There's a lot on partition here, but I haven't read all of it. The short version seems to be: it's a bad idea. I could have sworn I read something more recently, but I can't find it.
The movie of the season i'd most want to see this season, and have thought so for months, if I could afford to see a movie, and thought of first when someone or other was saying "what movie would I want to see, anyway?," or words to that effect.
But, eventually, it's on a network. (Someday, we will also again afford cable.)
It's a bad idea primarily because the Sunni area becomes the new al Qaeda training ground, from what I understand. Of course, since I'm a blogger, I didn't follow the link, prefering to shoot off my mouth like I know something.
Anyway, though, I think that Fox is adequate as an entertainment network. Our basic cable plan is so terrible, though, that perhaps I've lost perspective. We don't even get full 24-hour coverage of Law and Order.
I actually finally hauled out of storage my tape of Starship Troopers, the movie, and thought of something to say, but I've then realized nobody here but Chopper gives a damn. Such is Unfogged. Happy fucking holidays. May Heidiger give you equal joy. God fucking bless you all, everyone. (I played Tiny Tim in the third grade play in the (redundantly) third grade in public school, complete with aluminim foil brace.)
You have to have something to talk about during all those long boring drives over the globalized surface of our flattened world, where the olive trees grow beside the lexus factories, and prices are expressed in Big Macs, and somewhere, somehow, McDonalds is advancing the cause of world peace.
I saw Munich. Walked out surprised that Tony Kushner was associated with such a Zionist work. But some Jews I know weren't pleased with the movie's moral equivalence, so.
but I've then realized nobody here but Chopper gives a damn.
Um, I was more or less on your side, Gary, which I would've thought you would've figured out. That said, Heinlein is out-of-fashion/unacceptable, at least in youngish-professional-liberal-land - and when nothing is at stake, I don't see any particular reason to argue fashion. Much less personal preferences or 'religious/faith-based' personal convictions. Arguments about facts can be disputed and disposed of; policy must be argued, whether any facts are at hand or not; and the arguments about taste and personal convictions will never be settled and probably aren't that goddamned important anyways.
There's a lot on partition here, but I haven't read all of it. The short version seems to be: it's a bad idea. I could have sworn I read something more recently, but I can't find it.
Yes, and Djerejian is a neo-con True Believer. People do not get to decide what country they live in; Iraq was created by the British Empire and the British Empire is really great and stuff.
Also, there may be some ethnic cleansing (which was the only substantial objection other than some catastrophizing). Of course, ethnic cleansing is going on right now. (This was Cole's objection as well, and this applies to him too.) This is all in the context of "Yes, it's tough, hard, ugly going--but if we remain strong and see this as a five to ten year effort I'm not sure the gig is up yet."
Since I don't see how you get actual democracy by forcing people to live together who do not wish to do so except by Stalin's methods and I do not see a 5 to 10 effort panning out, I'm not going to buy in. In the long term, I do not see any effort panning out if it forces people to live together who do not wish to do so. See Yugoslavia 1918-1999.
Curiously enough, whenever THIS subject comes up, Germany of WWII and the forcible expulsion of zillions of Germans from Eastern Europe never comes up, even when it comes up in every OTHER neo-con screed about nation-building.
I think that Peggy Noonan also quotes cabbies dreaming the American dream and rapt with the vision of the magical singing dolphins rescuing Baby Jesus Elian "Alien" Gonzales.
I say let Iraq partition itself. It will be somewhat bloody, but so was Yugoslavia's disintegration, so was India's. And there is no way to know what would be bloodier, what is more "democratic", partition, or enforced unity. And in the end, it isn't for us to decide.
Whether it will be better or worse for US strategic interests, whether one or another new state will be anti-American, or a petri dish for anti-western terrorism, doesn't really matter as that can be said of those parts of Iraq already.
Besides, state association with terrorism is arguably good for the US's goals against terrorist. How dearly we wish that all terrorists would become state associated. We can deal with states. We can obliterate them. We are geared for it.
On the other hand, old borders are like old scars. They contain. Newer borders are less tough, less strong, less containing. I think what is more frightening is that armed struggle between Sunnis, Shiites, and Kurds, to establish and maintain 3 new borders inside Iraq could ignite and escalate into larger war, Sunni vs. Shiite. Lots of non-muslim countries could be pulled into this, Russia, China, France, Israel, Turkey (ok, I know, Turkey is muslim...)
What may be done by the US to avoid this not to cling only to the idea of a unified Iraq as the sole viable solution. It may make sense for the US to prepare as best as possible for an as-peaceful-as-possible partitioning. This may have to be done in secret, on the back burner, but surely we need to at least formulate a Plan-B.
"Gary, did you just comment to say that you weren't going to comment because no one cares enough?"
Probably. Don't mind me, I'm in an incoherent mood, as well as a foul one. Carry on. I'd say that I was feeling trapped in that bright moment in which I learned my doom, but no one here would get the refererence, I expect (surprise me).
What a waste of comment space. Not Dahlgren, Fall of the Towers? Been decades, I read that at least twice, but don't remember much, closer to mainstream that anything else Delaney wrote, but I wonder if there are intimations or artistry even in that early work. Gonna go see if I still have a copy.
Can't find "Towers" in my database, which doesn't mean it isn't in a box around here somewhere. "Jewels of Aptor" is listed, I think the ACE double version, which would be cool. Haven't seen a picture of Delaney since the 70s, and in googling, came across more recent ones. Lord he looks good
"I think identity . . . it's a provisional notion. Like race, it doesn't exist. The problem with identity is simply that there isn't any such thing. Or another way of saying the same thing, I mean it has no ontological status." ...SD
"The sign really is arbitrary. And the categories that we create from the sign are also arbitrary. And because they're arbitrary, then they serve functions, they allow language to proceed in an efficient manner. When the categories are not useful, language snarls and people argue over [it], and then the next thing you knew, we come up with a new category that's more efficient and allows less snarling." ...SD
"SD: The problem is, is hegemony an element of one's political ontogeny, or is it a political effect? And I think it's a political effect, not an ontological absolute. "
There are proportionately less Jews in Mississippi than there were in 1840 or 1940. Yet that local religious homogeneity has not relieved the Mississippi Christians of the paranoia and need for national hegemony. The opposite. The mono-culture of Saudi Arabia created the monster that brought down the Towers.
No, the smart kids are not thinking about Iraq in any useful way. The ones I see in the blogosphere are just beating the war drums of their particular retro-peacenik tribe in an attempt at using sympathetic magic to make the other cultures disappear.
Happy Jesus'-birthday to all my parents' coreligionists! Happy Long-lasting-oil-day, to all of mine! Peak oil will not longer be a problem after we go on the Maccabee system.
Composing a Happy Holidays post for my own blog just now, I came up with what I think is the finest descriptor I've heard yet for the "War on Christmas" brigades: "Bill O'Reilly and his co-psychotics".
Very possibly where Chip got it from, because he's a far smarter man than I am or ever will be. Not what I was thinking of, though. Fall Of The Towers (gee, that took on a new meaning, recently didn't it?) was probably his worst book/books ever, but he was just a kid, then.
"Haven't seen a picture of Delaney"
Delany, damnit. No offense taken, of course. And he is a patriarch. (Or should be; it's been many years since I called and Iva answered, but he's had so many students.)
I'm quite willing to have Bob's babies's now, though. He actually gets my references, or goes looking for them, and I'd never ask for more. I'm just a simple man with simple pleasures.
Not that I'd object if a younger woman with similar insights started writing me.
Hasn't happened recently, alas. Nor even an older woman. Surprising as that doubtless is.
But, even if you're not with teh skiffy crowd, am I nuts in watching the reruns and thinking that Kristin Kreuk is astonishingly beautiful (although I might take Alison Mack over her, to be sure)?
Since it's such a het male crowd, I play to it, or something (mostly not thinking, just typing; bitches allowed, as well as you other broads not sleeping with me).
That the bright philosophy kids have no clue about Chip Delany suggests to me that they follow fashion more than knowledge, incidentally, but that's just me being obnoxious, I expect. And unfair in many ways, because we all have lanes we go down. And I've avoided reading Heidigger. .
STill, I think Chip is one to check out. At least though the basic essays, and maybe also Triton, for starters. Though it won't work if you don't have the mindset. Never has, never will, alas.
That the bright philosophy kids have no clue about Chip Delany suggests to me that they follow fashion more than knowledge, incidentally, but that's just me being obnoxious, I expect.
Candy everybody wants. Hey. Hey. Give them what they want. (It's not as if there's much other talk going on here tonight. Dunno why that might be.) (I surrendered hoping people might talk on my own blog a while ago. Hey. Hey. Even though I don't give them what they want, and never will, because I am so fucking brave and independent, or such. Okay, it's all candy tossing; I'll just step back and lick,)
You could help us fight the terrorists, Wolfson, but you seem to be against us. Why, Wolfson? Why? Bring us into the light. Cleverness is far easier than wisdom, Mr. Guy.
I'f be perfectly happy with a group hug, mind. And why do I keep having to fill in the "email address" query, anyway? It's quite tiresome, although so am I, of course. (Linda Rondstat on "When Will I Be Loved?" is yet another story.)
A biography of Delany, written by Delany using a pseudonym. Interesting in how little apparent "fun" Delany has, how straightforwardly it is written.
Gary, at some point Holbo demonstrated to me that he knew more about Delany than I am capable of learning. Reading the biography and trying to follow the visiting professorships and lecture series, my guess is that Chip Delany has single-handedly turned most American lit-crit departments into SF fan clubs.
I also somewhere got the impression that reading Dahlgren is a rite of passage for modern young American intellectuals. Even at 900 pages, I think it is at least superficially(stylistically) easier reading than the earlier Delany classics, and the themes and scenarios have a great appeal to the postpunk generations. Just a guess, to pick oh a random smart kid who read SF, I'll bet Saiselgy hasn't read Fitzgerald or Miller or Kerouac(ok maybe) but read Dahlgren somewhere near puberty. Hell, thirty years ahead of its time, it tells women how to pee standing up.
I'd just remembered a discussion of PK Dick on his old blog and got the impression he had read SF as a kid. I was just trying to think of someone who might have read it. Doesn't matter. Nobody needs literature and culture, cept those who need it. Didn't do me any good.
"A biography of Delany, written by Delany using a pseudonym."
Yes, I think he first stuck K Leslie on the appendix to the Bantam first version of Triton, but K. Leslie likely existed far before.
"...more about Delany than I am capable of learning...."
Chip has always made my head spin. I am simply grateful to live in the world he does.
:...my guess is that Chip Delany has single-handedly turned most American lit-crit departments into SF fan clubs."
Dunno. Probably. But he's handy when facing the usual "ha, ha ha, sf is crap" crowd.
"...Even at 900 pages, I think it is at least superficially(stylistically) easier reading than the earlier Delany classics,"
I don't have a copy here, and like almost everything, I've not reread it in more than a decade, but as I recall, there was a huge block of text in the first 80 pages or so that then, once past, turned into fairly normal narrative. But most sf readers didn't get past that. Thus J. J. Pierce, etc.
Dhalgren actually helped me become lovers with the love of my life, and enabled me to be the Kid in other relationships, but it is just a subset of the fact that science fiction has been my life. (Last century, anyway.)
"Didn't do me any good."
I think it maybe did. I'm silly that way. I'm willing to sleep with anyone who can talk the talk, basically, not that that's an invite, Bob.
"I'd just remembered a discussion of PK Dick on his old blog...."
I wish I'd seen that blog. I can almost write it, given enough speed.
God bless us all, everyone. It's the only day I can tell you what I feel.
He snores, by the way. As do I. (It was at worldcon, 1983, that I learned; I had to bang on the door to get in, because the management was stingy with the keys; parties at his apartment were more fun, even when Iva was younger and didn't question why I was calling.)
Also, so much in the Chip link weirds me out, which is why I've never touched it before. I have a few too many personal connections to it, and not just as a reader.
I do commend it to others, though, since I always like the thought that good people should go near certain sets of words, at least. There's no doubt that Chip changed my life. Power of writing is a mighty power, and my own words are nothing. (I click before I reread, because otherwise, as usual, I would cancel it for being the same old nonsense. What a bunch of crap I mostly write. Mutter, mutter, mutter.)
That's not good (though I'm an Albert Brooks fan), but I think the movie for which I saw a preview last night could pretty easily take it down in an awfuler-movie contest.
People say Syriana is confusing because it has more plots than a Jacobean tragedy. Take that back. It is a Jacobean tragedy: put George Clooney in doublet and hose and he'd fit right in.
:I'm pretty sure that I couldn't say enough how much it would mean to me if and when anyone reads the Chip essay Bob linked to, by the way. Just in passing, and running away. Running very fast.
I liked the Seventies more than the present decade. Women threw themselves at me a tad more, and I kind of liked that, and them.
Running much faster, now. It's still a fine set of stuff by K. Leslie, though. ("Cancel" is so much better a choice than "post.")
73: Oh man, that "American Dreamz" movie? I thought it was a joke when I saw the trailer. Looks like a painfully drawn-out, poorly done SNL sketch (half-assed impersonations, etc.) I'm surprised Hugh Grant and Willem Defoe would do something like that.
There's a lot on partition here, but I haven't read all of it. The short version seems to be: it's a bad idea. I could have sworn I read something more recently, but I can't find it.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 12-23-05 5:47 PM
The movie of the season i'd most want to see this season, and have thought so for months, if I could afford to see a movie, and thought of first when someone or other was saying "what movie would I want to see, anyway?," or words to that effect.
But, eventually, it's on a network. (Someday, we will also again afford cable.)
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 12-23-05 5:52 PM
Although I'm also interested in Munich, now.
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 12-23-05 5:54 PM
It's a bad idea primarily because the Sunni area becomes the new al Qaeda training ground, from what I understand. Of course, since I'm a blogger, I didn't follow the link, prefering to shoot off my mouth like I know something.
Anyway, though, I think that Fox is adequate as an entertainment network. Our basic cable plan is so terrible, though, that perhaps I've lost perspective. We don't even get full 24-hour coverage of Law and Order.
Posted by Adam Kotsko | Link to this comment | 12-23-05 8:37 PM
Is there a reason there's no space between "three" and "tidbits"?
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 12-23-05 9:00 PM
Ogged is baiting you into being a little bitch, Ben.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 12-23-05 9:48 PM
I actually finally hauled out of storage my tape of Starship Troopers, the movie, and thought of something to say, but I've then realized nobody here but Chopper gives a damn. Such is Unfogged. Happy fucking holidays. May Heidiger give you equal joy. God fucking bless you all, everyone. (I played Tiny Tim in the third grade play in the (redundantly) third grade in public school, complete with aluminim foil brace.)
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 12-23-05 9:51 PM
I also used to stop italics, in my heroic days, We hung Mussolini.
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 12-23-05 9:53 PM
Gary, did you just comment to say that you weren't going to comment because no one cares enough?
Posted by FL | Link to this comment | 12-23-05 9:55 PM
Hanged.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 12-23-05 10:03 PM
Isn't "my cabbie said" an old trope of Krugman and other dim stars of the printed media?
Posted by TJ | Link to this comment | 12-23-05 10:36 PM
It's Friedman who's the cabbie-quoter.
Posted by slolernr | Link to this comment | 12-23-05 10:43 PM
You have to have something to talk about during all those long boring drives over the globalized surface of our flattened world, where the olive trees grow beside the lexus factories, and prices are expressed in Big Macs, and somewhere, somehow, McDonalds is advancing the cause of world peace.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 12-23-05 10:45 PM
I saw Munich. Walked out surprised that Tony Kushner was associated with such a Zionist work. But some Jews I know weren't pleased with the movie's moral equivalence, so.
Posted by Armsmasher | Link to this comment | 12-24-05 12:19 AM
but I've then realized nobody here but Chopper gives a damn.
Um, I was more or less on your side, Gary, which I would've thought you would've figured out. That said, Heinlein is out-of-fashion/unacceptable, at least in youngish-professional-liberal-land - and when nothing is at stake, I don't see any particular reason to argue fashion. Much less personal preferences or 'religious/faith-based' personal convictions. Arguments about facts can be disputed and disposed of; policy must be argued, whether any facts are at hand or not; and the arguments about taste and personal convictions will never be settled and probably aren't that goddamned important anyways.
Why does it bother you so much?
ash
['?']
Posted by Anonymous | Link to this comment | 12-24-05 4:52 AM
There's a lot on partition here, but I haven't read all of it. The short version seems to be: it's a bad idea. I could have sworn I read something more recently, but I can't find it.
Yes, and Djerejian is a neo-con True Believer. People do not get to decide what country they live in; Iraq was created by the British Empire and the British Empire is really great and stuff.
Also, there may be some ethnic cleansing (which was the only substantial objection other than some catastrophizing). Of course, ethnic cleansing is going on right now. (This was Cole's objection as well, and this applies to him too.) This is all in the context of "Yes, it's tough, hard, ugly going--but if we remain strong and see this as a five to ten year effort I'm not sure the gig is up yet."
Since I don't see how you get actual democracy by forcing people to live together who do not wish to do so except by Stalin's methods and I do not see a 5 to 10 effort panning out, I'm not going to buy in. In the long term, I do not see any effort panning out if it forces people to live together who do not wish to do so. See Yugoslavia 1918-1999.
Curiously enough, whenever THIS subject comes up, Germany of WWII and the forcible expulsion of zillions of Germans from Eastern Europe never comes up, even when it comes up in every OTHER neo-con screed about nation-building.
ash
['BAH.']
Posted by ash | Link to this comment | 12-24-05 5:09 AM
I think that Peggy Noonan also quotes cabbies dreaming the American dream and rapt with the vision of the magical singing dolphins rescuing Baby Jesus Elian "Alien" Gonzales.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 12-24-05 8:18 AM
I say let Iraq partition itself. It will be somewhat bloody, but so was Yugoslavia's disintegration, so was India's. And there is no way to know what would be bloodier, what is more "democratic", partition, or enforced unity. And in the end, it isn't for us to decide.
Whether it will be better or worse for US strategic interests, whether one or another new state will be anti-American, or a petri dish for anti-western terrorism, doesn't really matter as that can be said of those parts of Iraq already.
Besides, state association with terrorism is arguably good for the US's goals against terrorist. How dearly we wish that all terrorists would become state associated. We can deal with states. We can obliterate them. We are geared for it.
On the other hand, old borders are like old scars. They contain. Newer borders are less tough, less strong, less containing. I think what is more frightening is that armed struggle between Sunnis, Shiites, and Kurds, to establish and maintain 3 new borders inside Iraq could ignite and escalate into larger war, Sunni vs. Shiite. Lots of non-muslim countries could be pulled into this, Russia, China, France, Israel, Turkey (ok, I know, Turkey is muslim...)
What may be done by the US to avoid this not to cling only to the idea of a unified Iraq as the sole viable solution. It may make sense for the US to prepare as best as possible for an as-peaceful-as-possible partitioning. This may have to be done in secret, on the back burner, but surely we need to at least formulate a Plan-B.
Posted by Mr. B | Link to this comment | 12-24-05 10:56 AM
Damn, I just realized. In posting that from the bathtub, I just missed my day's best opportunity to masterbate. Well, maybe not...
Posted by Mr. B | Link to this comment | 12-24-05 11:02 AM
"Gary, did you just comment to say that you weren't going to comment because no one cares enough?"
Probably. Don't mind me, I'm in an incoherent mood, as well as a foul one. Carry on. I'd say that I was feeling trapped in that bright moment in which I learned my doom, but no one here would get the refererence, I expect (surprise me).
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 12-24-05 11:15 AM
Remember to use both hands today.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 12-24-05 11:15 AM
"People do not get to decide what country they live in...."
They do, actually, and they tend to take up arms about it. Even Tibetans think about it, as in last week's NY Liberal Newspaper Magazine Section.
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 12-24-05 11:18 AM
"Why does it bother you so much?"
Alcohol. And it's a diversion from all the endless serious problems (both mine and the world's).
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 12-24-05 11:24 AM
"Why does it bother you so much?"
Also, I'm depressed, so I'm mostly hearing the negative. This will pass. But meanwhile.
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 12-24-05 11:29 AM
Bitch reminds me it's masturbate, not masterbate. Heh.
Posted by Mr. B | Link to this comment | 12-24-05 11:53 AM
I wasn't going to say it.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 12-24-05 11:56 AM
20 "but no one here would get the refererence"
John Hall Wheelock "The Bright Doom" c1927
There are three tremblings sweet
to think upon:
The trembling of a poplar-leaf in
the wind,
The trembling of a woman in the
moment of love
And the trembling of the stars.
My heart is a dark forest where no
voice is heard,
Nor sound of foot by day or night
—nor echo, borne
Down the long aisles and shadowy
arches, of a horn,
Trembling—nor cry of beast nor
call of any bird.
Posted by bob mcmanus | Link to this comment | 12-24-05 12:13 PM
20 I just liked that, but this is a better seach result:
You are trapped in that bright shining moment when you learned your doom.
'That there might be too much snow in the notion of fire' --Cesar Vallejo, The Complete Posthumous Poetry, tr Clayton Eshleman (1979)
From Edward Bear- The Seven Deadly Needs: To Know, To Be Right, To Get Even, To Look Good, To Judge, To Keep Score, and To Control.
The internets have everything
Posted by bob mcmanus | Link to this comment | 12-24-05 12:20 PM
Shit Shit I knew this Dahlgren, it's from Dahlgren
Posted by bob mcmanus | Link to this comment | 12-24-05 12:22 PM
It's always a mistake to correct people when they're masturbating.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 12-24-05 12:27 PM
What a waste of comment space. Not Dahlgren, Fall of the Towers? Been decades, I read that at least twice, but don't remember much, closer to mainstream that anything else Delaney wrote, but I wonder if there are intimations or artistry even in that early work. Gonna go see if I still have a copy.
Posted by bob mcmanus | Link to this comment | 12-24-05 12:27 PM
Maybe if their errors are starting to cause problems, they'd appreciate being taken in hand, though.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 12-24-05 12:28 PM
Can't find "Towers" in my database, which doesn't mean it isn't in a box around here somewhere. "Jewels of Aptor" is listed, I think the ACE double version, which would be cool. Haven't seen a picture of Delaney since the 70s, and in googling, came across more recent ones. Lord he looks good
Delaney Interview
I have a white beard, but can't ever get any length of hair, head or facial. Stopped at the middle of my back 7 years go. Probably liver failure.
Posted by bob mcmanus | Link to this comment | 12-24-05 12:52 PM
The hegemonic patriarch would tell you that there is one correct way to masturbate, but the hegemonic patriarch would be wrong.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 12-24-05 1:16 PM
Can't the patriarchal hegemon be right, just once?
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 12-24-05 1:21 PM
From the Delaney interview cited above:
"I think identity . . . it's a provisional notion. Like race, it doesn't exist. The problem with identity is simply that there isn't any such thing. Or another way of saying the same thing, I mean it has no ontological status." ...SD
"The sign really is arbitrary. And the categories that we create from the sign are also arbitrary. And because they're arbitrary, then they serve functions, they allow language to proceed in an efficient manner. When the categories are not useful, language snarls and people argue over [it], and then the next thing you knew, we come up with a new category that's more efficient and allows less snarling." ...SD
Marcotte on the Front Lines of the War on Christmas"
All the above is a comment about the partition of Iraq.
Posted by bob mcmanus | Link to this comment | 12-24-05 1:58 PM
Reminds me of Cassirer.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 12-24-05 2:00 PM
Wolfson, the Patriarch would consign us all to a hellish life of only missionary-position masturbation. And you defend him.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 12-24-05 2:14 PM
"SD: The problem is, is hegemony an element of one's political ontogeny, or is it a political effect? And I think it's a political effect, not an ontological absolute. "
There are proportionately less Jews in Mississippi than there were in 1840 or 1940. Yet that local religious homogeneity has not relieved the Mississippi Christians of the paranoia and need for national hegemony. The opposite. The mono-culture of Saudi Arabia created the monster that brought down the Towers.
No, the smart kids are not thinking about Iraq in any useful way. The ones I see in the blogosphere are just beating the war drums of their particular retro-peacenik tribe in an attempt at using sympathetic magic to make the other cultures disappear.
Posted by bob mcmanus | Link to this comment | 12-24-05 2:39 PM
Happy Jesus'-birthday to all my parents' coreligionists! Happy Long-lasting-oil-day, to all of mine! Peak oil will not longer be a problem after we go on the Maccabee system.
Posted by Jeremy Osner | Link to this comment | 12-24-05 2:56 PM
And, belated wishes for a happy solistice, to all you druids out there.
Posted by Jeremy Osner | Link to this comment | 12-24-05 2:57 PM
Composing a Happy Holidays post for my own blog just now, I came up with what I think is the finest descriptor I've heard yet for the "War on Christmas" brigades: "Bill O'Reilly and his co-psychotics".
Posted by Jeremy Osner | Link to this comment | 12-24-05 3:06 PM
"John Hall Wheelock "The Bright Doom" c1927"
Very possibly where Chip got it from, because he's a far smarter man than I am or ever will be. Not what I was thinking of, though. Fall Of The Towers (gee, that took on a new meaning, recently didn't it?) was probably his worst book/books ever, but he was just a kid, then.
"Haven't seen a picture of Delaney"
Delany, damnit. No offense taken, of course. And he is a patriarch. (Or should be; it's been many years since I called and Iva answered, but he's had so many students.)
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 12-24-05 6:38 PM
I'm quite willing to have Bob's babies's now, though. He actually gets my references, or goes looking for them, and I'd never ask for more. I'm just a simple man with simple pleasures.
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 12-24-05 6:43 PM
Not that I'd object if a younger woman with similar insights started writing me.
Hasn't happened recently, alas. Nor even an older woman. Surprising as that doubtless is.
But, even if you're not with teh skiffy crowd, am I nuts in watching the reruns and thinking that Kristin Kreuk is astonishingly beautiful (although I might take Alison Mack over her, to be sure)?
Since it's such a het male crowd, I play to it, or something (mostly not thinking, just typing; bitches allowed, as well as you other broads not sleeping with me).
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 12-24-05 7:07 PM
That the bright philosophy kids have no clue about Chip Delany suggests to me that they follow fashion more than knowledge, incidentally, but that's just me being obnoxious, I expect. And unfair in many ways, because we all have lanes we go down. And I've avoided reading Heidigger. .
STill, I think Chip is one to check out. At least though the basic essays, and maybe also Triton, for starters. Though it won't work if you don't have the mindset. Never has, never will, alas.
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 12-24-05 7:19 PM
That the bright philosophy kids have no clue about Chip Delany suggests to me that they follow fashion more than knowledge, incidentally, but that's just me being obnoxious, I expect.
Yeah, I expect.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 12-24-05 7:34 PM
I'd disappoint if I didn't fulfill.
We wouldn't want that.
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 12-24-05 7:46 PM
Candy everybody wants. Hey. Hey. Give them what they want. (It's not as if there's much other talk going on here tonight. Dunno why that might be.) (I surrendered hoping people might talk on my own blog a while ago. Hey. Hey. Even though I don't give them what they want, and never will, because I am so fucking brave and independent, or such. Okay, it's all candy tossing; I'll just step back and lick,)
You could help us fight the terrorists, Wolfson, but you seem to be against us. Why, Wolfson? Why? Bring us into the light. Cleverness is far easier than wisdom, Mr. Guy.
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 12-24-05 8:07 PM
I'f be perfectly happy with a group hug, mind. And why do I keep having to fill in the "email address" query, anyway? It's quite tiresome, although so am I, of course. (Linda Rondstat on "When Will I Be Loved?" is yet another story.)
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 12-24-05 8:14 PM
Delany
A biography of Delany, written by Delany using a pseudonym. Interesting in how little apparent "fun" Delany has, how straightforwardly it is written.
Gary, at some point Holbo demonstrated to me that he knew more about Delany than I am capable of learning. Reading the biography and trying to follow the visiting professorships and lecture series, my guess is that Chip Delany has single-handedly turned most American lit-crit departments into SF fan clubs.
I also somewhere got the impression that reading Dahlgren is a rite of passage for modern young American intellectuals. Even at 900 pages, I think it is at least superficially(stylistically) easier reading than the earlier Delany classics, and the themes and scenarios have a great appeal to the postpunk generations. Just a guess, to pick oh a random smart kid who read SF, I'll bet Saiselgy hasn't read Fitzgerald or Miller or Kerouac(ok maybe) but read Dahlgren somewhere near puberty. Hell, thirty years ahead of its time, it tells women how to pee standing up.
Posted by bob mcmanus | Link to this comment | 12-24-05 9:07 PM
I haven't read it, this is pure trivia, but it's Dhalgren, right?
Merry Xmas.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 12-24-05 9:31 PM
Can I claim dsylexai? Or that whatever the hell he meant, it sure looks more Scandavian the Southeast Asian or whatever?
Merry Xmas John. And everybody.
Peace Gary.
Posted by bob mcmanus | Link to this comment | 12-24-05 11:52 PM
Saiselgy doesn't read enough fiction, I'm always telling him. But I think he's read the big classics.
Posted by Armsmasher | Link to this comment | 12-25-05 12:02 AM
I'd just remembered a discussion of PK Dick on his old blog and got the impression he had read SF as a kid. I was just trying to think of someone who might have read it. Doesn't matter. Nobody needs literature and culture, cept those who need it. Didn't do me any good.
Posted by bob mcmanus | Link to this comment | 12-25-05 2:09 AM
I'm aware of Delany as someone I should probably read, but he's in kind of crowded company in that regard.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 12-25-05 2:11 AM
Enjoy any holiday any of you happen to be celebrating, or enjoy the lack thereof, as the case may be.
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 12-25-05 2:26 AM
Don't you tell me what to do!
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 12-25-05 2:27 AM
Didn't do me any good.
Get stewed: books are a load of crap.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 12-25-05 2:32 AM
"A biography of Delany, written by Delany using a pseudonym."
Yes, I think he first stuck K Leslie on the appendix to the Bantam first version of Triton, but K. Leslie likely existed far before.
"...more about Delany than I am capable of learning...."
Chip has always made my head spin. I am simply grateful to live in the world he does.
:...my guess is that Chip Delany has single-handedly turned most American lit-crit departments into SF fan clubs."
Dunno. Probably. But he's handy when facing the usual "ha, ha ha, sf is crap" crowd.
"...Even at 900 pages, I think it is at least superficially(stylistically) easier reading than the earlier Delany classics,"
I don't have a copy here, and like almost everything, I've not reread it in more than a decade, but as I recall, there was a huge block of text in the first 80 pages or so that then, once past, turned into fairly normal narrative. But most sf readers didn't get past that. Thus J. J. Pierce, etc.
Dhalgren actually helped me become lovers with the love of my life, and enabled me to be the Kid in other relationships, but it is just a subset of the fact that science fiction has been my life. (Last century, anyway.)
"Didn't do me any good."
I think it maybe did. I'm silly that way. I'm willing to sleep with anyone who can talk the talk, basically, not that that's an invite, Bob.
"I'd just remembered a discussion of PK Dick on his old blog...."
I wish I'd seen that blog. I can almost write it, given enough speed.
God bless us all, everyone. It's the only day I can tell you what I feel.
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 12-25-05 4:02 AM
He snores, by the way. As do I. (It was at worldcon, 1983, that I learned; I had to bang on the door to get in, because the management was stingy with the keys; parties at his apartment were more fun, even when Iva was younger and didn't question why I was calling.)
Probably everyone snores after reading this.
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 12-25-05 4:10 AM
"Just a guess, to pick oh a random smart kid who read SF, I'll bet Saiselgy hasn't read...."
I doubtless should know whom you spoke of, but I don't, incidentally.
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 12-25-05 4:18 AM
No, wait, I got the year wrong (as usual). It wasn't 86 in Atlanta, either, probably. But Back Then. (I have the world's worst memory for dates.)
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 12-25-05 4:36 AM
Wow, it's almost as if people were on a holiday.
I'll just have to be a jerk to myself, as usual.
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 12-25-05 11:58 AM
You can go blind doing that, Gary.
"Saiselgy" is this fellow, family name reversed.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 12-25-05 12:23 PM
"Sausagely" is the easy-to-remember preferred form
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 12-25-05 12:55 PM
"You can go blind doing that, Gary."
I try my best.
And usually fail.
Even though it's less appreciated than it might be.
Someone's loss (of the girly sort).
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 12-25-05 5:06 PM
:"I ask for a ham sandwich and I get a pig" is a fine expression, by the way, apropos of only the DVDs I write about on my own blog.
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 12-25-05 5:12 PM
Also, so much in the Chip link weirds me out, which is why I've never touched it before. I have a few too many personal connections to it, and not just as a reader.
I do commend it to others, though, since I always like the thought that good people should go near certain sets of words, at least. There's no doubt that Chip changed my life. Power of writing is a mighty power, and my own words are nothing. (I click before I reread, because otherwise, as usual, I would cancel it for being the same old nonsense. What a bunch of crap I mostly write. Mutter, mutter, mutter.)
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 12-25-05 6:21 PM
Merry Christmas and / or happy Hannukah and / or happy soon-to-be-new year, all.
xo,
B
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 12-25-05 7:31 PM
That, too. Quiet around here, for some reason.
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 12-25-05 9:18 PM
This evening, I saw a preview for this movie.
Aneurysm city.
Posted by silvana | Link to this comment | 12-25-05 11:09 PM
That's not good (though I'm an Albert Brooks fan), but I think the movie for which I saw a preview last night could pretty easily take it down in an awfuler-movie contest.
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 12-26-05 12:45 AM
People say Syriana is confusing because it has more plots than a Jacobean tragedy. Take that back. It is a Jacobean tragedy: put George Clooney in doublet and hose and he'd fit right in.
Posted by jim | Link to this comment | 12-26-05 6:08 AM
:I'm pretty sure that I couldn't say enough how much it would mean to me if and when anyone reads the Chip essay Bob linked to, by the way. Just in passing, and running away. Running very fast.
I liked the Seventies more than the present decade. Women threw themselves at me a tad more, and I kind of liked that, and them.
Running much faster, now. It's still a fine set of stuff by K. Leslie, though. ("Cancel" is so much better a choice than "post.")
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 12-26-05 7:58 AM
In posting that from the bathtub, I just missed my day's best opportunity to masterbate. Well, maybe not...
Mr. B's using a laptop in the bathtub?! I guess that's possible, although some have claimed otherwise, but it seems inadvisible. Or maybe he's using a cell phone with Internet access? Apparently some women actually use cell phones to masturbate (albeit not in the bathtub). Who knew? btw, the site where I found the above also has some hilarious stories from people whose mothers caught them masturbating.
Posted by Frederick | Link to this comment | 12-26-05 10:23 AM
73: Oh man, that "American Dreamz" movie? I thought it was a joke when I saw the trailer. Looks like a painfully drawn-out, poorly done SNL sketch (half-assed impersonations, etc.) I'm surprised Hugh Grant and Willem Defoe would do something like that.
Posted by Matt F | Link to this comment | 12-26-05 10:42 AM