that god shaped hole, again

Music: Burial: Untrue (2007); this is in the top running for my best albums of the year! Today Mitt Romney delivered a speech in College Station to address his Mormonism, which seemed only to address the true believer (and by that, the evangelical sort). Because I was raised as an evangelical, I understand the challenge he chose to address. I remember in my youth watching a video with the Rockbridge Baptist Church congregation that argued Mormonism was a "cult" (in fact, all I distinctly remember is a comic-book like illustration of Jesus and Satan---brothers---trying to persuade God to give or not give human beings freewill, respectively). The speech Romney gave was most directly aimed at this widespread belief among certain protestants, the same protestants that the Left Behind series demonstrated existed in very large numbers. When Romney said that he "will put no doctrine of any church above the plain duties of the office and the sovereign authority of the law," I'm sure this put a lot of evangelicals at ease. On the other hand, he did not say that he supported the separation of church and state doctrine, something his much-referenced predecessor (JFK) made a point to underscore.

Although I do not think that one can separate religion and politics (and in this respect, Schmitt's "political theology" is on the money), I must admit my commitment to the separation between church and state is righteous. Along with Rev. Barry W. Lynn, I worry about the erosion of the first amendment and the Jeffersonian spirit in which it was written: there needs to be a wall between the church and the state in order to protect both. Romney's statements about the "religion of secularism" were particularly icky insofar as this wall, for him, is apparently permeable.

I am always uneasy when I talk politics because I do not follow it closely, but the decidedly theological tone of the current presidency has certainly got me paying more attention. After Bush, I long for either someone truly religious---that is, resolutely hospitable and Other-oriented---or resolutely agonistic. After thinking about religion for a number of years, I'm confident I do not want an atheist as my president, or at least a righteous atheist. Atheism is a fundamentalism, and I'm so tired of that un-deliberative kind of certainty. I mean, this week President Bush is stumping about the nuclear threat of Iran two days after it was revealed they killed their nukes program four years ago. With the catastrophe of Iraq all up in our grill, how can anyone take Bush seriously? The righteous do. The righteous on either side of God.

Many months ago I was having drinks with a friend, and I mentioned that my fascination with religion had to do with righteousness: on the one hand, righteousness was the passion necessary for some forms of social change (I'm thinking of Stonewall, the civil rights movement, and so on). On the other hand, righteousness is a kind of violence that often leads to real violence. So I explained to her that part of what I'm doing in my own work is trying to work through righteousness, trying to discern where my wall is, where I would stave off the ecstasy of violence. In general that wall is the law, broadly construed (and that wall, like the side of the pool for thrusting, is needed for righteousness). We should worry when the law/wall between church and state is said to be permeable because violence can go either way in a total collapse.

Yesterday we finished the graduate seminar on subjectivity, and we ended with Levinas. Romney's speech couldn't have landed at a better time. In class we discussed the general turn toward religion in theory: Derrida's last ten years; Badiou and Zizek's turning to the figure of Saint Paul; the English discovery of Levinas. Obviously having read so little of Levinas I won't even begin to gloss what we discussed yesterday (it would probably provoke laughter among the in-the-know Levinasians out there). But there are two things I can say: (1) Badiou grossly misreads what Levinas seems to be about; and (2) Levinas (like Walter Benjamin) gives us a vocabulary for talking about religion that is nuanced, interesting, thought provoking, and above all not stupid. Levinas' conception of deity reminds me, very much, of the Sufi stuff I read in my coursework on Islam as an undergraduate (I studied Islam for a year with Nasr at GWU): there is a humility and responsibility to the exterior. Levinas' claims (I think we would be in error to call them arguments) about the Other are compelling, and demand a certain orientation to other people based on a collapse of the is/ought distinction that has an affective force. What we discussed in class is the problem of judgment, the role of rhetoric in this problem, and (tacitly) the necessity of violence.

I'm sure Levinas has wrote about violence, and I look forward to discovering that material. In fact, I found his writing so impenetrable I'm sort of anxious to read more. Nevertheless, what comes across in the tone of his writing is a kind of postitionality toward Deity that is the opposite of Romney's today. I'm not suggesting that Levinas is down with the separation of church and state---although he may well be, I dunno---rather, I'm suggesting that by speaking against Jefferson, the sort of respect of the Other, the recognition of responsibility, is not there in Romney. I'm not suggesting it's there with the other candidates, either.

Well, I'm just saying that if Romney is truly a man of God, then we're damned if he becomes president. The problem of all fundamentalisms (as opposed to speculative or mystical traditions) is that they are closed off to disturbances, that which cannot be accounted for, the inevitable void or rupture at the center of things, which is precisely that which Levinas argues must be central to any ethical relation to others. Just because Levinas says it does not make it so, but I'm sympathetic, I’m leaning, I find the recognition of substitution in the event compelling.

Fuck y'all, thinking about the political is a downer. The more I think about it, the more I come back to a discussion Brooke and I once had last year: one honors deity---whether it exists or not---by being good to each other. It is not easy to be good to each other. But if you can do that, beyond inevitable selfishness, then you are religious in orientation. In this respect, perhaps the worst case scenario is that somebody like Donald Trump becomes president: at least Romney, if he has any doubt about his God, ain't that.

I worry Romney's speech sealed the deal. I worry. I wish Obama would talk about deity.

tar pits are tar pits

Music: Marconi Union: Distance (2006) Yesterday a crackpot named Alan Travis (a probable pseudonym) sent an email to all the faculty in my department, as well as the dean and a number of regents. The email basically shamed all of us for working along side Dana Cloud, my good colleague and friend, because she was a “homosexual Marxist.” It’s the sort of note I’m told deans and chairs get all the time about a number of faculty; hostile, angry, accusatory. Travis’s was misogynistic and homophobic. With restraint, I responded at some length (I won’t rehearse that response here, since Dana’s blogged it).

I knew when I decided to respond that doing so would be a mistake---it was just so fun to imagine this guy was responsible for all of those guys who presume to understand what goes on at a university but have no clue. Why is it a mistake? You cannot reason with an obsessive or a psychotic (I'm hoping this guy is the former). There is a certain predictability to these types: the world is only to be understood in black and white terms; latent but unacknowledged homoerotic feelings; often ex-military; lack of a college education or forced to leave college before the degree was finished. During my first year at LSU I had to deal with these kinds of folks, sometimes as students. Usually about mid-semester they “got it” and became much more respectful of others opinions.

Anyway, so I responded to Mr. Travis, which ignited, of course, his ire and a couple more emails, each one more bigoted. They’re actually entertaining (at least my colleagues said they enjoyed reading this guys rants).

Dear Black Nails, Your arguments are about as inane and pathetic as you appear in your website photograph. In fact, you look so silly, I thought about including you in my initial response. However, I kept to the subject of one radical nut, the lesbian Marxist.

I'll now address the second, you. In the interest of specifics, I'll reply within your lengthy blathering.

Dear Mr. Travis,

Thank you for taking the time to express your views. Clearly you are upset about the educational enterprise today; you find Dr. Cloud particularly emblematic of an "extreme left-wing bias" among the professoriate, and worry academics like Cloud are "brainwashing" young people. You seem to suggest that educators have the power to: (a) convince young people the United States is a bad place to live; (b) force young people to accept feminist philosophies; (c) and encourage young people to accept or become gay or lesbian, which tempts violence.

Alan Travis: Nowhere did I suggest that homosexuality "tempts violence." You twist my words, sir. And yet you call yourself an academic. You pretend to use reason and express yourself with utter clarity. No, in fact what I said was that homosexuals commit a disproportionate amount of violence and death on others. They beat and kill. This homosexuality does not "tempt violence," but commits it.

[snip]

As a teacher, I can assure you, Mr. Travis, our students are a bright bunch. [How could they be, with such as Ward Churchill, and you, Black Nails, pontificating your nonsense to them.]

[snip]

[The presumption of your department website is that change is always positive. Of course there is no evidence of such a thing. It is another of the many fatuous pretenses you and the lesbian Marxist advance.]

[snip]

[Sir, your pretense that freedom and liberty and justice need to be defined is the height of ignorance and condescension and empty argumentation. The absolute height. The "sense" of the kind of "freedom" I am referencing moves people from virtually every country on earth to move to America and remain here. As Tony Blair said, "The measure of what other people think of a country is how many of them want to move there."

"Might makes right" came from your computer, not mine.

On any measure of desirability, America is at or near the top of the worldwide list. Unfortunately we taxpayers have to suffer the relentless condemnation of such as you and the lesbian Marxist not to mention your partner in crime, Ward Churchill.]

[snip]

[Black Nails, you're not very bright. You can't name a Marxist state that is not a dictatorship. In fact, leftists, including Marxists, and socialists, murdered approximately 100,000,000 human beings in the Twentieth Century, and that grisly total continues today, in the cesspools of Africa.

Now speaking of Africa, the lesbian Marxist pretends that America is so racist towards blacks, but clearly she, and you, choose to ignore the fact that virtually any black African would pay handsomely to leave their homeland and live here. I have spoken to many of them. I have asked blacks born in Somalia, and Ethopia, and Nigeria, and Kenya to name but a few, if they thought America was racist. They said not at all. Moreover, many said that they could "not talk to black Americans. They all have a chip on their shoulder."

That chip has been placed there by leftists like you, and Dr. Cloud, and Al Sharpton, and Jesse Jackson. You should be ashamed of yourselves for being so patronizing to blacks, and holding them to a lower standard, and excusing all manner of irresponsible behavior by blacks which you blame on some Vast Right Wing Conspiracy, to borrow a line from Bill Clinton's enabler, the "smartest woman in the world." But how can a radical leftist professor like you, with your black fingernails, be ashamed of anything you do.]

[snip]

[What do you mean by "feminist studies," Einstein? Knock off your condescending bullshit, will you? Everyone knows what "feminist" means. It's just an oxymoron of a word. "Feminists" are about as "feminine" as you are masculine.]

[snip]

[You sure spent a lot of time, and words, refuting my lack of an argument. How positively silly of you, Black Nails.]

[snip]

[Let me tell you what doesn't make sense. First, we hear from you leftists that women are, and have been, discriminated against. We also hear that women are "just as equal as men if not more so." If in fact, women have been so beaten down and abused and fearful, like the famous psychology professor at Harvard who "nearly threw up" when Dr. Lawrence Summers suggested research to determine differences between men and women, then they should not and cannot claim equality.

If in fact women were as "equal" as you leftists lie, you need to explain: 1. Why 93% of the people in prisons are men; 2. Why more men are physically abused by women than are women by men; 3. Why it is quite acceptable for women to be described as more nurturing, and more verbal, and more communicative, and better at so many different things than men are, and yet men are no better at anything than women are except lifting weights. Although I think that dandies with black fingernails probably fall behind women in this category as well.]

[snip: I suggest a morbidity report from the CDC would be good evidence for claiming an increase in homicides among LGBT communities]

[Listen, Black Nails, you're SUPPOSED to be a scholar. You look it up, huh. It's really not that hard. Try it. I have better things to do than reply to all the nonsense you can conjure up. ciao]

Well, I couldn’t help myself. I am happy to have a little fun with this guy, but he keeps emailing the college with his replies. But, you know, I couldn’t resist one last note. Clearly this guy didn’t get to go to college, so, I hit that button:

Mr. Travis: you say “I have better things to do than reply to all the nonsense you can conjure up.” Ditto that, only--to tweak your tone--"I'm rubber and you're glue; what you say bounces off me and sticks to you."

I'm glad you won't suffer us fools. If you had an education you might be dangerous!

Josh

His reply (again, cc’d to everyone under the sun), is absolutely golden. Read this, dear reader, and you delight in its phallic powah!

Josh, you traffic in bastardizing words. You're no more a scholar than Al Gore.

I have been around the world more times than I can count. My earnings year to date just on my investments is in excess of $600,000.

As to who knows what, here are a few puzzlers for you that I can answer in a hearbeat, having worked with them for my mere amusement:

1. What proportion of an atom is empty space?

2. What would happen to a teaspoon of neutron star if you could hypothetically place it atop El Capitan?

I am still married to the wife of my youth. And you? How many boyfriends have you had? Particularly of the Goth variety?

By the way, my P.R. for the marathon is 3:06. Have you any idea of the significance of that? Any at all, Black Nails?

I caught a 210 pound ahi at the Kona Coast and a 350 pound black in the Sea of Cortez.

How is your knitting coming along, Black Nails?

season's greetings

Music: 60 Minutes

Last week I received this rather inconspicuous holiday greeting photo from my dog Julius, his wife Amy, and their wee tot, Hayden. I promptly put it on the fridge, the spot where these things are destined to go. A day later I was cutting onions and, in a tearful moment, looked to my left where the greeting was . . . and through watery eyes I started admiring Hayden's hat. Then I realized something wasn't quite right. Take a closer look.

See, that's not a hat on Hayden's head. That's a wig! And then I noticed the greeting read, "Happy Holidays From Our Family, Love, Brian, Amy, and Elvis." Ah-ha! I just knew Julius would not descend to the norms of married-with-kids life. I'm so proud. As Reverand Juice, I married these two many years ago in a rather unconventional wedding. I'm thrilled to see that these two are still doing it their own way. Hayden is, incidentally, one of the cutest babies ever.

You can visit Julius' blog here for more updates and baby photos. And it seems to me the Beard's have really issued a challenge: Ok Ken and Christine, Jenny and Jon, let's see if you can top this!

bandwagoning with badiou

Music: Will Ackerman: Passage (1981)

This week graduate seminarians in the subjectivity course read Alain Badiou's Saint Paul: The Foundation of Universalism, while I read a bunch of other stuff in addition to help us all contextualize Badiou. To my embarrassment, I actually didn't finish the actual assigned book, but ended up "skimming" (if one can really do that with Badiou) a number of the middle chapters. It's a rare problem I have, but on the heels of NCA catch-up and then with two job candidates visiting this week (and a host of other unmentionables) time slipped away. Levinas is on tap for next week, and I'm starting reading today!

To summarize Badiou's project as I currently understand it would be difficult, but what is pertinent to the course is his theory of subjectivity. Apparently, for Badiou, the so-called poststructural project has demolished the self-transparent, substantive subject but, in so doing, has created problems in regard to agency on the one hand, and identity on the other. So, exhibit A for the former problem is Foucault, who cannot locate a seat of agency except only insofar as one can discern a site of resistance. Exhibit B for the latter is Derrida and Levinas, whose profound respect for radical alterity leads us to ignore any positive project of equality. Badiou's solution to these issues is to focus on the problem of agency first, and then the issue of identity (apparently forthcoming in a follow-up to Being and Event next October).

As I gather (I should stress this is all from secondary sources and a brushing up against the collection Infinite Thought and an incomplete reading of Saint Paul) Badiou's "question" concerns the relationship between ontology and subjectivity, and before the latter can be discerned (in tension, of course), we must understand the former, hence, Being and Event, only recently translated in English, and apparently a royal mind-fuck of set theory. For Badiou subjectivity is emergent from an event, an unexpected rupture in the realm of Being, where everything is accounted for. Now, I gather that set theory provides Badiou with a logic that helps to formalize more mundane observations about "the new in being" (being being, of course, "the situation" and the "state of affairs," the "elements" of which we can formalize and mathematize such that we can understand the multiplicity of being in terms of a set, and in a way that does not close-up everything in pre-givenness or in the Big Wait).

When I was reading this, I couldn't help but to remember a provocative post by Ken on Badiou: was Badiou fucking with us? Is this "ontology = set theory" a joke? Although I didn't mention it in class, I framed my lecture as a kind of answer to Ken's blog question. I told the group yesterday that the only way I could understand what Badiou is up to with "set theory" is by way of Lacan, who also, for a brief period, thought that set theory provided a way to formalize psychoanalytic principles in a precise way, but "without mathematization." As I gather (and this to a large extent from Fink) Lacan was always critiquing notions of wholeness, completeness, and what is presumably a prescientific notion of yin-and-yang: that there is some direct correspondence, perhaps formal or only homological, but a parallelism of sorts nonetheless, between human representation and the world in itself, that underlying the she-bang is this "the," the whole, Jungian mandalas and so forth. Lacan bitched and moaned about the way in which psychoanalysts kept relying on this old fantasy of wholeness and completeness (e.g., a "sexual relationship"), and he thought one way to avoid the tendency was to reduce his own axioms "to the letter"---that is, a meaningless letter, symbols that were nothing more than placeholders, an "X." The groovy thing about this "formalization" of principles was that it allows one to play around with the letters, seemingly oblivious to their meaning, and then derive new principles from the new logics that emerged: set theory for Lacan promised a new form of combitory invention, as it were. Lacan thought that set theory allowed for this kind of logic in a way that doesn't sew everything up in advance and, thereby, collapse onto the fantasy of reconciliation and wholeness.

Badiou, a student of Lacan, unquestionably employs set theory for a similar reason, though I cannot say I quite get this reason yet (which means I've not quite got my labels figured out). It's difficult for us to say that one can formalize with out mathematizing (that is, without getting into issues of the measure), so certainly this is one reason why Badiou embraces mathematics in name. And, if it is the case that one does not want to represent the event (since this would be impossible anyway), I can kinda see how set theory allows one to give an account of the realm of being while also making room for the accident, the new, the . . . well, what Lacan calls the real.

Nevertheless, when we move uneasily from this approach to ontology back to the subject, I'm still fuzzy about where this gets us: are we simply talking about the existence of of possibility, of formally using contingency to avoid a totalizing determinism (e.g.,. that "truth processes" are always already shut-down)? These are rhetorical questions, of course, more about my lack of reading and understanding than anything Badiou-lovers might help me with.

Although I do not think Badiou is a joke (if only because his political views seem pretty darn earnest, and because a friend who attends the EGS says Badiou is one of the handful of heavies that sits among the students [apparently Agamben is the snooty one]), I do wonder about the lack of any reference to the fetishization of theory in Badiou. Lacan is always self-mocking, or at least, seems to make fun of his theoretical enterprise at the same time as he arrogantly makes fun of others. Reading Badiou, you get the sense that no one could possibly agree with him because he's so different---I dunno. There just seems to be a clamoring for Badiou that is like the next new indie band (you know, Zizek is like Of Montreal---he sold an essay to Newsweek and so, like the band who sold-out to a car company, he's so 2005). In this I'm sort-of in agreement with Ken and Catherine Liu: why do we need another French philosopher? Where is he getting us, at least in terms of cultural critique?

Well, I think embedded in these questions is a partial answer: Badiou is principally a philosopher, and I'm a critic. Same deal with Deleuze. These guys are about sharpening thought, honing thinking. And I’m trained to "apply or die." I guess there's some underlying bitchiness, then, that to "do theory" in my field I have to do philosophy. I majored in it, but then left that field for a reason . . . .

I suppose another part of the answer to "why Badiou?" is that he takes on politics head on, and for every critique he offers he poses an affirmative, forward-moving solution. That is refreshing to read. Even so, I'm reading Badiou because I know others in the field are reading him, and if I want to participate in disciplinary conversations I need to at least have some brushing. I dunno why I'm blogging except to say that "staying current" in theory is sometimes exhausting; and it's never a theorist that I'm really excited about or interested in. You know, like Larry Rickels. Why can't we just read Larry? Why does it have to be Badiou? Larry is fun, fresh, takes on big problems, but leaves-off the critique of global liberalism and universal human rights for a while.

Eh, I'm rambling. Maybe just reading Badiou on the evils of the world---ok, on the non-Goods, since evil doesn't exit---has kind of got me down.

I must now finish reading a dissertation on lynching.

the brilliant pass

Music: Tears for Fears: The Hurting (1982)

I've been thinking more about the subject of signifier and subject of jouissance and how these map onto professional life. Fink is such a clear and beautiful writer, so let me let him do the reminding:

the subject of the signifier might be termed the "Levi-Straussian subject," in that this subject contains knowledge or acts on knowledge without having any idea that he is doing so. If he is asked why he built a hut in his village in such and such a place, his answer seems to have nothing to do with the fundamental oppositions that structure his world and effectively order his village's layout. . . . This is the same kind of knowledge discovered in hypnosis, and in the end it seems not to require a subject at all, in the usual sense of the term. (Lacan to the Letter 143)

I would call this the "scripted subject" or the subject of the living dead, the dead subject if you want, the pure subject of language sans affect, Damasio's example of Phineas Gage. This subject is animated, however, by the subject of jouissance, that which makes humans uniquely human and not zombies or animals of instinct (that is, that which makes us the living dead and not the dead-come-to-life). Both sides or "faces" of the subject are necessary for something "human" to emerge, however, there is no good way for them to relate in any direct sense (this is why psychoanalysis privileges "speech"---it is the locus of the meeting of these two faces or facets).

Two posts ago I cited Fink approvingly in his critique of academic fields, like that of sociology and political science, as ignoring the subject as jouissance in favor of this disembodied knowledge, this subject of the signifier. I cited Burke as my field's exemplar of this willful disavowal of the affective: Burke's understanding of "motive" is, effectively, a script. What are missing are the engine and the fuel. In this respect Burkean theories of rhetoric aspire to linguistics by cutting out the enunciator and muffling affect (except by name). And this brings me to what I shall term "the brilliant pass": overlooking the sins of certain professionals because of their intellectual gifts; outrageous affective transgressions are "allowed" since the signifying traces of their (unconscious) knowledge are simply too good to pass up.

There are facile references to Heidegger here, of course, Burroughs and Althusser. But I'm thinking more locally about the discipline formerly known as Speech-Communication. In the shift from Speech-Communication to Communication Studies in, more or less, the last decade we see the problem: speech, the meeting place of affect and the signifier, got cut out for wider, academic respectability (a shame, to be sure). Yet this move also reflects that willful blindness to rampant assholism in the field: mean-ass scholars who gut and gore with verbal quips are given license to do so because of their intellectual gifts (gifts that appear fully formed on the page, like a slug plucked from Zeus' head). In other words, the subject as jouissance is allowed free reign in exchange for coin of "knowledge." Professionally, we don't police enjoyment and the economies of aggression that continue to circulate victims (emotional and, alas, sometimes physical).

Put more crudely: people presumed to be brilliant get a pass for acting-out. It's difficult not to see the valorization of the "Levi-Straussian subject" at work in the professional domain here, that what gets emphasized as "knowledge" in the journals is the same thing that gets emphasized in social spaces. This tendency is no more obvious than at the awards ceremonies at professional conferences: look what gets honored; borderline pedophiles, well-known misogynists, and generally difficult people are honored with the "good peeps" alike, without any attention to the "energies" these people also inspire and exude. That's too bad.

loveless

Music: Patrick Wolf: Wind in the Wires (2005) As many of you know, holidays for academics are times to get "caught up" on work . . . so I have spent today, and will spend the better part of the weekend, doing "work." I get scare quote-y with "work" because even though I do a lot of it, it's kinda fun (and shouldn't that scare anyone?). It's also often a solitary fun, something the only child-cum-adult appreciates, but something that is also a little alienating, which is why it is good to have a little fun with other people on working holidays (owie; my head is still hurty from last night . . . good times, but hurty times).

The title of today's post is topically trine, in part an homage to the last, great album by My Bloody Valentine (the only thing better is Blonde Redhead's most recent masterpiece), in part my holiday expectations for intimacy, and---you guessed it---in part a reference to Lacan. So here is the problem for the weekend in a gif(t), Lacan's sexuation formulae. I know, I know: I'm supposed to pretend I know what it means. Before two days ago I had no effin' clue, and a reviewer of my work was calling me on the carpet for not having a clue, and so I'm working on my un-cluelessness. Suffice it to say sexuation (the choice of sex-identification) concerns where one aligns oneself in respect to phallic jouissance, here represented in the bottom quadrant of the chart, the third register of sexual differentiation (the first two at the top are previously introduced formulae). It's complicated, and I'm not sure it's satisfying in a way that helps me organize the world better, certainly not satisfying in any way that will appear in my work except in footnotes, but we'll see. I have more reading to do. Oh, and I have to say that Lacan oddly comforts me in his arrogance: "After what I just put on the board," he begins the seminar in which he introduces this chart, "you may think you know everything. Don't."

I like that opening sentence for a number of reasons. For starters, Bruce Fink translated it from the French, so it's probably close to what was said in spirit and letter. Second, the contraction "don't" is deliciously ambiguous: don't what? Do not know everything or do not think you know everything? Or is this a more vernacular omission: you don't know everything, you don't know Jacques! But, the beauty of the statement is that it means independent of what it is set against, the impossibility of writing the difference between the two sexes. On the one hand is an ethic (of humility and hubris; you cannot have one without the other), an ethic I try to teach myself: give up! That is, lets give up on the quest for mastery---of having this or that definitive reading on Lacan, for example---and instead see knowledge in the form of an unanswerable question. On the other hand, that statement is meant to denote a certain deadlock or impasse, a "parallax view" if you're down with the latest Zizek idiom, a certain embrace of lovelessness: that grand rapprochement, it ain't coming.

You don’t understand this chart? Give up! Ben Gibbard figured it out (and then forgot he did after Transatlanticism, cause you have to admit Plans kinda sucks with its happy "I Will Follow You Into the Dark" sentiments). I think I've finally reached that point, now, where Eastern religious thought makes more and more sense. As does my penchant for writing love letters.

I have folders full of love letters that I have written, that I started writing on a typewriter when I was 14. I remember writing the first ones to C-W, my first true love (she still sends me valentines, but there is never a return address), I remember writing a tortured one at two in the morning after being turned away from her apartment by her brother because she was in bed with another young man (a magazine model, of course), and my mother catching me in there typin' and cryin', and then she decided to go to bed and let me alone because I was determined to hammer out this relationship, to write a relation, to impress the impression, that dogged teenage reckoning with . . . disjunction. Like the romance in The Age of Innocence, the fruitless attempts to write a relation are either with the promise of love, or its disillusion, but never in the sustained fantasy of having it (desiring therein is truly dead). Lovelessness is the real deal; a reason to live; a reason for Daniel Johnston to stay alive.

I think I know everything. Don't.

the maudlin machine revisited

Music: The Reindeer Section: Son of Evil Reindeer (2002)

Last night I watched the season finale of Phenomenon, a "reality" competition for illusionists. One of the strange "wow" moments of the show was when Criss Angel revealed he had (apparently) predicted Nine-eleven as a part of a mentalist trick. It was, as Peter Jackson might agree, in bad taste, but there was some attempt to channel affect about that dreadful event into holiday spirit.

This morning the executive producer of the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade gleefully announced the highlight of the parade is the Virginia Tech marching band, which lost one of its players in "the tragedy." "There will be a missing man formation," he said with a twinkle in his eye, as an all-smiles Matt Lauer and Meredith Vieira nodded in anticipation.

So, to put on my rhetorician hat: what do we do with this stuff? How does one contend with the commemoration spectacle as a rhetoric? In previous years I tried to capture the condensation of affect via the memorializing spectacles in terms of "the maudlin machine," a term that tries to capture the attempt to generate brand loyalty and kick-start the drive to consume through a kind of commercial, melancholic interpellation process (also see this post). The maudlin machine is a mournful dispositif that articulates people into a temporary group structure in a manner that is perilously close to kitsch (think of a Thomas Kinkaid painting; that's what the apparatus produces, but in the form of "truth"). Although there is unquestionably an ambivalence to Virginia Tech's appearance in Macy's parade today---that is to say, some people need that band marching to mourn, namely, the people of Virginia Tech---the cheer with which the parade's producer announced the "missing man formation" made me throw-up a little. As a rhetorician, how do I deal with my reaction, as well as the desired reaction (people watching the parade to see such a maudlin display)?

The trouble is that rhetorical studies is impotent to explain the dynamics of the maudlin machine. This morning I was reading Bruce Fink's Lacan to the Letter, and found a good language for expressing rhetoric's impotence in terms of Lacan's many subjects. Fink explains that in Lacan's theory, there are many subjects (viz., paradigm selves) and Lacan slides among them fluidly, which can be quite confusing. Fink proposes three are the most important: the subject of the signifier; the subject of jouissance, and finally, the subject of enunciation (the latter is Fink's formulation). Let me explain each of these to help me detail the impasse of rhetorical theory when dealing with things like Criss Angel's evocation of Nine-eleven on a magic show.

The subject of the signifier refers to that structuralist subject, the one that speaks through me (the subject of the unconscious), the subject of language and representation. As we know from Freud, representation is always posed against affect in stark way but also in a way that requires it. I'm reminded of Antonio Damasio's example of Phineas Gage in Descartes Error: this man gets a pole through his head and loses his capacity to emote, which has devastating effects on his ability to reason. In other words, Gage became merely the subject of the signifier---a guy who did things without knowing why he did them, and he did them . . . well, "to the letter." Gage lost the subject of jouissance and the drives, the subject that couples representation with feeling.

The problem with most domains of knowledge, says Fink, is that they tend to exclude the subject of jouissance and focus almost exclusively on the subject of the signifier. Linguistics is the perfect example (as is Lacan's early work): what gets ignored in the study of linguistics is the "subject of enunciation." That is, there is a person with a tongue and lungs and breath and so forth who says, "I am Sam." Linguistics can only focus on the "I," but not the flesh and blood person. But that flesh and blood person, this enunciator, is where both the subject of the signifier and the subject of jouissance is located. Psychoanalysis is a privileged discourse, therefore, because it works to achieve effects at the level of jouissance, but can only do so via the subject of the signifier (there is no direct route to enjoyment via representation). This is why psychoanalysis is both literally and figuratively located in the "speech situation." Speech is the meeting place of these two subjects (or three, if you wish).

When we consider, then, the maudlin machine we are met with both representation and affect. Rhetorical studies would have me focus entirely of the surface spectacle, on what the producer of the parade said, for example, and not the enjoyment of his saying it. Hence, this choice quote from Fink:

While psychoanalysts obviously have to grapple with the heterogeneity of the subject [viz., the impossibility of establishing some direct relation between the subject of jouissance and the subject of the signifier], it seems to me that many other fields in the humanities and social sciences have to come to terms with these two faces of the subject in theory building and praxis---no doubt different ways that psychoanalysis due to the different aims that inform each field.

In short, in looking at suasive phenomena rhetoricians have really only dealt with half the picture. When making arguments for the study of psychoanalysis, I often catch myself saying that rhetorical studies does not have a theory of desire; what I mean by this is shorthand for this reckoning with the two subjects (or two faces). This argument is sometimes met with "but we have that in Burke," to which I have to bow and nod my head. Burke's career was a systematic exorcism of the subject of enjoyment from the domain of rhetoric.

on gossip

Music: Hilmar Örn Hilmarsson: Angels of the Universe (2001)

I cannot help myself; I rationalize after "it" exits, this "it" that goes on to circulate like a beautiful accident, sometimes the name of an obsolete scholar who has, as Michael Stipe once sang, "said it up; said too much," sometimes the deed of another who cannot help herself either. But always at the core of that self-same conference speaker there is an identifiable body and a voice goes from it, from me, as well as the delusion that this "it" can somehow be controlled for meaning, purpose, representation.

"What I say goes," muses Steven Conner, "for you, [my voice] comes from me. For me, it goes out from me. Between this coming from and going towards lie all the problems and astonishments of the dissociated voice." The problem is gossip. The astonishment of this post is coming to terms with the fact that I am one. The catalysts to my gifts of the tongue, my charismata, are bourbon, exhaustion, and the inescapable desire to connect with other bodies. In some sense gossip is an answer to the question of desire, "Che Vuoi?", because it is always about another, a third party, and an attempt to mediate with the Other as an immediate interlocutor. Would you like me to be the knowing one? Very well then, I can produce the nugget.

What is curious about admitting one is a gossip is the etymology of the term, which is a noun: "One who has contracted spiritual affinity with another by acting as a sponsor at a baptism," says the OED, again, a mediation (this time, in terms of The Angel). In Lacan-o-babble, over the course of some four centuries the position of the gossip seems to have shifted from something closer to the analyst's discourse to that of the university discourse (I think we would be in error to describe the contemporary gossip as party to the hysteric's discourse, insofar as the secret knowledge of the gossip is about justifying the gossip's existence as such, whereas the knowledge of hysteria is the source of jouissance). I'm not so sure this distinction is all that helpful except for pointing out that in either case---then or now---the gossip claims to represent another party (whereas the hysteric demands knowledge): then, the dialogue partner for The Angel; now, some absent other for whomever one is speaking to. Let us term the gossip of old the Godparent, and that of today the Circulator. What does the difference tell us (tell me?)

Obviously the difference represents the ravages of secularization, a shift in the way in which folks forge representatives of the Big O. Previously the Godparent and the baptized were subservient to some larger divine. The Circulator, however, is subservient to knowledge, is a node in a network, what Avital Ronell terms a "human switchboard": precisely when one has succumbed to the delusion of self-transparency and control, the secret knowledge comes out with a vengeance, as if one is speaking in tongues. In a sense, the contemporary gossip, the Circulator, unwittingly lets The Angel in. It is a prophecy of sorts---but almost universally a prophecy we both enjoy and despise.

Why despise? Because, of course, gossip---like speech---is associated with body, earth, woman. Babble, speaking in tongues, speech as such.

Reflecting still on the academic conference of last week, I continue to feel guilt for having become at many moments a Circulator---as were we all, to greater or lesser degrees. This is how a culture is sustained. And we are foolish to think we are in control of the culture; it would seem it is quite the other way about. As a thing or a verb, gossip sustains our the culture of Communication Studies as an ecology, a multi-noded environment, a kind of gaze- and projection-zone that all cultures that sustain the academic discourse require. There is no academy without gossip; and there is really no knowledge without our unwitting theological prostrations.

reflections-on-communicating-worldviews-faith-intellect-ethics

Music: O’Hare Muzak “Don’t Disturb This Groove” (dunno the artist)

As I sit here in the airport Chili’s, I’m feeling nostalgic and somewhat wistful, and because I have a couple of hours before my plane boards, I thought I’d take a few moments to reflect on my conference experience this year: reflections-conference-chili’s-airport.

First, however, I would like to mention that Nancy is among the most unpleasant servers I’ve had in some years. I am wearing a cowboy hat, which makes me conspicuous, so they hid me behind the server’s station, crammed into a corner on a very small table, next to another very small table, and I put my cowboy hat on the neighboring table, and Nancy angrily ordered me to keep all my stuff to “my” table. She does not smile. She slams down plates and glasses. She is having a bad morning.

I, however, am having a slow-moving but nevertheless relaxed morning. I’m slightly hung-over, which oddly makes the moo-moo-I’m-a-cow routine at the airport less irritating. Finally, I am no longer hungry. With departure imminent but many hours off, I am caused to reflect on this morning’s panel, “(Re)Communicating Worldvies: Repetition, Yet Again: Five Years Later: A Retrospective [title abbreviated for brevity],” to which no one came, except for a wayward soul from Tokyo, who was a friend. We didn’t sell any more of the t-shirts, and we have a but load of our “panel-in-a-box” sets (we decided to franchise the panel this year). So, dear reader, if you’d like to submit the panel yourself, you can get the deluxe set (t-shirt + DVD) for $15.

Some vivid memories from this past week include the “parties,” where I found free booze and lots of smart, prospective graduate students. I laughed until I cried having drinks with Tom Frentz and Joyce Rushing (the saucy bartender had us howling). Rooming with the Shaunnesy: that comment about shampooing conditioning your back hair was priceless. (Oh my god! They’re playing Billy Ocean! “When the goin’ gets tough . . . . “). I remember getting off the elevator unsure about which room a group of friends was in, only to find it rather quickly by following the strong stench of burning oregano (I mean, it was ridiculous!). I remember some rather good papers; Julia Wood is so good. I finally met Phaedra Pezzulo (I’m a fan---and I think she thought I was a leetle nutty in my fandom). I remember taking lots of photos (check back later for more of those). I remember the effing shower: a small stall and a bolted shower head that sprayed you hard and directly in the face. I remember the Oasis People (thank god for Rosa).

And I remember a polite but promising kiss at the elevator.

a beautiful mess

Music: Blak Audio: Cexcells

Day three of the National Communication Association conference in Chicago. Tired. There are parties to attend here in a few. It’s great to see old friends, to ruminate and recall. A common theme that has come up is about so-and-so, you know, what ever happened to her/him? How is such and so? The theme is the answer, said so well by my roommate: “A beautiful mess.”

There are so many beautiful messes walking about these conference hotels. We discuss their tragic beauty over drinks, over coffee, over dinners and in the hallways. I worry that I am someone’s beautiful mess. If so, I hope the stress is on beauty, since I did cut my hair and shave (as for the mess, is it as well hidden as I presume?).

One thing that goes so well with the theme of “the beautiful mess” is the cover of the conference program, which, alas, I cannot locate online to present to you, dear reader. It is a swirl of disembodied body parts---mouths, eyes, teeth---and various faces coded ambiguously ethnic, like a sort of fleshy black hole, leading to a center that resembles . . . well, it resembles an anus (the hues are browns and reds). The art is perhaps some of the worst I have yet to see on an academic conference program. Just inside the program cover is an essay, presumably by the artist---it is unclear---under the title of the conference, “Faith-Intellect-Ethics: About the Program Cover” (I honk for hyphens, don’t you?). The essay begins thusly:

How did the world begin, swirling matter arranged by intelligent design or ignited from a cosmic explosion? What about me? Am I a divine creation or the result of a big bang---two cells colliding in the night? Around these questions of birth, creation and existence, fragments of humanity orbit, sucked into a vortex of dialogue, thought, and feeling

I am reminded of my post about how other fields see communication studies from the outside. It is true I would not want my colleagues in political science, psychology, and English studies to see the cover of my own professional organization’s program. Nor would I want them to read the accompanying essay---or at least I would not want them to read “Am I a divine creation or the result of a big bang” without my and my roommates passionate delivery and reenactment of this mind-blowing rumination on the meaning of it all in our William Wegman heavy hotel room. (If you are reading this, dear artist, yes, your folks banged you out; it’s gross, I know).

What this world needs now is a new drug, a new organ, not a folk singer or those who aspire to be. What my world needs right now is irony, not cynicism, and it would secrete the kind of critical self-awareness that ends in laughter, not the tears of self-importance.

day two: electric bugaloo

Music: The Smiths: Louder Than Bombs (1987) I’ve secreted away to my room for a breather from the overwhelming sound of a elementary school cafeteria (I think this is what Francis Bacon also terms “the marketplace”); after a while thousands of people talking at once is an overwhelming sound, a bodily assault on the senses.

And I’m sort of high, off the heels of a very good panel Adria organized based on our haunting seminar from last year. Everyone was prepared, read clearly and articulately, and just so good. And it was, as panels go, fairly well attended. I gave a brief response, and there were good and interested questions. I also felt very strange: these are more or less both my students and my friends, and I consider them as my colleagues. But I had one of those maternal “I’m so proud” attacks, a warmth in my otherwise cold and steely heart. It was nicely done.

Had lunch at the art museum with two of my most favorite people in the world: Bob Scott, my advisor, and Angela Ray, one of my count-on-one-hand best friends. At dinner I was noticing how warm and soulful their eyes seemed to me, like I was oddly at the end of a much-needed umbilicus . . . recharging.

After that, did the graduate fair. A good servicey thing to so and I met a few prospective students (they’re so articulate! When I was looking for grad programs I know I sounded so, like, dude, and you know).

So it was a nice second day at the conference. I’m meeting friends for dinner, and then later this evening I have plans to see some Chicago blues with the home team. This is lovely: what conferences should be. I think in two days time, though, I’m going to be exhausted.

and so, the circus . . .

Music: Duran Duran: Red Carpet Massacre

It's colder in Chicago, a welcome chill. No screaming babies, no snakes, just a few friends on the plane. Wore my cowboy hat; man from India tried to crush my hat with his suitcase, hasty thrust in overhead bin: "You can have my girlfriend, just don't crush my hat," says my tall colleague in jest. Watched Battlestar Gallatica on the notebook (they seek the tomb of Athena or some such thing). Cram in a shuttle to sit in a traffic jam (don't forget to owe Katie and Dana for the ticket, the tip, . . . the love). Hotel Essex: oh no, oh no. This place is a dump. Or it was. Not any more. They refurbished. Fear of scabies abated. Must have music. Radio: play. Hang clothes. I'm here earlier than I expected. Get registration out of the way. Cross street to Hilton. Pre-registration: "You need your name tag." "I left it in my room; do you have a roster?" "I'm afraid not." Sheesh. Back through lobby. Pass some guy I had a good time with two conferences ago, forget his name. Pass chair of small liberal arts school who I interviewed with five years ago. She doesn't recognize me (good). Up to room for name tag. Back to Hilton, get conference program, friendly faces whose names I should know (I'm reminded of a McDonald's commercial that I despise in which two men who work at the same place lie to avoid each other; are people really that secretly cynical?). Should sweep through bar on way back to see if anyone is here yet. No sooner than I walk into the door, "Josh! Josh!" It's a friend and respected mentor, at a table with a host of mentors (one generation older, now they are the "guard"---which is weird to think about---but thankfully true). Loving hug, chit chat. I try to sell "Repetition, Yet Again" t-shirts. No one is impressed with t-shirts. "Hey, you gonna blog the conference?" friend/mentor asks. "Depends if I can find free wifi," I says. Red head spitfire mentor/colleague in the corner still mad at me, taking long drags off of cigarette and laser-eyebeam surly looks. How long will she hold a grudge? It's not about her. She still loves me, just mad; must ignore laser-eyebeams. Lots of smoke, asthma trigger. Ugh oh. Should leave to puff asthma medicine. Spy dear friend; go over to hug and kiss. Yay, more love! (conferences are for love, not ideas). Still wheezing. Should leave smoky bar. Back to room, open lungs on the way. Up up up. Play radio. The new Duran Duran is good, a touch of Justin Timberlake but still enough of that Roxy Music continental cheese. Ice machine. Spot of bourbon. What-ho? Free wifi. Should I go back, be social? Over stimulated. Blog post.

chicago ho!

Music: Calvin Harris: I Created Disco (2007)

Today's blog title does not refer to the last entry, but my impending travel. The bags are packed and loaded into the car, and I've an arsenal of coats and overcoats and scarves for weathering freezing temperatures in Chicago. In an hour I depart for the airport to endure one of my least favorite activities (right up there with mopping, plucking eyebrows, and eating deep-fried pig scrotum): getting through an airport. Every time I go my bags are too heavy and I have to unload something. Every time I pass through security something sets off the metal detectors. Every time I am seated in front of or next to a small child for whom the changes in cabin pressure are too much to bear quietly.

I would say that I like to travel, except that I don’t. I like to be in different places; it's getting to those places that is the issue. And, this is the first time I'm leaving Jesús for an extended period of time; I'm worried he is going to drive the neighbor crazy and pee in her house.

I'm very much looking forward to seeing friends I've not seen in a while! It's exciting to think about. I'm coming into O'Hare at 2:30/3:00 p.m. If you’re a friend or simply just want to be and spy me in the "ground transportation" area, grab me and let's share a cab. And somewhere I will definitely be Thursday night: the Mem Shannon show at Buddy Guy's Legends!

I'll try to blog during the conference. Much of that depends on whether there is free wifi signals. In a conference area, that is probably not very likely, but one can hope.

Anyhoo, I'll see four of five of you readers here in a day!

gettin' some (at a conference)

Music: Japancakes: Waking Hours (2004)

I have just finished, after almost two weeks of preparation, writing all the responses, talking points, and papers that am to have ready for the professional conference I am attending next week. I have also finished preparing for our unusual "repetition panel," which shall be very different this year (for starters, we have t-shirts commemorating the fifth anniversary for sale . . . as well as the complete panel itself). Anyhoot, it's like I’m already exhausted and haven't even left for the conference yet. Every year I say I'm not going to do fifty billion things, and end up getting roped into fifty billion things. I'm not sure I will go next year (I really do need a break). Is anyone else in "the field" thinking about skipping San Diego next year?

Now, so that I'm not too misleading with the title of today's entry, what follows is not of the "how-to" variety, but more of the, "how did I get left out?" variety: apparently professional conferences are seen as opportunities to make-out, grind, and otherwise be naughty in bodily ways. I'm not saying that I don't realize this happens: as every randy 20-something grad student could likely attest, the fantasy of meeting some hot stranger at a conference and getting jiggy is widespread. I've seen some unfortunate make-out sessions in crowded conference hotel hallways (hey people, don't do that; it makes you look bad). I've seen some nasty-come ons at the hotel bar, otherwise distinguished scholars, usually men, behaving very badly with unsuspecting, at-first-kind-of-flattered-but-then-horrified young women. Conferences are gaze-crazy zones and you'd have to be a total idiot not to notice the libidinal charge of these carnivals. However regrettably, I'm just sayin' that these conventions were never lovefests for yours truly.

I know, I know. Readers are baffled, mystified . . . dumbfounded! How can it be?

In other words, I have never gotten jiggy at a conference. Does that make me too naive? Ok, well, let me take that back. Once I did as a brand new grad student, but it was a grind with a good friend and was nothing serious or (regrettably) orgasmic. What I'm saying is that (to my knowledge) I have never hit on anyone at a conference, nor have I been hit on. I've never done lines of cocaine or shot horsey up my butt at a conference, either.

Now, I don't hit on folks because I am fiercely loyal as a partner, or if I'm single, simply because I don't want to be perceived as one of these nasty, smarmy conference people who get tipsy so that they can be inappropriate. I guess, then, because of my concern for reputation or whatever, "getting some" has never been on my (conscious) agenda. I'm usually at a conference to be with friends whom I cannot see any other time, or for "business" (which, lets face it, is seeing friends). Yet this inner puritan of mine has apparently caused me to miss out on the hot, exciting, if not altogether seedy underground of the professional conference. Looking at the excited faces of some of my conference going friends, it must be like a scene from the middle of some David Lynch movie, as if you walk into the conference hotel lobby and Madonna's music blasts your entire body with "where's the party? I want to lose controooollllll" except that instead of "party" she's singing "orgy," as black-capped academics caper about telepathically communicating which otherwise respectable academic is the hook up for eight-balls and crank.

Well, I get carried away. I know this stuff goes on, I guess I am (somewhat regrettably) clueless about how it goes down ( who is the conference coke dealer, anyway? ). So, if you're with me at a conference and you see something going down---a drug deal, a hook-up, footsie---point it out to me. I want to learn to spot this secret love action, because . . . because I like to watch.

Anyhoo, so why this topic? Do I have a now not-so-secret agenda this year? No. But I think others wished I did. Last weekend a friend who was in town asked me if I had lined-up anyone to make-out with "at the conference." No, I haven't, thanks. The very next day my mother phoned to ask if I "planned to met any new ladies?" Ah . . no. No plans (although she did prompt me to think if I did hit on anyone, it should be exclusively men---maybe I'd pick up someone and bring him home, just in time for the holidays). And then just two days ago my shrink asked the same question, couched in an more appropriate yet nevertheless disconcerting way about hooking up with "old flames" at the conference. What? Did I not get the memo about my conference going some how?

I remember at a conference many years ago, a trusted mentor, with a straight face and apparently a history of success, said: "you outta get yew sum tonight baby! You have the lead article in QJS!" (QJS is for Quarterly Journal of Speech, a visible rhetoric journal in my field). I thought the statement was ridiculous and said so: "So, instead of hey baby, what's your sign? I should say, hey, didja read the recent issue of QJS?"

Nevertheless, in preparation for this week's conference I welcome your siliceous stories about "Sex in the Conference" (post anonymously, even). Have any stories? Tips?

Finally, I feel a twinge of irresponsibility with this post, so let me say something a bit more sober, especially for any graduate students who are reading and are attending a professional conference for the first time. Most of what I'm talking about here, with intended irony and humor, is between like-minded, like-aged adults. Younger folks especially should be warned that very inappropriate things can and do happen at conferences, especially at the conference bar and often to young women. When Mr. Big Name scholar comes around and has had one too many, do watch yourself, and if his breath is worse than Listerine and his eyes are wandering, scram! Nothing can ruin your good time more than Mr. Big Names behaving badly.

And on that note, I swear that this humble, small-name conference goer pledges to be good (just not too good).

love thy neighbor

Music: Brian Eno: Apollo (1983)

RING RING

"Hello?"

"Hi Josh, this is [insert neighbor's name]. How are you doing?"

"Oh, I'm hangin' in there. Trying to get over another cold."

"Oh dear [insert ramble about unconquerable yeast infection of neighbor]."

"Yuck, I’m sorry to hear that!"

"Listen, the reason I'm calling is about the pipes. Do you hear the pipes rattle every time I flush the downstairs commode?"

"No m'am. Not really. I'm a noisy person myself so I prolly just tuned it out."

"We'll, it's really loud and bothersome, and it started happening when they tore up the wall. There's air in the pipes."

"Hmm. [insert neighbor's name] I can give you my insurance adjuster's number and you can see what he says."

"No I won't! YOU DO IT!"

"[trying not to loose my cool] Well, I cannot get to it right now. I'm prepping for class and about to leave for school; it'll have to wait until tomorrow."

[interlude: I change clothes, brush my teeth and then remember. I call neighbor back]

"[insert neighbor's name], this is Josh. I just remembered something. Didn't you have some plumbers out to fix a leak in your bathroom after our summer ordeal?"

"Yeah, uh-huh."

"Well, I can tell you what will happen. If I call my insurance adjuster, he will look up the report. The report says the leak was behind my refrigerator, and not in your bathroom. You'll recall those were two different plumbing issues and that my insurance only addressed the one that occurred on my side of the wall. Bruce will say it's your problem."

[silence]

"So the first step in this situation is to call the plumbers you hired. The work they did should be under warranty and they should fix it without charge, I would think. If they worked on your toilet and sink, I bet the air got in when they did the work. The folks that we brought in for our mutual problem didn't work on the plumbing at all, other than fix the leak on my side."

"[angry tone] Ok, Josh. [click]"

[I then sent an angry email to another neighbor, who has been rubbed the wrong way by the demanding neighbor also. He sent the following email in reply]

[demanding neighbor] had this concern long before any leaks from your place or wherever. I remember going there a couple of times when she asked me to check out the noisy pipes. My advice to her was to call a plumber and have them release the air from the pipes. This is done by turning off the water supply and turning on all the taps and then turning on the water supply and then turning off the taps. I didn't feel like doing this so I suggested at least twice she notify her son or call a plumber. I feel sorry for [demanding neighbor] as she is old and basically on her own but I have grown frustrated with it seemingly being my assumed responsibility to fix everything in her household. I, as well, became aggravated enough to refer to [demanding neighbor] as an [insert expletive]. [Insert name of third neighbor] is much nicer as she refers to [demanding neighbor] as our "Brontesaurus."

Of course, we all live on Bronte Drive.

on the man (or [my?] self-importance)

Music: Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan & Michael Brook: Night Song (1996)

I had been warned some weeks ago that the Fire Marshal was citing my office as a violation of fire code. I had assumed I would receive an official letter or something on paper, specifying exactly my violation and what I needed to do to comply. Instead, I received an "official" forward of a series of emails with vague demands. I present them to you, dear blog readers, in their complete, fuzzy absurdity:

From: ------.
Date: Mon, 05 Nov 2007 21:51:59 -0600
To: [all my bosses]
Cc: [the dean]
Conversation: SFMO Inspection Report Fire Violation @ CMA Rm.#7.126
Subject: FW: SFMO Inspection Report Fire Violation @ CMA Rm.#7.126

[Josh's Bosses]:
I am forwarding the UT Fire Marshal recommendation for Josh Gunn's office. The visit from the UT safety office was in response to the State Fire Marshal's Inspection. This was a spot audit of our building, so every office was not inspected.

If you would inform Josh of the violations and have him comply by the end of the month. The UT safety office will have to inspect Josh's office again, before the violation can be cleared. I would like to have this resolved before the holiday break in December.

Let me know if you have any questions,
Thanks,

[signed college building manager]

------ Forwarded Message
From: [FIRE SAFETY INSPECTOR]
Date: Mon, 5 Nov 2007 11:28:18 -0600
To: [College Building Manager]
Conversation: SFMO Inspection Report Fire Violation @ CMA Rm.#7.126
Subject: FW: SFMO Inspection Report Fire Violation @ CMA Rm.#7.126

A Good Monday morning to you [college building manage] and how are you doing today? On Friday I forwarded a copy of these pictures taken at CMA to the Fire Marshal and he totally agrees with my request to remove the combustible materials on 3 walls to comply with the State Fire Marshal's Inspection (SFMO) report. If the user of this office disagrees with this request, then we can take this further on up to the Dean's Office. The code only allows a minimum of no more than 20% of an aggregate wall space to be used for materials. We will allow adequate time for the removal of the combustible materials. Also, candles even though not lit are unauthorized in UT facilities. If you have any questions, please give me a call #471-7989. Thanks so much for your assistance on this matter. [fire safety inspector]

From: [Fire Safety Inspector]
Sent: Friday, November 02, 2007 3:58 PM
To: [University Fire Marshal]
Subject: SFMO Inspection Report Fire Violation @ CMA Rm.#7.126

FYI
[Fire Marshal] ! I made a visit to CMA in reference to the SFMO inspection report identifying fire violation/s FINDING # 5: -----. Building Manager at CMA had met with ------- [some other person] sometime back in April as he made a follow up visit. So as my follow up, I took these pictures of what the room actually looks like to support the SFMO fire violation finding. One wall has a book shelf with storage on top to the ceiling and the other 3 wall surfaces are covered with posters, other combustible materials and a candle on top of a filing cabinet.

SFMO Repot: FINDING #5

Offices are not permitted to have extensive fuel loads. The extensive combustible materials in this office will fuel a fire, endangering occupants and hindering fire department suppression efforts.

REMEDY: Remove the extensive combustible materials to an amount typical of business offices. # 7.126

NFPA 101, Life Safety Code Chapter 10.2.5.3 Bulletin boards, posters, and paper attached directly to the wall shall not exceed 20% of the aggregate wall area to which they are applied.

I highly recommend for the individual assigned to this office remove the excessive combustible materials from the other 3 walls in this room. I've talked to Jackie Smensky the Building Manager and told her I would get back with her once you've had a chance to review the pictures to help remedy this situation.

Thanks [fire safety inspector]

[Here is a gallery of the ALARMING! photos he took and forwarded to everyone and their brother in the college.] All of this, after almost three years with out much more than a peep. They first asked me to remove posters from the ceiling last semester. I did that. Now they want me to "remove combustible materials" from three of four walls? What are those? How many? I phoned this very alarmed fire inspector safety person and asked. He said, "all materials must be removed." I said that in the email, it said I would only have to remove items to the level of a "typical business office." What is that? I asked. "20% of the wall," he said. Given the small size of our offices, I said I could not think of ANY office in the building that only had 20% coverage. "Yes, but yours is excessive," he said. I said it sounded a bit like the obscenity debates. I requested a meeting, in person, so that he could point to what exactly needed to come down, and perhaps point out the offices of colleagues who were in compliance, so I had a point of reference.

Now, resisting the Fire Marshal is very much a lost cause; it's not something I really want to waste a bunch of energy on, because if I fight this, I will lose. Even so, this is really about the politics of excess (which is my point, if there can be said to be a point, about wall decorations) and less about fire; more about someone's self-importance, and less about death and destruction. There are many homologies here in respect to world conflict, but I don't want to draw them lest my own self-importance be read as . . . "over the top."

dey wubs each udder

Music: Meet the Press

meh cuss-tomb

Music: Tonight Show

Well, shit. Tonight I was really wanting to go see Johnette Napolitano at the Cactus Club, but would you know I came down with a cold yesterday and it's worse today and I feel like a full-grown booger with time-delay and ear maggots. I managed to have a drinkie with the rockin' DJ James and friends, but ended up sipping toddies and chicken noodle soup instead of seeing one of my favorite artists ever. Oh well. I'm looped up on cold meds at the moment, about to hit the sack, and remembered that James was like all up in my grill tonight because I didn't have a proper photo of my Halloween costume on the blog. So here I am. With open arms . . . sort of, when I set down my basket of garden goodness. Click photo for bigger rendition.

Oh, I was stuck on the elevator with the college development guy on Halloween in this outfit. I said to him he could rent me for $300 an hour to stand on the lawn of various donors. He barely cracked a smile.

I am not just happy to see you: that is a rather large cob of corn, thank you.

samhain

Music: Between Interval: Secret Observatory (2005)

Halloween marks the beginning of the Celtic new year and the convergence of the world of the living and the dead; according to those who study the pagan sun ritual of Samhain, tonight is the easiest night to contact and cavort with the dead, and also a time when the dead might voluntarily come for a visit. Of course, nothing today about Halloween has anything remotely do to with Samhain, but that doesn't stop certain angry Christians from declaring the horned god "Satan."

Today what we celebrate as Halloween is largely a commercial venture (rivaled only by Christmas, but not by much, as the aisles in Wal-Mart and Target should attest), a sort of white-washed Disnification of what was initially a Victorian era evening of divination, then a night to worry about vandalism. We know Halloween is a hodgepodge of celebrations that occur naturally at the beginning of winter and after the harvest, as all sorts of things start to change (so Halloween falls in the middle of seasonal tradition), and so it makes sense there would be various "pagan" holidays around this time of year. After Christianity took over much of the West and the popes had some power, the church re-christened Samhain activities as "All Saints Day." English revels had costuming. Blast through centuries and you get to the effigy-crazy Guy Fawkes day in Britain (this dude tried to blow up parliament, and was caught and hanged and quartered and so forth), also celebrating in the states. Somehow all of this evolved by the nineteenth century into doing things with apples in water, or throwing nuts in the fire, or scrying with mirrors, all for the purpose of answering the question: who will I marry?

Halloween was largely imported to the states, we know, by the Irish and the Scots, which perhaps is why here the holiday was about class division in the early twentieth century. The Great Depression made sure that the cushy Victorian ladies carving pumpkins and getting glimpses of their future beloveds at midnight would soon be under attack by rock-throwing ragamuffins, disgruntled youth, clad in rags, roving the streets. According to David J. Skal in his Death Makes a Holiday: A Cultural History of Halloween (Bloomsbury, 2002), in New York city and related areas in the north east, apparently it became common practice to beg for change on Thanksgiving. For some reason the previously generous class stopped giving, and to the ragamuffins started "pranking" and vandalizing rich folks' homes (we're not talking TP-ing someone's yard here, but real damage). Apparently folks got the idea to open their doors on the night of pranks as an anti-vandalism tactic. They fed the kids apples and cider and what not. It's likely that civc groups and schools also started organzing similar kinds of events to keep the kids off the streets. Candy companies got into the gig---and presto, "trick or treat!"

It does seem the case today that celebrating Halloween is a "lower class" or "middle class" thing, that the license to transgress that the holiday now signifies (rivaled only by Mardi Gras, of course) allows one to temporarily escape roles and social position. I am reminded here of the Halloween episodes of Roseanne, which were always about working-class "fun" with blood and guts.

Ah, so, the moral of the story today ladies and gentlemen is a Marxian one: Halloween is a holiday about class antagonism. Too bad that has been "masked" by, well, by capitalism.

Happy Halloween y'all!

expertise, yet again, one more time

Music: Slowdive: Souvlaki (1994)

I just got off the phone with a radio DJ from somewhere on the west coast who wanted me to do a 3:00 a.m. bit; he had “fifty-thou watts, man, we’re heard in 38 states and you can plug your book.” I said I’d be happy to get up that early if I was paid to do so. “Sorry man, we’re a Clear Channel station and don’t shell out.” He sounded just like a radio guy on the phone; I thought that excited “voice” was only used for on-air?

Yesterday I submitted about a 20 page affidavit to the Assistant Attorney General on the practice of Wicca and the history of the religion (this is compensated, although I’ve run out of billable hours for the state; anything I do from them from this point on is pro-bono).

This morning I taped an episode of The Dad Show with Kenneth, a radio show primarily but one that also broadcasts on local cable access (so I washed my hair). The program will stream tonight at 6:00 p.m. and after that you’ll find it in the archive. The show is an excellent use of public air to address community concerns (my basic message: don’t worry Dads, your kids will be alright on Halloween, and if your teen starts wearing black clothes, don’t freak out).

After I returned from the taping, I did two telephone interviews with reporters (one on Halloween, the other, on urban legends). I have two more requests for interviews in my inbox.

I’m about to hear the fabulous Chuckmeister deliver a talk on Lincoln’s queerness. Getting hard evidence for Lincoln’s sexual proclivities will be a welcome diversion from my Pez-dispenser routine as an “expert.” This is a busy time of year, when you add in all the letter writing and attempting to prepare for a conference coming up in a couple of weeks.

Maybe I should start wearing more pink.