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The Public Blogging of Pomosexuality, Homotextuality, Homophobiaphilia, and Drear Theory (aka Career Theory) [aka Gay4Pay]. We also read the Corner and OpJournal so the right buttock will be punished as well.
All comments subject to publication. Or dismissal. Or Both.
The book I most want to read at the moment (but as the days, weeks, months and years are full of moments, it will be many moments until my forgotten then rekindled desire to read it intersects with my immediate access to it--if indeed it ever does.) This is a book with definite boundary issues.
Maybe its greatest appeal is that it replicates a key aesthetic event of my life, seeing the Beatles White Album for the first time. Of course that design orgasm was triggered as much by my infinite expectations of what the package contained as by my stunned and overjoyed reaction to the package itself. It held the promise and had the appearance of an everything box.
I don't have nearly the same hopes for M. Jullien's book, but I'm a pushover for defenses of the indefensible, praise of the scorned, and recognition of the unnoticed, so unless it's a hot-house lotus blossom floating on top of a cold-soup sea of French theory (a real danger, I'm afraid), I'll enjoy it just for its contraventional essence. And I can always put it aside and contemplate it melting into my bed's white sheets when my interest flags. Which means I'd also have to buy some white sheets.
In Germany It Would Have Been The O.J. S. Trial (And He Would Have Been Found Guilty)
The most interesting thing I've learned so far today (5:52 am EST) is emphasized below:
LONDON, Jan. 24 ...Prosecutors said Yasser Abu S. intended to fake his death in a car accident in Egypt and use the life insurance proceeds to pay for Qaeda activities in Germany and travel expenses to Iraq, where he planned to carry out a suicide bombing. The surnames of suspects in criminal cases are not disclosed in Germany.
So there must be a semi-anonymous half-dozen or so, demi-everyman Josef K's on trial somewhere in the Bundesrepublik D. in any given month. How tiresome for all concerned.
Update: I am now deeply enamored of the coquettish German judicial system:
(Planetout) Thousands of people lined the streets in Munich, Germany, on Saturday to pay respects to flamboyant fashion designer Rudolph Moshammer. He was killed by a man who says the designer failed to pay him for sexual favors.
...Moshammer, 64, was found strangled in his Munich villa on Jan. 14. A 25-year-old Iraqi man, identified as Herisch A. by the Deutsche Welle newspaper, has been arrested for the murder.
Update II: I really would like to know Herisch A.'s full name. Its anagram possibilities are looking formidable, almost singularly propitious. We're already most of the way to heresiarch, with an unknown number of spins left on the wheel of fortune.
EAGLE -- The death of Johnny Carson caught a lot of people by surprise this weekend. Actor George Kennedy made several appearances on the "Tonight Show" and called Johnny Carson a dear friend.
Internationally known artists Chris Burden and Nancy Rubins have retired abruptly from their longtime professorships at UCLA in part because the university refused to suspend a graduate student who used a gun during a classroom performance art piece, a spokeswoman for the artists said Friday.
...The brief performance involved a simulation of Russian roulette, in which the student appeared before the class holding a handgun, put in what appeared to be a bullet, spun the cylinder, then pointed the gun at his head and pulled the trigger...The weapon didn't fire. The student quickly left the room, then the audience heard a shot from outside. What ensued is not clear, but police said no one was hurt.
...Burden made his name in the early 1970s with influential and controversial performance art. In his best-known piece, "Shoot," performed in a Santa Ana gallery while he was a graduate student at UC Irvine, Burden had an assistant stand 15 feet away and shoot him in the upper arm with a .22-caliber rifle.
...Even before the incident, Watson said, Burden and Rubins were unhappy at UCLA because of budget cutbacks and bureaucratic issues that "got in the way of them adequately running an art department."
...Burden, whose annual salary was $128,300, and Rubins, who earned $88,300 per year, both were scheduled to teach courses and advise master's degree candidates during the current winter quarter and coming spring quarter...
...The student who did the performance is Joseph Deutch, 25, according to the campus police log entry on the case. Campus police said that in the course of the investigation, Deutch handed over a gun that was not a real firearm...
...Barbara Drucker, who chairs the art department, and Ron Athey, a visiting instructor who taught the course and was present during the performance, conducted a meeting at the Warner Building a week after the incident... Athey, known for piercing and cutting his body as a form of performance, did not return calls.
My favorite thing in this story is that the LA Times used the numeral 2, instead of the word two, in its headline.
The article's last paragraph is good as well. Christopher Waterman, dean of the School of the Arts and Architecture, closes with a collegial air guitar solo. Or is it the sound of a toy gun fired offstage?
"Change is a natural thing, and we're looking forward to conversations" about strategy for shaping the department's future in the search to fill the two vacant professorships, he said.
