A Valentine's Day Revolution

So six alleged terrorists who have been incarcerated for the past several years in Guantánamo will finally have their day in court, albeit a military court, but a court nevertheless. When will the confirmed terrorists who have been in charge of such prisons for the past several years finally be brought to justice?

And in the “do as I say and not as I do” category: was it Israel or the US (same difference, I know) who planted a car bomb in Syria to take out Imad Mugniyah?

Car bombs. Secret prisons. As the joke goes: if it quacks like a terrorist....

And on an even more political note, here’s an excerpt of Nikki Giovanni’s “When I Die” to help set the mood this Valentine’s Day:

and if ever i touched a life i hope that life knows
that i know that touching was and still is and will always be the true
revolution

Bullet-Point Friday

• Today is Labor Thanksgiving Day in Japan. After (only) two years in Japan I still have no idea what that means or what is celebrated. But I was always thankful to have the day off from teaching.
• When did the day after the US Thanksgiving start being referred to as “Black Friday”? It seems like I’ve heard that phrase before, but it’s only been over the past couple of years. What a horrible thing this over consumption is: people feeling as if they have to buy gifts for one another, a nation’s entire economy based solely on over consumption and reckless spending for a so-called Christian holiday, and then the utterly useless news reports about over consumption and greed and then the interviews with poor people who can’t afford to buy what they want for their children and then the interviews with self-proclaimed shop-oholics or compulsive buyers! It’s enough to make me run screaming, especially when the soundtrack to this shopping season—tinny carols about some Jewish baby born in modern-day Palestine—comes over the PA!
• In honor of the Japanese holiday, I declare myself thankful to be counted among those who labor to make this world a (little) better place.
• I always enjoy teaching Marx in my classes. When I taught government, I would spend about a week on political ideologies, slowly introducing socialism in small doses until the majority of my students would insist on knowing why we in the gloriously free United States didn’t fully embrace Marx’s philosophy. I had a similar experience teaching Marx in my philosophy course a couple of weeks ago. One student exclaimed, “I’m poor, and I don’t see anything wrong with what he’s saying!” Another student questioned, “Why were we taught that he was the enemy?” My answer: “Why don’t you write your president and ask him?” I’m all about pushing the limits.
• There is no free market economy. It’s a lie and a myth and a delusion all rolled into one. A free market economy in principle would not allow monopolies to exist, would not insure bank deposits, would not bail out corporate failures, etc. etc. The only good thing about the US economy is all of the Marxist-inspired policies we have implemented to protect consumers and workers and the public. And we have a long way still to go.
• "The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. Proletarians of all countries, unite!"
• My favorite new story this evening: the First Baptist Church of Dallas was robbed last night (on Thanksgiving Day). The thieves got away with eight plasma televisions plus a lot of other crap. I think God’s message this holiday: stop watching your fucking TVs when you’re supposed to be worshipping me! (I wonder if Homeland inSecurity will come knocking on my door if I declare that any church that has eight plasma televisions deserves to burn.)

Bullet-Point Friday

• It’s like, you know, flamenco piano: when you hear the first measures of just such a beast you recognize the form (flamenco) but don’t recognize the medium (piano) because your ears are not trained to interpret that form through that medium. After a few moments, a new synapse fires, and you are better prepared to hear flamenco piano again: a new possibility has been created in your world.
• It’s like, you know, when human beings rely too heavily on infrastructure designed to keep them safe (i.e., guardrails, stop signs, traffic lights) that they behave irresponsibly because someone else is policing their reckless behavior; they have a false sense of security because they’ve relinquished responsibility for their own actions. (It’s also like, you know, when parents expect legislation to supplement their demonstrably poor parenting skills: they want society to be policed instead of being responsible for the raising of their own children. I mean, think of the children!) Remove the guardrails and pedestrian accidents fall 60% because pedestrian and driver behave more responsibly when they must think for themselves. If I choose to jaywalk, then I’ll be sure to look both ways—twice, even—before jumping out in traffic.
• It’s like, you know, trying to get through a lecture on Berkeley’s immaterialist idealism when your students would much rather hypothesize about “crazy people” or “people on LSD” or “the blind”: if someone falls in the woods and no one is around to perceive it, did the person really exist in the first place? (Thankfully, for Berkeley, God is omniscient and omnipresent: He’s always watching/perceiving! And even if you don’t believe in God, He still believes in you.) I sometimes wish my students would stop invading my sensory world so their drug-induced craziness would simply stop existing, even if only for me.
• It’s like, you know, hotdog!
• It’s like, you know, accepting the alternate relationship with truth that wanders to supplement one’s acceptance of truth that remains coordinated on a grid. To start walking with the right foot (techne, the logos of techne, the word: “technology”) is quite alright as long as the next step is with the left foot (organic, systemic (uncoordinatable) episteme, the organicity of the epistemic); otherwise, you spin around in circles going nowhere. And no guardrail is going to protect you from doing that!
  
• It’s like, you know, attempting to speak language as such without using any of the words from the language of humankind. Or perhaps like, you know, speaking a word to(ward) an other all the while speaking a word as (an)other. This too shall not pass.
• It’s like, you know, Liberace’s famous question: “Would you rather have roses on your piano or tulips on your organ?” Vote now!

Genocide Schmenocide

I'm loving how the Turks have taken to the streets to protest the passing of a House bill (in committee) calling the Armenian Genocide "genocide." Perhaps someday our government will actually do something about genocide instead of sitting in committee debating whether a genocide should be called genocide.

And where were the Turks when Hitler himself mentioned the Armenian genocide? If Hitler can talk about it, then shouldn't meager American politicians have that same freedom?

Hell, why doesn't Turkey just gang up with Azerbaijan and 'reveal' the facts about the genocide there perpetrated by the Armenians. (Maybe in the future the Azeri lobby will get a House bill through committee calling the Azeri Genocide a "genocide"! That'll be political progress at its finest!)

Fuck all of you.

Observance

Today, on Columbus Day (Observed) I’m sitting through a lecture on early American history—yeah, academic calendars don’t quite match up to national holidays. (When I was at UD—boo! hiss!—I was told that we would not be off on Labor Day because “we are not laborers.”)

But today, I too feel like Columbus: discovering something that millions of people already knew about. (Thanks, Lisa Simpson!) My discovery: I need a break from sitting through lectures and spending far too many hours in front of a computer doing research and writing.

A modest proposal for renaming the day observed today:

• Stolen Continent Day
• Genocide Day
• Taino Heritage Day
• European Legacy Day (celebrating the effects of smallpox and “conquista”)

Indeed, perhaps we all should just walk backward into the ocean….

Bullet-Point Friday

• Conversation over breakfast of Swiss oatmeal this morning included Alan Watts’ lecture over the coincidence of opposites, Huston Smith’s Zen training, and the metaphysics of becoming (as opposed to the Heideggerean notion of Gellasenheit, a letting be). All this before 7:30 a.m.
• There is no front without a back, no heads without tails, no sickness without health, no I without you.
• Now that it’s almost 9:00, I can also think about bringing in Parmenides’ attempt toward deduction: one can’t make negative existential statements, nor can one make positive existential statements (because by saying what something is, then one is implicitly saying what something is not—if this is a dog, then it is necessarily not a cat—which takes you back to the first premise).
• Therefore (in all of its metaphysical/rhetorical glory), all is one.
• There is no Buddhist monk without a dictator-general.
• And every poet has her other.
• But who is the poet’s other? The rhetorician? The philosopher? The linguist? The poem’s reader? The poem? The poet herself? All and (n)one::all is (n)one.
• It’s now 9:02, and I still have so much more work to do....

Burnt Out

Cameron Diaz using her eco-friendly (and edible) hair gel.

Nothing makes Skajlab wish the whole world would burn to smithereens than the incessant and insipid Cameron Diaz talking about the environment. Yes, I bought those damned expensive light bulbs several months ago. Yes, I gradually grew accustomed to the bizarre glow that emanates from them. (Even my neighbors commented on the strange light coming from my windows!) And one of them has already burned out! So much for saving me money in the long run. So much for saving the world one light bulb at a time. So much for eco-spokesperson Cameron making a real difference: I’m sure now in the post-Live Earth fantasy she’ll refuse to be a part of any production that is not entirely green and utterly significant. I wonder just how many of those st00perstars are willing to make the ultimate sacrifice for the world and give up their careers and celebrity lifestyles. My light bulbs are not going to make the least little impact if Al Gore himself is still jetting around the globe presenting his fancy slideshow. Jets don’t run on rainbows. PA systems don’t run on love. Stop preaching (and “raising awareness”) and actually conserve energy (and my patience) by sitting your sorry ass at home in the ethereal glow of an enviro-friendly light bulb that’s about to burn out long before the world. And I’ll gladly keep my TV turned off for good measure.

Required Reading (definitely though with love)

This Independence Day it's important for us Americans to finally get it through our thick heads that there is a fundamental, essential difference between nationalism and patriotism. And that neither of those has anything to do with hegemonic warmongering. Just to keep us straight on those points, here is one of my favorite poems from patriot Nikki Giovanni:

I Laughed When I Wrote It
(Don’t You Think It’s Funny?)

the f.b.i came by my house three weeks ago
one white agent one black (or i guess negro would be
more appropriate) with two three-button suits on (one to
a man)
thin ties—cuffs in the bottoms—belts at their waists
they said in unison:
ms. giovanni you are getting to be quite important
people listen to what you have to say
i said nothing
we would like to have to give a different message
i said: gee are all you guys really shorter than hoover
they said:
it would be a patriotic gesture if you’d quit saying
you love rap brown and if you’d maybe give us some
leads
on what some of your friends are doing
i said: fuck you
a week later the c.i.a came by two unisexes one blond afro
one darker one three bulges on each showing lovely bell-
bottoms and boots
they said in rounds:
sister why not loosen up and turn on
fuck the system up from the inside
we can turn you on to some groovy
trips and you don’t have to worry
about money or nothing take the commune
way and a few drugs it’ll be good for you
and the little one
after i finished a long loud stinky fart i said serenely
definitely though with love
fuck you
yesturday a representative from interpol stopped me in the
park
tall, neat afro, striped hip huggers bulging only in the right
place
i really dig you, he said, i want to do something for you
and you alone
i asked what he would like to do for me
need a trip around the world a car bigger apartment
are you lonely i mean we need to get you comfortable
cause a lot of people listen to you and you
need to be comfortable to put forth a positive image
and digging the scene i said listen i would sell
out but i need to make it worth my while you understand
you just name it and i’ll give it to you, he assured me
well, i pondered, i want aretha franklin and her piano
reduced to fit next to my electric
typewriter on my desk and i’ll do anything you want
he lowered his long black eyelashes and smiled a whimsical
smile
fuck you, nikki, he said

And below some more worthwhile reading this holiday: first, an op-ed about immigration hysteria, and secondly, an interview with probably the most intelligent conservative thinker I've ever heard on what's wrong with the current administration.

• The Founding Immigrants
  By Kenneth C. Davis
  Published: July 3, 2007
  Disdain for what is foreign is, sad to say, as American as apple pie, slavery and lynching.


• Interview with Victor Gold
  By Bill Moyers
  Aired: June 29, 2007
  The impact of the sound bite mentality which you find in both parties...is there's been a debasing of the system. Because if you listen to these — I call them the Stepford candidates — on both sides in these debates the only two candidates that speak clearly are the ones they call the kooks.

Simple Things

It really is the simple things that make life worth living. The complicated shit only makes me mad.

I’ve been spending much more time at the local YMCA. Lately I’m exercising at least five times a week, mostly there but also sometimes in the neighborhood. I’ve even been much more able to engage in the senseless chitchat with the woman behind the counter at the Y. I think it’s funny she wished me a happy fathers’ day and then asked if my father was still alive. Do I not exude the fatherly vibe myself? Am I (visibly) at that age where fathers typically die off?

I’ve been diligently reading since the spring term ended, preparing for the courses I’ll be taking as well as those I’ll be teaching this fall. I’ve read some really hard books. I wonder why all knowledge always comes in book format? To study music, you have to read books about music. To study art, you have to read books about art. I’m beginning to hate books more and more.

I’ve been slacking when it comes to studying German on my own. I’ve only gotten through the first six lessons in the Pimsleur program. Last summer I’d gotten through the entire Russian I course (30 lessons) in the same amount of time and had began Russian II. I hope my dedication comes back once I’m actually sitting in class in Germany next month.

Tomorrow I’m returning all the books I’ve checked out to the university library. I have eleven. And the Pimsleur German CDs. I need to get them back since I’ll be gone when it’s time to renew them online. And when I return, the fall semester will already be in its second week.

Today, the CIA released hundreds of pages of internal reports on assassination plots, secret drug testing, and spying on Americans. That’s nothing: you should see the secret reports I keep on the government.

What’s in heavy rotation on my iPod this week: “North American Scum” by LCD Soundsystem, “Everyman Everywoman” by Yoko Ono w/ Blow Up, “Hammering in My Head” by Garbage, “Girlfriend is Better” by Talking Heads, “Bump!” by Nylon Room, and “Guilt is a Useless Emotion (Mac Quayle Vocal Mix)” by New Order. Maybe I should write a book about it.

Thinking the Unthought about Thoughtcrime

“Thoughtcrime does not entail death: thoughtcrime is death.”
– Winston Smith (from George Orwell’s 1984)

Yesterday afternoon when my telephone rang and awoke me from the stupor induced from a couple of less-than-restful nights of sleep and the subsequent hours spent staring at a paper that failed to produce itself on my computer monitor about Irigarayan deinos and the distance of home (philosophically speaking, of course), I was confronted by a recorded voice asking me this hysterical (in a philosophical sense, of course) question: “Are you concerned about children being preyed upon by child pornographers? If yes, then press 8.” My response was to shout, “No!” and hang up.

Now I am more-than-painfully aware that that experience was probably the first step on my slippery slope ending with my incarceration at Gitmo (unless, of course, that illegal and immoral branch of my government has been outsourced to the Egyptians or the Poles or some other “good” (as in ally) terrorist group). For today, Congressional Quarterly reports “New Homeland Security Technology to Detect ‘Hostile Intent’”:

The Department of Homeland Security is developing a technology that lets screeners at airports and border posts uncover deception and bad intentions with minimal inconvenience to innocent travelers.

The program, known as Hostile Intent, is developing technology to detect physiological characteristics that indicate nervousness in a person, such as body heat, perspiration and facial movements, said Bob Hooks of the department’s Science and Technology Directorate.

About 400 million people cross the U.S. border every year, and most of them have no hostile intent whatsoever, said Larry Willis, human factors program manager for the Science and Technology Directorate. This technology presumably will be able to screen people without slowing down traffic or inconveniencing travelers because it is non-invasive.

The core research for the program started about three years ago but has really ramped up this year, said Willis. It could be used in a wide range of settings beyond border entry programs, such as at the State Department during visa applications.

The program will eventually have two main tests — one in 2010 and the other in 2012. In the meantime, there will be smaller tests as research and development continues, Willis said.

Despite the attempt toward normative language (that is, “bad intentions”), any program named “Hostile Intent” belies it own true intentions. Hostile, in-fucking-dubitably! Just how “non-invasive” is a measure of one’s “body heat, perspiration and facial movements”? And how does such a measure necessarily denote intent to harm the United States, its citizens, or its government? [Please, please always distinguish between the citizens of the US and its government, for we are not the same!] Couldn’t a traveler just simply be tired from a trip spanning several time zones? Disoriented from jet lag and exhaustion? Worried about career or relationship or health issues necessitating a trip in the first place? [Hell, American Airlines claims in its ad We know why you fly; are they now expected to hand that information over to the authorities?]

Thinking back about all the international travel I’ve done, I can only remember one, perhaps two times I landed at a US entry point and wasn’t harassed either by a custom’s officer or an immigration officer. When I returned from Germany this past December, I was sent to the line for “bad intentioned” threats for not being able to understand the immigration officer’s questions. Landing in Texas after an international trip is always good for a culture-shocker, especially with a non-native English-speaker/fucker who speaks with such a thick Mexican accent that I couldn’t make out what he was asking. Perhaps I just need to throw in the towel and support—like the majority of my family—that damned wall that separates us (US) from Them. But They already knew that ... that is, if they’re reading my dirty thoughts already.

One final question: just when did intentions become criminal? Isn’t thinking about bombing a governmental office slightly different than planning to bomb or actually bombing a governmental office? And finally, yes! I really am concerned about children being preyed upon by child pornographers. I think. (And as long as I don’t think otherwise, then no action on my part is necessary....)