A Rare Thing

It's rare that a little, teeny, petite blogpost about a blogpost (Klein, "Krugman on Krugman") can be so accurate a summation of (what Doug Henwood calls) what the people at The New Left Review call "the current conjuncture."

We began with an economic crisis that looked a lot like the Great Depression. But due in large part to the massive efforts of the Federal Reserve and the government, we pulled out of it, or seem to have pulled out of it.

Of course, I think people do understate the political work done by this administration simply to keep a Depression-ish financial collapse from sucking our entire society into a squalid crater. But the question for the people who govern us is: now that we have (maybe) "hit bottom," how, then, will we re-emerge? How long will it take to begin gaining ground again? And will we be a fairer society when we emerge, better-hedged against the asset bubbles and demand-side shortfalls that occasion these recurrent crises?

If the answer to that last question is "yes," I want to know how demand can be stimulated without rising wages, increased government investment in human welfare (i.e., government entitlements and government jobs) and, by extension, increased taxation of the wealthy? Will Democrats come to see that it is in their political self-interest to open themselves up further to charges of socialism, big-government, blah-blah-blah, if said charges arise while they are delivering actual benefits to voters?

Chris Matthews and Foucualt are both always right when they say that the burden of governing is heaviest on the 20th/21st century Left. If Ds win on the discourses of "health care" and "jobs," they can afford to lose on "socialism," because at that point, socialism'll be* just another (bleeping) tree falling in the (bleeping) woods.

*Actually, socialism already is a (bleeping) tree falling in the (bleeping) woods: at least in the northwest hemisphere. Go ahead and blame it on the whole previous century, or Stalin, or Mitterand, if that makes you feel better.

prisonship self-cleaning survey utensil

is it more precious - more presumptuous - to describe your dreams or your bowel movements in conversation with another?

do you ever describe either? do you never describe neither? to how many people? are the people you talk to about "elimination" the same people you talk to about being back in junior high but, like, with elephant hands or whatever it is you people dream?

aren't dreams waste matter, or dirt (i.e., "matter out of place"), even if we mean "waste matter" in the elevated manner of Julia Kristeva's "abject?"

bonus points: who's ever dreamed of going to the bathroom? who hasn't? high praise to anybody who has fallen asleep (and dreamed a memorable dream) while going to the bathroom.

beyond academic emo: prisonship inventory of sentiments/commodities

one of the things that stinks about giving advice is how platitudinous, catch-all and relatively hollow our hard-earned lessons sound when churned out in sentence-form. thus, you'll understand how i half-grimaced, half-mewed long ago when a certain family member told me earnestly how

things seem like they're going great guns for you, Pat. and that's really great. I'm proud. and you need to really make sure you enjoy these times, Pat. cuz it's sure as shooting that there'll be times when the world rains cats and dogs upon you. enjoy these times, Pat, cuz eventually times'll suck eggs, and, by extension, you'll suck, too.

"sure," i'd thought at the time. sounds reasonable enough - like a paraphrase of a parable from a Randy Newman song, or something. and it is reasonable - shit, it's probably even "true," (i'd thunk.) but that was all before the current conjuncture, when oddly enough, graduate school got hard again. (i know, who'd've thunk it? you could knock me over with a feather.)

now, i have a lot of uncomfortable things in my life, like everybody else: some things - by no means all - that are much more uncomfortable than grad school's sudden difficulty. but grad school is something tuff that is both "personal" and "general" enough as to be appropriate for weblogs (aka, "blogs.") so here we go with a thoroughoing personal inventory in light of this recent, panic-attack-ish element to "school," which once was a padded cell for holding-forth, but which is now a caged structure reminiscent of "Hell in a Cell."
Part 1. Problem Areas

1. Health and welfare? Oh no. I've had some sort of walking plague since I boarded that aeroplane last Weds. Clammy hands, cough, headache, shakes, sniffles, snot, phlegm, etc. All the rest (upset tummy, too!)
   
2. Social Encounters? Nope. Does Election Night count? I barfed.
   
3. Eating Right? More like, "eating out." 'Can't afford it, but also can't seem to stop, or, can't seem to take the time to cook.
   
4. Body/Mind, Work/Life Balance? Oh, p'shaw. My body is a two-legged sack of balloons. My skin is the consistency of a paper shopping bag, but it looks like a potato sack because there are tuffs of hair pasted on to the bag (, which holds balloons of various sizes).

But that's just the downside. See me, I gotta lotta upside in my life. Part 2. Upsides

1. Herself: But that's obvious. We're like the Footprints Prayer over here in the Brown House. Or Smith and Jones, in that Silver Jews number.
   
2. SonicYouth/SonVolt/Slint(/Springsteen?!?): update post soon.
3. Shoegaze: It matches the weather. In particular I've listened to the magnetic morning full-length thrice since I e-music'd it yesterday (even notwithstanding the american apparel-ish alb cover). Do you guys do the emusic? I'd like to, uh, monitor yr playlists and share recommendations with you.
   
4. Over-the-counter cold medicines: this has to stop. Not sure they help at all. I just like the plop-plop, fizz-fizz aesthetic. (Honorable mention: cough drops [not lozenges.] "Honey-lemon" and "eucolyptus," specifically.)
   
5. It's sweater weather: what? This post has 'emo' in its title. Do you need a road map?
6. Cardinology vinyl pack: 'love the t-shirt, 'haven't rocked the bonus 7" yet...comic book is awesome. Lengthy alb review coming soon. Commenter David, among others, received a warped 12". 'Mine has a surface scratch but no audible flaws.
   
7. Crime Novels: crime novels in particular, Ross MacDonald and Lawrence Block in particular. I'm going back to the well, even opting to crack the seal on what may be the last (?!?) of the Matt Scudder novels, certainly the last one I haven't yet read.
8. "Organizing Grievances" and organizing grievances: top-shelf!
   
9. The return of implicitly (not explicitly) lewd texts/emails/voice messages/ground mailings from evil r+b: how long until I start posting poems again, at this rate?
   
10. Chris Matthews: much to a lotta peoples' chagrin(s), including, sometimes, mine.
    
11. French fries: yeah, there's this place just a block away from the Brown House that makes, I think, the best french fries in Eugene. (Better yet, they come with a special "french fry dipping sauce" that features horseradish, but nonetheless reminds me of the famous white sauce" that accompanied the mozzarella sticks back at Shenanigans', where cool kids like evil r + b once glommed underage frat sodas.) Eugenians, which restaurant do you think has the best fries? I'm prepared to get exploratory about starch this Rainy Season.
    

so anyway, there's the nov 2008 catalog. what works for you when "times" are "tuff"?

The Games We Play(ed)

Conversation down thread leads me to ask what competitive drinking games did you all play when you were in the age range of 16-26? (I put it this way instead of "in college" because I went to undergrad late and in graduate school the only competitive drinking I did involved seeing which would last longer, the pain or my liver.)

I'll start.

High school it was quarters. We played full cup of beer, bounce the quarter in the cup of beer, assign the cup to be drained, recover quarter, repeat. This game was not great for me in that until I was 25 or so, I could never burb. Not on command, mind you, but at all. So after chugging a few brewhas, I was bloated like a guy with three or four beers' worth of carbon dioxide building up in his stomach. I later discovered speed quarters, which was very fun, and burbing, which is just practical.

Post high school quarters were still played, but other games came up. Does anyone know "three man"? You roll dice and when certain number combination come up, a mini game was played or a certain function had to be preformed. We usually had "categories" when an eight came up. The roller would call a category, say "cars" and you'd go around the circle and have to name types of cars. When one repeated or the person couldn't think of one, they had to drink. Of course, the three man drank every time a three was rolled. It sucked to be the three man.

We also played a very epic game called "New Kids on the Block." My friend Mark had a deck of cards wherein the face cards were the five New Kids. The game was played like a combination of rummy and poker, where you went around the table and had to take the card off the top of the pile or draw, then discard. You were trying to collect a high poker hand. If you thought you had it, you had to call "New Kids" and everyone had one more chance to draw to beat you. In this last round cheating was freely encouraged. I don't know how many times I asked someone if it would possible for them to "slip me a Joe, if they had it." The highest hand was an NKOTB straight, holding all the New Kids, worth ten points. Or in our parlance, 10 drinks to assign out as the winner saw fit. If you called "New Kids" and lost, then you automatically had 10 drinks and had to pray you weren't assigned the other 10. A drink was commonly thought to be an ounce, but less strictly enforced as the game wore on. It sounds lame, but no one who played New Kids failed to enjoy it. Games would go on for hours. I wish I could play it with you all right now.

What you got?

Saturday Night in 1993 Will Never Be the Same

MillerCoors ends production of Zima

1 day ago

MILWAUKEE (AP) — MillerCoors LLC says goodbye to Zima.

The joint venture between SABMiller's U.S. unit and Molson Coors Brewing Co. told distributors in a letter Monday that production of the malt liquor beverage was discontinued as of Oct. 10.

Chief Marketing Officer Andy England says the decision was due to weakness in the "malternative" segment and declining consumer interest.

He says distributors can get remaining Zima inventories most likely through December.

Distributors are being asked to put products from caffeinated alcoholic beverage Sparks on retail store shelves to make up for Zima's absence.

The brand came to the joint venture from Molson Coors, maker of Coors Light and Keystone.

h/t: AP

Moral Relativism

You all know that I am not a smart man, so help me out here.

Having sex outside of marriage is a sin, yes? But apparently, not that big of a sin.

From what I understand, abortion is murder, which is a huge sin. Big time. Not having an abortion qualifies someone to be vice president and definitely overrides the sin of having premarital sex.

But, volunteering to participate in a war of conquest and killing someone (be they combatant, or, as is more likely, innocent civilian) is not murder nor a sin.

Do I have this right? Because, if so, it seems to me that it is fair to say that the decisions one makes are influenced by a particular set of circumstances and what is "right" or "wrong" can depend on those circumstances or even a particular point of view.

Hmmm.

Have No Fear

I know it's not fair to pick on every wingnut who starts a blog, but this woman is actually published in a wide variety of places, including the MSM (at least according to her mini CV at the bottom of her webpage).

In a column about the dangers of drinking on the public - liberal, secular - college campus, Marie Jon wrote this paragraph, which I thought was the most hysterical hysterical paragraph I have read in a long time.

Binge drinking — excess for its own sake — is encouraged by other students. As a result, hospitalization of their peers for acute alcohol poisoning is becoming practically epidemic. It is not unusual for some students to down as many as twenty-two shots of vodka while in a dorm room waiting with their friends to start a weekend of partying. Poisoning resulting from the intake of such massive quantities of alcohol in a short span of time has become widespread on campuses across the nation. Approximately three hundred students die each year.

Twenty-two shots just pre-funking (as we called it in my day)? Not unusual? That's amazing. It's amazing in both the "I don't believe it for a second" sense and the "why 22 shots?" sense. Depending on how you measure a shot, that's either 86% of a fifth (1 oz), almost a whole liter (1.5 oz) or 1-1/3 liters (2 oz) of vodka. Not unusual. Before you go out partying. If this is the case (it is not), then I tip my hat to the college student of today. Thank God He made it so that one need not fear, if one has consumed the liquorous spirits before one partakes of the beer.

I'm sure Marie would like to cite her sources on this, but how to you link to Pastor Tim's lecture about the dangers of alcohol at the last youth fair at the church?

As for the Wii beer pong game, I want one and wouldn't this be a lot more sanitary than actual beer pong? But what the hell happened to quarters? I imagine as the economy continues to sink and money tightens, we'll see a return to a less equipment-intensive drinking regime.