The Concept of the Circumcised Sandal

After the majority had gone we were left standing with him. He noticed that my shoe was very misshapen. The heel was so twisted it was facing forward. The Rebbe said, "Your shoe has got a face like a slap in the face." Then he was silent for a bit. We certainly believed that nothing he said was simple and all his words contained deep secrets.
He then said: "Our casual talk!"- stressing the word our. "Let some mystic tell me how that comment contains all the mystical intentions of circumcision as well as what is higher than mystical intentions."
With awesome grace and holiness the words began to flow forth from his lips. "There are cases where they slap a person in the face, others where they slap him on the sandal." The Rebbe mentioned the statement of the Rabbis referring to a sandal: "A man should not marry his friend's widow if she is carrying. This is a decree to prevent the embryo from developing a face like a shapeless sandal." He also mentioned other statements of the Rabbis involving the concept of sandals. All these statements point to how the concept of the sandal contains deep Torah secrets.
He then gave over the entire lesson. None of us yet knows how far it reaches. Everything was presented allusively in a succession of flashing sparks. May God grant us the merit of understanding all of this completely.

Midnight Fax 1999

Inscrutable Japanese Pep Talk

"You can tell a man's character by the way he makes advances to a woman. Men like you, for example- when the fleet's in port and you go off to have a good time, you seem to have only two ways of going about things. First you put it straight to the woman: "Hey, how about a lay?" Now, any woman, even the lowest whore is going to put up at least a show of refusing if she's asked like that. So what do you do next? You either act insulted and get rough, or you give up immediately and go off to try the same thing on the next woman. That's all you're capable of. But take a look at Western men- they're quite different. Once they've set their sights on a woman, they invite her out for a drink, or to dinner, or to go dancing. In that way they gradually break down her defenses until, in the end, they get what they want, and in style at that. Where achieving a particular aim is concerned, that's surely a far wiser way of going about things. At any rate, they're the kind of men you'd be dealing with if there were a war, so you better give it some thought."
-Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto
in 1939 to his junior officers, quoted in "The Reluctant Admiral"

"Success is the ethical quagmire par excellence of commodity culture because it jeopardizes our relation to dissent, to resistance, to saying no, as fame is precisely about what one is willing to do, how far one is willing to go, and how much (low in the form of high. Going low in order to get high) one is willing to say yes to. The road to fame is made up of assent. That is what gets you to the literal and figurative top. And this is why fame is almost always a parable about losing (not finding one's way). About being lead astray. "Making it" is not the struggle to become, as it's always been said, but the willingness to be made."

--Masha Tupitsyn

'

The implicit bargain that many Americans struck with the state institutions supporting modern life is that they would be politically acceptable only to the degree to which they remained invisible, and that for all intents and purposes each citizen could continue to believe that she was sovereign over her life; she would of course pay taxes, use the roads and schools, receive Medicare and Social Security, but only so long as these could be perceived not as radical dependencies, but simply as the conditions for leading an autonomous and self-sufficient life...

Tea Party anger is, at bottom, metaphysical, not political: what has been undone by the economic crisis is the belief that each individual is metaphysically self-sufficient, that one's very standing and being as a rational agent owes nothing to other individuals or institutions.  - J.M.Bernstein

Sunday Dinner Seating Chart

Vicarious Causation

" This article gives the outlines of a realist metaphysics, despite the continuing unpopularity of both realism and metaphysics in the continental tradition. Instead of the dull realism of mindless atoms and billiard balls that is usually invoked to spoil all the fun in philosophy, I will defend a weird realism. This model features a world packed full of ghostly real objects signaling to each other from inscrutable depths, unable to touch one another fully...vicarious causation is not some autistic moonbeam entering the window of an asylum. Instead it is both the launching pad for a rigorous post-Heideggerian philosophy, and a fitting revival of the venerable problem of communication between substances."

Graham Harman

when all the numbers swim together
and all the shadows settle
when doors forced open shut again
a flytrap and a petal

my eyes burn and claws rush to fill them
and in the morning after the night
i fall in love with the light
it is so clear i realize
that here at last i have my eyes

when all the figures sound retreat
the soft skin starts to shrivel
when dreams made real become less sweet
the orchid and the metal

my sex turns and claws rush to spill them
but in the morning after the night
i fall in love with the light
it is so pure i can't arise
without the fear of secret lies

when all the characters full size
and every moon is level
when all the spirits burn in lies
as center grief by steel

my eyes burn and claws rush to fill them
but in the morning after the night
i fall in love with the light
it is so clear i realize
and now at last i have my eyes

--Genesis_P-Orridge

Clumping Action: Pisswick Crunch

"Dancing is alien to heavy metal for two basic reasons. One is the continuation of the tradition of the youth counterculture. The audience for psychedelic music and for folk-inspired political protest songs listened while seated, to better concentrate on the lyrics. Second, dance music is understood in the modern West as an erotic activity. As a masculinist and overwhelmingly masculine grouping with an extreme heterosexualist ideology, the heavy metal subculture stresses male bonding, not male-female pairing...Yet heavy metal music is based on a strong regular beat that calls for the movement of the body...The solution to the problem of body movement was to create a code of gestural response to the music that could be shared in common. One of the two primary gestures is the arm thrust, usually a sign of appreciation but also used to keep time with the rhythm. The other primary gesture, called headbanging, involves a downward thrust of the head with a gentler upthrust...A distinctive demeanor and expression are also nurtured in the metal subculture. The familiar insult that  metal fans are "slack-jawed", evincing a look of dull stupidity, needs to be examined. In part it is an accurate characterization of the faces of those emerging from a heavy metal concert, but it could also describe someone who has just spent several hours enjoying ecstatic physical activity. The look also reflects the impact of the downers and beer consumed by metal fans.

...Ingestion of massive quantities of beer has remained a constant feature of the metal subculture. Beer induced urination has influenced at least one venue in the U.S. to spread large amounts of kitty litter in the area near the stage."
-Deena Weinstein

The Moon's Middle Name is Wane

bionic strain motif
power baby names
direct action vomiting
ketchup catchup catsup
all-star salute to fat chicks
platteville sweatsuit polemic
an eagle named small government
and a strangely candid businessman
labov's department store study again
inducing involuntary musical imagery
harnessing entrepreneurial manic-depression
a crystal wand to shift my stationary assemblage point
and resultant burns from sleeping beside a running blowdryer

'79 Houston Oilers v. '99 Tennessee Titans at the Yale Bowl under Light Precipitation

"We Drink Small Sour Drinks"

                                                                          jacobites

Elevator Ethnography

More senior men seemed to direct themselves towards the back of the elevator cabins. In front of them were younger men, and in front of them were women off all ages. Men watched the monitors, looked in the side mirrors (in one building) to see themselves, and in the door mirrors (of the other building) to also watch others. Women would watch the monitors and avoid eye contact with the other passengers
(unless in conversation) and the mirrors. It was only when women traveled with other women [that they'd utilize the mirror].      -Rebekah Rousi