Hmm...

Never let it be said that the U.S. doesn't know who its real friends are.

The United States government is paying the Halliburton Company an average of $2.64 a gallon to import gasoline and other fuel to Iraq from Kuwait, more than twice what others are paying to truck in Kuwaiti fuel, government documents show.

[. . .]

The cost of the imported fuel first came to public attention in October when two senior Democrats in Congress criticized Halliburton, the huge Houston-based oil-field services company, for "inflating gasoline prices at a great cost to American taxpayers." At the time, it was estimated that Halliburton was charging the United States government and Iraq's oil-for-food program an average of about $1.60 a gallon for fuel available for 71 cents wholesale.

But a breakdown of fuel costs, contained in Army Corps documents recently provided to Democratic Congressional investigators and shared with The New York Times, shows that Halliburton is charging $2.64 for a gallon of fuel it imports from Kuwait and $1.24 per gallon for fuel from Turkey.

[. . .]

She said the contract was also expensive because it was hard to find a company with the trucks necessary to move the fuel, and because Halliburton is only able to negotiate a 30-day contract for fuel. "It is not as simple as dropping by a service station for a fill-up," she said.

A spokesman for the Army Corps of Engineers, Bob Faletti, also defended the price of imported fuel.

"Everyone is talking about high costs, but no one is talking about the dangers, or the number of fuel trucks that have been blown up," Mr. Faletti said. "That's the reason it is so expensive."

Yeah, and we all know those snipers and suicide bombers out there have been oh so discriminate in their target selection thus far, huh? They're singling out Halliburton trucks . . . riiiiiight. War profiteering? What war profiteering?

Iraqi's state oil company, SOMO, pays 96 cents a gallon to bring in gas, which includes the cost of gasoline and transportation costs, the aides to Mr. Waxman said. The gasoline transported by SOMO — and by Halliburton's subcontractor — are delivered to the same depots in Iraq and often use the same military escorts.

The Pentagon's Defense Energy Support Center pays $1.08 to $1.19 per gallon for the gas it imports from Kuwait, Congressional aides said. That includes the price of the gas and its transportation costs.

The money for Halliburton's gas contract has come principally from the United Nations oil-for-food program, though some of the costs have been borne by American taxpayers. In the appropriations bill signed by Mr. Bush last month, taxpayers will subsidize all gas importation costs beginning early next year.

Goodie!!

This is Really Good

"The problem today is the apparent impossibility of unifying world politics, of mediating between the polycentricity of our everyday political practice and the utopian horizon of a universally liberated humanity. It is not that we are without utopia, but that we are without paths to utopia. And without a path towards it, without concrete and practical mediation in our field of experience, utopia becomes a sickness." (Paul Ricoeur, "Myth As the Bearer of Possible Worlds," in Dialogues with Contemporary Continental Thinkers [1984], p. 31)

Ricoeur's definition of 'utopia' is definitely distinct from its more popular use, but either way it's a great passage.

Welcome to Humble Home

The dollar hit a record low against the euro for a sixth straight day on Friday as investors sold in disappointment that U.S. job creation in November fell short of recent inflated expectations.

But analysts and traders said even if the number of new jobs last month reached economists' consensus estimates of 150,000 -- when just 57,000 jobs were added to payrolls -- there is little to stop the current dollar sell-off.

[. . .]

The euro rose steadily versus the dollar after the jobs data, reaching a new high of $1.2177 (EUR=), according to Reuters data, before dipping to $1.2160, still up 0.60 percent on the day.

[. . .]

Sterling rose to $1.7315 (GBP=), a gain of 0.33 percent and just shy of a fresh 5-year high.

Doubts remain about the dollar's ability to benefit from robust U.S. economic data, barring the disappointment from the jobs report, with many in the market convinced that a recovering economy will do little to help the United States fund its deteriorating current account deficit.

I don't know what any of this really means in the long-run -- be it macro- or microeconomically (for that, go here -- but I do know that it has really sucked the past couple of years paying my tuition from a U.S. checking account.

For my friends visiting me in February, bookmark this. It'll save you the confusion when you look at your bank statement in March.

For the Lack of a Better Gift

The New York Times has a few gift-giving options for all you readers out there. I've not yet read any of the tomes on their Best Books of 2003 list, but will gladly accept anybody's generous offer to buy me a copy of Jonathan Lethem's newest.

Excuse [2]

Oh, and should you need an excuse to never for a moment entertain the notion of changing your citizenship -- or, conversely, of getting the hell of Dodge now while you can and never returning -- consider the case of Canadian citizen, Maher Arar.

The United States can't guarantee there won't be a repeat of the Maher Arar deportation case, the American ambassador said today.

Paul Cellucci, commenting after speaking to a conference on Canada-U.S relations, said that the United States respects the Canadian passport, but reserves the right to act unilaterally when it sees a need to protect its security.

His remarks came a week after Paul Martin, the incoming prime minister, spoke strongly about the need to respect Canadian passports to prevent a recurrence of the incident in which Arar was arrested in New York and deported to his Syrian birthplace, rather than to Canada.

Arar, a Canadian citizen, spent a year in a Syrian jail, where he says he was tortured. He was released without charges in October.

The Americans said he was an Al Qaeda terrorist suspect, although he was never charged with a crime in any country.

It's mindboggling, isn't it, why our northern neighbors dislike us so?

A Healthy Excuse

Do you still need an excuse to truly despise George W. Bush and Co.? Look no further than Jonathan Chait.

Similarly, the Medicare bill, supposedly evidence of Bush's moderation, is in fact typical of his domestic agenda, which revolves around granting favors to powerful interest groups. Again, most of the major liberal and conservative think tanks opposed the bill. But the pharmaceutical companies were ecstatic with it: Not only does it subsidize drug purchases, it specifically prohibits the federal government from using its negotiating power to hold down the cost of the drugs it purchases. (Got that? Those who spend your tax dollars are forbidden from striking a good bargain with the drug companies.) The American Medical Association was brought on board with a promise to boost Medicare reimbursements. And employers received federal subsidies--more than twice what they requested--to help cover the cost of their retirees' health care. As Thomas Scully, the Bush appointee who heads the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, put it, businesses received "way beyond their wildest requests" and "should be having a giant ticker-tape parade." Perhaps deeming a ticker-tape parade unseemly, the Business Roundtable and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce instead launched a lobbying campaign on the bill's behalf.

Note that all these measures would require the government to spend more money. But they triggered nary a complaint from conservatives. What they hated about the Medicare bill was the part about helping senior citizens buy medicine. When the government gives money to sick people, you see, that's incipient socialism. When it gives money to drug companies, doctors, and employers, that's the free market in action.

Things to Remember

At long last, after a vacated absence of what feels like two years, Glasgow's Grosvenor Cinema reopened this week. Praise Jeebus! It's quite a bit more posh than what it used to be -- then again, two years ago you had to contend w/ the mice and seats that occasionally had no cushion -- but it's still cheap during the week.

Sadly, I wish my reintroduction to an old haunt had been with a better, or at least more memorable, movie. Memorable, Love Actually ain't. Richard Curtis has yet to write a bad movie, but they are getting increasingly vapid. But then again, it's a holiday celebration of love -- if you can't do schmaltz during then, when can you? Whether you should, well, that's a different question altogether. Fifteen hours after the movie ended, the only thing I remember is the Bill Nighy line that I think my (male) friends here shall use for several months to come -- 'C'mon, let's get pissed and watch porn' -- Keira Knightley's ability to be hot, despite (because of?) having a curious-looking mouth, and Martine McCutcheon's willingness to be called, inexplicably, 'chubby' in nearly every scene that features her. Reasons to go out and see the movie if you've not seen it already? Er... I think not. Watch a Waterstones or AT&T commercial instead. Same emotional tug, if you need that to get through the holidays, less money spent.

A Quote In Passing

Speaking and writing is a crazy state of affairs really; true conversation is just a game with words. It is amazing, the absurd error people make of imagining they are speaking for the sake of things; no one knows the essential thing about language, that it is concerned only with itself. That is why it is such a marvellous and fruitful mystery -- for if someone merely speaks for the sake of speaking, he utters the most splendid, original truths. But if he wants to talk about something definite, the whims of language make him say the most ridiculous false things. Hence the hatred that so many serious people have for language. They notice its waywardness, but they do not notice that the babbling they scorn is the infinitely serious side of language. If it were only possible to make people understand that it is the same with language as it is with mathematical formulae -- they constitute a world in itself -- their play is self-sufficient, they express nothing but their own marvellous nature, and this is the very reason why they are so expressive, why they are the mirror to the strange play of relationships among things. Only their freedom makes them members of nature, only in their free movements does the world-soul express itself and make of them a delicate measure and a ground-plan of things. And so it is with language -- the man who has a fine feeling for its tempo, its fingering, its musical spirit, who can hear with his inward ear the finer effects of its inner nature and raises his voice or hand accordingly, he shall surely be a prophet; on the other hand the man who knows how to write truths like this, but lacks a feeling and an ear for language, will find language making a game of him, and will become a mockery to men, as Cassandra was to the Trojans. And though I believe that with these words I have delineated the nature and office of poetry as clearly as I can, all the same I know that on one can understand it, and what I have said is quite foolish because I wanted to say it, and that is no way for poetry to come about. But what if I were compelled to speak? what if this urge to speak were the mark of the inspiration of language, the working of language within me? and my will only wanted to do what I had to do? Could this in the end, without my knowing or believing, be poetry? Could it make a mystery comprehensible to language? If so, would I be a writer by vocation, for after all, a writer is only someone inspired by language?

On a Roll

If you're not a regular reader of Matthew Yglesias's blog you've really missed out the past couple of days. He's been on a very plain-speaking / punch-to-the-gut roll. E.g., (1), (2), (3), (4), and (5).

Letters to a Young Theologian [2]

Also, I do want to say that I think Foucault is starting with his end as well. He is quick to criticize the historical perspective that assumes we are moving toward an end. His complaint is obviously that they interpret the present with reference to this past that got us where we are and will take us where we’re going. And yet in his denial of a linear history he makes the same mistake, he starts with his end – that history has no purpose. Neither position can be proven or disproven, so both remain valid. (Note: I'm not using 'valid' in a philosophical, but in a popular-level sense.)

Am I right in reading what you write here as implying that your use of 'valid' is more a matter of 'you have the right to say (or believe) THAT', versus a declarative affirmation of a particular truth-claim? If so, I'm not so sure that your sense of the word, in the popular sense, isn't philosophically pertinent to the questions you're troubling yourself with. Or, to put in different terms, the philosophical / popular distinction you've established here might very well be construed as the necessary distinction between metaphysical and pre-&-post metaphysical understandings of truth.

An obscure nugget to chew on, readonly only if you have the time: to what extent do you think we might be able to say that 'validity' (or, 'truthfulness') arises out of the very practice of communication itself, and is not anything metaphysical or transcendent toward which the communication itself strives? That is to say, what if 'validity' / 'truthfulness' do not abide outside language-use, but only ever arise, individually and tenuosly, from the act of communication between one subject and an(other)? 'Validity', then, is the product of interpretive, communicative engagement: for instance, 'I understand you' = some rudimentary validity; 'I believe you' = another level of validity; 'I empathise with you = yet another. Validity, here, is multi-layered, conscious and unconscious, and profoundly subjective.

And yet, all the same, this validity is not relative, at least not in the sense that necessarily privileges that which is 'true for me' over that which is 'objectively' true. Too often, statements like the former have a similar metaphysical assumption about truth as those who might say (and truly mean it!), 'Faith in Jesus Christ of Nazareth, he who died and rose again, is the only means of having a relationship with God'. Being 'true' in either sense assumes a certain singularity -- be it immanent or absent. I.e., X is true . . . y is untrue; which is to say, x corresponds to some pre-determined category of truthfulness, and y does not. Even the most ardent of relativists, one who says everything is true (and thus it doesn't matter what one believes), is implicitly returning to this very same assumption, as she invariably makes an exclusivist claim about the fact that everything is true. I.e., anyone who says everything is not true, is wrong. This, of course, just brings you back to saying, in essence, x [relativism] is true . . . y [non-relativism] is false.

It is difficult to wiggle your way out of this kind of metaphysical, very logical, matrix, but I think it is definitely worth giving it a try. Perhaps you, implicitly / unintentionally, thinking something similar: that 'validity' is a rupture of the traditional conception of truthfulness as that which is absolutely singular, be it immanent (if you're a romantic) or absent (if you're dualist); that 'validity', maybe, perhaps, is a cornerstone of truth as communicative coherence / comprehensibility; that it emerges from, in the midst or act of, discourse, and is the assumed potential of this discourse that makes it possible (that is, comprehensible) in the first place. This is the kind of truth that most interests me -- the kind that takes the engagement of subject and object in the act of communication seriously.

There is more to say -- there always is -- but I'll stop until I hear from you again.

Best,
Brad

It's the Little Things

There are maybe only two people out there who read this blog who will find this intertesting at all, but I post it only as a cathartic proclamation that is finally finished! You see, these 1,200 words kicked my ass this week. I'd intended on writing it last week, but I was too doped up on meds to function physically (let alone mentally); and thought I'd bang it out on Tues. or Wed. of this, and then send it to the journal editor on Fri. Alas, no. Tuesday because Wednesday, and then Wednesday Thursday -- and I could only manage 125 - 200 words a day. Something kicked into gear today, finally, and the damn thing has finally breathed life.

* * * * * *

Strangers, Gods and Monsters: Interpreting Otherness. By Richard Kearney. London: Routledge, 2003. x + 294 pp.

In his two previous volumes, On Stories and The God Who May Be, Richard Kearney successfully sought, respectively, to mark the human experience as that which must tell stories and that desires to think the unthinkable impossibility of the God that (may) lie at the limit of the narrative imaginary. In this, the final volume of his 'Philosophy at the Limit' trilogy, he explores the ethical implications and philosophical potential of doing both. The self, he suggests, is fraught with, and defined by, the sense of its own ending, where its self-familiarity ends and the strangeness of others begin. Kearney's desire is that we might more effectively redefine this self-familiar self in terms of the limit-experience of strangeness, in order to avoid the alienating projection onto others of our own unconscious fears of ourselves. Citing religious history in particular, as well as examples from popular cinema like Alien and Apocalypse Now: Redux, Kearney argues here that all too often and far too easily the 'stranger' is made a sacrificial scapegoat, a monster that must be exorcised if the stable, certain self is to identify and safely secure itself. What is lost in this economy of redemptive sacrifice, he continues, is the recognition of 'the stranger before us as a singular other who responds, in turn, to the singular otherness in each of us. We refuse to acknowledge ourselves-as-strangers' (p. 5).

All of this at first seems to be a recapitulation of the by now fairly standard postmodern critique of the self-sufficient subject, as rehearsed by the likes of Jacques Derrida, Emmanuel Levinas, or Slavoj Zizek. While he clearly owes a great deal to such thinkers, he suspects their 'postmodern obsession with absolutist ideas of exteriority and otherness' of leading to a problematic idolatry: 'that of the memorial, ineffable Other', in which there is no discernible difference between the divine Good and the horrific Abject (p. 229). The key, he maintains, is to acknowledge the division between the self and the other without separating them so far that there is no relation at all. To do otherwise is to make ethical, responsible discernment impossible.

Kearney is at his best here when surveying the 'fetishising' of otherness and critiquing its ethical implications. With the overwhelming emphasis that postmodern criticism places on the infinite sublime that is a conditioning agent of knowledge, and thus not a subject of knowledge itself, its privileging of ethical undecidability (versus the moral stricture of being law-bound) is not surprising. For thinkers like Derrida, thinking the absolutely other, and the unconditional hospitality it deserves, 'marks a break with everyday conventions of hospitality governed by rights, contracts, duties, and pacts' (p. 69). As such, the openness of undecidability that is provoked by absolute alterity necessarily precedes the possibility of ethical discernment. In a turbulent world that has grown weary of theory and has been torn asunder by the ethical aftermath of 9/11, though, Kearney's query is especially apt:

How can we tell the difference between benign and malign others? How do we know . . . when the other is truly an enemy who seeks to destroy us or an innocent scapegoat projected by our phobias? Or a mixture of both? How do we account for the fact that not every other is innocent and not every self is an egoistic emperor? (p. 67)

Of these questions, he contends, much of postmodern philosophy remains disturbingly silent.

There must be, he suggests in response, a middle way between the 'romantic hermeneutics' of the autonomous self (at the expense of alterity) and the 'radical hermeneutics' of emphatic alterity (at the expense of the self). What is needed is a mediation between the poles of sameness and strangeness, which Kearney styles 'diacritical hermeneutics'. Here, the other is not 'so exterior or so unconscious . . . that it cannot be at least minimally interpreted by a self', but rather a debt 'inscribed within me as an uncontainable call from beyond' (p. 81). When that which is foreign is made more familiar, and that which is familiar more foreign, there is the potential of -- the necessity of -- hospitality to the other and the self's ethical discernment coexisting in the practical wisdom (phronesis) of narrative understanding.

All this, of course, stands in stark contrast to the primordial silence of the Immemorial Other. That which cannot be known or recalled, because of its absolute singularity, the Immemorial is invoked by Levinas to highlight the blank abyss, the darkness and madness, at the heart of the self's experience of itself, and thus also of the self's experience of history. To speak the other is, in this perspective, its unthinkable domestication; in fact, we would all be much better if we accepted the traumatic darkness at the root of our existence. It is the implication of the latter that Kearney finds most problematic, as it renders our cathartic mourning in the face of evil, be it apartheid or genocide, mute and ineffectual:

What the catharsis of mourning narrative allows is the realization that new actions are still possible in spite of evil sufferered. Narrative catharsis detaches us from the obsessional repetitions of the past and frees us for a less repressed future. For only thus may we escape the disabling cycles of retribution . . . . which estrange us from our power to act by instilling the view that evil is overpoweringly alien, that is, irresistible (p. 104).

If we cannot make something new and good of the evil in our past, in other words, what hope at all have we of achieving anything good for the future?

Kearney's ethical interrogation is, quite obviously, timely. Indeed, it is powerful, and often very persuasive. Nevertheless, if he does not necessarily argue against a straw man version of postmodern ethics, the weight of his arguments fall upon the hyperbolic implications of its rhetoric. This is most clearly the case in his analyses of undecidability, which he a little too readily accuses of being equivalent to indecidability. The point of the undecidable, rather, as a condition for the possibility of decision-making, indeed of storytelling, is that it marks the inherent, inevitable violence and guilt of the decisions we make and stories we tell. That is, in the face of the unthinkable absolute singularity that beckons us to act and to narrate, our actions and our stories do not simply fall short of representing the alterity of the other, but, more importantly, they cut us off from all the other decisions and stories that might have been enacted or narrated with the best of intentions. In not focussing on the decisive guilt at work in the ethics of undecidability, but rather the indecision he inaccurately espies as its result, Kearney's critique is weakened.

This weakness notwithstanding, Strangers, Gods and Monsters remains an invaluable ethical clarification of philosophers like Levinas and Derrida. Indeed, Kearney's presentation of a hermeneutical / narrative understanding of reality and truth, as that which actively discloses the possible, rather than that which is only infinitely deferred as a condition of possibility, is a significant, helpful corrective to the philosophical paralysis of postmodernity's residual Platonism.

Letters to a Young Theologian

Brad,

If you choose to believe in [a philosophical god (the Absolute, or Ultimate, or Real), Judeo-Christian / Muslim God, nameless Other, Emptiness, etc.] it is exactly that, isn't it, a choice? Can it be anyother but that, as there will never be a logical proof or argument that will make you feel settled -- it just boils down to the fact that you either believe or you don't.

I guess I really am asking this also because i want to know what you think of jumping completely into the abyss and saying there is nothing out there. I know several people who have done that, and I don't think they have any more answers (although I know there may not be any "answers"). They are just as unsettled in that decision as maybe I am in continuing an orthodox belief in light of some things I've picked up this semester. It seems both decisions leave you floating around in vertigo.

What do you think?

I can but say what I've said countless times on this blog: the less religiously inclined I become, the more I get drawn into questions of religion and belief. Why is this? Why do people continue to invite me to riddle their Christian faith with more than nails?

All this got me to wondering, when I should've been working feverishly; it got me to thinking a very unworked-out, quasi-mystical thought. Must belief / faith always be a conscious choice? I understand that self-consciousness, which we can't escape, behooves us to identify ourselves as 'choosers' of some sort; but I sometimes wonder whether this is the end of the story when it comes to religious assent. I remember once talking to a Hebrew Bible scholar about his reading of the prophet Jeremiah as one who, despite his best efforts, could do nothing else but be a prophet of YHWH; when he tried to look at something mundane, for instance, prophecy was still spoken. His number was called in that most enigmatic of texts, and his lot in life was unavoidable.

The email above, I think suggests a very similiar unavoidability. Namely, the unavoidability of (religious) assent -- be it the assent to confessional faith or the assent to irreligious faith. To nihilism. To secularism. Etc. (Cf., S. Zizek's On Belief). I agree that 'jumping completely into the abyss and saying there is nothing out there' provides no more stable ground than believing in God or Allah or Whatever as Absolute. Why, though?

Can it be, perhaps, that the implicit assent that marks one's religious or irreligious 'faith' can itself never be thought, consciously or not, in the singular? This is one of the more interesting aspects of J. Derrida's thinking, though lamentably not explored nearly enough. He says something very similiar here: that faith in whatever is, inevitably, a saying of 'yes, I assent to that'. Notice, though, that this saying is a present participle, it is being lived; it is not a 'yes' that is said, with a referent in mind, and thus referring to something stable and fixed (the bane of someone like Derrida).

In reply to my emailer's question: no, faith, even in something seemingly absolutely negative like, say, nihilism, cannot be nearly as stable, as 'absolute', as the Nietzsche (or Derrida)-quoting third-year philosopher might like to think it is. Rather, the saying of 'yes' in faith can only be achieved in a lived repetition; or, in other words, the saying of assent: 'yes, yes', an affirmation / confirmation of 'yes'. However, once you start such a repetition, as anyone who's ever dealt with basic semiotics might remember, it is quite difficult to know where or how stop (i.e., yes, yes, yes, yes, yes -- in this light, is faith all that different from an orgasm?).

A Sigh of Relief

Greetings, all.

Let me begin by saying something unequivocal and simple: Being sick blows. I've been nursing myself to some semblance of health since Sunday evening, with only sporadic moments of success. Four days into the brain-crunching, chest-constricting terror of it all, I actually kind of feel like myself today -- minus the ringing in my right ear, which I've actually kind of taken to.

Only a couple of blogworthy things at the moment, though. First, I briefly attended an anti-Bush demonstration in Glasgow. Even at my healthiest I'm not much of a protester -- so you should not be too surprised to learn that I did not (a) march through rush-hour traffic filled streets, (b) carry a placard or a sign with some sort of witty sexual innuendo referencing 'Bush', or (c) spend 50p on a tiny peace button. Oh, and I did not (d) participate in the particularly vile chant 'Who let the bombs out? Bush Bush Bush Bush!' You, my friends, know that there is no love lost between me and my country's leader, and I certainly didn't take offense at the personal attacks on him; but at the same time, most of the chants and such all seemed a bit too youthfully exuberant and naive -- they with their Che Guevara t-shirts purchased no doubt from the local alterna-shop conveniently located next to Ann Summers -- but more importantly, utterly uncreative. If I see one more effigy of Bush dressed like a Taliban cleric, I think I might just vote for him out of good ol' American spite. (Okay, maybe not.) But hey, kudos to the hundreds of pensioners I saw in the crowd. Genial, dignified, and intelligently earnest . . . good on ya. Protests are as much about public relations as they are about making the disempowered discontents feel good about themselves and reinforce their conviction that they aren't the only person pissed off about something. You get enough grey heads with money in those marches, and you have something that really sells to the masses -- well, obviously, not just grey heads, otherwise church attendance would be through the roof in Europe.

I waded through the sea of people and menacing-looking police horses, and made it back to the flat just in time to watch Scotland get the shit kicked out of them by Holland in the away leg of their Euro 2004 playoff, during which a valuable lesson was learned. I.e., watching an ugly 6-0 loss is made even uglier when your girlfriend, due to her allegiance to the lowlands of Europe, is, after each goal, pointing at you from the middle of the living room while slightly squatted, like a sumo wrestler ready to pounce, and bellowing in a demonic tenor: 'You knew it, Bitch!'

Nevertheless, my quiet life of domesticity returned, more or less intact, by watching a couple more episodes of 24 (season one). I'm really late on this particular bandwagon, but such is life when you don't have a television for nearly two years. Mindless fun, that 24 -- if you can get beyond those gaping chasms of disbelief it inevitably evokes.

Oh, and lastly, (and yes, I know this is a complete non sequitur, as it has nothing to do with me, but aren't you happy to know that blogging hasn't made me into a complete narcissist? doesn't that make me the coolest, best blogger of the bunch?), rejoice with me, in the imminent return of Berkeley Breathed to America's cartoon pages. And while you're rejoicing, relish the caustic wit that Jim Davis only wishes his Garfield-writers could muster. Don't let your paper get away with not running 'Opus' . . . make some noise if you don't see it on Sunday.

No Blood No Foul?

Fijians Say Sorry For Cannibalism

The Australian relatives of a British missionary killed and eaten by Fijian villagers 136 years ago thought two apologies were enough.

But yesterday they got a third, in the form of an elaborate ceremony attended by the Fijian prime minister, as villagers strived to lift a curse they say began with their ancestors' cannibalist crime.

The Reverend Thomas Baker was killed in 1867 at Nabutautau, a remote community high in the hills of the South Pacific island of Viti Levu.

[. . .]

Yesterday, they offered cows, specially woven mats and 30 rare carved sperm whale teeth known as tabua to 10 Australian descendants of Baker, a Wesleyan missionary.

In related news that isn't true at all, not in the slightest, not a word of it, Jews worldwide have begun deliberations as to whether the Christians, especially those who haven't been eaten by Fijians, are right about their culpability in that whole crucifixion of Jesus debacle of old. 'It's really been horrible public relations if nothing else,' Rabbi Yulli did not say.

Oh, but buck up, all you wrathful Christians out there. Take it from the Fijians, your vengeful God's still got a bit of spite in him. Don't you, Big Guy?

Village chief Ratu Filimoni Nawawabalavu said the village hoped the ceremony - which mixed ancient Melanesian pagan and modern Christian rituals - would erase the misfortunes they believed had kept them poor since that long-ago meal.

[. . .]

Past apologies haven't helped. The village last said sorry in 1993, when it presented the Methodist Church of Fiji with Baker's boots, which cannibals had tried unsuccessfully to cook and eat.

[. . .]

Villagers believe that since 1867 either Baker's spirit or old disapproving gods have made sure that modern developments like electricity, a school, piped water supply and other essentials most Fijian villagers enjoy have been kept from them.

It was only two weeks ago that a logging company cut a track to the village

All this goes to show: do not fuck with the Methodist Church.

A Silver Lining

All I can say of this is that I'm soooooo glad Katrien now has a job in Glasgow.

Not that long ago, Alain de Benoist wrote something very powerful:

The highest measure of democracy is neither the 'extent of freedom' nor the 'extent of equality', but rather the highest measure of participation.

Well, colour America's ruling party sold! That's right, never let it be said that the GOP doesn't encourage active dissent and critical dialogue:

The Bush White House, irritated by pesky questions from congressional Democrats about how the administration is using taxpayer money, has developed an efficient solution: It will not entertain any more questions from opposition lawmakers.

The decision -- one that Democrats and scholars said is highly unusual -- was announced in an e-mail sent Wednesday to the staff of the House and Senate Appropriations Committees. House committee Democrats had just asked for information about how much the White House spent making and installing the "Mission Accomplished" banner for President Bush's May 1 speech aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln.

The director of the White House Office of Administration, Timothy A. Campen, sent an e-mail titled "congressional questions" to majority and minority staff on the House and Senate Appropriations panels. Expressing "the need to add a bit of structure to the Q&A process," he wrote: "Given the increase in the number and types of requests we are beginning to receive from the House and Senate, and in deference to the various committee chairmen and our desire to better coordinate these requests, I am asking that all requests for information and materials be coordinated through the committee chairmen and be put in writing from the committee."

He said this would limit "duplicate requests" and help answer questions "in a timely fashion."

It would also do another thing: prevent Democrats from getting questions answered without the blessing of the GOP committee chairmen.

Oh, but don't worry, the White House assures us all:

"It was not the intent to suggest minority members should not ask questions without the consent of the majority."

I feel better already. Thanks.

Just When All Hope Seemed Lost

Outta the way, Jesse Jackson. Step aside, Jimmy Carter. To the back of the line, Jesus. Indeed, all ye mortals, thank the heavens, for Tenacious D have set their priorities, and life will never be the same again.

Proving the Caricature True

Unctuous. Chicanery. Cloacal. Vulpine. Specious. Cormorant.

Each of the above very well may be for some of us fifty-cent words, but I think today's Washington Post shows quite well that their primary referent may not be nearly as exotic.

When Congress this year decided to allow small-business owners, doctors, lawyers and real estate salespeople to deduct up to $100,000 from their taxable income for the purchase of a luxury SUV, Texas car-dealership magnate Jerry Reynolds could hardly believe his good fortune.

He took to the radio to spread the news, drafted a treatise for the Internet, and last week, the man known around Dallas simply as "the car guy" began advertising in the Dallas Morning News. "It's a loophole," the ad proclaims, "and this weekend, we can show you how to make that loophole big enough to drive a fleet of trucks and sport utility vehicles through it!"

It's enough to make me really and truly want to be believe in Hell.

Come Unto Me, Neo, All Ye Who Are Weak and Burdened

I just got word from a friend that he scored us some tickets to the Matrix Revolutions premiere down in the city centre. While I'm excited to see it, especially since I'll see something before most of you losers back in the States (heh), I'm slightly ambivalent.

A couple of weekends ago, I saw Kill Bill, and absolutely freakin' loved it. If, as Theodor Adorno suggested, there is no poetry after the Holocaust, I think a contemporary (though, admittedly far more shallow -- and I'm not making an ethical evaluation here) corollary might be that there are no more violent movies after Kill Bill. It was utterly shocking. I'm hard-pressed to think of a way that future movies can present violence in such a way as to compare to Tarantino's vision.

I tell you this for one simple reason: I only see the Matrix movies for the comic book, sublime violence. Nothing else. The mythology is pretty shallow and obvious, and the philosophy is of the popular variety that many a thoughtful person might ruminate upon whilst in the tub, stuck in an elevator, etc. So, let's not be fooled, The Matrix is about crazy violence, executed with absurd, electronically-attuned finesse. This, I think, is the reason I left Reloaded a little disappointed. The fights were, for all their bluster and boom, were pretty predictable (save for Morpheus' sudden ability to kick an agent's ass, and I certainly don't credit that as a good plot turn) -- plus, the movie wasn't helped by that bane of such movies: the moviemakers taking their mythology far too seriously, and thus forcing the gunplay to be muted for some insipid dialogue. Moreover, this is the reason I fear I may dislike the last installment. If the early word is true, while there's heaps of over-the-top shoot 'em up, Revolutions will revel in the Christological pap of its suggested pseudo-allegory. Invariably, you'll have people who will remark at the brilliance of this parallel -- evangelical Christians inviting their 'unsaved' friends, so that they might evangelize over a slice of pizza later, in hopes of ticking one name off their Christian hit-list; and, even more annoying, popular culture seminars in which cool black-clad professors push back their greasy, brown locks, and read the trilogy as some seminal moment in contemporary mythology. Urgh. Meanwhile, that'll be me -- at the pizza joint eating a ham calzone, or at the seminar scribbling down a grocery list -- rolling my eyes and awaiting the second volume of Kill Bill.

Anyway, for now, let's hope none of this is the case. Suspension of disbelief begins now . . . we'll just have to wait and see for how long.

A Song for the Day [2]

All around me are familiar faces, worn out places, worn out faces
Bright and early for their daily races, going nowhere, going nowhere
Their tears are filling up their glasses, no expression, no expression
Hide my head I want to drown my sorrow, no tommorow, no tommorow

And I find it kind of funny, I find it kind of sad
The dreams in which I'm dying are the best I've ever had
I find it hard to tell you, I find it hard to take
When people run in circles it's a very, very
Mad World

Children waiting for the day they feel good, Happy Birthday, Happy Birthday
Made to feel the way that every child should, sit and listen, sit and listen
Went to school and I was very nervous, no one knew me, no one knew me
Hello teacher tell me what's my lesson, look right through me, look right through me

And I find it kind of funny, I find it kind of sad
The dreams in which I'm dying are the best I've ever had
I find it hard to tell you, I find it hard to take
When people run in circles it's a very, very
Mad World

Name that band . . .

A Song for the Day

When I tell you that I love you, don't test my love
Accept my love, don't test my love
'Cause maybe I don't love you all that much

Don't ask what kind of music I'm gonna play tonight
Just stay awhile, hear for yourself awhile
And if you must put me in a box, make sure it's a big box
With lots of windows
And a door to walk through
And a nice high chimney
So we can burn burn burn everything that we don't like
And watch the ashes fly up to Heaven
Maybe all the way to India
I'd like that

All the ancient kings came to my door
They said, "Do you want to be an ancient king too?"
I said, "Oh yes, very much. But I think my timing's wrong"
They said, "Time is relative. Or did you misread Einstien?"
I said, "Do you really mean it?"
They said, "What do you think we come here for, our goddamn health or something?"

Everybody's waiting for the messiah:
The Jews are waiting
The Christians are waiting
Also the Muslims
It's like everybody's waiting
They've been waiting a long time
I know how I hate to wait, like even for a bus or something
Or an important phone call
So I can just imagine how darned impatient everybody must be getting

So I think it's time now
Time to reveal myself:
I am the Messiah
I am the Messiah
I am the Messiah

Yes, I think you heard me right
I am the Messiah
I was gonna wait till next year
Build up the suspense a little, make it a really big surprise
But I could not resist
It's like when you got a really big secret
You're just bursting to tell someone
It was sorta like that with this
And now that I've told you, I feel this great weight lifted
Dr. Nusbaum was right -- he's my therapist
He said get it out in the open

I spent ten whole days in Jerusalem
Mmmm Jerusalem
Sweet Jerusalem
And all I ate was olives
Nothing but olives
Mountains of olives
It was a good ten days
I like olives
I like you too

So when I tell you that I love you, don't test my love
Accept my love, don't test my love
'Cause maybe I don't love you all that much

Just thought I'd share.

Theology is a big con

Irregular blogs abound around the internet these days. Not surprising, I guess. What with a pretty damn boring World Series (bully for the Florida Marlins, though) and a war that looks increasingly the same each day -- 'getting better' if you believe the White House; 'not getting better' if you're breathing out your nose right now^* -- it looks like we're stuck with a Nelly's stolen jewelry and a quite probably feckless September 11 Truth Commission. While I'm inclined to wax eloquently about the travails of being a multi-millionaire rap-pop star, and being the victim of such a horrible crime, I'm going to resist the urge.

Instead, I'm going to do what most bloggers, myself included, do when they've been especially irregular in their posting. I am, first, going to offer an explanation:

I've been freakin' busy, a'ight!

Secondly, I will offer an example, admittedly a very very obscure one, of what has been keeping me busy. Turn away now:

V. The Character of Theology

(1) The poles of absolute chaos and order betray an inert uncertainty -- a dehumanizing, and perhaps even unethical, stasis

(a) E.g., The alleged fascisms of M. Heidegger and M. Eliade

(2) The tenuous path between these pole is that of a fictive / narrative telling, which, by extension, would rethink the practice and assumptions of theology.

(a) Focus on F. Schleiermacher's hermeneutics -- namely, the dialectic of psychological and grammatical interpretation -- and the importance of his praxis of interpretation.

(a¹) Note, as well, how this plays out in his Das Leben Jesu, and its consequent influence upon the other 'fictions' of God / Christ (e.g., A. Schweitzer, D. Strauss, G. E. Lessing, R. Bultmann, and P. Tillich).

(b) Rethinking the play between reality and possibility that is provoked by the ineffable, albeit material / textual, gap between the subject and itself opens theology, amongst other discourses, to an imaginatively adaptive characterization [re-telling].

(3) The discursive praxis of theology

(a) Herman Melville's complex theatricality marks a significant discursive model for the praxis of theological production: that of the 'confidence game'

(a¹) Cf., contemporary complexity theory (with its nineteenth-century roots in F. Schelling and G. W. F. Hegel) -- neither centralized nor chaotic, complexity marks the liminal moment between complete order and absolute chaos, a moment itself that is dependent upon the dual dynamics of emergent patterns that evoke comprehensibility and evolutionary adaptation.

(a²) Note how this plays out in the communicative ebb and flow of a 'confidence game' -- in both Melville's fiction and in contemporary culture (notably, 'the Spanish prisoner')

(a^2a) The confidence game co-opts memory as a pool of narrative possibility, and thus continuously adapts it -- quite often in shocking, spontaneous ways. Such discourse lends itself to the unexpected (i.e., adaptations, possibilities), while at the same time rending it open to further interpretation (i.e., emergent patterns of comprehensibility).

(b) Theological discourse, modeled on an imaginatively true confidence game, is bound to neither order nor chaos. With the theologian's god as multi-faced as the theologian and the student of theology, systematic order and nihilistic chaos would invariably cripple the constructive character of its discourse.

(c) The ostensible fact that chaos and order are the twin poles of a simplicitity that is not evident in human existence or discourse compels us to think and create theology in all its possible complexity.

(c¹) As such, what I suggest here is not a change of venue, per se, from the halls of academic theology to that of literature -- or even the backroom of casinos -- but merely a perusal of the playbill that, like Plinlimmon's pamphlet in Melville's novel Pierre, has somehow woven its way into the lining of our jackets, which we have been unknowingly wearing all along.

Ah, the joy of last-chapter outlines!

*********

^*Yeah, that's right, I discriminate against you mouth-breathers. Now, take a Tic-Tac and let's move on, shall we?

The Logic of a Bush

Oh, I get it . . . those 'foreign' terrorists in Iraq last week, last month, etc. -- not to be confused with its foreign invaders -- who were killing American G. I.'s at one or two per day with seemingly indiscriminate shooting and bombing were really deeply idealistic and hopeful of their cause, as opposed to those of the more deadly desperate ilk. Yes, it makes sense: the more that die, the closer the victory; the bloodier path, the greater the glory.

Hast ye, Christian soldiers, deadly onto war! Ask no question, be told no lie.

An Open Postcard to Me Mum

Dear Mum,

I have a few moments to spare before I make my way up to the university and finally, several weeks late, matriculate. I would prefer to put it off even longer, what with the silly fact that I have to pay them gobs of money when I do so, but the registry contacted me yesterday, god love 'em, wanting to know why I was receiving student loans if I wasn't even registered for the 2003/04 term. None of their bloody business, I say! Let me go in debt in peace, please!

All is well . . . surprisingly so. Got my passport back from the Home Office yesterday, with a brand spankin' new leave-to-enter stamp, good until May '05. This was a welcome relief considering what I just said about my lack of matriculation. Work, too, is coming along fairly well; though I bit off more extra work this year than I should've -- what with organising the centre, reading groups (1, 2, 3, 4, and 5), and writing several book reviews (1, 2, and 3). This, my third year, I've decided is to be my 'serious' year.

The reason, as you might've guessed, is rooted in some measure of my overwhelming vanity, as I was reminded the other day that my nonchalance about such things as, say, this whole damned academic enterprise, may not always be the best thing for my 'image'. I was talking to a friend of mine who is writing his thesis on technology and conceptions of the Self, and I guess I said something that was either very articulate or particularly astute; whichever it was, because it came from me, it surprised him and everybody else at our table. It seems that I am mostly regarded, at least by the postgraduates with whom I associate, as the first to arrive at the pub and the last to leave -- i.e., the most likely to destroy himself and all he loves w/ the drink and his ability to say really uncouth, alcohol-induced things like 'God, you Brits really hate your Jews, don't you?'

But, you know, I sometimes feel like I just can't be bothered by trying to try to impress these people, or at least this is what year-two B. would say (and what year-three B. will undoubtedly say again after his second double of uisge!). I realise that many of them will inevitably be my colleagues, and some my friends, and that I should try to make a good impression; but I've recently come to an even more important realisation that trying too hard at just about anything is actually kind of frowned upon in Britain. In other words, there are no rewards for all that stuff I was taught in various leadership courses whilst an eager undergraduate in America: namely, proactivity.

For instance, should you wish to register for classes when you are told to do so in the student manual or in countless emails from brusk-sounding administrative types, you will toil your day away in a five-hour queue. Or, should you submit your visa renewal application on time and with the necessary paperwork, as I did last year, the Glasweigan office of the Home Office will go out of their way to nearly lose your passport in the process. Or, should you aggressively position yourself as an important contributor in your departmental centre, you will invariably be second-in-line in every bid for substantial funding. Or, lastly, should you make an innocent call to British Telecom's customer service line, in hopes of making sure that you're not paying too much for calls to Belgium, you are summarily thrown into a vertigo of confusing conversations, disconcerting pauses in the midst of those conversations, and long waits on cold late-mornings with a stomach whose grumbling betrays the fact you've not yet eaten anything - all to learn that, 'we don't even understand why your line is working correctly'.

The Belgian is doing well. She, in fact, says 'Hallo' right now, issuing her trademark, childlike wave (ever notice how she makes a little semi-fist with her goodbye waves?) for all to see. For the most part, she seems to enjoy her job. It is a bit more of a call centre position than she originally envisioned, but the pay ain't bad for a short-term gig. Crap job or not, she's far more resiliant and filled with moral fortitude than I, so even if she truly loathed her job she'd handle it with considerable grace and aplomb.

You'll appreciate this, you who pray over my lost soul all the night long, in those darkest nights of the soul that only a mother with wayward children can know. I was telling a friend of mine the other day - a friend from way back in the days in which I wished to be a minister, those halcyon days before the 'fall', one who has, despite her own ministerial standing, considers me a friend - about how my fascination with theory has been supplemented, quite healthily I think, with a passionate enquiry of ethics, politics, and praxis in general. More significantly, though, so many of these 'practical' concerns are very similar to the ones I had before - though, admittedly, radically altered, tinged with a hopeful, creative, indeed a theological, atheism. Stuff like inter- and intra-religious dialogue, political dissent and compromise, and even eschatologically-charged stuff like 'care for the other'. This is a good sign, I suppose.

Anyway, I guess I've written far more than I thought that I might - and likely far more than you wished to read. Hope you are well almost as much as I do that I might hear from you soon.

Best,

B.

Cut this picture into you and me
Burn it backwards, kill this history
Make it over make it stay away
Or hate'll say the ending that love started to stay

There's a kid a floor below me saying brother can you spare
Sunshine for a brother old man winter's in the air
Walked me up a story, asking how you are
Told me not to worry, you were just a shooting star

Sweet adeline, sweet adeline
My clementine, sweet adeline

It's a picture perfect evening and i'm staring down the sun
Fully loaded deaf and dumb and done
Waiting for sedation to disconnect my head
Or any situation where i'm better off then dead

Damn, this really sucks: "Oscar-nominated songwriter Elliott Smith dead at 34."

You Mean 'Marriage Protection Week' Has Nothing To Do With Prophylactic Distribution?

Did you know? The glorious God-given sanctity of traditional, missionary-position marriage is under savage attack. The GOP is openly terrified that gays are galloping into the cultural consciousness on sequined horseback, lovers are shunning traditional weddings in favor of incense and anal sex and taiko drumming, children are weeping in the streets, neglected and confused and reading Harry Potter backward, wondering why Mommy scours the nerve.com personals while Daddy is off visiting his "sisters" in Bangkok.

[. . .]

Therefore, if we all work to "protect" marriage -- which apparently means lots of counseling and guilt-thick church meetings and bad sex and rampant loathing of gay people, coupled with your tacit agreement to bury your sense of self and endure yet another decade of unhappy marriage with someone you might not love anymore and who might be abusive or unhealthy or just plain depressing as hell -- society will be saved.

Come now, you know who I'm linking to, don't you?

Let's make this perfectly clear: Marriage does not need protection. Traditional marriage does not need any forcible recommitment by right-wing Christian zealots who try to force everyone into little shiny happy heterosexual SUV-sized boxes of sameness and sanctimony and bad rented tuxedos and engraved gravy boats.

[. . .]

Marriage needs to be tickled until it screams. Marriage needs to be stripped down and sprayed with whipped cream and licked all over. Marriage needs to be blown apart with the dynamite of new possibility and put back together again in ten thousand different kaleidoscopic configurations, each one encouraged and celebrated and applauded, even those that don't involve ridiculously expensive cakes and tepid church ceremonies and the bride zonked on Valium as the groom slams another scotch to calm his nerves.

This is the only way. Evolve or die, honey. Because it's exactly when you try to force-fit love's modern, ever-evolving mutations into archaic, increasingly bitter boxes of ideology and Right wing-approved blandness and sactimony that the culture suffers most. Legislating love is never the answer. Hey, just ask your neighborhood Catholic priest.

So. Let us redefine this week. Let us claim it right back from the hounds of fearful conservatism. Let us call it "Shut the Hell Up and Get Your Damn Conservative Agenda Out of My Love Life Week." In fact, let us make it a month. A year. An agenda of our own.

Okay, how about now? No . . . hmm . . . oooer . . . well, just click the damn link and see for yourself (as if I didn't, without a hint or whiff of shame, already quote half of it!).

Ahh, there's aye a something

So an ever-increasing number of European universites are facing the financial reality that they're going to consider charging (more) tuition, eh? As we say here in Glasgow, with a tip of my hat one way to K. and another to my current loan provider, boo-fookin'-hoo. Keeping this in mind, my award for today's pure blethering skite (it's Glasweigian dialect day here at Silentio, if you couldnnae tell) goes to Humboldt University's own, Herr Thomas Sieron.

The prospect of tuition fees has caused dismay among students, many of whom already work to make ends meet. Student union president Thomas Sieron said that fees would be a disaster.

[. . .]

What, then, was his solution to the problem of university under-funding? "We don't have a perfect solution. Our perfect solution is to smash capitalism," he said. "The need to smash capitalism has become even more obvious over the past three or four years."

He's a right wee nyaff, that yin, intheno?

Seriously, though, there's something seriously short-sighted with this either/or reasoning; and, in truth, it seems like something that could and would only come out of a university (or, conversely, The Wall Street Journal editorial page). Compound the ivory tower / corporate scrum syndrome -- with its problematic dialectic of 'pure' Marxism set against its archnemesis 'pure' capitalism -- with a system in which it's not odd to see forty-year-old students who've never paid a dime for the education (or, hell, the course[!!!] they've no real intention of ever finishing, and this kind of mince is gonnae keep being spouted by more than naff Student Union presidents. (The tragedy being, of course, that people who might realise that 'purity' ain't what it's cracked up to be, and that finding a tenuous, adaptible middle-way between socialism and capitalism might be worth actually implementing, that is, non-[debt-ridden]-Americans, are probably hanging out in the Humboldt University Student Union coffee shop, thinking about switching majors for the fifth time.)

Reading this today was enough to neerly maek me gag on me Irn-Bru. Oh, there's aye a something.

Broken Promises

Whew, I sure am glad we have a president in the Oval Office who doesn't get illicit, icky blowjobs! Yes, I'm glad we have one tells us the truth! No exaggeration. No equivocation. No backpeddling. That's right, those days are behind us since Bush was anointed by his Saviour (funny, innit, Dubya's tendency to need a sacrificial, mediatory figure to take the full brunt of, or redeem, his fuck ups -- be it in his life, his presidency, or his faith?) as 'Leader of the Free Werld'.

Okay, so maybe not.

Fighting Aids was supposed to show George Bush's softer side. "Seldom has history offered a greater opportunity to do so much for so many," he said in his State of the Union address in January.

He has since reconsidered, deciding instead to offer a few more opportunities to the few. First he handed the top job of his global Aids initiative to a Big Pharma boss, then he broke his $3bn promise of Aids relief. And now there are concerns that he may sabotage a plan to send cheap drugs to countries ravaged by Aids.

I suppose one might be solaced a bit by Canada's resistance to the American position if it wasn't so inevitably ineffectual.

A Must Read

I want to be clear, so there is no misunderstanding here: Every single person who voted in this election who did not vote in the actual gubernatorial election in 2002 is a complete and total fucking tool. You could not have been any more used if you were a spent condom.

[. . .]

If you voted for the recall, you might have thought you were voting to boot Gray Davis out of office. But that's because you're a moron, easily distracted by sparkly lights and shiny objects. You were really voting to let small, inherently undemocratic groups run your state all the time, forever. The fact that you thought you were doing the former when in fact you were doing the latter suggests that you would have been more helpful in the governance of your state by hurling yourself off the Golden Gate Bridge and smacking into the bay below with a nice, bone-powdering swack. In addition to clearing out four million bottom-feeders from an already-overpopulated state, California might still have a government still nominally beholden to voters, instead of through special-interest control by mob rule proxy. Good job.

John Scalzi says all that really needs to be said about the California recall.

I'm Living Paul Auster's Life For Him

. . . which, for those of you who've ever read any of his stuff, might not be as unthinkable as it seems on the purpose. (You know, if Silentio should ever have an entrance fee (indeed, why would it though?) I think it would simply be that you read Auster's New York Trilogy.

Anyway, back to the point. Yes, I'm living Paul Auster's life, or at least that life rendered in quasi-fiction / semi-memoir in The Invention of Solitude -- or, more precisely, a paragraph, ripped out of its context, from said book.

When night comes, the electricity dims to half-strength, then goes up again, then comes down, for no apparent reason. It is as though the lights were controlled by some prankster deity. The electric company has no record of the place, and no one has ever had to pay for power. At the same time, the phone company has refused to acknowledge A.’s existence. The phone has been here for nine months, functioning without a flaw, but he had not yet received a bill for it. When he called the other day to straighten out the problem, they insisted they had never heard of him. Somehow, he has managed to escape the clutches of the computer, and none of his calls has ever been recorded. His name is off the books. If he felt like it, he could spend his idle moments making free calls to far-away places. But the fact is, there is no one he wants to talk to. Not in California, not in Paris, not in China. The world has shrunk to the size of this room for him, and for as long as it takes him to understand it, he must stay where he is. Only one thing is certain: he cannot be anywhere until he is here. And if he does not manage to find this place, it would be absurd for him to think of looking for another.

Yesterday I tried to report at fault with British Telecom, only to be told very politely but with a steady amount of angst, that I should not exist -- or at least should not be talking on the line that I professed to be using. My confirmation to that effect was not enough for the Customer Advisor with whom I was dealing, due in no small part to the fact that I called five minutes before he and the rest of his call centre cadre were set to clock out for the evening. Upon calling this morning, Customer Advisor #2 was so rattled by the mystery that she accidentally hung up on me after a fifteen minute analysis of the problem. Customer Advisor #3, who I reached after a twenty minute, wholly unsuccessful, endeavour to find a neighbour to call me, just to be sure I was in fact real, refused to believe there was a problem at all; she instead enquired whether I was happy with my British Telecom service. Of course, I indicated that I was quite happy with them as long as they kept providing me free service, which she tacitly indicated might very well continue because 'there's nothing I can do for you on this end. We will call you back at that number [the one that, allegedly, does not exist] when we know what's going on.'

In other words, it is a mystery. This matter of the telephone . . . this matter of me. Which is it, Paul?

In the interim, in the void between the moment he opens the door and the moment he begins to reconquer the emptiness, his mind flails in a wordless panic. It is as if he were being forced to watch his own disappearance, as if, by crossing the threshold of this room, he were entering another dimension, taking up residence inside a black hole.

Oh okay, thanks.

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A Blind Link

I've not read all of this yet, but the idea is interesting enough to make it worth a read. If you're a technophile and have an interest in political discourse, or at the very least realise that the way things are in the West's political landscape are not at all how they must be, you may want to check out Open Source Democracy.

Now that I think about it, let me know what you think, because I really have no idea when I'm going to get a chance to read the full sixty-some pages.

A Pictorial Depiction of Me At Any Belgian ATM

I'm loathe to admit it, but sometimes Jean Baudrillard is not a hyperbolic blowhard. In his self-announced age of simulacra, which I'm not as against as this post's opening sentence would suggest, sometimes the world of advertising truly is the place to look to get the best bead on what we all-too-blithely call 'reality'. To illustrate, I direct your readerly attention to this Ananova headline: Ban on Russian ads depicting euro having sex with dollar. Having sex, perhaps, or in my case, when either standing at an ATM in western Europe, or balancing my US checking account online, it is using the dollar from behind, à la the Wolfman of Freud ("this man is a Jewish swindler, he wants to use me from behind and shit on my head"). But, alas, you be the judge:

Incidentally, what the hell dance move did Igor "I thought the currencies were dancing" Maltsev have in mind? I wonder if he should be my new hero.

My New Hero

His name is Buffo the Clown, my friends. And there's nary a phone book around he's not prone to open a can of whup ass on. Stick that up your Grand Prize Game, Bozo.

A Short Introduction to the Valerie Plame Story

Just in case you've just jumped onboard the ever-growing Valerie ('you know, she's a CIA operative' Plame-scandal that is currently, finally(!), billowing out from the White House with the stink of mephitic gas, Juan Cole is here to help catch you up to speed.

While I'm On the Subject

While I'm on the topic of Iraq, not to mention America's worldclass ability to wage indiscriminate, myopic wars . . . maybe what needs to be remembered most is that we're still us.

We didn't lose in Vietnam. We weren't there to lose. By every conventional military standard, we won. Yet we fled. We fled from our own creation, when we could no longer deny its horror and its ugliness. And we fled from ourselves, when we realized that what we'd fallen in love with was a monster of our own creation, an unintended monster, but a monster nonetheless. And how fitting it is that, when we face the marble of The Wall, we see our faces reflected on the names.

We won't lose in Iraq. We won't be there to lose. And someday, when the time comes to design the Iraq Memorial, I'd hope for a fountain, a fountain and a pool, in front of The Wall.

So we can see them reflected there, too.

Back to Iraq

A friend and reader of Silentio recently asked me about my relative silence, lately anyway, on the situation in Iraq. 'Do you no longer even care?' were his words, I believe. I'm not sure if his question was rhetorical, an observation in the form of a question, or what; nevertheless, it did provide some incentive to point out that not only am I curious enough in general to read about Iraq, I care enough to post about it a bit more. My thoughts, I realise, are not the most helpful for most people. (Newbies to this blog, realise, please, that I'm not a primarily a 'linker', but a self-conscious obfuscator.) Fortunately, there's 'big media' to help us out. Having sunk their heads deep in the earth the past few months, lo and behold, many editors are now arising and greenlighting the kind of pieces that would not have seen the light of day six months ago.

Case in point -- the latest Newsweek cover story..

LAST FEBRUARY, retired Lt. Gen. Jay Garner was trying to put together a team of experts to rebuild Iraq after the war was over, and his list included 20 State Department officials. The day before he was supposed to leave for the region, Garner got a call from Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who ordered him to cut 16 of the 20 State officials from his roster. It seems that the State Department people were deemed to be Arabist apologists, or squishy about the United Nations, or in some way politically incorrect to the right-wing ideologues at the White House or the neocons in the office of the Secretary of Defense. The vetting process “got so bad that even doctors sent to restore medical services had to be anti-abortion,” recalled one of Garner’s team. Finally, Secretary of State Colin Powell tried to stand up for his troops and stop Rumsfeld’s meddling. “I can take hostages, too,” Powell warned the secretary of Defense. “How hard do you want to play this thing?”

Pretty hard. Powell lost, as he often does in the councils of the Bush war cabinet, and Rumsfeld had his way. Only one of the 16 State officials was restored to Garner’s reconstruction team. It was a petty triumph, but emblematic of Rumsfeld’s dominating, sometimes overbearing style. Rumsfeld was not a rogue elephant. In much of what he did, Rumsfeld himself was following orders. The hidden hand of the White House (read: Vice President Dick Cheney) was decisive in many of the behind-the-scenes struggles over postwar policymaking in Iraq. But President George W. Bush put the Defense Department in charge of both invading Iraq and rebuilding it after the war. Since 9/11, the secretary of Defense has been a brilliant war leader. Yet when it comes to making peace, he has been guilty of almost willful denial. His deep reluctance to use the American military for “peacekeeping” and “nation-building”—he scorns the very terms—threatens to wrest defeat from the jaws of victory in Iraq.

The rest of the article, though attempting to maintain that quintessentially American, jejune journalistic objectivity that I find particularly boring, is worth reading -- for the quotes alone:

At the State Department, Deputy Secretary Richard Armitage, Powell’s number two, fought bitterly with the Defense Department neocons, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith, the Pentagon’s third-ranking civilian. Armitage was convinced that the Defense neocons had spies at the State Department. “Bats, we call them. Bats,” said Armitage, in a colorful private harangue reported to NEWSWEEK. “Because they hang upside down all day, with their wings over their eyes, pretending they don’t see anything. But at night they spread their wings and fly off to whisper, whisper, whisper.”

[. . .]

“I’m sorry, but I just got off a phone call from a level that is sufficiently high that I can’t argue with him.”

[. . .]

On May 16, five days after he arrived in Baghdad, Bremer assembled the top American officials in Baghdad and announced that all ministries would be “de-Baath-ized” by removing roughly the top six layers of bureaucracy. The CIA’s Baghdad station chief demurred. “We’ll, that’s 30,000 to 50,000 pissed-off Baathists you’re driving underground,” said the senior spook. Bremer went on: the Army would be formally disbanded and not paid. “That’s another 350,000 Iraqis you’re pissing off, and they’ve got guns,” said the CIA man. Said Bremer: “Those are my instructions.”

[. . .]

On the ground, the Coalition Provisional Authority, charged with actually running Iraq until the Iraqis can take over, is the source of increasing ridicule. “CPA stands for the Condescending and Patronizing Americans,” a Baghdad diplomat told a NEWSWEEK reporter.

[. . .]

At least one old Middle East hand is a pessimist. Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak recently passed a message to Rumsfeld. It ran roughly: “There’s a 5 percent chance you get Saddam tomorrow, the energy goes out of the resistance and things get dramatically better. There’s a 5 percent chance a car bomb takes out the entire Governing Council, and things go to hell. In between those, it will get better over time, or worse over time. Right now, I say it’s twice as likely that it gets worse.”

'Why don't you write more about Iraq?', M. asked. I wonder.

Nearly Rested

I'm sure you all, all three of you, have been wondering about this for days now, so I'll begin by saying that, yes, my trip back to Scotland was fine. Time slipped by quicker than my wayworn friends cum chauffeurs anticipated while en route to Chicago. I tell you this only to flag the one marginally notable aspect of my travels back home. Should any of you ever feel behooved to take me to an airport, consider yourself warned when I tell you that I am not a fun passenger when I feel as though I might be late for a flight. (Just ask Pat and Julia.) Anyway, I finally got to check in about an hour prior to my flight, and was lucky enough to have a departure gate not too far away. By the time I emerged from my routine orifice inspection, I had a few minutes to pump up on the piety I never fail to leave on the ground just before a flight.

The flight itself was pretty uneventful -- a bit bumpy in parts, but short enough for it not really to matter all that much. Unfortunately, but certainly not unexpectedly, no sleep was to be had. Upon my arrival at 8.30 a.m., I was welcome by the Zoons clan, with K. clad in an enormous parka-like thing around her petite frame, last week's reward to herself for passing French.

Since then, life's been pretty non-stop. Deprived of sleep or not, I was a bundle of energy once we got to the flat, skimming through my midden of mail and making quick phone calls to verify the astonishingly miniscule outstanding bills. The standard, minus the 'astonishingly miniscule' part. Come 7.30, though, I was beyond wiped out. However, about thirty minutes earlier I'd begun a large Windows update download, and I was bound and determined to stick it out. I dozed off once, I remember, while watching the Australian women's soccer team playing somebody whose nationality I can no longer remember.

This morning was a layer of hell for which I was not suitably prepared. Hell #1 -- shopping, not simply browsing mind you, at Ikea. K.'s mom is a born-and-bred shopper. Holy hell, nothing escapes this women's shopping gaze. One can but guess that the only thing that helps things escape her grasp is her husband. A couple of hours after entering, we emerged with a suspiciously cheap dining room table, a full-length mirror, a little vanity-mirror thing for the bathroom (with requisite interior medicine cabinet), toilet paper roll, floor mats, shower and sink mats, a couple of other things that I, rejoicefully, do not have to remember because I did not pay for.

The good news -- it's not been entirely, or even mostly, bad -- is that K. got a job at the very first place, and only, place she's interviewed. Boy does it pay to have marketable skills.

Back to your irregularly scheduled, non-autobiographical blog tomorrow.

My Only Drinking Problem is That It Ain't Free

I am sooooo looking forward to getting back to Scotland on Monday.

A Slacker

Two posts with actual links in one day, that ain't bad, is it?

Man oh man, I've really been a slacker when it comes to blogging lately, haven't I?. I was on the verge of making up an excuse like 'pity poor me, I've been busy', but, let's face it, just about anybody who reads this blog, regularly or just in passing (esp. you, the one who has hit my site twice in two days in search of 'tennis hotties'), is working harder at that very moment than I do on a typical day. This is all the more true since I've returned to America. With the exception of a couple of mornings and evenings, I've been stripped of any inspiration at all (let alone the usual sense of abject resignation to type something . . . anything) to regale you with my wit and raucous good-naturedness.

And yet, strangely enough, lo and behold my time here in these United States of America is nearly at its end and I actually feel rejuvinated. It's not quite been forty days days in this here desert, but I think I'm on the verge of coming out a better, more bitter man.

In other words, Silentio, dear, leave the light on and have dinner ready -- papa's nearly home (i.e., strap in, strap on, and stay tuned!).

Fun While It Lasted . . .

Ah, remember the salad days of unfettered MP3 downloads? of free internet porn? (errr....) of more real email than Spam? when Webcrawler was your search engine of choice, for no good reason at all? when AOL plebs were relegated to twenty hours a month? Well, I do, and pretty soon I'll be adding to the list 'when I could sign online in Europe and buy a dirt cheap ticket airline ticket.' Sigh.

With Apologies to My Friend and Colleague . . .

Hey, all you interdisciplinary types out there with a sympathetic side towards religion, take notice. I'm not entirely sure what my role in this conference is. At one point, I was a co-chair; but at another point, more like a series of consecutive points, I kind of neglected to do anything for it. Indeed, this trend held through for most of this year, which has more or less been lost in the neo-alcoholic haze that is student-loan-funded life in Brussels. All the same, with or without my administrative contribution, the oblique biblical reference on the main page notwithstanding, this looks like it could be halfway interesting -- in the not-at-all practical way most people would invest in the term 'interesting'. The other half of it, well, looks like yet another academic circle-jerk. (Look for the DVD at your local Hustler shop next spring. If I have anything to say about it, the special features will be killer!)

Souvenirs, anybody?

I've only about a week left in the States, so I've been frantically getting all my requisite shopping done this weekend. Shoes and socks yesterday, jeans today -- all of which, surprisingly enough, are poverty-strickeningly (is that a word??) expensive back in Britain and Belgium. In addition to my wardrobe enhancements, there's also the matter of souvenirs. Any suggestions for trinkets of Americana that I simply must buy for somebody, anybody, back in the Old World?

Oh, and don't bother suggesting this:

It's on its way already. Your welcome, Katrien.

'Everyone I know goes away in the end'

Suffice it to say, we here at Silentio are hoping tonight that good ol' J. R. Cash is giving heaven a bit of hell. He is, as I'm sure you know, or at least have been told a good three dozen times today, already missed. In an age in which artistic sincerity is only as important as it can either be commodified, Johnny Cash somehow achieved both -- he, the millionaire-mythic 'Man in Black'.

Having long been a fan, not to mention one who operates a sporadically-updated weblog, I think I'm qualified, or at the very least willing and able, to offer up a few things I've learned along the way:

(1) Black is, indeed, slimming; as is a copious amount of barbituates.

(2) I, too, would snowball Jackson for June Carter.

(3) Pushing one's brother onto a circular saw, in hopes of emulating the tragic inspiration for your brooding disposition, while hardcore, just isn't cool and definitely won't get you an autograph.

(4) One good turn definitely doesn't always deserve another.

And (5) how to win friends and influence people.

RIP, Johnny.

A Bit More About Religion

Ah, would that more religious traditions / myths / narratives discover their own Douglas Rushkoff.

Because I can

"The sun is half the world, half everything, the bodiless half. There is always this bodiless half, this illumination, this elevation, this future, or, say, the late going colors of that past, effete green, the woman in black cashmere. If, then, New Haven is half sun, what remains, at evening, after dark, is the other half, lighted by space, big over those that sleep, as of a lone, inevitable sound, a kind of cozening and coaxing sound, and like the goodness of lying in a maternal sound, unfretted by day's separate, several selves, being part of everything come together as one." (Wallace Stevens)

More words.... We even sneeze them, you know: ahhh choo. "Ahh" who? "Choo" . . . chew. "Ah[,] choo[-choo].." Words upon words, skin upon skin, sand upon sand -- layer upon layer, all the way down. My, we're getting thick already -- or maybe it's just me. Maybe both. May[it]be neither.

Not surprisingly, I'm more enchanted by the night than I am the day. The day seems so promising and alive, and yet I find the prospects of either wanting. The night, however, is demure. She slinks onto the stage with grace, slowly, until she finally owns it. She holds no promises -- in fact, she rarely speaks. She speaks so seldom, she hardly seems alive. And yet, when she does sleep, truth and lie do not matter nearly as much as hearing her voice. She speaks softly, like a lullabye. And when she sings, she sings in a hush. And when she sings, we all become one without a face, hushed and hidden.

Oh, what am I talking about now? What am I saying? Down what path am I treading with these romanticised, idealised thoughts? More to the point, though, why are these paths I set you on only well-worn by previous exits - was it an exodus or exile? Are we, pray tell, headed to Egypt or Eden? Maybe a breather from this mysterious course is necessary.

Re: Mysticism

As much as I try to question my relationship with religion, it's probably pretty obvious to any regular readers that I'm still pretty consumed by the topic for one reason or another (there's a blog post, perhaps?). While I'm not inclined to, nor do I think most of you care to know, the specifics of what I believe and/or disbelieve, I thought I'd toss out a little essay on the topic, generally speaking, of mysticism.

* * * * * * *

What to do when words run out on you, off to another pen, another's lips? They're never our own, you know; they are forever, and forever have been, nothing but a haunting silence -- present only as a spectre. Words fail me.

"I who live by words am wordless when
I try my words in prayer. All language turns
To silence. Prayer will take my words and then
Reveal their emptiness."

So begins one of my favorite poems about prayer. If I don't do it often myself, I sometimes take solace that others do. This poem, which is not entirely distinguishable from the prayer its about, is a story and song of hope and healing. It is, on the surface, a story of peace and quiet:

"The stilled voice learns
To hold its peace, to listen with the heart
To silence that is joy, is adoration."

To silence?/./! -- need this be a simple statement, or also a question, an exclamation. Is it possible to be each? Is there enough breath, enough room on one tongue? -- though one may rightly suspect that the answer to this question depends upon who is asked. For instance, to interrogate the silence we identify as God, our question, statement, and exclamation is empty, indeed silent. What kind of silence is this?

"The self is shattered, all words torn apart
In this strange patterned time of contemplation
That, in time, breaks time, breaks words, breaks me,
And then, in silence, leaves me healed and mended."

A silent devastation; but, and this is the ineluctable question that haunts, is it a devastation that is seen, and if so by whom? To speak, particularly in prayer, though perhaps also in poetry, and maybe still in one's living and dying, is to betray one's self by speaking the unspeakable Word, heard only in a whisper, (in parenthesis), and which comes at a price: "Do no think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to brign peace but a sword."The Word of prayer, then, it slices and it dices, having itself been punctured and hung to die. Indeed, in speaking the Word, one shares in its fate, as well as, so it is sometimes spoken, inside empty, silent rooms, its resurrection.

"I leave, returned to language, for I see
Through words, even when all words are ended.
I, who live by words, am wordless when
I turn me to the Word to pray. Amen."

This, to me though, causes yet more problems. We arise to a world of words that can do nothing but fail. What, then, does this say of that which we see, if we do indeed 'see through words'? What, then, does this say of our world, of us? What else can words say but silence?

A spoken silence?/./!

I've been asked by several people about mysticism, my philosophical investigations often sounding as though they may indeed be so disposed (though perhaps merely interested). Its minimal acknowledgement notwithstanding, I think this poem is a pretty fair description of the Christian variety. To be truly mystical, however, to follow the trail of one's assumptions and, one's prayers and tears, one must be willing to err along the groundless ground of a radical silence that never quite heals, unlike what we find in the poem. That is, the promised healing is always ever a present we can never open. "Is there no balm in Gilead?"

Faith, it would seem, is certainly scary business. I suppose it could be regarded in a couple of ways: a tease, or the motivation to continue erring, seeking that which cannot be found, saying what cannot be said and hearing only silence, but never a telling silence, of the sort that most mysticism uncovers. The mystic's gift is one that cannot be opened. It is an impossible gift that faith continually experiences as the impossible.

It's enough to make you mad. -- and indeed it normally does.

I, of course, find this whole realm of (non)thinking very intriguing. Mysticism points to Absolutely Nothing, which is not to say God -- or at least gives it its all to do so; it cannot, in fact, point to any thing, not even Nothing because Nothing then becomes the possible, the thought. No-thing is what is sought, and sought it must be, and never found.

I've already said too much: mysticism is the experience of the impossible as impossible, thus inflicting the mystic with her wounding silence that proves to be too much. Words fail. She and the Word, the Christ of the Gospel-page, collapse under the weight of an indifferent silence, only to find life again, and again, and again.