For Edi-mus, bibi-mus, vivi-mus -- ore-mus

The weather is condusive to me being prolific. That's because baby, it's cold outside, and it's cold inside as well. I spent three hours shooting down by Ground Zero yesterday, interviewing a most helpful street vendor named Heaven; he was a pleasure to work with except for when he kept compaining that the tourists were always trying to "jew [him]." I guess I'll have to edit around that one. Anyway, my long black coat had to stay home I just can't shoot in it, not with all the wires, it's a "bad idea" as per my 2003 New Year's Resolution, and despite the fact that I wore 6 layers (constintina's thermal underwear, my Texas T-shirt, a wool sweater, a turtleneck, a hoodie and a ski vest) I was colder than I had been since I was, like, 10, and it was -45 C degrees (that's -49 Farenheir), the coldest winter in Soviet Russia in over a century, and I was stuck in the middle of the woods in a cabin that served as a Young Pioneer camp during the summed (which explained why every square inch of the pillows and the mattresses was covered by Russian equivalents of "fuck," "cunt" and "tits") on a bizarre winter vacation with my mom and her coworkers and her coworkers' children and it was so cold that all the pipes froze and exploded and we had to ski into the woods to get firewood to build a fire, and then we had to be evacuated, and I got frostbite on my toes . Today I am reluctant to uncurl and my down comforter is my best friend pro tempo, since my actual best friend totalvirility is at some lame film festival called Dance of the Sun or something lame and hippie like that somewhere in Mormon territory. I was going to write a news update, but it's too cold and depressing, so I'll just pass along the info that Rumsfield the Skeletor is warmongering some more ( as you can tell from this )

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Um, also the state of Arizona is preparing to secede from the United States in case the Constitution is suspended. Worldnetdaily.com had a whole editorial about it up, for a whole day; then it went bye-bye from their website, but I'm going to repost it for you( right here. )

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Anyway, I just talked on the phone to my dad, and he was in a delighted mood because he had just discovered the work on a poet named Christopher Smart in his collection of English Absurdist Poetry. Christopher Smart was an 18th-century fella, and apparently came to his absurdism by way of insanity, whatever the construct of insanity happenned to be in his day. Dad said his insanity primarily consisted of praying all the time, at inappropriate places and times, like dropping to his knees in the middle of the street. I said that I see people in the subway who do that every day, and no one is locking them up. But Smart apparently was also fond of coming over to his friends' houses in the middle of the night to pray. Loudly. Anyway, so he got locked up. Before that he was an average poet, but during the three years in the asylum he wrote some brilliant shit, all about the Bible and God and his cat Jeffrey, whom he also, apparently deified. So here is an excerpt from his Jubilate Agno:


For I will consider my Cat Jeoffry.
For he is the servant of the Living God duly and daily serving him.
For at the first glance of the glory of God in the East he worships in his way.
For this is done by wreathing his body seven times round with elegant quickness.
For then he leaps up to catch the musk, which is the blessing of God upon his prayer.
For he rolls upon prank to work it in.
For having done duty and received blessing he begins to consider himself.
For this he performs in ten degrees.
For first he looks upon his forepaws to see if they are clean.
For secondly he kicks up behind to clear away there.
For thirdly he works it upon stretch with the forepaws extended.
For fourthly he sharpens his paws by wood.
For fifthly he washes himself.
For sixthly he rolls upon wash.
For seventhly he fleas himself, that he may not be interrupted upon the beat.
For eighthly he rubs himself against a post.
For ninthly he looks up for his instructions.
For tenthly he goes in quest of food.
For having consider'd God and himself he will consider his neighbour.
For if he meets another cat he will kiss her in kindness.
For when he takes his prey he plays with it to give it a chance.
For one mouse in seven escapes by his dallying.
For when his day's work is done his business more properly begins.
For he keeps the Lord's watch in the night against the adversary.
For he counteracts the powers of darkness by his electrical skin and glaring eyes.
For he counteracts the Devil, who is death, by brisking about the life.
For in his morning orisons he loves the sun and the sun loves him.
For he is of the tribe of Tiger.
For the Cherub Cat is a term of the Angel Tiger.
For he has the subtlety and hissing of a serpent, which in goodness he suppresses.
For he will not do destruction, if he is well-fed, neither will he spit without provocation.
For he purrs in thankfulness, when God tells him he's a good Cat.
For he is an instrument for the children to learn benevolence upon.
For every house is incomplete without him and a blessing is lacking in the spirit.
For the Lord commanded Moses concerning the cats at the departure of the Children of Israel from Egypt.
For every family had one cat at least in the bag.
For the English Cats are the best in Europe.
For he is the cleanest in the use of his forepaws of any quadruped.
For the dexterity of his defence is an instance of the love of God to him exceedingly.
For he is the quickest to his mark of any creature.
For he is tenacious of his point.
For he is a mixture of gravity and waggery.
For he knows that God is his Saviour.
For there is nothing sweeter than his peace when at rest.
For there is nothing brisker than his life when in motion.
For he is of the Lord's poor and so indeed is he called by benevolence perpetually--Poor Jeoffry! poor Jeoffry! the rat has bit thy throat.
For I bless the name of the Lord Jesus that Jeoffry is better.
For the divine spirit comes about his body to sustain it in complete cat.
For his tongue is exceeding pure so that it has in purity what it wants in music.
For he is docile and can learn certain things.
For he can set up with gravity which is patience upon approbation.
For he can fetch and carry, which is patience in employment.
For he can jump over a stick which is patience upon proof positive.
For he can spraggle upon waggle at the word of command.
For he can jump from an eminence into his master's bosom.
For he can catch the cork and toss it again.
For he is hated by the hypocrite and miser.
For the former is afraid of detection.
For the latter refuses the charge.
For he camels his back to bear the first notion of business.
For he is good to think on, if a man would express himself neatly.
For he made a great figure in Egypt for his signal services.
For he killed the Ichneumon-rat very pernicious by land.
For his ears are so acute that they sting again.
For from this proceeds the passing quickness of his attention.
For by stroking of him I have found out electricity.
For I perceived God's light about him both wax and fire.
For the Electrical fire is the spiritual substance, which God sends from heaven to sustain the bodies both of man and beast.
For God has blessed him in the variety of his movements.
For, tho he cannot fly, he is an excellent clamberer.
For his motions upon the face of the earth are more than any other quadruped.
For he can tread to all the measures upon the music.
For he can swim for life.
For he can creep.

( More about the cat )

awesome. Good night.

news addendum: GAH!

we're so totally not going to have elections



Cheney's grim vision: decades of war

Vice president says Bush policy aimed at long-term world threat

Los Angeles -- In a forceful preview of the Bush administration's expansionist military policies in this election year, Vice President Dick Cheney Wednesday painted a grim picture of what he said was the growing threat of a catastrophic terrorist attack in the United States and warned that the battle, like the Cold War, could last generations.

The vice president's tone, in a major address to the Los Angeles World Affairs Council, was sobering, unlike many other comments recently by senior administration officials that have stressed successes in the war on terrorism.

Cheney mentioned only in passing the administration's domestic policies, while saying President Bush would present a blueprint of his domestic goals in next Tuesday's State of the Union speech.

Cheney devoted the half-hour speech to a frightening characterization of the war on terrorism and the new kind of mobilization he said it demanded. He sounded the alarm about the increasing prospects of a major new terrorist attack and the extraordinary responses that are required. While many of his remarks echoed past comments by the president and senior officials, Cheney struck a surprisingly dour note and suggested only an administration of proven ability could manage the dramatic overhaul necessary for the nation's security apparatus.

more here

"No to Bio-Political Tattooing" by Giorgio Agamben

Or "Why Agamben won't be teaching at NYU this Spring"
*************
  Le Monde
  Saturday 10 January 2004
  The newspapers leave no doubt: from now on whoever wants to go to
the United States with a visa will be put on file and will have to
leave their fingerprints when they enter the country. Personally, I
have no intention of submitting myself to such procedures and that's
why I didn't wait to cancel the course I was supposed to teach at New
York University in March.
  I would like to explain the reasons for this refusal here, that is,
why, in spite of the sympathy that has connected me to my American
colleagues and their students for many years, I consider that this
decision is at once necessary and without appeal and would hope that
it will be shared by other European intellectuals and teachers.
  It's not only the immediate superficial reaction to a procedure
that has long been imposed on criminals and political defendants. If
it were only that, we would certainly be morally able to share, in
solidarity, the humiliating conditions to which so many human beings
are subjected.
  The essential does not lie there. The problem exceeds the limits of
personal sensitivity and simply concerns the juridical-political
status (it would be simpler, perhaps, to say bio-political) of
citizens of the so-called democratic states where we live.
  There has been an attempt the last few years to convince us to
accept as the humane and normal dimensions of our existence,
practices of control that had always been properly considered
inhumane and exceptional.
  Thus, no one is unaware that the control exercised by the state
through the usage of electronic devices, such as credit cards or cell
phones, has reached previously unimaginable levels.
  All the same, it wouldn't be possible to cross certain thresholds
in the control and manipulation of bodies without entering a new
bio-political era, without going one step further in what Michel
Foucault called the progressive animalization of man which is
established through the most sophisticated techniques.
  Electronic filing of finger and retina prints, subcutaneous
tattooing, as well as other practices of the same type, are elements
that contribute towards defining this threshold. The security reasons
that are invoked to justify these measures should not impress us:
they have nothing to do with it. History teaches us how practices
first reserved for foreigners find themselves applied later to the
rest of the citizenry.
  What is at stake here is nothing less than the new "normal"
bio-political relationship between citizens and the state. This
relation no longer has anything to do with free and active
participation in the public sphere, but concerns the enrolment and
the filing away of the most private and incommunicable aspect of
subjectivity: I mean the body's biological life.
  These technological devices that register and identify naked life
correspond to the media devices that control and manipulate public
speech: between these two extremes of a body without words and words
without a body, the space we once upon a time called politics is ever
more scaled-down and tiny.
  Thus, by applying these techniques and these devices invented for
the dangerous classes to a citizen, or rather to a human being as
such, states, which should constitute the precise space of political
life, have made the person the ideal suspect, to the point that it's
humanity itself that has become the dangerous class.
  Some years ago, I had written that the West's political paradigm
was no longer the city state, but the concentration camp, and that we
had passed from Athens to Auschwitz. It was obviously a philosophical
thesis, and not historic recital, because one could not confuse
phenomena that it is proper, on the contrary, to distinguish.
  I would have liked to suggest that tattooing at Auschwitz
undoubtedly seemed the most normal and economic way to regulate the
enrolment and registration of deported persons into concentration
camps. The bio-political tattooing the United States imposes now to
enter its territory could well be the precursor to what we will be
asked to accept later as the normal identity registration of a good
citizen in the state's gears and mechanisms. That's why we must
oppose it.
  -------
  Translated from Italian to French by Martin Rueff.
  Giorgio Agamben is a philosopher and professor at the University of
Venice and New York University.
  Translation: Truthout French language correspondent Leslie Thatcher.
  -------


I really looked forward to having Agamben at NYU.

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