Links Archive
Heartbreak Hotel
A very interesting look at the evolution of a song over at Fragments of a Cale Season. This song goes through the wringer.
[S]omewhere between playing mit der Polizei and coming out of his lost years, in the less innocent days of good friends, fast women, lots of drugs, and possibly too many studio recordings… he started playing it on solo piano. And no more was this man kidding around.
Version 1
Version 2
Version 3
Rick Perlstein: “A Liberal Shock Doctrine”
Rick Perlstein writing in the American Prospect:
Progressive political change in American history is rarely incremental. With important exceptions, most of the reforms that have advanced our nation’s status as a modern, liberalizing social democracy were pushed through during narrow windows of progressive opportunity — which subsequently slammed shut with the work not yet complete. The post–Civil War reconstruction of the apartheid South, the Progressive Era remaking of the institutions of democratic deliberation, the New Deal, the Great Society: They were all blunt shocks. Then, before reformers knew what had happened, the seemingly sturdy reform mandate faded and Washington returned to its habits of stasis and reaction.
(Via A Tiny Revolution.)
The Bankruptcy of America, Starring Aquaman
Ken Layne, managing editor of Wonkette, writing for Political Machine:
The United States of America is bankrupt, morally and financially. This country stands for nothing but bad loans, brute force and blind consumption. Everything is literally crumbling, from our roads and bridges to our financial system to our “bring all children down together” public schools. The White House’s response to the Russia/Georgia war gets a smirking “whatever” from Moscow. Who are we to be telling anyone not to invade little countries? We’ve been doing it with great fanfare and steady failure since Vietnam, and we’re bogged down in so many doomed occupations today that Robot Troops are the only hope. Maybe we can buy some from Japan, on credit. Or that famous swimmer Michael Phelps can save the country by, uh, swimming very fast to various problem zones, like Aquaman.
(Via Mike Soron.)
141 Tiny Terror Combos Stolen
Thieves broke into Orange HQ at Borehamwood on Saturday night (16th August) and stole 141 Tiny Terror combos with a total retail value of £62,000. So far, 121 Tiny Terror combos have been legitimately shipped into the UK and 2 pieces to Hungary, no others have been shipped anywhere in Europe…
I put in a price inquiry on one of these with a great guitar site a few months ago. The original Tiny Terror head has earned some great reviews and from what I’ve heard in youtube videos these combos have a really great sound. I envy the thieves.
Communism
Mike Johnduff at Countermemory:
On the left, things seem just as nuts. There is no theory of this spread and the resistance to it, except those promising ones of micro-loans. This leaves them with the specter of Lenin: communism has not died out there either. The idea of mobilization (Zizek) and the general idea that social-democracy is, as Jean-Luc Nancy put it, a “compromise” (“Is Everything Political?”) is flawed.
Regardless, one thing is clear from all this, Communism still remains a specter—one cannot simply, as we have been doing, forget about it. The key is to see that it does not return into our thinking as a big massive homogenous thing: we are realizing that our framework for dealing with these problems remains very locally determined by Communism and Marxism in general as a model. This is chiefly Frederic Jameson’s insight, and it is to his credit that he continually insists, against the pragmatists (and one needs to apply this critique to the Lacanians and to the Nancy-type radicals too), that this is actually the greatest unifying discourse of our time.
Violence and its Vicissitudes
Jodi Dean:
What Zizek omits, though, is the creative, productive dimension of resentment. It can create power relations invested in refusal (an acquaintance of mine once used the expression ‘anti-war profiteers’). Differently put, even heroic resentment can become ordinary and normalized, ultimately exhausting itself and rendering the heroic feeble and pathetic. The challenge, then, of heroic resentment is this very risk, this unavoidable uncertainty.
Conclave Obscurum
Don’t ask me to explain what it is, but if you can get it to load it’s worth the wait.
Reuters Published Fake Propaganda Photos
It is interesting to note that the boy’s supposedly injured right leg, “bleeding” profusely from the thigh, seems to be supporting itself. The soldier on the right also appears on many of the photos below in various capacities.
A very similar situation to the Iranian photoshops. Now I’m waiting (hoping) for the Errol Morris analysis.
James Mollison’s The Disciples
Galleries of concert goers. An example:
Some more from the set can be found on The Guardian, but you have to go to the end of the slide show to figure out what concert they’re taken from.
The Most Trusted Man in America?
An interesting profile piece on Jon Stewart and The Daily Show in the Times. It reminds me that I should probably start watching it again.
Winehouse takes on Talented Musicians
Amy Winehouse lost the job of performing the theme song to the new James Bond film due to her inability to stay clean–the gig eventually went to the team of White Stripes’ Jack White and Alicia Keys
But according to the Telegraph UK, Winehouse is threatening to release the version of the Bond theme in order to show the flim (SIC) producers that they have “made a big mistake.”
Said Winehouse, “I guess they are going for clean-cut and boring. When I do release mine – and I am tempted to do it on the same day – this would be the bigger hit…If they change their minds, I’m waiting.”
Yes… those other musicians are such commercial phonies. They’re not indie enough to do the theme for a James Bond movie. The tabloid junkie British soul singer in the cleopatra make-up is obviously the “authentic” one. She’s going to prove she’s legit by selling more records– the true measure of a successful artist.
21st Century Hegel
Frank M. Kirkland in Logos:
As we scome to the end of the 200th anniversary of the publication of the Phenomenology of Spirit (PhS),[1] I am reminded of a remark made a decade ago by the noted Hegel-scholar Robert Pippin. He then entertained the possibility of what a sequel to the PhS would look like were Hegel able to complete one. In his mind, the sequel would present two new chapters, which “would have to include oddly parallel accounts of both [a] the great expanding confidence and influence of modern science and technology…and [b] the coincident ever-growing pessimism that all of that, and much of anything else, matters all that much….”[2] Pippin rightly recognized the need of new “shapes of Spirit” relevant for at least a 1997 PhS. He had seen in the trajectories of these two large-scale cognitive and ethical enactments “contradictory” outcomes in which the success of (a), in fulfilling ideals that have been set for modern science and technology, comes at once with (b), with a disposition that ever loosens the normative grip their ideals are to have on us.
I myself admit that Pippin’s selections to a hypothetical sequel to the PhS and his evaluations for those selections are on point. However, I would like to make a suggestion of my own to such a sequel. With all the discussion, both critical and uncritical, on racial oppression and cultural diversity over the distant and recent past, a shape of spirit accounting for a conceptualization of these matters appears to me quite apropos.
(Via 3 Quarks Daily.)
Zizek on Haiti: Democracy versus the People
Slavoj Zizek reviews Peter Hallward’s book on Haiti in the New Statesman:
As Aristide himself puts it: “It is better to be wrong with the people than to be right against the people.” Despite some all-too-obvious mistakes, the Lavalas regime was in effect one of the figures of how “dictatorship of the proletariat” might look today: while pragmatically engaging in some externally imposed compromises, it always remained faithful to its “base”, to the crowd of ordinary dispossessed people, speaking on their behalf, not “representing” them but directly relying on their local self-organisations. Although respecting the democratic rules, Lavalas made it clear that the electoral struggle is not where things are decided: what is much more crucial is the effort to supplement democracy with the direct political self-organisation of the oppressed. Or, to put it in our “postmodern” terms: the struggle between Lavalas and the capitalist-military elite in Haiti is a case of genuine antagonism, an antagonism which cannot be contained within the frame of parliamentary-democratic “agonistic pluralism”.
This is why Hallward’s outstanding book is not just about Haiti, but about what it means to be a “leftist” today: ask a leftist how he stands towards Aristide, and it will be immediately clear if he is a partisan of radical emancipation or merely a humanitarian liberal who wants “globalisation with a human face”.
(Via I cite.)
Psychoanalysis as Spirituality
Patrick Lee Miller in The Immanent Frame:
Psychoanalysis strives, first of all, to reveal the meaning of symptoms (not to mention dreams, slips, free-associations, transferences, and anything else mysterious in someone’s mental life and behavior). But this meaning is none other than the apparent but illusory good sought by the analysand. He may inquire, for instance: “What is the meaning of my coming late to sessions every day?” The hard-won answer will be something of this form: “I want my analyst to feel as though I don’t need him; I want him to feel worthless, to snub him, so that he will know how he makes me feel.” When such an apparent good comes to light, it reveals itself as illusory: “My analyst doesn’t make me feel unworthy, he’s waiting there patiently for me everyday; I think the person I really want to snub is my father; he’s the one who made me feel worthless.” When the analysand exposes such illusion himself, he grows in wisdom, not least by the acknowledgment that he unconsciously chose that illusory good and has clung to it all the while. He grows further in wisdom when he recognizes that his boss, and no doubt many others besides, have been victims of his illusion, since he has sought its apparent good from other relationships as well. His character changes, finally, when he can relate differently to these others, seeing them not as ghosts of his father—or his mother, or his siblings, or whomever—but instead as the unique individuals they really are.
I don’t know how I feel about conceiving of psychoanalysis as a “spiritual” science, which to me reeks of New Age obscurantism. I recommend giving the whole article a read though. (Via 3 Quarks Daily.)
McCain and Obama’s Top 10 Songs
Barack Obama’s top 10:
- Fugees - Ready Or Not
- Marvin Gaye - What’s Going On
- Bruce Springsteen - I’m On Fire
- The Rolling Stones - Gimme Shelter
- Nina Simone - Sinnerman
- Kanye West - Touch The Sky
- Frank Sinatra - You’d Be So Easy To Love
- Aretha Franklin - Think
- U2 - City of Blinding Lights
- will.i.am - Yes We Can
John McCain’s top 10:
- ABBA - Dancing Queen
- Roy Orbison - Blue Bayou
- ABBA - Take A Chance On Me
- Merle Haggard - If We Make It Through December
- Dooley Wilson - As Time Goes By
- The Beach Boys - Good Vibrations
- Louis Armstrong - What A Wonderful World
- Frank Sinatra - I’ve Got You Under My Skin
- Neil Diamond - Sweet Caroline
- The Platters - Smoke Gets In Your Eyes
Personally, I prefer Obama’s, though I don’t know what he’s thinking with 7,9 & 10. As for McCain… seriously, Dancing Queen? (Sorry Tobis.) My feelings about the list are in tune with Guardian commenter Martyn Bone:
When I saw this “news” item on NME.com yesterday, I just knew there would be a Guardian blog on it. And that it would be run by one ex-NME hack and feature comments by other ex-NME hacks. If you’re gonna do this kind of thing on the Guardian blog, why not do a comparison of, say, Obama and McCain’s respective books, w/ one of the Guardian Books section bloggers in charge? There might be something worth saying and discussing there.
Mind you, I concede that more voters might be swayed by these Hornbyesque lists of pop songs than by reading Obama or McCain’s books…And you can’t help but ponder the racial connotations of their choices. McCain chooses three African American acts, but all of them date back to the 1950s or earlier…
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