Tuesday, August 12, 2008

NY Observer: the new GoingPomo?

Has the NY Observer ascended to the heights of urban(e) irony?

http://www.observer.com/2008/fore-birdie-beatrice-inn

Wednesday, July 30, 2008

I've Been Waiting for This Moment, for all my LIFE

OH LORD

more on this later, but



queenuvdiamonds (5 days ago)
I don't want to sound stupid or weird but when I have this song super loud(in the car. or by myself at home) or really loud on my headphones. i'll close my eyes and fade away. like an out of body orgasm. nevermind. its stupid. awesome freakin' song ...

jscorpio78 (5 days ago)
thats not stupid its a kick ass tune...go with it



Which is more powerful, this or the Phil Collins? Which Miami Vice is more powerful, the original or the movie? Which is more real, TV or film? Is Miami Vice the movie realer because it is based on a TV show? Sorry guys I'm farming right now so a full discussion will have to wait.

Saturday, March 8, 2008

I miss kissing.... I am 6'3", 185 lbs and, yes, in shape. No pot belly; working on that six pack now. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gyUIvv3KowU&NR=1 (right click link above - open in new tab or window)

I have only been with 3 women in my life, but I won't disappoint you... I learned from those best women in how to please a woman.

TY 4 your time, please forgive my temporary brashness and calendar age (53 y/o but 25 y/o mindset). I don't play with people's hearts - I won't be your anchor.

ONE Lucky Lady Gets Free Rent, Food + $500 / week allowance - AND more importantly, a very genuine and nice male FRIEND - Yes, you are "lucky" - I have tried meeting a nice woman in many ways. Meeting someone nice is not easy, but I truly am a real sweetheart. I will be glad to have you talk in person to sincere young women who know me and who will vouch for me. On a "commercial" note, my offer is worth $50,000 per year (your rent share plus allowance). Heck, my offer is as good as having a fulltime job or doubling your income. I should be flooded with replies - I am being so sincere, so real, so honest, so down to earth... BUT world is full of sh*t, I know (sob silently)... BUT, please know this, I am very, very sincere. Talk to me on the phone - you WILL know from your own heart. I am not bullsh*t and never will be. PLEASE READ THIS AD. I don't expect you to be gullible, but I PROMISE you I can prove everything I say here. I am truly a very nice man. I don't know how I can pour my confident, strong heart out anymore than I am doing right now. I talk with my feelings. I am not your average guy. I am a pieces (zodiac sign - a true romantic) in touch with his feelings.

SO... (inhales and hopes a lady knows his heart) .... ONE Female, Zero Rent, Zero Food - $500 / week Spending Allowance 4 YOU 2 Splurge. That's $2,165 per month or $26,000 per year for you to squander. Not bad, huh? It will pay a few of your bills, no? Spend your allowance as you see fit. Spend it on us, you, the apartment - your pick - your choice - your spending allowance. Why am I so generous? Because I make a great living and will be glad to share it. I would spend this kind of money on a pursuit or fondly retaining the attention of a real girlfriend. OK, so I am generous; I have always been generous and always successful financially in life. You can't take it with you SO...

Looking for ONE female. ONE bedroom, Very Large, Very Nice Executive Condo, Walk-IN closet, 24/7 Doormen, Excellent / Very Safe Neighborhood (Battery Park) and all the upscale amenities. Rector Place / South End Ave, Battery Park. Excellent View of Freedom Tower construction and Statue of Liberty. Lower Manhattan near Financial District. Come and go as you please. I would be interested in your NSA (no strings attached) friend with benefits companionship. Share a bed but no rush. No means No. 18 to 40 y/o. I am 53, but have all the youthful charm and health of a 25 y/o. I love life. I am a "#10 catch." I am charming, fit, SWM, HEALTHY (d/d free), handsome and prefer same type females. I am an excellent friend, good companion, listener and conversationalist. I even cook well and love a clean apartment. I am very young at heart. I work at home on Fridays. You will really like me - and, no, you don't have to "love" me... just continue to love my friendship. Write me for my phone numbers - Call me - it won't take long for you to see that I am a genuine sweetheart. So why waste my time alone? I have a VERY small 7 pound (bread loaf size) very, very cute male Papillon dog (hope you don't mind - he's a sweetheart). Your small dog OK. Serious inquiries only PLEASE (send a pic)... I smoke indoors, but will quit for the right you. TRUE. And if you don't mind being seen with me in public, then we could go out as friends and enjoy the city - my treat.

Sincerely and humbly, Peter
P.S. Yes, I am toxic, but not poisonous...




I finally figured it out.. I miss kissing, cuddling and warmth - that's the real me. Pics below...










Monday, February 11, 2008

Spring Break

Hotel Prices Prices for South Padre 2008!
To: members of South Padre 2008!!!

Islam A.Moneim
4:29pm Feb 8th
Hey guys,I found a real cool deal at Southbeach hotel in South Padre. The hotel is two block from the beach so it's at a walkable distance from the beach. This package is through StudentCity.com therefore there will be a lot of incentives like:1.Free VIP parties2.$50 gas card per room3.two meals per day4.$50 card for groceries and liquorOne room at the hotel for 5 people will cost a total of $240/person for 5 days and 5 nightsIf you want a similar package or any other modifications I will be able to arrange it for you. I am the Representive for StudentCity at SOSU so I can get you other hotels/condos for different prices. They have beach condos for 10 people for as low as $400 for 7days 7 nights! so Just Ask! I am trying to get all the info and signing people up in the next 5-7 days so let me know if your interested so I can get you a reservatoin. The more you wait the higher the prices go up, so the sooner the better. If you are interested you can facebook me or call me at 580-775-0504
Islam A.Moneim.

Protest

To: members of South Padre 2008!!!



From: GONEPOMO

1:57 am Febuary 11th

Dear South Padre 2008!!!,



It is with a sad heart and a heavy pen that I write this missive, but I feel that it is my duty to announce to the world, and the greater Facebook community, that, as a matter of conscience, I must resign from this group.



While the simple but heroic aims of South Padre 2008!!! - the creation of a larger community of intersubjective communication and public discourse, free jello shots, nice, big titties, low-priced tattoos, and all-inclusive pricing - have always stood out in my mind as the paradigmatic example of modern manhood, with the continued presence of our beautiful country in the land of Iraq, I feel that I must resign in protest from this formerly beautiful community. How can we sit here, sipping our drinks out of some girl's bellybutton or asshole, while our bros are getting fucking pummelled in Iraq? As I was playing Halo last night with my buddy Tim Riggins, I realized that, instead of teafragging (http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=teafragging) some toolbox across my hall, I could be sitting in a tank teafragging some fucking Muslims in the desert. It is only because of the privileges of aristocratic birth, what the French call "bien naitre," that I am able to teafrag from the comfort of my dorm room. Given this realization, I am not, in good conscience, able to recreate myself in our country's beautiful seaside resort of South Padre along with other Citizens. I ask that those of you for whom the ideals of brotherhood, liberty, and global peace still mean anything join me in resigning from this group in protest.





Saturday, February 9, 2008

No Pomo

I am going to attempt to, as Deleuze says, try to insert myself in the history of philosophy through an "ass-fuck". No homo, no pomo.

In his essay "The Uncanny," Freud spends 10 pages going through the etymological history of the words "uncanny" (unheimlich) and "homely" (heimlich), reprinting the entire entry from a 1860 German dictionary and paying special attention to the examples of usage given. Heimlich is that which is "homely, familiar, intimate, belonging to the house, not strange, domesticated, tame"; it is "intimate, arousing a pleasant feeling of quiet contentment.

Yet it also means "concealed, kept hidden, so that others do not get to know of it or about it and it is hidden from them." In the German Bible, "die heimliche Weisheit," (the secret wisdom), "Gottes heimlichen rat", (God's secret wisdom).

Unheimlich - "arousing uneasy, fearful horror." Schelling is quoted: "uncanny [unheimlich] is what one calls everything that was meant to remain secret and hidden and has come out into the open."

We can see the "uncanny" semantic slippage between these two ostensible antonyms in a passage from Schiller that Freud quotes: "To the left of the lake lies a meadow hidden [heimlich] among the trees." The meadow is thus homely, comfortable - it is made comfortable by its seclusion, its intimacy. By the same token, it is "concealed, kept hidden".

What do we get from this digression? For Freud, the uncanny is the "return of the repressed": something that was meant to remain secret and hidden somehow bubbles up, makes itself known. Most interestingly, this is not simply a question of unconscious memories from childhood. Freud's examples of the uncanny are automatons, epileptic fits, dopplegangers. These throw into relief a certain lack, a certain absence: some sort of mechanical and meaningless Real underneath the veneer of apparent reality. The heimlich in the unheimlich, the "domestic" and comfortable space is precisely absent, and this is what makes the "homely" itself "uncanny".

Let's skip ahead a bit. I cite here the UrbanDictionary.com entry on the phrase "no homo".


1.
no homo

1363 up, 81 down

Phrase used after one inadvertently says something that sounds gay.
His ass is mine. No homo
by ELJ


2.
no homo

477 up, 65 down

Said to show that you aren't gay after saying something that sounded gay.
Hay man, pass the nuts. No homo
I cornered him in my room and nailed him with a board. No homo
by Anonymous

3.
no homo

567 up, 171 down

phrase NOT coined by Cam'Ron, but by his young protege Juelz Santana.used after a phrase that sounds ambigously gay or 'homo', so that your friends won't call you a 'homo'. very homophobic.
'no homo but we cockin' em' - Juelz Santana'
yo homie, i just spent five hours talking with my man on the phone, no homo' - random dude


What we should note so far is on the one hand the seemingly "unambigious" and "straight"-forward meaning -- "I am not gay," "what I just said did not have any homosexual subtext" -- and on the other hand, the contexts in which the phrase is used: sites of classically 'male' performance (threats of physical violence [his ass is mine, we cockin em, etc], eating [pass the nuts], and male friendships/bonding [i just spent five hours talking with my man on the phone]).

We come next to this:

5.
no homo

248 up, 96 down

It is added in a sentence:
1) to make it sound less gay.
2) to say if you're not kidding; Seriously.

1) Paul and I had each other's back all the time, no homo.
2) No homo though, Paul was a good friend.
by joooon crack

Thus "no homo" can both disavow a meaning that was felt to be implicit or at least potentially implicit for the listener, and it can also emphasize a claim as "serious" and genuinely intended. In the above example, a classically 'male' pact of solidarity through physical and perhaps psychological reciprocal defense (Paul and I had each other's back all the time) is cleansed of any 'accidental' or unwanted homsexuality. In regards to the same relationship, however, the male bond is affirmed by the use of the same phrase. Thus it is precisely the fact that there is "no homo" that we know that Paul really was "a good friend". Although joooon crack sees these meanings as distinct, it seems fair to say that the same work is accomplished in each instance: the straight male relation is affirmed through a disavowal of the threat of "homo." As in the "unheimlich" within the heimlich, it is the homo within the no homo that is in fact already accomplishing the no homo.

We might look briefly at what is probably the paradigmatic instance of no homo:


The scene is situated as an instance of urban male braggadoccio par excellence: a game of dice, money changing hands, male camraderie, displays of misogyny, etc. When one of the participants violates the unwritten code of ethics governing the interaction, Cam'ron must prove that he is not a pussy, that he is himself no(t) homo, and that he won't let this guy pwn him. What is so fascinating is that he does this via an action that he knows very well might be seen as homo. Thus when, while peeing in dude's face, he says "no homo? no homo. no homo. no homo" etc, it is, as we saw above, a refutation of any potential homo element and at the same time an affirmation of the sincerity of his act: this is for real, this is decisive, and thus, precisely in this decisiveness - in this decisively "homo" act - I have proved that I am not homo, I am "no" homo.

We might even extend this productive semantic ambiguity into a reading of the broader category in which the homo/no homo discourse is situated, that of pomo. It is clear that Cam'ron is here going quite pomo - this video is self-consciously exaggerated, its stereotypes are played up the nth degree, and it must be seen on some level as self-parodic and self-referential. Yet on another level Cam'ron, like David Lynch or Slavoj Zizek, is being quite sincere. His pomo is precisely no pomo: he means it to be taken quite seriously, his face-pissing is a genuine act of self-affirmation.

I would finally want to extent this question of pomo/no pomo to the critical project in which this blog is engaged. On one level I would claim that this blog is "no pomo", that it is itself attempting to gain some sort of critical purchase in regards to postmodernism (at least in regards to postmodernism on Jameson's definition, as the 'cultural logic of late capitalism,' a symptom); but on the other hand, postmodernism has itself already anticipated and preempted such a critique: pomo is already 'in' no pomo such that 'no pomo', especially in the way i have tried to perform it, is itself the height of pomo. My desire to be no pomo is predicated on the acknowledgement of a certain element of pomo within my discourse, and the disavowal of that element is itself the affirmation of that element's structural necessity and ultimate determinative power. The hope, I guess, is that being no pomo is able to productively include the pomo within itself, and that its reflexivity about its own conditions of possibility means that rather than disavowing one's pomo, one is able to use it. Still: could this not be the ultimate victory of postmodern qua "structural logic of late capitalism"? Is the pomo not "using" me? Does my blog not objectively function as cynical advertisement for e.g., Thom Browne, Cam'ron, Friday Night Lights? Stay tuned.

Tuesday, January 15, 2008

Monday, January 7, 2008

Shitting and I-Banking



[yes, that's a Thom Browne suit!, and yes, he's a real live I-banker!]
At the Denver airport, I'm taking a shit and reading Motor Trend ("The Homeland Security Administration has raised the threat level to, ORANGE."). After about ten minutes - I'm really just biding my time, this article on the new BMW 1 series (modeled on the 1978 2002) is really interesting, - I decide to rejoin my family, and I drop the Motor Trend on the floor, kick it to the side, then immediately leave for fear of being mistaken by the gentleman in the adjacent stall for a toe-tapper.

Isn't it exciting that Barack Obama won the Iowa caucuses? What an historic moment! I think that this suggests that the country is finally ready for CHANGE. Obama, to me, represents CHANGE, leadership, a new perspective - most of all, an optimism about our country. The Democratic Party represents hope and the promise of liberal democracy, a better future for everyone, not just the special interests of a few wealthy people.

Two interesting articles in the Times today - our favorite intellectual prude Stanley Fish, arguing as always that his job as a humanist is "useless", and a piece on the decline in prestige of medicine and law. To my mind, these articles are treating a similar theme - the ways in which we try to make our intellectual, critical/ethical existence coincide with our "mundane," worldly existence.

Apparently law and medicine are losing ground because young people like myself are more interested in having "creative freedom" and integrating their work and "personal lives" such that the former becomes an outgrowth of the latter. This means, of course, that we're drawn to investment banking and management consulting, where we can truly realize our creative passion, where as Marx wrote we can "hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, and criticize after dinner."

For Stanley Fish (and here I agree with the ol' curmudgeon!), no effort to justify the humanities from some outside, quantitative or social perspective (e.g., it exposes people to morally fortifying examples from literature, gives people greater critical thinking skills that they can they apply to other areas of their existence - say, their I-banking job after getting a History degree at Princeton) will work, and moreover such efforts end up devaluing humanities-oriented thought in the first place. "The humanities are their own good. There is nothing more to say."

Let me put it this way: is it a kawinkydink that I vacillate between wanting to be an arrogant, effete theory-hipster with an endowed chair at Berkeley, and wanting to be a high-fiving, Red Bull-drinking I-Banker who works 100 hours a week and can only relieve the tension created by my lifestyle through flagrant consumption that feeds the sublime machine to which I enslave myself?

No. This is a paradox that I have been trying to work through for the past two years, and I don't seem to be moving anywhere except into a more and more deeply emotional appreciation of the impossibility of resolving it.

How is it that investment banking (the Times article actually does cite this) could seem to people to be the most self-creating and intellectually 'integrated' profession? I think it's because i-banking is essentially what is going on, in the broadest sense of the term. It is simply bullshit to suggest that 21st century American culture is not defined by the confluence of global capital, highly specialized and exclusivized consumption, and a general sense of giving oneself over to a sublime, technologized, rationalized system the complexity of which is impossible to understand. No one knows what the fuck is going on in international finance. Though it is a cliche to cite the subprime issue, it really is quite indicative. Basically, people try to come up with more and more esoteric (the word I-bankers love to use is "exotic") forms of accounting for money, which entails allowing complex, interconnected systems to become more an more autonomous. Like critical theory, investment banking spins off more and more into its own autonomous, rational, Platonic realm of pure forms; like Adorno and Horkheimer's Dialectic of Enlightenment, "the fully enlightened world radiates disaster triumphant". Also like Adorno and Horkheimer, I-bankers feel fucking baller: they have situated themselves at the center of this absurd realm and have produced themselves as its product, in the same way that esoteric theory is always already an ironic self-deconstruction, an exercise in the proving of one's own uselessness, one's own ideological determination.

My latest solution to this career indecision is to try to combine them: I will be a Deleuzean schizoanalyst of the futures market (as Soros applied Popper's pragmatism to the market and made billions), I will be the next Jeff Koons, or, most recently, I will become an investment banker as an art project: I will get patrons to pay me to be an investment banker, on top of which I will make huge bonuses because I will actually be an investment banker, I will think like one, I will become one, and the patrons will get "nothing" in return, which will be precisely the substance of the art-work, and my own position as artist will be confirmed in the completeness of my existence as an I-banker, as the next Patrick Bateman.

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