I’m wishing you all the continued success you have had in your long and blusterous career. That is to say, I hope you remain an utter and colossal failure. May your final personal humiliation be our collective national redemption! At which time, you will join the other raging-bullies who have stomped the world stage before you, and, through manipulation and lies and corruption and unholy alliances (as well as the abetting cowardice of those within your own, chosen, party), have risen to such Icarian heights. They, too, “won” the game of power. So please enjoy today’s moment of “triumph” before you slide down history’s sleazy and slimy slope, the one greased with blood, pus, vinegar and snake venom. And then you will be fully ensconced in the Pantheon of Ignominy, at the Hall of Half-Hitlers, to rub elbows with the likes of Franco, Marcos, Amin, Gaddafi and Pinochet. Our very own Mobster Baron. The Buffooner-in-Chief. Perhaps you are just the oily emetic (or else cathartic suppository) that we need, at this critical inflection point, to rid our body politic of its Medieval black bile. Do your worst, you gilded piece of mediocre horseshit… and then, in the immortal words of Logan Roy, FUCK OFF!!
Is it considered a “found object” in the artful sense if it’s discovered in your own old boxes?
Being 26 y/o at the time, I’ve no doubt why I purchased this Oct 1990 issue of Rolling Stone. Three reasons, in fact. Oddly enough in retrospect, I was never a subscriber. I think I felt that the magazine’s best days were past. I did, however, subscribe to CMJ New Music Monthly and Q Magazine for the music recommendations (they gifted me early warnings on Neko Case, American Analog Set, Franz Ferdinand and Sparklehorse). And yet somehow none of those copies survived, while I did manage to hang onto this artifact across the 34 years and 12 home moves, most of that time without a storage unit. Recently unearthed, I wanted to share some of the images in this little time-capsule. ..
The answer is, no, I never owned Duck Head pants. Not that I wouldn’t have worn them, as I’ve been seen in worse… recently.
Perhaps more than the feature articles, the advertisements seem to capture the vibe of those days. It’s the frisson of amused and semi-disgusted recognition. Like an unflattering photo of your younger self, caught wrong-footed. Reminds you of all the really bad stuff you fell for and/or bought. Any 8-track tape. Pants with pleats. Top-siders. The Stones album “Dirty Work” (1986). That beer can collection. The beaded car seat cushion. I could go on…
And why is it that bad jokes are so easy to remember? My friend Mike, if you hit your golf ball into a bunker, would invariably exclaim, “China Beach!” It never got old because it was always old. But we all could agree that Dana Delany was, and probably still is, as that very same Mike would say, a “smoke show”! TV, thankfully, started to get a little weirder in the 80’s and early 90’s. ESPN launched in 1979 (ESPN2 in 1993). The sports news was initially pretty sparse, so they used supplemental material like strongman competitions and Australian Rules Football (“Footy”). In the latter case, our mid 80’s college boredom was transiently salved by picking teams and trying, unsuccessfully, to figure out the scoring system (later explained to me by an Aussie while on an overnight ferry from Calais to Dover). My adopted team was Geelong. The stadium cheer I conjured up was half the crowd yelling “GEE-” and the other side responding “-LONG” (fucking brilliant!). MTV started in 1981. Later would come “The Simpsons” and “Beavis and Butthead” when things really started to bend. But, as with bad jokes, some of the most memorable TV shows are the ones you found cloying/annoying, like “30 Something” and “Friends.” Just fucking shoot me…
There were also standouts to the upside like the surrealist “Twin Peaks”, and it is only fitting that we honor the great David Lynch who very recently passed away (for my money, “Elephant Man” is his magnum opus, followed closely by “Mulholland Drive”). A moment of silence, please…
It wasn’t all ads, of course. But while I mostly enjoy Kyle MacLachlan’s work, I never got comfortable with his role on “Sex and the City.” Just sayin’…
New albums by Neil Young, with or without Crazy Horse, are always welcome! And there’s a song on Ragged Glory that I’ll sing to myself when I’ve made some stupid, unforced error: “Why do I keep fuckin’ up…??” (and if you’re interested, the track is called, ahh, “Fuckin’ Up”). Try it…!!
In life, there’s always a mix of good and bad news. A yin for every yang. Saw a great musical play about Curtis Mayfield in Chicago years ago. Man, he had such a healing voice…
Yup…
The only thing constant is change…
Miss, are you gonna finish that cherry?…
The Netflix documentary about WHAM! is quite good. But this post has turned a tad funereal…
I must have joined these CD clubs half a dozen times (and still have the discs!). But there was never a time, ever, when I would spend even one bloody-red-fucking-cent for Don Henley’s “The End of the Innocence” album. Utter shite…
Top Five: Mariah Carey, MC Hammer, Anita Baker (I do like her!), Poison, and Wilson Phillips. I’ve recently been thinking that popular music has gotten much worse in the last 30 years. Now I’m not so sure…
Music’s future was in our past…
(Richard Branson in an ad for GAP) Remember the good old days when our corporate oligarchs were jovial adventurers and had no plans to subvert democracy from unelected positions? How quaint…
At a representative rest stop along the Ohio-Indiana axis from Nov 2024.
Thank you, America, for re-electing the Grifter/Groper/Felon-in-Chief who consistently puts his own dark, sociopathic needs ahead of those of all other Americans. Great job!
Thank you, America, for proving, yet again, that fear and paranoia and hatred are woven into the fabric of our national flag. Great job!
Thank you, America, for tacitly absolving the President-elect of fomenting an insurrection and subverting our democracy to salve his own ego. Great job!
Thank you, America, for suddenly rediscovering your confidence in our electoral system after that, ah, minor unpleasantness (“a day of love”) on Jan 6, 2021. Great job!
Thank you, America, for throwing off the yoke of science and knowledge in favor of one reassuring cult of personality and the infallible guiding hand of our benevolent Christian leaders. Great job!
Thank you, America, for not letting your vocal support for the perpetrators of the public assault and battery of police officers at the Capitol hinder your stated desire for “law and order” in our exceptional nation. Pardons for all, please! Great job!!
Thank you, America, for joining the hands of those who wholeheartedly support Israel, no matter how asymmetrical their war with the Palestinians, with those who march under torchlight chanting, “Jews will not replace us!” Great job!
Thank you, America, for reminding us that if you aren’t punching down on marginalized and underrepresented groups then you aren’t a true patriot, you’re not a Mucho-Macho-MAGA Man. Great job!
Thank you, America, for making STUPID the new top status symbol and prerequisite for serving in GOP’s Congressional majority. You put them there! Great job!!
Was this a protest over poor ergonomics and uncomfortable seating? A statement about seat diversity or the lack thereof? Are these physical chairs “stand-ins” for department chairs in academia?? To answer these and other questions, I will refer you to the artist responsible for this 2024 Paris installation called “AVALANCHE,” Tadashi Kawamata.“Liberty Leading the People” (1830) by Eugene Delacroix commemorates the July Revolution of 1830 that toppled King Charles X.The chairs! The chairs! They’re EVERYWHERE!!”
“I like a good, dry wine Dry like Ludwig Wittgenstein”
— Your host
A bit of the old Ludwig “Non-von”… Archivists have recently uncovered an early unpublished Wittgenstein piece called “Tractatus Logico-Scatologicus” that includes hand-drawn doodle illustrations!
This story relates to events that occurred in Denver, CO on Sat Jan 11, 2020:
It was a call weekend for me. I worked in-hospital from 9am to 7pm. The pace was generally brisk and the food pretty bad in the cafeteria, which closed at about 2pm, so I had loaded up on snacks. A short time before this, I had started eating KIND bars — supposedly healthy, flavors like a candy bar, etc. All good. But that day I think I ate 4 or 5 of them, mostly in the afternoon. And it turns out that not all KIND bars are created equal, as some contain chicory root fiber while other don’t. Mine sure did. And it just so happened that on the same night my friend Bob and his wife were hosting a holiday party at their house. We arrived around 8pm. My intense gas pains arrived, sharply, at around 9pm. I didn’t figure it out until a few days later (Googling it at a stop light after work) that chicory root can have the adverse effect of extreme gaseousness! It was off the charts. Farts, farts and more farts. Farts that lasted 15-20 seconds or more. It was Fart-A-Thon 2020. Like having back-to-back colonoscopies. At one point I just sat on the toilet bowl and lazily expelled gas like a whale venting through its blowhole. It was comical (in hindsight) and almost musical. When I emerged, I kept crop-dusting like those old biplanes dropping DDT. As I was talking to one guy, with each sentence came a short involuntary burst of coliform cologne from my undercarriage, although I must say the odor was somewhat less than your standard issue blast (n of 1). But, Jesus the overall gas volume! Buyer, and bystanders, beware. Read the label. Limit your intake. Schedule an outdoor event. Bring a change of clothes. Stay home.
And come to think of it, we were never invited back.
I spent a year working at Denver Health, a public hospital in Denver, CO, before moving back east during the COVID-19 epidemic. The radiology offices were fairly spartan and we shared adjacent bathroom facilities with the house staff that included showers. These spaces were generally clean and sanitary, but there was one unusual situation that I’ve depicted here. It concerns a certain green towel that was hanging in one of the bathroom/shower from late November 2019 until Feb 2020. The towel had already been hanging for about a week when I first took a photo on Nov 22, 2019…
Dec 9, 2019
Several weeks later on Dec 9, 2019, the towel was in the same position but with the addition of a partially deployed roll of toilet paper resting atop. The appearance now suggests a floating, ghost-like figure with some sort of dangling headdress, if you’ll allow…
Dec 19, 2019
Ten days on from that and no major changes noted. There was no discernible smell beyond the usual that I recall (let’s just assume the trail of white material on the wall to our left was outside the FOV on most other images, as it is visible on Feb 6). It did have me wondering whether any specific housekeeping policies might be in place to address an abandoned towel. If so, it would likely involve the wearing of gloves upon removal…
Jan 7, 2020
It’s a new year and now we’re over six weeks into the towel’s “residency.” We notice an alteration — the dangling stretch of tissue paper is no longer evident although the loose wrapping suggests a possible hasty re-wrap versus a displacement with tear-off and then a return to position. This is speculative. The towel itself meanwhile has undergone only subtle shifts in its geometry and has probably remained on the hook for the duration…
Jan 17, 2020
Ah-ha! At the two-month mark, we are back to baseline as the toilet roll has been removed. Note the indentation left by the roll near the towel’s apex. One senses, without touching, that it has a certain coarse stiffness (rigor towelis)…
Feb 3, 2020
Heading into Feb 2020 at status quo with only a partial subsidence of the apex indentation…
Feb 4, 2020
Whoa! Big changes afoot. The towel has been shifted to the left hook and we see a used yellow surgical mask (it perhaps a fateful portent of the nascent COVID epidemic that subsequently blossomed in March 2020) has replaced it on the right hook. But wait. A bias had been introduced! I had finally shared my little photo project with one of the radiology residents, and he later copped to being the architect of the change. This case therefore holds a major lesson about the integrity of scientific research and our fiduciary responsibilities as investigators to minimize bias and conflicts of interest (Disclosure: this project was made possible by funding from both CLOROX and TINACTIN)…
Feb 6, 2020
Alas. Not sure if our green towel was taken home, tossed out, or maybe it walked away on its own. But as George Harrison put it, “all things must pass.” It was quite a run.
March 28, 2020
There was no return of the infamous green towel but one of the house staff did leave behind a relic of the bygone days of medicine: a stethoscope. About as useful these days as mercury was in treating syphilis prior to Penicillin. The auscultatory device has been replaced, along with many time-honored skills in clinical diagnosis, by the CT scanner. This particular specimen was passed along to the Smithsonian Institute for posterity.
Great Exudations 