02 March 2012

DAY ONE HUNDRED AND FOUR POST THREE

i just figured out that d-bag central from the previous post is a graduate school at a school with an awesome debater and involved in the best remake of the lord of the rings ever created, ever. i may email him asking for a guest review of whether once a douche always a douche remains true.

DAY ONE HUNDRED AND FOUR POST TWO

officemate has laughed so hard she snorted four times today!

DAY ONE HUNDRED AND FOUR

this song is dedicated to rachael since it's totally her. i am kind of in love with them. especially because of this song, which makes me want to learn it on violin.

I read a very depressing tale of mob violence in South Africa. It's sad. I wouldn't read it if I were you, but if you want to be kinda down for a while, go for it.

tornadoes scare me almost as much as umbrellas.

WE HAVE A ROOM AVAILABLE PLEASE FIND US A ROOMMATE! This post is nowhere near as good as the one we posted when we needed a new roommate but instead got our hotel guest, polly, who then skipped out on her bills while calling me a liar because she was too cheap and bratty to pay for heating (and also called herself 'from new york city' and when asked 'what area' she lived in replied 'new york city', to which i confusedly looked at her and asked what part specifically of the city, to which she replied.... connecticut). i wish i had the text to reuse but they apparently don't keep forever like twinkies.

RANT O HATE RANT O HATE RANT O HATE RANT O HATE RANT O HATE RANT O HATE RANT O HATE

i'm glad officemate and i are so united on hatred of those who love zizek except that one professor at msu who wanted to do the critical theory/judo club. she was cool. for instance, that douchey guy who went to madison who used to do debate who was really sexist and got in trouble for having pornographic images of women on his folders, obviously creating a rather hostile environment for the teenage girls competing against him, who presented a paper at a conference (edited for spelling so any google alerts hopefully don't come up, all words were originally as they would be normally fully spelled:) Fuc- Your G-- in the Disco: Torshure, Muzik, and the Deevine in Guan tanimo. Officemate's college roommate offers this gem: "hung like a horse, but he doesn't know how to use it." This revelation from a girl he cheated with perhaps explains a bit more about why his hot girlfriend who went to an ivy dumped him so many times, as explained by his very cool bffer. but bffer and i digress by looking up our unrequited loves on facebook now. back to the example zizek lover:

this asshole was such a jerk to people in debate. he came from a school known, fittingly for his binders, PorNo. he thought he was the shit. he was not. he wasn't that good and he lost against my partner and me all the time, but he thought by being very, very rude and condescending he could somehow prevail or seem like we perceptually lost. he was very, very rude to both of us, although i remember that socially he was ok to me.

cut away to college. three years later, i'm in an honors option, extra classes taken to get H credit required by the honors college. We're reading Welcome to the Desert of the Real, and d-bag central is trying to explain his reading of the post-September 11th world as described in the book (along with lots of references to the matrix). He starts spouting off stuff about psychoanalytics - a subject I am fairly strong in given my intense hatred of the origins of the field (penis envy what!?) - and begins discussing how after September 11th we achieved the real. HA. HAHAHA! This is only funny for the probably like two people ever who will read this blog and know about Zizek, psychoanalytics, or Lacanian theory, but the real is - as a FUNDAMENTAL PREMISE of psychoanalysis - an impossibility. I mean, even the Wikipedia article says that. Duh!
Anyway, he would lecture us all like we were idiots about stuff that was FUNDAMENTALLY INACCURATE but was banking on the fact that nobody else in the class had any knowledge, whatsoever, of the fundamental basics of philosophy, a foolhardy error given that we had to understand it moderately well for college debate. THEN, in the next breath, he proceeded to explain how he had never really understood psychoanalytics until he had done a bunch of shrooms and read some of the more well known works. He said this to two professors. Newsflash d-bag - shrooms certainly did not help your understanding of some of the most FUNDAMENTAL ASPECTS of zizek's works. THIS is the level of knowledge of the typical zizek fan.

Quotes from facebook: "I totally forgot that Zizek spends the first few pages of the Plague of Fantasies theorizing the differences between how Germans, French, and Anglo-Saxons "shit" and how this reflects their national ideologies and predilections. And he's been accused of being too esoteric .... hmph."

Quotes from gchat:
From a 27 year old friend: "yyyy: what does your 20 year old girlfriend think of zizek
do you use zizek to get laid
xxxx: Ummmmmmmmm
She is a virgin.
yyyy: you're avoiding the question
xxxx: Also she thinks it is cute when I talk about him.
yyyy: right"

school flashbacks:
"dont skip, go
just talk abotu agamben
and zizek
it will all be good
i had to listen to a speech today
abt agamben
and zizek
and derrida
and how they releate to shakespears abrahamic traditions
it was like
ewwwww"

"me: YOU ARE A ROCK STAR!
in teh future
jimotron: the first prospectus i submitted!
me: people will be like
jimotron: and they accepted it!
me: jimotron fans
rather than like zizek freaks" - GOD WILLING

regarding when lee and i first met, with our first big argument:
"jimotron: mags i hate zizek
me: i know i do too
he got offended when i said he was the like
beatles/elvis of theory
which is like there is absolutely no contnetion about htat
jimotron: yah"

On Wed, Nov 17, 2010 at 11:25 PM, UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE wrote:
of course the cute indian boy in teh reading room would be reading zizek

me: hahaha
[Epilogue: AND LIKE THAT, HE WAS NO LONGER ABLE TO BE CONSIDERED AS ANYTHING BUT A TOOL.]

And I leave with some links, on either side of the debate, and a HOME RUN for my argument with lee.
Why he's an idiot.
An interview with him on al jazeera (confusing why he's chosen), where he is identified as "known as the elvis of cultural theory." Although the overall tenor of his speech is great, there's some completely idiotic essentializations of all muslim protestors as a kind of noble savage.
And finally, an interview with the Guardian.
What is the worst job you've done?
Teaching. I hate students, they are (as all people) mostly stupid and boring.

Now, I know there are a number of folks out there who like Zizek. I'm friends with at least two, one of whom may know more about the above quote.

01 March 2012

DAY ONE HUNDRED AND THREE POST FOUR

this is a fascinating and account of conjoined twins who may well share thoughts and process each others' external stimuli. i love the picture of the girls getting a medical procedure done where they're holding hands.

DAY ONE HUNDRED AND THREE POST THREE

"lucky for you jim is not online" says officemate threateningly. I ALREADY GET THE BLINK ITERATION!

i'm dropping this here because i think bffer will want to blog accordingly. you read the reference here first, folks.

DAY ONE HUNDRED AND THREE POST TWO

time for it again: zany stuff found on etsy. first is a lovely set of photographs of animals just being themselves!!

so pretty - what excellent wedding shoes with bling! the pink, the purple! and these white glittery fashion statements of the year go for a cool $420 only!

DAY ONE HUNDRED AND THREE

tales from a way worse kind of trenches: warehouse duty. reminds me of working 3rd shift target back in the day, when they'd lock us inside for the 8+ hour shifts, a policy that was later rescinded after a few people died in a fire in a different target, or so the rumor went. when i quit that job to go to college - something i had repeatedly mentioned would happen - they threatened that i would never be hired to work at a target or subsidiary company again. bold threat, and one i hoped and predicted would be accurate (thus far, at least). they seemed hurt that i wasn't more upset about that. it really enforced the importance of education and gave personal context to ehrenreich's nickle and dimed. apparently, poverty voyeurism is still a popular sport amongst over-educated socially-minded investigative journalists and uppity college-bound overachievers! at least mac understands what's really at stake:
I probably look happier than I should because I have the extreme luxury of not giving a shit about keeping this job.
and i love this:
I feel genuinely sorry for any child I might have who ever asks me for anything for Christmas, only to be informed that every time a "Place Order" button rings, a poor person takes four Advil and gets told they suck at their job.

i do not understand how these people act as if their obvious and ingrained privilege somehow goes away just by pretending they have not gone to college. it's an incoherent social statement - yes, adam shepard, you made money and did okay after pretending not to have graduated from a school that costs $45,000 per year (basketball scholarship or no) - but its so disingenuine to, as an over-educated, middle to upper class white man or woman, play at poverty only to return to a cushy lifestyle and somehow attempt to speak for the poor in doing so. looks like other discussion boards discuss this further.

it has come to my attention that i am one of the sole users of the verb devegan, as in "after i deveganed", or "after deveganing". yay!