DID YOU GUYS KNOW MAX HAS A BLOG?

...and it's really clever too!


Here's the link to it: http://cigarettesandcapitalism.wordpress.com


:)

"words are losing their meaning"

http://ww2.kqed.org/pop/2014/09/03/betty-white-is-not-dead-the-internet-is-awful-hoax/

A very interesting article. The general idea seems to me to be that the internet enables "satire", which in these cases is just thinly veiled lying – making things up for "laughs", which is in turn just a thinly veiled way to be very nasty and get away with it. Excerpt:

There are a few things at play here. First, words are losing their meaning, cheapened by the blather found in places like YouTube comment sections and aided by anonymity. Second, bullying has traveled from the middle school hallways of our pasts into our daily digital lives, becoming the unofficial language of the internet. And third, we no longer acknowledge the humanness of celebrities; they are larger-than-life and fair game for a death hoax. Instead of consoling the daughter of a famous comedian, we bully her on the day of his death. Instead of disagreeing with a comedian’s style of humor and moving on to something more agreeable, we wish her dead. It’s as if we’ve traded our sensitivity chips for all of the ones in our gadgets.

The Grifters

In the competitive market of rationales, explanations, and motives (which we call life) , what is calculably better for me is what wins. What is better for me, is a question of life-preserving qualities. What can be calculated, if at all, is pleasure and pain.

--
There is always an apparent reason that not only masks – that would be far too simple – but supersedes and overwhelms (into near oblivion) the instinctual , the impulsive, the human. This 2^nd-order dominant reasoning that - like decrepit broken down stone homes in a newly industrialized city – is testament to another, dare we say, archaic vision of humanity, consumes for the sake of a logic not wholly complete in view of what it seeks and which,  because it is incomplete, is torn and thrust forth always in an incessant direction towards an endlessly enlarging appetite. Perhaps now it will be satisfied! This simple fact it does not come face to face with, for it would mean oblivion of itself. All the while, of course, the 1^st-order instinctual lingers awhile and as yet unrecognized, recedes and withdraws and sometimes we notice it implode.

--
The novel begins with Roy wrenching in pain. Thompson tells us " a hard blow in the guts can do that to a man, and Dillon had gotten a hard one".  What kind of man receives such blows as this? What kind of a man is Dillon? Certainly one who seems to be normal, he possesses all the characteristics of a man in debt to society which is how we measure normalcy. Credit cards in stow, a police office ( discipliner of delinquents - those who leave society) is satisfied. Is it difficult to satisfy a police officer when you are a professional con-artist?

To be specific, Roy is a grifter. Thompson has entitled his novel, The Grifters. What then is a grifter? Thompson is kind enough to provide us clues. Let us return to Roy. After assuring the police officer that he is a typical white, credit-card owning man in the 1960s Los Angeles, Roy returns to his predicament.  "He was in a suburb of Los Angeles, one of the many which resist incorporation despite their interdependence and the lack of visible boundaries". The last part of that sentence gives us a clue to the state of affairs within the novel. Roy is in a space which occupies a paradoxical position in relation to the world around it. Like the suburb, Roy seems to lack visible boundaries with the normal civil society around him and yet he resists incorporation, despite a sort of reasonable call for him to do otherwise. Roy manages this desire and his simultaneous aversion from it in a strangely precarious way. Let us, however, take a step back. Roy "needed to be in better shape than he was". Having just escaped an event that seems to have caused much unease, Roy is in a transformative moment in his life. He tries hard to remember and reconstruct the events in his mind.

In what does a good con or grift consist? Certainly not what happened at the "confectionary" or "fountain" we would hope. What did happen? Its not entirely clear, not to us and not to Roy. On the surface, superficially, we can say that Roy tried to steal money using the first grift he ever learned and one which he is admittedly not very good at and he was caught and beaten as a result. Viewed with a bit more reflection, and following Thompson's narrative clues, we find that this image of Roy's memory, recounted in the narrative, is a little more complicated. The setting is a confectionary, for which there are various names, all of which reflect the shifting development of divergent histories, of West and East and America. A bat on the wall. Roy goes through with the "twenties" which he has done for the "tenth time" that day. "Some marks fall for the twenties repeatedly, without ever tipping". The clerk at the counter, however, has fallen one time too many. Apparently recognizing that he has been cheated, he assails his bat upon Roy. The clerk's language dances, moving from of justice, retribution and reputation to shame, blame, and accountability. From "dirty crook", "cheatin" , "cusses me out" to "askin for it", "you know what you did"  and finally to "it w-was j-just a mistake mister. Y-you made a m-mistake an' I m-made a m-m-mistake" and most interestingly "d-don't look at me like that" (7).  The clerk cannot bear to be seen in the administering of retributive force. It is terribly uncomfortable, inconvenient, and puzzling to come face to face with the effects of violence. Much easier to resort to m-mistakes, m-mis-understandings, and to turn away. The clerk cannot face the gaze not because Roy is in exceptional pain, but because to face Roy would be to face another human being - naked and without any euphemism possible about who he is, and who Roy is and what it is that has driven them to their current condition - blood, ulcers, internal bleeding, shame and everything in between. The clerk ends with an abstraction (it was a mistake). Roy is indeed dying, but he is not the only one. 

The "twenties" grift

A couple years back, while I was still working at McDonalds (I'm a bit ashamed to admit it), a customer walked in and ordered a few things from the dollar menu. I informed him of the total, and he proceeded to pull out a hundred-dollar bill. I counted out the change, all the while they fumbled around in their pockets. I handed himthe change, upon which he "found" a couple bucks and two dimes in their pocket, asking for his Benjamin Franklin back. I looked at the fellow askance, placed the two-twenty in the drawer, and asked him for the change I had already given hiem. With some mumbled excuses, he gave it back, and I handed him his hundred in exchange - not without a few protests on his part about wanting "the rest of the money".  I could have very easily been a victim of the same grift, but my presence of mind saved the fast-food giant a few bucks - and probably saved my job in the process.

"Nietzsche's Angel Food Cake"

http://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/nietzsches-angel-food-cake

I used to work for this publishing company, and this is a short article from their daily humor website "Internet Tendency." Not so much to do but lying, but I thought you all might enjoy the attempt at Nietzsche humor.

A couple stories - enjoy!

I found these stories in a notebook I had been writing this and that down in – a sort of "diary of ideas" – and they're quite relevant to the course, I would think.

The first:
He said, he wanted me to tell him a story. I asked, what sort of story it should be, and he answered: "it shouldn't fit with reality, because words always deceive. As soon as an experience is transformed into words, it is no longer the truth. It might be something similar to it, but it is never interchangeable with it." I found that at first to be extremely strange, but after some pondering it cleared up and I do believe he was right. Life doesn't need to be a story.

The second:
She wanted to never lie and attempted to always say the truth, but more often as she wanted, she couldn't keep to her promises. In the beginning she didn't notice this, but as time went on she noticed that, despite her best intentions, she still lied, and this was a bit unnerving to her. The more she noticed that her words didn't do as she meant, she became all the more tense about this failing of words. To her, it seemed to become harder to speak, and when she finally uttered something, it tormented her to the highest degree. One noticed that she began to speak more infrequently. One day, she made the rash decision never to speak again, since her words were impostors and she didn't trust them any more. One couldn't speak a lie, if one simply never spoke. After a long while, her tongue no longer moved, and she forgot the language of her fathers. Her mind died, her memory extinguished, and her being disappeared.

The third:
Stories are like images in a mirror. They can be believable, but the most believable mirror image ist still something false, an illusion. Faces, which one makes in front of the mirror, are never found during a regular day, though they can seem soulful or true-to-life. One cann only hope to guess what the reality is.

The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (Iron Maiden)

Sweet song. Came out a number of years before the Hogue stuff even happened, let alone had a book written about them, but has some interesting lines. Lyrics below (I have added red to parts that seem significant to me to our course and to the Hogue story):

Tough of the track
With the wind
And the rain that's beating down on your back
Your heart's beating loud
And goes on getting louder
And goes on even more till the sound
Is ringing in your head
With every step you tread
And every breath you take
Determination makes
You run, never stop
Gotta win, gotta run till you drop
Keep the pace, hold the race
The mind is getting clearer
You're over halfway there but the miles
They never seem to end
As if you're in a dream
Not getting anywhere
It seems so futile

Run, on and on
Run, on and on
The loneliness of the long distance runner

I've got to keep running the course
I've got to keep running and win at all costs
I've got to keep going, be strong
Must be so determined and push myself on

Run over stiles, across fields
Turn to look at who's on your heels
Way ahead of the field
The line is getting nearer
But do you want the glory that goes?
You reach the final stretch
Ideals are just a trace
You feel like throwing the race
It's all so futile

Run, on and on
Run, on and on
The loneliness of the long distance runner

Run, on and on
Run, on and on
The loneliness of the long distance runner