Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Silicon Valley of Ash

Actual template text messages on AT&T GoPhones, which cannot be deleted from phone memory:
I am late. I will be there at
I'm in a meeting, call me later at
I'm busy right now. I'll call you later.
I will be arriving at
Meeting is canceled.
See you at
See you in
Please call
I love you too
Happy birthday
Thank you

Sunday, September 26, 2010

Ginch Fever


"Blood from your penis! Snakes from my vagina!" - Margaret Thatcher

"My tongue is on fire and my balls feel like lead." - George Clooney, Escape from Manila

"Michael Winslow is a tragic figure." - Michael Winslow

"Do they fear the sea or the foam?" - Barack Obama on the Congressional Black Caucus

"I'm sure there are a lot of lovely people there, I met a few when I visited, but I fucking hate that place." - Adam Sandler on Israel

"Hell yes I smoke every damn day! -Elena Kagan after meeting with Sen. Jeff Sessions

"Like dogs in a bowl of dicks, swimming around, gladhanding." - Lula on meeting with the International Olympic Committee

"Sex is rape." - Bill Clinton

"Why, you're just a goddam ape with a crown made of shit!" - Thomas Hobbes

"I remember walking up to that damn restaurant in Harlem in the rain at night god it took forever and I was sweating under my coat the rubber was wet and the cement was wet and the whole damn city was wet wet like an octopus or a woman tentacles around your neck and it felt kind of dangerous and it felt kind of good and it was all I could do to choke it back swallow it down and not fall in." - Elliot Spitzer

Thursday, September 23, 2010

"My President's a Winner"


"I can quote Born in The USA on the trail because I fucking ghostwrote half of it, so shut the fuck up." -Pres Reagan to Sam Donaldson, New Hampshire, 1984

Q: What does that picture even mean? A: Nothing, we need more free association these days, things have gotten too thematic; fewer quotes, less sense, that's the model! -The Editors

"You see once the Chinamen and the Yankee link via the transcontinental railroad because of the California gold, eventually the basic model won't be Capitalism. No gentleman: it'll be Desire itself. -Karl Marx to his skiffle group, The Mine Canaries, 1852

"In his 4th term Emperor Lincoln deemed that the slaves of South America would be free and sent an iron fleet of 800 metal ships that could then walk mechanically on land like the devil's spiders." Sean Wilentz, in What Horrible Modernity!: History as Written at Princeton (2015)

"Put your head there on my lap girl." -President Abraham Lincoln to a Younger Victoria

"You get me some goddamn speed or I'll pull this gun out of my desk and open up on the next damn tour group." - Pres. Kennedy to his Staff 1962

"Temperance forever!" - Pres. Harding toasting at a Harlem rent party, 1922

"He made love like a vicious spider." - Madonna on Pres. George H.W. Bush, 1990

Young acolytes are my girls' best customers


"I can't see why I wouldn't, but, you know, why do people shit instead of gutting themselves?" - Larry Summers

"I was under the impression that no French person took part in World War II." - Pat Buchanan

"I don't know this country anymore. It's no longer a socialist nightmare. It's a socialist's nightmare." - Fredrik Reinfeldt

"Ah, fall begins, as it always does, with a luxurious mental depression." - the Editors.

"I love getting money from corporations. It makes me want to do my job." - Nelson Mandela

"Capitalism > nationalism." - Robert Gibbs

"Man, like, what if I grew up and I'm just like my parents!" - Richard Milhous Nixon

"Academia is a zoo where the animals go to look at each other." - William Ayers

"I found out today that when my hair finally all falls out I'll be able to turn invisible." - the Editors

Friday, September 17, 2010

Man Vs. Nature

NATURE IS SATAN'S CHURCH

Wind Across the Everglades - Nicholas Ray (1958)


The Naked Prey - Cornel Wilde (1966)




Phase IV - Saul Bass (1974)


Long Weekend - Colin Eggleston (1978)

Thursday, September 16, 2010

Putin Devoured by Sea Creature

"Art and politics must make a strategic alliance against ethics and its regime of banality." - Vladimir Putin, last words

"IMDB's new layout is unbearable." - Martin Scorsese

"Alright: marry, fuck, kill: Lula, Medvedev, Hu Jintao?" -
Charlie Rose to Thomas Friedman at the Macao Pleasure Dome, 2008

"Andrew McCarthy is a fantasy." - Andrew McCarthy

"If you can't rock me, somebody will!!!" - Thomas Paine

"At the limits of of inequality there is a land of unparalleled desire." - Mark Zuckerberg

Saturday, September 11, 2010

Enter the Void


"I am the White Sheik!" - Obama

"Our dreams have boots of lead." - Mahmoud Abbas

"Some call it self-promotion. I call it giving the devil his due." - Mahmoud al-Zahar

"You'll believe a man can fly." -tag line for Netanyahu the 3D box office smash

Wednesday, September 8, 2010

Roseblood

"I've been with plenty of women, of course, but I never touched a lizard woman. The faint hissing was enough for me... that sound… like far-off cicadas, late summer rain on palmettos… puss escaping a wound.

I didn’t know anything about women until college. Sure I’d had some sweethearts in high school. I was a runner then, and girls found that attractive. But nothing ever past first or second base, depending on how you count. But I was too focused on other things—science and journalism, learning about other cultures and the world.

Her name was Elizabeth. She was the first. We fell in love, and it was rapture. In six months we had the whole cycle: infatuation, passion, attachment, resentment, and parting. The novelty of it all made it drag on too long. I don’t know how it ended, but I think I slighted her. Of all those minutes together I can probably only remember thirty.

It was with Tina, though, that I had my true sexual education. Everything with Elizabeth had been too fraught—we were still just discovering ourselves—the delights of our bodies and the cruelties of our hearts. Tina, however, brought those things, or at least the former, to its limits. With her I charted the full extent of my inner terrain. And what with the language barrier, there was little else we could do.

I used to be considered quite funny at the frat house. For the life of me I can’t remember why. I didn’t know if it was the humor that won the girls, or if it was the confidence that came with sexual success that made me comfortable being funny. Whatever it was I've got nothing of that now. All my jokes are gone. But then there were so many: Mary and Juanita, Natalia and Amelie. I took a special shine to girls with male sounding names—Jordan, Tyler, and Casey. My friends said I was just an old fashioned misogynist.

Things continued largely the same throughout graduate school, possible even diminished as my intellectual curiosities grew and grew. The great breakthrough, of course, was when I learned to stop expecting that a relationship would make me happy. Happy. It sounds ridiculous now, doesn’t it? Even at thirty-five, we were still so young.

I’ve never bought a woman, though that’s not a source of pride. Fame is too much like money, I’d feel like a hypocrite. But I’ve been well fed. It’s a blessing, I know, though as a consequence, the older you get the only things that stand out are the disappointments, mistakes.

Priorities change. Things with Shauna didn’t last long. We had different objectives, and of course I’m terrible with children.

And Roxanne. Her sex was like a furnace. I thought I would melt inside of her. Apparently she felt the same way. But our sweat was so cold, and after the act we shivered.

Ruth Simmons was… well… I’ve never been with such a powerful woman. After her I could only be with interns. Yes, it’s true. I know the allegations. What I will say is that this isn’t a university. We are all adults here—private adults, and professionals. I only regret not giving them more attention. In the end, it had all been about Ruth.

But it wasn’t a matter of love, only of power. Ruth taught me the most important lesson of my life. For a so long I wanted love, until I realized that others were only a mirage."

- Charlie Rose on This Week with Christiane Amanpour

Thursday, September 2, 2010

Our Man in Granada: The Last Interview


You're Lying
: Nicaragua!

Granada: Yeah! I hear you shouldn't move when you wake up, for scorpions, attracted by the heat, cling to your body at night.

You're Lying: My god.

Granada: And the old men there smoke chocolate. Chocolate.

You're Lying: Bring some back.

Granada: ...and Cuban cigars, and, apparently, the finest rum in teh world, and hopefully some messianic tropical fever. Part Kinski, part Céline.

You're Lying: You know, Nicaragua is one of the members of the gigantist Chavismo/Boliviarismo club.

Granada: Yeah, one of the leaders of the Sandinista junta is now president.

You're Lying: Like Hamas and Chavez, [President of Nicaragua Daniel] Ortega is a success story of Bush's great neoliberal project of exporting liberal democratic elections.

Granada: Apparently the country is pretty divided between the leftists and the Contras. A lot of transported American Southerners fly Confederate flags from their purchased islands.

You're Lying: Any last instructions for your will and testament?

Granada: Crush me into a diamond and fire me into space. Give my shit to those who care least.

You're Lying: What books did you bring?

Granada: Just 2666, which may not be enough. Should have brought Maldoror for the fever days... You know what? Have them leave me in the jungle. Our handling of the dead is so highly sexualized, it would make me uncomfortable.

You're Lying: Ha ha. I'm going to compile all this into a "last interview" on the blog.

Granada: Good. For the record: my murderers are my travel companions, coerced by the long arm of the white devil. Tombstone: we are all a girl named Jenny in a brothel run by Grande Madame Indifference.

You're Lying: Where the hell are you right now? The airport?

Granada: At work. Flight's at 6.

You're Lying: Jesus Christ. How terrible. Is this all just an elaborate corporate softball game?

Granada: No doubt. Fear and mistrust will fend of the scorpions at night... but not Man.

You're Lying: Any last words, Céline?

Granada: 'Sure, I hate the Jews. But I hate men like me and my quest for eternal life much, much more.' Be right back, I've got to go eat a fucking sandwhich.