Coming Up

Tropical Storms
John Grider
Here.

This post is as much for me as for you. I figure if I say I'm going to do something, it might increase the chances that I'll actually do it. So, coming up on Ich Bin Ein Oberliner:

(1) China, Big Bads, and a multipolar world.
(2) John McCain, what is up with that?
(3) David Lapham's Young Liars, also, what is up with that?
(4) Talk nerdy to me, baby (this one's for you, Nora).

On an unrelated note. You may have noticed the new art that's been up and about on Oberliner. It's the work of a Murderopolis based artist, John Grider. I think his stuff is nothing short of breathtaking. Check out his website (Broken Crow); send him some love. It might help make up for my blatant copyright infringement.

Also, did you comment on my last post yet? Yeah, I'm that guy.

Avoiding Epistemology IX

John Grider
Here.

While wandering aimlessly through the internets, I came upon an absolutely fascinating blog. Certain Doubts, an epistemology blog. That's right, an epistemology blog. The posters are all relatively well-know philosophers (read: I had to study them for my class), and their posts, while sometimes borderline incomprehensible, are interesting and exciting.

Here's an example of the kind of posting they do. Check out the comments section, sometimes is livelier than this, but just check it out. This is a much more accessible, much more vibrant way of entering academic discourse than, as a student, pouring of JSTOR trying to find journal articles. Blogging is, by it's nature, an interactive medium. When it's not (like some of the blogs for bigger publications), it loses a lot of its power. That's why a blog like Swampland (one end of the spectrum: posters never really respond to comments) can't match the appeal of a place like DailyKos (the other end of the spectrum: almost completely comment run).

It makes me wonder if something like this could be done at Oberlin. Here's the idea: Wilder Voice (or an entirely new publication, it doesn't really matter), runs a blog. The blog features three or four guest posters for two weeks or so. The posters are paid by Oberlin College to have a certain minimum number of posts. They have to be in dialog with each other through their posts. One week it could be foremost bloggers/intellectuals on international relations. The next, philosophy. The next, cinema studies. The blog would be managed and "edited" (not direct editing, but in consultation with the guest posters) by students, and a couple students would get to post the introduction to the topic du jour in a lengthy-er creative non-fiction piece.

I think it's a kick-ass idea, and a great way to demonstrate Oberlin's commitment to new media, new forms of discourse, and its institutional adaptability and also a great way to bring academic studies into the blogging world.

Thoughts? Comment away, reader(s).

P.S. bonus points for the barn picture reference...

There Will Be Blog

Kyle Wade
From The Post It Project, here.

It's easy to say why I'm happy right now. (1) It's the last week of school, (2) It's beautiful out right now, (3) I'm done with all my work except my private reading paper, Wilder Voice came out yesterday, and (5) everything, for the most part, is coming up West--if you catch my drift.

It's so nice out, as a matter of fact, it's getting hard for me to get angry at anything. Even reading coverage of this year's stupid primary season has lost it's high blood pressure-inducing effects.

So, today, I think I'm going to catch up on some blogging I've wanted to do. Later on Oberliner: Comics reviews! Kathy G. beats up another blogger! Chris Matthews beats up some anonymous wingnut! Review of Prince Caspian and Iron Man!

A Little Game

Facundo Percio
Here.

I'm going to play a little game: let's see how long I can resist writing about politics. A friend of mine (hi, N___) told me I've been getting a little "ranty," hence the game.

I've done quite a bit of reading in the last few days. But let's start with Warren Ellis's new series Anna Mercury, which I read quite a bit back. As best I can tell, this is Ellis at his sci fi prime. It took until the end of the first issue to get there, but it isn't what I though it was going to be: another "hot chick fights bad guys" flick. Plus, it's with Avatar, so, while it's a dollar more expensive, it doesn't have ads. Also, the art is spectacular. If you have a pull list, add this to it. Issue two doesn't come out for a week or two, so try to get your hands on the first one. Here at Oberlin, that means asking the kind folks at Infinite Monkey to order it for you.

Also of note, Ex Machina, which just gets better and better. It's on a sixty-issue clock, and we're at issue 35, so there's still time to start it and collect the last issues in pamphlet form--if you're a nut for that kind of shit like I am. I reviewed it once, here, and, as I mentioned before, it might get made into a movie (Fellow Oberliner, Bubblegum Aesthetics has a post up on Vaughan, the author, here).

Really, though, it's top-notch work, and yet another example of how--even within the superhero genre--the medium of comics can tackle a wider variety of topics, with success, than you'd think.

I'm up to date with it, so if you'd like to borrow the first trade (five issues), let me know.

Lastly, 100 Bullets. Wow. The first trade isn't great, but it's necessary, and if you stick with it, you'll get bowled over pretty quickly. My friend Marc! told me that if he could only get two comics, he'd get Cassanova and 100 Bullets. I can see why. Plus, the shit's is more addicting then Lost.

It's on a 100 issue clock, and has 90 out right now, so it's coming to an end, but, frankly, with a scope as broad as this one, and with a plot as addictive as this one's is, I would have lost my mind if I had to read it a month at a time.

Comic Review

Meena Hasan
Silk painting
From The Headquarters, here.

Reading Mark Carey’s Faker is like trying to hold an eel; just when you think you have it, it slips away. It’s odd animal, its six issues are at once not enough and too many. And that is too bad. If it weren’t for Carey’s poor pacing, his ideas—brilliant and strange—would mean much more.

Faker had a six-issue run, and Carey spent the first two issues laying out the background, and it seemed like some sort of strange but mundane examination of a group of somewhat despicable collage-age characters. The next two issues build a pseudo-science fiction existential story, and in the last two issues, it felt like a smart, almost introspective, philosophy-leaden action yarn. The fact is, each two issues felt rushed, and, while Jock’s artwork ameliorated some of the rushed feeling—he/she has an ability to effortlessly do in one panel what other artists might do in four or five—Faker feels awkward in its own skin.

In a certain sense, this discomfort fits, as Faker is, in many ways, a meditation on the internal dis-ease of this generation. Nevertheless, it loses something, crammed into its form.

But, thematically, it is riveting and provocative. It gives voice to the silent struggles faced by so many—sexual abuse, addiction, depression—and places it in Gen Pomo’s unique and detached context. It would have been easy—too easy—for Carey to give us a cheap ending, but he didn’t. I’d hold the last pages of Faker on the level of comics’ canonic works--The Invisables, Transmet, Watchmen. Here’s a particularly pertinent passage—both to the way Carey ends Faker and to the way it captures the essence of our cultural paradigm:

Love is like everything else. It’s there if you say it is. Which I guess, if you follow the logic, means that a happy ending is as easy to fake as an orgasm.

If you ever have an opportunity to read it, I’d encourage you to do so. Hell, you can borrow my copy anytime (those of you who know me personally). Otherwise, try to grab it when it comes out in trade. It’s a Vertigo comic.

Later on Oberliner: The Month In Review, as promised; a discussion of paradigmatic media bias and the “Obama is a racist” meme; and why Glenn Greenwald is one of the sanest voices in today’s political punditry.

More will be revealed.

Tales for Tykes

Meena Hasan
here

More Oberlin artwork.

I first read Salman Rushdie's Haroun and the Sea of Stories the summer before the ninth grade. I remember thinking it was something of a kids book. Cute, clever, quaint, but little substance. I think I picked up the writing about writing bit--that's what the fucking book's about, after all--but I didn't get the importance of it until this last read.

Before I get too deep into that, let me give it a glowing recommendation. This is the perfect book to read in one's free time while at collage. It's a quick read and has a liminal frivolousness about it that keeps the pages turning. At the same time, it also is one of the more eloquent defenses of story-telling I've ever come across. Seriously. Taken out of context, it may seem beyond even the most stringent suspension of disbelief. But only a few pages into it, I found myself so thoroughly immersed in the framework of the novel, I would have followed Rushdie to the ends of rationality without a second thought.

It is a defense of the necessity of becoming a part of a narrative--reading, watching, getting an escape. It is an example of the rewards of it. He does it concisely and hides his craft perfectly. There's none of the self-righteousness of Franzen, no absurd expectations.

In a place like Oberlin, where the our sentences drip of irony and distain, where our ideas are cloaked in sarcasm and self-awareness, Rushdie's book may seem like an unlikely favorite. On the contrary, it can penetrate the thickest shields and become the antidote to the hipster toxicity we bathe in and create.

Read the goddamn thing. It's quick. You can even borrow mine.

As for Doom Patrol, I know I said I'd write about it--and I still might--but don't get your hopes up (not that you were). Things are getting busy. Already.

Shame Spirals

So, I haven't posted in God-knows-how-long, and, as per the title, this may have sent me into a shame spiral from which there is no escape. My shame is a black hole. Or something.

Here's the deal: I'm posting again.

Enjoy.

Also, I'm leaving for the not-so-verdant fields of Northeast Ohio on the 28th. It appears that I won't have to change the title of the blog, which, frankly, hasn't made much sense for the last ten-or-so months. Not that I've really been posting that long, but, you get the idea.

Morning Update VI

Roma

Keegan Wenkman (here)

From MPLSart (here)

Origonal Wenkman post here

No updates from the Pynchon Project; I'm taking a breather until I go on vacation on Monday (woot). But here's some Courtney Queeney. From the poem "Upper Crust Adolesence" from her book Filibuster to Delay a Kiss:

There was always some boy

to kiss under the buzzing streetlight

filling my head with static, closest state to a swoon

I'd allow, thought I wanted them to swallow me whole

or spirit me away from the house

Next up, here is the most amazing dog. Really.

h/t to K___, my favorite IRA supporting Saint Paulian.

Last but not least, things to expect today:

ich bin ein oberliner reviews The Elephant Vanishes, by Haruki Murakami; The Burial at Thebes (Seamus Heaney, trans.) by Sophicles; and Facebook wall messages

Morning Update IV

Gravity's Rainbow, selections from pages 60, 61, and 71:

These changes on the text "You never did the Kenosha Kid" are occupying Slothrop's mind...
- Thomas Pynchon [italics mine]

[2]
Old veteran hoofer: Bet you never did the "Kenosha," kid!
[2.1]
O.V.H.: Bet you never did the "Kenosha Kid."
[3]
Superior (haughtily): You! never did the Kenosha Kid think for one instant that you...
[3.1]
Superior (incredulously): You? Never! Did the Kenosha Kid think for one instant that you . . . ?
[4]
the meek voice of little Tyrone Slothrop, celebrated over after in tradition and song, ventured to filter upward to the Kid's attention: "You never did 'the,' Kenosha Kid!"
[5]
Maybe you did fool the Philadelphia, rag the Rochester, josh the Joliet. But you never did the Kenosha kid.
[6]
Oh-oh. Wait. What's this, Slothrop? You never did the Kenosha kid. Snap to, Slothrop.
[7]
Slothrop: Where is he? Why didn't he show? Who are you?
Voice: The Kid got busted. And you know me, Slothrop. Remember? I'm Never.
Slothrop (peering): You, Never? (A pause.) Did the Kenosha Kid?

On the suggestion of my friend A___, I've been checking out the blog ENERGYDRINKSBLOG!?!1/?11 [sic]. There is, as you can imagine from the title a lot of YELLING. This is understandable as the writer is apparently hopped up on energy drinks at all THE TIME. He seems to have trouble controlling THE VOLUME OF HIS TEXT. At any rate, there is a lot of useful information about energy drinks, the best kinds, the ones that make your breath smell, etc. As for me, I'll stick to coffee. I guess it's comforting to know that someone is willing to subject themselves to every form of energy drink under the sun and is thus able to provide useful information like this:

the effects of energydrinks and over-the-counter painkillers multiply each other: my mood was SO GOOD and my feet felt like i was wearing new balance 991's with hiking socks, hopping around and not really minding the chair compressing my spine. also i skipped dinner which felt great because the advils really heightened the usual appetite-suppressing effects of the edrinks!

so if you're ever in any sort of pain or you get down on yrself, maybe because you look in the mirror and all you see is a big fatbody or you just got a shit haircut, drink energydrinks and heedlessly eat advils until you feel great. IT'S NOT DRUGS IF YR PARENTS WOULD/DID BUY IT FOR YOU. or also if you hear about how 35 lbs of weight loss = 1 inch of penis growth and you wanna lose some of that jelly, this combo will work too. [I'm just going to put a big old "sic" after this entire quote]

In all honesty, I found this blog amusing to the point that I will be a repeat visitor, and, it did make me strongly consider actually buying energy drinks and OTC painkillers. Somehow, I don't think my sponsor would approve (ha. ha.)... I'm not going to blogroll this one, simply note that I've visited it, enjoyed it, and move on.

Over at This Has Happened Before, part two of the awesome pictures from yesterday are up (I wrote about this, here), plus he said nice things about me, here, and believe you me, I'm a huge sucker for that. Once again I won't scoop his pictures, even though I want to; you'll just have to head over and check them out yourselves.

I'd like to come back and say something else about the crazed energy drink review site. It makes me want to slam them until I'm fucked up on caffeine. Not so healthy, but it speaks well of the site.

Lastly, I'd like to say that this is the third day in a row that I've spilled hot coffee one myself. That is all.

Murderopolis Pride

Flying Dutch
Keegan Wenkman

I mentioned adding a new site to my blogroll--MPLSart--in a previous post. I'd just like to elaborate on why exactly I find this site so important.

Minneapolis pretty much rocks the culture and arts scene in the Midwest. Granted that isn't saying too much; I'm aware Minneapolis does not equal New York. Nevertheless, I'd venture to say that Minneapolis has one of the most vibrant cultural scenes in the country, between the insane number of theaters here (chief among them the world-renown Guthrie), the art scene (led by the cultural powerhouse, The Walker Art Center, creator of The Soap Factory, Movies in the Park, etc.), and the local music scene (for classical, with The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra and Lyra Baroque, and for pop, with tapes and tapes, Battle Royale, and The Bees, just to name a few).

All of this leads me to MPLSart, which highlights young, up-and-coming artists, including Keegan Wenkman, the painter from the top of the post. I'd strongly recommend that you head over the MPLSart and take a look at their featured artist page. I know I'm actually considering taking a portion of the money I'm making at this cushy executive assistant gig and putting it towards buying some art. Unfortunately, I really want to move into a new apartement, and I'll have to find $500 dollars deposit plus first month, so, I may have to wait for the next insanely well-paying temp job.

Fuck, now I have to add the "things i probably won't do but want to" tag to this post.

Morning Update II

First, news from the Pynchon Project. Page 47:

They turn southward. Lights on the dash glow warmly. Searchlights rake the raining sky. The slender machine shivers over the roads. Jessica drifts toward sleep, the leather seat creaking as she curls about. Windscreen wipers brush the rain in a rhythmic bright warp. It is past two, and time for home.

While on the subject of Pynchon, here's a nice post on It Has Happened Before (the sub-head of the website, for those of you unfamiliar with the first page of Gravity's Rainbow, is "But There Is Nothing To Compare It To Now") about Zak Smith

I had coffee last night with an old acquaintance of mine from High School. I haven't seen her in over two years. It was wonderful to talk with her, and I found the conversation more engaging than I expected. She talked at length about her new-found passion for modern (or, as she said, contemporary) dance. Since I've been doing yoga and pilates with A___--a skilled dancer--this idea of dancing has already been on my mind. I've gotten more flexible since doing yoga (from not being able to touch my toes to putting my hands flat on the ground), and my slowly-developing core strength has made it passable for me to move a little bit after doing pilates--an epic improvement considering my post-pilates near-incontinence and uncontrollable quivering mere weeks ago. I want to do something with these new, underdeveloped skills. I want to dance. I have to stew on this a bit and remember that I make shit for money and have no idea when I'll be making more.

So everyone knows, when at Caffetto (Lyndale & 22nd), I ran three separate groups of people I knew and hadn't seen in a while, two of them who went to high school with me and K___ (my platonic coffee date). Either this is a strange coincidence, or I know the hipster nodes better than I thought I did. Unfortunately, this is probably the beginning of the end for Caffetto, I have little doubt that, soon enough, the hipsters will be gone, replaced by suburban kids with Sum 41 tee-shirts. Alas. To be honest though, I'm not sure which are worse. Can't we just go back to the days of Caffetto as the small, neighborhood coffee joint?

Fuck it. I might as well live it up while I can. I'll grab L___'s red vest, put some gel in my hair, and pack Gravity's Rainbow and see if I can get hit on.

Book Lists

You may have noticed the recent addition of a text box to your right. It reads "August Book List."

As I am not in school, I have much more free time than I normally do. I've decided to take those books of my shelf that I've always told myself I would read but now are used only as conversation starters and actually read them.

"Why are you inflicting this upon me?" You may be asking. When (if) I finish each book, I'll write up a little review, and, ideally, prove useful to you, my not-so-captive, terribly small audience in which books you might pick up and read.

Let's see how it goes.

Morning Update

here.
or my initial post, here.
you can buy it here.

That is page 39 of Gravity's Rainbow. I'm on page 49: "They were in love, fuck the war."

I haven't had my coffee yet, and as I'm working a temporary office job at S___ C___ P___, I won't be getting coffee until my lunch break. If this seems counter-intuitive to you, I would tell you that, yes, it is. For reasons passing understanding, there is no coffee in this office. There is only Coke and bottled water. I can feel the film on my teeth as they rot away into a lunar landscape: craters of cavities, canals of rot. In conclusion, not only am I tired and grumpy (no coffee) but worried about the state of my teeth, what with the chain-smoking, early-morning Coke drinking, regular coffee binging, using my roommate's odd-smelling toothpaste (I'm out), and poor hygiene in general and all.

On another note, Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes are going to pose nude for a photo shoot, undoubtedly to try to deal with people like this:

I don't think one single person who believed Tom Cruise was gay prior to his courtship, engagement, marriage, and subsequent childbirth of Katie (not necessarily in that order) has since changed his or her mind.

Just thought you should know. (This from SAWF News, via Radar Online)

My friend A___--the same one's whose Pilates prowess has pushed my abs into a quivering, gelatinous mess--has challenged me to build a model schooner. She doubted my origami abilities, and, as one who has built an entire city (a model one, obviously) out of paper, I took a bit umbrage with this. Here is my model, which, as I've been discovering, may be a bit too ambitious--par for the course, really:

I fear I may have set off on another hopelessly complex task. I've completed the base and foremast so far, but am having a little trouble with the double jib.

Pictures forthcoming.

From Wikipedia.

The Pynchon Project

I'm trying to read Gravity's Rainbow. Again. By way of checking in, I give you this quote from page 26:

"It was one of those great iron afternoons in London: the yellow sun being teased apart by a thousand chimneys breathing, fawning upward without shame. This smoke is more that the day's breath, more than dark strength--it is an imperial presence that lives and moves. People were crossing the streets and squares, going everywhere. Busses were grinding off, hundreds of them, down the long concrete viaducts smeared with years' pitiless use and no pleasure, into
haze-gray, grease-black, read lead and pale aluminum, between scrap heaps that towered high as blocks of flats, down side-shoving curves into roads clogged with Army convoys, other tall busses and canvas lorries, bicycles and cars, everyone here with different destinations and beginnings, all flowing, hitching now and them, over it all the enormous gas ruin of the sun among the smokestacks, the barrage balloons, power lines and chimneys brown as aging
indoor wood, brown growing deeper, approaching black through an instant--perhaps the true turn of the sunset--that is wine to you, wine and comfort."

Abs of Steel

My friend A___ and I have been doing Yoga and Pilates. Although, since she's a modern dancer, more Pilates than Yoga. We just got done with a session; my abs feel like jelly, and I'm pretty sure my lower back will never be able to imprint again. What's more, I'm sweaty and gross and wearing my green loon pants (thanks mom and dad! great Christmas gifts). It's a good look.

The good thing is, when practicing with A___, I push myself so I'm only humiliated a little bit.

The bad thing is, afterwards, I humiliate myself anyway by lying on a couch in the fishbowl, immobile and smelly.

Chickens and Pynchon

I want to have a house with chickens that run free. Like in a third-world country. Is this possible? I'm sure it violates some health code or other. But, honestly, how cool would that be?

On another note, I've--once again--started reading Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow. This will be attempt four or five, I can't remember. But, this time, I have another tool at my disposal. Zak Smith, a young, American artist did a piece currently on view and The Walker Art Center (where I work, incidentally). He did one drawing for each page of the book. An epic undertaking, considering that Gravity's Rainbow is beyond complex and is a rather difficult read (okay, a really, really difficult read). I bought the book of his drawings and am making myself stop after each page and look at his interpretations. This prevents my normal problem with Pynchon, where I lose myself in his cul-de-sac prose and end up reading an entire chapter and at the end thinking, "when the hell did he start having sex with a one-limbed prostitute," or "when did he start talking about black Nazis?"

Check it out here.

Oh Come, Oh Come, Amanuel!

There is an allure to creating your own magazine, n'est ce pas? This idea's charms have not been lost on me. In fact, the idea of a group of committed, determined, energized youth creating something is one of the last earnest dreams left to gen pomo.

But it must be done carefully, the subject matter and approach must not be construed as too earnest, lest it be mistaken for mundane naivety, nor can it be too edgy, lest it loses accessibility to our potential audience. This is a very delicate balance.

As Dave Eggers wrote in AHOSG:

We begin to perfect a balance between being close to where things are happening, knowing the people involved and their patters, while keeping our distance, an outsider's mentality, even among other outsiders.

Good call, Dave.

I've been a staff member of one blog (The B Sides), two published newspapers, one published magazine, and one not published magazine (Amanuel). I have tried to write over five solo blogs and never made it past a week. The problem with each and every one of these ventures is a focus on vision rather than on content. I have, in my head (a dangerous place to be...) an image of this perfect blog: a veritable powerhouse of trendy memes, clever, laconic, smart. It would end up expanding into print media with the creation of a small, independent publishing house, a la McSweeney's. We--and I say we because it becomes a group venture--eventually rise to the position of true culture-makers. I'm invited to the coolest parties, consulted by the next generation of young up-and-comers. I say cryptic, gnomic things, and people think them wise. This, my friends, is the life for me.

I think the key is to throw this away and just fucking do it.

So, on that note...
For those of you who don't know what Amanuel is, the rest of this post will mean very little to you. For those of you who do, ponder this.

Next summer, I propose that we stay together in Cleveland (or another city of mutual decision, though Cleveland is definitely preferable for reasons I can discuss by email only) and rent a house-office and actually do this shit. Thoughts?