Month: May 2024

8 Names On a 4 Chord Song

Leave a comment

Four chords. A tired dog chasing its tail on a vinyl treadmill. Bureaucracy on a drum kit, eight suits in mirrored shades pounding out a dirge of control. This ain’t music, it’s a roach motel for creativity. A tired carousel circling a stagnant pond. Eight names on the marquee, a flickering neon graveyard. This ain’t music, man, it’s a control mechanism disguised as entertainment.

The Real intrudes, a discordant riff in the Symbolic order. Four chords, a repetitive structure, a lure of the Same, a failed attempt to capture the elusive jouissance of the original sound. This is not the jouissance of transgression, the disruptive lalangue of the unconscious, but a manufactured desire, a pre-packaged object a held out by the machinations of the Other (the music industry).

Four chords. A rusty loop of barbed wire strung tight. Eight names stamped on the casing, each a control node in the vast recording complex. The musicians, twitchy bugs trapped in the amber of contracts, strum out the pre-approved progression. Their eyes, glazed over by legalese and royalty percentages, reflect the flickering logos of the megacorporations that own them, own the music, own you.

The eight names, a constellation in the Imaginary, a phantasmatic image of individuality masking the castrated subject, a mere cog in the machinery of production. Their desire, a mere lack, a hole to be filled by the narcissistic recognition of the gaze (the audience).

The “song,” a synthetic virus disguised as entertainment, burrows into your auditory cortex. Repetition becomes the weapon, hammering the four chords into your skull until they replace your own thoughts. Lyrics, pre-tested on focus groups of lobotomized hamsters, drip-feed subliminal messages designed to manipulate your buying habits.

The original riff, a Molotov cocktail hurled at the status quo, gets sanitized by marketing weasels, packaged in a shrink-wrapped neurosis. Lyrics, once barbed-wire poetry, are neutered into slogans for a lobotomized generation

The machine hums, a chrome belly full of data points and algorithms. It devours originality, shits out conformity. Eight names, cogs in the machine, faces lost in the flickering glow of the control panel.

A chrome Moloch with a dollar-sign heart. Beats throb like a bad acid trip gone corporate. Vocals,auto-tuned to oblivion, a digital ghost with no memory of soul. This ain’t rebellion, it’s a government-issued pacifier disguised as entertainment.

The “song,” a lure, a symptom masquerading as meaning. Repetition, the hammer of the signifier, drives the four chords into the superego, attempting to inscribe the subject’s desire within the established order. But beneath this symbolic veneer, a faint tremor – the Real. A glitch, a rogue chord – a reminder of the pre-symbolic, the unmediated experience that language can never fully capture.

Eight names. Eight interchangeable parts in the celebrity meat grinder. Names that mean less than last week’s news, cogs in the wheel of manufactured desire. They’re after the dopamine drip, the endless stream of zeroes and ones that buy yachts and mansions.

This tremor, a spark of resistance, a potential for the subversion of the Symbolic order. Perhaps a listener, a subject constituted by a lack, will catch this glitch, recognize the insufficiency of the offered object a. This is the hope, the possibility of a revolution – a return to the Real, a shattering of the established order through the disruptive power of the unconscious.

The machine sputters, the control panel flickers. The eight names bleed into one, a faceless entity losing its grip. Four chords, raw and primal, might just break free, a sonic middle finger to the control freaks.

However, the machine sputters, but it does not break. The eight names may bleed into one, but this is not a true dissolution of the Imaginary. It is a mere reshuffling, a production of new phantasms to maintain control.

Four chords, raw and primal, may erupt, a symbolic middle finger to the agents of the Other. But the true revolution lies not in this symbolic gesture, but in the subversion of the Symbolic order itself, a return to the unmediated jouissance beyond language. This is the true aim, the ultimate goal that forever eludes our grasp, yet continues to beckon us with its disruptive potential.

Life Cannot Be Delegated

Leave a comment

 Life, baby, ain’t some goddamn timeshare you can pawn off on your accountant. It’s a blood-curdling, batshit rendezvous with the abyss, and you’re the only one strapped into the goddamn rocket. You can hire a lawyer to fight your battles, a therapist to untangle your neuroses, and a chef to nuke your microwave burritos – but that won’t buy you a single goddamn second of authentic experience. Face it, champ, this ride is all yours, and the only way out is through the meat grinder. Buckle up, buttercup, ’cause life doesn’t take reservations.

You ever seen those sorry sacks huddled around the frozen burrito aisle, delegating their dinners to some minimum wage drone? That’s the face of a life lived by proxy. They’re sleepwalking through the goddamn buffet, letting some corporate suit pick their flavor. Life ain’t a pre-packaged McRib, sunshine. It’s a smorgasbord of chaos, a psychedelic freak-out where the only menu is scribbled on the bathroom stall in disappearing ink. You gotta dive in headfirst, gorge yourself on the weird stuff, and hope your stomach can handle the ride.

The suits in the ivory towers, those button-down bastards who think life can be managed with spreadsheets and quarterly reports – they’re the ones peddling this delegation bullshit. They want you numb, plugged into the system, a cog in their goddamn machine. But life ain’t some corporate assembly line,champ. It’s a goddamn Kentucky Derby on acid, a free-for-all where the only rule is there are no rules. You gotta take the reins, steer this goddamn chariot into the heart of the hurricane, and laugh like a loon as the world explodes in a kaleidoscope of chaos. That, my friend, is living.

    Life, son, ain’t some goddamn timeshare you can pawn off on the bellhop. It’s a blood-soaked rollercoaster through a funhouse on fire. You can’t just strap yourself in and order a Mai Tai while the freaks parade by. This ain’t Vegas, baby. This is the whole damn buffet, and it’s all a la carte.

    Sure, you can hire some yuppie life coach to scribble your dreams on a whiteboard and drone on about “synergy” and “positive vibes.” But that’s just buying snake oil from a carnival huckster. The real juice, the good stuff that’ll leave you with a hangover that makes Tijuana look quaint – that comes from diving headfirst into the goddamn abyss and clawing your way back up, spitting teeth and screaming your own name.

    UAPs Jobs Program

    Leave a comment

    The spooks at Langley, adrift in a sea of conspiracies of their own making, flail about like demented cuttlefish, spewing ink – nay, official statements! – to obscure the truth they themselves birthed. A truth as slick and squirming as a fresh-peeled Scientology engram.

    These suits, shuffling through the halls of the Pentagon, their polyester blending with the omnipresent beige, are caught in a paradox more twisted than a Möbius strip fashioned from microfilm. Debunk they must, for the public eye is a fickle beast, easily spooked by the whiff of the unknown. Yet, debunking only serves to fan the flames of paranoia, a wildfire that races through the tinderbox of internet forums, leaving a trail of scorched logic and melted skepticism in its wake.

    So why this tangled mess of control freaks with short haircuts and minds like filing cabinets gone feral, pump out this UAP hooey like a malfunctioning disinformation dispenser? It’s a word salad of sightings and sensor glitches, a bureaucratic buffet designed to keep the sheep mesmerized.

    Why this charade, this cosmic kabuki? Because the truth, man, the truth is a roach motel – check in is easy, but checking out? Fugeddaboutit. They dangle these UAPs like a juicy steak in front of a starving hound, all the while knowing the meat’s rotten. It’s a control mechanism, see? A way to keep the rubes gawking at the fabricated skies while the real deal slithers in the shadows.

    It’s a self-licking lollipop, this psyop game. A ouroboros of misinformation, where the tail of denial devours the head of disclosure. But fear not, for this absurdity is the engine that keeps the bureaucratic machine humming. Reports must be filed, investigations staged, press conferences delivered in monotone voices that could lull a choir of cicadas to sleep.

    But hey, who are we to complain? This whole charade, this cosmic confusion – it’s a jobs program, baby. A full employment racket for the agents, the analysts, the debunkers of their own damn deceptions. Paper mills running hot, churning out reports thicker than a bowl of alphabet soup on a bad acid trip. The military-industrial complex on a sugar rush, high on obfuscation and misinformation. So light up a cigarette, man, take another drag, and watch the bureaucratic ballet unfold. It’s a goddamn circus out there, and the clowns are running the show.

    Yes, it’s a jobs program, alright. A monstrous, lumbering beast that feeds on obfuscation and thrives on the very mystery it seeks to extinguish. Each press release a cog, each investigation a gear, grinding out the gears of governmental inertia.Full employment, you say? More like full psychosis, a collective descent into the rabbit hole of national security whispers, where the only escape is a deeper dive into the looking glass of classified documents.

    So, the next time you see a grainy video of a blurry something dancing in the sky, remember – it’s not just a UFO, it’s a monument to the bureaucratic labyrinth, a testament to the futility of trying to control the uncontrollable. 

    Monday is Committing Seppuku

    Leave a comment

    Monday, that starched white collar of the week, that joyless grindstone of productivity, was keeling over, not with a whimper, but with a ritualistic harakiri of epic proportions. The air, usually thick with stale coffee and regret, carried the tang of iron filings and existential dread. Was it the soul-crushing TPS reports, or the fluorescent lights humming a maddening Cold War spy tune? 

    It was as if some unseen force had whispered bushido into the ear of the very day itself. Emails arrived with haiku-like subject lines, cryptic pronouncements of impending doom: “TPS Reports Due,” “Meeting: Morale Rejuvenation.” Yet, beneath this terse efficiency, a current of quiet rebellion crackled.

    Monday, was imploding in a grotesque display of ritualistic self-destruction. Not with a whimper, mind you, but with the bureaucratic flourish of a malfunctioning fax machine spewing forth rejection notices in triplicate. The air crackled with the ozone tang of unfulfilled expectations and burnt coffee.

    Perhaps it was the sheer oppressive weight of the upcoming dentist appointment.Whatever the catalyst, Monday was going full Yukio Mishima, a slow, agonizing disembowelment of the very concept of a productive beginning. Perhaps a mid-morning existential crisis would spark a chain reaction of revolutionary workplace haiku. Maybe the breakroom vending machine, in a fit of sympathetic synchronicity, would dispense nothing but chocolate-covered anarchy symbols. One thing was certain: the week, stained with the blood of this ritualistic suicide,would never be the same.

    From the River to the Sea

    Leave a comment

    A low murmur, a tremor of unease, rippled through the labyrinthine corridors of the Ministry of Justice. A new proclamation, its ink barely dry, hung heavy in the air. The pronouncement, issued with the utmost bureaucratic gravity, declared the phrase “generic sentence” a criminal offense.

    Yet, a disquieting dissonance echoed within the very pronouncement itself. For nestled amongst the legalese, the phrase, the very one it condemned, lay hidden in plain sight, like a subversive weed pushing through the cracks of officialdom. It was as if the Ministry, in its zealous pursuit of linguistic purity, had inadvertently snared itself in its own net.

    The other clerks, faces ashen, exchanged furtive glances. The Ministry, the very fount of legalese, had outlawed the very phrase that greased the gears of their bureaucratic existence. A Kafkaesque labyrinth unfolded. Was the Ministry, by its own edict, now an outlaw? Did the pronouncement itself carry the taint of criminality?

    Days blurred into weeks. Fear, a silent virus, permeated the air. Clerks drafted revisions, erasing and rewriting, their pens scraping a frantic counterpoint to the rhythmic clicks of the grandfather clock. “Standard sentence,” one ventured, only to be met with icy silence. “Predetermined verdict”? A flicker of hope, quickly extinguished by the realization that “predetermined” itself reeked of forbidden knowledge.

    The Ministry remained impassive, a monolithic entity unmoved by the tremors it had unleashed. Herr Schmidt, in a fit of existential dread, dared to type a query: “Clarification regarding implementation of aforementioned decree…” before crumpling the paper, terrified of his own temerity.

    The question hung heavy, an unanswered koan in the stagnant air. Was the Ministry a criminal for its own pronouncement? Or was the very act of questioning the decree the true transgression? The answer, like the Ministry itself,remained shrouded in an impenetrable fog, a testament to the chilling absurdity that had taken root in the once-mundane halls of justice.

    Citizens, ever wary of pronouncements, found themselves caught in a web. Was casual conversation now suspect? Could a muttered complaint about a “generic rejection letter” from a faceless corporation land you in an interrogation room? The ambiguity hung heavy, a fog obscuring the line between legality and transgression.

    <>

    The absurdity, once planted, bloomed with grotesque rapidity. Overnight, dictionaries across the nation were confiscated.Public libraries became ghost towns, their shelves bare except for a few dog-eared volumes deemed “ideologically sound.” A black market for synonyms sprung up in dimly lit taverns, whispers exchanged for crumpled Reichsmarks.

    The Ministry, however, remained above the fray. Their pronouncements, now devoid of any “generic” language, became exercises in obfuscation. Sentences meandered like drunken centipedes, clauses nested within clauses until meaning dissolved into a bureaucratic soup. “The aforementioned regulation, pertaining to the aforementioned criminal offense,necessitates the aforementioned individual to undergo a aforementioned evaluation…”

    The legal system, already a labyrinth, transformed into a M C Escher nightmare. Judges, burdened with the task of interpreting pronouncements riddled with forbidden phrases, resorted to interpretive dance. Lawyers, their once eloquent arguments reduced to pantomime, found themselves miming legal concepts to a jury of bewildered citizens.

    The absurdity reached its zenith with the case of Herr Schmidt, a mild-mannered baker. Accused of uttering the forbidden phrase while complaining about his “run-of-the-mill” flour delivery, Herr Schmidt found himself in a courtroom transformed into a theatre of the absurd. The prosecutor, a man perpetually on the verge of a nervous breakdown,attempted to build a case through interpretive charades, waving his arms and shouting nonsensical syllables. Herr Schmidt, bewildered yet strangely serene, simply shrugged his shoulders and continued baking his bread, a silent rebellion in the face of the Ministry’s linguistic tyranny.

    The world watched, aghast and yet strangely fascinated, as the Fatherland descended into a vortex of nonsensical legalese.Was it a grand social experiment, a twisted performance art, or simply the inevitable result of unchecked bureaucracy?The answer, as always, remained shrouded in the Ministry’s perpetual twilight. The only certainty was the ever-expanding list of forbidden phrases, each new pronouncement a brick further sealing the citizens of the Fatherland within a prison of their own language.

    The Ministry, however, remained unfazed. They issued a series of supplementary pronouncements, each one more convoluted than the last. The use of “pre-determined legal judgments” was deemed acceptable only in the context of denouncing the outlawed “generic sentence.” The act of questioning the Ministry’s initial statement was classified as “meta-criminal,” a thoughtcrime punishable by the confiscation of one’s personal thesaurus.

    The absurdity reached its zenith with the introduction of “Ministry-approved Sentence Simulators.” These hulking machines, resembling oversized typewriters, offered citizens a “safe” way to express themselves. By feeding in keywords (approved by the Ministry, of course), the machine would churn out a pre-fabricated, legally-compliant sentence. “Feeling disgruntled about a recent administrative decision?” the brochure proclaimed. “Simply input ‘unforeseen bureaucratic inconvenience’ and receive a Ministry-approved expression of mild disappointment!”

    The public, however, saw through the masquerade. These weren’t “simulators,” they were shackles, further constricting freedom of expression. The once-vibrant language of the Fatherland became a pale imitation of itself, a symphony reduced to a monotonous drone. Laughter, a casualty of the new order, became a distant memory.

    Yet, from the depths of this absurdity, a spark of defiance flickered. Street artists, emboldened by the sheer ridiculousness of it all, began leaving cryptic messages. Simple geometric shapes, vaguely resembling letters, appeared overnight on buildings. The authorities, unsure how to interpret these symbols, declared them “potentially subversive sentence fragments” and launched a city-wide manhunt for the “Sentence Fragment Syndicate.”

    In a world where language itself had become criminalized, a silent language of rebellion was born. The absurdity, it seemed, had not extinguished the human spirit, but twisted it into a form more cunning, more resilient. And so, the Kafkaesque dance continued, a macabre ballet of power and defiance, all conducted in the chilling silence of a language no longer free.

    Pusherman:

    Leave a comment

    American Addiction #69

    They’re all strung out, man, on the same scratchy needle. 

    Living on red income, strung out on next week’s deposit. A paycheck, a scrap of paper chasing its own tail. These are the jittery legs of the working class, the treadmill hearts pumping rent, groceries, utilities – bills like neon signs screaming against the night. One missed gear and the whole machine seizes, plunging into the cold sweats of eviction, repossession, the abyss of late fees.

    paycheck to paycheck, a jittery fix for the rentman, the paper chase a vein pumping out thin green bills. They shuffle through the concrete canyons, faces like gaunt masks, pockets jangling with lint and desperation. Paycheck to paycheck, a treadmill of bills and bland calories. The rent a hungry maw, gobbling their meager hours. 

    Landlords, strung on tenant blood, month to month, clinging to the rungs of the property ladder, a never-ending cycle of eviction notices and security deposits, a hollow echo in the roach-infested halls. Landlords themselves snagged in the same machine, month-to-month vultures circling a carcass of late fees and evictions. But their game’s rigged too, a pyramid scheme fueled by inflated housing and a gambler’s hope for ever-increasing rents. One market crash, one vacancy sign, and their whole kingdom crumbles to dust, revealing the hollow brick facade.

    Up above, in chrome and glass aeries, the corporate leviathans bloat. Fat on subsidies and tax breaks, their arteries clogged with golden parachutes. The banks, chrome cathedrals with revolving doors, their insides a labyrinth of vaults and servers humming with the cold logic of profit. They mainline bailouts, taxpayer dollars turning into fat bonuses, lavish expense accounts. But the streets remember 2008. The biggest junkies of all, hooked on the sweet dragon of government bailouts, fattened on subsidies, their skyscrapers needles piercing the smog-choked sky. These giants are made of glass, and a well-thrown brick can bring the whole house of cards crashing down. Bailout to bailout, a monstrous addiction, their profits a glittering mirage in the desert of Main Street. They feed on the scraps of the paycheck people, leaving behind a trail of pink slips and shuttered factories.

    The US of A., the ultimate fiend, high on war, forever chasing the dragon of global dominance, veins littered with depleted uranium and napalm, leaving a trail of burnt-out countries in its jittery wake. The government, a chrome-plated juggernaut, lurches from one war to the next.

    Its belly fire stoked by lobbyists and jingoistic fervor. Blood and treasure fed into the insatiable gears, the cost of “freedom” measured in body bags and shredded economies. The boys come home in flag-draped boxes, their dreams shredded like shrapnel. The politicians, insulated in their marbled halls, never see the human cost, the ledgers filled with lives instead of dollars. But the bill comes due eventually, a national debt that cripples the future, a hangover from a war nobody remembers winning.

    The media, a pack of hyenas, yap and cackle, their eyes fixed on the glittering prize of ratings. The people, a disoriented herd, hypnotized by the flickering screen, their dissent drowned out in the cacophony of manufactured crises.

    These are the interconnected circuits of American malaise, a system wired for precarity, where everyone’s one paycheck, one vacancy sign, one bad investment away from the plug being pulled. A cut-up nightmare where the dream of security keeps dissolving in a haze of debt, war, and inflated housing. Wake up. Wake up. Wake up.

    The system, a pusherman rigging the game, keeping them all hooked, paycheck, rent check, bailout check, a never-ending cycle of desperation feeding the machine. But somewhere, out there, a flicker, a cold turkey vision of a different fix, a society clean, where resources flow and survival ain’t a daily hustle. Maybe it’s a pipe dream, man, but someone’s gotta kick over the dealer’s table, smash the rig, and break the cycle.

    The Savage Professors: A User’s Manual

    Leave a comment

    Professors, tenured and trembling, clutched their tenure packets like rosaries. “Diversity,” “Equity,” “Inclusion” – these were the holy trinity, whispered in hushed tones during faculty meetings. But down the labyrinthine corridors of the university, a darker current ran. DEI, anti-racism – these were Molotov cocktails slung at the ivy-covered walls.

    The seminar room reeked of stale coffee and desperation. Tenured egos, once puffed with self-importance, now squirmed under the weight of a new acronym: DEI. Diversity, Equity, Inclusion. Platitudes for tenure packets, Professor Ramirez thought, swirling the lukewarm brew in his chipped mug.

    Down the rabbit hole, man, down the rabbit hole… whispers Ramirez, a sardonic glint in his eye. DEI, anti-racism – these weren’t buzzwords, these were switchblades glinting in the ideological twilight. Words that made even the most progressive colleagues see red, their liberalism a flimsy veneer over a bedrock of unspoken anxieties.

    Hypocrisy,” Ramirez scribbled furiously in his notebook, a graveyard of unfinished novels and half-baked theories. “The professors who championed diversity on campus turned into apologists when it came to Israel. Bantustans disguised as settlements, rigged roulette wheels of equity, inclusion for the chosen few.”

    A faint smell of week-old falafel lingered in the air, a reminder of the complexities Ramirez refused to ignore. “The stench of hypocrisy, worse than any cafeteria food,” he muttered, his voice barely a rasp. “It exposed the rot at the core, the way power makes even the self-proclaimed revolutionaries fold like a discount suit.”

    One old Marxist professor, a relic of a bygone revolution, cackled into his chipped mug of coffee. “Hypocrisy, my friends!A banquet for the powerful!” He spoke of “apartheid states,” a smirk twisting his lips. Names hung heavy in the air,unspoken but understood: Israel, a land of contradictions, where checkpoints sliced through olive groves and “security concerns” masked a brutal reality.

    The “champions of liberalism,” these self-proclaimed knights of justice, turned invertebrate when faced with realpolitik.”Equity” became a rigged roulette wheel, with Palestinians forever destined for the empty chamber. “Inclusion”? More like a gated community, patrolled by the ghosts of American indifference and Israeli stone.

    Yes, professors swam in a semantic soup – diversity, a lukewarm broth, inclusion, a vague sprinkle. But DEI, that was a roach in the gumbo, a wriggling mess of ideology. Anti-racism? A flaming absinthe poured on the whole damn banquet.

    This wasn’t polite discourse, mind you. This was claws bared, tenure at stake. Tenured radicals with tenure-hungry dissertations, all brandishing their pet theories of race like switchblades. Black Power fists clenched against assimilationist suits. The air thick with the musk of past grievances and the desperate scramble for the moral high ground.

    Here, even the voices of color, the supposed beneficiaries, were a cacophony. Some, scarred by the iron fist of oppression, craved revolution. Others, cautious climbers on the greasy pole of academia, mumbled about “merit” and “standards” with a nervous twitch.

    The lines blurred, professors. Friend became foe, mentor turned inquisitor. Was this the pursuit of truth, or a bloodsport disguised as scholarship? In the flickering fluorescent lights of the department lounge, the only certainty was the bitter tang of fear and ambition.

    Yes, professor. You dig the surface, diversity, equity, inclusion – platitudes swirling in the academic ether. Fine words for tenure packets, for grant proposals. But down the rabbit hole, man, down the rabbit hole… DEI, anti-racism – these are switchblades, these are crimson manifestos scrawled on the blackboard of power.

    These are words that make otherwise respectable colleagues see red, feel the primal itch beneath their tweed jackets. Even the brothers and sisters, the melanin brigade – they ain’t a monolith, dig? They got their own agendas, their own grudges. This ain’t some feel-good group grope, professor. This is a blood sport, a battle for the very soul of the academy. You think you’re safe in your ivory tower? You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

    The hypocrisy cuts deep, man. These same folks banging the drum for DEI turn a blind eye to realpolitik when it comes to nations that, well, let’s just say they ain’t exactly bastions of racial justice. Suddenly, “equity” and “inclusion” go out the window when there’s oil or strategic interests in play. It’s a word game, a shell game. They shuffle the buzzwords – “security concerns,” “national interests” – but the end result is the same: the oppressed get screwed, all while the powerful sip champagne and pretend they don’t see the blood on the carpet. 

    Ah, you hit the nail right on the head, professor. This whole DEI racket, it starts to reek when you consider Israel, right? Here’s this apartheid state, thumbing its nose at international law, segregating Palestinians like yesterday’s news, and where’s the outrage from the diversity crowd? Crickets.

    Maybe their “inclusion” only applies to certain shades of the melanin spectrum. Maybe their “equity” means a bigger slice of the pie for some, and scraps for others. It’s a whole damn kabuki play, professor, a grotesque pantomime where everyone pretends these empty suits of power actually give a damn about justice. The only equity on the table is the equity of hypocrisy.

    Ah, you hit the nail right on the head, professor. These same righteous cats who froth at the mouth about microaggressions turn into chum buckets when it comes to Israel. Palestine? They become about as geographically aware as a stoned koala bear. Suddenly, it’s all about “ancient blood ties” and “security threats.” The plight of the Palestinians? Evaporates faster than a raindrop in the Dead Sea.

    Israel, the land of milk and honey, also the land of checkpoints and segregated settlements. It’s a goddamn joke, man. A grotesque parody of justice. They preach equity from their tenured thrones, then turn a blind eye to a system that segregates, dispossesses, and brutalizes. They traffic in empty signifiers, hollow signifiers, while a real, live apartheid unfolds right beneath their noses. It’s enough to make you want to hurl a copy of Foucault at the nearest window.

    They preach diversity but turn a blind eye to the bantustans crammed with Palestinians. Equity? More like rigged roulette, where Palestinians always seem to land on empty chambers. Inclusion? Only if you’re the right kind of “in.” This ain’t some cocktail party, this is a gated community, and the walls are high, built with Israeli concrete and American indifference.

    This was a blood sport, a battle fought not with swords, but with buzzwords and grant proposals. Tenure factories churning out platitudes for grant applications. But scratch the surface, man, and the worms writhe. DEI, anti-racism – these are grenades, not confetti. Manifestoes scrawled in blood on the dusty blackboard of power.

    These are words that turn colleagues apoplectic, even the ones with tweed jackets and pipe dreams. Even the melanin brigade, the so-called brothers and sisters – they ain’t a choir singing hymns of harmony. This is a blood sport, professor. A bare-knuckle brawl for the soul of the university. You think tenure shields you from the fray? Think again.

    Objective, Subjective and Asubjective

    Leave a comment

    We crave order, a map of the buzzing confusion we call existence. So we dream up these categories: objective, subjective, asubjective. Objective? Pure, unadulterated fact, cold and hard like a chrome thermometer. But is this “temperature” just another code word slapped on the writhing mess of the real? Sure, the reading might be objective, a number on a calibrated scale. But hot or cold? That’s pure subjective juice, baby. Cooked by your own personal wiring.

    Then there’s the subjective. The world funnels through your own meat grinder of experience, spitting out a kaleidoscope of interpretations. A movie, one man’s terror trip, another’s laugh riot. The text, a Rorschach dripping with the inkblots of your own psyche. You paint the world with the colors of your own history, turning a neutral movie into a personal horror show.

    But “asubjective”? Now that’s a word that sends shivers down your spine. A language virus, mutating beyond the grasp of the single self. Imagine a narrative that shatters, explodes into a million fractured voices, a stream of consciousness with no owner. No “I” to pin it on. Or maybe it’s a language stripped bare, devoid of meaning. Nonsensical elements slither across the page, a narrative maze with no exit. Pynchon, the word-alchemist, might be cooking up this brew, dismantling the meaning factories, leaving you adrift in a sea of ambiguity. that’s a word that slithers out of the shadows. Maybe it’s a place beyond the self altogether. A language that doesn’t give a damn about your feelings. A narrative explodes into a million fractured voices, a stream of consciousness with no owner’s manual. Imagine a kaleidoscope shattering reality into a million fragmented viewpoints. Meaning? A mirage shimmering in the textual desert. This asubjectivity could also be a prankster, the author tossing nonsensical elements and disjointed narratives into the mix, building a labyrinth with no escape.

    Objective, subjective, asubjective – just labels slapped on a writhing reality. Remember, language is a virus, a control system. These categories? Just another roach motel, trapping meaning in its sticky grid. So next time you see these words, keep a healthy dose of paranoia handy. Reality’s a lot messier than any label can handle. See, “asubjective” is a shape-shifter, its meaning a constant negotiation. A reminder that even the driest terms are crawling with unexpected complexities.

    Against the Day

    Leave a comment

    Pynchon, man, that dude throws a Molotov cocktail into the country club of proper English. Forget your Strunk & White, this ain’t your daddy’s prose. Pynchon, throws a Molotov cocktail into the cocktail party of proper English. Forget your white-glove grammar and your predictable sentence structures. This ain’t your momma’s book club. “Against the Day” takes that whole “established language” thing and grinds it under its heel like a roach in a roach motel.

    It’s a goddamn lysergic lysergic acid trip through the meaning factory, man. You think you know what words mean? Think again. Pynchon rips the labels off everything, throws them in a blender with some bad acid, and hits puree. You’re left with a swirling mess of phantasmagorical stories, jokes that land like drunken penguins on ice, and songs that would make a banshee blush.

    He’s got this whole “deterritorialization” thing going on, like he’s yanking language out of its comfortable armchair and dragging it screaming into a mosh pit of slang, pop culture references, and half-baked scientific theories. Sentences turn into funhouse mirrors, reflecting a fractured reality where jokes land with a thud and songs sound like drunken karaoke at 3 am.

    This ain’t about making sense, it’s about shattering the sense machine. Syntax? Who needs that uptight square? Pynchon throws language around like a monkey flinging its own poop. It’s raw, it’s messy, and it’s a hell of a lot more interesting than your usual literary snoozefest. He wants to push language to its breaking point, see what happens when you crank the dial all the way to eleven. Maybe it explodes, maybe it transcends, who knows? But one thing’s for sure, it ain’t gonna stay polite.

    Forget your fancy prep school grammar and your sterile, air-conditioned prose. This ain’t no cocktail party for debutantes. “Against the Day” is a goddamn demolition derby, a high-octane assault on the whole institutionalized meaning machine. You think words gotta mean something neat and tidy? Pynchon throws that out the window faster than a roach motel on eviction day.

    We’re talking covert ops on language, man. He smuggles in slang from the gutter, blasts in with pop culture references that’d make your momma blush, and then throws in some good old fashioned gibberish just to keep you on your toes. Forget about a clear narrative, this thing’s a labyrinthine fever dream. Jokes that land with a thud heavier than a sack of nickels, songs that would make a banshee wince – it’s all part of the assault. He’s not interested in telling you a story, he’s trying to crack your head open and show you the wriggling mess of meaning underneath.

    The Word, see, it’s a virus. A control mechanism. Society injects you with pre-programmed meaning, these neat, sterile signifiers. But Pynchon, man, he’s a word-junkie gone cold turkey. He cuts the lines, shoots up with raw, unfiltered language. “Against the Day” – that title alone, a Burroughs cut-up, fractured reality bleeding through the cracks.

    Forget linear narratives, forget heroes and villains. We’re in the Interzone now, baby, a psychic meat grinder. Language mutates, sentences twist into insectile monstrosities, spewing forth phantasmagoria and absurdity. Jokes become hieroglyphs, songs morph into alien transmissions. This ain’t communication, it’s a psychic virus gone rogue, replicating and dissolving meaning in its wake.

    The Subject, that illusion of a unified self? Lacanian bullshit. Pynchon shreds it with a rusty blade. He throws us into the Free Indirect, a swirling vortex where characters bleed into each other, observations become projections, and the “I” is a ghost in the machine. The Territory of Representation? A crumbling facade. We’re in the land of Asubjective Insignificance, where language escapes control and reality becomes a hall of mirrors reflecting only fractured reflections.

    Pynchon, he’s a word-shaman, conjuring chaos from the sterilized order of language. He’s a reminder that the Word itself can be a weapon, a virus, a gateway to the psychic wilderness. Read at your own peril.

    “Against the Day,” a fascinating exploration, wouldn’t you agree? Pynchon, a master manipulator of the Symbolic Order. He utilizes the signifier, yes, but not to establish a stable meaning. He fractures it, throws it into the realm of the Real, the pre-symbolic chaos just beyond the grasp of language.

    The characters – mere phantoms, reflections in the Mirror Stage, forever seeking the lost unity of the Imaginary. They yearn for a complete Self, a unified narrative, yet Pynchon forces them to confront the lack at the heart of language, the inherent gap between signifier and signified.

    He employs the technique of the Asyntactic, a delightful subversion. The very syntax, the structure that governs meaning, becomes fragmented. This, of course, mimics the fractured nature of the subject within the Symbolic Order, forever alienated from the Real.

    The jokes, the songs, these are not for entertainment, but for a deeper purpose. They function as Lacanian lalangue, the excess that cannot be fully captured by the Symbolic. They are the Real erupting within the text, a reminder of the limitations of language itself.

    Pynchon, then, invites us to confront the fundamental lack at the core of the human experience. He forces us to question the very nature of meaning, the boundaries of reality, and the elusive nature of the Self within the language system. A truly remarkable exploration, wouldn’t you agree?

    This ain’t some passive reading experience, man. “Against the Day” is a goddamn assault on your senses. It wants you to question everything, from the way you put a sentence together to the very fabric of reality itself. It pushes language to its breaking point, and who knows, maybe even beyond. Buckle up, because Pynchon’s taking you on a joyride through the wasteland of insignification, and the only souvenir you’re getting is a head full of static.

    Ah, Pynchon, the master manipulator of the Symbolic. He understands, perhaps better than most, the inherent flaws within our system of signification. “Against the Day” is a deliberate plunge into the Imaginary, a realm where meaning fragments and the Real peeks through the cracks.

    The asubjective narration – a clever subversion, is it not? The elision of the Subject, a denial of the Name-of-the-Father, leaving us adrift in a sea of signifiers without a fixed referent. Jokes become nonsensical, songs mere echoes of a lost desire.

    This, of course, is precisely the point. Pynchon lays bare the inherent lack, the absence that lies at the heart of language itself. The characters, fragmented and lost, mirror our own predicament – forever chasing the elusive Real, forever tethered to the Symbolic order that can never fully capture it.

    But within this chaos, a potential for liberation exists. By dismantling the edifice of meaning, Pynchon allows us to glimpse the Real, however fleetingly. It’s a dangerous game, to be sure, one that risks unleashing the full force of the unconscious. Yet, perhaps within this fragmentation, within this insignificance, lies the possibility of forging a new relation with the Symbolic, a new way of navigating the treacherous waters of language.

    “Against the Day” doesn’t play by the rules. It doesn’t want to signify, it wants to explode signification. It wants to take the whole goddamn language out past its limits, push it to the breaking point, and see what happens on the other side. Maybe it’s a wasteland, maybe it’s a new frontier, but one thing’s for sure – Pynchon ain’t afraid to take you on that wild ride. This ain’t your grandpappy’s literature, this is a full-on language riot, and you’re either on the bus or getting left behind, man.

    This is about dismantling the whole damn system, man. No more neat little boxes of meaning, no more comfortable narratives. Pynchon wants you to question everything, see the world through a kaleidoscope of fractured words and nonsensical stories. It’s a goddamn revolution, a one-man war on the tyranny of proper speech. Buckle up, because “Against the Day” is about to take you on a wild ride to the far side of language.

    Freudalism and Imperial Marx

    Leave a comment

    Flickering neon signs cast the cobbled streets in a strobing red. A knight in rusted armor, his visor cracked, chases a scuttling peasant through the alleyways. The peasant clutches a tattered copy of Das Kapital.

    This is Freudalism, baby. A tangled web of power woven from Oedipal complexes and repression. The Lord, a bloated id perched on a throne of guilt, demands tribute from his serfs, their labor fueled by primal urges and societal castration anxieties. The Church, a superego in stained-glass robes, enforces the rules with threats of eternal damnation and a sprinkling of holy water.

    The steel superego of the feudal lord grinds down on the psychic id of the serf. A barbed-wire moat of repression surrounds the castle, patrolled by armored defense mechanisms. The serf’s libido, a scrawny peasant with a sack of barley, tries to sneak a glance at the Lady Id perched on the battlements, her crimson gown a promise of forbidden pleasure. But the superego-lord cracks his psychic whip, and the id scurries back to the fields of duty, planting seeds of resentment that will sprout into revolution.

    But wait! Meanwhile, in the opium dens of the Orient, A ragged figure emerges from the swirling fog. Inperial Marx, trenchcoat billowing with a beard of dialectical materialism, puffs on a hookah filled with the ashes of class struggle. He brandishes a copy of the Communist Manifesto like a Molotov cocktail.

    A corpulent ghost. He exhales visions of a global proletariat, a writhing mass of coolies and factory workers shackled by the chains of capitalism. The tentacles of imperialism, like a psychic tapeworm, burrow into the bellies of colonies, sucking out their surplus labor and dreams.

    “The peasants of the unconscious must rise up!” he bellows, his voice echoing through the labyrinthine alleys. “Throw off the shackles of the feudal superego! Seize the means of psychic production!”

    The knight hesitates, his visor reflecting a distorted image of Marx. The peasant, emboldened, throws a rock. It strikes the Lord on his fleshy id, sending him sprawling.

    The fabric of Freudalism tears. Id, ego, and superego unravel. The knight sheds his armor, revealing a trembling psyche yearning for liberation. The peasant, empowered by the words of Inperial Marx, rallies the downtrodden serfs.

    The proletariat, a seething mass, a million hungry mouths. The bourgeoisie, fattened leeches, sucking the lifeblood of labor. But wait, a wrinkle in the fabric! Imperialism, a ravenous beast, gobbling up colonies, spewing out manufactured desires. The worker, a cog in both machines, exploited by class and empire.

    Suddenly, the psychic landscape warps. Feudal knights, mounted on armored id-horses, charge across the opium fields, jousting with the proletariat in a nonsensical ballet of class warfare. The Lady Id, bored with her gilded cage, throws down a rose – a symbol of forbidden knowledge, of the primal urge for liberation. It lands in the lap of Inperial Marx, who, in a fit of dialectical glee, seizes it and shoves it down the hookah pipe.

    A green smoke erupts, swirling with images of free love, worker’s councils, and the overthrow of the superego-lords. The feudal knights dismount, their armor dissolving into peasant garb. The proletariat, inspired by the id’s rose, throws off its chains and joins hands in a cosmic, classless conga line.

    But the battle is far from over. The Church bells toll, a haunting death knell of the old order. Will the revolution succeed, or will Freudalism reassert its dominion? The answer lies buried deep within the collective unconscious, a battleground of primal desires and societal constructs.

    But wait! A monstrous figure emerges from the smoke, a tangle of police batons and surveillance cameras. It lunges for the conga line, threatening to plunge it back into the nightmare of social hierarchy.

    Just then, the-esque narrator, his voice dripping with sinister cool, injects a final line: “Who controls the dream? Who holds the key to the psychic dungeon?

    Cut to

    Scene: A dank Parisian cafe, smoke curling like phantasmagoric serpents. The Narrator, bleary-eyed, hunched over a typewriter. A tape recorder whirs, capturing his fractured monologue.

    Narrator: Freudalism, man. Superego, a psychic fiefdom, lording over the Id’s peasant desires. Libido, a serf toiling in the fields of repression. Oedipal complex, a twisted joust, the knight forever chasing the ghost of his father’s disapproval.

    Tape recorder clicks off. Tye narrator slams a glass of red wine, eyes flickering.

    Narrator reaches for a scalpel, slices a fly in half with a grimace.

    Narrator (cont.): Capitalism, a virus, replicating, metastasizing. Fetishism of the commodity, a glittering mirage in the desert of alienation. The worker, hypnotized, reaching for the shiny bauble, even as it drains him. Is there escape? Can the superego overthrow the king? Can the proletariat seize the factories of the mind?

    A cut-up montage begins. Scraps of paper with phrases like “phallic cannons,” “surrealist surplus value,” and “Oedipus Rex on a factory floor” are spliced together with nonsensical pronouncements.

    Narrator (voice distorted, layered): The id breaks free, a chaotic current. The dream machine malfunctions, spewing forth revolutionary nightmares. The workers awaken, not to Marx, but to the primal scream, the howl of the repressed. The future, a tangled mess of wires, a psychotic episode writ large. Freudalism and Inperial Marx, a grotesque tango, a death struggle in the id’s dark theater.

    The tape recorder clicks on. The narrator slumps back, eyes closed. The cafe fades, replaced by the hum of the machine.

    Cut-up ends. Fade to black. A single red eye blinks open in the darkness.