Nards

I always forget how fucking awesome the word nards is. I mean, seriously, this word has some incredible qualities, but for some reason is almost totally forgotten on a regular basis. I had a stomach ache for like 5 minutes this morning and in describing it to myself I thought "it feels sort of like I got kicked in the nards" and then I thought to myself "damn, I haven't said the word nards in way too long." Try it out a couple times. Say "I got kicked in the nards" or "Suck my nards" or even the classic pun "Save big money on My-nards." There is something about the possessive form of nards which kicks something more in. While I could go on further with words that I like which are not in the everyday paralance of our times, but I don't really feel the need at the moment.

I should really get back to an argument which I started last week before the trip to Chi-town. To continue...

We had discussed how many non-white people in the activity rarely display what I referred to as "urban characteristics," I guess I will continue with those terms since I haven't been corrected. I certainly won't go as far as to question anyone's racial authenticity, if we want to believe in such a concept, you don't have to act or dress or whatev to be an individual of whatever race you identify as, but there is no question that music, dress, speech, etc are all markers of very different symbolic positionings. Anyway, we have so few of these individuals who display what have been called "radically racial characteristics" that there are very few times that we are actively forced to recognize the facts of exclusion.

Now I will try to lay out the analogy which I have yet to figure out how to state in a fashion which is in no way offensive, but I am not sure how. For the purposes of the argumemt lets take the assumptions of Louisville's argument (that non-white people are excluded from the activity for reasons besides simply accidents, that the community makes active decisions which facillitate this exclusion, and at the very least there is unconscious and structural racism) to be true. As a pre-empt, I understand the potentially dangerous things that can result from a comparison of non-white people to children, I would never intend or support those connotations, but since we are taking Louisville's statmentents for truth we have to imagine that the people most in question or the structural components of the activity do assume that they hvave some smaller capacity for participating. Now that said: Imagine that two really little kids, like 6 month olds, sit down and start painting. 10 minutes later you look at their work and Kid A (Radiohead not intended) has a nice jumble of colors that they have sort of slopped on the paper. It may be really cool for a child and maybe it even reflects to you something of the child's perspective on color and the world and what they deisre to create. Thats cool, its valuable, there is no question. Now, you look at Kid B and they have done an exact replica of dogs playing poker, I mean an exact fucking replica. Which one is more shocking to you, which one makes you go "Holy what the fucking fuck."

There are some important elements to this analogy that deserve note. Kid B's painting isn't a technical masterpiece, I choose to avoid the Mona Lisa for a reason. Its not that they are necessairly saying something more advanaced or more developed or cultured or whatever, but just something that you never would have thought the child capable of producing. The basic point is that when someone occupies a category of difference from you it is not subversive for them to do something different from you. The child painting like a child, no matter how incredible of a children's painting, is just that. It isn't a shock to anything when difference produces difference. The second forces you to recognize that whatever it is you conceive yourself as participating in is not your exclusive province. Differnce does not imply any inability to produce the same, just a difference in term of initial identity. Why is it that people have such a problem imagining that Baghdad, before Gulf War I and the sanctions was one of the premiere cities of the world. The contemporary perception that it is essentially a large camel ridden shack village runs pretty strongly contrary to the National Geographic articles run in the 80s which described it as the city of the future, the first Paris or London or New York of the Middle East. On the West Wing there is an episode from season 4 called "Red Haven's on Fire" which deals with maybe four American soldiers ambushed and taken hostage in Kumar. Their families come to the White House, fairly standard procedure I would guess. One woman, someone's mother, is more than a little smarmy and snippy towards both Leo and the president. At one point Leo tells the families that they got a picture of Kumari TV and the woman says, in a voice which is an odd combination of snottiness and genuine surprise, "Oh, they have TV." I mention this line in relation to the Baghdad example because one of the big controversies of the Kumar conflict, which is obviously related both to Somalia and Rwanda, is the American public's resistance to sending their boys (and girls) to die in some wasteland they have never even heard of.

Now, there is some resistance to these ideas obviously. If for no other reason then the postmodern logic of difference, as many have called it, has become pervasive. That argument tends to indicate that just because something is different that it is automatically a form of resistance, any novel which experiments with form or vocabulary, any film which breaks the conventions of traditional Hollywood cinema, that it is a challenge to the ideologies which back those up. There are more than a few people who don't want to accept the same as oppositional. You don't have to know alot about postmodernism or, as Frederic Jameson put it, the cultural logic of late capitalism, to know that the basic ideology of capitalism is the production of difference, of niche markets. Produce as many different things as possible, make sure there is something for everyone. Slavoj Zizek talked about this when he was here last spring in relation to Deleuze and Guitarri. Their whole thing, especially in the Anti-Oedipus books, about the rhizome and the production of multiplicitites, multiple identities and paths, lines of flight as they say it, fundamentally is the exact same structure that they are attacking. In a world where difference is already the order of the day, where capitalism is the ruling ideology in the first place, producing more difference is nothing it can't handle.

Anyway, I have a number of arguments I am still trying to work out in relation to all this. Some things which are at best tangentially related, especially involving a narrative trend which has sort of struck me recently, epitomized by the film Frailty. I think I may have discussed this somewhat earlier, I will check before I issue my full arg, but yeah.

Besides these issues I have been thinking about these two dogs that I saw at the grocery store this afternoon. They were outside with their owner and it was a little chilly and they were two little wimpy dogs, one I am certain was a weiner dawg and the other appeared to be (I am fairly certain of this ) a papillon. They are cute little dogs, members of the toy group which look quite a bit like black and tan chihauhas with big poofy ears. Anyway, the papillon appeared to be pretty chilly and was attempting to warm up under its friend the dachshund (literally badger-dog, which I think is pretty cool), so the dachsund would be standing in one place and the little papillon would come scurrying up and ram itself into the front of the weiner dog. As you might know, dachshunds are fairly low to the ground, so the attempt to sneak under it wasn't really working so well. Basically it was just ramming the other puppy and then trying to cuddle up to it. A very cute little display.

I am really in the mood for waffles. I have been for a while, its sort of like the chocolate martini thing. We don't have a waffle maker, or I would remedy this situation. What I would really like is a good plate of waffles and a couple chocolate martinis. Too bad most Waffle Houses don't have bars, so that is not going to happen anytime soon. I mean, when you think about it, its no odder than chicken and waffles. I fucking love chicken and waffles by the way, far too many people diss on that shit without experiencing how wonderfully they work together. Its not like you are eating waffles with chicken strips on top of them or anything, but still, you get the drift. There aren't alot of places anywhere I have lived which really serve chicken and waffles, I have only had the pleasure in St. Louis and Charlotte. I am thinking that I really want to open up a high quality restaurant that serves oft-neglected delicacies. We've already had the hot dog discussion, you can't get better ingredients than Vienna Beef, but maybe some experimentation with the perfect waffle and frying chicken, the right syrup consistency, etc. could turn it around. At one point I had dreams of doing something like this in another country, but I guess it would take on more of an "American restaurant" flavor, though it by no means has to. I have never really eaten true Belgian waffles, at least according to Diane (a Belgian woman I coached at Roseville a couple years ago), but I think they would work for this dish. Belgian waffles are much thicker than belgian waffles in this country. Its essentially batter filled with sugar, so that you've got the outer crust of waffle, then some very doughy batter and molten sugar on the inside. Diane has spent alot of time in Brussels and I guaruntee that I will get there at some point because of her descriptions. Vendors on all the corners serving french fries and waffles wrapped in newspaper cones. Damn Gina damn.

Alright, thats enough.

Peace,

MB-K