Weather

Outside.
Originally uploaded by Jodi3425.

It thunders nearly every night. Peals of thunder. Low, rolling thunder. Loud cracks of thunder. Every night. It's gone on for ages. Several days at least. Usually lightening and rain accompanies the thunder.

It's starting to unsettle me. I've never been in a war zone. I don't think I can imagine what it's like to endure the sounds of planes and bombs, the fear of them hitting one's place, the sense that there is no real shelter, no protection, the complete uncertainty about what will be left in the morning.

I couldn't watch "I am legend." I wanted to, but it was too intense, too much. The zombie fighters in the Resident Evil series aren't alone. Alice is a real bad ass, and not merely human. But Will Smith was scared, vulnerable, losing his mind. I left before the dog died. Paul and my son said it was a good thing, too. Both told me about some significant errors in zombie depiction: zombies don't crawl on ceilings like spiders and don't have superhuman strength. But these technical errors aren't much relief from the scene where Smith goes on too long as he recites dialogue from Shrek along with the movie. Or when he talks to manikins. Or when he says he can't leave because this is ground zero.

Comments

[parody center]

It's starting to unsettle me. I've never been in a war zone. I don't think I can imagine what it's like to endure the sounds of planes and bombs, the fear of them hitting one's place, the sense that there is no real shelter, no protection, the complete uncertainty about what will be left in the morning.

I was in Holland when it was happening in Serbia, and my parents told me that it was much worse for me than it was for them. They got used to it after a month and found a lot of relief in throwing parties for people all day. I did realize later there was that classic psychoanalytic effect of fear in anticipation - when soldiers go to war their excellent performance in the war will not remove their obsessive neurosis, for example. And so from a distance, in fantasy, it's always much worse than in reality.

I am legend is the cheapest possible buggery of the book you can imagine, it ends with the world being saved by Christians.And Will Smith as Neville? Please.

[Seb]

I remember the feeling of soul-rot when I realized it had only been a year since I'd moved to Baltimore before I stopped noticing gunfire, sirens, and police helicopters. I'm glad loud noises catch my attention again these days.

I've had apocalyptically-themed dreams since I was about 8, but they were by and large kinda fun. It was all either car-chase action escape, or a kind of post-acceptance Stendhal syndrome euphoria. But since last fall, they've turned into something far more desperate and claustrophobic. It's no longer about escape or acceptance, but being besieged by some implacable evil - very much like every big-budget zombie flick of this decade.

For my money, the original Vincent Price cinematic adaptation beats both this and the book (which I found crushingly dull). But I sypathise with Parody Center's dismay at the cheerily theistic denouement; that same thing almost ruined "Children of Men" for me.

By the way, they weren't actually zombies in "I Am Legend", were they? I thought they were supposed to be vampirised plague victims.

[Joe Clement]

Yeah, they have always been vampires of some sort. I've read an interview with Richard Matheson who kind of blanketly condemned any attempt at turning his book into a film, at least partly because he thinks fidelity to the book means simply copying it even if that amounts to a bad film.

It is interesting to note how more and more animalized the infected survivors become as the trilogy of movies progresses. In the book and first two movies, they basically attempt to create a new society, but in this most recent film they're dumbed down and almost dog-like.

[parody center]

Seb, the ending of the book is that Neville is dying and the last thing he sees is the emergence of a new society that the vampires are going to build on the basis of his scientific discoveries. Therefore he undergoes a kind of a (Deleuzian) Becoming. ''I am legend'' refers to his feeling that he's a total relic in this new emerging world and in that radical strangeness, Uncaniness, lies the book's power.

All hack Halliwud versions, including OMEGA MAN with Charlton Heston, re-read this in the Christian key, and this constant imposition of the Biblical narrative is utterly upsetting for me. It also ruined the cheerily anti-Apocalyptic WALL-E, by the way.

Jodianne the dog scene which you missed is horribly overwrought in the film. In the book it's much more poignant. The dog is dying for a long time in Neville's lap and licks his hand once before he passes out.

[Jodi]

I didn't know the movie came from a book. I thought it was just a remake of Omega Man, which I can't quite remember but thought began with at least some other people besides Charlton Heston. Paul mentioned to me that the woman who shows up in the film gives some horrible Christian interpretation of the situation, something akin to thinking of Katrina as divine cleansing and renewal of New Orleans. I think zombies are more interesting.

Again, having not read the book, the folks seemed like zombies, not vampires. They are infected from a measles virus that was deliberately mutated to cure cancer. Apparently, it runs amok and becomes transmissible by air as well as fluids (I thought of the rage virus; I'd also classify those movies as zombie movies in addition to the Resident Evil movies. The Zombie Survival Handbook also attributes zombification to a virus. I think only transmissible through infected blood, not just any old fluid.). Anyway, most die. A few turn into deadly mutants. And a tiny few are immune.

I was surprised that Dejan said that the books attribute a nascent form of sociality to the zombies. Paul said that in the movie this was emerging in the form a leader who gave orders. I would be interested in hearing more about the emerging zombie culture--would I get that from reading the books?

(Oh god, I fear that I've really exposed new levels of nerdish sincerity.)

[parody center]

...well if you consider that Halliwud always works in the employee of the ruling elites, I shouldn't be surprised it's churning out so many Bushite-Christian narratives.

In the book they are a cross between vampires and zombies, and they do have a ''normal'' consciousness like humans but coupled with an animalistic group consciousness, so they are a bit like the Brundlefly (from Cronenberg's THE FLY). The Charlton HEston version retains that part of the plot, while this new porridge with Will Smith deprives them even of human consciousness and turns them into video game zombies.

I also just remembered that there were so many ad placements in the early scenes with abandoned New York, it's insulting (like a shot of glistening Golden Arches right in the middle of existential rubble).

[Jodi]

I didn't notice the Golden arches...but I did have a surprising and unexpected craving for a Big Mac.

[parody center]

The craving for the Big Mac is probably the added dimension of the inevitability of the mutual imbrication/determination of stupidity/reflexivity in this case.

Anyhow I'm not totally pleased with either the frequency or the warmth of your responses, so I'm afraid I'm going to ask Mullins to write the dialogue for Jodianne's Choice in a strong Southern hick accent.

[Jodi]

I'll bite: what?

First, a tangent--I tried to make a comment at your blog when you quoted that little line but it (you?) wouldn't let me.

Second, I guess I can see that my remark sounds silly (perceptive, no?). I could write it off as performing the point itself (which then performs the regression, gets stuck in the loop, etc). But really (unfortunately?) it's what/how I think. I guess I could have said it's like a mobius strip or indicative of a parallax gap. But I'm not quite sure why it's funny or ripe for parody (or maybe I don't want to admit it?).

Warm and frequent (the terms evoke micturation)? I'm confused. This is the most I've ever replied to you. So maybe you prefer it when I coldly ignore you?

Or maybe you're checking to see if I've noticed a discussion elsewhere? A discussion where a certain Vanessa repeats (could one say obsessively?) how he is like so totally over my 'scene'? On this score, I was impressed by K's interpretation of the exchanges around the interview--spot on.

Yet, I should apologize for not responding to the point of God's submission. That's very smart and interesting and I've not heard it before. On Schreber: I've just read a wonderful article that smashes psychoanalytic dogma to argue that Schreber's psychosis is rooted in pregnancy envy. He wants to have God's baby. I didn't pick up any of these themes (in what was pretty clearly a technical discussion) because I was only interested in the connection between certainty and psychosis because there's a chapter in my forthcoming book about it.

[Seb]

PC: Don't get me wrong, I know the ending of the book, and I agree that it was the finest element of the story and was sorely missed in all the film adaptations. The Vincent Price version came the closest to keeping the original ending; the only reason I prefer it to the book is, as I said, the book was meanderingly dull. (Yes, perhaps trying to instill the numbing repetition of Neville's routine, but there are more effective ways of conveying this than boring the reader.)

As for "I Am Legend," honestly, the only reason I wanted to see it was my favourite singer did all the vocal effects for the monsters.

[parody center]

First, a tangent--I tried to make a comment at your blog when you quoted that little line but it (you?) wouldn't let me.

I've been having problems with the commenting system. Kamarad Fox pissed me off last week because together with the Leninist trannies at the Benevolent Tumor he got on the ''racist and nationalist'' bandwagon (it happens always when I tell them that the Albanian rabbits were bred on purpose by the Titoist apparatus in the 1970s but they think they know the history of my country better than me; they also have very definitive opinions about nationalism). I then did something to the commenting system which doesn't want to recover.

I guess I could have said it's like a mobius strip or indicative of a parallax gap.

that is probably correct, but the problem is that the Slovenly Alien puts it in the service of this Lacanian edutainment-cabaret and so the communicative function of his speech annuls anything smart he might have reached by invoking the Moebius strip; that article sounds like soft pornography for Victorian academics, it's really embarrassing. I'm half-expecting him not to comment on the Russian story, or if he does, it will be an even more vigorous confirmation of his Austro-Hungarian nationalism than the review of 300.

[parody center]

the book was meanderingly dull.

Seb, I read it some 20-odd years ago and can't really remember whether or not it was dull. i remember it evoked very strong spectral images, and indeed the only good thing about the new version is the apocalyptic New York City.

[parody center]

On this score, I was impressed by K's interpretation of the exchanges around the interview--spot on.

Which interpretation do you mean? I always told you that my positive- cognitive dad Clysmatics is great!

[parody center]

Warm and frequent (the terms evoke micturation)?

No, breast feeding of course

[Jodi]

which interpretations?

#57: "Of course I’ve recently recommitted to the kid gloves treatment, at least as far as personal slurs go. I thought you reacted abruptly to Mahmet’s content (which I found mostly impenetrable) without demeaning him personally. He got defensive, and Jodi reassured him at your expense. Now Mahmet may be a sensitive soul, regarding sarcastic remarks about his ideas as personal insults, and it was probably good that he returned in order to clarify his intentions. I suspect Jodi knows you well enough to feel like you can take her rebuke, in order to keep the door open for other sensitive souls who might have something interesting to say. Anyhow, I regarded it as a minor slight to you, though I’ve not been back today to see further developments."

Breast feeding: oh. Pretty clear that you weren't the feeder.

[parody center]

Well yes indeed Clysmatics is an active bottom, he's always eager to please all parties involved in a conflict. I will see if I can work something out on your behalf with Vanessa.

[Mehmet Çagatay]

“Mahmet may be a sensitive soul”

I prefer to regard myself as a sentimental son of a kitsch by the virtue of perverse dimension of my soul. Just as in “Play me Again”, Tanita Tikaram’s brilliant song in her latest album, Sentimental:

“In the beginning, the word is hot
Now I see the ruin, but I can't stop
For I'm so sentimental
Play me again”

Tonight I watched ‘Shall we Dansu?’ a Japanese movie which was later remade by Hollywood. In a scene the movie all of a sudden turned into a music video of The Drifters’ version of the famous song ‘Save the Last Dance for Me’. Since I typically feel grieved to watch the pathetic scenes that are supposed to exploit the optimism of audience, lines of tears started to drop to my cheeks. It was the sublime moment in which the signifying power of music and dance (Dylan once said, "I think of myself more as a song-and-dance man.") removed the veil of language from the impossibility of desire. Of course I didn’t think in this vein at that moment or about the basis of my explosion of excessive sentimentality until I read the remark that may be I have a sentimental soul. In fact, I was thinking about a particular moment with a woman, a stupidly missed opportunity of happiness where she joyfully held my hand and attempted to drag me to the entrance of a pub. But I calmly withdrew my hand to present my phony maturity. It was the momentary synopsis of our story. Anyway, now I have realized that, let me repeat Kant’s well-known example: I realized that I am sort of a perverse moralist, I am really eager to enter the first room to make love with the beautiful woman in spite of the fact that there will be gallows for me on my way out. But the real point is when there is this beautiful woman, there is no gallows to pay the price of transgression, when there is gallows, the woman has already gone. I suppose, I was crying for the inconvenient fact that after that pathetic song, we will be introduced by the veiled impossibility in the diegetic reality.

[parody center]

I suppose, I was crying for the inconvenient fact that after that pathetic song, we will be introduced by the veiled impossibility in the diegetic reality.

Mehmet why don't you just admit that you're a hopeless NERD?

[parody center]

I suppose, I was crying for the inconvenient fact that after that pathetic song, we will be introduced by the veiled impossibility in the diegetic reality.

Mehmet why don't you just admit that you're a hopeless NERD?

[patrick j. mullins]

I think he sounds much like Jules in 'Diva', which I've always totally failed to understand--I just don't see Wilhelminia Fernandez to work all that well once you've heard Leontyne Price.

"I am really eager to enter the first room to make love with the beautiful woman in spite of the fact that there will be gallows for me on my way out. But the real point is when there is this beautiful woman, there is no gallows to pay the price of transgression, when there is gallows, the woman has already gone"

I'm afraid those two alternatives are exactly the same, monsieur. This is the kind of thing that caused all the Faust legends, and which are making me very uncomfortable because repudiating Goethe is somehow not something I'm yet as ready to do as I find alternatives to Jesus 24/7--although if it comes to it...
there still should be a lot left, at least for me, I don't know if Mehmet will be able to access any of the guiltless pleasures--but even adepts know there is an eventual limit on any of it.

But this is a nice fellow, we should indeed be glad for his advent. He's not talking about the same stupid things quite as often as most are, and has some multi-dimensional sparks among the veiled impossibilities of Jules.

"lines of tears started to drop to my cheeks."

Oh dear. Well, I still don't think that's as pimply-adolescent as '[Lynch] does really well, good enough to have a shot at canonization'. Of course, it's physically impossible that the tears dropped as 'lines'. BUT--this is not the dessicated desperation inherent in 'undertheorization', which may or may not ever having had the joys of being able to write about the false fears of the phony promise of the diagetic reality? After all, films are quite as diagetic to life as are little record players with pop songs played by characters inside film scenes. Films have always had this genius of infecting us with a secret wish that they will always be accessible, and I wrote about this, of course (Mehmet may purchase...hell if I'm stuck with leaving out the finances just because I've found out about Arpege's Valhalla of Elite Billionaires Who Hire Millionaires to Make Batman--anyway, this was just her own project to make sure everyone guiltily stayed on 'use-value message' while she kept her eye on the exchange-value baseball. Arpege is not capable of finding God, nor of having an erotic relationship with him.)

Oh well, I think I've run perezoso/lustmolch off all sites, without at all meaning to be overbearing, despite thinking some of his ideas are good with Arpege and Steppling, et alia. A couple of years ago he wrote me an email telling me to quit commenting on his blog, because, in his words 'I say Ellroy, you say Sontag.' That was something I'd never been accused of. I see now I was wrong to ever speak to him at all again, and won't further. It's interesting that there are some places locked off to all of us, including some where we'd think we're welcome. He just finds me even more overbearing and is allergic to me even more than most are. You see, Mehmet, the occasional person that simply cannot stand us in a purely irrational way is what really prevents us from the punishments of the Faustian pacts, once we've discovered the joys of Bacchus which bring us that true Heaven, as we become the vessels through which God enjoys His keenest pleasures.

"she joyfully held my hand and attempted to drag me to the entrance of a pub. But I calmly withdrew my hand to present my phony maturity"

These narratives keep one on the edge of one's seat. Through the lens of 'phony maturity', are you sure you were equipped to assess how 'joyfully' and how 'calmly'? Anyway, a pub is not a brothel, so your maturity may well have been phony. But this is some of the nicest young writing I've seen in a while. The undertheorizing and wicked stealing off to precincts of cinema and diagetic popsong may yet have mild promise. At such an early stage, one oughtn't to say more.

Yesterday was Jack's birthday, and Vanessa did happen to come up as we were discussing the bio of Edith Evans I'd just read. The number of plays per year the great Dame Edith was in is astounding enough, and there are even a few film appearances, including 'The Madwoman of Chaillot', bloated trash except that Dame Edith takes center stage with Kate Hepburn sitting right next to her. Anyway, Vanessa was the only current actress we could think of that wanted to go into one project after another as was once done by the great stage actors. But she still reminds me more of Kate than Dame Edith, who said she'd "never play Lady Macbeth. I don't think much of her. I could never play someone who was unfinished. Shakespeare never finished her."

[parody center]

Vanessa let me explain, Mehmet here has joined dr. Zizek and his intergalactic emissary here in lamenting the fact that love is an encounter with the Void (because you see, these Lacanian nerds postulate a Hole in the world which is only partially patched up by what we call ''reality''); you have to be careful to capitalize all these constructs - it's not just love but Love, and not the real but the Real... whether or not you subscribe to this view is a matter of belief, more than anything else, but when pulled through Germanic Romantic PR it tends to produce this whiny melancholia, the Weltschmerz trip, rendered doubly ridiculous by the fact that dr. Zizek owns several BMWs, a business school in Switzerland and an underage Brazilian bride - things that Mehmet can only dream about.

[parody center]

and in the way they see grandiose concepts like ''little death'' in Orgasm, completely unable to enjoy a leisure fuck, you can see just how sex-starved these types really are

[parody center]

I don't dare to comment on his affection for Tanita Tikaram - it would be too rude even for my low standards:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QAyVNqhyXDE

[patrick j. mullins]

Oh please, I don't mean that he wrote WELL. And YOU may stop calling me women's names, I'm a sexist and I want that known, since political correctness is clearly more important than all nukes anyway.

Anyway, it had been necessary to place something about my mistake in posting at Arpege and traxus. That guy's blog I hadn't looked at in maybe 2 years, he's got all sorts of things in the comments about some 'bubbabot' thing. He may still post at Adam's sometimes, but is always deleted there. It goes back and forth, and sometimes the writing has some sharp points in it, but too many threats. I had thought things had calmed down, maybe they have in some ways, but I'm leaving that alone for good.

[parody center]

And YOU may stop calling me women's names

Ok but I will think about including Mehmet's blawg on the roll under the title ''Tanita's tears''. We need to keep a watch on that area because we don't want to share the position underneath the Alabama tit with THREE of us, do we now.

[patrick j. mullins]

Who cares what's on your blogroll? It's nothing to do with me.

Anyway, Mehmet is trying to express and understand something, which is more than stalkers like you and the troll are doing.

[Jodi]

Patrick--glad you haven't left. It seems like there is a thread of connection between you and Mehmet; I didn't quite follow all the culture references, but that's neither here nor there; happy birthday to Jack.

[patrick j. mullins]

Thanks, Jodi. I guess I'm upset that Obama hasn't got a big enough lead with McCain, and Dowd was very scathing on the behaviour of the Clintons today. I'm really on the same wavelength as Alain, just a much ruder person, of course. Yes, I do like young people like Mehmet. If most of us were honest, we'd realize we felt just like that about things, and some of us still do. Admittedly, I can't resist 'phony maturity', though. That's one of the best things I've heard in a long time.

[Mehmet Çagatay]

Hello All,

Other than my hopelessness, here I have to admit an obvious thing about myself: English is my third language, the second one is Turkish and my first language is a freaky hybrid of these, or more accurately, I don’t know a first language. Therefore, I would be appreciated if you could give me some slack on strange combinations of nouns and adjectives, illogical phrases, etc. Besides, although I didn’t wrote a single verse in ages, once I was a poet (actually, I recently made a desperate effort, I started a poem titled “Rosemary of Diamonds Jay of Hearts”, an allusion of Bob Dylan’s song, but it seems that I have lost the anger and the bitter sarcasm that I had when I was 20), thus, I think at least I may have a privilege to violate the ordinary language.

My next admission is about psychoanalysis. My extensive interest on Freud and Lacan has started with a dreadful personal experience. At the beginning of this year, when I woke up one morning with a trouble resembling facial paralysis, and an intolerable buzz inside my left ear, I rushed to the hospital and after a careful examination by a couple of doctors, finally the neurologist concluded that my nervous system is functioning properly, my reflexes are working fine as well but my problem might be a symptom of Generalized Anxiety Disorder. He prescribed me a light anti-anxiety pill (Buspon, Buspiron or something like that) but he added that I should see a psychiatrist too. After realizing that I didn’t have serious problem, instead of seeing an ordinary dull psychiatrist and taking the pills, I started to study on psychoanalysis. My original question was/is why I am anxious or why I am who I am? Strangely, in a short period of time where I alternately pretended to be analyst and analysand, I got rid of the warp on my face and the buzz has been almost stopped for the moment. I mean, I think it is not totally fair to regard my references to Lacan as simple intellectual masturbation. To some extent, they are about me.

Last confession should be on who I am. I really can’t tell you who I am beyond rattling off my illusions about myself. I think we unintentionally demonstrate who we really are, just as I recently displayed that I am hopeless. But there is another way too, we might pretend to be someone, but there is a downside of this: discharging unintentional nonsense. For instance, it is inevitable for me to talk nonsense when I pretend that I properly understand Marx, Lacan, Hegel, etc. etc. and when I pretend to be solemn person, the obvious conclusion is (as in my memory with that woman) to turn myself into a confused clown. A Couple of days ago I sent an e-mail to friend of mine; I gave a link to Ms. Dean’s blog and I told her that, here I left a comment about Lacan whom I don’t understand even at minimum level, but anyway, even though its probably utter nonsense, I wrote this, maybe you would be interested in to read this stuff.

There is one thing that I was almost about to forget, I have to admit that it is situational, (since I mostly filled my head with heavy metal rumble when I was in high school). Here is the up to date map of my music taste:

http://www.last.fm/user/jay_jaywalk

Finally, I didn’t take offence to any of your remarks. But I enjoy pretending to be offended and displaying that I am such a polite person who keeps his balance even in very awkward situations. Probably this pattern is originated from poker. I always write something like “nice hand”, “well played” after devastating bed-beats. In fact, I like to read the comments from you folks.

[Jodi]

Mehmet, that's a weird story. Not least because analysis (of whatever sort) actually worked. I'm slightly disappointed not to have been a heroic defender. But there's a resonance here with Zizek's deploring of those who offer help when it's not needed. I have that tendency and it nearly always comes in when someone doesn't need it!

[Mehmet Çagatay]

Ms. Dean, I wasn’t too serious on auto-analysis remark, it was a kind of a witty exaggeration. But of course, because of the understandable impossibility to find a Lacaninan psychoanalyst in here, or I suppose also it may be in anywhere, I had to enforce what I learned ("anxiety is the lack of a lack” for instance) in my case to arrive at clarifying conclusions and to investigate the content of my traumatic memory. When I said that it worked, I meant that what I have found there has changed my subjective position. Maybe, my physical symptoms would cease anyway since at the moment the doctor said that in all probability they are because of a psychological disorder, I was relieved from the fear that I might have a brain tumor or something serious like that. He advised me to take the pills for a week and go the see him again if there would be no improvement. As my situation got better and better slowly, I didn’t see him again.

[parody center]

Mehmet, maybe you were TWISTING IN YOUR SOBRIETY?