Star Wars: An exercise in literary explication, courtesy Bill the Pundit Guy (The Jedi Council as traditional Catholic Church), Dean Esmay (original trilogy as collection of archetypal signifiers that lend themselves to endless allegorical attachments), and Nick Gillespie (medieval Knight-errant tale, ala Gawain). All very interesting. Personally, I’ve always seen Lucas’s sweeping intergallactic epic as a thinly-veiled wish-fulfillment narrative penned by a soft-spoken dork, with Lucas as Luke, and the
May 2005
May 19, 2005
University of Colorado Ethnic Studies professor and anti-American firebrand Ward Churchill and 70s Kung-fu expert and counterculture icon Billy Jack ponder the emotional tolls of racial uncertainty
“Did you catch the latest bit of revisionist nonsense being trumpeted by the white Establishment press? The Keetoowah Cherokees—my Keetoowah Cherokees—released a statement yesterday suggesting all my past, present and future claims to Keetoowah ancestry are deemed fraudulent and ‘should be respected by all media, government and private institutions to be so.’ Can you believe that shit? Sneaky Keetoowah motherfuckers probably traded my reputation for a casino deal and some
May 19, 2005
Odds, Ends
1. Martha returns! And she brings pie! 2. Also returning is Pundit Review Radio— a nice bonus being that Newsweek International disappears as a result! 3. Speaking of radio, “The CITIZEN JOURNALIST Report” is on indefinite hiatus. It’s all my fault. I am to blame. I am to blame. I am to blame. 4. Cold Play’s Chris Martin channels Che Guevara. Or some such. Honestly? If Kristofferson or the Marshall
May 19, 2005
My nineteenth brief conversation with a McIntosh apple
me: “You ever get really lonely, apple?” apple: “Lonely?” me: “Yeah. I mean, d’you ever just look around you and think, ‘there’s got to be more to life than this…?’” apple: “Not really, no –” me: “– more to it than just sitting around all day, watching tv, eating snack foods, waiting to grow old and die…” apple: me: apple: “Out of Funyons again, are you –?” me: “– I
May 19, 2005
The ninth set of 20 films that if you haven’t seen you should see immediately or risk having protein wisdom sneer at you like certain embarrassingly reactionary rightwing blogs sneer at homosexuals and minorities of all stripes
1970s, group 9 Rollerball (1975) A Boy and His Dog (1975) Slaughterhouse-Five (1972) Death Race 2000 (1975) Mad Max (1979) It’s Alive (1974) God Told Me To (1976) Black Christmas (1974) The Wicker Man (1973) The Legend of Hell House (1973) The Stone Tape (1972) The Night Stalker (1972) Time After Time (1979) Eraserhead (1977) Lipstick (1976) Fritz the Cat (1972) Lenny (1974) Macon County Line (1974) Le Cercle rouge
May 18, 2005
The “A poem for Boutros Boutros-Ghali” poem
No doubt about it: Boutros Boutros-Ghali is still more fun to say than Yo-Yo Ma—the protestations of a billion plus Chinamen notwithstanding…¹ **** ¹unless you like saying Yo-Yo Ma better. In which case, simply switch the order of proper names in the poem and change the line “biillion plus Chinamen” to “a truckload of angry Egyptians.”
May 18, 2005
“The yin and yang of intimate interpersonal relationships post, 11” (from the protein wisdom conceptual series)
yin: “Just once I’d like you to validate my feelings.” yang: “Just once I’d like you to dust, then make me a turkey club. And for Chrissakes, toast the bread this time, would you? We don’t live in a freakin’ cave.”
May 18, 2005
9 alternate excuses the Newsweek editorial staff considered offering for its decision to run with the Q’uran desecration story
“We thought it would bolster the morale of U.S. troops, who by and large are some demented and bloodthirsty Muslim haters to begin with, you have to admit.” “It’s unfortunate, sure. But a lull in the Michael Jackson trial really kinda forced our hand…” “BUSH LIED!” “Life is but a palimpsest, a layering of competing narratives each one manuevering for primacy of place in an endless historiographical manuscript written in
May 18, 2005
“You misunderstood. What we’re offering here isn’t so much an apology as an ‘explanation’…”
Karol Sheinin points me to this piece from the Columbia Journalism Review which, y’know, just wants to make it clear that Newsweek (and by extension the entirety of the elite liberal media, one gets the feeling) has not actually retracted its anti-US Q’uran-flushing story, but rather has temporarily and conditionally qualified it until such time as its editorial staff can find others to re-level the charges against US interrogators: What