Month / December 2003

by DrMabuse

The John Birch Monthly

I never thought I’d see the day when the Atlantic advocated racist generalizations. Actually, it’s the white guys who never seem to wash their hands in the bathroom. Generally the Caucasians about to broker a deal, the suits fond of the handshake. People like Cullen Murphy. Scary shit really, but all it takes is hanging out in a fancy-schmancy men’s room for an hour and keeping track of who doesn’t wash their hands.

Oh, and Happy New Year!

[8/8/05 UPDATE: Now of course, these things don’t come as much of a surprise to me anymore. But I’m still very much annoyed that highbrow to middlebrow magazines still use language to voice casual generalizations.]

by DrMabuse

Your Brain’s Guide to a Safe New Year

Today, please adjust the settings in your mind, as follows:

4:00 PM: Yearly Self-Diagnostic. Run defrag program. Check for viruses. Finish organizing and prioritizing memories of 2003 events.

5:17 PM: Finish Kith and Kin Telephonic Check-In program.

7:22 PM: Register 2004 New Year Resolutions with CPU.

8:42 PM: Determine whether Body Unit intends to drink. If blood-alcohol levels = unmanagable, then capitulate keys to Sober Mind Obligated to Protect Other Body Units.

9:06 PM: Kiss Long-Term Companion Unit, listen to L-TCU’s last thoughts and resolutions.

10:34 PM: If 2003 New Year Resolution = Program Not Executed in 2003, Then 2003 New Year Resolution = 2004 New Year Resolution. Don’t worry. Other Body Units and CPUS will probably forget, particularly OBU (Quite Inebriated) types.

11:22 PM: Exchange 2004 New Year Resolutions with OBUs and L-TCU.

11:46 PM: Obtain champagne.

11:50 PM: Last-minute Kith and Kin Telephonic Check-Ins.

11:54 PM: Find L-TCU or L-TCU (Potential).

11:56 PM: If L-TCU (Current) or L-TCU (Potential) Does Not = Hand (Champagne), then obtain champagne. L-TCU (Not Champagne) = L-TCU (Champagne).

12:00 AM: If one second before Turn of the Year Announcer = Mouth (“One”), then when Turn of the Year Announcer = Mouth (Null) or Turn of the Year Announcer = Mouth (“Happy New Year”), Your Mouth (“Happy New Year”). Kiss with L-TCU optional, though with obvious advantages for both CPUs.

General Program Notes: If L-TCU = Unavailable, don’t worry. This is the result of Propaganda (New Year’s) running in several OPU’s CPUs. Propaganda (New Year’s) was a virus authored long ago by some bored fifteen year old punk. Disregard all conversational facets pertaining to this and be sure that CPU = Happy, if L-TCU = Unavailable. See General L-TCU Maxim for more information (i.e., CPU = Not Happy continues L-TCU=Unavailable condition, CPU=Happy, and CPU=Confident and Listening, improves likelihood of L-TCU=Available condition, though timing of new variable impossible to predict).

by DrMabuse

Cutting Off the Collectors

Patrice Moore, a 43 year old one-time mail clerk, was trapped under a pile of books and paper. Emergency workers filled 50 garbage bags with paper. It’s still not nearly as bad as the Collyer brothers, extreme reculsives who never threw anything out, got caught within their own debris, and who died of starvation and being gnawed upon by rats, respectively. (And, in fact, there’s a book on the Collyers called Ghosty Men.)

A Moore-Collyer type in training might be this 18 year old, who chooses books over partying. An admirable Hobson’s choice, but how does this kid expect to meet people?

French book commercials are a big controversy.

Linguist Charles Berlitz has passed on.

And, apparently, there are a few Bernard Goldbergs running around in France.

by DrMabuse

More Quickies

Way to go, Brian!

And, another good victory.

Bertrand Russell’s last essay: “There could be a happy world, where co-operation was more in evidence than competition, and monotonous work is done by machines, where what is lovely in nature is not destroyed to make room for hideous machines whose sole business is to kill, and where to promote joy is more respected than to produce mountains of corpses. Do not say this is impossible: it is not. It waits only for men to desire it more than the infliction of torture. There is an artist imprisoned in each one of us. Let him loose to spread joy everywhere. There is an artist imprisoned in each one of us. Let him loose to spread joy everywhere.” (via Wood S Lot)

Harvey Weinstein publishes a satirical book about Miramax: “Contrary to popular belief, we do have a sense of humor about ourselves.” Yeah, right. (via Maud)

by DrMabuse

Gaddis Was The Man

Today, Wood S Lot reminded me that eighty-one years ago, one of the most underappreciated American novelists was born.

I first came across Gaddis when I was 25, stumbling through a bookstore and coming across some book called The Recognitions that had an incredible Hugo van der Goes painting on the cover. Something that looked like an anguished Neanderthal, but could have easily been a tortured wrestler. Plus, the book was thick. And instinctively, I’ve always been drawn to anything huge.

It took me three weeks to finish the sucker.

Gaddis wasn’t your fly-by-night novelist. He demanded that you work. One minute, he’d be drowning you in remarkable descriptions, placing you in fascinating tableaus that would never end. The next minute, he’d be giving you sentences like, “The door was opened to the length of a finger,” or “He got up and lit an American cigarette,” always reinforcing precise absurdities. (Why should the nationality of a cigarette matter so much? Why measure a door by a finger when a hand isn’t there?) The thing that kept his books worthwhile was Gaddis’s presence as a relentless imp. He’d skewer anything, whether it was Dale Carnegie’s disciples, bizarre organizations like the Use-Me Society, or the chronic counterfeiters who riffed throughout his books. His dialogue of debutantes and dilletantes always came across to me as astutely observed. The spoken lines were prefaced only by dashes, immersed within the pages as if to imply that the dialogue itself was inseparable from the tragic vapidity of human behavior.

Without Gaddis, there would not have been a Thomas Pynchon, nor a David Foster Wallace, nor a John Barth. He ushered in a postmodern wave where anything was fair game, where Balzacian observation could dance hand-in-hand with Mencken and the Marx Brothers. And that’s why I was particularly sad the day he died not long later.

Related Link: William Gaddis video interview with Malcolm Bradbury.