fucking hysterical. her book is just as funny as her stand-up act.

she's ok but not so great. i watched a couple of her tv specials and about halfway through the HBO special i got tired of it-- it's the same thing over & over: chinky, nigger, spick, i love you, i'm nice, chinky, spick, nigger, i love you, cripples, cripples, etc.

anyway i scored this at the bookstore yesterday:



sweet book.

What'd you think of Ham On Rye?

Ham On Rye is great.

It's a good, solid book. I wouldn't call it amazing or anything, but I think that's mainly because of I can't relate to 99% of his stories. I'd recommend it to people. 7.5/10

I'm reading "Stormbringer" by Michael Moorcock. I own a copy of the 1983 reprint. The cover leaves a lot to be desired.

yeah, but you forgot "fag" too. thats why i love her. shes an equal opportunity offender, and i love the offensive stand up.

anyways, about to start this:

Yet if anyone else uses the word "fag", loony lefties label them homophobes. Double standards have always been the norm for loony lefties.

not bad. well done

I love Bukowski. His letters are particularly good reading. The only novel I've started to read but put down was Pulp. It wasn't that it was bad... I just prefer his non-fictional work.


I'm reading Tropic of Cancer.... again.

I'm totally with you on this. It's ever since those Muslims got into power, I can't kick the shit out of a black cripple without the Politically Correct brigade tutting heavily.

Incidentally, while I'm here, in case anyone's wondering why I never post in this thread, it's because I don't tend to read whole books and mostly stick to academic things that are of marginal interest to... well, even myself I suppose. This week has seen me reading up on Bible slash fic, 'post-Madonna' feminism [gash], Valentinian Gnosticism [AMAZING] and 11th century mysticism. Just in case you were wondering.

It's a load of male feminists making 80s Madonna into feminist wank fantasy. If you get a chance, John Fiske's 'Madonna' is probably the single worst essay I've ever had the misfortune to read.

the zizek and the jackson came in the post recently, but i haven't started either of them yet, just glanced at a few of the articles in the jackson one - first impressions are that it lives up to the whole zero books ideal and is definitly high calibre music journalism.

and this one i've read 10 times online already, but needed a real life copy - they should hand this out on the street instead of bibles

Tell me about this last one. That looks like the sort of thing I might like.

Also, props for Zizek. One of the few philosophers who, regardless of what he's actually saying, always says something meaningful.

Yeah, saw Glenn Beck fear monger over The Coming Insurrection. I would hate that to be the extent of its impact in America but I figure it will be. Should pick up a copy, anyway.

As for Zizek, he's the most love/hate contemporary philosopher that I know of. Some guy on another message board I frequent said literally the exact opposite, that nothing he says is meaningful. Really, I know Zizek mostly from his Marxism 2009 debate and that's about it.

the coming insurrection -

it was called "a manual for terrorism" by the french government"
the supposed authors (they probably weren't but had some connection to them) were arressted in their commune somewhere in northern france. they were released ultimately, i think zizek and agamben had something to do with circulating a petition calling for their release.

when a translation of the book hit new york - people organised an unofficially reading in a barnes and noble. after a crowd gathered the manager tried to get them to fuck off - but they refused and started reading out passages until they were eventually kicked out, they continued down the street and had looted a perfume shop and screamed at the cops before it was all over.

but perhaps best of all, glenn "I AM LITERALLY FUCKING INSANE" beck read an advanced copy and dedicated a segment on his show about it. in which he warns that the ultra left is preparing to take up arms, and we should all be ready.

someone in the new statesman called in potentially the most important book of the century. nina power of the infinite thought blog wrote a review for frieze which i can't read because i'm not a subscriber, and perhaps most interestingly of all, it's really pissing off some of the anarchist community. they really seem threatened by it, perhaps because it threatens their cosy/ineffective activist structures and heirarchies? some of the online reactions to it have been idiotic and irrationally dismissive, calling it simply "poor" and lacking in ideas.

you can read it
http://tarnac9.wordpress.com/texts/t...-insurrection/

He has a few 'inconsistencies' that tend to gall analytic-leaning sorts; he's also a problematiser of postmodernism. He's also non-systematic (although he's almost drudgingly repetitious in his Lacan/ Hegel/ Marx 'trinitarianism' trope).

What Zizek does that very few do is to be a sort of platform, a lens for philosophy in popular culture; his writings on 9/11 or Big Brother (in, I think, 'welcome to the desert of the real') are compelling arguments written at times when resistance to cultural hegemony was sorely lacking from leftist academics. What he doesn't do is try and imbue popular positions with unnecessary gravitas.

He was also heavily involved with the NSK at one point, which also included everyone's favourite 'postmodern' industrialists, Laibach.

I can understand why someone would say he was 'meaningless', but I've very rarely encountered that sort of thinking that doesn't also dismiss postmodernism or poststructuralism out of hand (Zizek is neither). I don't know the guy you're talking about, but I tend to find that the sort of people who dismiss Zizek also dismiss Lacan, which is entirely foolhardy in my book. Did he structure his argument beyond 'it's meaningless'?

yeah i can see were this guy is coming from, the real substance is in his books - not always his talks which are often just very entertaining and inspiring.
the problem people have with zizek is that listening to him will make you feel riled up, like your part of something, like your ready for action - but while it seems like he is telling us exactly what it is we, the left, should do right now, he never does. that's not really the point. his worth lies in struggling to open up new theoretical spaces that are impossible to see clearly in our current situation, blinded as we are by the unconcioussly realized ideological presuppositions of reality.

i can understand someone saying that there is no substance to zizek, i just think the real substance lies in the work you have to do yourself while your contemplating him.

i'm going to make a zizek thread

Yeah, I think you have a good understanding of the guy. He mostly just stated that Zizek is meaningless and appealed to Zizek-followers to produce something 'meaningful' instead of, as he observed, leaving it at lauding the philosopher. Nobody bothered to entertain his request so nothing was developed any further though I'm sure he felt vindicated by the silence. All in all he was just another voice pontificating on the internet so I took it more as indicative of Zizek's presence than any legitimate contention. Honestly, the site where this takes place is utterly shit for philosophizing but it's a good source of links.

^ @glice but good point ni'k

I think you get precisely that problem with anyone who's heavily entrenched in Lacan. Relatedly, there's someone I know who was told by their lecturer to 'grow some balls' when reading Derrida. The points in each are diffuse and complex, and I think it's dangerous to reduce specifically these philosophers to bite-sized forum post-length. Which obviously leaves ample room for detractors to say there's no content.

I don't think it makes Lacan any more or less meaningful than Wittgenstein just because you can summarise Wittgenstein in a paragraph or so. Wittgenstein has one project, whereas Lacan (and post-Lacanians such as Zizek) deal with a more diffuse array of popular culture, psychoanalysis, film theory, leftist politics, the frissions of Maxism and so on. Personally, the fact that Zizek can write just as comfortably on CNN's rendition of 9/11 as he can Althusarrian ethics makes him a fascinating character; and while I'd never say that diversity was the most important capacity of a philosopher, it's certainly something that's largely absent in the 'mainstream' of philosophy.

Edit: Wittgenstein has, obviously, precisely 2 projects. But we all ignore the first one, amirite?

this just arrived today so everything else has to go on hold

Well I say I'm reading it. I certainly was up until I started uni about 8 weeks ago, and loving it. Was like half way through, and thinking it might be a candidate for the best novel ever written if it pulled off its promise. Then however uni hit, and I haven't read a word since due to a shitstorm of busy. Hopefully I'll pick up again and finish it over the holidays though...

Naked Lunch - thanks for the pointers. Very visual

cities of the red night is available on amazon.uk for 39p!

you should read that one next.

if your new to bhurroughs citites is the best starting point.

I got that the other day. I haven't started it yet but from the reviews it seems pretty good. I was a bit nervous ordering it off amazon though, incase it flagged me as some kind of combat trouser wearing terrorist.

Picking up on the discussion about Zizek, did anyone catch this interview on the BBC news the other night?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_cuMxR64t0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_ce8L_AiA8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2calhnMCMvw

Love him or loathe him, this really is solid tv gold

that's what they want you to think!

a surveillance state works both ways.
they don't have the time/energy/resources to successfully flag/monitor/track you but they want you to think that they do so you will monitor your behaviour accordingly. there is an author who has dealt with this but i can't remember his name.

the real control lies in your own imaginary hallucination of what control is.

BUT HEY, IN CASE YOU CIA//MI5/MOSSAD GUYS ARE ACTUALLY READING THIS THEN I, NI'K AM THE REAL TERRORIST MASTERMIND YOU HAVE BEEN LOOKING FOR ALL ALONG. THAT I WOULD ADMIT THIS ON A PUBLIC FORUM ONLY PROVES THAT I AM WEAVING A COMPLEX WEB OF DOUBLE BLUFFS, FALSE APPEARANCES, DIVERSIONS AND DISTRACTIONS. WHEN THE TIME IS NIGH AND OPERATION ******* COMES TO PASS, YOUR DEMISE WILL BE IMMINENT.

there was also a hardtalk interview with badiou. this kind of stuff is exactly what my license fee that i don't pay should go towards. well, not really since all the fancy graphics/music/studio stuff is a waste of cash. but the actual interview was good, in that zizek came across very well and sackur's questions highlighted the conservatism of blind faith in liberal paraliamentarianism. his resistance was useful to see because it highlighted, to me at least, how entrenched emotionally we are in certain values, and how we instantly equate anything outside of them as immoral totalitarian facism.

as i've been posting i've been listening to this, which is his latest available online talk i think.
http://backdoorbroadcasting.net/2009...alyptic-times/

the hardtalk interview and the talk i just linked to aren't the best introduction to zizek.
get on amazon and buy some of his books, they are pretty cheap right now.

and go to http://www.youtube.com/user/TheMariborchan this channel and pick one you like the sound of

That's a really good interview with Zizek - I think he did well to articulate relatively complex points in a format that's not ideally suited to it. Interesting that Sackur came across as an agent provocateur of middle-class ideology (and unsurprising given he's from the Beeb) in the face of a general 'pessimism' towards political ideology.

it's a horrendous format. it's ludditte and sackur/the bbc knows it. there is no need for a time limit and the usual "i'm afraid that's all we have time for" in the age of the internet. at least you'd think the bbc could let it go on for as long as it needs to, broadcast the edited version and put the full version online. but who gives a shit about the bbc and their so called "expertise" which usually involves being a coked up/drunken celeb egotist and towing the state line until the anxiety and self hatred of your own image drives you further down the road of coked up/drunken celeb mediocrity. a gross generalisation maybe, but one born of the jealous exasperation of being internetless/poor and trying to gain some insight from the tv, all the while wishing it would shut up and let you talk for once.

i've made this point before - the internet needs to move beyond the web2.0 stage of being a digital reproduction or alternate version of allready existing pre digital media. the interativity and democracy if technology that the bbc and their ilk love to promote needs to be taken away from their poisoned grasp.

yet when you do this you end up in a position like simon reynolds describes in a resonance fm interview; being wary of not putting too much content on his blog and instead saving it for a new book. i don't criticise reynolds for this, as he said himself he has a son to feed. i think many of us are in this same position. now that our lives have become so commodified there is a potential intellectual commodity in our own minds that might translate into cash/survival in the future. so how much do we "give away" and how much do we "hold back"? are we comprised by our very status as potentially commodified subjects? the coming insurrection would seem to get around this impasse, but isn't even the potential revolutionary scenario that it describes merely commodified by the very act of its transcription? can what zizek/the invisible committee say lead to an affective anti-capitalism? if it can then this would mean that it is an intellectual commodity that will bring down capitalism, which by its nature seems impossible. or have i just gone way off track with this line of thought?

demonrail - here is the blogsite for maribochan with even more stuff http://mariborchan.com/

Yeah, although I actually find those kinds of interviews quite interesting to watch. PBradley mentioned the MarxismToday2009 one which is great but the clearly sympathetic crowd meant that Zizek really didn't have to think for the whole 45 minutes or so. Sackur's questions are banal but they do at least force Zizek into an unusual position (for him at least) of having to justify certain claims that his usual audience would just take for granted.

High Society by Ben Elton

I just finished watching that one. I didn't know that much about him prior to the interview, just a name I kept hearing mentioned. He seems less impressive than Zizek, although that might be because I found his whole anti-globalisation thing far less interesting than Zizek's more broader project. Either way, for all its faults that Hardtalk series really is great. I just wish the BBC would have the nerve to give it a regular evening slot on say BBC4. It always annoys me that in its effort to justify the licence fee the BBC commisions the kinds of programmes that could be found on any commercial channel while stuff like Hardtalk is relegated to the graveyard shift.

Have you started that Capitalist Realist book yet? It keeps coming up as a recommendation on Amazon and I've been thinking of getting it.

that isn't one of badiou's best interviews. i've only read "the meaning of sarkozy", which you should get off amazon aswell as capitalist realism.

i read half of capitalist realism yesterday morning - a lot of the content has already appeared on the k-punk blog so if you've read that you will be familiar with it. i would recommend buying it, since you'll get it off amazon for about a 5iver and it's worth reading. i can't really comment too much because i haven't finished it yet. the parts about education in the uk are FANTASTIC, particularily for me since i've been through it.

Cool. I'll definitely pick it up now. I'd been thinking about Badiou's book on Sarkozy too, actually. Although that has less to do with any interest I have in Badiou than it does a general curious fascination that I have with Sarkozy himself. Have you read Bernard Henri-Levi's 'Left in Dark Times'? That has a really interesting take on Sarkozy while at the same time offering a very good analysis of the decline of the Left that's quite similar at times to the ongoing one offered by Zizek.

ah, i haven't read levi but i have watched this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_HxNImFZTgw debate with zizek. you'll find levi mentioned indirectly in "the meaning of sarkozy" when you read it.

I just watched the Zizek-Levi debate. Absolutely fascinating, especially when it turned to the Palestine-Israel issue - which, I have to say, I thought Levi won quite emphatically. Saying that, when the question asking them both about why they still believed in the Left, I was far more in agreement with Zizek. A brilliant debate. Thanks so much for linking it!

You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to ni'k again.