I am blessed that everything reminds me of some Pere Ubu song and yesterday set off a cascade. After years of my inability to find anyone or anywhere who could cite David Thomas' birthday I will accept June 14th via unreliable wikipedia because I need one day a year to celebrate. Expect lots of Ubu this month. Any and all requests solicited for June 14 massive cascade. I am blessed that everything reminds me of some Pere Ubu song:
- Of course I've known that Power claims as its own any private act I commit - I've written on this blog since day one that if I was worried about Power spying on me via phone and internet I shouldn't use my phone or type on a computer. Power has always claimed as its own any private act a subject commits and used whatever means and technologies available to enact those claims; what's different now is Power's technological capabilities. Power sucks up my digital crumbs into its cloud because it wants to and can, it doesn't give a flying fuck about me beyond storing information against my hypothetical radical future (and aiming advertisements via algorithms chosen just for me for toys I buy to keep me digitally docile while simultaneously enabling my surveillance), it sucks up my privacy primarily, essentially, because Power wants to and can. I've offered (I offer) no threat - Power has my phone records and photograph from the few Occupy protests I attended, and its bots scrolled me heavily in the days after and every month or two now, but I'm nobody. I'm archived, you're archived, not because of who you are but because Power wants to and can.
- Here's how nuts I am: Power is delighted by this story (Obama may or not be; Obama is not Power, Obama is Power's puny pimp). The chance to crucify a leaker who leaked information that empowers Power by reminding every subject how much power Power has plus another once-taboo assertion of Power routinized? Win-win-win, motherfuckers. Loved ones and friends and family ensure me Power (is a figment of my imagination) is too clumsy for such coordination, I say, brute clumsiness isn't a bug, it's a feature, like the drunken lout offensive guard turned loose by the stars at a frat party the football team has invaded. The lout gets suspended, the stars get away with property destruction and rape.
- Bullshit talking points.
- Scarier than what we know, though not scarier than what we assume.
- And I know it should go with saying though it needs said: none of this - none - has anything to do with terrorism, it has everything to do with the accelerating decline in the standard of living of the 99% of people and to the ruthless lengths the 1% will go to maintain the standard of living of the 1%.
- Trained for totalitarianism.
- Going after Greenwald?
- Note that the byline in the above article calls Greenwald a blogger, not a journalist or columnist, even though the article in question is in the Guardian. Fucking bloggers.
- UPDATE! George W Obama responds.
- Photography is not a crime.
- Ecocide and the soul of a nation.
- Toward an unhuman phenomenology.
- Henry Green season continues. As I said a few posts back, one breaks out in Blegsylvania every two/three years.
- The third hour of the night.
- New Neko Case album forthcoming! Forgive me, I love Neko Case.
- Mining the audio motherlode.
- Have I ever mentioned how much I love Pere Ubu?
WHAT NEXT
Frederick Seidel
So the sun is shining blindingly but I can sort of see.
It's like looking at Mandela's moral beauty.
The dying leaves are sizzling on the the trees
In a shirtsleeves summer breeze.
But daylight saving is over.
And gaveling the courtroom to order with a four-leaf clover
Is over. And it's altogether November.
And the Pellegrino bubbles rise to the surface and dismember.
