Obscurantisme Terroriste

With Derrida, you can hardly misread him, because he’s so obscure.
Every time you say, “He says so and so,” he always says, “You misunderstood
me.” But if you try to figure out the correct interpretation, then that’s not
so easy. I once said this to Michel Foucault, who was more hostile to Derrida
even than I am, and Foucault said that Derrida practiced the method of
obscurantisme terroriste (terrorism of obscurantism). We were speaking
French. And I said, “What the hell do you mean by that?” And he said, “He
writes so obscurely you can’t tell what he’s saying, that’s the obscurantism
part, and then when you criticize him, he can always say, ‘You didn’t
understand me; you’re an idiot.’ That’s the terrorism part.” And I like that.
So I wrote an article about Derrida. I asked Michel if it was OK if I quoted
that passage, and he said yes.

From an interview with John Searle

We’re still fighting bravely for our vague goal!

  1. Only the U.S. Government’s GIANT SPACE SLINGSHOT can save us now!
  2. The Pixies as done by Prince, Jimi Hendrix, The Beach Boys, and others.
  3. Simone Weil said that she didn’t want to go to Heaven, because she thought the people in Hell would need more help. Dear Kirk Cameron: You’re no Simone Weil.
  4. In other religious news, the story of Daniel in the lion’s den is meant to prove a point, not to provide an example to emulate literally.
  5. Since I am a terrible physical coward I would probably just slip this card under someone’s wipers rather than present it in person.
  6. The Vespa saved Italy from Communism. Maciej’s piece on the occasion of the Tiananmen anniversary asks: Will Wal-Mart save China from capitalism?
  7. My friend Russell has shot a hilarious promo for a new tv show called It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, and it’s here on his page. Warning: earworm. Browsing around his site I found the painfully perfect promos he did for the Sci-Fi channel a few years ago, which haven’t lost their ability to make me chorf.
  8. I have installed a lonesome electric chicken.

KLANG!

Last night mr_flippant and I were playing mp3 pingpong as we often do, and I didn’t listen to all of the stuff I got from him but left some on my desktop.

Today when I logged in to my account my computer decided entirely on its own that it was time to import “Bing Bang Bang Bong Kong” by Messer Chups into iTunes and immediately play it. I have no idea how this happened, since the thing started playing before I was actually all the way logged in.

Anyway I’m awake now.

Savage Republic

The band I am going to see tonight isn’t normal. Normal bands do not send out email like this the day of the show:

One last thing: We are in dire need of a few extra 55 GALLON OIL DRUMS for our guest musicians tonight.

If you happen to have something like this in Los Angeles, or know where we can get some on a Saturday, PLEASE CALL US AT:

650 619-3695

We can pick it up. These are they same types of barrels used by folks to make Burn Barrels. We’re just going to beat on the edges, so the barrels will still be usable after the performance.

Great Moments in Publicity: Armageddonist!

Courtesy jenlight. For me this brought back a memory of my time at the newspaper. Our typesetter hated the food writer’s prose with a passion. Due to irrepressible immaturity he would insert uncomplimentary things about her and her writing in the copy while setting it. We in Editorial would then have to find and remove them. It was really funny the first time.

Greenpeace’s fill-in-the-blank public relations meltdown

Before President Bush touched down in Pennsylvania Wednesday to promote his nuclear energy policy, the environmental group Greenpeace was mobilizing.

“This volatile and dangerous source of energy” is no answer to the country’s energy needs, shouted a Greenpeace fact sheet decrying the “threat” posed by the Limerick reactors Bush visited.

But a factoid or two later, the Greenpeace authors were stumped while searching for the ideal menacing metaphor.

We present it here exactly as it was written, capital letters and all: “In the twenty years since the Chernobyl tragedy, the world’s worst nuclear accident, there have been nearly [FILL IN ALARMIST AND ARMAGEDDONIST FACTOID HERE].”

Had Greenpeace been hacked by a nuke-loving Bush fan? Or was this proof of Greenpeace fear-mongering?

The aghast Greenpeace spokesman who issued the memo, Steve Smith, said a colleague was making a joke by inserting the language in a draft that was then mistakenly released.

“Given the seriousness of the issue at hand, I don’t even think it’s funny,” Smith said.

The final version did not mention Armageddon. It just warned of plane crashes and reactor meltdowns.

-Jeff Shields