The · Continuing · Adventures · of · Alexander · Supertramp

Too long gone, but I needed to say thank you to all who voted yesterday.  For many it was your first Presidential and one to always remember. Now the real work begins.
             I know I need to write more, and I will, but tonight its back to the books.  Goodnight..

I'm still alive, even if absent. 
I was admitted into the PhD program at KU and I'll be teaching two sections of Freshman English each semester--woohoo.  
Kansas storms are totally freaky.
I went to a roller derby match in KC.  WE HAVE A LEAD JAMMER!!!
The new Indiana Jones is terrible!
Speed Racer: visually stunning mindless fun.
The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters:  two thumbs up!

two oldies on DVD
1) Paris is Burning: Amazing documentary about New York gay dance culture and voguing.  I miss Madonna :(
2) Your Own Private Idaho: Henry the IV (II) on drugs, queer sex and Keeanu Reeves. Can you believe it's even better than it sounds!

Peace

I went Paris over spring break--completely amazing.  The weather was a bit cool, so I think I'll wait until May next time.  I've fallen madly in love with Paris, and I've begun plotting my escape. First, I need to learn some French...

I caucused for Obama on Tuesday.  I love to caucus! Throw out the voting machines! It feels like your doing something secret and shameful behind that curtain in the voting machine.  Hmm...that's an idea. Nevermind! Anyway, at the caucus you get to talk politics with people for two hours and you actually get the feeling that you're doing something. We were also all in a very large cattle pen which was very cool, and very Kansas. 

I was trying to convince my neighbor to abandon the Edwards camp and join the mass of Obama supports, when two Clinton supports tried to influence me to join them. It’s funny because I agreed with everything those Clinton supporters were saying: Bill and Hillary, together, presided over one of the greatest economic expansions in US history, reduced the deficit, created a budget surplus and stabilized social security. But, they also signed and campaigned heavily for NAFTA (literally, millions of manufacturing jobs were lost), deregulated the banking industry (the sub-prime mortgage collapse), the utility industry (ENRON) and the stock market (the Tech bubble, Worldcom, TYCO and others).  They abandoned Al Gore and the Kyoto global climate change treaty, and turned the Democratic party into a corporate financed machine that could compete financially with republicans, but could only win elections on the coasts and had no room for grassroots organizers or progressive agitators like Ralph Nader, Howard Dean, Dennis Kucinich or John Edwards. 

I’m supporting Obama because I believe he understands that he can’t make the changes our country (our planet!) needs on his own, that he needs to enlist Americans in a purpose higher than shopping and inspire us to something greater than fear.  I’ve seen young voters engaged in this process in a way I’ve never seen before, and corporate influence and money effectively pushed aside and exposed as a limited source for both fundraising and building political coalitions.  Sen. Clinton has had to dig into her own pockets for 5 million dollars in the last couple of weeks, while Sen. Obama has raised more than 7 million dollars since Tuesday (in 36 hours!) from small donors and families.  In short, I am supporting Barack Obama because I believe he is actually supporting this important attempt to take back the Democratic party and our government, and when he is elected he will be indebted to working families, community organizers, progressives and young people and not Walmart, Pfizer or United Health Care.

In the end, I brought my neighbor over.  The Clintons are still holding out.

“In Western culture, sex is taken all too seriously. A person is not considered immoral, is not sent to prison, and is not expelled from her or his family, for enjoying spicy cuisine. But an individual may go through all this and more for enjoying shoe leather”--Gayle Rubin, "Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical Theory of the Politics of Sexuality” (1984)

You know, Rudy can keep his "Islamo-Fascists," I want somebody to save me from the people most likely to hurt me this holiday season: gun loving teen-age boys, and their NRA assault rifle hoarding lunatic uncles.  Seriously, ever hear the story about the guy who ran into a McDonalds and stabbed 22 people to death? Me neither.  It's time to outlaw bullets and ammunition magazines.  Sure, those second amendment fucks can keep their fucking guns, but I want those bastards pouring black powder down the muzzle after each shot, so I can duck into the Old Navy and escape.  When will enough be enough?

How's everybody?  Man I'm swamped with classes coming to an end.  I'm writing a paper on Blake right now, but I thought I would take a minute and Luke's suggestion and type a bit about the candidates this year. Tell me what you're think and who I should vote for.

Clinton: I've never liked the Clintons.  As you might have guessed, I have little patience for those who compromise when I think they should stand on principle; yet I have to hand it to them sometimes, they sneakily manage some wonderful things, like SCHIP for example.  Still, NAFTA and the Kyoto failure still looms, as does the disaster that became "Don't ask don't tell." She's also too hawkish on Iran.  We are way pass due on a female Prez though... C'mon Hillary, seduce me with some of that old school liberal charm. Whisper single payer health-care again. I so want to love you.

Obama: Ok, anyone who turned Oprah into a citizen has to be good, right?  Too moderate for my taste, but could he really get past the Boomer gridlock as the Atlantic article suggests? A Black Prez would also be amazing.  C'mon Barack seduce me with edgy policy, any policy.

Edwards: To quote Men at Work, "you speaka my language," but why do I think you're lying?

Biden: You're so smart and funny.  Why did you have to be a white man?

Kucinich: I love you but you'll NEVER get elected, even if the UFO endorsed you.  PS--your wife! God damn!

Richardson: Strong environmental policy, and the minimum wage for teachers is a great idea, but I HATE having to listen to you. 1...2...3..

Dodd: read Biden (minus the funny)

Ron Paul: When will my leftist friends see you for the evil bastard you really are?

Huckabee: I'm starting to fall for the Fair Tax thing. Am I crazy?  He also has the best healthcare plan and a substantial green policy.  How are you a Republican? Oh yeah, you don't accept evolution.

Hey there kiddies. Now that you’re spread across the upper-Midwest does the world feel bigger or smaller? Sorry I’ve been out. I should write more. Here’s a bedtime story to make it up to you. Did anyone see “Into the Wild”? It’s funny, after teaching the Chip Brown essay half a dozen times, the light finally came on.  I had been reading Chris McCandless in the same way I read Thoreau, Joe Gould, and that crazy cat from the Grizzly Man.  Certainly, they all were lodging complaints against American materialism and consumerism, and I can be a sucker for that shit. But I should have been thinking of Aguerra.  It strikes me now that Alexander Supertramp escapes capitalism by driving himself even deeper into the humanist ideology from which that Capitalism has sprung.  For those of you who would like a primer, we can think of Humanism as exemplified by the philosophy of Descartes, who, as you might remember, decides that the foundation of existence develops from human thought: “I think, therefore I am.”  Now out this Descartes does all kinds of crazy shit (which is to say he pretty much agrees with everyone else he knows that the Christian God rules!), but more importantly, out of Descartes we nod in agreement with some notion of ourselves as removed from the world, as a singular, stable mind, as individuals, as “I”.  I probably also need to say this leads to all kinds of problems, like the assumption we have “freewill” and even worse, that others have “freewill”. But we don’t. And they don’t. And you don’t. Sad, I know.  You and “I” are only free to act within the limits of our ideology, which masks our material (economic—read: social, political, group) existence.  It is as though we’ve been locked in a room before our birth (our culture and ideology certainly proceeds us) and are left to think--actually we’re repeatedly told--that we can do whatever we want, but we are never “free” to open the door, no even seems aware that there is a door.  Some of us will resent the way others act in the room, and the rules they establish, and declare ourselves “outsiders,” but the limit of our rebellion is clearly defined by the limit of the room, in that we are always inside of our ideology.  And so it is with Chris.  He hates the hypocrisy of Modern Life and material culture but he is still locked into that ideology that says that honest people know themselves, that there is only one self and that the “false being within must be destroyed,” that honest people are free, that honest people are self-reliant.  He’s read “The Fountainhead” and believes in Shakespeare, and if not Shakespeare, at least Thoreau. But when he gets out to the wild it becomes clear that there is no "self" outside of the community, that he is several people, a legion, Chris, Alex, Son, Brother, Friend… All this makes the iconoclast Sean Penn nervous though, so he insinuates that Chris dies because he wasn’t careful enough in his application of reason; he was careless with his freewill; Chris eats a poisonous berry so that Liberty might be preserved!  I can see now though that Chris was mad long before he was choking that monkey on a raft, mad thinking not buying the HDTV  (that resistance) is “freedom”. 

Good night

Today I announce a conditional truce with Oprah.  After years of complaining that Oprah was by nearly every measure the most powerful woman in the world and that she used that power only to enhance her own wealth, with out attempting to influence national politics or engage in civil rights issues, I am pleased to report that Oprah may have joined the rest of us living beyond the TV screen.  Weeks ago Oprah gave her support to Obama and hinted that she would be featuring him on her show and using her vast army of laundry-soap queens and soccer-moms to Barak the World! Yesterday, she trumped that move by highlighting Micheal Moore's Sicko and advocating the move to government-run "socialized" healthcare, one upping her own Obama and every other candidate (except Kucinich and, oddly, Hucklebee).  Oprah, I hereby declare a peace and  a toast to the our brave new world.

Ah, life is good. Classes have started and I'm a scholar again. The research library--I so love a library--is amazing.  I was reading a printing of Lyrical Ballads last week from 1800.  The paper was....Oh shit, I don't know, but the book was from 1800 and it was THE Lyrical Ballads, ok?  Part of me still worships books like Catholic relics; this is wrong; I should care. I have a nice mix of Profs, from a muttering grump to an inspiring pedagogue. Too many good Profs at once can spoil the punch.

I ride a bike up the mountain to class. You can easily find me at the top red-faced and huffing for my life 20 minutes after each attempt.  One day that mountain will yield.

The greatest football Saturday of ALL TIME just passed. To recap: KU drummed Central (repent and drop the Native Mascot you colonial bastards), MSU looked good in their opener, and--most importantly--Michigan looked foolish against a I-AA team that no one had heard of before Saturday.

Slattern
noun  
1. An untidy, dirty woman.
2. A prostitute who attracts customers by walking the streets [syn: streetwalker]

1639, "a rude, ill-bred woman," probably related to Low Ger. Slattje, Du. slodder, dialectal Sw. slata "slut" (in the older, non-sexual sense). Cf. dial. Eng. verb slatter "to spill or splash awkwardly, to waste," used of women or girls considered untidy or slovenly.

Many of you know I'm  Werner Herzog's loving bitch. The Grizzly Man and Aguirrre rank among my favorite films, and films like My Best Fiend are are absolutely mesmerizing as twisted contours of a brutal accident. His films move on their own time, stumbling forward now and again, before settling into eddies, circling about their subject relentlessly stalking, watching, waiting. Only Robert Altman (M*A*S*H*) shared Herzog's voyeur fascination and absolute faith in the camera.  Hollywood thinks of film as a novel put to powerpoint; its plot progresses; the narrative is the purpose; the images serve only to aid our failing 21st century imaginations.  Herzog paints his films.  What ever text was sketched out on the canvas is quickly replaced thick greasy mattes of color and shape.  If you can slip out of time and see the first frame as vividly as the last, placing each moment in the context of every other, collapsing the seemingly natural linear construction of film, a Herzog film is tremendously rewarding experience, but if you can't, Herzog feels pointless and slow.
All this said, how Herzog was ever allowed near Rescue Dawn is baffling.  The film wants to be Top Gun, Rambo, Missing in Action. It wants to be a mundane prisoner of war escape flick filled with 'splosions, gun fire,  bug-eating and maybe even the tits of Vietnamese hooker, or two.  The recipe seems unavoidable watching Oliver Stone's Platoon, the first two hours of Coppola's Apocalypse Now, or the last hour of Kubrick's Vietnam effort, Full Metal Jacket.  The Vietnam film experience is a jungle that can devour even the greatest directors and turn them into braying maniacs spouting lines from "Charge of Light Brigade" and wielding a machete of cliche machismo, but amazingly, in Herzog's hands there are no heroics or oily chests.  This is the anti-300. 
Watching it happen, I was repeatedly left dumbfounded.  Over and over again the script calls the enigmatic German director to the well-worn path, but he scampers off the trail.  The prison camp should have an evil warden or guard who delights in torturing his charges. Preferably, he should be physically set apart from the others--an eye patch, a scar, rippling muscles, bad mustache, something so that we can feel dread anytime he's in the frame. The script even gives Herzog the name: Little Hitler.  But the smallest thing about Little Hitler in Rescue Dawn is his screen time.  He's noticeably  UNDERdeveloped. He looks like all the rest of the guards--no really big gun, no mustache,--and he doesn't do anything all that terrible. He doesn't even get a witty one-liner.  I would have to see the film again to even be sure if he was even killed.  In another Hollywood moment our escapees are washed down a mountain in a mudslide.  This is classic Hollywood stuff.  The scene should be 30 seconds of bouncing cameras, raging water, screaming and deflecting off and around trees before terminating over the edge of a cliff.  If not Romancing the Stone, at least Apacalypto. Herzog's scene lasts maybe 5 seconds and looks like the slide is about 15 feet. The entire film is this way. There's bug-eating, but without the disgusting closeup or gagging.  The escapees have big guns but then decide to ditch them because they're too heavy.  Their raft is caught up in dangerous rapids, but they wade over to the shore.  Seriously, if you blink, you might miss the only decapitation in the film, which happens off camera. In 300, the same scene would take 4 minutes of slow motion, pinwheeling, blood gushing carnage; Mel Gibson would concentrate on the physics of the bouncing, the sound of the thud.  Herzog ignores it. This is not a film about decapitation, or even war. All of that is left to Hollywood. Herzog still circles around his subject.
Rescue Dawn is not my favorite Herzog film.  It is a strange departure from Herzog's generally pessimistic films.  The music seems oddly out of place, trying to declare victory or emotional collapses where the images do not. I suspect a Hollywood executive ordered them in a last ditch attempt to make this film more mainstream.  This tension is evident throughout the film, and I'm curious to see a DVD release with Director's commentary or a different cut. Still, Herzog wrote the screenplay and his obsession with this story is well documented. If some things feel forced, it may be because survival doesn't come as naturally to Herzog as it does Hollywood. I get the feeling Herzog has made the film so that he could watch it, so that he could see and finally believe survival is possible.  The effort is unconvincing, for both Herzog and for us, but the film that remains buried beneath the score and narrative arc is a brilliant example of Herzog's unique aesthetic and vision of film.

Two classes: Semiotics; Gender, Genre and 18th Century Poetry.
I'm building a bamboo fence (pictures soon to follow)

Films:
Sunshine (B): It's been a while since I've seen a film where the editing is incredibly disturbing. The acting is so-so and so is the plot, but it's worth seeing as one of the better sci-fi efforts in a decade or more. Think Aliens meets 2001?

The Simpsons Movie (C): I paid $8 for this? Only Bart's cock kept this from getting a D.

Babel (B): Here is a classic case of the writing eclipsing the direction, the kind of film where you are left wondering why you didn't like it more.

Poetry in Motion (D): Poor documentary made at the start of the Performance Poetry boom. Most of the performances are boring with a few notable exceptions: 50 year-old Ginsberg performs with college punk-rock band in shirt and tie, a very young Tom Waits (I love Tom Waits), and a poet who compares writing poetry to the beer shits.  Only you can decide it this 7 minutes of genius is worth the 83 minutes of wallowing self-pity and pretentious angst.

Last night I went to free screening of the 1938 documentary classic The River, directed by  poet/director Pare Lorentz as part of one of FDR's works/arts programs.  The film follows the American history of the Mississippi River and how more than 100 years environmental neglect created a tragic cycle of flooding that left millions of working people permanently impoverished along its banks.  The film is simply spectacular.  The score is purely Americana; the editing throws the audience forward in the wash of the river; the cinematography is sharp; the use of repetition is so well interwoven throughout the entire film that it seems wholly natural, as though the project could not have been conceived without it.  I know next to nothing about Lorentz, but the film has all the power of Eisenstein (The Battleship Potemkin) with all the polish of Lang (Metropolis).  It's a masterpiece of environmentalism, the cinematic equivalent of Silent Spring.  It also reminds me of just how focused on solutions the government once was.

    Roosevelt! The world hath need of thee now!

Anywho, I have included some links to this 30 minute wonder...

12 Steps I've taken to go GREEN in the last six months:

1. Cut gasoline consumption by more than 100 gallon/ month by shortening commuting time and walking more.
2. Built a rain barrel from a discarded 55 gal drum.
3. Switched out 30 incandescent lightbulbs for CFLs
4. Recycle about 2/3 of my trash.
5. Added an insulation blanket to the hot water tank.
6. Switched to an engineless push mower.
7. Using the attic fan instead of the air when it's less than 90.
8. Added power strips to disconnect TVs and computers when I'm not using them.
9. Line drying all t-shirts, pants and linens.
10. Switched to paper towels and toilet paper made completely from recycled paper.
11. Purchasing green tags (carbon offsets) so that I'm carbon neutral.
12. Talked to my friends about going green!

There's much more I can still do, but I'm having a blast learning how I can help--doing more and saving more everyday.

Go ahead and share what you're doing!

I saw Sicko yesterday and I am recommending it to the masses. I admit that it's not Citizen Kane, or even Roger & Me, but the message is long overdue.  It plainly discusses the evils of HMO's and private health insurance and the benefits of Socialized Medicine that are enjoyed by every other industrialized nation around the world.  By the way, the US is health care system is ranked #37 by the WHO and the Canadians, French, British and the CUBANS all have lower infant mortality rates and a longer life expectancy.  Among the world's industrialized nations we have  above average rates of infant mortality and below average rates of life expectancy! For those of you not yet Marxist, at least go see it so you can see how the other half lives (longer and better than you).
Then, write your Senator and Congressional Representative asking them to support H.R.676 which would give free Universal Health Care to EVERY American. There's no need to get down when you can get busy working for a better health care system!

For those in MI

Debbie Stabenow: http://stabenow.senate.gov/email.htm
Carl Levin: http://levin.senate.gov/contact/index.cfm
Your House Rep: http://www.house.gov/writerep/