Meaning Making

 You go to Mexico, thankful for the asteroid that extincted the dinosaurs (I love them too, just not to live with, and it wasn't really in my hands). Riviera Maya, and the only resort I'll be caught dead in, because it is next to a nature preserve.  You're coordinating three schedules, so of course, ticket booking is a little later than ideal. Prices are insane, and there are few direct flights. Up pop Frontier (swipe left), JetBlue, Spirit (eventually, swipe left). So, JetBlue it is. But is it? First things first, list your mothereffing prices including tax. Don't BS me with $500 in fees I don't see till I get to your booking site.  A sidenote: don't book on third party sites. I booked a car on gotrentalcars.com, received a booking confirmation and then called the actual car provider, Thrifty. "Hi, I need a modified car." "Sorry, don't have that kind [you have to be fully crippled, because that is the only kind of modification they have]....

Where everyone is a little bit fucked up, but has a fucked up story to, uh, I don't know? To back it up? That's what the usamerican credo would dictate, no? It's all about winning, the winner, victory, right? Let's say everyone is a little messed up, and has a messed up story to top that.  --- I was thinking of Stella. The name, not a person. And how, when I was thinking of pseudonyming some of my key research participants, I kind of identified it as a black name. Or rather, to be more specific, I thought of it as a name for a person. This person was black. Over time, obsessed as everything around me in this country is, I kind of thought of it as a black name.  Which is why I shifted it to a person of, uh, I don't know, "not color"? But yes, [as I would say at a conference], people of Caucasian extraction could do with some 'blackening', 'coloring', so to speak. I think it would aid intercultural relations. Cos' we know already. We alre...

So the Museum of Science and Industry, yes. Very nice, good exhibits, the Lego artist had an exhibition, very groovy. There's the stuff you would expect, maritime, land, air transportation exhibits (including an old electric Ford from the early 20th century. All very well. Until... https://www.msichicago.org/explore/whats-here/exhibits/colleen-moores-fairy-castle/  What is a fairy castle doing here? Walked in, and there's all these fascinated , I mean totally rapt, women (2) and children (3, female from a cisgender phenotypical view; I did not speak with them, and even so, there would have been no way to ask, obviously. Not just because it is a random and invasive curiosity that I never had until I started writing these words here. Also, because this is the question—and the issue—of identification: I cannot ask, and no one else can, and no one else can tell, and neither will I).  And there was a total antifeminist JOKE of a voiceover. I caught, "in the attic while she wait...

  An Olympic Village that was developed with the hope that it will leave a legacy of accessible housing, area redevelopment, inclusion, and economic growth, fails to fulfill its promises a decade on. The private sector got the best bits, the taxpayer funded parts did not achieve objectives or provide a return, relocated residents remain outsiders looking in.  London.  The political theater of a disgraceful leader's disgrace being paraded around (is there such a thing as liberal "red meat"?), potential legal jeopardy, possible criminality, CONSPIRACY! While the economy burns the common people. Who, to be sure, liberal or conservative (US designations), continue to vote against their own self interest or for their own self indulgence.  Washington.*  A small town in the midwest lurches, gently and slowly, from one denuded crisis to another. The health system is struggling, the economy is struggling, the people are tough but feel the struggle, common cause around ...

 No. There isn't much elaboration in our greetings with friends. For one, we have more physical contact than here in general anyway, so a particular physical greeting does not feel imperative. Also, in my culture (all the disclaimers, culture is not a single thing; bear with it for the purpose of saying something), we are rather more submerged in the social, so meeting a familiar, the moment of encounter with another person, is not that remarkable. Unlike where it is a meeting of strangers—where the social must be conjured, expressed, brought into play, inaugurated even—each time.

So, I was driving through Columbus, MO. Actually, a little before Columbus, but I was in Missouri. I see this billboard, with the typical evolutionary sequence of our pre-homo sapient ancestors depicted on one side in a circled image. The image had a red line running diagonally across it. The standard depiction of "Do Not" do whatever it is that is on the image, like a "No Smoking" sign. The right half of the billboard said, "In the beginning, God Created." Pondering this debate, and before the cop pulled me over, I thought, "so what is different about other religions, say Hinduism, where this debate is not so front and center?" I mean, in India you have these old guys, not one day spent in school, and talk long enough and they will eventually ponder the meaning of life with you, give you some insightful pearls. They will, in other words, "drop some knowledge on you." They don't know the theory of evolution. On the other hand, y...

Ex-Deputies, tubes, and valleys If you are approaching Lookout Pass at the beginning of an incipient snowstorm or bout of snow, and if you don't have the right tires, here's the right thing to do: slide into that sign that welcomes you to Idaho, gently, and wait for help. And definitely do this if you have Jersey plates.  So, mileage eh. City mileage, highway mileage, what kind of mileage do you get from your car? Is it a sedan, is it an SUV, is it a truck, is it a "big-ass" truck with those wheels that make you higher than everyone else on the road. Everyone else except for semis? More on semis in a minute.  In the mountain passes of this region, you will not get that cool 34mpg hwy. No no. You'll get (at least I got) something like a whopping 41-43mpg. Simply because you're a fool if you use the gas. Just put it in Sport, let the engine control the braking, and let gravity do it's job. 60-65 mph, easy. Don't worry, that's the speed li...

Driving in a car too small to store much Is a good way to make sure your audio road trip does not land you in the poor house. Is there such a thing anymore? Poorhouse? I mean, I've read about this quaint English institution that condemned poverty in the strongest possible terms, but what, and how different was 1996 and PRWORA? That's the acronym for welfare reform, in case you pondering. And that was passed under Bill Clinton, as was some hardcore anti person-of-color-caught-up-in-crime legislation. And that is supposed to be the more socially concerned side of the political spectrum? Oof. Well, what's the difference between neoliberal Democrat and neoliberal neocon Republican anyway? Eh? Yes, at some point I really should start talking about traveling and checking out musical equipment. Hm.  So, it was winter of 2018, and after quite a few years in the wilderness of good audio equipment (Harman Kardon Soundsticks are ok, but come on), I was in the mood again. T...

  Swades  ( Our land ), directed by Ashutosh Gowarikar Swades  is Ashutosh Gowarikar’s follow-up to the hugely successful  Lagaan , a film appreciated for its novel idea of basing a story on the game of cricket, set in late nineteenth-early 20th century colonial India. While not attempting an entirely serious portrayal of the material and cultural context of the time,  Lagaan  probably scored with audiences because it represented a refreshing change from the usual kitsch of family dramas, revenge plots or the now increasingly (and already something you could be refreshed from) pervasive genre of “skin flicks.” Set in contemporary times,  Swades  looks at the issues of the Indian Diaspora, the return to one’s roots, a feeling of something lacking (perhaps of traditional bonds or a sense of community) in the fragmented (or at least non-Indian) American society. The story unfolds with Mohan Bhargava (Shah Rukh Khan) working on a global precipitation-...

  White Noise , a film by Vinta Nanda Multiplexes have taken off in India’s larger cities, spawning a breed of small-budget films in English and Hindi, targeted at urban, “yuppie” audiences. While this has created a space for new filmmakers without affiliations to the big studios and names that control much of the Mumbai film industry, the new genre is not free of the same pitfalls that afflict much of commercial cinema—uncritical films that capitalise on rehashing same old formulas: family dramas, titillation, mindless violence, revenge plots, and so on. While this new breed does profess to address fresh, urban themes, the perspectives behind the films are still the same, although the characters wear a metropolitan, savvy gloss. At a time when filmmakers who had some critical predilections in the 1970s and early 1980s are entering semi-retirement (if there is such a thing in the film industry), very few new faces have stepped in to take their place. White Noise  is an unconvi...

Bataille draws a distinction between that which is homogeneous (hence explicable, capable of submission to a scientific knowledge, an order of ordering principles), and that which is heterogeneous, beyond explanation, unyielding to analytical construct. The unconscious in psychology, the sacred in Durkheim, the laborer not at his workplace - all constitute the realm of the heterogeneous. And of course with Bataille, "the heterogeneous world includes everything resulting from unproductive expenditure" (Bataille: 69, emphasis in original). Recalling The Accursed Share, only in profitless destruction, in removal from the order of things, can man find the original intimacy which everything productive has alienated him from. But now it can never be complete, because it is not man, but an object / victim that man can remove in such way - only the sacrificed can completely achieve that lost intimacy, man can only gain a fleeting, vicarious aspect of it.   Moving to a consideration o...

“…regarding their kings as incarnate divinities on whom the welfare of men, of cattle and of the corn implicitly depends…” James Frazer, The Golden Bough Introduction At the outset, let me briefly outline the explanation I attempt here. This is a human sacrifice of substitution and fertility, the latter being most prominent, with aspects of expiation/propitiation/atonement. Agricultural fertility is being ensured since it is the lifeline for the survival of the community, and perhaps a wrong has been committed or being averted. I will draw on the work of Frazer and Smith, with additional references to readings as relevant . At the beginning we are shown the saplings planted in the fields. That and the several head of goat, coupled with the nature of dwellings (carved out of rock formations) indicate this is a subsistence community, based on agriculture and livestock. The young man in fine blue attire is waiting for the proceedings to commence, looking reflective and somewhat pensive. C...