In the Realm of the Census

Training:

"Just tell them the census is the list of who goes to heaven."

"Money cannot be defeated except by blood. Lipids won't do the job!"

"Don't procrastinate, transfenestrate!"

"The immortality of the Master is proportional to the innocence of his creatures."


In the field:

"Marx just didn’t get it, and neither do you."

"I don't have to do that."
"Actually, sir, yes you do. It's federal law."
"I'm good."

"Throw that boy a bottle or he's bound to turn loose on the women!"

"Come back soon, hipster scum."

Free Arisman!

The Bangkok Post reports that Thai pop star and "anti-government hardcore member" Arisman Pongruangrong has been arrested Wednesday night. Perhaps not coincidentally, the two Arisman music videos linked to in past entries of this blog were removed today, ostensibly for violation of copyright. You may remember Arisman from his comical/daring escape from the third story of a luxury hotel in April when police pursued him in reprisal for the Redshirts attack on parliament.



Arisman's redshirts made an even more stylish exit from Ratchaprasong, Bangkok's downtown shopping district, by burning it to the ground. Predictably, Western media portrayed this tactical retreat as spontaneous mob violence. The New York Times seems to have forgotten the very words it reported:

The [occupied] area is home to Central World, the second largest shopping complex in Southeast Asia, and to the Grand Hyatt, the Four Seasonsand other luxury hotels. “If they use force to disperse us, we will flatten the entire neighborhood,” said Jatuporn Prompan, one of the protest leaders.

"So great was his narcissism, Thai pop star Arisman Pongruanrong played every role in his elaborate narrative music videos."
- A&E Biography

"Redshirts redblood, redshits redcud!" -Joe Biden

"I won't leave Bangkok till the king renounces me!" - Jimmy Carter

1:06 AM me: "don't you fucking cross this line or i'll burn down this huge disgusting mall!"
1:07 AM Pat: hah this is my dream

None of what you have said makes sense because it is all too true

Summer living,
tires a'spinning,
Universal Unreason
rides

to the tune
of that old standard
"Bangkok! Bangkok!
Bangkok on the bongos!
Set the Central World on fire!"

- Arisman Pongruanrong

Your chance to hate

In a rare moment of non-fabricated seriousness, I would like to direct the attention of the readers of this blog (all ten of you) to the events surrounding the announced closure of all philosophy programs at Middlesex University including its internationally renown graduate program, the Middlesex University Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy.

Why does this matter? Because Middlesex's philosophy programs are basically some of the finest in the English-speaking world. Middlesex places a special emphasis on European philosophy from Kant to the present, something that is severely undertaught in English-language academia (in which generally only a few non-Anglo-American philosophers of the past 200 years are cherry picked to be taught in any depth). This is not some jerk-off cultural studies or lit crit program, like I and most American students interested in learning about "Continental" philosophy went through in our various communications, media, and comp lit departments, those places where you might write your thesis on Foucault while never having had to read Marx, Hegel, or Kant. This is real goddam philosophy, offering courses titled with big proper names--"Kant," "Hegel," "Nietzsche & Heidegger," "Sartre & Badiou," etc.--the kind of place where the usual hip names appropriated in American lit-cult departments--Derrida, Foucualt, Zizek, et al--are taught as secondary reading and contextualized in the philosophical lineage that they're actually writing about.

The closure of Middlesex philosophy was ostensibly made for economic reasons--the philosophy program fell a mere 2% short of their required income contribution to the School of Arts and Education. The real reason is this, however: the philosophy program is scheduled to receive a sizable sum of money (c.£170,000/yr) from UK government education funding agencies until at least 2015 (making a total of £850,000 or c.$1,223,000.00 USD) as a reward for its excellent performance in the 2008 Research Assessment Exercise (in which 65% of Middlesex philosophy faculty research was judged to be of "internationally leading" caliber). Middlesex University can close the Philosophy programs, but still receive the $1million+ in grants that the philosophy department earned. The Middlesex philosophy faculty won the university a huge sum (this 6 person faculty accounts for 5% of all RAE-awarded income in the university; their RAE-awarded grants are, per capita, 6 times larger than the Middlesex University average) and now they are all being fired and their money re-appropriated for other purposes. If Middlsex Philosophy isn't safe, no philosophy program is safe.

The announcement of the closure has caused huge uproar in academic philosophy circles around the globe. The Middlesex students, true to the spirit of Middlesex's founding as a polytechnic institution, took a practical approach: they occupied a building at the school and converted it into a democratic teaching space until the University prematurely terminated negotiations and got a court order to have the students removed. The most informative and critical independent article about the scandal I've read is this piece in Times Higher Education. Visit the website of the campaign to Save Middlesex Philosophy for yet more info.

There are two things you can do to help.

First, sign the online petition denouncing the closure, which has over 14,000 signatures at the time of this writing.

Second, and most hateful, write an email to the executive and governors' boards of Middlesex. Feel free to copy information from the petition text. Here are their emails:

michael@partridges.org.uk; A.Gajownik@mdx.ac.uk; A.Durant@mdx.ac.uk; thelindens@googlemail.com; andrew.parsons@rlb-law.com; avrobinson1@tiscali.co.uk; l_spence1@sky.com; Bridget.Rulski@guardian.co.uk; colin.hughes@guardian.co.uk; T.Cockerton@mdx.ac.uk; P.A.Johnson@mdx.ac.uk; jritterman@blueyonder.co.uk; dinagray@btinternet.com; j.alleyne@mdx.ac.uk; geoff.lambert2@ntlworld.com; W.Ahmad@mdx.ac.uk; J.Compton-Bishop@mdx.ac.uk; j.mulroy1@btinternet.com; K.A.Bell@mdx.ac.uk; lorna.cocking@btinternet.com; M.House@mdx.ac.uk; M.Keen@mdx.ac.uk; m.driscoll@mdx.ac.uk; PeterCheeseman1@aol.com; Peter.Thomas2@justice.gsi.gov.uk; RS1000@live.mdx.ac.uk; stephen.hand@lr.org; s.knight@mdx.ac.uk; T.Kelly@mdx.ac.uk; T.Butland@mdx.ac.uk; e.esche@mdx.ac.uk

Happy hatings,

P

I will execute the Law!

"Ball!" - Chief Justice John Roberts, Graham v. Florida, entire concurring opinion

"If you want mud you got it!" - Associate Justice Antonin Scalia, dissenting opinion

"Take it from me: I'm a mom." - Michelle Obama

"The master may wear slippers instead of boots, but he's still got his foot on your neck." - Elena Kagen

"In 40 years or sooner I can imagine that a tiger might become the President of these United States." - RFK

"This is real blogging, indecipherably tight knots of allusion!"
- Reza Negarastani

Q: A mentally disabled 17 year old buys a bull that he is told is magic but only on the condition that he loves the bull. If the bull dies on the way to Basra, is the contract enforceable?
A: I need more facts!

Hey Pat,
Are you getting more complacent or am i just a little tipsy.
Either way, i'm into it.

xo,

Tina, third row second seat to the left corporate law

"We don't have time to think. We're making money."
- Prof. Edward J. Esche, Dean of Arts and Education,
Middlesex University

"A rising tide sinks all boats." - Ronald Reagan

"I don't have the narcissism to really enjoy hurting others." - Karl Rove

"Obama plays it cooler than cool. Like, he complimented my wife's shoes but shat on her sweater."
- Chris Oynes, Minerals Management Service Associate Director

"Sex is alienation." - Barack Obama

Notes from Underground

"What do you want here?" he said, without moving or changing his
position.
"Nothing, brother, good morning," answered Svidrigailov.
"This isn't the place."
"I am going to foreign parts, brother."
"To foreign parts?"
"To America."
"America."
Svidrigailov took out the revolver and cocked it. Achilles raised
his eyebrows.
"I say, this is not the place for such jokes!"
"Why shouldn't it be the place?"
"Because it isn't."
"Well, brother, I don't mind that. It's a good place. When you are
asked, you just say he was going, he said, to America."
He put the revolver to his right temple.
"You can't do it here, it's not the place," cried Achilles,
rousing himself, his eyes growing bigger and bigger.
Svidrigailov pulled the trigger.

Here Lies Hate

She had gamely accepted an offer to listen for the first time to “Here Lies Love,” a new rock opera by David Byrne and Fatboy Slim that chronicles her rise from country girl to the First Lady of the Philippines. Removing the earbuds, tilting her head slightly, she said in an exaggerated tone, “I’m flattered, I can’t believe it!”

-- New York Times, 7 May 2010

"Yeah, whatever, we saw Marie Antoinette." - Maxim magazine

"Imelda Marcos is to hipsters what Nixon is to liberals: a monster whose revisionist recasting as a tragic figure by the latter belies a grotesque, desperate conservatism in the dominated fraction of the ruling class. It’s classic Bourdieu. These hipster attempts at symbolic subversion are just that: symbolic. 'It is we, the people of taste, not the vulgar rich, who should rule.'——a desperate lashing out by a bunch of clowns who are realizing too late, too late that they should have studied finance instead of 'critical' theory. Even the Beatles——those self-involved, pre-Thatcherite (see 'Taxman') cads——knew better than to prostrate themselves before the pink heels of that mutant bitch queen. Neither progressive nor reactionary, the hipster pleas helplessness. 'I am not political,' the hipster says, 'but I’m not opposed to others being political.' In fact hipsters like nothing more than this division of labor: like Imelda, they live (quite well) off the labor of others, but they're good natured about it--humble about the fact that they are not self-supporting, either individually or as a class——as long as they can exempt themselves from the obligation to secure justice for those who provide for them." -- Chuck Palahniuk

"I wouldn't get worked up about it. I hear it's just not that good."
- Barack Obama