Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow

The Frozen Hyperreal: At what time will it snow?

Disneyland is a perfect model of all the entangled orders of simulation. To begin with it is a play of illusions and phantasms: pirates, the frontier, future world, etc. This imaginary world is supposed to be what makes the operation successful. But, what draws the crowds is undoubtedly much more the social microcosm, the miniaturized and religious revelling in real America, in its delights and drawbacks. You park outside, queue up inside, and are totally abandoned at the exit. In this imaginary world the only phantasmagoria is in the inherent warmth and affection of the crowd, and in that aufficiently excessive number of gadgets used there to specifically maintain the multitudinous affect. The contrast with the absolute solitude of the parking lot - a veritable concentration camp - is total. Or rather: inside, a whole range of gadgets magnetize the crowd into direct flows; outside, solitude is directed onto a single gadget: the automobile. By an extraordinary coincidence (one that undoubtedly belongs to the peculiar enchantment of this universe), this deep-frozen infantile world happens to have been conceived and realized by a man who is himself now cryogenized; Walt Disney, who awaits his resurrection at minus 180 degrees centigrade.

-Jean Baudrillard in Simulacra and Simulations

Zombification and You

In 1985, Harvard University botanist Wade Davis traveled to Haiti in search of the poison powder called coupe poudre, allegedly used to cause the death-like trance state induced in the process of zombification. His sponsors believed that if such a drug existed it would have valuable pharmacological usage. He published the results of his findings in two books The Serpent and the Rainbow (1985), and Passage of Darkness: The Ethnobiology of the Haitian Zombie (1988). In essence, Davis claimed that yes, there are indeed "zombies," and that they are created, at least in part, by a poisonous powder. But, Davis maintains that the poison in and of itself is not enough to create a zombie, rather that "set and setting" must be taken into account. This is the distinction that defines the field of ethnobiology, the idea that physical, social and psychological settings inform biological interactions.


-Jakki Rowlett in The Ethnobiology and Ethics of the Haitian Zombie

Not For Human Sacrifice, Rather Against Humanity

Clearly, it is difficult for us to come to a true understanding of what human sacrifice meant to the sixteenth century Aztec: but it may be observed that every culture possesses its own idea of what is and what is not cruel. At the height of their career the Romans shed more blood in their circuses and for their amusement than ever the Aztecs did before their idols. The Spaniards, so sincerely moved by the cruelty of the native priests, nevertheless massacred, burnt, mutilated and tortured with a perfectly clear conscience. We, who shudder at the tale of the bloody rites of ancient Mexico, have seen with our own eyes and in our own days civilized nations proceed systematically to the extermination of millions of human beings and to the perfection of weapons capable of annihilating in one second a hundred times more victims than the Aztecs ever sacrificed.

-Jacques Soustelle in Daily Life of the Aztecs: On the Eve of the Spanish Conquest

For Bryan

Apparently in response to the woman's threat the she was going to stop helping her daughter if the daughter didn't stop responding to her abusive husband’s financial and emotional demands, Tonio, in an admonishing tone, gave the woman a piece of his mind, quoting an aphorism: "Una madre nunca echa los hijos para afuera, siempre los recoge" (A mother never kicks her children out, she always gathers them near her). Seeing that this woman was going on endlessly about her problems, he conveyed that he was going to resolve her problems by saying, "Yo se dónde está el monte" (lit., "I know where the rain forest is"; i.e., I am the brujo).

-Raquel Romberg in Witchcraft and Welfare

Backin' it up with Berger [x2]

According to usage and conventions which are at last being questioned but have by no means been overcome, the social presence of a woman is different in kind from that of a man. A man's presence is dependent upon the promise of power which he embodies. If the promise is large and credible his presence is striking. If it is small or incredible, he is found to have little presence. The promise power may be moral, physical, temperamental, economic, social, sexual - but its object is always exterior to the man. A man's presence suggests what he is capable of doing to you or for you. His presence may be fabricated, in the sense that he pretends to be capable of what he is not. But the pretence is always towards a power which he exercises on others. By contrast, a woman's presence expresses her own attitude to herself, and defines what can and cannot be done to her. Her presence is manifest in her gestures, voice, opinions, expressions, clothes, chosen surroundings, taste - indeed there is nothing she can do which does not contribute to her presence. Presence for a woman is so intrinsic to her person that men tend to think of it as an almost physical emanation, a kind of heat or smell or aura.

- John Berger in Ways of Seeing

"Bad" Girls

A book by fourth-grader Rosa hints at the tensions some girls may feel between operating within a discourse of love and romance and an alternative 'good girl/good student' discourse. Love and romance may represent a sanctioned cultural pathway for girls, but they receive conflicting messages about when and how they are to embark on it, such that in certain times and places for girls to operate within a discourse of love and romance is to position themselves as "bad." This may be especially true for Latinas, who are often stereotyped in good/bad binaries, and for girls within the context of schooling, where being “good” generally requires a denial of one’s sexuality. In the initial draft of her story, Rosa wrote about a girl who watched too many soap operas, talked about them incessantly in school, kissed a boy while under their influence, and performed miserably as a student until her teacher talked to her mother. At that point the girl stopped watching novelas and became a model student.

-Marjorie Faulstich Orellana, Good guys and "bad" girls: Identity construction by Latina and Latino student writers in Reinventing Identities: The Gendered Self in Discourse

A is for Affective

Affective epistemology is based on the idea that there is a way of knowing which transcends, specific perceptual frames. The idea is predicated on two primary elements:

1) Feelings and emotions (affective components) are relative to localized perceptual frames. They are not specific to perceptual frames. Individual affective components are specific-to-specific thought forms.

2) These components maybe categorized into two basic sub-classifications lateral and trans-lateral.

Affective components indicate the qualitative and quantitative efficacy or weighted meaning of a given perception, thought form, or way of being in the consciousness of human beings and sentient life.

There is a faith that, through affect and reason, an understanding of reality can be attained.

The Horrible Templet

Don't be confused, Orange is not my favorite color.
...this is the calm before the storm.

The Glory of Love

If you love something, set it free.
If it comes back, it will always be yours.
If it doesn't come back, hunt it down and destroy it.

Hat Tip (pt 2)

You are nothing compared to these guys.

Link

Hat Tip

This one goes out to all the ones that check this blog more often than I update it.

...this bud's for you!

The Next and Last Semester [Are Yall Ready?]

ART 21: Figure Drawing (3 units)
ART 160: Ceramics (intermediate) (3 units)
ART 120: Drawing (advanced) (3 units)
ART 113: Design (advanced) (3 units)
ART 140: Intermediate Painting (3 units)
ART 179: Development of Artistic Expression (3 units)

Daily Life of the Aztecs: On the Eve of the Spanish Conquest

Thus neither nature nor man are to be sent to an everlasting death. Resurrecting forces are at work: the sun comes up again each morning after passing the night 'under the holy plain' teotlalli iitic, that is to say, in Hades; Venus dies and is reborn; the maize dies and is reborn; the whole world of plants, struck dead in the dry season, arises more beautiful and younger each season of the rains, just as the moon dwindles in the sky and returns according to the rhythm of its phases.

-- Jacques Soustelle

Could be the Beginnings of a Term Paper

On the side, thanks Ken for reminding me to get back on track. Today I drove over to Dennis R. Falk's Dentist Office and got myself a crown. I listened to Mariah Carey on the way.