Found in the Computer Lab

"June 22, 1892 was like any other day for Ricky. Working on a farm in the South under an oppressive system and barely maintaining a subsistence standard of living, Ricky had limited options. He could not escape his conditions--leaving the farm was not an option. But through acts of subtle resistance, Ricky, along with his fellow workers on the farm, was able to renegotiate the power structure and shape their lives--even if only in a minor way. His story is that of many in the South that you may be familiar with except for one thing...Ricky was a pet. Specifically, and ant on an ant farm!

"Hello friendly reader and welcome to my seminar paper!! I hope you like excitement and intrigue because you are in for all you can eat! And if you liked Ricky's story then you are in for a real treat! This paper seeks to make a major contribution to the exciting new field of "noun" history; that is, the study of people, places, and/or things. More specifically, this paper will be situated in the even more exciting and expanding field of "pet history." The history of pets in the United States is grossly under-studied. This is absolutely preposterous because pets have played a major role in the history of this country. Not only were pets present at the very event which founded this country--the American Revolution--but there was a pet in the vicinity of every major military battle, political campaign, election/Supreme Court case, labor conflict, and social movement in the history of the universe. Thus, while EP Thompson was content to leave pets in the dustbin of history, I have decided to rescue pets from the condescending pile of trash of posterity.

"My work is organized into several wonderful sections. The first, "Cats and Lions: the social construction of pets," examines the process by which certain animals became socially constructed as pets. I pose the simple question, "Why are lions not pets?--they may be bigger but that means more to cuddle with." The next section, "See Spot Run...For the White House," argues that pets, and particularly dogs, have played a crucial role in presidential campaigns. That section is followed by "Dog Eat Dog: the role of pets in the Civil War." In "Lassie, Old Yeller, and the Myth of the Loyal Pet," I argue against the concept of pet-owner paternalism and argue that pets have constantly resisted their captivity. The fifth section, "Flush Me Now, Fear Me Later," looks at the great experiment of pet alligators and the terror they unleashed after being flushed into the sewers of major American cities, fueling the urban riots of the 1960s. Next, in "It's Raining Cats and Dogs," I look at the growth of pets and the baby boom/post-World War II consumerism and population growth. In my final chapter, "The Pet Rock: what kind of postmodern bullshit is this?" I ask the question, "What the fuck is up with the pet rock?" In my conclusion, I recap everything that I already said, but I punctuate every sentence with a paw print."



Possibly the best idea for a research paper ...ever.

I love this picture. Click to enlarge. It's the world at night. And it's true--nobody lives in Greenland. I like that you can track the trans-Siberian railway by the band of light across Asia.

Vocab Quiz

"bagnio"-whorehouse (you'll need to know it later)
"monadic"-singular entity; metaphysical individual life
"occluded"-blocked out
"chiliastic"-millennial (my personal favorite)
"liminal"-situated at the threshold
"peripatetic"-itinerant, wandering

Those are this week's Scholarly Journal All-Stars. You can play, too, by publishing an unnecessarily verbose piece in any academic journal. If you can top "chiliastic" you're very, very good. For a total loser. Word games are one thing; George Will, however, is an asshole. Don't be like him, kids.

Titnological Dickterminism?

It turns out that, contrary to popular belief, technology history does have merit. I know, I'm shocked, too!
The Chicago Levee, the early 20th century red-light district in the south Loop, closed down around 1912. The Chicago Vice Commission, composed of 30 prominent citizens, is widely credited with providing the impetus for this action with its widely-read report "The Social Evil in Chicago," which detailed the terrible conditions in the Levee, police malfeasance, and the enormous profits being made by pimps, landlords, and brothel owners.
But, it turns out, it's all a lie. According to historians Perry Duis and Richard John, the red-light district was dying out anyway, the victim of advances in technology. Levee districts had to be located near waterfronts or railway depots, to attract the maximum foot traffic. With the widespread availability of the automobile and prevalence of taxicabs, it became possible for brothels to move into the surrounding city and suburbs. Furthermore, the telephone made it economical to have "call girls" who stayed home by the phone, instead of living at a centralized bagnio.
So there you have it. Reform is for chumps. Just invent the problem away!
Anyway, vice moved into poorer, blacker neighborhoods after the Vice Commission made its report. No word yet from the technology camp about the ingenuity of that innovation.
Only historians could make sex disgusting and dull. Telephones. Jesus. Have you seen some of these guys? Oy.

shit, Shit, SHIT!!!

What do you do when you have to fly home for the holidays and you are on the no-fly, no-Democrat list at the airport? Shoulda thought of that before I voted. Damn me! AND my principles!
OK, I'm not on any list. That I know of.
Does anyone else find it odd that the most hated President of the last 50 years (oh, I know about Nixon and Reagan) would allow legislation to lapse such that any asshole with $1000 and five days to wait can get a submachine gun? Is George W. Asshat really fast, or is he a cyborg? Surely the thought crossed his mind that someone might take a shot at him, right? Now, thanks to George's lazy bill-signing hand (well, and his brain), you can make that 2000 shots a minute. WoooHooOOO!
Payback is a bitch, and it's already started. Those six guys that got greased up in Wisconsin must have been shocked as hell when their Republican asses got pureed by that crazy guy with an automatic weapon. THAT'S democracy in action, bitches!

Japanimation that Doesn't Suck

The Cartoon Network has a show called the Animatrix, and it's about 3,000 short (15min.) cartoons about various aspects of the Matrix (the movie and comic book) backstory. Each one, as near as I can tell, is done by a different artist and addresses widely different subject matter. These appear to have been made for Japanese consumption, and they're visually stunning and far, far more engaging than that shitball of a trilogy with Keanu "Whoa" Reeves.
Check your local listings. It seriously rocks.

What Hath Daley Wrought?

This is no shit. One of my students turned in an essay on the moral and historical ramifications of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and titled it "Word to Your Moms, We Came to Drop Bombs." I gave him an F. For "Fucking Retarded." Jesus Christ....

Confucius Died for THIS?!?

"It's Hard for an Empty Bag to Stand Up Right."
I think there's a misspelling in there somewhere, but aside from that, what does it mean? Is it so stupid that it clears your mind of all rational thoughts so you can...what? Commune with the dumber powers in the universe? God too smart for you? Everyday life not challenging enough--need somebody to wetfart some philosophical felching leftovers onto a little strip of paper and deliver it, straight from the wheel in the sky to your bag of Chinese food?
That fortune cookie "fortune," which is really more of an aphorism, sucked. There's my "fortune." Apparently, all comments are now "fortunes." Maybe the "comments" tab under this article should be called "fortunes."
One of the best of these "fortunes" was the one that said, "You Have Accomplished Far More than Anyone Expected of You." Think about it. I saw the face of the guy who got it. He was thrilled at first, and then very, very sad. And fat. And, if my sister ever sees this site, I want her to know right before he read it, that yes, he did drop his ice cream cone and it smeared all down the front of his shirt. It was, actually, more sad than if a skinny person had done it.

UIC Flame(r)s Lose on Last-Second Fuckup

Versus #3 (nationally!) Georgia Tech, the least interesting of the ACC powerhouses (that's right, West Coast numbnutses, the ACC is King!), our beloved UIC Flame(r)s choked it up on Monday and lost by 1. They had a chance to pull off the uber upset, but, alas, some dipshit freshman missed a freethrow (it's a free shot, for God's fucking sake!), and a desperation heave at the buzzer went wide.
Ah, well, it's nice they played hard--shit, they held GT to only 60 points--against a high-flying team stocked with All-Americans. Maybe we'll get into the NCAA tourney again this year and we can get that rematch with Kansas we've been aching for.
Shit.

The Day My Hammer and I Stopped Being Friends

When I used to work construction, the laws of physics were often suspended at the precise moment I did something stupid, allowing me to frequently injure myself horrifically. Lest anyone think I am complaining, let me say that it wasn't just me; many, MANY other construction-types around me also came unstuck in time on a regular basis.
This is the story of one such event, perhaps one of the ten or fifteen worst self-inflicted injuries I have ever seen, heard of, or suffered.
I was on the roof of some restaurant, recently built, and needed a shim. The SOP for making shims, in the absence of a compound miter saw, is to take a length of 2x4, hold it in front of you, on end, and swing your hammer mightily, with the utmost skill and grace (and a bit of blue collar savagery), not to mention artisanal craftsmanship, and split a perfect wedge off the edge of the block. Voila!
Unfortunately, the Populist moment is over, and craftsmanship or any attempt thereat is severely punished by the forces of nature.
I swung my hammer, claw-end first, of course, oh! mightily and with utmost manliness, but my eye was not speaking to my hand that day, and I missed the 2x4.
I. Fucking. Missed.
Think about the arc--of divine retribution, if you will--of a hammer, the shoulder as the fixed point from which extends a plumb-bob, whirling around in a path that describes a perfect cirle of wrath, swung at a point directly in front of a man's chest. Should it miss the target, it will continue on its path unimpeded...right into the crotch. That's what happened to me.

That's right. I claw-hammered myself in the balls.
For, oh, about .08 of a second, I just stood there, sort of wondering what just happened, and then it hit me. "It" being a tidal wave of blinding pain. I doubled over and tried to take deep breaths, even as my mind raced with thoughts like, "Did I just split open one of my nuts?" "I wonder if that sterilized me..." and the most comforting of all, "Is that blood running down my leg, or did I just shit myself?" None of the choices being very appealing, I went back to the mental drawing board, but by then my brain had gone into shock and all I was getting was a gibberish of "WifewillbepissedBabies??!HowdoyoumissaOw!!MotherfuckerwhatthefuckAdoption?!?"
Just as I got to the top of the wave of (self)mutilation, like clockwork, like when you take a really bad fall and all your friends gather around and eyeball each other to see who will ask the mother of all stupid questions, and then one of them bleats, "Are you OK?" like THAT, somebody yelled up, "Hey, where are the nails?"
As if I fucking give a shit where the nails are!! My nuts are hanging by a thread!!!
Now, I had been trying to gather the zen focus to pick up the hammer off the roof and hit myself in the head with it so that I could wake up later when the worst was over. That plan instantly became moot, since I had to acknowledge the stupid fucking question asked by some dickwad who still had notions of fatherhood. And because I didn't want anybody to know that I'd gone speedbag on my sack with a goddamn hammer, I managed, somehow, to croak out "no."
It is both my proudest and most desperately forgettable moment.

Zero is the Rockingest Number

Some of you assholes insist on continuing to read this bag of shit. Fine. But I want to say, again, that I am not impressed by your diligence or attention. I do not write for an audience--I swear I just write as an alternative to talking to myself. That 1. does not make me an artist, since autobiography is not art and 2. does not make me an artist because art is a conversation, and I have no intended audience. Furthermore, I have not gotten a single comment, or "fortune," so I proclaim that I hold the top spot as the most antisocial badass on the web for yet another day! Suckas!

"My Opponents Misundereducated Me"...See Below

Addition by Subtraction = Success Through Failure

Remember when George "Asshat" Bush, in a feat of thundering stupidity, even for him, told everyone at the debates that his administration had actually increased, not decreased, Pell Grant funding for poor students? By which, of course, he meant that he had cut the amount of the grants but had given them to more people. See, if I have one million dollars to spend on Pell Grants, but instead of giving 10,000 people $100 each, I give one million people one dollar each, I have just "increased" the number of grants. It's that simple! AND SOME DUMB FUCKWADS VOTED FOR THAT PRICK!

SO guess what happened last week? No? No idea? Let's let the NY Times do the talking (albeit not the criticizing. Reminding the President of his lies would be, I don't know, someone else's job, I guess): Headline : "Bill Clears Way for Government to Cut Back College Loans."

Except, see, a Pell Grant isn't a college loan. It's a grant, as the name clearly implies. In fact, the article immediately goes on to say that the bill going through Congress would cut as many as 100,000 low-income students' "grants," not loans! Why is the Times hiding the truth? I cannot imagine...

"They are throwing students out of the opportunity to seek a college education," said Senator Jon S. Corzine, the New Jersey Democrat who wrote the amendment to stop the changes last year, and introduced a similar provision this year that did not survive the conference committee. "It is now clear to me that this was a backdoor attempt to cut funding from the Pell grant program."

Thanks, Jon. See you at the MENSA meeting next vernal equinox?

As someone whose college education was funded in part by a generous Pell Grant, this strikes me as a big fucking deal. Where is the outrage? Where is the kicking and screaming? Why won't our paper of record put out a big headline that says, "Hey, Redneck Fuckwad! YOUR President Wants to Take Away Your Kid's Education!"???? Where, exactly, does the situation get so bad that even the dumbest shithead among the 59 million (if you believe that rigged-up number) shitheads realizes that this is all fucked up? When do they realize that they voted to fuck themselves, and then gave the man the four-foot, rusty nail-embedded, jagged glass-edged, roto-dildo to do it with?

You know what, though? FUCK THEM. Fuck 'em all. THEY voted for his sorry ass, they knew what they were getting, so fucking fuck them!!! You dumb motherfuckers own this one, no doubt.

Oh, you can't send little Ronny Reagan Shitkicker to college? FUCK YOU. You can't get him out of the draft? FUCK YOU. Gas prices so high that you can't afford to keep that Expedition? FUCK YOU. People in foreign countries spit on you when you go on vacation? FUCK YOU!!!

As for me, call me Canadian. Somebody else owns this disaster. I'm just rubbernecking.

Somewhere, a hungry Irishman is pissed...

I Am Shit

The movie "I Am Sam," "starring" Sean Penn and Michelle Pfeiffer (where did her career go??), is the most treacly piece of horseshit I have ever had the misfortune to passively view ("passive viewing," a term I can now claim to have coined, is when somebody else has the TV on and you cannot escape following along with the garbage that they are watching). Every one of the stupid shits in this travesty over-emotes to the point that I think they agreed to do the film as an alternative to paying their therapist that month. Penn, especially, seems to be working through some big issues, like "Holy dick! I was married to Madonna! How did I blow THAT??! I am such a fucking numbnuts!! AAAAAaaaaaahhhhhhh!!!"
The "story," such as it is, concerns Seanny boy, playing a retarded guy whose major affliction seems to be that he has no volume control, and his dipshit daughter. "The State," whoever the fuck that is, wants to take his daughter away because, you know, he's retarded. The State's attorney and the judge are, respectively, the world's biggest retard-hater and an impassionate, illogical fuckwad. This is what passes for characters these days.
So, anyway, Michelle Pfeiffer, the pro bono attorney who takes Sam's case (and did I mention that she has a lousy relationship with her son--hint, fucking hint), takes the hopeless case. Hopeless because, you know, The State would never let a retard keep his obviously brilliant, well-adjusted daughter. Because, you know, he's a retard. If you think I am exaggerating, see the movie--that is what passes for a fucking plot these days, and yes, it is that fucking obvious what the filmmakers want you to take away from this sack of shit. On second thought, don't see the movie.
Of course, Sam and his progeny have a great reunion, after The State takes her away, based on the evidence that Sam is a great father and a caring human being--all the traits you really don't want in a father. Really, what in the world would make anyone hurt this guy? A judge that would take his kid away would also take away Mother Teresa'a rosary beads. The people making this film poke you in the eye with all this Jobean torment of an innocent, and then expect you to take the film seriously. Look, guys, I don't believe in God because if the Book of Job is correct, he just likes to manipulate people for his own amusement. For the same reason (and with far, far less significance for my life) I despise "I Am Sam." These douchebags are just fucking with the viewers.
Let's get another thing straight: this movie never happened. These characters never existed, this situation never occurred, anywhere in the world; and this whole production is a high school-level drama troupe attempt to clean out your tearducts. The big, bad State is not out to get retards--or anyone else with white skin, for that matter. Furthermore, if this film is meant to make us question the threshold for "good parenting" (a little giveaway for sharper readers: the secret ingredient to everything, according to this film and "The Fifth Element," is love for fuck's sake), then it fails utterly and completely. No one in this movie is a good parent except the drooler, and he annoys the living piss out of us! I plan to have kids one day, but I am not about to become a baby-talking simpleton for that purpose. Furthermore, I will retard-ize anyone who tries to take my kids away--I ain't no fucking victim like this blowhole. Just what are we supposed to be learning from a bumbling patsy stuck in an Orwellian nightmare?
Finally, the movie itself, visually, is horrible. Especially the courtroom scenes, which look like they were filmed in a closet. By a monkey. A retarded monkey. Perhaps this movie was conceived, written, and directed by retarded monkeys, as a sort of affirmative action for monkeys-meets cinema of the weird experiment. All I know is that, when a director starts screwing with the lighting and camera angles, it's a pretty sure bet that he didn't have enough story to get through the film and the tricky bullshit was all he could think of. God forbid anybody should, I don't know, think of a better plot! The monkeys hypothesis would at least wash away some of the unending, crushing burden of guilt that the makers of this film should feel, not only for exploiting retards and smarmy little kids, but for stealing two hours of my life! Give it BACK, you cunt-faced bitches!! I would rather have spent my time looking at Madonna's tits!!

AAAAAAAaaaaaahhhhhh!!!

Racking My Brains (It Only Takes a Second)

It's hard to be funny. I (think I) have made a career out of being humorous at all times, except when I'm angry, and then I'm a bastard. Not a real career, because I have never made any money from it. And, not the kind of funny where I could do standup comedy, because I really need another person to play off of, or at least a group of subjects to ridicule. Frankly, I do crowd humor and it only really works when I know the audience or when people can look at something and listen to witty, if involved and sometimes too setup-intensive, comments from me at the same time.
But, on a larger scale, being funny often gets in the way of actual conversation, and it's really not the funny person's fault, because when somebody is trying to be serious they tend to say things that make great puns and cannot be passed up for that very reason. The serious person will find no humor in that. It's really a shame, since the funny person literally has to make fun of the serious one, because hey, who knows when the opportunity will present itself again?
Of course, the opportunity presents itself every single time you talk to somebody and they're trying to be serious. But, how do you know that this won't be the last time you get a chance to be funny? You don't. And that's why everybody hates talking to you. Because you have no sense of propriety or restraint.
No funny person ought ever to apologize for it, since--goddammit, we could all get hit by a bus tomorrow (and that would be funny, too)--because there are many, many people, mainly in academia, who are the unfunniest motherfuckers you would never want to meet. They will sap your funny and stare at you like a freak when you say something brilliant. And they do not get funnier with alochol, just more intent on talking about esoteric, egghead crap that nobody cares about but everybody wants to nod and "mmm-hmmm" over. That is a denial of life, and those people are one collective sack of dicks for acting that way. Who lives like that? Why aren't suicide rates higher among academics? Because they don't know what they're missing--they're defective--that's why.
Anyway, I'm working on it.

Response to Jim

You can read a great story about everything that's wrong with our country over at
www.politicsandletters.blogspot .com
It's so apt that you'll either laugh or cry, or maybe do one to prevent the other. I suspect that the soldiers in the story do a lot of both. Anyway, in order not to be maudlin or otherwise besmirch a great piece of writing, I am posting my coments here and trusting that they will filter back to the pertinent parties (and because this blog is an exercise in smartassedness, not literary growth).
First, what were you thinking, Jim, letting you driver's license expire and then going to Atlanta, the driving capital of the world? The only "walk" those fat assholes have ever even heard of happened at a Braves game. Those submorons have the trifecta of American defects: they're lazy, suburban, and can afford Excursions. Fuck 'em all. I'm surprised you didn't declare that the license is only for the photo, since normal, urban people don't particularly enjoy spending 20 hours a week in transit. It probably wouldn't pay to needle the TSA, though.
Second, as a fellow North Carolinian (albeit an oddly proud one) declared to me over the summer, "It's all about trigger time, dude." He was serious, and many of the kids in uniform at the moment are, too. They could not give less of a shit where they go or what they do; they just want to expend 2000 rounds a minute while they're there. I have no doubt that there is a terrible reckoning down the line for these people, but I suspect it comes in the sweaty middle of the night, when soul-searching reminds us that we ought to fear for ours.
Third, was it Killian's or Bud Light? Please don't tell me you sent our boys off to die on a low-carb beer...

This is going to be awkward later in life...

I'm, Like, Angry at Numbers. There's Too Many of Them and Stuff...

Shouldn't all food have a date stamp on it? Why does all beer have a month/day on the bottle but not all cheese does?
Have you ever gotten a food item where the date on the wrapper was after the day you were eating it? That would be some shit.

Homeland Security is a Fucking Joke

The Chicago Tribune reported on November 17 that a deer, possibly of Arab extraction, but a DEER nonetheless, "wandered" into the terminal at O'Hare International Airport and made it quite a ways into the airport before being spotted. "If it had had a boarding pass, it damn sure coulda gotten on a plane," said one exceedingly stupid passenger (quote courtesy CLTV "news").
Many, many things about this story scare me.
1. Deer are much, much rarer than crazy people in Chicago. If the bolt-from-the-blue, once-in-a-lifetime intruder could get in, then lots of nutty fuckers should be thawing the plastique even as we speak. Hooray.
2. It turns out that the deer didn't even get in through the front door, as you might expect. It came in through an open (that's right. Some fucktard left a "secure" area door wide open) cargo door. SO--it not only got onto the (fenced-in) premises, it also wandered around until it found an open door, then it went in said door, then it found its way into the terminal, then it wandered around, checked some bags, and perused the newsstand. AND THEN it was spotted and captured.
3. This proves beyond all doubt that Nature is pissed off and is counterattacking the decadent West. Al-Quaeda (sp?) is reportedly signing up young bucks all over the country.

Oh, the deer that was caught at O'Hare has been held for questioning in connection to the sleeper cell known as the "Martyrs of Bambi's Mom" and will be sent to the federal detention facility at (wait for it)...

Fawntanamo.

PRESBYTERIANS

I once read that wordplay is the second most fun indoor game. So, in honor of that thinly-veiled sex reference, can you figure out whose name is anagrammed in the title of this post?
Don't try too hard. It's Britney Spears. Or so I heard; I saw it on another website and ripped it off. I haven't actually taken the time to make sure it actually does spell her name. I honestly don't care enough. Now try to anagram Britney Federline. Way to fuck that up for the anagram junkies out there, you white trash frankenhooker.
New Contest: One free post for anyone who can tell me what "lazzarone" is/are/was/were.
If you answer correctly in the comments section, I will publish one (1) post of your wording on this site. Not that you will get any attention for it. Face it, if you had any friends who liked you, you wouldn't spend all your time in front of a computer reading this shit.

The fact that I am now running a "contest" does not mean that I want people to read this site.

Word Scramble: KUCF OYU

I Wish Ronald Reagan Was Dea------

Oh. Great. Never Mind.

Don't Lie to Me. I Have a Counter. See Below.

Born Again Blog Virgin

OK, OK, it's no big deal, but...GODAMMIT, you Mother FUCKERS!! I said, "NO READING THE BLOG" and you went and did it!!?
Now, this doesn't have to ruin our relationship. I can FORGIVE you, but only if you truly look SORRY. No, that's not it. NO, keep trying.
WHAT the fuck is THAT supposed to be??!

...That's better.

I will just take a deep, soul/keyboard cleansing breath and start over, George W. Bush-style. This is now a brand new blog. Our past indiscretions and history have been wholly purgedpraiseJesus.
If high school whores and frat boy drunks can do it, so can I.

Now fon't fuck up again or I will be forced to take drastic action. As you know, I can only get "born again" so many times.

See? It's Working!

WOOO HOOOO!! That's right, fuckers! Another day, no more readers! My plan is working better than I ever imagined!! Hell yeah!

Final Thought About John Madden

OK, this is the last word I'll ever say about John Madden and his lousy announcer skills: I once heard him call a game in which he let the following slip out of his overstuffed, barely-holding-back-the-puke gullet: "So BOOM! dis guy here takes out da corner and den BANG! da guy with da ball goes zip-zip up da middle and...he only had...one, two, dis guy here--four, five guys to beat and he woulda had a touchdown!"
Yes, John, and if he were the only guy on the whole field, he would have scored, too. In a way, every player has only eleven other guys to beat, right?
So, the next time life kicks you in the balls, just think, "I only had--what? one more kick to the nuts to avoid?" That'll cheer you up.

Joe Austin Needs to Get On the Trolley

I have just read 1/2 of Joe Austin's Taking the Train, which is about the graffiti problem in New York City in the late 70's and early 80's. It is an execrable book. I despise it with all my heart; at least, the half of it that I have read.
Austin, who is apparently a professor of social studies or some such crap at Bowling Green State Senior High School, is a total fanboy and makes no bones about it. He is positively in love with graffiti "writers" and hip-hop culture. Right there we have a problem. First, while it's perfectly fine to like your subjects, authors ought not to get defensive of them. That's what some call "unobjective" and what I call "wankerism." Second problem is that Austin never questions or even so much as attempts to explain the supposed link between hip-hop and writing. One suspects that, if he had tried to, he might have found that the two phenomena, while connected, are actually not one and the same.
Forget for one minute, if you can, that Austin is running about twenty years behind the times (he relates information about the 70's/80's subculture as though it's the latest word on the subject, and while acknowledging evolution of writing style, he apparently recognizes no substantive changes in the writers themselves or writing as a movement). Austin's larger problem is that he is so far up the asses of his ubjects that he cannot make a valid point about graffiti. I think Austin wants to tell us that graffiti was a means of resistance for NY teens who had been villanized and marginalized by a fearful, corporatist society. But, he spends the whole first half of the book alternately gushing about the "radical" "awesome" "cool" writers ("funky fresh," too?) and insulting (literally sticking his tongue out at them--I am not making this up) city officials.
Now, it ain't too hard to make a bureaucrat look foolish. And it ain't too hard these days to make a social misfit look like a history hero--this is what subaltern studies are for. But it is pretty difficult to piss off a room full of people who fondly remember tagging from the 80's, and that's what Austin did with my reading group.
Is this resistance? Sure. Does writing graffiti raise pertinent questions about public space? Sure. Does Joe Austin have a cogent argument about either of those two things? Hell no!
Look, the key to understanding graffiti, as Austin sees it, is that the act itself is unauthorized. That is, access to space has been restricted by society, or at least its ruling government, and taggers have to take space--literally by putting their names on it--in order to have any place in the public realm at all. There, Joe, I have just written your thesis for you. Now, why the fuck couldn't you have said that in the first 132 pages??
Unfortunately, and maybe Mr. Austin will get into this in the last half of this train wreck, there seems to be no understanding of the fatal contradiction that the very purpose of writing poses to its future. If the point if to do the thing you are not allowed to, then the only rule of graffiti is to disrespect all rules. Thus, it is positively HILARIOUS to read about writers who are furious that their work has been painted over by the city and, most comically, by other writers. D'oh! That's right: the people who conceived of a world in which everyone is free to paint anywhere are shocked, SHOCKED that anyone would turn that principle back on them.
My biggest beef with this book so far, however, is that the taggers and bombers apparently have no political consciousness, at least as Austin tells it, and thus have no bigger motive for painting on anything than, "I wanted to see my name." This is bullshit, and it demeans the subjects and forces the reader into an uncomfortable choice: Are these people subconsciously political and ultimately subversive, or are they, in fact, just as hopeless and destructively individualistic as the society they supposedly detest? Austin does not seem to know! If we take these stories (and really, this is just a book of stories) at face value, then the writers are antisocial punks who have no respect for public property (or any sense that they already own it and thus cannot "take it back") or the public at large. Austin sees only two groups at odds here: the writers and the city. He sees no third group, which he ought to, because he is himself a part of it: the people who live between the two extremes. Those people have to ride graffiti-covered trains every day. Those people have to pay higher taxes to clean the trains and repair railyard fences cut by taggers. Those people have just as good aclaim to public space as the writers, and the writers don't seem to give a flying fuck what the other people want or expect out of shared space. In that case, it's very easy for me to say, "Fuck you, Joe Austin. You and your graffiti punks are a bunch of assholes!"
I'll let you know how the second half turns out.

That is SO Gay.

BTW, before I get back to work (yeah, it IS hard to milk the public dollar for forty hours a week, asshole), I would like to say, for the record, that Ann Coulter is a man, and all Republicans are gay. And I don't mean the good kind of gay, I mean the mesh shirt-wearing, pleather pants and pigtails gay.

Talk is Cheap. Bullets are Cheaper.

Haha. So Iraqi "insurgents" (read just plain Iraqis) have captured 20 or so members of the Iraqi "Army" and I guess they're gonna kill them.
Well the Joke's on THEM! Jesus, when will those dumb bastards learn that we don't care how many brown people die? You gotta kidnap the WHITE ones, stupid!
And, since this haul is less than half the number of Iraqi guardsmen killed in that ambush last month (what was that number, 50?), I think this clearly shows that the insurgency is losing steam. For fuck's sake, they can't even kill fifty at a time anymore. Lame.