mise-en-abyme

Voice of My Generation, Part 1

2009-06-28T16:15:00.000-07:00

On my thirtieth birthday, I had not yet written the Great American Novel. Had not begun it, really, in any meaningful sense, in any non-conversational Brooklyn rooftop cocktail party hipster evolutionary fitness sense, in any non- bleary Tuesday morning soulworn Microsoft Office hyper-inflationary rent paying illegitimi non carborundum unappreciated-genius sense. My hairline had begun its long retreat from the temples (wherein the great work stirreth, surely) and the great work was not begun. I was aware, in my vintage necktie, in the subtle rebellion of my dapper sneakers, in the discriminating appointments that personalized my nook of obligation—French movie posters, array of USB-powered novelties, gargantuan synthetic pink Chinatown jewel that bespoke an ironic commitment to feng shui—that my Latin was itself bastardized, that I had never been to China, that my ability to identify Jean-Paul Belmondo as the star of À bout de souffle did not constitute a deep recognition of the film’s themes, but from this knowledge had failed to profit. As from this frightening truth: that I had grown to loathe my job, and in so doing loathed myself, for, despite all our carefully cultivated preferences, all the subtle modulations of our Friday night raconteurism, the fun-sized rhetorical flourishes of our blogs, and microblogs, these things are equivalent. We are, and forever shall be, our job descriptions.
I was not even in a band.

cutaways

2009-05-04T12:06:00.000-07:00

[via]

Vintage alien landscapes by Kazuaki Saito

2009-04-10T22:01:00.000-07:00

[via]

script for burned dollhouse

2009-03-22T01:40:00.000-07:00

a dollhouse is burned, and the burning is filmed.
the burned dollhouse and the film are presented together in a gallery or museum.

hiroshi sugimoto

2009-03-21T22:39:00.000-07:00

man of sand

2009-03-19T11:11:00.001-07:00

Thursday I slept in a lab. Don't be fooled by the rustic furnishings. It took me hours to fall asleep, and when I did, I had extremely vivid and bizarre dreams all night. A vague notion that something sinister was afoot. A lot of flying about the place, keeping watch. This activity plus various autonomic functions generated 1300 pages of data.

I wandered home at five in the morning. Trying to discern bus routes in the dark. Smell of spring, and wide open spaces--downtown Brooklyn, Columbus Park. I slept all day with adhesive and gauze still in my hair.

such beautiful weapons, they'll say

2009-03-08T14:00:00.000-07:00

[via]

virtual friendship and the new narcissism

2009-03-06T14:02:00.000-08:00

Excellent article from The New Atlantis:

The implications of the narcissistic and exhibitionistic tendencies of social networkers also cry out for further consideration. There are opportunity costs when we spend so much time carefully grooming ourselves online. Given how much time we already devote to entertaining ourselves with technology, it is at least worth asking if the time we spend on social networking sites is well spent. In investing so much energy into improving how we present ourselves online, are we missing chances to genuinely improve ourselves?

In which the goblets of dawn are briefly smashed

2009-01-11T10:53:00.000-08:00

Luxury

2008-12-21T23:31:00.001-08:00

As a child on the beach at home I often gazed
at the emerald sea.
Waves pounded toward me,
I only drew back, unable to meet them
and the sea remained simply the sea.
The laden clothes-line stretched heavily,
    the dry washing flapped and flew.
At last the disease I had long been carrying,
born of the washing (the other world’s flags)
    and the sea (this world’s body)
infected my gentle velvet-jacketed sister.
It was buried for good in the lungs of paulownia
    flowers.
My sister had no boy whose name she could call,
she only called “God! God!” or sometimes Father.
With my skinny body I heard a sobbing,
a field of reeds rustling in my sister’s veins.
The next spring lingered in the backyard then left, yet
still spring remained in some late-blooming flowers.
White rhododendrons kept it until summer came.
All through the summer I simply ate dirt and cried.
The rains poured down and the broad salting farmlands
behind the village were flooded deep.
Houses floated by all day long in a world of water.
Autumn came because my sister grew more beautiful.
Really. Yes, truly. Sister was the cause of autumn.
As I washed in cold water wrinkles covered my green brow
and after I washed, the autumn pretended to be the sky,
    standing there crying.
Then a far away whistle would sound boldly and at that
autumn would grow deeper still.
Even when a few rare leaves were left on the trees
which made them bare trees for other people,
my sister would talk with those leaves.
She spoke quite well, without alphabet or bird song.
And all the while, just below the ground of water-clear
gardens, roots were frolicking as they should.
The sky pretended to be our world, it was really Heaven
and because it shouted as it grew even bluer,
I gave up washing my eyes, for somewhere out there
my destination was all the while waiting for me.
Once sister started to cough, I suddenly grew sad.
I threw back my head and stared at all of Nature’s works
yet my foot did not stir, I was avenged by senility.
Sister coughed blood until I could not endure it,
    and could not lament it.
She bundled the blood up in her skirt. She collapsed
That day I saw. Sister’s inner being was there outside,
in her virginity lay the ebb and flow of the nearby sea.
After that my sleep was my sister’s withered sleep.
Her room was full of the eardrums of quick and dead,
I watched outside her door as night went plodding by.
The day that she took off her velvet jackeet,
I walked out and back along the winter shoreline
with my sister’s hours of ecstasy prolonging.
Early the following spring my sister’s pale hand dropped,
pointing to the empty clothes-line spangled with mist
and bade the world farewell.
I did not cry, I lay close against her china-white pillow
and followed her death for a while, then returned.
In her coffin the dark was unsure whether it was sister
or I, or some kind of joy.


--Ko Un


Translated by Brother Anthony of Taiz’e / Young-Moo Kim

About The Bailout

2008-09-30T08:32:00.001-07:00

Friends, Romans, Countrymen--

The narrative (at least the only one I've been hearing) from lawmakers
and the media is oversimplified: Bailout vs. No Bailout, "It sucks
that taxpayers will have to shoulder the burden of the excesses of
Wall Street but it's unfortunately necessary to stabilize the
economy."--in other words, that "The Bailout" is in our best interests
in the long run, even though it sucks. What's missing from the
discourse is an examination of the terms of The Bailout and mention of
the many possible alternatives (to taxpayers buying outright the
assets of a failed bank).

The following article delineates the various ways in which a
government can intervene to recapitalize a failing banking system, and
then EXAMINES THE HISTORICAL RECORD of countries that have done so.
Pardon my caps.

[About the author: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nouriel_Roubini]

Is Purchasing $700 billion of Toxic Assets the Best Way to
Recapitalize the Financial System? No! It is Rather a Disgrace and
Rip-Off Benefitting only the Shareholders and Unsecured Creditors of
Banks

Nouriel Roubini | Sep 28, 2008

Whenever there is a systemic banking crisis there is a need to
recapitalize the banking/financial system to avoid an excessive and
destructive credit contraction. But purchasing toxic/illiquid assets
of the financial system is not the most effective and efficient way to
recapitalize the banking system. Such recapitalization – via the use
of public resources – can occur in a number of alternative ways:
purchase of bad assets/loans; government injection of preferred
shares; government injection of common shares; government purchase of
subordinated debt; government issuance of government bonds to be
placed on the banks' balance sheet; government injection of cash;
government credit lines extended to the banks; government assumption
of government liabilities.

A recent IMF study of 42 systemic banking crises across the world
provides evidence on how different crises were resolved. First of all
only in 32 of the 42 cases there was government financial intervention
of any sort; in 10 cases systemic banking crises were resolved without
any government financial intervention. Of the 32 cases where the
government recapitalized the banking system only seven included a
program of purchase of bad assets/loans (like the one proposed by the
US Treasury). In 25 other cases there was no government purchase of
such toxic assets. In 6 cases the government purchased preferred
shares; in 4 cases the government purchased common shares; in 11 cases
the government purchased subordinated debt; in 12 cases the government
injected cash in the banks; in 2 cases credit was extended to the
banks; and in 3 cases the government assumed bank liabilities. Even in
cases where bad assets were purchased – as in Chile – dividends were
suspended and all profits and recoveries had to be used to repurchase
the bad assets. Of course in most cases multiple forms of government
recapitalization of banks were used.

But government purchase of bad assets was the exception rather than
the rule. It was used only in Mexico, Japan, Bolivia, Czech Republic,
Jamaica, Malaysia, and Paraguay. Even in six of these seven cases
where the recapitalization of banks occurred via the government
purchase of bad assets such recapitalization was a combination of
purchase of bad assets together with other forms of recapitalization
(such as government purchase of preferred shares or subordinated
debt).

In the Scandinavian banking crises (Sweden, Norway, Finland) that are
a model of how a banking crisis should be resolved there was not
government purchase of bad assets; most of the recapitalization
occurred through various injections of public capital in the banking
system. Purchase of toxic assets instead – in most cases in which it
was used – made the fiscal cost of the crisis much higher and
expensive (as in Japan and Mexico).

Thus the claim by the Fed and Treasury that spending $700 billion of
public money is the best way to recapitalize banks has absolutely no
factual basis or justification. This way of recapitalizing financial
institutions is a total rip-off that will mostly benefit – at a huge
expense for the US taxpayer - the common and preferred shareholders
and even unsecured creditors of the banks. Even the late addition of
some warrants that the government will get in exchange of this massive
injection of public money is only a cosmetic fig leaf of dubious value
as the form and size of such warrants is totally vague and fuzzy.

So this rescue plan is a huge and massive bailout of the shareholders
and the unsecured creditors of the financial firms (not just banks but
also other non bank financial institutions); with $700 billion of
taxpayer money the pockets of reckless bankers and investors have been
made fatter under the fake argument that bailing out Wall Street was
necessary to rescue Main Street from a severe recession. Instead, the
restoration of the financial health of distressed financial firms
could have been achieved with a cheaper and better use of public
money.

Indeed, the plan also does not address the need to recapitalize those
financial institutions that are badly undercapitalized: this could
have been achieved by using some of the $700 billion to inject public
funds in ways other and more effective than a purchase of toxic
assets: via public injections of preferred shares into these firms;
via required matching injections of Tier 1 capital by current
shareholders to make sure that such shareholders take first tier loss
in the presence of public recapitalization; via suspension of
dividends payments; via a conversion of some of the unsecured debt
into equity (a debt for equity swap). All these actions would have
implied a much lower fiscal costs for the government as they would
have forced the shareholders and creditors of the banks to contribute
to the recapitalization of the banks. So less than $700 billion of
public money could have been spent if the private shareholders and
creditors had been forced to contribute to the recapitalization; and
whatever the size of the public contribution were to be its
distribution between purchases of bad assets and more efficient and
fair forms of recapitalization (preferred shares, common shares, sub
debt) should have been different. For example if the private sector
had done its fair matching share only $350 billion of public money
could have been used; and of this $350 billion half could have taken
the form of purchase of bad assets and the other half should have
taken the form of injection of public capital in these financial
institutions. So instead of purchasing – most likely at an excessive
price - $700 billion of toxic assets the government could have
achieved the same result – or a better result of recapitalizing the
banks – by spending only $175 billion in the direct purchase of toxic
assets. And even after the government will waste $700 billion buying
toxic assets many banks that have not yet provisioned for such
losses/writedowns will be even more undercapitalized than before. So
this plan does not even achieve the basic objective of recapitalizing
undercapitalized banks.

The Treasury plan also does not explicitly include an HOLC-style
program to reduce across the board the debt burden of the distressed
household sector; without such a component the debt overhang of the
household sector will continue to depress consumption spending and
will exacerbate the current economic recession.

Thus, the Treasury plan is a disgrace: a bailout of reckless bankers,
lenders and investors that provides little direct debt relief to
borrowers and financially stressed households and that will come at a
very high cost to the US taxpayer. And the plan does nothing to
resolve the severe stress in money markets and interbank markets that
are now close to a systemic meltdown. It is pathetic that Congress did
not consult any of the many professional economists that have
presented - many on the RGE Monitor Finance blog forum - alternative
plans that were more fair and efficient and less costly ways to
resolve this crisis. This is again a case of privatizing the gains and
socializing the losses; a bailout and socialism for the rich, the
well-connected and Wall Street. And it is a scandal that even
Congressional Democrats have fallen for this Treasury scam that does
little to resolve the debt burden of millions of distressed home
owners.

six degrees

2008-09-09T10:18:00.000-07:00

Via The Center for an Informed America:

"Without further ado, we begin this journey - for no particular reason - with the aforementioned Phil Hartman, who was a highschool friend of Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme, who later became a disciple of Charlie Manson, a jailhouse correspondent of John Hinckley, and the attempted assassin of President Gerald Ford, who was once a roommate of modeling entrepreneur Harry Conover, whose wife was the infamous Candy Jones, who was 'treated' by CIA-linked hypnotist William Jennings Bryan, who also 'treated' the purported Boston Strangler, Albert DeSalvo, whose name was written repetitively throughout the diaries of Sirhan Sirhan, who was also 'treated' by Bryan, who served as the technical director on The Manchurian Candidate, which was directed by John Frankenheimer, at whose beach house a dinner was held on June 5, 1968 whose attendees included "Mama" Cass Elliot, Roman Polanski, and Sharon Tate, who was killed just over a year later by followers of Charlie Manson, whose music was recorded by Doris Day's son, music producer Terry Melcher, who lived with girlfriend Candace Bergen at 10050 Cielo Drive the year before it became a slaughterhouse after being rented by Polanski, who initially was slated to pen the screenplay for Day of the Dolphin, which purported to tell the story of Dr. John Lilly, who was a friend of Timothy Leary, whose Mellon family-owned Millbrook estate was frequently visited by Dr. Max "Feelgood" Jacobson, who once 'treated' Judy Garland and who served as the personal physician of John Kennedy, whose assassination prompted the shelving of the film The Manchurian Candidate by its star, Frank Sinatra, who was a frequent companion of fellow 'Brat Packer' Sammy Davis, Jr., who was an acknowledged member of Anton LaVey's Church of Satan, from where Manson recruited killers Bobby "Cupid" Beausoleil and Susan "Sexy Sadie" Atkins, who confessed to her cellmates that she had stabbed to death actress Sharon Tate, who was inducted into witchcraft on the set of the Polanski-directed film The Fearless Vampire Killers by Alexander "King of the Witches" Saunders, who received 'training' as a child from Aleister Crowley, whose followers included Anton LaVey and fellow Church of Satan member Kenneth Anger, who was the roommate (and probable lover) of Family member Bobby Beausoleil, who once appeared in an underground film titled Mondo Hollywood, which also featured hairdresser and Manson victim Jay Sebring, who was a former lover of Sharon Tate, who was a friend of a wealthy widow named Charlene Caffritz, who played host to - and filmed the exploits of - Charlie and some of his girls, who also lived for a time with Beach Boy Dennis Wilson, who recorded a song penned by Charlie, who was an occasional member of the entourage of Mama Cass, who was listed as a defense witness for Charlie's trial (but never called), as was her Mamas and the Papas band-mate John Phillips, who was close to Polanski, Tate, Melcher, Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Cass Elliot, and film producer Robert Evans, who was working with - and very likely contracted the execution killing of - Roy Radin, whose assistant was Michael DeVinko aka Mickie DeVinko aka Mickie Deans, who married - just a few months before her untimely death - Wizard of Oz star Judy Garland, who as a teen was flooded with phone messages and telegrams by admirer Oscar Levant, whose dead body was found by Candace Bergen, who - as a photojournalist for Life magazine - covered the preempted presidential campaign of Robert Kennedy, who was romantically linked to Marilyn Monroe, who was also linked to Anton LaVey, who appeared in Kenneth Anger's Invocation of My Demon Brother (released in August of 1969) along with Bobby Beausoleil, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, who was a guest at the 1968 London wedding of Sharon Tate to Roman Polanski, who - during a nude photo shoot - molested a thirteen-year-old girl at the home of Jack Nicholson, who was a friend of Cass Elliot, as were Robert Evans and Manson victims Jay Sebring, Voytek Frykowski and Abigail Folger, who provided funding for the Himalayan Academy, which Kenneth Anger helped form with Timothy Leary, who was at the side of the stage at the 1969 Altamont concert where - while the Rolling Stones played the Process Church-inspired Sympathy for the Devil* - a fan was killed on film by the Hell's Angels, who had been romanticized and transformed into anti-establishment heroes in the film Scorpio Rising by Kenneth Anger and the book Hell's Angels by Hunter S. Thompson, both of whom have been accused of making snuff films** for private collectors, which was also a favorite pastime of Charlie Manson, one of whose underage recruits was Didi Lansbury, who had written permission to travel with Charlie from her mother, Angela Lansbury, who starred as the control agent in The Manchurian Candidate, which was based on the novel of the same name by Richard Condon, who once served as a publicist for Walt Disney, who once owned the home where the Manson Family slaughtered Leno LaBianca and wife Rosemary, who was involved in the trafficking of drugs, as were many of those in this twisted saga, including Charles Manson, victims Voytek Frykowski and Abigail Folger, John Phillips and Kenneth Anger, who was a huge fan of the dark and violent imagery of the Rosicrucian-inspired, L. Frank Baum-penned Oz books, which inspired the band The Magick Powerhouse of Oz, which was led by Bobby Beausoleil, who was also at one time in the band Love with Arthur Lee, four of whose members later turned up dead or missing and presumed dead, as did Charlene Caffritz, Cass Elliot (who allegedly choked on a sandwich in 1974), Dennis Wilson (who allegedly drowned on December 28, 1983), and Gram Parsons, whose corpse was stolen and burned at Joshua Tree on the autumnal equinox of 1973 by his band's road manager, Phil Kaufman, who was a good friend from prison of Charlie Manson, who met (at Cass Elliot's house) and received money from victim Abigail Folger, who also funded Kenneth Anger, who at various times lived with both Jimmy Page (who purchased Crowley's home and many of his artifacts) and Keith Richards & Anita Pallenberg, whose home - in 1979 - yielded the body of a teenager who had been shot to death, as was John Lennon the next year by Mark David Chapman, who shortly before doing so met with - and offered a gift of live bullets to - Kenneth Anger, whose films were cited as a major influence by photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, who was implicated by witnesses in the Halloween 1981 execution killing of New York photographer Ronald Sisman (a close associate of Roy Radin), who was reportedly in possession of a snuff film of one of the Son of Sam murders, which were allegedly committed by David Berkowitz, who from prison accurately described the Sisman killing before it happened and who took the fall for the Son of Sam murders to cover up the involvement of others, including possibly Roy Radin and wealthy art dealer Andrew Crispo, who admitted being present at the site of a ritual murder which was committed by a man named Bernard LeGeros, who was the son of a State Department official, as was Pic Dawson, who was a regular member of the entourage of Cass Elliot, as was a one-time bodyguard of publisher Larry Flynt named Bill Mentzer, who was convicted of killing Radin and who was suspected of involvement in numerous other contract murders, including some of those attributed to David Berkowitz, who was 'examined' by psychiatrist/hypnotist Daniel Schwartz, as was Mark David Chapman, who was obsessed with the film The Wizard of Oz and the book The Catcher in the Rye, which was written by reclusive author J.D. Salinger, who served in the OSS with Henry Kissinger, who was a close adviser to Gerald Ford, who once met and shook hands with Mark David Chapman, who was 'examined' by psychiatrist/hypnotist Bernard Diamond, who also 'examined' Sirhan Sirhan, who had connections to the Process Church, as did many of those ensnared in this sordid web, including Kenneth Anger, John Phillips, Roy Radin, David Berkowitz and Charlie Manson, who attended a New Year's Eve party at the home of John Phillips, who wrote the siren song of the 'Summer of Love,' bringing thousands of hippies and flower children streaming into San Francisco and into the hands of such figures as Louis "Dr. Jolly" West, Anton LaVey, Charlie Manson, Bobby Beausoleil, Timothy Leary and Kenneth Anger, who - just three days after the suspicious death of Rolling Stone Brian Jones - filmed the Hell's Angels stomping the crowd at a 1969 Stones concert in London, just five months before they did the very same thing to the crowd at Altamont, which was organized by San Francisco attorney Melvin Belli, who consulted with F. Lee Bailey whilst the latter was busily railroading Albert DeSalvo and later consulted with Richard "The Night Stalker" Ramirez, who was offered an honorary membership in the Church of Satan by Anton LaVey's daughter Zeena, who along with boyfriend Nickolas Schreck staged an event on 8-8-88 celebrating the slaughter of the victims of the Manson Family, who some researchers believe were involved in the murders attributed to the "Zodiac," who called and sent correspondence to Melvin Belli, whose clients included the widow of Hermann Goering and Jack Ruby, who assassinated Lee Harvey Oswald, the purported assassin of John Kennedy, whose brother Robert was romantically linked to Jayne Mansfield, as was Anton LaVey, who served as Roman Polanski's technical director on the 1968 film Rosemary's Baby, which was set in New York's Dakota Apartments, where John Lennon was gunned down by Mark David Chapman, who shared a fixation on The Catcher in the Rye with failed assassin John Hinckley, Jr., who stalked actress Jodie Foster, who is working on a film biography of Leni Riefenstahl, who was met by - and admired by - fellow filmmaker Kenneth Anger, who laced his film Scorpio Rising with Nazi imagery, including the prominent use of swastikas, not unlike the one carved into the forehead of Charlie Manson, who - at the Cielo Drive home of Polanski and Tate - had a chance meeting with Nancy Sinatra, the daughter of Frank Sinatra, who was married to actress Mia Farrow, who starred in the Polanski-directed Rosemary's Baby, which was produced by Robert Evans, a friend of Henry Kissinger, who was the righthand man of President Richard Nixon, whose election was ensured by the assassination of Robert Kennedy by Sirhan Sirhan, who was yet another client of Melvin Belli, as were the Hell's Angels and Nazi-collaborator Errol Flynn, who made two films with Ronald Reagan, who was an occasional visitor to the childhood home of Candace Bergen, who - as a photojournalist - chronicled the short-lived administration of Gerald Ford, who married one of his friend Harry Conover's 'Covergirls,' who later opened the Betty Ford Center, where various celebrities in and out of this web routinely check in for tune-ups."

* A number of journalists have written that the killing took place later in the concert. This is perhaps due, at least in part, to the deceptive way in which the film of the event, Gimme Shelter (arguably the most widely viewed snuff film ever created), was edited. In the film, the killing is deliberately shown out of sequence, making it appear as though it occurred at the end of the concert. It did in fact occur while the Stones played Sympathy for the Devil, as can be discerned from a careful viewing of the final minutes of the video version of the film. The band, fully aware of what was going on immediately in front of the stage, played on.
** Thompson, whose legal representation is provided by the same politically-connected law firm that successfully shielded John and Patsy Ramsey from prosecution, has been accused by the child witnesses in the case dubbed the 'Franklin Cover-Up.' Anger was suspected by police investigators, but was shielded from prosecution by sex researcher Alfred Kinsey, a devoted follower of Aleister Crowley. Kinsey died shortly after he and Anger visited Crowley's Thelema Abbey in Sicily

Marilyn Monroe Reading

2008-08-16T10:42:00.000-07:00