Remora
Right after 9/11, Eric Boehlert published a nice compendious look at the WTC buildings.
His sources were agreed that the buildings were an exercise in elephantiasis, the bigger is better aesthetic of despots, pharaohs, and Rockefellers. Nelson and David were the men behind the WTC. The financing, the shady way the Port Authority suddenly had extra port authority to build the things, the running off of small merchants, the choice of an architect/drone, Yamasaki, were all about what NYC was in the seventies -- a sort of Trojan graveyard in which the buzzardly rich picked the bones, while the angry poor cried among them, scrapped up livings from the broken streets, and were instilled with the ethic of hopelessness. Yamasaki was type-cast: he'd processed modernism into a plutocratic pleasing tic, discarding its utopian beginnings, and distilling its totalitarianism into pure Brasilia; his own eccentricities simply made things worse:
"And then there were the unusually narrow office windows that robbed tower inhabitants of what should have been an indisputable perk: the view. Yamasaki was afraid of heights and decided in order to make everyone feel secure while they worked in the offices, the windows, set between columns, would be just 18 inches across, narrower than Yamasaki's own shoulder span."
Well, in this week's New York Obs, Nicholas von Hoffman goes on a rampage about the Towers. von Hoffman is one of those muckraking journalists who rode in on the sixties, re-discovering capitalism's black secret: profit has little to do with the economist's juiceless picture of it as a sort of epiphenomena of efficiency. No, profit is made, and the making of it, like charcuterie, requires a certain high imperviousness to the squeals of dying animals. Although way back in 1830, Balzac already understood this, the generation of sixties journalists seemed especially transfixed by the insight, which was not covered on any of the tv quiz shows they saw as kids. Hoffman went from writing for the Washington Post, I believe, to writing the biography of the ultimate American confidence man, Roy Cohn. Unlike Murray Kempton, who Hoffman has obviously thought about a lot, Hoffman doesn't really have that last bit of sympathy for the sinner. This is why he has lately sounded like H.L. Mencken -- not from the good period, but from the forties. Hoffman has spent the nineties in a state of perpetual irritation. Limited Inc had its own trouble with the nineties, the era of the mendacious Clinton, the end of welfare as we know it, and the heavy skewing of the wealth index to the top of the pile, (not to mention that sound (what's that sound?) in the background (everybody look what's going down) -- which turned out to be the bombing of Iraq) but Hoffman was irritable to a degree that even got on our nerves. We like the way he stubbornly remains unaffected by an afterglow of sentiment for the ruined towers, but we really mean unaffected. Here's the second graf:
"Never the same again goes the cry of regret. But why? And why should we want it to be the same? I am not, of course, speaking of the lives lost, yet the crime of Sept. 11 does not obviate the truth of the World Trade Center towers: They were a couple of ugly and ill-proportioned buildings of egotistical dimension and heartlessness. They had nothing noteworthy about them but gross altitude. It was by height alone that they drew attention away from the graceful Empire State Building, that old, fine-lined, Art Deco candlestick in the sky. The Empire State is a building worthy to be a symbol of a city, but the W.T.C. towers were two blunt, aluminum-clad hippo teeth stuck up in the air, symbolic of little more than the crassness and philargyry for which New York is known. They were Governor Nelson Rockefeller�s "Fuck you, everybody, I�m more powerful than you are�my balls are bigger and my dick swings a larger arc than yours."
More in that vein pours out of his pen. I don't know about the dick swinging a larger arc, although it is a very rat pack image -- the early seventies, you will remember, were immortalized by such White House sayings as Spiro Agnew's threatening to put Katie Graham's "tits in a wringer.' This is what you get when you unleash gin and Hugh Hefner on the 50s college male population, then follow up with a decade of luscious stories of flower girls giving it up for free, I guess.
Monday, November 05, 2001
Sunday, November 04, 2001
Remora
Limited Inc plans, God willing, to take a trip on a plane again some day (correcting an earlier version of this post that pinged on Alan's grammatical radar -- see comments). Nobody, to put it mildly, has been calling for our services lately. Is media dead, or like Elvis is it out there in hiding, its death a huge fake-out? Well, that's a story to cry about at some later point. More relevant point is that we would like, really, not to have to confront villains on our flight. It is part of the wish list that includes not running out of gas, getting the dinner from the first phase of when the hosts are handing them out (I hate it when I have the seat that is just above the dividing line, so I get the dinner and drinks last), and not setting next to a whacko. Yes, I prefer flying undisturbed by gun or knife or even tweaser toting loonies stalking down the aisle, none of that. But securing airline customers from such unpleasantness seems to be a very low priority in D.C. right now. A high priority is making sure that companies like Argenbright Security keep raking in the dough. Here's the WP story
Shaping a Compromise on Airport Security by Ellen Nakashima and Greg Schneider
The grafs about Argenbright, apparently the nation's largest provider of airport security, strike a comic note:
"Last month federal investigators found that Argenbright was employing security workers who did not speak English at Dulles International Airport. When investigators gave a skills test to 20 Argenbright workers at Dulles, seven failed. The company was already on probation for serious security violations last year at the Philadelphia airport, for which it paid $2.3 million in fines and restitution and several managers went to jail.
"Argenbright Security was founded in Atlanta in 1979 by Frank Argenbright, who sold the company in December to Securicor PLC of Britain for about $175 million. Workers from Argenbright were on duty at Dulles and at Newark International Airport when terrorists hijacked flights from those locations on Sept. 11."
The house repubs and our C-i-C Bushypoo seem to believe that the old system should be fluffed up like you fluff up the pillows for the guests, after which the attention will be off it, money will flow, and we can all go to sleep again. I sometimes forget that capitalism's unremitting focus on profit produces, in times of stress, a blindness to prudence ever surprising to the outside observer, or victim. Let's see if short term memory loss is the norm in Congress, or a mere aberration.
Limited Inc plans, God willing, to take a trip on a plane again some day (correcting an earlier version of this post that pinged on Alan's grammatical radar -- see comments). Nobody, to put it mildly, has been calling for our services lately. Is media dead, or like Elvis is it out there in hiding, its death a huge fake-out? Well, that's a story to cry about at some later point. More relevant point is that we would like, really, not to have to confront villains on our flight. It is part of the wish list that includes not running out of gas, getting the dinner from the first phase of when the hosts are handing them out (I hate it when I have the seat that is just above the dividing line, so I get the dinner and drinks last), and not setting next to a whacko. Yes, I prefer flying undisturbed by gun or knife or even tweaser toting loonies stalking down the aisle, none of that. But securing airline customers from such unpleasantness seems to be a very low priority in D.C. right now. A high priority is making sure that companies like Argenbright Security keep raking in the dough. Here's the WP story
Shaping a Compromise on Airport Security by Ellen Nakashima and Greg Schneider
The grafs about Argenbright, apparently the nation's largest provider of airport security, strike a comic note:
"Last month federal investigators found that Argenbright was employing security workers who did not speak English at Dulles International Airport. When investigators gave a skills test to 20 Argenbright workers at Dulles, seven failed. The company was already on probation for serious security violations last year at the Philadelphia airport, for which it paid $2.3 million in fines and restitution and several managers went to jail.
"Argenbright Security was founded in Atlanta in 1979 by Frank Argenbright, who sold the company in December to Securicor PLC of Britain for about $175 million. Workers from Argenbright were on duty at Dulles and at Newark International Airport when terrorists hijacked flights from those locations on Sept. 11."
The house repubs and our C-i-C Bushypoo seem to believe that the old system should be fluffed up like you fluff up the pillows for the guests, after which the attention will be off it, money will flow, and we can all go to sleep again. I sometimes forget that capitalism's unremitting focus on profit produces, in times of stress, a blindness to prudence ever surprising to the outside observer, or victim. Let's see if short term memory loss is the norm in Congress, or a mere aberration.
Remora
It is a barbarous place. Men are tortured by being confined for years to silent underground chambers. Some are cast into prison for violating taboos against using unclean plants, and left to rot the best portion of their lives away. Others, for petty thefts, can receive what amounts to a life sentence.
No, we aren't speaking of some Moslem republic in Central Asia -- we are of course describing the legal system of California, in many respects more regressive than the penal system of England, circa 1815. In such darkness, untouched by the recently much vaunted fruits of Western Civilization (Limited Inc is exaggerating -- there are some very sweet sex videos coming out of the Valley), a small but astonishing victory for reason was reported by the AP's David Kravets in this story:
Federal court throws out 50-year 'three-strike' sentence for shoplifter in California
lede graf:
"A federal appeals court threw out a shoplifter's 50-year sentence under California's "three strikes" law as overly harsh � a ruling that could lead to hundreds of challenges from defendants who received near-life terms for petty crimes."
further down, the casus and crux, a scandal to the Greeks and a stumbling blocks to our homegrown redneck element, who are no doubt even now petitioning for an end to the reign of the pernicious judiciary:
"[Leonardo] Andrade got 50 years in prison for stealing nine videotapes, valued at $153, from a Kmart. The court noted that kidnappers and murderers could receive less time than Andrade, who had a record of several nonviolent, petty crimes."
Of course, given the barbarity of a considerable portion of the electorate, which has sublimated its grandfathers' thirst for lynching into a penal code of a dense, complex ignorance, and a penal archipelago that has safely euphemized its systematic cruelties under such euphemisms as 'solitary' , no doubt this will be an issue on the hustings. How can our children be safe when bloodthirsty video thieves are allowed to prowl the aisles at KMart with impunity? We can just see the torches burning in the suburbs of Los Angeles, all the Day of the Locusts faces, the masks under the masks of reaction, like some Georg Grosz nightmare.
It is a barbarous place. Men are tortured by being confined for years to silent underground chambers. Some are cast into prison for violating taboos against using unclean plants, and left to rot the best portion of their lives away. Others, for petty thefts, can receive what amounts to a life sentence.
No, we aren't speaking of some Moslem republic in Central Asia -- we are of course describing the legal system of California, in many respects more regressive than the penal system of England, circa 1815. In such darkness, untouched by the recently much vaunted fruits of Western Civilization (Limited Inc is exaggerating -- there are some very sweet sex videos coming out of the Valley), a small but astonishing victory for reason was reported by the AP's David Kravets in this story:
Federal court throws out 50-year 'three-strike' sentence for shoplifter in California
lede graf:
"A federal appeals court threw out a shoplifter's 50-year sentence under California's "three strikes" law as overly harsh � a ruling that could lead to hundreds of challenges from defendants who received near-life terms for petty crimes."
further down, the casus and crux, a scandal to the Greeks and a stumbling blocks to our homegrown redneck element, who are no doubt even now petitioning for an end to the reign of the pernicious judiciary:
"[Leonardo] Andrade got 50 years in prison for stealing nine videotapes, valued at $153, from a Kmart. The court noted that kidnappers and murderers could receive less time than Andrade, who had a record of several nonviolent, petty crimes."
Of course, given the barbarity of a considerable portion of the electorate, which has sublimated its grandfathers' thirst for lynching into a penal code of a dense, complex ignorance, and a penal archipelago that has safely euphemized its systematic cruelties under such euphemisms as 'solitary' , no doubt this will be an issue on the hustings. How can our children be safe when bloodthirsty video thieves are allowed to prowl the aisles at KMart with impunity? We can just see the torches burning in the suburbs of Los Angeles, all the Day of the Locusts faces, the masks under the masks of reaction, like some Georg Grosz nightmare.
Saturday, November 03, 2001
Remora
Put the current deadlock in Congress in the growing list of things that haven't changed since Everything has changed. Tom Delay, who might be the best friend the Democrats have in Congress, pretty much kicked ass on the House vote that killed federalizing screeners. The real deal here is, why pay anything for defense of the Heimat when we could all just equip our private persons with guns? That obviously is in the Sugarland rep's mind, a mind forged in Texas and exhibiting all the qualities that make Texans proverbially obnoxious.
The Times story today quotes the usual airline officials saying that spending bucks on security is a huge priority, meaning sub voce that it ranks just below finding cheaper peanut packet dealers. And all the usual wonks say they have studied every aspect of the baggage system (the very thought of studying every aspect of the baggage system makes Limited Inc reach for our coffee and gulp a big caffeine laden swallow), and that basically, we are being screwed. Screeners from McDonalds, an antiquated bag matching system, and some airlines are training their pilots to use stun guns. Is this America, united, fighting against terrorism? Or is it corporations and Repubs fighting against decency and common sense? Okay, it is the latter, I'm not asking the tough questions this morning. Back thought has to be, they've done the plane strategy, surely they'll move on to the dams or nuclear power plants or something.
Here are two grafs:
"Critics note what they regard as a pattern of slow response by the government and airlines to air disasters.
Bag matching has been debated since the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Scotland in 1988. The new federal rules on airport screening that were scheduled to be issued in mid-September were devised after the crash of TWA Flight 800 off Long Island in July 1996. Implementation of the rules, which call for tripling classroom training for screeners, among other steps, was delayed for two-and-a-half years while the F.A.A. tried to figure out how to measure screeners' performance. The agency now says it has held off imposing the rules until Congress agrees on new security legislation."
Yes, infinite, infinite imbecility.
Put the current deadlock in Congress in the growing list of things that haven't changed since Everything has changed. Tom Delay, who might be the best friend the Democrats have in Congress, pretty much kicked ass on the House vote that killed federalizing screeners. The real deal here is, why pay anything for defense of the Heimat when we could all just equip our private persons with guns? That obviously is in the Sugarland rep's mind, a mind forged in Texas and exhibiting all the qualities that make Texans proverbially obnoxious.
The Times story today quotes the usual airline officials saying that spending bucks on security is a huge priority, meaning sub voce that it ranks just below finding cheaper peanut packet dealers. And all the usual wonks say they have studied every aspect of the baggage system (the very thought of studying every aspect of the baggage system makes Limited Inc reach for our coffee and gulp a big caffeine laden swallow), and that basically, we are being screwed. Screeners from McDonalds, an antiquated bag matching system, and some airlines are training their pilots to use stun guns. Is this America, united, fighting against terrorism? Or is it corporations and Repubs fighting against decency and common sense? Okay, it is the latter, I'm not asking the tough questions this morning. Back thought has to be, they've done the plane strategy, surely they'll move on to the dams or nuclear power plants or something.
Here are two grafs:
"Critics note what they regard as a pattern of slow response by the government and airlines to air disasters.
Bag matching has been debated since the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Scotland in 1988. The new federal rules on airport screening that were scheduled to be issued in mid-September were devised after the crash of TWA Flight 800 off Long Island in July 1996. Implementation of the rules, which call for tripling classroom training for screeners, among other steps, was delayed for two-and-a-half years while the F.A.A. tried to figure out how to measure screeners' performance. The agency now says it has held off imposing the rules until Congress agrees on new security legislation."
Yes, infinite, infinite imbecility.
Remora
Brent, of the Weblog review, sent us notice that Limited inc was being reviewed there today. We'd submitted in the hope of sweetness and light and blurbs. He seems enthusiastic enough about us to rank us just below a man whose claim to immortality is posting pix of naked gals on his site. This is not exactly the kind of applause we were shilling for. We like to think the comparison is with Adorno's Minima Moralia, or Peguy's Cahier; instead, the competition is with boobs on a stick. Oh how the mighty are fallen.
Further site specific comments. I've installed a comments code thingy, and we will see if it works this time. I noticed that my archives get that awful AOL dialogue box about do you want to continue using scripts, which is a drag. But I am hopeful I'll iron out the kinks.
Brent, of the Weblog review, sent us notice that Limited inc was being reviewed there today. We'd submitted in the hope of sweetness and light and blurbs. He seems enthusiastic enough about us to rank us just below a man whose claim to immortality is posting pix of naked gals on his site. This is not exactly the kind of applause we were shilling for. We like to think the comparison is with Adorno's Minima Moralia, or Peguy's Cahier; instead, the competition is with boobs on a stick. Oh how the mighty are fallen.
Further site specific comments. I've installed a comments code thingy, and we will see if it works this time. I noticed that my archives get that awful AOL dialogue box about do you want to continue using scripts, which is a drag. But I am hopeful I'll iron out the kinks.
Notice:
Hey, if you read Limited Inc regularly, you might want to pitch some pennies in our pot. This is a call to all good men and women of conscience -- the rent's overdue, the electricity is overdue, and the liquor bills are insurmountable. So send us checks, money orders, or warm women's undergarments: Make your check out to Roger Gathman, 615 Upson, #203 Austin, Texas 78703. We'd say, hey, you'll feel better, but really, who cares about you? We just want to make it to next month.
Hey, if you read Limited Inc regularly, you might want to pitch some pennies in our pot. This is a call to all good men and women of conscience -- the rent's overdue, the electricity is overdue, and the liquor bills are insurmountable. So send us checks, money orders, or warm women's undergarments: Make your check out to Roger Gathman, 615 Upson, #203 Austin, Texas 78703. We'd say, hey, you'll feel better, but really, who cares about you? We just want to make it to next month.
Remora
LimitedInc has made known its shameless crush on the NYT's Gretchen Morgenson. Some have compared it to the howling of a mangy, dying dog at the full moon; others, more mercifully, have compared it to an aging groupy's vain attempts to tempt teen Christian rockers into a three-way. Be that as it may, Limited Inc does not have the same hormonal surge for Floyd Norris. Sometimes his column stirs up thought, and sometimes dust. Today's is a little warning about deflation, with the reminder that hey, deflation is what happens during depressions. Although of course that isn't wholly fair - the great deflation of the 19th century, as we all know, while immiserating peasants and artisans, was a great boon to the urban proletariat and all who made their bread out of the workingman's bones.
Well, Norris takes the opportunity to advise the Fed. Here are two relevant grafs:
"Lower interest rates this year have kept the housing and auto sectors from collapsing, as they usually do early in economic downturns. But housing has started to weaken. "It now appears that a downward path of housing prices will accentuate the negative wealth effect from the stock market's decline," said Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington.
A decade ago, Japan's central bank was slow to loosen credit after its bubble burst. There is no way to prove its reticence was the cause of Japan's malaise, but it did not help. It is a precedent that Mr. Greenspan surely recalls."
Well, not causing and not helping are a pretty vague jam to put in the gaps in the story of Japan's excellent bust. It is part of the superstition of the era that central banks operate a little switch when they tighten or loosen money - that they operate as the heart of the financial body. There the central bankers are with their waterworker caps on, turning faucets on and off, and here we are strung out along the financial circuits, getting just the right amount of juice. But Norris's quaint idea about loosening credit ignores the backstory: the Japanese housing market is differently structured than ours, and lowering credit when a real estate bubble like Tokyo's is busting might not make a whole hell of a lot of difference. I mean, to cover his ass on that point, Norris has to reference the speed of the cuts -- but when you cut as much as the Japanese did and the patient is dead, it is hard to see that the speed had too much to do with it. Capital doesn't appear magically when it can get a better rate of return elsewhere, which is why Japanese money fled to the USA. And really, when, as in the heyday of the Japanese insanity, Golf Club memberships are selling for five million bucks, you know the system has gone too screwy to be fixed by your friendly central bankers. Norris is citing the Japanese example to wave his finger in front of Greenspan's nose, as though the Fed hasn't been lowering its interest rate in the most aggressive fashion in, well, that Limited Inc remembers. The Fed's magical mystery rate depression, a hommage to obsessive compulsion, is bringing us into alien territory. When the interest rate gets this low, as Paul Krugman has observed, we definitely start unsettling the markets. The fed's low rates have been helpful in keeping the auto industry booming insofar as zero percent financing means the companies loose less on the transaction, but face it, this boom is has the sick room smell of the housing market with the S&L's in the late 70s -- one of those borrow low from us as we borrow high from other people, which eventually grabs and eats your ass.
LimitedInc has made known its shameless crush on the NYT's Gretchen Morgenson. Some have compared it to the howling of a mangy, dying dog at the full moon; others, more mercifully, have compared it to an aging groupy's vain attempts to tempt teen Christian rockers into a three-way. Be that as it may, Limited Inc does not have the same hormonal surge for Floyd Norris. Sometimes his column stirs up thought, and sometimes dust. Today's is a little warning about deflation, with the reminder that hey, deflation is what happens during depressions. Although of course that isn't wholly fair - the great deflation of the 19th century, as we all know, while immiserating peasants and artisans, was a great boon to the urban proletariat and all who made their bread out of the workingman's bones.
Well, Norris takes the opportunity to advise the Fed. Here are two relevant grafs:
"Lower interest rates this year have kept the housing and auto sectors from collapsing, as they usually do early in economic downturns. But housing has started to weaken. "It now appears that a downward path of housing prices will accentuate the negative wealth effect from the stock market's decline," said Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington.
A decade ago, Japan's central bank was slow to loosen credit after its bubble burst. There is no way to prove its reticence was the cause of Japan's malaise, but it did not help. It is a precedent that Mr. Greenspan surely recalls."
Well, not causing and not helping are a pretty vague jam to put in the gaps in the story of Japan's excellent bust. It is part of the superstition of the era that central banks operate a little switch when they tighten or loosen money - that they operate as the heart of the financial body. There the central bankers are with their waterworker caps on, turning faucets on and off, and here we are strung out along the financial circuits, getting just the right amount of juice. But Norris's quaint idea about loosening credit ignores the backstory: the Japanese housing market is differently structured than ours, and lowering credit when a real estate bubble like Tokyo's is busting might not make a whole hell of a lot of difference. I mean, to cover his ass on that point, Norris has to reference the speed of the cuts -- but when you cut as much as the Japanese did and the patient is dead, it is hard to see that the speed had too much to do with it. Capital doesn't appear magically when it can get a better rate of return elsewhere, which is why Japanese money fled to the USA. And really, when, as in the heyday of the Japanese insanity, Golf Club memberships are selling for five million bucks, you know the system has gone too screwy to be fixed by your friendly central bankers. Norris is citing the Japanese example to wave his finger in front of Greenspan's nose, as though the Fed hasn't been lowering its interest rate in the most aggressive fashion in, well, that Limited Inc remembers. The Fed's magical mystery rate depression, a hommage to obsessive compulsion, is bringing us into alien territory. When the interest rate gets this low, as Paul Krugman has observed, we definitely start unsettling the markets. The fed's low rates have been helpful in keeping the auto industry booming insofar as zero percent financing means the companies loose less on the transaction, but face it, this boom is has the sick room smell of the housing market with the S&L's in the late 70s -- one of those borrow low from us as we borrow high from other people, which eventually grabs and eats your ass.
Friday, November 02, 2001
Remora
It is a don't ask, secret service man, need to know, high security kind of time in these here States. The ever vigilant FBI, when it is not dispatching its finest to sniff out those anthrax villains (men who have schooled their avoirdupois in some of the tough, tough donut shops of Manhattan, heros who, in the past, have won such accolades as the world's longest search for the world's oldest mobster (goes to those Boston Pros for chasing the ever elusive Whitey Bulger, who if caught might, heavens, reveal little tidbits about what FBI Men were on his payroll in Beantown), well those guys are keeping a weather eye on the foreign element. As proof, we have in our prison cells an unknown cohort of foreigners arrested after the WTC and kept without legal counsel, or communication with the outside world, and given over, on ocassion, to those merry bashings prisoners and guards, in our name, have to righteously deal out to those with the telltale brown skin and the arabic name. Andrew Gumbel of the Independent has the story:
"More than seven weeks after the attacks, the Justice Department says it has taken about 1,100 people into custody but almost nothing is known about who they are, why they have been detained, what charges, if any, have been filed, and how many of them have been cleared and released. One man has died in custody, in New Jersey, and others are being held indefinitely on immigration violations."
Ah, and there's more in the bottom grafs:
"The scanty reports to have surfaced about detainees are not encouraging. Some are said to have been beaten � either by their guards or by fellow prisoners, with the guards looking on. In at least one case, a detainee appeared in court with fresh bruises clearly visible.
A Saudi Arabian student, Yazeed al-Salmi, reported that he spent 17 days in custody in San Diego, Oklahoma and New York despite being told early on that he was not a suspect. He said he was denied contact with his family, held in solitary confinement, prevented from washing or brushing his teeth and repeatedly humiliated by his guards. "They don't call you by name," he said of his time in Manhattan, "they call you 'f****** terrorist'."
You know, if this keeps up, maybe one of those intrepid D.C. liberals will grumble about it in a few years.
It is a don't ask, secret service man, need to know, high security kind of time in these here States. The ever vigilant FBI, when it is not dispatching its finest to sniff out those anthrax villains (men who have schooled their avoirdupois in some of the tough, tough donut shops of Manhattan, heros who, in the past, have won such accolades as the world's longest search for the world's oldest mobster (goes to those Boston Pros for chasing the ever elusive Whitey Bulger, who if caught might, heavens, reveal little tidbits about what FBI Men were on his payroll in Beantown), well those guys are keeping a weather eye on the foreign element. As proof, we have in our prison cells an unknown cohort of foreigners arrested after the WTC and kept without legal counsel, or communication with the outside world, and given over, on ocassion, to those merry bashings prisoners and guards, in our name, have to righteously deal out to those with the telltale brown skin and the arabic name. Andrew Gumbel of the Independent has the story:
"More than seven weeks after the attacks, the Justice Department says it has taken about 1,100 people into custody but almost nothing is known about who they are, why they have been detained, what charges, if any, have been filed, and how many of them have been cleared and released. One man has died in custody, in New Jersey, and others are being held indefinitely on immigration violations."
Ah, and there's more in the bottom grafs:
"The scanty reports to have surfaced about detainees are not encouraging. Some are said to have been beaten � either by their guards or by fellow prisoners, with the guards looking on. In at least one case, a detainee appeared in court with fresh bruises clearly visible.
A Saudi Arabian student, Yazeed al-Salmi, reported that he spent 17 days in custody in San Diego, Oklahoma and New York despite being told early on that he was not a suspect. He said he was denied contact with his family, held in solitary confinement, prevented from washing or brushing his teeth and repeatedly humiliated by his guards. "They don't call you by name," he said of his time in Manhattan, "they call you 'f****** terrorist'."
You know, if this keeps up, maybe one of those intrepid D.C. liberals will grumble about it in a few years.
Thursday, November 01, 2001
Remora
Lucky Limited Inc went out with a gorgeous woman to dance the Halloween jitters away last night. The revelers in the streets looked suitably bleery, and the first club Limited Inc went into, The Metro, was busy trying to become the club it will never be -- it's your two bar, 4 dollar Shiner set-up, some ragged sofas scattered around (with their suspicious cushions where you know somebody has recently spilled something but you can't see it? Cause of the shadows?), and a concrete dance floor below a stage where the band was oddly low energy, all the signs pointing in the direction of a much cooler club in, say, the East Village. The Metro shouts, we aren't really here. As for the low energy which the band was trying to wrestle into something vaguely interesting, well, some shake and bake rhythm was coming out of the drum section, but since Limited Inc was there to dance (and his partner, very Rita Hayward-ish in a stunning vinyl outfit, was ready to rhomba), and there was no scene, we made our way out of there and up to reliable Antones. Antones has lately become Limited Inc.'s spot. It wasn't crowded, but at least the band didn't sound like they'd doused themselves with barbs and scotches before the set. In fact, they sounded damn good, and exuded some South of the border throb that did Limited Inc a huge favor --
- it put a dreamy smile on the face of the beautiful dish he was with. The rest is dance history.
Lucky Limited Inc went out with a gorgeous woman to dance the Halloween jitters away last night. The revelers in the streets looked suitably bleery, and the first club Limited Inc went into, The Metro, was busy trying to become the club it will never be -- it's your two bar, 4 dollar Shiner set-up, some ragged sofas scattered around (with their suspicious cushions where you know somebody has recently spilled something but you can't see it? Cause of the shadows?), and a concrete dance floor below a stage where the band was oddly low energy, all the signs pointing in the direction of a much cooler club in, say, the East Village. The Metro shouts, we aren't really here. As for the low energy which the band was trying to wrestle into something vaguely interesting, well, some shake and bake rhythm was coming out of the drum section, but since Limited Inc was there to dance (and his partner, very Rita Hayward-ish in a stunning vinyl outfit, was ready to rhomba), and there was no scene, we made our way out of there and up to reliable Antones. Antones has lately become Limited Inc.'s spot. It wasn't crowded, but at least the band didn't sound like they'd doused themselves with barbs and scotches before the set. In fact, they sounded damn good, and exuded some South of the border throb that did Limited Inc a huge favor --
- it put a dreamy smile on the face of the beautiful dish he was with. The rest is dance history.
Tuesday, October 30, 2001
Remora
Limited Inc remembers with fondness Halloweens of yore - the costuming, the secret hurling of rotten eggs at the neighbor's prize Oldsmobile, the decorative touch with dog turds flambee and the ringing of the doorbell, giggles in the dark as we ran to the bushes -- such, such were the joys. But this Halloween we want to give our readers a special fright, some horror they can treasure up for the golden years. That is why we recommend this article by Kenichi Ohmae in New Perspectives Quarterly. The undead, monsters reassembled out of corpse parts, mad knifethrowers, phantoms of the opera, they might give one the ephemeral tingle, but there's nothing like sober economic statistics to bring on a dead faint and heart palpitations. The article is a scathing survey of the financial sleight of hand by which the Clinton administration contained infection from the Japanese slump. Old Doctor Bush, our cornpone POTUS, has poo-pooed the old Clintonomics, and, according to the article, he's about to get a big surprise. His advice amounts to the standard boilerplate about letting the marketplace sort out the dead from the living, the bankrupt from the solvent. The gov, in this view, should stand back and let unemployment do what it will, in order to have a healthier tomorrow. Well, Ohmae points out, lets say the Japanese government actually pays more than lip service to this insane advice. The zombies among Japanese banks and corporations might not just roll over, but but Doc! they might actually struggle to survive. Eek! Then Daddy Warbucks might have to put on his thinkin' cap. You can't smoke capital out of the holes, unlike terrorists, and since he has a complete moron for a Treasury secretary (did Limited Inc say that? Apologies all around. Not a COMPLETE moron. Really, what were we thinking?), we shouldn't expect common sense from that quarter. Well, in that potential struggle, these moribund investors will need resources, which means pulling massive amounts of capital out of investment positions here in the States. Here are two grafs with some striking claims:
"I believe that the Dow will decrease by one-third from its peak. When the Dow was 12,000, it would have been 8,000 without the influx of foreign capital.
Who will suffer the most?
The capital flight back into Japan will be close to $550 billion, of which $320 billion is in Treasury bonds. The Japanese hold approximately 10 percent of all outstanding US government securities-more than any other single country."
It is a little noted facet of economic theory that sometimes, it pays to be crooked. In the early 90s, American regulators and the Fed knew that technically big banks, like Citicorp, had suffered enough of a loss in the bursting of both the stock and real estate bubbles in the Heimat and the double whammy of the real estate bubble in Tokyo and its collateral effect in emerging markets that they were in default of the rules regulating banks. That is, they had to start monetizing assets in order to maintain balances against debt. But the Fed looked the other way, and eventually the situation solved itself. James Grant has written a nice and disgusted book on this, but it isn't that disgusting. Here we are facing another situation in which the better part of financial valor is to cook the books. We'll see what happens.
Do the numbers, and have a happy and safe Halloween, y'all.
Limited Inc remembers with fondness Halloweens of yore - the costuming, the secret hurling of rotten eggs at the neighbor's prize Oldsmobile, the decorative touch with dog turds flambee and the ringing of the doorbell, giggles in the dark as we ran to the bushes -- such, such were the joys. But this Halloween we want to give our readers a special fright, some horror they can treasure up for the golden years. That is why we recommend this article by Kenichi Ohmae in New Perspectives Quarterly. The undead, monsters reassembled out of corpse parts, mad knifethrowers, phantoms of the opera, they might give one the ephemeral tingle, but there's nothing like sober economic statistics to bring on a dead faint and heart palpitations. The article is a scathing survey of the financial sleight of hand by which the Clinton administration contained infection from the Japanese slump. Old Doctor Bush, our cornpone POTUS, has poo-pooed the old Clintonomics, and, according to the article, he's about to get a big surprise. His advice amounts to the standard boilerplate about letting the marketplace sort out the dead from the living, the bankrupt from the solvent. The gov, in this view, should stand back and let unemployment do what it will, in order to have a healthier tomorrow. Well, Ohmae points out, lets say the Japanese government actually pays more than lip service to this insane advice. The zombies among Japanese banks and corporations might not just roll over, but but Doc! they might actually struggle to survive. Eek! Then Daddy Warbucks might have to put on his thinkin' cap. You can't smoke capital out of the holes, unlike terrorists, and since he has a complete moron for a Treasury secretary (did Limited Inc say that? Apologies all around. Not a COMPLETE moron. Really, what were we thinking?), we shouldn't expect common sense from that quarter. Well, in that potential struggle, these moribund investors will need resources, which means pulling massive amounts of capital out of investment positions here in the States. Here are two grafs with some striking claims:
"I believe that the Dow will decrease by one-third from its peak. When the Dow was 12,000, it would have been 8,000 without the influx of foreign capital.
Who will suffer the most?
The capital flight back into Japan will be close to $550 billion, of which $320 billion is in Treasury bonds. The Japanese hold approximately 10 percent of all outstanding US government securities-more than any other single country."
It is a little noted facet of economic theory that sometimes, it pays to be crooked. In the early 90s, American regulators and the Fed knew that technically big banks, like Citicorp, had suffered enough of a loss in the bursting of both the stock and real estate bubbles in the Heimat and the double whammy of the real estate bubble in Tokyo and its collateral effect in emerging markets that they were in default of the rules regulating banks. That is, they had to start monetizing assets in order to maintain balances against debt. But the Fed looked the other way, and eventually the situation solved itself. James Grant has written a nice and disgusted book on this, but it isn't that disgusting. Here we are facing another situation in which the better part of financial valor is to cook the books. We'll see what happens.
Do the numbers, and have a happy and safe Halloween, y'all.
Remora
Another magazine is roadkill - not exactly eyecatching news as the Stock market finds the center cannot hold, and the ceremony of innocence is lost among postal workers nationwide. This magazine, too, it isn't exactly Lingua Franca. It's Famous Monsters of Filmland. Apparently the articles in this magazine exerted a formative influence on a lot of very bad directors in Hollywood, among them John Landis. So why don't these bad directors, who can eat off silver plate, could fill their swimming pools with 20 dollar bills, have spent tons, no doubt, to promote trade with Colombia (heh heh), why don't they shunt some ready in the direction of their childhood formative influence? Not a question that Caitlin Liu asks in her acticle:
Auction Could Kill 'Monsters'
Here are two grafs that plug into a very California feud:
"Last year, after a trial during which Landis and author Ray Bradbury testified for Ackerman [former editor/publisher of the magazine], a Van Nuys jury found Ferry [current publisher/editor of the magazine] liable for breach of contract, libel and trademark infringement. Ackerman won a judgment of about $500,000 and rights to the pen name "Dr. Acula." Ferry has appealed.
Shortly after the verdict, Ferry transferred his assets to his housemate, declared himself broke and filed for bankruptcy protection, court documents show. The judge found the asset transfers to be fraudulent because Ferry was trying to keep them out of the hands of creditors such as Ackerman, Avery said."
Why can't Limited Inc use these telltale bits to make a fortune, you know, in the screenplay trade? We confess, the color by number scenario could be put together by the merest hypnotized piker and surely sold to some narcissistic someone out there in Beverly Hills. Of course, in the process, avoiding use of the term "Dr. Acula," which would be wrong, just wrong.
Another magazine is roadkill - not exactly eyecatching news as the Stock market finds the center cannot hold, and the ceremony of innocence is lost among postal workers nationwide. This magazine, too, it isn't exactly Lingua Franca. It's Famous Monsters of Filmland. Apparently the articles in this magazine exerted a formative influence on a lot of very bad directors in Hollywood, among them John Landis. So why don't these bad directors, who can eat off silver plate, could fill their swimming pools with 20 dollar bills, have spent tons, no doubt, to promote trade with Colombia (heh heh), why don't they shunt some ready in the direction of their childhood formative influence? Not a question that Caitlin Liu asks in her acticle:
Auction Could Kill 'Monsters'
Here are two grafs that plug into a very California feud:
"Last year, after a trial during which Landis and author Ray Bradbury testified for Ackerman [former editor/publisher of the magazine], a Van Nuys jury found Ferry [current publisher/editor of the magazine] liable for breach of contract, libel and trademark infringement. Ackerman won a judgment of about $500,000 and rights to the pen name "Dr. Acula." Ferry has appealed.
Shortly after the verdict, Ferry transferred his assets to his housemate, declared himself broke and filed for bankruptcy protection, court documents show. The judge found the asset transfers to be fraudulent because Ferry was trying to keep them out of the hands of creditors such as Ackerman, Avery said."
Why can't Limited Inc use these telltale bits to make a fortune, you know, in the screenplay trade? We confess, the color by number scenario could be put together by the merest hypnotized piker and surely sold to some narcissistic someone out there in Beverly Hills. Of course, in the process, avoiding use of the term "Dr. Acula," which would be wrong, just wrong.
Sunday, October 28, 2001
Remora.
Sadness. Yesterday Limited Inc went to the rally gainst the death penalty. We saw a poster advertising it, and made a note to go. Limited Inc is not an inveterate rally-goer, but these days, these grim days, needed some poetic counter-thrust. And what better protest than to protest against the cruel, extensive intention to murder, taken by the state and its officers?
All rallies in Austin are as obsessed with the capital building as Moslem pilgrims are with Mecca, although for opposite reasons: instead of worshipping, we come to metaphorically destroy. Routine for this rally, like the anti-WTO rally, was: forces gather in that park on 5th street across from the post office, forces get pumped by a few speeches, forces shuffle down the sidewalk out third street, past the groovers who wave at us from the coffee shop and past Fado's and then left turn up Congress and after various and sundry chants have been tried out and the cops have motorcycled past so we know that they have motorcycles (I suppose this impresses upon us that if we suddenly get the urge to hurl bricks through windows, we WILL be run down by flashing blue lights), we all pool around the Capital steps and listen to more feisty oratory.
When we got to the park, there was a desultory group with some tables set up, and we mistakenly thought for a second that the march had already occured, because the scene looked so evidently like backwash. B-b-but no, the backwash was the group -- a pitiful collection of middle aged freaks like us, with a few tatted youths, and (best part of the whole thing) at least twenty African Americans-- usually the rallies we've been to are as pale as the chalky shores of Albion, and that always bugs us no end. There couldn't have been more than two hundred there. Instead of expressing a strong minority opinion, our march seemed to express an arcane eccentricity. It was pathetic. And when we got to the Capital, the feisty oratory was off-key. There was an address from a woman whose daughter had been murdered that was painful to listen to, partly because we felt she was being exploited, somehow.
Here's the rub: to my mind, it is alright to be for the death penalty if a member of your family has been murdered. We would be for it, then, like a shot. We're a revengeful little prick, all in all, but even if we weren't, we'd still feel we owed it to the victim to want to kill the killer.
I talked about this with my friend MB last night. Opposition to the death penalty, for both of us, doesn't depend on an act of forgiveness, but is rooted in a separate conviction, that the state shouldn't add another murder to one (or more, oftentimes) that has already been committed.
In that conversation, I learned that MB and Limited Inc have different notions of what forgiveness is. Forgiveness takes up remarkably little space in ethical theory. When Jesus, dying on the cross said, forgive them, they know not what they do, what was he talking about? Could they not be forgiven if they knew what they were doing? For MB, Jesus didn't rise to the occassion, which would have required that they knew what they were doing in order for the act of forgiveness to be perfect. As you can tell, MB has high standards. So is forgiveness an insight into some intellectual lapse? Well, that doesn't seem to fit the way I think of forgiveness. There's an article in the New Republic this week (but not online) that reviews Andre Comte-Sponville's "A Small Treatise on the Great Virtues," and the reviewer does a little conceptual analysis of forgiveness.
But to get back to my original topic. Perhaps we should have lobbed some bricks through windows. Or simply not marched. I know, of course, that the death penalty is as popular in Texas as football. I know the death penalty is wrong. I know that fact must, sooner or later, yield to conviction, if conviction is tireless enough. But this is a dreadful time to come out against death. So many people are eager to see it.
Which brings me to the odd article by Phillip Weiss in the NY Observer. Weiss puzzles me -- second graf of the article will tell you why.
Vietnam ended marriages. The husband was for the war and the wife was quietly against it. Maybe they were Republicans, and the wife turned slowly Democratic. She didn�t talk about it openly. The husband�s change of view came years later, and was reluctant.
That was before feminism, but it seems as if the same divide is occurring over the war against terrorism. I left the country in mid-October, but before going I was at several gatherings where the women ran down the jingoistic rhetoric of the Bush administration, and then the men drifted off and discussed the war in somewhat gonzo terms. "What do you think we should do?" I said to one friend. "Go over there and ice �em," he said. We shook hands. At a birthday party, a biker told me about off-the-books assassination squads that roam free in mountains in the Far East. We both grunted with approval. A third friend and I drank red wine before his stone fireplace and talked about how some action was required. An artist, but he seemed to be saying "Love it or leave it," and I found myself agreeing."
Is Weiss serious? The article goes on to quote dissenting e-mails from his wife, who must wonder at that lede. And what to make of that "shaking hands" scene. Is the frat boy in Weiss coming out, or what?
Sadness. Yesterday Limited Inc went to the rally gainst the death penalty. We saw a poster advertising it, and made a note to go. Limited Inc is not an inveterate rally-goer, but these days, these grim days, needed some poetic counter-thrust. And what better protest than to protest against the cruel, extensive intention to murder, taken by the state and its officers?
All rallies in Austin are as obsessed with the capital building as Moslem pilgrims are with Mecca, although for opposite reasons: instead of worshipping, we come to metaphorically destroy. Routine for this rally, like the anti-WTO rally, was: forces gather in that park on 5th street across from the post office, forces get pumped by a few speeches, forces shuffle down the sidewalk out third street, past the groovers who wave at us from the coffee shop and past Fado's and then left turn up Congress and after various and sundry chants have been tried out and the cops have motorcycled past so we know that they have motorcycles (I suppose this impresses upon us that if we suddenly get the urge to hurl bricks through windows, we WILL be run down by flashing blue lights), we all pool around the Capital steps and listen to more feisty oratory.
When we got to the park, there was a desultory group with some tables set up, and we mistakenly thought for a second that the march had already occured, because the scene looked so evidently like backwash. B-b-but no, the backwash was the group -- a pitiful collection of middle aged freaks like us, with a few tatted youths, and (best part of the whole thing) at least twenty African Americans-- usually the rallies we've been to are as pale as the chalky shores of Albion, and that always bugs us no end. There couldn't have been more than two hundred there. Instead of expressing a strong minority opinion, our march seemed to express an arcane eccentricity. It was pathetic. And when we got to the Capital, the feisty oratory was off-key. There was an address from a woman whose daughter had been murdered that was painful to listen to, partly because we felt she was being exploited, somehow.
Here's the rub: to my mind, it is alright to be for the death penalty if a member of your family has been murdered. We would be for it, then, like a shot. We're a revengeful little prick, all in all, but even if we weren't, we'd still feel we owed it to the victim to want to kill the killer.
I talked about this with my friend MB last night. Opposition to the death penalty, for both of us, doesn't depend on an act of forgiveness, but is rooted in a separate conviction, that the state shouldn't add another murder to one (or more, oftentimes) that has already been committed.
In that conversation, I learned that MB and Limited Inc have different notions of what forgiveness is. Forgiveness takes up remarkably little space in ethical theory. When Jesus, dying on the cross said, forgive them, they know not what they do, what was he talking about? Could they not be forgiven if they knew what they were doing? For MB, Jesus didn't rise to the occassion, which would have required that they knew what they were doing in order for the act of forgiveness to be perfect. As you can tell, MB has high standards. So is forgiveness an insight into some intellectual lapse? Well, that doesn't seem to fit the way I think of forgiveness. There's an article in the New Republic this week (but not online) that reviews Andre Comte-Sponville's "A Small Treatise on the Great Virtues," and the reviewer does a little conceptual analysis of forgiveness.
But to get back to my original topic. Perhaps we should have lobbed some bricks through windows. Or simply not marched. I know, of course, that the death penalty is as popular in Texas as football. I know the death penalty is wrong. I know that fact must, sooner or later, yield to conviction, if conviction is tireless enough. But this is a dreadful time to come out against death. So many people are eager to see it.
Which brings me to the odd article by Phillip Weiss in the NY Observer. Weiss puzzles me -- second graf of the article will tell you why.
Vietnam ended marriages. The husband was for the war and the wife was quietly against it. Maybe they were Republicans, and the wife turned slowly Democratic. She didn�t talk about it openly. The husband�s change of view came years later, and was reluctant.
That was before feminism, but it seems as if the same divide is occurring over the war against terrorism. I left the country in mid-October, but before going I was at several gatherings where the women ran down the jingoistic rhetoric of the Bush administration, and then the men drifted off and discussed the war in somewhat gonzo terms. "What do you think we should do?" I said to one friend. "Go over there and ice �em," he said. We shook hands. At a birthday party, a biker told me about off-the-books assassination squads that roam free in mountains in the Far East. We both grunted with approval. A third friend and I drank red wine before his stone fireplace and talked about how some action was required. An artist, but he seemed to be saying "Love it or leave it," and I found myself agreeing."
Is Weiss serious? The article goes on to quote dissenting e-mails from his wife, who must wonder at that lede. And what to make of that "shaking hands" scene. Is the frat boy in Weiss coming out, or what?
Saturday, October 27, 2001
Remora
The great images of prostitution in the 19th century - the century of Nana -- feed by unconscious and subterranian streams into the Storyville photographs of EJ Bellocq. Walter Benjamin would have recognized the spirit of the Passagen in the itchy copulations implicit in the professional smiles of girls reclining in desolate, straw cushioned cribs, or the sentimental decorations which cluttered the rooms of the higher class tarts, and the lost allusions to a debased and by this time comic myth of Oriental sensuality that runs right into the chinese motifs decorating the ceramic chamber pots under the often used beds in the quality houses as well as the porcelein bric a brac behind glass and lock and key in the overstuffed steamboat mansions along St. Charles from which the better, regular clients came. Ornament is crime, the Viennese Modernists said. Ornament is where the dream of Lustmord, sex killing, begins. Limited Inc saw Bellocq's work in Al Rose's book on Storyville. I was living in New Orleans then myself, and vaguely knew that Pretty Baby, the Louis Malle film, was based on this book. But when I looked at those prints, I knew I was seeing something mad -- something that Manet's Olympia hinted at. It was the madness of a man who can't get over what is between a woman's legs. He can't get over the sight, smell, touch of the thing, he can't get over how the vagina is the body becoming the body. Bellocq, of course, might never have read Nana, certainly didn't know Rimbaud, but this is what gives his work its power: he had to make it all up. The most startling photos were, of course, the ones with the heads of the women erased. The erasures are concentrated, jagged scribbles; they look as though they were done in some fury, figurative damage to a figure, the transfer of rancorous passion that still looks criminal. The story was that Bellocq's brother, a priest, must have worked over these photographs. Even then I wondered why a priest would be destroying the faces instead of the bodies -- what was the point? Now Lee Friedlander, who restored Bellocq's photos, is saying that he believes Bellocq himself did it. One of the Roses has a great article on the subject at Exquisite Corpse.
Here's a graf:
Recently, Lee Friedlander has re-examined the plates and tried to duplicate the scratching with a sample area, but the emulsion flaked off instead of scratching. The emulsion around the original defacement in some areas is folded over gently, and could only have done so when wet. Therefore, E.J. Bellocq probably defaced the negatives shortly after he developed them in the early 1900s.
In one photograph, however, a woman wears a carnival mask that has been incongruously positioned to hide her eyes, possibly echoing some ambivalence that made Bellocq scratch the faces from so many of the negatives. Yet the approach to the women's faces is not the only curious aspect of Bellocq's Storyville work. In one pair of photographs, a woman stands clothed in the first image in front of heavy wooden doors, but in the second image, she is nude, her face has been scratched from the negative, and a heavy couch has been pushed in front of the door. A locket, another repeating motif in Bellocq's Storyville work, also becomes visible in the second image. One of Bellocq's defaced nudes is actually shown examining her locket. But the pair of images mentioned above is not the only example of couches in front of doors in Bellocq's Storyville nudes. One such image shows clearly that there is already a lock on the door, and a cord from an electric light has further been wrapped around the lock in what looks like a final obsessive attempt at privacy. Why would Bellocq feel the need to use a couch, a lock, and a wire to keep the door shut in an expensive brothel? Rugs used as hasty partial backdrops and, in one case, sawhorses also suggest that Bellocq may have intended to drop the backgrounds from his images, vignette, or otherwise alter the images to imitate the saccharine romantic photographs and paintings he hung on his walls. In fact, one of Bellocq's portraits is clearly shown vignetted and framed in one of the two studies of his desk.
The great images of prostitution in the 19th century - the century of Nana -- feed by unconscious and subterranian streams into the Storyville photographs of EJ Bellocq. Walter Benjamin would have recognized the spirit of the Passagen in the itchy copulations implicit in the professional smiles of girls reclining in desolate, straw cushioned cribs, or the sentimental decorations which cluttered the rooms of the higher class tarts, and the lost allusions to a debased and by this time comic myth of Oriental sensuality that runs right into the chinese motifs decorating the ceramic chamber pots under the often used beds in the quality houses as well as the porcelein bric a brac behind glass and lock and key in the overstuffed steamboat mansions along St. Charles from which the better, regular clients came. Ornament is crime, the Viennese Modernists said. Ornament is where the dream of Lustmord, sex killing, begins. Limited Inc saw Bellocq's work in Al Rose's book on Storyville. I was living in New Orleans then myself, and vaguely knew that Pretty Baby, the Louis Malle film, was based on this book. But when I looked at those prints, I knew I was seeing something mad -- something that Manet's Olympia hinted at. It was the madness of a man who can't get over what is between a woman's legs. He can't get over the sight, smell, touch of the thing, he can't get over how the vagina is the body becoming the body. Bellocq, of course, might never have read Nana, certainly didn't know Rimbaud, but this is what gives his work its power: he had to make it all up. The most startling photos were, of course, the ones with the heads of the women erased. The erasures are concentrated, jagged scribbles; they look as though they were done in some fury, figurative damage to a figure, the transfer of rancorous passion that still looks criminal. The story was that Bellocq's brother, a priest, must have worked over these photographs. Even then I wondered why a priest would be destroying the faces instead of the bodies -- what was the point? Now Lee Friedlander, who restored Bellocq's photos, is saying that he believes Bellocq himself did it. One of the Roses has a great article on the subject at Exquisite Corpse.
Here's a graf:
Recently, Lee Friedlander has re-examined the plates and tried to duplicate the scratching with a sample area, but the emulsion flaked off instead of scratching. The emulsion around the original defacement in some areas is folded over gently, and could only have done so when wet. Therefore, E.J. Bellocq probably defaced the negatives shortly after he developed them in the early 1900s.
In one photograph, however, a woman wears a carnival mask that has been incongruously positioned to hide her eyes, possibly echoing some ambivalence that made Bellocq scratch the faces from so many of the negatives. Yet the approach to the women's faces is not the only curious aspect of Bellocq's Storyville work. In one pair of photographs, a woman stands clothed in the first image in front of heavy wooden doors, but in the second image, she is nude, her face has been scratched from the negative, and a heavy couch has been pushed in front of the door. A locket, another repeating motif in Bellocq's Storyville work, also becomes visible in the second image. One of Bellocq's defaced nudes is actually shown examining her locket. But the pair of images mentioned above is not the only example of couches in front of doors in Bellocq's Storyville nudes. One such image shows clearly that there is already a lock on the door, and a cord from an electric light has further been wrapped around the lock in what looks like a final obsessive attempt at privacy. Why would Bellocq feel the need to use a couch, a lock, and a wire to keep the door shut in an expensive brothel? Rugs used as hasty partial backdrops and, in one case, sawhorses also suggest that Bellocq may have intended to drop the backgrounds from his images, vignette, or otherwise alter the images to imitate the saccharine romantic photographs and paintings he hung on his walls. In fact, one of Bellocq's portraits is clearly shown vignetted and framed in one of the two studies of his desk.
Friday, October 26, 2001
Remora
If you sup with the devil, use a big spoon, as Tolstoy, or my grandmother, said. Limited inc is always confusing our grandmother with Tolstoy -- difference is, our grandmother sold Avon, Tolstoy didnt. In any case, the saying means, if you dabble in evil, evil will get ya. And so it goes with this military campaign. Bombing Afghanistan, or Kabul and other targets, had a certain military logic. Just as prelimary bombardments in any war target military hardware, vulnerable personnel, and sites which are strategically key, such as communications systems, so I suppose -- we all suppose, here at Limited Inc, having only the filtered information that our patriotic media has so wonderfully denuded of any content shocking to the naive American citizen -- that was the point of the first wave of bombing.
Now, however, the bombing is serving another, and less justifiable purpose. In fact, unjustifiable, I'd say -- nasty, illegitimate, criminal, these are other terms that come to mind, but I'm a bit saturated with invective right now -- and that is to remind the Heimat that the commander in chief is still ferocious and on point. We have to consider the neandrathal element in the populace. In fact, they find ululation, here and there, never so clearly as in this posting from Scott Moore at Slate.
"But regardless of the source [of the anthrax], if you believe, as I do, that the poison is being spread by al-Qaida operatives in the United States, you have to ask: What the hell are we waiting for in terms of killing the Taliban and al-Qaida in Afghanistan? From what I read in news reports, we�re taking our sweet time about bombing their front-line positions. There have even been reports that senior Taliban leaders were fleeing Kabul and other cities to go to the front lines because they thought they would be safer there. Wouldn�t round-the-clock B-52 raids reduce the front lines of the Taliban to something resembling the pile at 1 WTC in a matter of days? But we aren�t doing that because we hope �moderate� elements of the Taliban will defect and form a coalition with the Northern Alliance after the war. Let me offer a suggestion: Let�s worry about post-Taliban Afghanistan post-Taliban."
Notice the clever/unclever phrase, "reduce the front lines of the Taliban to something resembling the pile at 1 WTC in a matter of days?" As if there were anything in Afghanistan that, standing or ruined, was going to resemble the tallest skyscrapers in New York City. It is the American conceit that all wars are winnable if you use enough ferocity. It stands in troublesome disjunction with another American conceit: that we fight for moral reasons only. If, for instance, Scott Moore had said that he desired, like Charles Manson, or Jeffrey Dahmer, to play in the slimy viscera of dead Afghanis, he probably wouldn't have had his forum -- but of course, he keeps his bloodlust technologically condomed, so we think, sure, let's use our vast explosive capacities to spread jihad warrior gore over the mudhuts of Afghani villages. Something in me, however, thinks this isn't a good idea.
It seems that all involved confess that the military gain to begin with was small. Now it is miniscule. And there is this thing about bombs -- explosions pick out bodies randomly. So with each new bombing, we increase the amount of collateral casualties. We in fact move from warfare slowly but surely to organized terrorism, in the classic sense of spreading terror among an unarmed population. The Times headline story today has definitely turned Limited Inc against continuing this phase of the war. Here's the banal first graf:
"Huge explosions shook Kabul today on the Muslim day of prayer as United States jets kept up their bombing raids on targets in and around the capital, witnesses said."
Tickets go to the first caller who names how many NYT headlines stories begin with "explosions shook Kabul today"...
If the UN does intervene here, it might save us from ourselves.
Guardian Unlimited Observer | Observer site | UN set to appeal for halt in the bombing
If you sup with the devil, use a big spoon, as Tolstoy, or my grandmother, said. Limited inc is always confusing our grandmother with Tolstoy -- difference is, our grandmother sold Avon, Tolstoy didnt. In any case, the saying means, if you dabble in evil, evil will get ya. And so it goes with this military campaign. Bombing Afghanistan, or Kabul and other targets, had a certain military logic. Just as prelimary bombardments in any war target military hardware, vulnerable personnel, and sites which are strategically key, such as communications systems, so I suppose -- we all suppose, here at Limited Inc, having only the filtered information that our patriotic media has so wonderfully denuded of any content shocking to the naive American citizen -- that was the point of the first wave of bombing.
Now, however, the bombing is serving another, and less justifiable purpose. In fact, unjustifiable, I'd say -- nasty, illegitimate, criminal, these are other terms that come to mind, but I'm a bit saturated with invective right now -- and that is to remind the Heimat that the commander in chief is still ferocious and on point. We have to consider the neandrathal element in the populace. In fact, they find ululation, here and there, never so clearly as in this posting from Scott Moore at Slate.
"But regardless of the source [of the anthrax], if you believe, as I do, that the poison is being spread by al-Qaida operatives in the United States, you have to ask: What the hell are we waiting for in terms of killing the Taliban and al-Qaida in Afghanistan? From what I read in news reports, we�re taking our sweet time about bombing their front-line positions. There have even been reports that senior Taliban leaders were fleeing Kabul and other cities to go to the front lines because they thought they would be safer there. Wouldn�t round-the-clock B-52 raids reduce the front lines of the Taliban to something resembling the pile at 1 WTC in a matter of days? But we aren�t doing that because we hope �moderate� elements of the Taliban will defect and form a coalition with the Northern Alliance after the war. Let me offer a suggestion: Let�s worry about post-Taliban Afghanistan post-Taliban."
Notice the clever/unclever phrase, "reduce the front lines of the Taliban to something resembling the pile at 1 WTC in a matter of days?" As if there were anything in Afghanistan that, standing or ruined, was going to resemble the tallest skyscrapers in New York City. It is the American conceit that all wars are winnable if you use enough ferocity. It stands in troublesome disjunction with another American conceit: that we fight for moral reasons only. If, for instance, Scott Moore had said that he desired, like Charles Manson, or Jeffrey Dahmer, to play in the slimy viscera of dead Afghanis, he probably wouldn't have had his forum -- but of course, he keeps his bloodlust technologically condomed, so we think, sure, let's use our vast explosive capacities to spread jihad warrior gore over the mudhuts of Afghani villages. Something in me, however, thinks this isn't a good idea.
It seems that all involved confess that the military gain to begin with was small. Now it is miniscule. And there is this thing about bombs -- explosions pick out bodies randomly. So with each new bombing, we increase the amount of collateral casualties. We in fact move from warfare slowly but surely to organized terrorism, in the classic sense of spreading terror among an unarmed population. The Times headline story today has definitely turned Limited Inc against continuing this phase of the war. Here's the banal first graf:
"Huge explosions shook Kabul today on the Muslim day of prayer as United States jets kept up their bombing raids on targets in and around the capital, witnesses said."
Tickets go to the first caller who names how many NYT headlines stories begin with "explosions shook Kabul today"...
If the UN does intervene here, it might save us from ourselves.
Guardian Unlimited Observer | Observer site | UN set to appeal for halt in the bombing
Thursday, October 25, 2001
Remora
One Vincent Browne for the Irish Times has written a scathing newspaper column revealing a scandal of major proportions -- people on the Net were mean to him! In his first graf, he describes the response to an article he'd written, entitled Afghans victims of US terrorism:
"A Mr Nelson ... wrote: "I read your article and all I have to say is: go f**k you f***ing queer butt f***ing . . . I hope the US bombs Assolastan until every rag has been killed . . . Hope you get AIDS f***er".
There were tens of other such responses, in all 339 e-mails, almost entirely from the United States from people who had read the column on the Yahoo.com website, where it was posted. The response was overwhelming vituperation offering an insight into part of the mind of America at this time. Of the 339 responses only about 30 were supportive of the views expressed."
Mr. Browne goes on in the tone of shock I associate with schoolteachers asking, who threw that paperwad. He has either never written anything for the Internet, or has only transacted with the most high minded sites, say, the Wilfred Sellars Philosophy Portal. His last sentence is a good gauge of his mindset: we have either the unruly students over there, or the ones that did their homework over here. I especially like the "insight into the mind of America." Hmm, I wonder if Mr. Browne has ever been tempted to go to an Irish pub, and if he has, I wonder if he's ever strolled to the the Gents with a belly full. Now just Imagine him, dear reader, shaking off the excessive Harp, and surveying, with increasing consternation, the racism, the unwarranted, impossible and sometimes drawn suggestions re the female anatomy and its uses, and other scribbles indicative of the "mind of Ireland" at this time. Mr. Browne would no doubt tuck in and fly in the horror Christian shows in Pilgrims Progress for one of Satan's typical lures. Browne doesn't apparently know that between the ages of 12 to 21, there are a lot of boys out there, and they like nothing better than to say, "you f**cking c*cksucker", or use Assolastan (which just doesn't have the ring of the well beloved Assotollah of the hostage years). The prim, shocked tone, and the idea that the only correct response, indicative no doubt of the better sort, would be 'supportive of the views expressed" is the clincher -- I mean, this is the school teacher in a nutshell, this is the one it was so much fun, when I was in high school, to discombobulate -- the fart sounds coming from the back row, the stray spit ball, the furious threats to make all the class stay after school. It comes back to me in a rush, darling Clarkston High, which has proudly produced more than its share of illiterates and crack addicts. Join me now in a rousing hymn of the Pink Floyd favorite, 'We don't need no Education." Or no, don't. Just join with me in sending Mr. Browne a message.
Turning to the right, we have Andrew Sullivan, who seems to be thrown at me from all directions. Why is he famous and I'm not is the question many in my household ask. But let's not get into that. Two friends have recently sent me columns of his, and one of them was rather astonished at the flood she produced -- she said that my inexhaustibility on a subject where I was not being remunerated might have something to do with my lack of remuneration in general. This friend goes for the jugular, sometimes. Anyway, Sullivan, in a benign mood, turns his eye to the "loony left,' the knee jerk anti-Americans, the traitorous pink, and his eye alights, at last, on Christopher Hitchens, who Sullivan thinks shows some glimmering sanity, as he so manfully did about that outrage on the Constitution, Clinton's infamous bj, so that maybe, as these lefty cohorts fade away into the sunset, conservatives can grapple with respectable people on the left who agree with them at all times. The usual tripe, in other words. What I do think is interesting is the graf about Hitchens:
"One immediate response is to argue that the U.S. itself created Osama bin Laden in its war against Soviet communism. This isn't true--but even if it were, doesn't this fact, as Mr. Hitchens has argued, actually increase the West's responsibility to retaliate against him?"
Someone once said that in foreign affairs, as in love affairs, you always forget your next to last partner (okay, someone didn't say that, I said it, I just thought it sounded more sophisticated if I put in the someone said part). In the Gulf war, we turned on a dime from watching Saddam decimate Iranian troops with billions pumped into him from the Kuwaitis and the Saudis, and with our connivence in keeping his chain of material supplies alive, to Saddam as Hitler. Of course, the US didn't create bin Laden, they merely created the fundamentalist muhadjeen of the 80s, and then pronounced the ruins of a Soviet free Afghanistan a stunning success. What the left said at that time is that encouraging people to battle against communism is one thing, encouraging them to battle, as was done in the 80s, against atheism and civil rights for women in the name of Islam --- and if Sullivan was interested, he could find plenty of material that showed the US Intelligence people were not only doing this, but were quite proud of doing this ---- did infinite damage to the country. And that damage would be multiplied as the battle against godless Communism became the battle against the Infidel. Back in 1982, the latter phrase had a stirring ring, with CIA men fancying themselves little Lawrences of Arabia. Now, of course, we know what that means. To pretend this didn't happen is, well, did someone say the loonie right?
One Vincent Browne for the Irish Times has written a scathing newspaper column revealing a scandal of major proportions -- people on the Net were mean to him! In his first graf, he describes the response to an article he'd written, entitled Afghans victims of US terrorism:
"A Mr Nelson ... wrote: "I read your article and all I have to say is: go f**k you f***ing queer butt f***ing . . . I hope the US bombs Assolastan until every rag has been killed . . . Hope you get AIDS f***er".
There were tens of other such responses, in all 339 e-mails, almost entirely from the United States from people who had read the column on the Yahoo.com website, where it was posted. The response was overwhelming vituperation offering an insight into part of the mind of America at this time. Of the 339 responses only about 30 were supportive of the views expressed."
Mr. Browne goes on in the tone of shock I associate with schoolteachers asking, who threw that paperwad. He has either never written anything for the Internet, or has only transacted with the most high minded sites, say, the Wilfred Sellars Philosophy Portal. His last sentence is a good gauge of his mindset: we have either the unruly students over there, or the ones that did their homework over here. I especially like the "insight into the mind of America." Hmm, I wonder if Mr. Browne has ever been tempted to go to an Irish pub, and if he has, I wonder if he's ever strolled to the the Gents with a belly full. Now just Imagine him, dear reader, shaking off the excessive Harp, and surveying, with increasing consternation, the racism, the unwarranted, impossible and sometimes drawn suggestions re the female anatomy and its uses, and other scribbles indicative of the "mind of Ireland" at this time. Mr. Browne would no doubt tuck in and fly in the horror Christian shows in Pilgrims Progress for one of Satan's typical lures. Browne doesn't apparently know that between the ages of 12 to 21, there are a lot of boys out there, and they like nothing better than to say, "you f**cking c*cksucker", or use Assolastan (which just doesn't have the ring of the well beloved Assotollah of the hostage years). The prim, shocked tone, and the idea that the only correct response, indicative no doubt of the better sort, would be 'supportive of the views expressed" is the clincher -- I mean, this is the school teacher in a nutshell, this is the one it was so much fun, when I was in high school, to discombobulate -- the fart sounds coming from the back row, the stray spit ball, the furious threats to make all the class stay after school. It comes back to me in a rush, darling Clarkston High, which has proudly produced more than its share of illiterates and crack addicts. Join me now in a rousing hymn of the Pink Floyd favorite, 'We don't need no Education." Or no, don't. Just join with me in sending Mr. Browne a message.
Turning to the right, we have Andrew Sullivan, who seems to be thrown at me from all directions. Why is he famous and I'm not is the question many in my household ask. But let's not get into that. Two friends have recently sent me columns of his, and one of them was rather astonished at the flood she produced -- she said that my inexhaustibility on a subject where I was not being remunerated might have something to do with my lack of remuneration in general. This friend goes for the jugular, sometimes. Anyway, Sullivan, in a benign mood, turns his eye to the "loony left,' the knee jerk anti-Americans, the traitorous pink, and his eye alights, at last, on Christopher Hitchens, who Sullivan thinks shows some glimmering sanity, as he so manfully did about that outrage on the Constitution, Clinton's infamous bj, so that maybe, as these lefty cohorts fade away into the sunset, conservatives can grapple with respectable people on the left who agree with them at all times. The usual tripe, in other words. What I do think is interesting is the graf about Hitchens:
"One immediate response is to argue that the U.S. itself created Osama bin Laden in its war against Soviet communism. This isn't true--but even if it were, doesn't this fact, as Mr. Hitchens has argued, actually increase the West's responsibility to retaliate against him?"
Someone once said that in foreign affairs, as in love affairs, you always forget your next to last partner (okay, someone didn't say that, I said it, I just thought it sounded more sophisticated if I put in the someone said part). In the Gulf war, we turned on a dime from watching Saddam decimate Iranian troops with billions pumped into him from the Kuwaitis and the Saudis, and with our connivence in keeping his chain of material supplies alive, to Saddam as Hitler. Of course, the US didn't create bin Laden, they merely created the fundamentalist muhadjeen of the 80s, and then pronounced the ruins of a Soviet free Afghanistan a stunning success. What the left said at that time is that encouraging people to battle against communism is one thing, encouraging them to battle, as was done in the 80s, against atheism and civil rights for women in the name of Islam --- and if Sullivan was interested, he could find plenty of material that showed the US Intelligence people were not only doing this, but were quite proud of doing this ---- did infinite damage to the country. And that damage would be multiplied as the battle against godless Communism became the battle against the Infidel. Back in 1982, the latter phrase had a stirring ring, with CIA men fancying themselves little Lawrences of Arabia. Now, of course, we know what that means. To pretend this didn't happen is, well, did someone say the loonie right?
Wednesday, October 24, 2001
Dope
We at Limitedinc, in a vain attempt to become the Yuppie we used to despise (ah, and now we think, if only I had that much disposable income! And the insurance! And the SUV!), run � we run around Town Lake. This has become a necessary adjunct of thinking � we have an article to write, or a totally unremunerative post to post here, and we think it out while running.
So perhaps our mind is a little too vigilant, a little too quick to catch hints, but for the last five months, ever since the pedestrian bridge was thrown across the lake, we have been bugged by an architectural faux pas. The bridge is really a pretty structure, with scoriated cement arches footing it in the lake. It loads onto the South shore footpath from the North Shore. The north shore has a spiral entrance, which carries the pedestrian or bicycler about two stories up to the bridge proper. Or you can take the stairs, which also goes up to the bridge. There�s are two arms for the two entrances, which then come together to form the main bridge thru-way.
What is bugging Limited inc in this arrangement, which shows a maximum appreciation for us athletic Austin citizens? The entrances on the North Shore, as I said, go up about two stories, so the last supporting pair of arches on the shore face the spiral entrance. These arches have capstones. And --- here it is � the capstones are at different angles. In other words, the capstone front sides, which are marked by the symbol of Texas, the Lone Star, are wall eyed to each other. It looks disgraceful.
Now you are saying, perhaps the architect intended that asymmetry, and the angle between the capstones, which is some jagged number, 153 degrees or something, is subtly multiplied by some feature of the South shore landing. Well, short answer is no. We�ve gone over and over this bridge, and it turns out that Gaudi isn�t working for the department of highways and bridges of Texas. The capstone angle is a mistake.
How did this happen? Here�s what we speculate. Originally, the capstones were supposed to front the north shore in traditional alignment, one with the other. Then the entrances were added, or changed, in some way. And when the entrances were changed, they were speced according to some formula for bearing a load, and they discovered that the last supporting arches were somehow misplaced. So they moved the arches, and then they made room, in the more cramped space between the arches and the spiral entrance, by wall-eyeing the capstones.
Taking that scenario as true, for a moment, I imagine a further mistake was made. I imagine they specced the bridge with a weight per unit figure reflecting cars and trucks, not pedestrians. And if that is true, and here Limited Inc has become the paranoid he so dreaded becoming, perhaps THIS ISN�T A MISTAKE. In other words, the bridge was built so it could be converted to cars and trucks. And how would this happen? It would happen if the city, in its infinite wisdom, decided that the Lamar Boulevard bridge wasn�t big enough. In other words, they would decide they needed yet one more road to carry traffic through the city, north to south and vice versa. Now I think they wouldn�t dare do that right now, but it is easy to imagine a scenario. There�s a five car pile up on Lamar, for instance, and talk of how crowded it is, and how expensive to expand. And then covetous eyes are cast upon our pedestrian bridge.
So I say: change the capstones! The people, united, want symmetry or will fight, yeah! � we want them chanting that in the streets.
We at Limitedinc, in a vain attempt to become the Yuppie we used to despise (ah, and now we think, if only I had that much disposable income! And the insurance! And the SUV!), run � we run around Town Lake. This has become a necessary adjunct of thinking � we have an article to write, or a totally unremunerative post to post here, and we think it out while running.
So perhaps our mind is a little too vigilant, a little too quick to catch hints, but for the last five months, ever since the pedestrian bridge was thrown across the lake, we have been bugged by an architectural faux pas. The bridge is really a pretty structure, with scoriated cement arches footing it in the lake. It loads onto the South shore footpath from the North Shore. The north shore has a spiral entrance, which carries the pedestrian or bicycler about two stories up to the bridge proper. Or you can take the stairs, which also goes up to the bridge. There�s are two arms for the two entrances, which then come together to form the main bridge thru-way.
What is bugging Limited inc in this arrangement, which shows a maximum appreciation for us athletic Austin citizens? The entrances on the North Shore, as I said, go up about two stories, so the last supporting pair of arches on the shore face the spiral entrance. These arches have capstones. And --- here it is � the capstones are at different angles. In other words, the capstone front sides, which are marked by the symbol of Texas, the Lone Star, are wall eyed to each other. It looks disgraceful.
Now you are saying, perhaps the architect intended that asymmetry, and the angle between the capstones, which is some jagged number, 153 degrees or something, is subtly multiplied by some feature of the South shore landing. Well, short answer is no. We�ve gone over and over this bridge, and it turns out that Gaudi isn�t working for the department of highways and bridges of Texas. The capstone angle is a mistake.
How did this happen? Here�s what we speculate. Originally, the capstones were supposed to front the north shore in traditional alignment, one with the other. Then the entrances were added, or changed, in some way. And when the entrances were changed, they were speced according to some formula for bearing a load, and they discovered that the last supporting arches were somehow misplaced. So they moved the arches, and then they made room, in the more cramped space between the arches and the spiral entrance, by wall-eyeing the capstones.
Taking that scenario as true, for a moment, I imagine a further mistake was made. I imagine they specced the bridge with a weight per unit figure reflecting cars and trucks, not pedestrians. And if that is true, and here Limited Inc has become the paranoid he so dreaded becoming, perhaps THIS ISN�T A MISTAKE. In other words, the bridge was built so it could be converted to cars and trucks. And how would this happen? It would happen if the city, in its infinite wisdom, decided that the Lamar Boulevard bridge wasn�t big enough. In other words, they would decide they needed yet one more road to carry traffic through the city, north to south and vice versa. Now I think they wouldn�t dare do that right now, but it is easy to imagine a scenario. There�s a five car pile up on Lamar, for instance, and talk of how crowded it is, and how expensive to expand. And then covetous eyes are cast upon our pedestrian bridge.
So I say: change the capstones! The people, united, want symmetry or will fight, yeah! � we want them chanting that in the streets.
Remora
We love stories like this one. We love them because the people who accord them respect are the same kind of people who scoff at wild Kennedy assassination conspiracies; yes, people, like George Will, who accused Delillo of being treasonous for having written a novel, Libra, that implies the CIA bumped old JFK; or the people from the commentariat of the nyt who decry (oh, decry me a river, as Tallulah Bankhead once said) Oliver Stone's JFK for its fictions and hyperbole. But even Oliver Stone at least tried to make a convincing link. Here's the first two grafs of an AP story:
"Former CIA Director James Woolsey says Iraq likely was involved in the attacks of Sept. 11 and that the United States will probably confront President Saddam Hussein as part of its ongoing campaign against terrorism.
``There are too many things, too many examples of stolen identities, of cleverly-crafted documentation, of coordination across continents and between states ... to stray very far from the conclusion that a state, and a very well-run intelligence service is involved here,'' he told the national convention of the American Jewish Congress on Monday."
Here's Georgie Will on Libra:
"DeLillo says he is just filling in "some of the blank spaces in the known record." But there is no blank space large enough to accommodate, and not a particle of evidence for, DeLillo's lunatic conspiracy theory. In the book's weaselly afterword, he says he has made "no attempt to furnish factual answers."
Weaselly, huh? It's weaselly to say, I wrote a novel, not a history book? Hmm, well, wonder what George thinks of the phrase, "...stray very far from the conclusion that a state, and a very well-run intelligence service is involved here." Let's see, stolen identities, check for Oswald; cleverly crafted documentation, ditto; coordinated between continents, well, that is what you call petitio principii, begging the question, no? Still, I would like Woolsey to tell us who he thinks was at the crossroads in Dallas, 1963. But we know his answer: Saddam Hussein!
We love stories like this one. We love them because the people who accord them respect are the same kind of people who scoff at wild Kennedy assassination conspiracies; yes, people, like George Will, who accused Delillo of being treasonous for having written a novel, Libra, that implies the CIA bumped old JFK; or the people from the commentariat of the nyt who decry (oh, decry me a river, as Tallulah Bankhead once said) Oliver Stone's JFK for its fictions and hyperbole. But even Oliver Stone at least tried to make a convincing link. Here's the first two grafs of an AP story:
"Former CIA Director James Woolsey says Iraq likely was involved in the attacks of Sept. 11 and that the United States will probably confront President Saddam Hussein as part of its ongoing campaign against terrorism.
``There are too many things, too many examples of stolen identities, of cleverly-crafted documentation, of coordination across continents and between states ... to stray very far from the conclusion that a state, and a very well-run intelligence service is involved here,'' he told the national convention of the American Jewish Congress on Monday."
Here's Georgie Will on Libra:
"DeLillo says he is just filling in "some of the blank spaces in the known record." But there is no blank space large enough to accommodate, and not a particle of evidence for, DeLillo's lunatic conspiracy theory. In the book's weaselly afterword, he says he has made "no attempt to furnish factual answers."
Weaselly, huh? It's weaselly to say, I wrote a novel, not a history book? Hmm, well, wonder what George thinks of the phrase, "...stray very far from the conclusion that a state, and a very well-run intelligence service is involved here." Let's see, stolen identities, check for Oswald; cleverly crafted documentation, ditto; coordinated between continents, well, that is what you call petitio principii, begging the question, no? Still, I would like Woolsey to tell us who he thinks was at the crossroads in Dallas, 1963. But we know his answer: Saddam Hussein!
Tuesday, October 23, 2001
Dope
Limited Inc tossed and turned last night. In fact, we sleep so poorly lately that Insomnia has become our least favorite devil, and we are at a loss as to how to make terms with it. Benadryll doesn't help any more. Warm milk, not a chance; walking to and fro, exhaustion, lying still, lying under the sheet, pretending to be dead, turning on the light and deciding to read, turning off the light and trying to think of nothing, then trying to think of one thing, then trying not to let the mind get carried away by the thing that has to be done tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. All those nice, luscious stories about incubi and succubi are nothing compared to Beelzebub, Lord not only of the flies but of all buzzing night thoughts. The thought that we could open our eyes at any point last night was itself enough to drive us crazy.
Well, so we go to the National Sleep Foundation, my fave charity, and see what is up. We are greated with one of the great headlines of our time:
NATIONAL SLEEP FOUNDATION WELCOMES NEW FINDINGS SHOWING MINNEAPOLIS TEENS SLEEPING MORE DUE TO LATER SCHOOL START TIMES.
Where were these people when I was a punk?
Here's the kind of graf that makes teenage wasteland seem not so bad.
"Sleep studies indicate adolescents need between 8.5 and 9.25 hours of sleep each night. NSF surveys show that during the school week, only 15 percent sleep 8.5 hours or more, and more than one-quarter sleep less than seven hours. Because of their physiological changes, adolescents tend to fall asleep and awaken later, which can find their body clocks in conflict with school clocks if classes begin at a time when teens want to be sleeping. The result is that too many teens come to school too sleepy to learn. "
Well, the greatest non-sleeper in history is Macbeth. But Freud points out that Macbeth was not exactly the sleepless one:
"One is so unwilling to dismiss a problem like that of Macbeth as insoluble that I will venture to bring up a fresh point, which may offer another way out of the difficulty. Ludwig Jekels, in a recent Shakespearean study, thinks [Endnote 5] he has discovered a particular technique of the poet's, and this might apply to Macbeth. He believes that Shakespeare often splits a character up into two personages, which, taken separately, are not completely understandable and do not become so until they are brought together once more into a unity. This might be so with Macbeth and Lady Macbeth. In that case it would of course be pointless to regard her as an independent character and seek to discover the motives for her change, without considering the Macbeth who completes her. I shall not follow this clue any further, but I should, nevertheless, like to point out something which strikingly confirms this view: the germs of fear which break out in Macbeth on the night of the murder do not develop further in him but in her. It is he who has the hallucination of the dagger before the crime; but it is she who afterwards falls ill of a mental disorder. It is he who after the murder hears the cry in the house: "Sleep no more! Macbeth does murder sleep ..." and so "Macbeth shall sleep no more"; but we never hear that he slept no more, while the Queen, as we see, rises from her bed and, talking in her sleep, betrays her guilt. It is he who stands helpless with bloody hands, lamenting that "all great Neptune's ocean" will not wash them clean, while she comforts him: "A little water clears us of this deed"; but later it is she who washes her hands for a quarter of an hour and cannot get rid of the bloodstains: "All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand." Thus what he feared in his pangs of conscience is fulfilled in her; she becomes all remorse and he all defiance. Together they exhaust the possibilities of reaction to the crime, like two disunited parts of a single psychical individuality, and it may be that they are both copied from the same prototype."
Distributed insomnia. Well, whoever lost his insomnia, I found it. Call immediately. It answers to the name of Warmed Over Death.
Limited Inc tossed and turned last night. In fact, we sleep so poorly lately that Insomnia has become our least favorite devil, and we are at a loss as to how to make terms with it. Benadryll doesn't help any more. Warm milk, not a chance; walking to and fro, exhaustion, lying still, lying under the sheet, pretending to be dead, turning on the light and deciding to read, turning off the light and trying to think of nothing, then trying to think of one thing, then trying not to let the mind get carried away by the thing that has to be done tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. All those nice, luscious stories about incubi and succubi are nothing compared to Beelzebub, Lord not only of the flies but of all buzzing night thoughts. The thought that we could open our eyes at any point last night was itself enough to drive us crazy.
Well, so we go to the National Sleep Foundation, my fave charity, and see what is up. We are greated with one of the great headlines of our time:
NATIONAL SLEEP FOUNDATION WELCOMES NEW FINDINGS SHOWING MINNEAPOLIS TEENS SLEEPING MORE DUE TO LATER SCHOOL START TIMES.
Where were these people when I was a punk?
Here's the kind of graf that makes teenage wasteland seem not so bad.
"Sleep studies indicate adolescents need between 8.5 and 9.25 hours of sleep each night. NSF surveys show that during the school week, only 15 percent sleep 8.5 hours or more, and more than one-quarter sleep less than seven hours. Because of their physiological changes, adolescents tend to fall asleep and awaken later, which can find their body clocks in conflict with school clocks if classes begin at a time when teens want to be sleeping. The result is that too many teens come to school too sleepy to learn. "
Well, the greatest non-sleeper in history is Macbeth. But Freud points out that Macbeth was not exactly the sleepless one:
"One is so unwilling to dismiss a problem like that of Macbeth as insoluble that I will venture to bring up a fresh point, which may offer another way out of the difficulty. Ludwig Jekels, in a recent Shakespearean study, thinks [Endnote 5] he has discovered a particular technique of the poet's, and this might apply to Macbeth. He believes that Shakespeare often splits a character up into two personages, which, taken separately, are not completely understandable and do not become so until they are brought together once more into a unity. This might be so with Macbeth and Lady Macbeth. In that case it would of course be pointless to regard her as an independent character and seek to discover the motives for her change, without considering the Macbeth who completes her. I shall not follow this clue any further, but I should, nevertheless, like to point out something which strikingly confirms this view: the germs of fear which break out in Macbeth on the night of the murder do not develop further in him but in her. It is he who has the hallucination of the dagger before the crime; but it is she who afterwards falls ill of a mental disorder. It is he who after the murder hears the cry in the house: "Sleep no more! Macbeth does murder sleep ..." and so "Macbeth shall sleep no more"; but we never hear that he slept no more, while the Queen, as we see, rises from her bed and, talking in her sleep, betrays her guilt. It is he who stands helpless with bloody hands, lamenting that "all great Neptune's ocean" will not wash them clean, while she comforts him: "A little water clears us of this deed"; but later it is she who washes her hands for a quarter of an hour and cannot get rid of the bloodstains: "All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand." Thus what he feared in his pangs of conscience is fulfilled in her; she becomes all remorse and he all defiance. Together they exhaust the possibilities of reaction to the crime, like two disunited parts of a single psychical individuality, and it may be that they are both copied from the same prototype."
Distributed insomnia. Well, whoever lost his insomnia, I found it. Call immediately. It answers to the name of Warmed Over Death.
Monday, October 22, 2001
Remora
We at Limited Inc are a little nostalgic for the blood sports of yesteryear -- the homicides that use to fill our tv time before the 9/11 6,000. Remember when all of America was obsessed with whether an aging ex-football player slaughtered his ex-wife and her boyfriend? Remember how this was considered (God knows why) some kind of naked encounter between black and white skin (Limited Inc must confess that we were less than enthralled by the OJ Simpson case and its ultimate meaning. That millionaires commonly get off of homicide raps was not news to people who have lived in Texas for more than a couple of months -- surely you could throw a good sized party with just the unconvicted Sugar Daddies of Fort Worth, not to mention Dallas. The revelation, to us, was not racial, but the house guest situation in Brentwood. That it was possible to roll in the lap of luxury, swilling liquor and eating hors d'oeuvres, without paying rent - and that the only job requirements were good grooming and availability for any late night hints from your host that his hands and teeth were dripping blood and gore for a secret reason -- that this job actually existed was was a crushing blow. We wanted to be Kato Kaelin! If you out there, reading us, are a homicidally inclined rich person in need of a house guest, please, we'd be more than happy. Just keep the fridge stocked, and we will bear infinite witness for you.)
Luckily, there will always be a Texas. The Washington Post has an amazing story this Sunday by Paul Duggan. It profiles the only full time pseudo hitman in the nation. And of course he works for the Houston police. The story begins with a typical day in his life -- there he is, sitting in a hotel room, listening to a wife's emotional plea that he take her money and eliminate her husband, so that she can find true love in the arms of another -- paid for, of course, by her husband's estate.
These two grafs are for those of you out there who don't believe me:
"Playing the part of the hit man was a 54-year-old undercover cop named Gary Johnson. Investigating murder solicitation plots and posing as a killer for hire is his full-time job, a busy specialty in Harris County, population 3.4 million. His beat is rife with big-money schemers and low-rent dreamers, many of whom, to their regret, have made the hit man's acquaintance.
In the last dozen years, working for the Harris County district attorney's office, Johnson has posed as a contract killer in about 100 meetings like the one with Lynn Kilroy. About 55 of those meetings led to murder solicitation charges against more than 60 people -- housewives, barflies, business owners, burger flippers, pencil pushers, an Elvis impersonator, even a church pianist who wanted the choir director dead."
And, okay, I can't resist one ghoulish note, though I usually try not to quote this much of an article. Here's my fave:
"Once he was offered a $22,000 speedboat, but normally his fees run in the low four figures. In 1993, a high school computer whiz named Shawn Quinn told Johnson he wanted a romantic rival slain, and he gave the hit man three $1 bills and seven Atari video games for the job.
"You want a $3 killing?" said the hit man, nonplused.
Quinn handed him a fistful of coins, making it a $5.30 killing, and said to look at the bright side.
"If you drive back on the toll road, you won't need to get change."
Apparently the neighborhood hit man is as much in demand as a good dentist. You see, you never know when your going to get tired of your loved ones in Houston.
We at Limited Inc are a little nostalgic for the blood sports of yesteryear -- the homicides that use to fill our tv time before the 9/11 6,000. Remember when all of America was obsessed with whether an aging ex-football player slaughtered his ex-wife and her boyfriend? Remember how this was considered (God knows why) some kind of naked encounter between black and white skin (Limited Inc must confess that we were less than enthralled by the OJ Simpson case and its ultimate meaning. That millionaires commonly get off of homicide raps was not news to people who have lived in Texas for more than a couple of months -- surely you could throw a good sized party with just the unconvicted Sugar Daddies of Fort Worth, not to mention Dallas. The revelation, to us, was not racial, but the house guest situation in Brentwood. That it was possible to roll in the lap of luxury, swilling liquor and eating hors d'oeuvres, without paying rent - and that the only job requirements were good grooming and availability for any late night hints from your host that his hands and teeth were dripping blood and gore for a secret reason -- that this job actually existed was was a crushing blow. We wanted to be Kato Kaelin! If you out there, reading us, are a homicidally inclined rich person in need of a house guest, please, we'd be more than happy. Just keep the fridge stocked, and we will bear infinite witness for you.)
Luckily, there will always be a Texas. The Washington Post has an amazing story this Sunday by Paul Duggan. It profiles the only full time pseudo hitman in the nation. And of course he works for the Houston police. The story begins with a typical day in his life -- there he is, sitting in a hotel room, listening to a wife's emotional plea that he take her money and eliminate her husband, so that she can find true love in the arms of another -- paid for, of course, by her husband's estate.
These two grafs are for those of you out there who don't believe me:
"Playing the part of the hit man was a 54-year-old undercover cop named Gary Johnson. Investigating murder solicitation plots and posing as a killer for hire is his full-time job, a busy specialty in Harris County, population 3.4 million. His beat is rife with big-money schemers and low-rent dreamers, many of whom, to their regret, have made the hit man's acquaintance.
In the last dozen years, working for the Harris County district attorney's office, Johnson has posed as a contract killer in about 100 meetings like the one with Lynn Kilroy. About 55 of those meetings led to murder solicitation charges against more than 60 people -- housewives, barflies, business owners, burger flippers, pencil pushers, an Elvis impersonator, even a church pianist who wanted the choir director dead."
And, okay, I can't resist one ghoulish note, though I usually try not to quote this much of an article. Here's my fave:
"Once he was offered a $22,000 speedboat, but normally his fees run in the low four figures. In 1993, a high school computer whiz named Shawn Quinn told Johnson he wanted a romantic rival slain, and he gave the hit man three $1 bills and seven Atari video games for the job.
"You want a $3 killing?" said the hit man, nonplused.
Quinn handed him a fistful of coins, making it a $5.30 killing, and said to look at the bright side.
"If you drive back on the toll road, you won't need to get change."
Apparently the neighborhood hit man is as much in demand as a good dentist. You see, you never know when your going to get tired of your loved ones in Houston.
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