It was widely said after the attacks of 9/11 that irony was dead, but, somehow, I don't really think that this and this were what people had in mind when they said it.
What is it about these people that makes them so totally and utterly blind to irony? Is it that to appreciate irony one has to be able to see many sides of a situation -- even if one ultimately chooses one particular one as right or proper or real or factual -- and their fixed mindsets prevents them from doing so? Do they have tunnel vision and cannot see the context that surrounds them, only the set pathway that their ideology allows, and without that context they cannot compare what they do to what they say, or what what other people do or say? Is it related to the fact that liberalism is much like the scientific method, which places a high value on exploration, experimentation, theorizing and debunking, none of which dogmatic thinking are conducive to?
I think probably the explanation is in there somewhere, but it certainly can't be denied that despite what some thought, irony isn't dead, and won't be as long as people continue to pay attention to right-wing ideologues and authoritarians of all stripes.
Things have reached rock-bottom, perhaps, since the rumors that the government of the United States is considering an unprovoked first-strike nuclear attack against Iran can't be dismissed out of hand, especially since "national defense assests" have been alerted in a way that makes it appear that an attack on Iran is (perhaps) imminent. There seems to be some doubt whether there could actually be "plausible deniability" about such an attack, but there's not doubting that such thinking has been typical of the way the Bush Administration has gone about doing things.
Of course, such thinking is morally, politically and geo-politically insane. If such a thing were to happen it would argue for the mental instability of the people in charge in a way that nothing else they've done up to now really has done (as bad as those things have been).
I would like to suggest that if Bush & Cheney attack Iran, without provocation or authorization, that an effective response would be to pick a day and organize and publicize a General Strike. Not people marching in the streets or rioting or even associating in groups, just for one day everyone stay home from work, keep your kids home from school, don't drive, don't shop (in person or online), don't consume anything more than the minimum necessary. Withhold your services, withhold your participation, make a showing that can be measured in many places of the depth and breadth of our revulsion for what will have been done in our names, without our approval or permission.
136) 'Never get out of the boat.' Absolutely goddamn right. Unless you were going all the way.
Apocalypse Now (film, 1979) produced & directed by Francis Coppola written by John Millius & Francis Coppola narration written by Michael Herr spoken by the character "Captain Williard" played by Martin Sheen
137) There are going to be times when we can't wait for somebody. Now, you're either on the bus or off the bus. If you're on the bus, and you get left behind, then you'll find it again. If you're off the bus in the first place - then it won't make a damn.
Ken Kesey quoted by Tom Wolfe in Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (1968)
138) Our answer [...] is to rely on youth - not a time of life but a state of mind, a temper of the will, a quality of the imagination, a predominance of courage over timidity, of the appetite for adventure over the love of ease.
Robert F. Kennedy campaign speech (1968) quoted by Greil Marcus in Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the 20th Century (1989)
139) Generation to generation [...] nothing changes in Bohemia.
Nik Cohn Awopbopaloobop Alopbamboom: Rock From the Beginning (1969) quoted by Greil Marcus in Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the 20th Century (1989)
140) Everyone knows history moves in circles; the surprise is how big the circles are.
Greil Marcus Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the 20th Century (1989)
141) Nothing is true; everything is permitted.
Rashid al-Din Sinan Islamic gnostic, leader of the Levantine Assassins (1192) quoted by Greil Marcus in Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the 20th Century (1989)
142) In Berkeley in the mid-1960s, I used to wonder at the way friends made the world new each day by cartwheeling down the street, moment to moment exchanging Trotskyism for anarchism for Stalinism for the occult for drugs for religion while professors who in the 1930s were Communists and now were Freudians explained it all. In every case there was a received answer to every question, which meant there were no questions. Everything seemed possible, and the prospect was terrifying - so "nothing is true," one basis for "everything is possible," was exchanged for one truth, whatever it was. Everything was present save a critical spirit, which might have made real the great adventure in doubt that, as Decartes described it, lay behind his "Cogito, ergo sum": his dead slogan. No doubt the mad multiplication of choices by which "the sixties" were known led straight to a surrender of choice in the next decades, a surrender to authoritarian religion, authoritarian politics- for some, freedom from doubt was always the point, peace of mind worth any price.
Greil Marcus Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the 20th Century (1989)
Note: "3089/898" is the designation I've given to the project of posting all my collected quotes, excerpts and ideas (3089 of them) in the remaining days of the Bush administration (of which there were 898 left when I began). As of today, there are 854 days remaining in the administration of the worst President ever.
131) [Philip K.] Dick's fiction calls up our basic cultural assumptions, requires us to reexamine them, and points out the destructive destinations to which they are carrying us. The American Dream may have succeeded as a means of survival in the wilderness of early America; it allowed us to subdue that wilderness and build our holy cities of materialism. But now, the images in Dick's fiction declare, we live in a new kind of wilderness, a wasteland wilderness, because those cities and the culture that built them are in decay. We need a new American dream to overcome this wasteland.
Patricia S. Warrick Mind in Motion: The Fiction of Philip K. Dick (1987)
132) It was either Phil [Dick] or [Ace editor] Terry Carr who came up with the idea of an Ace Double edition of the Holy Bible. One of these days Ace will print the Holy Bible as a Double, back to back, the Old Testament and the New Testament each cut to exactly 30,000 words, the Old Testament titled Master of Chaos and the New Testament titled The Thing That Frees Souls.
Poul Anderson posthumous appreciation of Philip K. Dick in Locus magazine #256 (5/82) quoted by Gregg Rickman in To The High Castle; Philip K. Dick: A Life 1928-1962 (1989)
[Note: In Divine Invasions by Lawrence Sutin, Karen Anderson, wife of Poul Anderson, is quoted. In this version of the anecdote, each half is 20,000 words, and the New Testament is The Things with Three Souls. In e-mail from Arthur Hlavaty (5/28/95) the Old Testament is given as Wargod of Israel and the New Testament as The Thing with Three Souls]
133) Writer X may sell 500,000 copies. All those 500,000 people may think, nice book. I liked it. I'll read the guy's next one. And 40,000 people may read a Phil Dick book, and be loud and vocal and persuasive about feeling the book had incredible impact on them intellectually and emotionally. The guy with the 500,000 will not be seen as a major writer and the guy with the 40,000 will. Because nobody's talking about the guy with the 500,000 readers.
Russ Galen, Philip K. Dick's agent quoted by Gregg Rickman in To The High Castle; Philip K. Dick: A Life 1928-1962 (1989)
134) In one of the most brilliant papers in the English language [David] Hume made it clear that what we speak of as 'causality' is nothing more than the phenomenon of repetition. When we mix sulphur with saltpeter and charcoal we *always* get gunpowder. This is true of every event subsumed by a causal law - in other words, everything which can be called scientific knowledge. "It is custom which rules," Hume said, and in that one sentence undermined both science and philosophy.
Philip K. Dick "The Day the Gods Stopped Laughing" [unpublished article written in the late 60's] quoted by Gregg Rickman in To The High Castle; Philip K. Dick: A Life 1928-1962 (1989)
135) Custom, then, is the great guide of human life.
David Hume An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748) [B15]
Note: "3089/898" is the designation I've given to the project of posting all my collected quotes, excerpts and ideas (3089 of them) in the remaining days of the Bush administration (of which there were 898 left when I began). As of today, there are 855 days remaining in the administration of the worst President ever.
Regarding what Josh Marshall and Atrios write: I recall the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the aerial photographs on the front page of the New York Daily News. I grew up having trouble falling to sleep because I thought that every plane passing overhead was going to be dropping The Bomb -- I listened for the sound of bombs falling. I didn't realize that other kids my age had the same fear until it came up in a discussion when I was in college. I wasn't unique, entire generations grew up with those fears.
The thing is, my fears were exaggerated, maybe even morbid, but, on the other hand, there was also every reason for them to be, since it was a distinct possibility that nuclear war could break out with the USSR at any moment, and the world would be devastated.
I lived with these fears until early adulthood, when the de-escalation of tensions between East and West gradually diminished them.
I live in Manhattan, so I'm not one to try to minimize the danger that terrorists represent, but neither am I inclined to make sweeping generalizations about Islam, as opposed to pointing at certain factions and movements which are dangerous. We just have to keep things in perspective.
128) How many formulaic tales can one wade through in which a self-destructive but sensitive young protagonist with an (implant / prosthesis / telechtronic talent) that makes the evil (megacorporations / police states / criminal underworlds) pursue him through (wasted urban landscapes / elite luxury enclaves / eccentric space stations) full of grotesque (haircuts / clothes / self-mutilations / rock music / sexual hobbies / designer drugs / telechtronic gadgets / nasty new weapons / exteriorated hallucinations) representing the (mores/fashions) of modern civilization in terminal decline, hooks up with the rebellious and tough-talking (youth / artificial intelligence / rock cults) who offer the alternative, not of (community / socialism / traditional values / transcendental visions), but of supreme, life-affirming *hipness*, going with the flow which now flows into the machine, against the spectre of a world-subverting (artificial intelligence / multinational corporate web / evil genius)?
Istvan Csicsery-Ronay Jr. "Cyberpunk and Neuromanticism" Mississippi Review 47/48 (1988) reprinted in Storming the Reality Studio (1991), Larry McCaffery, editor
129) Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the selfhood of every one of its members [...] The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs [...] Who so would be a man must be a nonconformist.
Ralph Waldo Emerson Self-Reliance (1841) [B15]
130) [The] process of cultural mongrelization seems to be what post-modernism is all about. The result is a generation of people (some of whom are artists) whose tastes are wildly eclectic - people who are hip to punk music and Mozart, who rent these terrible horror and SF videos from the 7-11 one night and then invite you to a mud-wresting match or a poetry reading the next [...] I'm very prone to what [writer Ted] Mooney calls "information sickness", and I'm having increasing trouble dealing with it. Without doing this too consciously, I had set up my life to minimize input...I have friend, Tom Maddox, who did a paper on my work [...] he says I display "a problematic sensitivity to semiotic fragments."
William Gibson interviewed by Larry McCaffery in Storming the Reality Studio (1991), Larry McCaffery, editor
Note: "3089/898" is the designation I've given to the project of posting all my collected quotes, excerpts and ideas (3089 of them) in the remaining days of the Bush administration (of which there were 898 left when I began). As of today, there are 856 days remaining in the administration of the worst President ever.
FLASH! Ed Brayton reveals the existence of a sinister Darwinist conspiracy, the very cabal which worked to block the sword of righteousness and deal a blow to creationists in the Kitzmiller case in Dover, Pennsylvania!
There are several dozen people around the world who have, over the course of the last 20 years or so, formed into an unofficial, largely undefined group. This group has gathered on various email lists and centers around the NCSE, the TalkOrigins group and now around the Panda's Thumb as well, and it includes lots of scientists and academics, but also a few people like me who just have an interest in it. We have all spent many years involved in the evolution/creationism battle in various capacities, and together we have a collective memory and expertise. That proved vital in this case as we had people who had spent years studying this or that particular claim or argument, or the movement as a whole. And as the expert reports and depositions and testimony came out, we were able to use that collective memory and expertise to suggest weaknesses and ways to attack the arguments of the other side, and a lot of those things ended up being incorporated into the work of the attorneys in the courtroom, either in their cross examinations or in the closing arguments or in the overall strategy. There are just lots and lots of stories of how information and arguments got used in the trial, where they came from and who suggested them, and I think they really add depth to the story. And since Wesley and I are fortunate enough to know almost all of the experts and the people involved behind the scenes personally, we've got access to things that others writing about the trial just don't have.
Brayton and Wesley Elsberry are writing a behind-the-scenes book about the Kitzmiller trial, which sounds like it will make fascinating reading.
* Actually "groupuscule" probably isn't the most appropriate word to use in this context, but I just came across it and I love it. I'm going to look for some way to use it at work tomorrow.
It's a feeling that I share, a combination of astonishment and horror and despair that so many bad things can be going on in the country I love, the country which should be the best and brightest hope of the world, but which, instead, has turned into a selfish and self-righteous bully run by corrupt thugs and ideologues.
I'm 51, so I've lived through the Bay of Pigs and the Cuban Missile Crisis, the assassinations of John and Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, the Vietnam War and the domestic discord it engendered, the time of rampant self-absorption, consumerism and passivity known as The "Me" Decade, the energy crises of the 70's, "stagflation", recessions, Yuppies, the Reagan Revolution and Reganomics, and more wars than I care to enumerate, so I'm not inclined to claim that the pre-Bush world was an idyllic place to live and work, but I think it's demonstrable true that since Bush has been in control, things have gotten very, very bad, with little prospect of doing anything but getting worse.
You'll pardon me if I find that just a wee bit depressing.
125) The things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotist and self-interest are the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first they love the produce of the second.
John Steinbeck Cannery Row quoted by James Wallace & Jim Erickson in Hard Drive_(1992)
126) There was a desert wind blowing that night. It was one of those hot dry Santa Anas that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands' necks. Anything can happen.
Raymond Chandler "Red Wind" in Trouble Is My Business (1939)
127) An Irishman hears that the banks are failing. He runs into the bank where he keeps his money and demands every cent of it. 'Yes sir,' the teller says politely. 'Do you want it in cash or in the form of a check?' The Irishman replies: 'Well, if you have it, I don't want it. But if you haven't got it, I must have it immediately.'
Philip K. Dick The World Jones Made (1956)
Note: "3089/898" is the designation I've given to the project of posting all my collected quotes, excerpts and ideas (3089 of them) in the remaining days of the Bush administration (of which there were 898 left when I began). As of today, there are 857 days remaining in the administration of the worst President ever.
absolutist
aggresive
anti-Constitutional
anti-intellectual
arrogant
authoritarian
blame-placers
blameworthy
blinkered
buckpassers
calculating
class warriors
clueless
compassionless
con artists
conniving
conscienceless
conspiratorial
corrupt
craven
criminal
crooked
culpable
damaging
dangerous
deadly
debased
deceitful
delusional
despotic
destructive
devious
disconnected
dishonorable
dishonest
disingenuous
disrespectful
dogmatic
doomed
fanatical
fantasists
felonious
hateful
heinous
hostile to science
hypocritical
ideologues
ignorant
immoral
incompetent
indifferent
inflexible
insensitive
insincere
irrational
isolated
kleptocratic
lacking in empathy
lacking in public spirit
liars
mendacious
misleading
mistrustful
non-rational
not candid
not "reality-based"
not trustworthy
oblivious
oligarchic
opportunistic
out of control
pernicious
perverse
philistine
plutocratic
prevaricating
propagandists
rapacious
relentless
reprehensible
rigid
scandalous
schemers
selfish
secretive
shameless
sleazy
tricky
unAmerican
uncaring
uncivil
uncompromising
unconstitutional
undemocratic
unethical
unpopular
unprincipled
unrealistic
unreliable
unrepresentative
unscientific
unscrupulous
unsympathetic
venal
vile
virtueless
warmongers
wicked
without integrity
wrong-headed
Thanks to: Breeze, Chuck, Ivan Raikov, Kaiju, Kathy, Roger, Shirley, S.M. Dixon
recently seen
i've got a little list...
Elliott Abrams
Steven Abrams (Kansas BofE)
David Addington
Howard Fieldstead Ahmanson
Roger Ailes (FNC)
John Ashcroft
Bob Bennett
William Bennett
Joe Biden
John Bolton
Alan Bonsell (Dover BofE)
Pat Buchanan
Bill Buckingham (Dover BofE)
George W. Bush
Saxby Chambliss
Bruce Chapman (DI)
Dick Cheney
Lynne Cheney
Richard Cohen
The Coors Family
Ann Coulter
Michael Crichton
Lanny Davis
Tom DeLay
William A. Dembski
James Dobson
Leonard Downie (WaPo)
Dinesh D’Souza
Gregg Easterbrook
Jerry Falwell
Douglas Feith
Arthur Finkelstein
Bill Frist
George Gilder
Newt Gingrich
John Gibson (FNC)
Alberto Gonzalez
Rudolph Giuliani
Sean Hannity
Katherine Harris
Fred Hiatt (WaPo)
Christopher Hitchens
David Horowitz
Don Imus
James F. Inhofe
Jesse Jackson
Philip E. Johnson
Daryn Kagan
Joe Klein
Phil Kline
Ron Klink
William Kristol
Ken Lay
Joe Lieberman
Rush Limbaugh
Trent Lott
Frank Luntz
"American Fundamentalists"
by Joel Pelletier
(click on image for more info)
Chris Matthews
Mitch McConnell
Stephen C. Meyer (DI)
Judith Miller (ex-NYT)
Zell Miller
Tom Monaghan
Sun Myung Moon
Roy Moore
Dick Morris
Rupert Murdoch
Ralph Nader
John Negroponte
Grover Norquist
Robert Novak
Ted Olson
Elspeth Reeve (TNR)
Bill O'Reilly
Martin Peretz (TNR)
Richard Perle
Ramesh Ponnuru
Ralph Reed
Pat Robertson
Karl Rove
Tim Russert
Rick Santorum
Richard Mellon Scaife
Antonin Scalia
Joe Scarborough
Susan Schmidt (WaPo)
Bill Schneider
Al Sharpton
Ron Silver
John Solomon (WaPo)
Margaret Spellings
Kenneth Starr
Randall Terry
Clarence Thomas
Richard Thompson (TMLC)
Donald Trump
Richard Viguere
Donald Wildmon
Paul Wolfowitz
Bob Woodward (WaPo)
John Yoo
guest-blogging
All the fine sites I've
guest-blogged for:
Be sure to visit them all!!
recent listening
influences
John Adams
Laurie Anderson
Aphex Twin
Isaac Asimov
Fred Astaire
J.G. Ballard
The Beatles
Busby Berkeley
John Cage
"Catch-22"
Raymond Chandler
Arthur C. Clarke
Elvis Costello
Richard Dawkins
Daniel C. Dennett
Philip K. Dick
Kevin Drum
Brian Eno
Fela
Firesign Theatre
Eliot Gelwan
William Gibson
Philip Glass
David Gordon
Stephen Jay Gould
Dashiell Hammett
"The Harder They Come"
Robert Heinlein
Joseph Heller
Frank Herbert
Douglas Hofstadter
Bill James
Gene Kelly
Stanley Kubrick
Jefferson Airplane
Ursula K. LeGuin
The Marx Brothers
John McPhee
Harry Partch
Michael C. Penta
Monty Python
Orbital
Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger
"The Prisoner"
"The Red Shoes"
Steve Reich
Terry Riley
Oliver Sacks
Erik Satie
"Singin' in the Rain"
Stephen Sondheim
The Specials
Morton Subotnick
Talking Heads/David Byrne
Tangerine Dream
Hunter S. Thompson
J.R.R. Tolkien
"2001: A Space Odyssey"
Kurt Vonnegut
Yes
Bullshit, trolling, unthinking knee-jerk dogmatism and the drivel of idiots will be ruthlessly deleted and the posters banned.
Entertaining, interesting, intelligent, informed and informative comments will always be welcome, even when I disagree with them.
I am the sole judge of which of these qualities pertains.
E-mail
All e-mail received is subject to being published on unfutz without identifying names or addresses.
Corrections
I correct typos and other simple errors of grammar, syntax, style and presentation in my posts after the fact without necessarily posting notification of the change.
Substantive textual changes, especially reversals or major corrections, will be noted in an "Update" or a footnote.
Also, illustrations may be added to entries after their initial publication.
the story so far
unfutz: toiling in almost complete obscurity for almost 1500 days
If you read unfutz at least once a week, without fail, your teeth will be whiter and your love life more satisfying.
If you read it daily, I will come to your house, kiss you on the forehead, bathe your feet, and cook pancakes for you, with yummy syrup and everything.
(You might want to keep a watch on me, though, just to avoid the syrup ending up on your feet and the pancakes on your forehead.)
Finally, on a more mundane level, since I don't believe that anyone actually reads this stuff, I make this offer: I'll give five bucks to the first person who contacts me and asks for it -- and, believe me, right now five bucks might as well be five hundred, so this is no trivial offer.
