In this space, as in Swedenborg’s heaven (described in Balzac’s Seraphita), there is no absolute down, no right or left, forward or backward. Every musical configuration, every movement of tones has to be comprehended primarily as a mutual relation of sounds, of oscillatory vibrations, appearing at different places and times
December 14, 2012 § Leave a comment
Think Tanks surround politics today and are the very things that are supposed to generate new ideas. But if you go back and look at how they rose up – at who invented them and why – you discover they are not quite what they seem. That in reality they may have nothing to do with genuinely developing new ideas, but have become a branch of the PR industry whose aim is to do the very opposite – to endlessly prop up and reinforce today’s accepted political wisdom.
So successful have they been in this task that many Think Tanks have actually become serious obstacles to really thinking about new and inspiring visions of how to change society for the better.
It is also a fantastically rich story about English life that takes you into a world that’s a bit like Jonathan Coe’s wonderful novel ‘What a Carve Up’, but for real. It is a rollicking saga that involves all sorts of things not normally associated with think tanks – chickens, pirate radio, retired colonels, Jean Paul Sartre, Screaming Lord Sutch, and at its heart is a dramatic and brutal killing committed by one of the very men who helped bring about the resurgence of the free market in Britain. read more
PHOTOGRAPH: Mona Kuhn
E pur si muove
December 13, 2012 § Leave a comment
Disc jockey: “What do you think about President Reagan.”
Slits: “Oh boring.” “Boring” “Ugh.” “I can’t deal with that.” “He’s full of shit.”
Along with the recording of Johnny Rotten playing his own records on Capital Radio in 1977, this is my other favorite piece of audio ephemera from the punk era, the legendarily awkward “American Radio interview (Winter 1980)” from The Slits.
The group had driven to college radio station WORT-FM in Madison, Wisconsin from Chicago and were exhausted and testy. They immediately set about destroying the show and insulting most of the male listeners. They were slightly nicer to the female callers, even offering to put one on the guest list.
This came in various forms, a promo record, bundled with The Return of The Giant Slits
Waxidermy had this to say:
Resembling some sort of mythical, technologically-mediated encounter between a coven of witches and a mob of townspeople (most of them men), this “interview” is hilarious, profound, and scary all at the same time. listen
PHOTOGRAPH: Le Fist Noir
I must say, Amy, pretending to have intercourse with you has given me a great deal of satisfaction
December 12, 2012 § Leave a comment
I’ll let you in on a secret: before this crisis, when I thought about the budget deficit I was like everyone else in that I paid no attention to how the government budget interacted with the private and trade sector balances. This is a big error. If you do that, you treat the government budget deficit in isolation, when the reality is that the government is an integral part of an open economy with households and businesses that trade domestically and abroad. When the government balance changes, the balances for those businesses and households change too. If you are talking about deficits then, you need to know how changes in the government balance affect the rest of the economy.
Here’s the thing: when we exchange goods and services with each other, from an accounting perspective, it’s a wash; if you buy my goods, I get money and you get goods of equivalent value. If you pay for those goods with an I.O.U., with a debt, your liability, your deficit in the year we made the transaction, is exactly equal to the asset on my balance sheet and my surplus for the year. I mean this is basic accounting, folks. There’s no hocus pocus. Any person’s, any household’s, any business’s, any group’s, any government’s debt is someone else’s asset. Any person’s, any household’s, any business’s, any group’s, any government’s deficit is someone else’s surplus. Again, it’s basic accounting.
Think of it like exchange traded options and the profit and losses on the exchange. People buy and sell oil futures or soybean futures. At the end of the option period, they either have a loss or a profit and that period’s deficit or surplus is exactly offset by the deficit or surplus of the counterparties. When you sum up these deficits and surpluses they net to zero. Again, no hocus pocus. That’s how accounting works.
The same is true for national accounts. At the end of any accounting period, then, the sum of the sectoral financial balances must net to zero. The government balance – the private balance – capital account balance = 0. The government balance = the private balance + the capital account balance. See my post Economics 101 on government budget deficits for the full write-up. I credit British economist Wynne Godley for making this identity relevant to macro economics.
What does all this mean then? Put simply, the financial sector balances framework means that when the government sector runs a deficit, the non-government sector runs a surplus of equivalent size. So, to move any sector balance in an open economy, you need to move the other two balances exactly opposite in equivalent measure. To reduce the government deficit in any period, the private balance and the capital balance must increase by the exact same amount in that period.
Thinking about government deficits this way opens a whole new understanding of what cutting deficits means for the economy. What it should mean to you is that deficits are the effect and not the cause. Budget deficits are the result of the ex-post accounting identity between the sectoral balances and should not be a primary goal of public policy. read more
PHOTOGRAPH: Francesca Woodman
Novak Djokovic buys up annual supply of donkey cheese
December 11, 2012 § Leave a comment
No, I’m sorry. The bathroom is for customers only.
But if I can draw your attention to our unsurpassed selection of priceless first-edition Kindle files, I’m sure you’ll find something to tickle your fancy. Take this copy of The Road for instance: it was downloaded from Amazon only two hours after the novel first went on sale back in ’07-yet note how the .azw file is still in pristine condition!
Look, I don’t care that it’ll only take a second. Either buy something or go across the street to Saxby’s.
No, I don’t have any DRM-cracked Game of Thrones files for Nook. Sir, need I remind you that this is a serious, scholarly establishment with an incredibly sophisticated clientele? Why, just the other day Jonathan Franzen was in here asking for directions to the Apple Store. At any rate, petty digital piracy is beneath my craft.
Now if you’ll look over here, you’ll see that we have a rare .doc draft of The Corrections that I found when someone accidentally left his laptop bag in the store. How does $7,000 sound?
Wait, wait!-don’t leave yet. You still haven’t seen this yet: a four-gigabyte Kindle DX autographed by none other than preeminent postmodern novelist Don DeLillo. “To Eric-Wow, now you can’t read the screen of this $400 eReader. That sucks. Sorry.” It doesn’t get much more postmodern than that, right?
Or check this out: an .rtf containing the text of the original 42-line Gutenberg Bible, elegantly typeset in MS Courier New. I have a couple thousand other copies of the file on an external hard drive, but I’ll happily delete them to make this one rarer if you’d like.
It’s yours for ten grand. I’ll even throw in Franzen’s MacBook. read more
CHART: Goldman Sachs
The day I took my mask off my face was missing
December 10, 2012 § Leave a comment
A recent article in Science Daily has the headline ‘Linguist makes sensational claim: English is a Scandinavian language’. The claim in question is Jan Terje Faarlund’s conclusion that ‘English is in reality a Scandinavian language’ — that ‘Old English quite simply died out while Scandinavian survived, albeit strongly influenced of course by Old English.’ The core of Faarlund’s argument is that, in addition to many words that originally belonged to Norwegian and/or Danish, English has syntactic structures that are Scandinavian rather than West Germanic in origin. Specifically, Faarlund argues that ‘wherever English differs syntactically from the other Western Germanic languages — German, Dutch, Frisian — it has the same structure as the Scandinavian languages.’ Faarlund then gives a few examples of syntactic parallelism between English and Scandinavian [that is, the Germanic languages of Scandinavia] and concludes that ‘the only reasonable explanation’ for this parallelism ‘is that English is in fact a Scandinavian language, and a continuation of the Norwegian-Danish language which was used in England during the Middle Ages.’
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, as the saying goes. read more
ART: Marlo Pascual
They go naked except for shoes, and live on milk, which is red. They are rarely more than 18 inches high, and their horror of drunkenness is such that a sleeping drunk may be robbed with impunity. They have a vocabulary of 30,000 words, they venerate serpents, and there are penalties for lying, yawning and immoderate laughter
December 7, 2012 § Leave a comment
Belgian independence arguably owes its very fact to an opera – or to a single aria, “Amour sacré de la patrie”, sung at a performance of La Muette de Portici in honour of the Belgians’ Dutch overlord, William I. Ah, the 1830s! When even Belgium was an exciting place and a fine tenor voice could provoke a revolution. Now, the screaming death chants of the most frenzied shock rockers provoke entire stadia of narcotised face-metal-wearers to… buy merchandise.
But opera riots provoked by nationalism scarcely count – nothing could be more infra dig than the 1919 Times Square demonstrations-turned-nasty against a production of Wagner’s Die Meistersinger, which was staged despite the mayoral ban on German opera productions then in place. Servicemen and civilians battled the NYPD’s finest and the whole fracas was reported in the Los Angeles Times under the teasing headline “Crossfire of bricks”.
After all, if you want to riot against a Wagner opera, at least go for Parsifal or The Ring Cycle. I go to the opera quite a lot, almost always equipped with the makings of a Molotov cocktail in the hope that Bryn Terfel will spark it off and the scores of suits slumbering on corporate freebies will get torched but somehow it’s always a bit of a damp squib. read more
PHOTOGRAPH: Tara Violet Niami
In the real world, banks extend credit, creating deposits in the process, and look for the reserves later
December 6, 2012 § Leave a comment
BLVR: I imagine it would be difficult to write nonfiction, because you have to have such an authority to say, “This is what the world is.” How can you really have the authority to say, “I know enough and I’ve seen enough to be able to conclude things about the world”?
JD: Well, you have to just gain that confidence. Which is part of what you do over the course of your whole career. I mean, you become confident that you have—this sounds ridiculous, but you become confident that you have the answer.
BLVR: Do you remember the point—
JD: —at which you get that confidence?
BLVR: Well, for you.
JD: For me it probably occurred fairly late, when I started getting feedback from the audience. Feedback in terms of a response. Well, it wasn’t fairly late. It was fairly early [laughs] when I started getting a response from the audience, otherwise I wouldn’t have had the nerve to continue.
BLVR: And where would you situate that? Around which book, say?
JD: I would say it happened at Play It as It Lays. Which was, when? My third book. And I remember my husband saying, when Play It as It Lays was about to come out, “This isn’t going to—you’re never going to—you’re never going to—this book isn’t going to make it.” And I didn’t think it was going to make it, either. And suddenly it did make it, in a minor way. And from that time on I had more confidence.
BLVR: Why did you both feel like it wasn’t going to make it?
JD: Because it was my third book and I had not made it until then. And you don’t see—I mean, you don’t think in terms of suddenly making it. You think you have some stable talent which will show no matter what you’re writing, and if it doesn’t seem to be getting across to the audience once, you can’t imagine that moment when it suddenly will.
BLVR: Play It as It Lays was fiction, but that confidence translated into other kinds of writing as well.
JD: Yeah. What happened was I started doing a lot of reporting that gradually came to get noticed, so I was asked to do other things. Gradually, gradually you gain that confidence. Well, you know. You’ve been through this.
BLVR: Yes, it’s gradual. It stuck in my head when your husband said, “It’s not going to make it.” Did that hurt your feelings to hear that, or was that simply the way—
JD: No, it didn’t hurt my feelings. It was, I thought, a realistic assessment. Which I certainly agreed with.
BLVR: What was the first sign that there was going to be a real response?
JD: I don’t remember exactly what it was, but suddenly people were talking about this book. Not in a huge way, but in a way that I hadn’t experienced before. read more
PHOTOGRAPH: Jennilee Marigomen
I photograph to find out what something will look like photographed
December 5, 2012 § Leave a comment
So I was up in New Jersey last week with a national TV crew, and they went into McDonald’s for literally five minutes, during which time I managed to get propositioned for sex and learn a new slang word from two fine gentlemen with gold teeth. Granted, I did kind of immediately set the tone for the conversation. I was standing outside of the SUV to smoke a cigarette (I’ve quit since I got the dog and am now on Day 4, and I know I can do it) and I watched as these two men were flailing around in the back of their trunk.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“We’re trying to get the door to open,” the bigger one responded, sauntering over, taking my, “What are you doing?” as the seduction tactic it so obviously is.
But then I did say something that I suppose the average person wouldn’t. Honestly, I wasn’t trying to sexualize the situation, I was just going for the joke, but I also recognize that I’m an adrenaline junkie shit-starter so I probably realized that this was exactly what was going to happen. So here’s what I said.
“It looks like you were fucking the car,” I said.
The big dude smiled and pulled out his phone.
“You’re pretty,” he said. “You hear that today?”
“Yes,” I said, suddenly becoming super prissy. “From my boyfriend.”
I have no boyfriend.
“When did he say it?” he asked.
“Um, when I woke up.”
“Okay, good,” he said, moving ever closer. “He better be saying that right when you wake up.”
“Well, he is. That’s just how my boyfriend is.”
My boyfriend my boyfriend my boyfriend my boyfriend.
“Give me your number,” he said.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” I said. “I think we should just have this magical moment for what it is. You know, we’ll always have the McDonald’s parking lot.”
I started nervously eyeing the door of the fast-food restaurant wondering when the producers were coming out.
“Let me ask you something,” he said. “How much would it cost for a night with you?”
“Uhhhh, what the hell,” I said. “I’m not a fucking hooker.”
Was he a closet “Dr. Drew” fan, too?
“I know,” he said. “Look. We all got bills to pay. I understand that. You can’t be waking up on that wet spot for nothing.”
“Wow,” I said. “Yeah. That is well put.” read more
ART: John Virtue
Je me donne des règles pour être totalement libre
December 4, 2012 § Leave a comment
Male bodied folk have the dubious benefit of external genitalia, flopping forth and front for the world to see in every locker room and public bathroom across the globe. By adulthood, most men have seen enough dick to know how they measure up against normal folk and porn stars alike. Like it or not, if you have a weird penis, you’re probably going to know.
But not the ladies. No, even in the most nude of the nonsexual naked times, women walk around with their genitals tucked sweetly between their legs, nestled away from prying eyes. Betwixt the thighs of every woman lurks a vulva as unique as her fingerprints. With nothing to compare herself too, she begins to wonder. To assume the worst. To fret that she is excessive, ugly, smelly, weird, wrong, too dark, too light, too fleshy, too soft, too much.
And one day she Googles “designer vagina”.
Cue flashing dollar signs.
Thanks to the carefully crafted copy on the soothing-yet-demonic genital cosmetic surgery websites, she is suddenly stricken with the panicked realization that she is, indeed, the owner of a grotesque downstairs smile. Her vagina is weird. Obviously, her worst fear is true: all of her childhood masturbation definitely made her vulva asymmetrical and that one year spell of regular deep dicking back in college unquestionably made her love tunnel looser than dead turkey neck. The baited trap – that if she Googled, it must be true – is set in the cache of before and after pictures.
These pictures confirm that she is the owner of a crotch disaster because all of the women in the before pictures are totally, 100% anatomically normal. That’s the advertising genius. The ‘before’ snatches may be biological perfection but the vulnerability inherent in simply Googling “designer vagina” belies such deep physical insecurities that the merest whiff of confirmation sends these women fist first into their bank accounts. The women who Google simply don’t notice that the before shots are normal because they are so afraid.
Afraid of what, though? Of being unique? Of being displeasing? Of their own genitalia?
The natural extension of cosmetic surgery from its bread and butter, our human billboards (faces, breasts, asses) to our deepest, darkest crevices is brilliant. Everyone knows how their nose compares to other people’s. Only people who eat pussy know what real world pussy really looks like.
Please note how this form of advertisement capitalizes on the golden pairing: a legitimate lack of knowledge and borderline disastrous body dysmorphia. With no normal to compare to and a deep seated fear of all things weird and Lovecraftian, doctors can elegantly swoop in and ply their trade. There, there, I know it’s hard to accept that you have a squirrelly and unattractive vulva but the good doctor is here to slice up your bits and make you a star. read more
ART: [unknown]
According to the most up-to-date investigations, the unconscious is a sort of cognitive ghetto – a home for homeless thoughts. Alas, many thoughts are now homesick
December 3, 2012 § Leave a comment
If the current public opinion polls hold up, and the Democratic Party of Japan suffers losses commensurate with its betrayal of the high hopes the voters had had for the party when they voted it into power in 2009, leaving the Liberal Democratic Party and the Japan Restoration Association as the top vote winners, then we are all in big trouble.
How do we know this?
Calligraphy.
The leaders of the eleven parties held a joint press conference yesterday at the National Press Club. The hosts had the party leaders write down, with felt-tip pens on giant stiff paper flip cards, the main theme(s) of their campaigns.
For those not familiar with this business of writing down slogans or mottoes, the request would probably seem a tad odd. The practice is quite common, however. A major sports figure can hardly get out of a one-on-one, sit down interview without being handed a white square of stiff paper and a felt tip pen.
Given the place of this little ritual in public life, the variation in the performance of the eleven was stunning. The majority of the leaders proved incapable of writing down a few legible characters in a white rectangle. read more
STILL: Harry Lachman
my nerves are bad to-night 