not forget John Lennon, Lou Reed et al.) to be the most inspirational, instructive, in the same breath as Nietzsche, Marx, Derrida, Foucault, James Joyce, because they didn't tell people what to think, but how to think, and this was importance of them all, and the importance of Woody Guthrie as well, for while we remember Woody's guitar as a machine for killing fascists, it is ultimately Woody himself, and Bob and Joe and Derrida and Lennon and Reed, that, by virtue of accepting the signifier of Woody, become similar machines for killing fascists.

It's funny, because, on the last day, when I was finishing up, and the students were putting together portfolios, I looked at one of my students, who worked her ass off all quarter, came to class after having been struck by a bus, who lived with her sister, who's life has been struggle and toil and the institutional racism that is the city of Cincinnati, with her brow furrowed, glasses down on her nose, combing her paper for for comma splices, growing and perfecting a language that is not native to her and beginning to claim ownership of it, liberated and liberating, redefining by her own rules, and I thought "this machine kills fascists"...