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Welcome to The Adventures of Horatio
A blog on culture, media and freedom.
Posted on Tuesday, August 05
| Supreme Courts and Objectivity |
 On the Sotomeyer question... reflections to follow.
Q: Initial thought: When has there ever been an "objective" Supreme Court Justice that was not influenced by "his or her social, political or religious views"? and since when has the court ever had a "judge that objectively applies the law to the facts?"
A: to follow...
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Posted by horatio on Sunday, June 07, 2009 (02:18:18) (6 reads)
comments? |   | Score: 0 |
| Our Official Blog : Consumer (Red) |
 Here is a poster cover I have been working on for the latest issue of Canon magazine. Just a design inspired by a friend's work on the Red campaign...
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Posted by horatio on Monday, May 18, 2009 (18:57:58) (12 reads)
comments? | | Our Official Blog | Score: 0 |
| This Just In - New School Computer Network Crashes - All Printer down |
 Ah, the irony of final at a school run by incompetent bureaucrats!
So I was trying to print some image for a project, and of course since its the last few days of finals everyone is jam packed into the computer lab trying to finish their final papers. So I printed one flyer, nothing. Having had similar problems in the past I printed it to another computer printer, still no luck. Ok, I have seen this before, no sweat. Then a few minutes later one of the girls from the lab tells everyone that the printers are down--across the entire university--and hopefully they will be back up in about 10-15 minutes, she says with a hesitation.
And it's also rather ironic, sitting here in the 3rd floor computer lab where every pole has the words QUIET please printed on them in huge letters--meanwhile the sound of hammering, pounding and construction work has been going on for the last hour directly behind on of the corner lab walls, making it completely impossible to concentrate.
Oh, and did I mention I have been sitting on a milk crate for the last hour because the only free computer I could find had no chair at it...
Ah, how I love the new school.
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Posted by horatio on Monday, May 18, 2009 (18:52:06) (9 reads)
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| Our Official Blog : New Words for the Day |
 Well, it's always fun to take a few minutes after a long project and reflect on how it all turned out. Too bad I don't have time to do that 
So instead, I'll just offer a few tidbits from my work today. In short, trying to finish up a god-awful long ethnography project that is about 35 pages too long--it was supposed to be around 20!--egads, and my homemade pizza is cold and hard and the microwave keeps beeping at me to get my coffee out of it, so all I can do is say, here's the new words I added to my spell checker:
-unmutilated
-Marcuse
-... {yeah, my computer froze up trying to get past Eros and Civilization--I wonder if it is trying to tell me something ;)}
-zine/s
-radicality {this one was particularly amusing, since the sentence read "We recognize no pre-given limits to the radicality of our intentions." Apparently the built-in spell checker on the computer disagreed...}
-ethnographer's
-it wanted to add Kerrey's but I just decided to tell it to "Ignore All", it seemed rather fitting.
-recuperators (?) WTF is a recuperator anyway?
-countermoves
-accommodationist
-flyering
-assed, as in half-assed
-Unaguration
-consensed
-admin
-something's
-spatiotemporal {at least the computer tried on this one, it suggester atemporal...}
-Bakhtin
-insurrectionary
-unlife {it suggeted unlike - how unlike life unlife is - hahahaha, i digress}
-deconstructing {seriously!? How big of a statement on modernity is it that my computer knows reconstruction, but not deconstruction! Oh the irony.}
-it thinks Booya should be Yahoo?!
-anarcho {apparently it knows anarchy, but not anarcho?}
-primally
-unfreedom
-autodestruction {it thought this should be two words...}
-immediatists
-mediatists
-sublation {it went for the close sublimation, and an entirely different meaning!}
-supersession
-timeframe {again with the two word thing}
-disjoining {ditto}
-Ranciére
-biopolitical {which is truly ironic when one of the alternate options is nonpolitical}
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Posted by horatio on Monday, May 18, 2009 (03:12:46) (9 reads)
comments? | | Our Official Blog | Score: 0 |
| Dear Diary : Why I Write and The Flesh of Words |
I'm trying to clean my head out.
Trying to clean my room out.
Trying to clean my computer out.
While cleaning out my wallet I found a small cache of fortunes. I have this bad habit of keeping every fortune from a fortune cookie, just hording them all up for a bad day when I need to cash in on my fortune. So here's what they had to say to me, this little memory time capsul from the not so distant past.
-Adversity is the prosperity of the great.
-Life to you is a dashing and bold adventure.
-Any impatience you show will only create more stress.
-There is in the worst of fortunes the best chance of a happy ending.
-As soon as you feel too to do a thing, do it.
-You will hear pleasant news.
-Friends long absent are coming back to you.
(ironically as I write this the song is singing..."I'm going home...")
-When someone wrongs you [it?] is good virtue to ignore [them?/it]
(this fortune was stuck to another one and dates 9.15.06... )
-From a past misfortune good luck will come toy ou.
-A friendship founded on business is better than a business founded on friendship.
-You are altruistic and will be involved in many humanitarian projects.
-If you wait too long for the perfect moment, the perfect moment will pass you by.
-Doing the best at this moment puts you in the best place for the next moment.
and finally, last but not least (drum roll please...)
-Unexpected gain and honor will be yours!
Sweet!
And in the process of all of this I ran across two excellent books that I know I should just put back in the dark where I found them, but rather will take a look at them soon. The first one is The Flesh of Words: The Politics of Writing by Jacques Ranciere, and the other on is Why I Write: Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind by George Orwell.
I find this particularly interesting in light of the recent e-mails I was looking at from people in the writing program at the New School comdemning the violent actions of the students and threatening the safety and such of the campus, as well as being against its founding ideas and values. Very interesting to see reactionary writing coming out of the "writing" area of the New School... who knows?
Anyway, onward to more struggle kiddies. And don't forget to thank the tooth fairy for another good nights sleep.
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Posted by horatio on Wednesday, April 15, 2009 (04:19:43) (20 reads)
comments? | | Dear Diary | Score: 0 |
| Our Official Blog : Mapping Resistance |
Mapping Resistance
Today has been a strangely productive day. I hope these questions are helpful for our inquiry into the nature of resistance. They are inspired from my current reading of Talal Asad's On Suicide Bombing (-love the cover image) and meditations on the construction of animal, nature and human... With that in mind, let me begin with two quotes, rather than a poem
| Quote:: |
"If you're not afraid of it, it will hurt you," said animal behaviorist Dave Salmoni. "You can't get the wild out of a cat because he's in a cage."
The Lion House is where the mauling occurred... just after the public feeding with at least 50 patrons watching, Tatiana turned on Komejan [a zookeeper]. Chari and his son [zoogoers] were standing 8 to 10 feet away, focused on another tiger named Tony, when they heard a shriek. |
Does anyone else see the sick hidden irony in all of this? Tony the Tiger? The Lion House? public feedings? "Civilized" versus "savage"? or is it just me...
As I read the first few lines in ch. 2 this thought came to mind: How do you “show” a particular construction of a particular logic which then constitutes (makes "real") certain understandings of what "war" and "terrorism" mean (and look like) in relation to our additional constructed understandings* of what he calls the "question of legality" and "feelings and vulnerability and fear of social disorder"? {p39} After coming out of the end of ch. 1 I had this question of the "liberal democratic state" and its relationship to violence on the tip of my mind.
The thought, because I have apparently been thinking and looking at maps and mapping (both are true), came out in the form of a visual map idea. Could a group of 15 people map out our understandings, our “logic”, of what a construction like “resistance” looks like, either visually or linguistically (most likely written, but possibly sung or performed)? Could we draw out on a big white board with a marker our outline, our assumptions, our “logics” of resistance? Maybe. What about the liberal democratic state? Could we map that out? Don't we, like Walzer—also construct a particular discourse on what is “resistance” in our class and in our daily lives? Could we map those out? Would they be similar?
It really goes back to an earlier question that came up a couple of weeks ago in conversation. What is the basic “logic” and “common sense” that each person starts from in thinking about a construction like the “liberal democratic state” and the discourse that holds it up in US society? Is it inherently based on exploitation, domination and oppression of some people by others, or is it fundamentally democratic more or less to all people? Can we speak of an “us”? This goes back to the question of mapping. Who gets to do the mapping, and what gets mapped, as the hegemonic discourse and reality are important questions to consider. Ultimately, I think they go back to the larger and harder question, which is who exactly gets defined as the “we” that are resisting against “them”—Schmitt's “friend and enemy” distinction—or the civilized against the savages. A battle over civilization, isn't that what this is? A becoming that is not fully realized, that is always almost at the point of becoming, or emerging—a becoming that is in conflict with itself. What happens in a nation of grown-up schizoparanoids?**
For example, consider the following statement in light of our earlier discussion on "civilized" v "savage" [or I might argue human v nonhuman]:
| Quote:: |
“Civilization refers to the central civilizational anxiety [paranoid anxiety], the fear of invasive malevolence. This is experienced as coming from the outside, but ultimately derives from the projection out of the death instinct. Civilization anxiety can be understood in terms of anxiety about imminent annihilation and derives from a sense of the destructive or death instinct of the self—[and by extension the state]. In this position before the secure internalisation of a good object to protect the ego—[think “the state”], the immature ego [“the state”] deals with its anxiety by splitting off bad feelings and projecting them out [hence the term “social outcasts” and torture centers located outside of the continental US]. However, this causes more civilization [paranoia]. Schizoid refers to the central defense mechanism: splitting, the vigilant separation of the good object from the bad object...a healthy development implies that the infant has to split its external world, its objects and itself into two categories: good (i.e., gratifying, loved, loving) and bad (i.e. frustrating, hated, persecutory). This splitting makes it possible to introject and identify with the good. In other words: splitting in this stage is useful because it protects the good from being destroyed by the bad. Later, when the ego [“the state”] has developed sufficiently, the bad can be integrated, and ambivalence and conflict can be tolerated.”**
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As odd as it all seems, it really is simple, which is perhaps the problem after all. Resistance is about hanging onto something as much as it is about getting something new. What do we want to gain, and what do we want to lose? And mapping that is a lot harder...
Earlier today my mother sent me a video link on the "American Government". While I wouldn't say I support the video's conclusion, but it is a provocative case for defending a Republic rather than a Democracy and speaks directly to the question of a "democratic liberal state."
With that I will end with a selectively fascinating tidbit that only a few people will likely appreciate, but is worthy nonetheless in my opinion.
| Quote:: |
On the East side of Coit Tower, down the Greenwich steps halfway to Sansome, a local artist has made a memorial statue to honor Tatiana the Tiger. I suggest walking from the bottom and up, and you'll see on the right hand side a cobblestone path lined with wood planks (not somebody's backyard!) that leads to an opening. At the top of the slope in the brush, you'll see a mosaic painted life size statue of the tiger underneath a small banana tree. The memorial marks the one year anniversary of the death of the tiger that everyone, except for these Yelpers, forgets to mourn.
RIP Tatiana!
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And after all, Tatiana deserves to have her side of the story told too, right! It's been like five minutes and my sides still hurt and I can't see straight, so I think you might want to watch this too. [warning...this video may cause spontaneous and contagious laughter from anyone in the vicinity. You have been warned!]
That of course left me wondering what can we do to get back to nature and start talking again about freedom. I think I agree with Jules Dervaes, we do need a homegrown revolution!
*[Tatiana might respond: "You need to look both at the construction of the relationship between these understandings, and the construction of each of those distinct and separate "knowledges", one might argue...]
**[inspired and adapted from wiki]
***For more from Asad check him out on the Huffington Post talking more about "Just War".
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Posted by horatio on Saturday, April 04, 2009 (04:41:01) (31 reads)
comments? | | Our Official Blog | Score: 0 |
| Hijabelegance |
 No, this is not a joke. I'm on the SHUKR e-mail list because I like their stuff, and this was part of their latest e-mail campaign. I can't help but laugh, and I think it is a great and clever idea. Too bad I'm not really a hijab wearer ;(
Anyway, just passing this little tidbit along. And if you're looking for some nice clothing from a cool Islamic company, check them out. SHUKR
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Posted by horatio on Friday, March 20, 2009 (20:05:35) (31 reads)
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| Dear Diary : Help me throw 5 million tomatoes at AIG! |
Yeah, I'm not normally a big fan of forwards and whatnot, but this one actually was worth the time. MoveOn, that pseudo-leftist group we all hate to love or love to hate--take your pick--has a campaign about the AIG bullshit that has been happening with our--yes our--tax money thanks to Congress (who elected these idiots?) and President Obama (see, I told you so!). Anyway, the details are irrelevant at this point as so much money has been thrown into this balck hole that the best option sounds like a public takeover of the entire building and, while we're at it, why not the homes of these CEOs too?
So if you feel like throwing some virtual tomatoes at AIG, here's your chance.
The people at AIG who are most responsible for the severity of the financial crisis should be in jail. But instead, they're slated to get $450 million in bonuses. Infuriating, right?
So a MoveOn member created a game to show just how mad Americans are at AIG. It's called The Great AIG Tomato Toss and it's based on the idea that we should stop throwing money at the people who ruined our economy—and start throwing tomatoes.
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Posted by horatio on Friday, March 20, 2009 (20:01:19) (19 reads)
comments? | | Dear Diary | Score: 0 |
| Help, I'm Lost! : Rice balls and slpit peas |
I've been eating a lot of rice lately. For that matter, I've been eating a lot of beans lately too. Why? Sadly, I can't say it's due to some all-encompassing love for beans and rice (although I do love both), but rather the economic realities of having little financial reserves on the incoming side of the scale with large financial expenses on the outgoing side of the scale. A scale which, truth be told, feels like it is hanging quite askew at the moment.
I tried to think of some grand image of the lady of justice falling over from the burden of corruption and the evils of $, but all I could ever really come up with was an image of Garfield chasing his tail around an empty room complaining about the lasagne--obviously not much help for my situation. But in trying to find an appropriate image to match that I did run across a completely random French video clip from some series entitled La Fonte des neiges which I am including because I think there should be more films about nudist communities to remind people we exist as part of the norm...
So instead I have resorted to writing more again, which always seems to be the most productive activity when I am feeling trapped and worked into a corner, which I think aptly describes my mental state right now. And I have begun the usual tasks of remedy and resuscitation:
-clean the laundry /check
-clean the room /still need to do!
-clean out my head /working on it
-look for jobs /doing it as we speak (ha, once again multitasking wins!)
[On a different note, what does it say about me that I had to double check the spelling of resuscitation in an entry about trying to jumpstart my life again...?]
School is seemingly going well, even if this week has proved unusually challenging for entirely different and unrealted reasons--another blog on that to come. I have some pretty interesting topics I am working on, and am slowly learning to navigate me way through the ethnographic minefield, or at least I hope I am.
Well, more to come, but more to do now, so until later, ciao.
cc
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Posted by horatio on Wednesday, March 11, 2009 (21:36:45) (24 reads)
comments? | | Help, I'm Lost! | Score: 0 |
| New School Students Renew Call for Pres. and VP To Resign |
Students gathered Tuesday morning outside of the Tishman Auditorium on 12th Ave of the New School to renew their call for the resignation of the President and Vice President of the University. Students rose up last December and occupied the Graduate Faculty building slated for closure by the university. The students released a statement this afternoon coinciding with the Emergency Faculty Senate Meeting being held in the auditorium. The statement renewed the call for the resignation of key leadership and listed a series of concerns and grievances which they were organizing around. More on the morning events will be posted as things develop.
Visit www.newschoolinexile.com for the statement and more details.
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Posted by horatio on Tuesday, February 10, 2009 (16:44:08) (41 reads)
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