lapsedmodernist | (no subject)

btw I know I missed commemorating nanalala this year, but belatedly, I thought I would share with you this amazing op-ed that decorates our refrigerator

http://www.time.com/time/covers/1101010924/esroger.html

also I really need to download a client onto this laptop, because I cannot master the basic HTML involved in making a link. What can I say, my five-minutes-to-finished Higher Education taught me to slay different dragons.

Anyway, my favorite part is this:

History occurs twice, crack the wise guys quoting Marx: first as tragedy, then as farce. Who would believe such a thing except someone who has never experienced tragedy? Are you looking for something to take seriously? Begin with evil. The fact before our eyes is that a group of savage zealots took the sweet and various lives of those ordinarily traveling from place to place, ordinarily starting a day of work or — extraordinarily — coming to help and rescue others. Freedom? That real enough for you? Everything we cling to in our free and sauntering country was imperiled by the terrorists. Destruction was real; no hedging about that. Hans Christian Andersen wrote that famous fairy tale about The Most Incredible Thing, a beautiful, intricate clock that was smashed to bits by an ax, which act was then judged to be the most incredible thing. No fairy tales required this week. Where the Twin Towers were, there is now only empty air.

I esp. love the part about quoting Marx. I want to know who these wise guys are! I want to crack with them! I seriously need a posse that goes around quoting "The 18th Brumaire." We could do science experiments, like put Amoeba Fukuyama under a microscope and see whether the manner in which the cells subdivide classifies the End of History as a tragedy or a farce. We can do apocalyptic logic problems, like if Fukuyama saw the end of history, and Leonard Cohen saw the future, and it was murder, and if future implies history, does that mean that the end of history is not murder? does that mean that history, then, IS murder? hmm, that actually works out right.

Also I GREW UP on H.C.Anderson. I grew up reading his fairy tales that were never translated into English, like "Ole Lukoye" about the sandman-type-figure with a trippy umbrella he spins over the kids to make them have colorful dreams. I could recite the ending of "Wild Swans" by heart. I have been known to go on drunken diatribes about the ending of the Disneyfied "Little Mermaid" and how it is related to the juggernaut of "Left Behind" unbooks. But? I have no freaking clue which Anderson fairy tale he is referencing. HALP.