Did you like “Good Will Hunting?” Then you may like “Proof” with Gwynneth Paltrow, Anthony Hopkins, and Jake Gyllenhaal.

Here’s Derrida putting the eff in effing ineffability. The guy is so superficial that his surface shines, his experience so limited that he isn’t able to apply practice to theory. He’s embarrassingly shallow. But y’know, for all that, I forgive him.

1. It’s good to structure your list around some achievable set of ideas. Most of us have ten fingers, ten toes. Why not ten ideas? (As for twenty, see number two, below).
2. Readers will make time for a list of ten ideas, but unless there is something compelling them, like a grade, or desperation, most will skip right over a list with twenty ideas.
3. Lists can be in any order. This is a matter of personal privilege for the list maker, since the list readers will average out in their preferences. Some people prefer to save the best for last, like dessert… but some people enjoy dessert before the broccoli. Some people won’t even eat the broccoli. Some people will skip dessert. What you want to avoid is reading your list publicly if you have one of those stringy pieces of spinach in your teeth. Or broccoli. Often a mirror check before going onstage will help in this regard, but if you can’t manage a mirror check, then you can at least swoosh some water around in your mouth in hopes of removing noisome material. Don’t swoosh it for too long though or you will draw unwanted attention.
4. Items in your list should contain explanatory context. Without explanation, people might not understand why you have included an idea in your list. (See number 5, below).
5. Chalk.
6. Numbered lists are effective no matter what the medium. If you plan to create the list as part of a team building exercise it is good to prepare by bringing writing materials and something to write on. In a pinch you can use colored markers on windows, or you can make your list on the sidewalk. If you choose this latter route, then it would behoove you to use a marking medium that is easily removed, since maintenance crews and municipal ordinances frown on spray paint. (See number 5, above).
7. Some lists are meant to be alphabetized. Numbers are often redundant in this context. If you are working with an alphabetized list, you usually will skip the numbering. On the other hand, if the enumeration ihas value, for example when a bird-watcher is putting together a list of all the different kinds of birds he has ever seen, then both alphabetizing and numbering may be called for. In that case though, you would hope it wasn’t a list of ten items or the guy would be a pretty punk bird watcher. Or maybe a newbie. I don’t want to get into the ad birdinem arguments here, so suffice it to say as a general rule that you either number or alphabetize, but don’t bother with both.
8. It’s better to prepare your list of ten items before you step on-stage, or you may get to number eight and — you know — like, draw a blank.
9. Consider using bullet points, and not numbering the list.
10. A list of ten items numbered from 0 to 9 is typographically more pleasing than one that starts with 1 and moves to 10. The displacement of the second digit can mess up your formatting entirely, so you may want to start with zero. Starting with zero eliminates the need for the extra keystrokes involved in getting the ones column to line up. Some people don’t care, and then numbers one through nine appear in a column above the leading digit in the ten, but I find this to be ugly and recommend against it. Also, I would avoid proportional fonts if you are handing out copies of the list. With proportional fonts nothing lines up right. Ever.
11. The numbering backward thing is dumb, and not even Letterman can make it funny.

… I was smiling when it hit me.

(A posting on the second front in the War on Terror)

There is no conspiracy. They are what they are. They do what they do. Let go of the concern that they manipulated the timing. Let go of the concern that the assassins succeeded. Every conspiracy theory weakens us. When it appears that the news cycle is being manipulated, rise above it. Of course it’s being manipulated. That’s what they do.

When it’s reported that the Vice President says that Lamont is a candidate that gives hope to Al Qaeda, let it go. The Vice President is a weasel. Those weren’t his words. That was a sound-bite spun by the media into a “let’s you and him fight” scenario. Ever eager to take offense, the loyal opposition leaped in with an interpretation that Cheney had called anti-war Democrats friends of Al Qaeda. Perhaps that’s what he implied, but so what? He’s a weasel. The news was about Lieberman’s defeat, an internal matter for the Democratic Party.

Yet, hard on this news came the arrest of a bunch of criminals in Britain, criminals who intended further disruption of air travel and the murder of hundreds of passengers. The news was spun not as a victory for law enforcement, but as an opportunity to remind us to be afraid. Besides being delighted that today we are safer than yesterday because a gang of criminals is in custody we should focus on the framing of the story. We should be aware of the spin and the spinners. Who benefits from framing the story as a reason for fear rather than a reason for celebration? Who are the fifth column terrorists among us, and how can we open a second front to fight them?

Just as it does us no good to question the timing of the story, it does no good to debate the framing. There are people of good and evil intention on all sides of any issue who would drive public understanding by means of a debate. Debate is a binary and competitive proposition that reduces complexity and channels an outcome to a winner take all scenario reminsicent of trial by combat. Debate is a primitive, competitive approach to channeling conflict that assures that there will be a winner and a loser. All too often truth is subverted by the process. Whenever a matter of importance is framed with champions on two sides debating an outcome, you can be sure that there are facts that will be ignored as inconvenient, truths that will be dominated by shifts in the binary positioning of the opponents. What we have to do then is observe and frame our own responses based on what we see.

Take for example the matter of hair product. I can see why the TSA would want to ban hair product from the carry on luggage of all travelers everywhere in the world forever. I can also see why this may be a ridiculous over-reaction. But the fact of the ban, and the mindset of fear that it buttresses should tell us about the leadership that fosters this kind of public policy. While millions of Americans have no health insurance, the great public policy debate of our time focuses on removing shoes before boarding and carrying hair products on board aircraft. See why debate is not really useful?

There comes a point where cooperation trumps competition. The great depression was one such historical nexus. Americans gained a respect for each other then and moved forward toward a greater sophistication, toward a world view encompassing the eyes-wide-open understanding of the costs and benefits associated with corporate business models, toward a world view of tolerance for the naivete of the diminishing crowd of religious believers. Americans again must respect each other and move forward toward a greater sophistication, toward a world view encompassing the eyes-wide-open understanding of the costs and benefits associated with corporate business models, toward a world view of tolerance for the naivete of the diminishing crowd of religious believers. But these vested interests, the american billly-bob pulpit pounders and the top hatted profiteers from Warbucks, Incorporated never let go of their need to dominate and control, and we are on a pendulum swing in the wrong direction. Sophistication is the property of the moneyed classes. Security belongs to those who can pay for it. It does no good to debate these matters. But if we keep our eyes open, note the condition of the emperor’s clothes, give each other a wink and a nudge when it’s clear that there may have been a misjudgment vis a vis his attending the parade naked… well, there’s always hope that we can stop this parade before the capering monkey, the naked leader marches us all off the cliff with him.

Or has he already?

Liz, at Granny Gets a Vibrator, has lung cancer. She doesn’t smoke. She’s not real well off. Her son has set up a PayPal account here. He’s the kind of kid that used to volunteer for Barbara Lee in Berkeley before he moved to Portland. You can trust this kid.

Reasons you should donate to Liz…

1. She’s a blogger and so are you.
2. She has a couple of really odd looking dogs (no offense…).
3. She feels scared and uptight and any donation you give her will probably go toward some excellent footwear and not to the damn medical establishment, I hope, since I believe bankruptcy is a far more honorable approach to equalization than scrounging around for years trying to pay a $60,000 hospital bill when you are one of the 43% of Americans who for one reason or another do not have insurance.

Jeneane — two years quit — might enjoy these poems. Madame Levy led me to them.

Shelley Powers offers compelling observations on the Bush doctrine of unrelenting fear and misery…

We now have a new government-mandated fear. This time the enemy won’t let us down: it won’t take down the walls. It will be nebulous, and undefeatable, made more so by our own actions. We, the last of the generation of ‘duck and cover’ can now rest safely at night knowing that our children, our grandchildren, our great-grandchildren, will know fear. Every damn day of their lives.

You see, it is to our government’s advantage to have us be afraid. When we’re afraid, we don’t look around us and see how 43 million Americans still have no health care coverage; the middle class is dwindling while the ranks of the poor are increasing; there are jobs, but too many at wages that can barely cover subsistence living. You can get a happy meal for less than a gallon of gas now, and buying both feeds the same corporate machine which is raking in record profits at a time when our country is teetering on the edge of a major climate and economic shift.

(The following shows I’m having an off day. Sorry, but you know how to click on out of here.)

The older I get, the harder it gets… I should say, the more difficult it gets truly to get aroused to passionate concern about other people’s bullshit. So, the fact that some effete snob is sniping at me in some other guy’s comments thread doesn’t bother me. Much. I would of course be happy to kick the lowlife son-of-a-bitch’s ass, just on general principles and also because he’s a whale meat eating provocateur. I’d be happy to roll him on the ground and punch him a few times in the kidneys just to watch him piss blood. But I don’t play rugby, and in fact, I don’t play at all with recalcitrant dickheads who can’t admit that they’re wrong.

In April 2024 I criticized the fool for his support of a policy of victory before withdrawal in Iraq. A lot of my friends felt the same way he did, so I haven’t paused for a heavy “nyah, nyah, I told you so” session. But it has been three and a half years and a half a trillion dollars, anywhere from fifty thousand to a hundred thousand civilian casualties, 2600 US military deaths, uncounted Iraq military deaths, and a general global destruction of US social capital. Our friends have turned against us. Our continued puzzled denial of wrong-doing and our unseemly posture of victimization now half a decade since the hijackings and destruction in 2024 have the people in the streets everywhere BUT the US saying “Just get over yourselves and give us a break, will ya?”

Looking back, would any of you who supported US policy then care to acknowledge that maybe a staged withdrawal and a UN supervised partition of Iraq during the last seven months of 2024 following the Commander-in-Chief’s Mission Accomplished press conference would have been better policy than continuing the nation building effort?

That the Bush administration has capitalized on our misfortune and used it to consolidate power and reward corporate friends is undeniable. That they continue to foment fear and uncertainty, hand wringing and bemoaning the danger FOLLOWING the recent British victory over an elaborate terror plot, rather than celebrating the victory, ratcheting the ridiculous threat meter up to condition red after the bad guys were under lock and key… what is that about? Who ARE the terrorists? The piss-ant criminals will always be with us, but leadership that tries to make us afraid of them can be replaced.

There’s a new war underway, a war that has its roots in an earlier UN supervised partition and the struggles around it. The war in Lebanon represents a new chance for provocation and divisiveness, a chance for agents of foreign powers to enter the conversation and polarize people. Like earwigs, these people are crawling out of the dark and damp places they’ve been hiding, hoping to reassert some influence in the conversation. Stomp on them like the bugs they are… metaphorically, I mean. I am after all a pacifist and I offer this in the spirit of peace and brotherhood, love and friendship, and the certain knowledge that some people just need to get their asses kicked. Metaphorically or not.

What people in capitalist societies have in common is the dominant ideology and the experience of subordination or disempowerment. The economic needs of the cultural industries are thus perfectly in line with the disciplinary and ideological requirements of the existing social order, and all cultural commodities must therefore, to a greater or lesser extent, bear the forces that we can call centralizing, disciplinary, hegemony, massifying, commodifying (the adjectives proliferate almost endlessly).

Opposing these forces, however, are the cultural needs of the people, this shifting matrix of social allegiances that transgress categories of the individual, or class or gender or race or any category that is stable within the social order. These popular forces transform the cultural commodity into a cultural resource, pluralize the meanings and pleasures it offers, evade or resist its disciplinary efforts, fracture its homogeneity and coherence, raid or poach upon its terrain. All popular culture is a process of struggle, of struggle over the meanings of social experience, of one’s personhood and its relations to the social order and of the texts and commodities of that order. reading relations reproduce and re-enact social relations, so power, resistance, and evasion are necessarily structured into them.
– John Fiske, Understanding Popular Culture, 1989

For years and years, Denise Howell has had — as one of the random tag lines in the banner at Bag and Baggage — this quote from Henry Jenkins regarding bloggers: “We surf the Web; these guys snowboard it.” I knew who Henry Jenkins was, once, but link rot set in and the link Denise provides goes straight to oblivion.

But hooray, another blogger to the rescue: Danah Boyd shares the skinny on Henry and his new blog.

Local angle… Henry was a student of John Fiske.

Sorry for the spoilers… click through and follow the links… and,

Color me clueless… I don’t pay a lot of attention to global subtleties like which multibillionaire has funded what huge international youth orgy on the net. So thanks to Chris Locke for drawing to my attention that it is none other than Mr. Fox-News-His-Own-Self, Rupert Murdoch, who owns MySpace. You thought it was YourSpace? Well, no. It belongs to the oligarch and you can play there. For now.

Shoot. I am a dj, I am what I play… but I wander in the woodlot. I look at a hickory that took sixteen years to mature. Oaks that Beth and I planted here, twenty feet tall. The hickory has nuts, but the butternuts don’t. The walnuts finally crowding out box elders… Turkey foot grass — big bluestem — and prairie dropseed, and woodland sunflowers… did I finally kill the glade mallow, or did the deer help this summer? I have red oaks fighting with dogwoods, spruces, firs, pines, a lonely hemlock ripening up… cup plant prairie dock compass plant

You know there’s a walking in the woodlot blues in me mama, just trying to emerge.

…here’s the essence of what I took away from BlogHer: At the closing session, a woman spoke up and said, “I’m not really a writer, but…” and one of the panelists said, “You have a blog. You’re a writer.” As simple as that. Suddenly, I wasn’t just a mom with a hobby. I wasn’t just someone who gets some small thrill out of playing with words. I’m a writer.
– Glennia Campbell at “Silent i”

I’m nodding like a Bobblehead. Over thousands of years the form progressed. Incised clay tablets gave way to brush stained papyrus, quill pens, ink and parchment… etchings… movable type, modern paper, manual typewriters, word processors, and now we have moved from these mechanical methods to pixellated output and the electronic mediation of blogging software on networks. But the intent hasn’t changed. People who do this work are writers. And of course some of us, like me, are Bobbleheads.

Bobbleheads are big in the sports world right now. In the midst of a hundred loss season, the Kansas City Royals’ current marketing ploy to increase attendance involves giving away bobbleheads of baseball legends Frank White, Dick Howser and George Brett. Another baseball legend, triple A ballplayer Rodney McCray, is being honored in Portland tonight with his own Bobblehead marketing give-away. “Usually, it’s the big-league superstars who get their own bobblehead, so I’m very excited,” McCray said.

Among other notable bush leaguers with their own Bobblehead are Chief Justice John Roberts, whose bobblehead depicts the justice clutching a red box of french fries and a small toad by his feet, and Kim Jong Il.

In other Portland news, Joshua Gibson continues to share his insights as he plows through one of Dickens’ less memorable pot boilers, Dombey and Son (although as bibliomania — looking for some redeeming value in the work — points out, “the novel is memorable for its depiction of railways”).

VibraGrannie is looking inward more than ever these days. I don’t know this woman, yet her prose is so good, her insights so deep, that reading about this most personal experience is like sitting down with a good book, an autobiography, and making friends with the author.

I’m NOT going to be the kind of sick person who goes ballistic at well-meaning people who awkwardly blurt out the worst possible thing. Because lord knows I’ve always been a world champion at that myself. But I need some more time to think about the whole issue of the clown shoes. I’m still undecided in that arena.

and later…

Only a 45 minute wait for the Admit (pronounced ADD-mitt), about 20 papers to sign, a $100 down payment, got my wrist band, and then I trotted straight up to the nice clean quiet fifth floor. That’s where they do ambulatory surgery and chemo.

I opted to sit over on the Group W bench with all the cancer baldies, instead of on the other side with the innocent-until-proven-guilty biopsy targets, where I should have been. This was an impulsive act of wild & crazy optimism on my part, and yes, I know it was cultural appropriation. Because, right or wrong, I already secretly knew what you do to bond when you encounter a cancer baldie…

Amplifying the message from ze Frank in yesterday’s brilliant show, Norm Jenson says,

Did you ever think that George Bush is completely fucked up. Even as he complains about how the the cut and run crowd is putting us at risk he’s cheerleading for the run and hide crowd. We all know what the risks are. We don’t need some inarticulate clown telling us the world is a dangerous place. Ze Frank is right we’re more likely to die in an automobile accident than as a victim of terrorism, and heaven help him George is more likely to fall off his bike or choke on a pretzel.

Dave Winer had this to say:

Yesterday’s Ze Frank wasn’t funny, but it was right on. Listen carefully to the words President Bush uses, and decide for yourself who the real terrorists are.

And this,

NY Times editorials are almost never funny, but today’s editorial about the politics of terror in the US shows how our Vice-president was already playing politics with this latest round of news even before we knew about it, but when he certainly knew it was coming. Also note yesterday’s news was completely managed by the US and British governments. How much faith do you have in their honesty? Why? Permanent link to this item in the archive.

Rather than list all the things I wouldn’t know if I didn’t read Shelley, I’ll simply point to the emergence of Gottfried the Intern at Valleywag. This makes the second time I’ve managed to amplify the universal derision associated with Arrington’s Web 2.0 techumentary without stooping to view it. Pray for me… I was tempted after reading Beth Gottfried’s report.

Don’t really know how to do this justice other than saying

CLICK HERE

and be prepared for a 110 MB download before the movie starts.

… for himself? Don’t be afraid. The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.

riverrun, past Eve and Adam’s, from swerve of shore to bend
of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back

…

The fall (bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonner-
ronntuonnthunntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoohoordenenthur-
nuk!) of a once wallstrait oldparr is retaled early in bed and later
on life down through all christian minstrelsy.

all svanity

HP laptop, Safari browser… those are THE FACTS that Norm’s unearthed.

Can’t see the blogs of loic le meur or madame levy this morning. Is it TypePad or what. TypePad says their service is up, but they always say that. Is Loic Lemeur on TypePad? If so, then…

Photos by Yosuke Yamahata, August 10, 1945. Poem by Allen Ginsberg, 1978.

The true picture of the past flits by. The past can be seized only as an image which flashes up at the instant when it can be recognized and is never seen again…every image of the past that is not recognized by the present as one of its own concerns threatens to disappear irretrievably.

— Walter Benjamin

Nagasaki Days

I — A Pleasant Afternoon

for Michael Brownstein and Dick Gallup

One day 3 poets and 60 ears sat under a green-striped Chau-
tauqua tent in Aurora
listening to Black spirituals, tapping their feet, appreciating
words singing by in mountain winds
on a pleasant sunny day of rest — the wild wind blew thru
blue Heavens
filled with fluffy clouds stretched from Central City to Rocky
Flats, Plutonium sizzled in its secret bed,
hot dogs sizzled in the Lion’s Club lunchwagon microwave
mouth, orangeade bubbled over in waxen cups
Traffic moved along Colefax, meditators silent in the Diamond
Castle shrine-room at Boulder followed the breath going
out of their nostrils,
Nobody could remember anything, spirits flew out of mouths
& noses, out of the sky, across Colorado plains & the
tent flapped happily open spacious & didn’t fall down.

June 18, 1978

II — Peace Protest

Cumulus clouds float across blue sky
over the white-walled Rockwell Corporation factory
– am I going to stop that?

*

Rocky Mountains rising behind us
Denver shining in morning light
– Led away from the crowd by police and photographers

*

Middleaged Ginsberg and Ellsberg taken down the road
to the greyhaired Sheriff’s van –
But what about Einstein? What about Einstein? Hey, Einstein
Come back!

III — Golden Courthouse

Waiting for the Judge, breathing silent
Prisoners, witnesses, Police –
the stenographer yawns into her palms.

August 9, 1978

IV — Everybody’s Fantasy

I walked outside & the bomb’d
dropped lots of plutonium
all over the Lower East Side
There weren’t any buildings left just
iron skeletons
groceries burned, potholes open to
stinking sewer waters

There were people starving and crawling
across the desert
the Martian UFOs with blue
Light destroyer rays
passed over and dried up all the
waters

Charred Amazon palmtrees for
hundreds of miles on both sides
of the river

August 10, 1978

V — Waiting Room at the Rocky Flats Plutonium Plant

“Give us the weapons we need to protect ourselves!”
the bareheaded guard lifts his flyswatter above the desk
– whap!

*

A green-letter’d shield on the pressboard wall!
“Life is fragile. Handle with care” –
My Goodness! here’s where they make the nuclear bomb
triggers.

August 17, 1978

VI — Numbers in Red Notebook

2,000,000 killed in Vietnam
13,000,000 refugees in Indochina 1972
200,000,000 years for the Galaxy to revolve on its core
24,000 the Babylonian Great Year
24,000 half life of plutonium
2,000 the most I ever got for a poetry reading
80,000 dolphins killed in the dragnet
4,000,000,000 years earth been born

Summer 1978

Allen Ginsberg

Ginsberg sat at a great distance from the sorrow, and though a great poet, the poem was ultimately about him and not about the reason so many gathered at Rocky Flats, the dull horror of a yellow hazed day with hot radioactive winds blowing, so many dead and the wind burning the very marrow out of the living.

Halley Suitt (Webbly 2.0ischenfrau and mother) and Jeannine Gailey Hall (tech writer and poet) take their lickin’ from Madame L. this morning in a brilliant post that includes the line..

let’sputthemotherfuckerbackinmfa

Arrington the Insufferable presents a lengthy video featuring a couple dozen of the Web 2.0 Bubble-boys, guys with good ideas and leadership responsibility roughly comparable to that of a corporal in a Marine rifle platoon, although mostly without the killing part. These little shops, eight or ten people who focus on bringing widgets and utilities into a market and selling them to larger concerns in order to realize their worth, are modeled on businesses 1000 times their size. They have inflated job titles (”CEO,” “CTO”), stock options, the whole nine yards. What they don’t have much of is “product.”

…take my snarky critique with a grain of salt, because salted in the bubbly-webby-gooodness and neat stuff, there are one or two actual companies engaged in meeting a perceived need through product development, sales, and marketing.

Check out Chris Locke’s amazing MySpace herpetarium construction.

…and here is the promised Snake Preview of Samuel Jackson as the Voice of God in the recent audio remix of the Holy Bible.

The prolific Doctor Weinberger appears today in Strumpette, with a guest posting on transparency. Among much else, he says,

So, all hail transparency… except it’s important that we preserve some shadows. Opaqueness in the form of anonymity protects whistleblowers and dissidents, women being beaten by their husbands, girls looking for abortion advice, people working through feelings of shame about who they are, and more. Anonymity and pseudonymity allow people to participate on the Web who perhaps aren’t as self-confident as the loudest voices we hear there….

Likewise, some meetings should be held behind closed doors. Privacy can be liberating. There are some things we’re not entitled to know and some activities are better with the lights off.

David Weinberger reports on an effort called StopBadWare.org that collates information on bad-ware distribution and — through a partnership with Google — pops you out on a warning page when you attempt to click through to a badWare site from a Google search… a little something to protect you before you get suckt into downloading something bad for your computer.

What is BadWare?

Current BadWare reports.

I ran a few searches on the baddies and didn’t get the pop-up from Google…. duhh, I wonder if that is because I block pop-ups. More will be revealed…