good article on Hugo Chávez

Geoffrey Hawthorn, "Baseball's Loss"

If only Americans got this kind of analysis on its major media. In its absence, it's up to socialists and progressives to make the case for an analogous "revolution" in the US, respecting, of course, the traditions and peculiarities of US culture and politics. Chávez obviously recognizes the need for international solidarity, and has successfully advanced that agenda, even if it puts him into strategic relation with despotism. Hawthorn's article, however, concludes by echoing the dreadful doctrine of "socialism in one country," which he thinks Venenzuela will be constrained to accept: "Socialists elsewhere will no doubt continue to enthuse, but Venezuela will in the end be on its own." Let's see how long they can keep it going.

Reasons and Evidence

Excellent op-ed on Iraq’s “patrimony” from last March, referenced in a Tomdispatch article by Jack Miles today.

Conference: “In Defense of Sloth”

Jens Lekman: “but I will never kiss anyone…who doesn’t burn me like the sun.” Night Falls Over Kortedala is such a wonderful album.

Listening to Max Richter, The Blue Notebooks. It sounds derivative of something, but I can’t quite place it. Have the suspicion that it would be extremely impressive to people who listen mainly to pop music, but old hat to people who work in experimental/electronic/ambient music. I happen to love it, though I couldn’t imagine being an artist who put stuff like this out regularly. Need something else to lighten things up, which Richter actually has, e.g. production work with The Thermals and other rock groups.

Example of an independent Left: Socialism ou Barbarie. Its program would not really work in the US, however, given the intransigence of libertarian ideology in this country. That is to say, its critique of bureaucracy is too-easily folded into the knee-jerk US libertarian fixation on liquidating state agencies and leave the provision of health care, education, environmental control, etc., up to the free-for-all of the market. The same goes for Autonomia, perhaps, though there does exist such a thing as left libertarianism, i.e. anarchism, academic proponents of which include David Graeber and Simon Critchley.

Reason number 53 that it is difficult to take The Man without Qualities seriously:

"Ulrich [the main character] liked girls like this: ambitious, well-behaved, in their well-trained timidity like little fruit trees whose sweet ripe fruit is destined to fall one day into the mouth of some young knight of Cockaigne as soon as he deigns to open his lips. 'They have to be brave and tough,' he thought, 'like Stone Age women who shared their hunter's bed by night and carried his weapons and household gear on marches by day,' although he himself had never gone on such an expedition except in the distant prehistoric age of his awakening manhood" (189).

cultural transmission

"The Blue Angels were established following World War II by Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, chief of naval operations. Their mission is to enhance Navy recruitment and to act as ambassadors of goodwill. They got their name when one of the original team members saw a mention in the New Yorker magazine of the Blue Angels nightclub in New York City." -- SF Gate, "Mayor blasts conservative critics, says S.F. supports military," 10/6/07.

What the ace pilot might not have known is that the Blue Angels night club was most likely named for the 1930 movie Der blaue Engel, in which an elderly secondary school teacher played by Emil Jannings (who would continue to be a major film star in Germany 1933-1945) lusts after cabaret singer Lola, played by Marlene Dietrich. Cultural inheritances can certainly be odd. Perhaps the pilot did know; I know at least one naval officer (my brother) who spends some of his time reading high-brow magazines. I wonder what the audience for The New Yorker was in the late 40s. And the corollary, how many New Yorker issues get mailed every week to US military installations around the world today?

Music today
Wolves again. Two Hunters is a masterpiece.
Hyphy Hitz again. Good house chore music.
Les Savy Fav, Let's Stay Friends
Trelldom, Til Minne
Chromeo, She's in Control
Spektr, Near Death Experience
St. Vincent, Marry Me
Love FM

NPR Gem

When the Dodgers left in 1957, "Brooklyn was spiritually eviscerated, to whatever extent the spirit possesses viscera." Uttered by Robert Siegel.

Also eviscerated, to extend the metaphor: Chávez Ravine.

Music Thursday
St. Vincent, Marry Me
Chromeo, She’s in Control
Supersilent, 6
James Blackshaw, The Cloud of Unknowing
Pelican, Australasia
Nielsen, Clarinet Concerto
Wolves in the Throne Room (again and again!)
v/a, After Dark (Italo disco)

move is complete, sort of

Now I just have to rearrange my stuff [initially wrote just now, involuntarily, "rearrange myself"], buy lamps / lighting fixtures, remove stick-on crap from walls, buy rugs, paint, make five wooden shelves for the cabinets, get a filing cabinet, and buy/make curtains. Very lovely to know that I have this room all to myself. I've been in a walk-through room for the past two years. Paid my dues. The trees in front of my windows are rustling in the wind. The person who painted this room a long time ago thought that the green paint, along with the brown cabinets, would create a forest ambience. It sounds really nice in theory (associations with transcendentalism, black metal, fairy tales, the Sierras, etc), but a) that spatial metaphor is way too overdetermined, and b) the green is not even a forest green, just an ugly green. It is also a dark green, and among the rooms in the upper floors of the house, this room probably gets the least sunlight. Hence lamps and painting it a brighter color. One of the undergrad dorms, painted orange and resembling a prison, is across the street.

Listened to Hyphy and Wolves in the Throne Room again, on my cell phone, which I can finally upload music to again (problems with the driver). Music for room-moving. Also a new Wire Tapper came in with the new issue; favorite cuts so far are the fun years, Damon & Naomi, and Tarentel. D & N opened for Boris on Sunday night at the Empty Bottle. Despite the little paper signs at the bar asking people to stop talking and listen to the music, the band could barely be heard above the din. I think most people, myself included, really just went to hear Boris. The two bands are touring together under the moniker The Roaring Silence Revue, featuring a sweet sweet poster. I don't see Boris's name on the poster, though.

Sounds

Went to Boris on Sunday. Even better live than on record. Three shows coming up this month I hope to see: Beirut/Colleen at Portage Theater, Asian American Jazz Festival event at the Velvet Lounge, and Wolves in the Throne Room / Lair of the Minotaur at the Empty Bottle.

I'm moving to a new room at the co-op - one that is a lot roomier and which I have all to myself.

Music yesterday:
Tina Brooks, True Blue
Boris, Pink
Gato Barbieri, Latino America
Francoise Hardy, La Question
Hyphy Hitz
Wolves in the Throne Room, Two Hunters