This post is a bit of a pet-centric journal of self-examination. It started as a fluff piece about Smokey and Uroy, with all my whining about social alienation and disappointment lately, I wanted to add a note of positivity about these, my most beloved of "social" responsibilities. Along the way, it turned into the kind of narcissistic self-examination the reader has no doubt come to expect from me. So it goes. One of the things I've learned in the past year is that human beings cannot be "loved up", you can't take a broken person into your heart, love them, and expect that your love will fix all the cracks and fissures that are or were breaking that person down. My standards of "fixed-ness" are also to blame, being vastly higher for humans than they are for animals.


Smokey, for example, was basically a neglected elderly cat with no taste for humans and more than enough defensive aggression to keep potential admirers at a distance. I've had him now for almost two years, and I'm satisfied if he wants to sit/sleep next to me and doesn't bite me every day. This summer I've been leaving him alone in Syracuse four days a week to work in Ithaca, and when I return he won't leave me alone, following me around just to be pet and talked to. The change is remarkable, and reinforces my sense that indeed, this anti-social cat is now more or less socialized and misses me when I'm gone.


Uroy, on the other hand, came to me from the Speisers', and although he was a healthy dog who grew up with a family who loved him and taught him good manners, he wasn't getting enough attention or exercise for his relatively modest needs. This is life in a family, really, and a totally dependent dog does not take priority over an adorable 7 year old boy, for example. With my single family-lessness, and my very flexible schedule of sitting around, reading and writing, I can take him around the block 5 times a day, haul him around to all outdoor events, and even take him to work with me at the market. Since the winter especially, Uroy has gone from a kind of lethargic, totally dependent -- but unbelieveably adorable -- lump of sleeping wrinkles to an astonishingly active and social dog. He comes with me practically everywhere and has developed a fighting trim and precocious cheerfulness that I wasn't quite expecting. He has a wonderfully balanced energy -- as Cesar Milan would say -- that mellows other dogs and people, including over-excited puppies and children.


More often than not, I think my loneliness despite my rich social life comes from an instinctual urge to nest, to make a loving home for myself and others, an urge that is only getting stronger as I get older. Contrary to some advice I've received, I don't think I can simply make a choice about the person I make such a nest for and with. Sometimes it defies my imagination to conjure up some person I could seriously commit to and build a home with. Every criteria I imagine turns out to be either completely unrealistic or not at all sufficient. On the other hand, making a home suitable for Uroy and Smokey is more or less a snap. Food? Check. Water? Check. Acceptable places to poop? Check. Demonstrations of love? Check.


Of course our little domestic paradise has its problems. Smokey still bites me occassionally and Uroy's flatulence and spats of serious attitude continue to embarrass me, and I haven't slept alone in my own bed since Smokey showed up. But the pros vastly outweigh the cons, and I see little unexpected improvements in both of them nearly daily. I have, indeed, successfully "loved up" my furry rejects and we are all better for it. I'm less self-centered in general and less anxious about my ability to sustain serious love for another creature, an ability I have seriously doubted in the wake of past romantic relationships.



The problem of course is that this increased faith in my own ability to care for another creature has pushed to impatience my desire to find another person to nest with. There are so many differences between pets and "boyfriends" it's hardly worth mentioning them, but perhaps the most thorny of nettles for me is the "live and let live" attitude that I have toward my pets' idiosyncrasies and the exacting, vocal expectations I have for the one I'm with. On the one hand, I've accepted too much in the past and been burned REALLY badly. In a sense I need to raise my standards, change leagues, get better at cutting my losses etc. That's an issue of self-esteem versus my impatience and the things it makes me hallucinate about other people. On the other hand, what I really need to accept is that sooner or later someone is going to surprise me, blow apart my expectations and only THEN will it be an issue of accepting this or that flaw or idiosyncrasy. People are not pets, you can't just pick out the needy and damaged ones and lovingly chip away at their rough edges. It's a balancing act and a waiting game rolled into one and there's no end in sight. As crazy as that makes me, as proactive as I want to be about it all, there's nothing I can really do. I have to learn to be satisfied. I have to analyze and work on myself. I have to make myself and my pets happy, and I have to enjoy and appreciate my own company and the company of my dear ones. All of this takes patience. I have to develop a little "live and let live" in relation to my own life.


In the meantime, I guess I have managed to experience another kind of relationship that prepares me in some way for some serious commitment, even if I can't really imagine it. I have my friends, that's one. I have the charred hellscape of my previous entanglements, that's another. I have my family, whose dealings are always an education in love. Now I guess I know that in some scenarios my selfishness doesn't rule supreme, and I can enjoy the little considerations and providences of caring for a dependent. Of course the next logical step is children, but that is certainly a topic for another post.

I guess we're on an upswing in personal content here. This is my blog and I'll write whatever I want I suppose, but I thought I was transitioning out of putting a lot of deep inner monologues on the internet. Wouldn't be the first time I was wrong about myself... certainly won't be the last. It's two in the morning, I'm sober in Syracuse and I want to move on from the alienation post... so here goes.

I think I'm finally coming around to realizing something about myself. It's something I've heard myself say a thousand times, and if one were to scroll through this blog I'm sure the same declaration has worked its way into my self-examinations. I am essentially a solitary person. I live most of my life in my head, even when I'm surrounded by people... I'm embarrassed to say that I'm usually in my head somewhere even when there's only one person talking to me. I'm a pro at "active listening", at picking up the breaks in the conversation and saying something innocuous and vague that lets the other person "know" that I'm being attentive. I'm usually not being attentive, usually I'm not listening because something is rattling around in my head making too much noise and taking up the space usually reserved for real-time interlocutors. I'm always overwhelmed in some way or another, and I guess lately I've started burning out.

I was always looking for something. That was my excuse before. I wasn't popular in the early years, being awkward and pretentious, always reading books that were way over my head and hanging out with people that were way older than me. I was always reaching for something that I wasn't quite ready for because wherever I was supposed to be wasn't working out. I've always taken such a proactive approach to everything. I think I can fix things that are going wrong just by making it all so much harder, because -- I suppose -- if something is difficult then I'll learn something even if the end result doesn't meet my expectations. The problem at this point presents itself: I'm old enough and competent enough to be able to do pretty much anything I want. All those books didn't go entirely over my head, and now the challenge is hanging out with people who are so much younger than I am. But the results are still not meeting my expectations.

What are my expectations? This is the sticky part. Undoubtedly they are wholly unrealistic. Undoubtedly whatever it is that would unwind this knot in my chest is not something I can just go out and grab. If it were, I would have grabbed or at least grasped it by now. So... *deep breath* ... I have to own the knot in my chest. I have to stop pushing myself out into the world, trying to talk to every person that crosses my path. I have to stop looking for the riveting conversation, the surprising sense of humor, the beautiful turn of phrase. I *have* all these things, I know all these beautiful people who literally make my world turn on its eccentric axis and who pick me up when I fall into that self-deepening, imaginary hole of nobody loves me. It's unconscionable that with all the love that I have in my life, with all the people who listen to my ridiculous stories and put up with my manias, that I should still be looking over their shoulders for something else.

Kierkegaard, somewhere, talked about "dissipating oneself in conversation." I think of that phrase over and over again. I don't remember which book it's from or how long ago I read it, but it's stuck like an orange traffic cone in my wheel well, thump thump thump thump thump. I don't know anything else, what else is there for me but conversation? But I can feel myself being dissipated as the years go by, and all these millions of conversations don't bring me that thing that I want. In the moment I am elated, I can't stop thanking the powers that be for giving me such an interesting life. But there's a part of me that still wishes desperately that I were invisible, so I could just enjoy my friends' faces around a bonfire, so that I could tune in and out, attending to the images and threads their insights fill my head with. There are so many times when I wish I could only express myself like this, to an empty page, to some ideal person who could... I don't know, understand it all? Make it all seem worth it? It's the problem of my expectations, I don't know what I want, just that when I come home I'm both relieved and devastated, because it wasn't tonight, I didn't find it, and I'll have to try again tomorrow.

I'm tired of trying. I have everything I ever said I wanted. So, my ideal interlocutor doesn't exist yet, I can't describe them, I don't know that I'd know them if they spoke to me, so in the meantime I'm just dissipating myself in conversation. I'm neglecting my true friends in the pursuit of imaginary soulmates, and it's making me miserable. What's the plan of action? I'm going to become a homebody. Obviously I'm not going to stop going out or meeting new people, but that's not the mission anymore. I'm going to make a little home in my body that I can take with me, where I can peer out the windows and only invite in the people who I know won't muddy up my carpets or pocket my knick-knacks. There's been far too much of the open door policy lately, as though I had no boundaries or personal possessions. As though I couldn't lock my door or even pull down the blinds. I prefer the comfort of a wingback chair in my own living room to the stark naked trust of full disclosure. This is new and old at the same time. I've always wanted a comfortable wingback chair, with an ottoman to put my feet up and wings wide (and low) enough that I could just doze off in the middle of a chapter. I've just always thought I was too young to retire. Maybe now is the perfect time, since I couldn't have gotten here without everything else I've put myself through. Maybe all this alienation is just the tide I never allowed myself to feel before, because I hadn't done enough or felt enough to step back from the high-water mark. It was always just another challenge, another difficult thing that I'd gain in defying. I don't feel so defiant anymore, it hasn't made me happy. I'm going to try to be happy, and leave all the amorphous tortures for the page, for characters that are not me. Maybe I'll write those books instead of living them, and maybe that will be better.

So I've had a rough couple days. There's a sense in which I have to talk about it, like taking a mental shower. Back at home I'm listening to my music, my dog is snoring quietly and I'm alone. When I'm in Ithaca I'm in my Mom's house, or I'm hanging out at Dom's, or I'm working, or I'm hanging out with a hundred million strangers in some crowded bar. The din of my life in Ithaca is deafening... all the more so for all its deadening silences.

I work a job that I love. I love all my jobs, but this one in particular. It's challenging, mentally and physically; it's hyper social; it pays well; my workmates kick ass. We fuck up all the time, every little thing can go wrong on any given shift. We work incredibly hard, and most situations we can handle. The problem is the impatience of the customers, and the way we're treated as Gimme! employees at the market. Somehow we've been implicated in some wrong-doing or incompetence, and people feel free to abuse us; to criticize what they don't understand and demonize us and our bosses. We worked so hard yesterday, and at the end of the day I made the mistake of checking a critical post on the traitorous interwebs. The outpouring of criticism and snide self-righteousness took the wind right out of my sails, and in addition to the fatigue and the hormonal reset of another wasted breeding cycle, I'm feeling utterly defeated.

What's wrong with people? This is exactly what I'm talking about when I mention the "ugly left". The shrill, reactionary "criticism" that takes an ideological position in relation to real people in real situations. Just because there's more than one Gimme! and the owner doesn't want to hang around 25% of the time doesn't mean that we aren't all good people trying to do our best. I'm trying *really hard* to make Gimme! a good experience at IFM and I fucking resent all this petty bullshit. As far as I'm concerned, Gimme! shouldn't continue at IFM after this year. It's just not worth it. Between the hassle and the expense (time, money, effort) there's little room for vitriolic ingratitude, and frankly the nay-sayers can kiss my ass. Don't come if you don't like it, we don't need your business and we sure as shit don't enjoy your attitude.

That all felt good to say, but there's a more general point in there. I'm tired of uncritical criticism. I'm tired of ideologues and their jerky knees. It started with the SU GSO, and the kerfuffle over the Drumlins country club funding. The leftly inclined hear the words "country club" and are suddenly transformed into petition-filing powerhouses of righteous indignation. "How dare the golf and tennis players of SU get free access through the GSO's support!! Aren't the golf and tennis players of SU all rich?! Make them PAY!!" It makes me sick to my stomach. I hated those meetings. It didn't matter how many times someone would try to slow their roll, telling them that a lot of country club regulars are international students who can't go home often (a vulnerable minority), and that many of them are NOT wealthy. Every time there was a new delegate from whatever department who heard about the GSO funding and objected to it, they would stand up and demand a reckoning, and an audit, and an outrage. Uncritical criticism. Infuriating, noisy puppets. Listening to them makes me so angry, sometimes it's hard to breathe.

But breathe I do. I'm not out of patience. I can smile even when I'm grinding my teeth. But it's like a cage, keeping up the appearance. I'm not relaxed, I'm vigilant. I have to keep all the cracks sealed, smile and remain open. People still surprise me sometimes. But I'm tired, and I'd rather be alone than pretend to understand where you're coming from, since you make it so difficult. Somehow I need a straw man, a "you" that the singer sings to. Of course I sigh to myself, and remember that we're all just human beings, ignorant, incompetent, impossible. But lately all that breath-taking and remembering just feels like another cage. Somehow the cages have proliferated, and I'm finding myself -- for the first time -- just wanting to be alone. I have such beautiful people in my life, I'm so fortunate that way. Somehow they all feel really far away right now, even when I'm lucky enough to be standing next to them. I don't know how I came to feel so alienated, I just want it to slow down, or stop.

Maybe it's all just hormones and sleep deprivation. I'm really, really tired. Maybe I'll go to sleep tonight and everything will seem different in the morning. Here's hoping.

Ciampa put this up on Facebook. Issues of the gaze anyone? Performativity? Enjoy:

Will I perish? Yes. But not today...

Analecta Hermeneutica is the annual refereed journal of the International Institute for Hermeneutics (IIH). It provides an intellectual forum for interdisciplinary, inter-religious, and international hermeneutical research. The journal publishes research in the form of articles, reviews, and other scholarly contributions in all hermeneutically related fields, with a particular focus on philosophy, theology, and comparative literature.

My article on Lacan and Plato's Symposium is in the "Retrieving the Tradition" section. In addition to my own shameless self-promotion, I recommend that everyone read Brian Treanor's article on the digitalization of the archive, very good read.

This is such a nice segue piece I couldn't resist...


Snails Go west ! Funny TimeLapse from www.time-lapse.fr on Vimeo.

Another excellent interview with Cornel West:

I'm reading Danah Boyd's dissertation in order to write my paper, you should read it too:

Taken Out of Context:

American Teen Sociality in Networked Publics

by
danah michele boyd

from BoingBoing

I'm going to write my paper here... live, as it were. At least the germ. I need somehow to dovetail my emotional life with my academic, because the energy I seem to have for the former I need for the latter. My life needs to be my work, otherwise this is not going to work.

What is the value of disembodied communication for counteracting desire?
What is revealed in pain?

The Facebook phenomenon has something powerful in it. Through chat, online games, messages (private and public), link and media posting I can spend time with my family, friends and acquaintances regardless of our physical circumstances. My friend could be in Korea or confined by labor of one kind or another, and we can still communicate in real time. I can play scrabble with someone I haven't ever seen physically, and we can develop a relationship without ever reading each other's bodies. Video is possible beyond words, but touch is not. It is so spectoccentric that nearly every other sense is relegated to an ancillary function. Nonetheless, relationships do form, and existing ones change.

Even more than Pia's ball, the internet is not a passive object. It exists beyond me, as something to be picked up or put down, but I am shaped by my interaction with visual communication technology. The disembodied interaction of "social networking" pushes me in the direction of disembodiment: a visual and verbal conceptualization of my experience, even as it happens.This is often what detractors ridicule. When something happens to me, I begin to think of how I will reflect the experience in my status update, for example. Ridiculous as it may seem, I think immediately of my community -- spread far and wide -- and how they will view it. How I will disguise it from the uninitiated; how I will gild my feelings, justifying them to myself and others; how I will be reflected in the eyes I intend as my audience. My mind works hard on these considerations, despite whatever nominal efforts I might expend for the sake of nonchalance. Perhaps I am unique in this, in which case this is an exposition of a curious individual psychology. But somehow I think not. Somehow I think this is an observable phenomenon in others' experience as well. I can only rely on those others for corroboration, I make no claims of universality.

So to the pressing question. It has become obvious to me through various researches, professional as well as personal, that desire is the strong force of human psychology. What is desire? That force of wanting that overwhelms whatever rational or material factors seem relevant to the dispassionate observer. That wanting that makes me act, regardless of my best judgment, my strength of conviction or the knowing counsel of my peers. I will stop short of saying "against my will," because it seems in fact to be the case that my will is transformed in desire and bends like solder toward that object or objective that simultaneously takes up my entire field of vision. I have observed in myself the capacity to read hundred of pages, turning each one with care, and yet to close the book with no sense of what I have just "read". That is only one mundane example, I could think of countless others.

Perhaps all that this indicates is a weak will. That has crossed my mind more than once. I have taken steps and enacted strategies to check myself, and I'm sure that will only grow easier with age and maturity. Nonetheless, I am convinced that the power of this phenomenon certainly warrants at least a passing glance. It is obvious, at least to me, that if I were able to harness this power into those objectives that my dispassionate observers would approve of, I could spend a great deal more of my time achieving those ambitions -- without the strife and self-flagellation --that I have already undertaken at some considerable cost to myself and others.

Such is the aim of sublimation: To bend desire to the accomplishment of socially acceptable aims. Very often the exemplars of sublimation are in fact some of the leading artists and intellects of history. They are held up as accomplishing world historical events precisely because they had the passion of conviction. Luther, Leonardo, Proust, Ghandi... But I often say to myself, the biographies of these men are so often tragic. For all their power and world historicalness, they were miserable human beings. Kierkegaard and Nietzsche for example, these are not lives that I would want to lead, for all their genius and production. I have the feeling that they didn't see the choice, they didn't sign up for the trade off, somehow it all just happened to them and they could not do otherwise. However much it tortured them, however much they gave up in the gnashing process of their lives, they produced these works that exist now as what Serres wants to call quasi-technological subjects: books. Books that change lives and people. Books that have lives entirely dedicated to them. Books that create cultures, even as they are reproduced, sit on shelves, burn and soak like any other paper.

So what is it about sublimation that is still such a radical compromise? I can assume only one thing: That desire is radically insatiable. Now we're caught up with Lacan. Sublimation can make us more productive and socially acceptable, even world historical, but it can't make us happy. Or maybe happiness is just quieter. If I were happy maybe I would just busily pretty up my corner of the world and no one would ever know my name and all that ambition would seem like a silly dream. Maybe that's the ideal that never comes to sit on the couch. That's possible, but it's not the topic at hand.

Isn't there something in common here, between these exemplary books, these cultural productions and this phenomenon of social networking? Disembodied artifacts, ensouled somehow. It is not even the case that they are powerful in the sense of some source. It's as easy to pick up Untimely Meditations, read it and remain unmoved as it is to sign on to Facebook, create a profile and remain disinterested in its possibilities. These are not irresistible subjectivities, they do not insist upon themselves precisely because they are in a very real sense inert without some living person's passion for them. It seems so simple at times: we are shaped by our environment, these are objects in our environment. I might want to call them technological quasi-subjects, but that only changes the orientation of my thinking.

I have to stop there, I'm tired and it's 2am. To be continued...

February 15th:
This is the paper that came out of this. I just discovered Academia.edu, all you paper writing people should get on it. I want to read all these papers I'm always hearing about. Just because we can't get published doesn't mean we can't be read, for better or worse.

Okay, this is an X rated cartoon that you should not watch with your kids, but it's too funny and adorable for me not to share. Be safe people.



From BoingBoing

Susanna sent me this, and I just can't get enough of it. I love the fact that his name went from Francis to Frank when he was discovered to be a "ladies man". Oh how it warms my cockels...

Trucking Duck

There's something infuriating going on with the embed code, sorry for the unexciting click through.

This was posted to BoingBoing, I wonder if they're just doing a series on my favorite musicians. I have never seen this before, I knew Screamin' Jay Hawkins was crazy, but I didn't know he actually got gussied up for the part!

The witch doctor thing makes me cringe a little, but it's so over the top...

This video was posted to BoingBoing, I've seen it before but I thought I'd post it all the same. It's a beautiful, heart-wrenching performance that's difficult for me to watch, haunting and dark as that song is. In the biography With Billie by Julia Blackburn, which is by far my favorite Holiday biography (and I've read them all), Blackburn talks about how white audiences would clamor to hear Strange Fruit, but after a while Billie just didn't want to sing it. I imagine it took a lot out of her.

I want to talk about this Rick Warren invocation issue, since the emotions in my circle are really running high and I have heard some hard, ugly words in the last few hours that made me wonder if hating hate-mongers is really different from being a hate-monger.

In part, I guess I will structure my response around this particular debate clip from CNN:

Hilary Rosen is pretty upset, and it seems like in the long, dark shadow of the Prop 8 horribleness pretty much anyone who cares about civil rights for LGBT people would be. She takes issue with the fact that Warren is a divisive figure who uses his pulpit to demonize gay people. Warren is well on record for comparing gay relationships to polygamy, pedophilia, etc. etc. I don't debate that, nor do I condone it. She castigates him for being a divisive figure, which perhaps he is, and that Obama should have picked someone less controversial, someone that wouldn't kick gay people when they're down. I can almost get behind that, but one consideration stops me from seeing the inclusion of Rick Warren as adding insult to injury: Barack Obama did not pick Rick Warren because he's a homophobe, he isn't trying to reach out to the homophobe contingency in this country. He picked Rick Warren because he is a man that has done a lot of good in the world, has a powerful voice and following, and because Warren's own stated political ideals emphasize the importance of openness in democratic conversations.

I don't think that Warren's right about gay marriage (for the record, I don't agree with Barack Obama either) nor do I believe that his views on gay rights will be borne out in the evolution of our ever more perfect union. As Roland Martin points out, the benediction will be presented by a pro-gay rights clergyman. Before I make my major point, let me post our President-Elect's own comment, which is more or less the meat of what I want to get across:



This is my view: This is a diverse nation. We have lots and lots of people with lots and lots of different viewpoints. There isn't anyone in my life, not anyone, that I don't have some fundamental disagreement with that challenges my understanding and love for them, as well as my moral compass. Given that fact, and my experience of it over and over again, I have never tried to surround myself with people who thought like I did. It happens, I'm from a liberal town and I spend most of my time in academia, which unfortunately is not as diverse or as integrated as perhaps it should be. But at times like this I'm reminded why that's a bad thing, why it insulates us and makes us callous and bends us toward dehumanizing the "enemies" we are all too ready to imagine.

The pitch of outrage over Rick Warren giving a prayer at Obama's inauguration is disturbing. It's overblown because the castigation of Warren as a spiritual leader is overblown. Hardly anyone I talk to knows anything about him. With the publication of his VERY successful book, he repaid 25 years of salary to the church and continues to dedicate 90% of its tithes to church initiatives. His ministry puts good works and anti-consumerism at the core of its message, supports initiatives on global poverty, illiteracy and disease, including HIV/AIDS, and he's one of the very few Evangelical leaders that has acknowledged global warming and holds human beings responsible. I enthusiastically applaud all this despite the fact that he's a creationist, against gay rights and a woman's right to choose, his dedication to the success of Prop 8 and his stance on euthanasia. Here's a TEDTalk he gave in 2006:



I agree with a lot of what he says here, especially about giving, and how it breaks the hold of materialism. I agree with his interpretation of our stewardship responsibility and the idea that our gifts are best exercised in service to a larger community. Because of all this, I disagree profoundly with classifying Rick Warren as a hate-monger. If he's a hate-monger, then the definition extends to everyone I have heard condemn him with a twisted, poisonous vitriol, who expressed surprise when I told them of his good works, or who said something like "that doesn't matter, he's a bigot."

It does matter. There isn't a single one of us that isn't a bigot at one time or another, not a SINGLE ONE. The fact that Barack Obama recognizes this, and has publicly recognized it in his closest family members, his own spiritual leader and now in Rick Warren is reason enough to praise him to the skies. But the fact that he's willing to WALK that talk, to acknowledge the truth in the controversy and still put his rhetoric in action, his including (albeit in a token way) Rick Warren in the inaugural proceedings only adds to my sense that our President-Elect is a rare man of principle and that we are even luckier than we know.

I may alienate a whole lot of people by saying so, but Rick Warren is not a bad man, and I bet he's going to give a good invocation. I hope that he will have influence with our president, because like so many of us, he has a LOT more to offer than the bigoted bullshit we are all so ready to use, so conveniently, to sum up his character and condemn him. Barack Obama explicitly rejects the ideology of excluding someone based on a disagreement which, I would add, is an ideology that incubates most forms of ignorance and hatred. Disagreeing without being disagreeable is more than a pithy phrase. It is a principle that requires hard work and moral discipline. Demonizing people who have different views and reducing them down to a one-dimensional caricature that can fit in the circle of a bull's eye is not my idea of progressive politics. Our new president has the wisdom to discern that and as in so many other instances, I hope we will take his example to heart.

Just for good measure, I will post Obama's section of the forum that Warren hosted during the campaign. As you will remember, the President-Elect mentions the openness of this forum as one of his reasons for including Warren in the inauguration proceedings:











And there's just a little bit more in part 6 before McCain comes on:

Back in May '07 I posted an article through BoingBoing about a 2,000 year old computer that they had found somewhere in Greece. Cordell posted this to Facebook today, apparently a British museum has made a replica and rebooted it!

Bettie Page has passed away. Her iconic bangs and risque photos are undoubtedly some of the best from the pin-up era. May she rest in peace.

I am delighted to report that there has been another step in the emerging detante between the elder statesmen in my house. This morning around 5am (for some reason, a usual time for four-legged wakefulness) Smokey began his morning caterwauling, and I responded with my usual calls for him to get on the bed and be acknowledged so that we can all go back to sleep. Usually he comes into the bedroom, sees Uroy on the bed and goes back out again, commencing his raucaus. This morning, however, he got up on the bed and tentatively sat down less than a foot from where Uroy was snoring soundly, and let me pet him. Lo! after a few sleepy strokes he settled down and much to my delight began to purr! Even when Uroy stirred and started demanding equal attention, Smokey lay placidly and continued to purr, so loud in fact that I could hear him even when I lay down with Uroy's snarfling in my ear. It was a short lived success, Smokey got up and went about his early morning routine after about 20 minutes, but I was still extremely pleased.

This may seem like a small thing to everyone else, but for me, living as the DMZ between two curmudgeonly sovereigns has its drawbacks. Besides having to sit/sleep in the middle of every piece of furniture so as to allow room for each on either side, I worried that Smokey would feel marginalized in my affections, since he's much more independent and won't approach me when Uroy's at my heel (which he always is). I worried that all the hard work I had put into making Smokey feel like he's a loved member of the household would go to pot with the disturbance of our usual routines. I also worried that Uroy would be forever alienated from his feline housemate, learning to fear him the way everyone else does. But now, with this minor victory, I feel that the lines are still defining themselves, and there is hope for an effective inter-species peace, if not a fully affectionate companionship. Dare to dream.

This is funny, timely and star-studded!!

See more Jack Black videos at Funny or Die

Found this looking around after seeing the Cadillac Records preview:

B.B. King, Etta James, Gladys Knight, Chaka Khan.... enjoy:


And the Preview:



Who's going to see that? *hand up*

This is nice too:



I swear that Beyonce could be the cause of global warming, even in platinum hair and costume jewelry.

Odetta passed away today. She was, as many of you know, one of the truly unique voices in the '60s activist folk scene and influenced just about everybody. Her deep voice, percussive and disruptive style set her apart and I still get goosebumps when I listen to her renditions of spirituals like "'Buked and Scorned", "Joshua" and "God's Gonna Cut You Down". She was also a soulful interpreter of contemporary songs, and below I've embedded a video of her version of "House of the Riding Sun" from 2005, and a beautiful but short close-up clip from the Newport Festival way back when.

And here's just a search result from NPR on some of the specials and interviews they've done with her.

Odetta, Still a Powerful Voice for Justice

May she rest in peace.