Procrast-Nation

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Taking Seratoninronin’s apt criticisms to heart on my first post in this series, I took a break in order to both catch up on my collegiate studies (still lagging pretty far behind, damn you Japanese I) and to rethink my approach in regard to it. I take his silence in the comments section as a victory; there was nothing so obviously off there as to prompt an attack. So I’m returning to the series.

In the meantime I read a good number of pieces from the John Hanhardt edited reader Video Culture: A Critical Investigation. While the reader is a quite handy and thorough collection of pieces on the topic, from “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” onward. McLuhan is wrongly represented in essay after essay as the herald of some sort of electronic utopia, which makes me wonder how deeply any of the various essayists researched their topics before pontificating. While some good points were made and interesting concepts brought up in each essay, the vast majority tended to fall into Marxist analysis. The further from the source each Marxist critique got, the more the essays started sounding like Rand worshipping objectivist critiques. “This person’s idea doesn’t work because Marx/Rand said so. Utopia will be achieved once class equality/completely unrestricted markets are instated.” It got to the point of being like eating sand, and I imagine several of the writers here would’ve been thoroughly annoying in conversation.
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Another banjo composition for all the legions of fans who delighted at the previous one, “The Great British Petroleum Oil Slick.”

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This is a paper I wrote for a class I was taking on Nietzsche. I’m essentially arguing that Nietzsche was even more Christian than he himself was aware of, sort of that he was a secret, closeted Christian. More papers to come. I have one on Borges, one on Kierkegaard, one on Sartre, one on infinite regress and belief justification and one on methodological individualism vs. holism in the social sciences (along with random old other ones). Let me know what y’all are interested in reading. Enjoy. (more…)

Interpreted on banjo, since I’ve run out of ways to say “We’re pretty well fucked.” in prose.

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THIS IS PART III OF MY ILLUSTRATED MEMOIR (illustrations Monday).

Part one is here.
Part two is here.

His gums. Such gums. Vast, prodigious. His teeth never stood a chance. His frame gaunt, face narrow, posture hunched, eyes ever so slightly crazed. When he spoke he gesticulated wildly, jerky and erratic. Like a marionette puppet.

Over the years we spent a lot of time, talking, scheming, making up backgrounds for the numerous town characters. He had a knack for nick-names, and it seemed like he had one for everyone he knew except me. Probably the best one he ever came up with was Hearing Aid Adam. Hearing Aid Adam was a short latino man who would show up to every teen punk show in his trademark Slayer hat covered in promotional patches and air drum with his eyes squinting intensely. Craig loved to tell one story especially. (more…)

An essay appropriating Foucault’s conception of power to my own understanding and interest of self-stereotyping behaviour. Ties to “The Distinction between Geeks, Nerds and Dorks.” I suggest the essay to you if not for the greater topic at large then for the novelty contained in the paragraph near the end where I describe goth kids as if they were gorillas in a zoo.

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From the warped genius behind ‘Silent Commando’ comes a music festival so enormous no one person could fund it. So thats where you come in.

Upstate New York, scenic background to my memoir posts, could have its own annual music festival, but the two guys who’ve set it up have hit a road block. Being college students (i.e. destitute), they have bands, but no money to pay them. They have a venue, but no money to hold it. But what they do have is one month and a Kickstarter account. And (fingers crossed here), the support of a grateful and generous community, including you, the reader.

Knowing the organizer, I can vouch this is a 100% grass-roots endeavor, a labor of love. And how can you argue with a line-up like this?

Every bit counts.

So a while ago I promised (sort of) to outline some major problems I have with utilitarianism as an ethical theory. Seeing as it’s generally well liked around these parts from what I can tell, I thought I’d follow through on that and get some chit chat going on the topic. Obviously I don’t have the time to get SUPER in depth with any of these and there may be some problems with a few (applying more readily to act instead of rule utilitarianism, for example,) but these can all be fleshed out should the conversation decide to move in that direction. Anyway. Some problems.

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I’m working on the first part of a couple post-long exploration of the MOMA Frederick Wiseman retrospective, but I figured I better get this post out there before some poor person is subjected to either of the god-awful pieces of shit I sat through this week.
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