the Common Place

I’m a sucker for them.

electrical apocalypse by melissamaples

H5N1 relapse by wishy

Streetcleaner, Čečovje, Ravne na Koroškem (Slovenija) by r.marin

more: Textures and Layers Group on Flickr

one of my own recent efforts can be seen here.

Ludo pastes his visions of nature mutating in self-defense on the walls and doorways of Paris:

via PSFK

Conversation on the way to the first day of Celtic Music Camp up in the redwoods:

“I wonder if the other kids have names for their instruments.”

“I wonder too. What’s your harp named again?”

“Jasper Moon.”

“Oh yeah, I forgot it’s a boy.”

“Yes, but he’s gay. “

One of the biggest events in her social circle last spring was the wedding of a violin and a cello. Whatever is going on, at least it doesn’t involve Miley Cyrus, and that’s got to be good, no?

By now, I suppose everyone* has seen and formed an opinion about Barry Blitt’s illustration for the July 21 New Yorker cover:

No one really disputes that it is only a slightly exaggerated depiction of the way some Americans view the Obamas. But people who think it is a Bad Thing are worried that it reinforces and perpetuates the outrageous claims it attempts to satirize.

Chris at the Underverse reviews a particular tin-eared critique of the cover by Dr. Mahzarin Banaji, a Harvard psych professor:

… it’s not hard to detect a note of fear-mongering (no doubt unconscious) in Banaji’s words, which conjure themes of infiltration, hidden intrigue, contamination, and subterfuge, bracingly reminiscent of just about every fear campaign ever run. Her implicit argument, then, is that human nature demands that we purify our information stream to keep out harmful imagery, which, once loosened, can never be eradicated. This, I confess, suggests a branch of psychology that is unknown to me. At one point she goes as far as to state that any imagery we are exposed to, under any conditions, is fairly compared to Pavlovian conditioning:

Learning by association is so basic a mechanism that living beings are jam-packed with it — ask any dog the next time you see it salivating to a tone of a bell.

If only we had a cultural weapon against this mechanism, something that could subvert the meanings of these associations by calling close and precise attention to them. But such is not our fortune, alas.

I commented glibly that my reaction to the cartoon was “Wouldn’t it be cool if Obama really did have a hidden agenda to undermine the American empire?” I had the same reaction when Hillary was described as a dangerous radical feminist bent on forcing us into socialized medicine: if only!

(Here I must clarify that my first impression of the cartoon zoomed in on the depiction of Michelle as a black revolutionary complete with Angela Davis ‘do, machine gun, and combat boots, rather than the portrayal of Barack as a fundamentalist madrasseh grad. So my comment doesn’t really reflect sympathies with radical Islam but rather my persistent 1960’s nostalgia complex.)

Arnold Zwicky at Language Log comes down on the side of the cover as Bad Thing, but his problem is more specific, and I think, more justified than Dr. Banaji’s. It centers precisely on the gesture that unites the black revolutionary and the Islamic radical in the cartoon:

In the cover, the fist bump is presented along with clear signifiers of anti-Americanism, Muslim identity, and terrorism, suggesting that it is another such signifier. That’s just wrong, and presenting the gesture this way is pernicious. The primary social-group signification of the gesture is, or at least was, “African-American”, and it’s never been associated with either Islam or terrorism, so that linking the gesture to anti-Americanism and terrorism (and, via another link, to Islam) promotes a (groundless) slur on African-Americans. I’m sure this is not what the New Yorker intended — quite the contrary, in fact — but its depiction of several signifiers together encourages this interpretation, and so advances a slur on African-Americans as treacherous anti-Americans.

Of course, it wasn’t Blitt’s cartoon that first made the association between an innocent gesture of greeting/congratulation with terrorism. That distinction apparently belongs to a commenter on Human Events, a right wing site. (Behold the power of the blog commenter!)

It was then picked up by the host of Fox News’ America’s Pulse:

…host E.D. Hill teased an upcoming discussion by saying, “A fist bump? A pound? A terrorist fist jab? The gesture everyone seems to interpret differently.”

[Read the transcript on Media Matters]

Zwicky’s point, then, is not that the cartoon viewers will have the image of the Obamas as jihadis implacably seared in their brains. He grants that most people will get that the cartoon is a satire of “sleazy slurs on the Obamas.” No, what bothers him is that the fist-bump - culturally specific to African-Americans but innocent of political or terrorist associations - will be taken at face value as “just another signifier of Islam, terrorism, or anti-Americanism.”

That’s rather charitable to the many Americans for whom “America” means “white America. ” (After all, there weren’t any black characters in “Little House on the Prairie ” or “Davy Crockett” were there?) To those voters anything specifically “black” about the Obamas is as threatening as the sound of Barack’s middle name. The well known terrorist news network , Al Jazeera, interviewed some of these voters back in May. The key to their attitude is expressed by the guy at 2:02 in the video:

It is a race problem… the white people have put the Negroes at the back of the bus for years, and if we’re not careful, we’re going to be at the back of the bus and they’re going to be in the front.

I think this is a fear shared by many who would not be so forthright in expressing it as this Kentuckian. But it won’t stop them from flinging all the mud they can at the Obamas, especially Michelle, I fear. Already she’s been portrayed as next door to a Black Panther for writing honestly about her experiences as African-American on an Ivy League campus.
Finally, here’s another example of satirizing an attitude by pretending to espouse it - Hayes Carll singing She Left Me For Jesus:

She left me for Jesus and that just ain’t fair
She says that he’s perfect, how could I compare
She says I should find him and I’ll know peace at last
If I ever find Jesus I’m kickin’ his ass

She showed me a picture; all I could do was stare
At that freak in his sandals with his long pretty hair
They must think that I’m stupid or I don’t have a clue
I’ll bet he’s a commie, or even worse yet, a Jew

She’s given up whiskey and ah taken up wine
While she prays for his troubles she’s forgot about mine
I’m a gonna get even, I can’t handle the shame
Why last time we made love she even called out his name

Now, how could a true lover of Jesus possibly be offended by this? You’d have to be a prude, or be offended by the idea that Jesus had a kickable ass - which is funny if you take seriously the whole point of incarnation.

But I’m sure the petty umbrage-takers who pass for his followers these days will summon up some outrage for Mr. Carll.

*******************************************************************
*Except my dad in Omaha, because I asked him last night. I asked because in the ordinary course of events, it’s highly unlikely that he would ever see a New Yorker cover. Indeed the whole tradition of the New Yorker cover has never penetrated into my parent’s world. The very name of the magazine implies, to them, “people who are likely to despise us.”

Overheard on Pacific Avenue:

“Santa Cruz is a great place to live. I’ve only got the shit beaten out of me once in 28 years.”

Language Log’s Barbara Partee writes about a new kind of Internet slang born from switching back and forth between international character sets when keyboarding:

I have a Live Journal account where my “friends” are mainly young Russian linguists, so most of the posts are in Russian, in the Cyrillic alphabet, but user-names, tags, etc., are all in the Roman alphabet. There was one tag that I had often seen in one particular user’s posts, “lytdybr”, and I had just guessed that it was some private code word of her own (I even invented a romantic etymology for it as an abbreviation starting with “love you”.) But then last week I suddenly saw the same tag on a post by another young Russian linguist, and realized that it wasn’t just one person’s private tag.

So I googled it and discovered what it really is: it’s how the Russian word дневник, dnevnik ‘diary’, comes out if you’re typing on a QWERTY keyboard with the keystrokes you would use on a Cyrillic keyboard. There’s a Wiktionary entry about it; and I didn’t even know such a category of — of what? I guess I’ll call it slang — existed.

So on my LJ, I asked if there were any other examples, and it generated some interesting discussion. One person told me about usus for гыгы (gygy ‘laughter’ — think hee-hee); someone remarked that the “usus” of usus is fun in itself. Another example is ghbdtn, which is привет, privet ‘hi’ or ‘greetings’, common in instant messaging, with ICQ, Google Talk, etc.

One common example goes in the other direction: Russians typing in Cyrillic often use З.Ы. for P.S. so as not to have to switch out of the Russian keyboard. And one person told me they even sometimes use Ж-) instead of : -) for the same reason!

The phenomenon even has an example in contemporary fiction. In one of Boris Akunin’s detective novels (set in Imperial Russia and featuring the Byronic detective hero Erast Fandorin) there is an English character named Фрейби (freyby). Freyby is what you get if you type Акунин (Akunin) on a QWERTY keyboard.

lytdybr/лытдыбр has also acquired a specific meaning relating to blogging, as Partee explains.

One of my students commented that lytdybr, even sometimes transliterated back to лытдыбр, has become a word of its own, with a meaning more specific than the original ‘diary’.

It is often (but not always, there is a neutral meaning too) used to tag posts in blogs that are nothing more than boring retelling of author’s life. For example, something like “Just eaten some apples. Cool.” is a typical lytdybr in its negative meaning.

I am still working out what sort of posts will go here in my commonplace book - there may even be some reshuffling in the near future. However, I sincerely hope to keep the “lytdybr” type of post (in its negative meaning) to a minimum! Ж-)

Some activity on the internets related to GP Surfboards and the Surface show:

Cococello design

The show is a collaboration between Brown and surfboard designers, Bruce Gordon and Nick Palandrani of GP Surfboards in a combined effort to raise ocean awareness and responsbility. Brilliant.

I’m eager to see the boards (Brown promised to send some images my way and I’ll be sure to share them with you as soon as they come in.) as I bet they are stunning. I know nothing about surfboards but what I’ve seen on GP Surfboards’s website looks impeccably crafted. Just check out those fins!

This is from artbusiness.com, a site that reviews art openings in SF, kudos not only for the art but also for attracting “an atypically active, attractive, and fit crowd.” There are some great pics of the opening but unfortunately you have to scroll to the bottom of the page to see them.

A stunning display of surfing-related art includes a raft of exceptional atmospheric oceanic photographs by Brown W. Cannon III, and amazing hand crafted pictorial all-wood surfboards with inlays built by GP Surfboards of Capitola, California. These surfboards are so good, as far as I’m concerned, they’re sculpture. The good news? You can surf on ‘em too. Plus special added bonus– an atypically active, attractive, and fit crowd (for an art show, that is). The event is being held in part to support The Baum Foundation, The Marine Mammal Center, and Surfrider Foundation.

Interview with Brown Cannon III at rawtake.net:

Cannon: Two years ago, I started a creative collaboration with two surfboard designers from GP Surfboards in Santa Cruz bringing fine art images to classic surfboard designs. The images are of water texture, ocean life, and coastal environments – the full scope of a person’s relationship to the ocean. I am excited about these boards because they are beautiful, usable, and innovative. I have come to feel a personal and constantly increasing sense of responsibility to the ocean and hope that this project will raise ocean awareness.As a photographer I spend a lot of time alone, which is why this collaboration became so appealing. It has enabled me to bring an idea to fruition and to get the best results by entrusting and working with other specialists. Sure I could have completed this show on my own, but the opening reception would be in 2015. It is fantastic to combine efforts with other talents and to see what can happen. Just in the simple act of reaching out and getting people involved, I have made many new friends in the creative field. That is inspiring.

Here is a vocabulary list of some words which have been occurring lately in my vicinity. I invite myself and anyone else who is interested to contemplate this list in hopes of understanding some recent news.

1. vivisector
2. legal protest
3. home invasion
4. stalking
5. attack
6. vandalism
7. sidewalk chalk
8. domestic terrorism
9. police state
10. melodrama

Here’s what I encountered  walking home last night. Literally a swarm of cop cars , 7 or 8 cops standing in the front yard of a home, and a crowd of college-age kids. A drug bust, or a really heavy response to a noisy party? I asked a cop, and he said the raid was “part of an ongoing investigation of activities at this residence.” From someone I knew in the crowd, I got the info that the police had followed some of the people home from a protest, and were refused admittance to the house. The police then blockaded the house, while waiting for a search warrant to be prepared.

From this report, it appears that the earlier incident was neither peaceful nor legal but, of course, this is the SC Senile we’re talking about, so who knows what actually happened. For one thing, the reporter seems very willing to take the police spokesperson’s word that the crowd last night was “agitated” and were “taunting” officers. The one thing that struck me in fact was that it seemed so oddly quiet for such a dramatic scene. And since when is asking for a badge number a “taunt?”

The actual raid occurred about 45 minutes after I left. At that point, the landlord had arrived, and provided the police with a key. But they still broke in with a battering ram. Why? Lots of reasons, but mainly I think because battering rams must justify their own existence by being used.

Right now I feel very weird about what’s going on around the corner from my house. I have a lot of unanswered questions.

Photos from indybay.org (As usual, the photos are the most interesting thing about the post on indymedia. The verbiage is long on attitude, short on information. Also, a comment from a neighbor there makes it seem like the atmosphere changed after I left.)

Artem Troitsky, shown here bumming a cigarette off Kino guitarist Yuri Kasparian while lead singer Viktor Tsoi looks on, wrote the book on the 80’s underground rock scene in the USSR. He also seems, from what I’ve read, to be one of the few really independent journalists left in Russia. In an interview with the St. Petersburg Times, he recounts how Back in the USSR came to be written, and shares his views on the Russian music scene, then and now:

“But if we’re speaking about the songs, I was more interested in the lyrics, rather than the music. I really think that poetically Russian rock is at least not worse than American, although it’s absolutely different, of course.

“So when this paradigm of the 1970s/80s Soviet rock that was dear to me disappeared, evaporated, inevitably I lost my interest in it. But speaking about the music itself, I always say that we have some quite likable guys, whose work I treat with sympathy and understanding.”

One of the most “likable guys” of that era has to be Viktor Tsoi, who I personally think can hold his own as a songwriter on any territory, though of course given the challenges of the times a lot of the recordings are pretty rough. It seems, thanks to the Knackered Hack, that I am now part of a not-secret plot to bring the cult of Tsoi to the West.

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