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NEWS ITEM OF THE DAY:
Evidently, in a rare concession to widespread criticism and the obstinate forces of reality, George W. Bush has decided to stop using the phrase “stay the course.” Of course, that doesn’t mean he plans on changing the course in any way. It’s just that he’s decided not to stay the course with the phrase “stay the course.” That, it appears, is the only way in which he is deviating from the course.
Even by the lofty standards of this administration, that’s a subtle and rhetorically fascinating modification. But I wonder: Does this leave him open to charges of flip-flopping. I thought you said we had to stay the course. And now we’re merely “not going to change anything? “ Sounds like flip-flopping to me?!?!
CONCEPT OF THE DAY:
Authenticitude. I was just at a presentation on trends in youth culture in which is was reported that teens today aren’t interested in authenticity so much as the attitude of authenticity. Not the real. But the feel of real. In this mindset, the new and fake beats out the old and original every time. As, presumably, the enhanced reality on reality TV beats out the tedium of actual reality. While the reactionary fuddy dud within my mind might say they are just shallow, fraudulent habituees of the Simulacrum, the French theorist within my mind would applaud them for being liberated from the illusion of “originality.” (At the moment, the old fuddy dud is speaking louder and more clearly than the Gallic post-structuralist. In fact, he is conducting a fillibuster.). All sort of fascinating. And disturbing. But, in any case, like Colbert’s term of the decade “Truthiness”—it’s a great and useful addition to the cultural critical lexicon. Authenticitude. Feel it. Love it. Be it!
ABSURD ANECDOTE OF THE DAY:
My father, who is almost 80, is severely ambulatorily challenged but insists on continuing to drive. The other day, he told me with great excitement, that he got a new car. "Teddy, it's a honey. It's got 320 horse power and can go from 0 to 60 in 5.5 seconds!" I'm like, "Dad, you mean 0 to the Afterlife in 5.5 seconds" Great, I'm thinking. This is great news. A near octogenarian who everyone knows has no business being on the road now has a couple of hundred extra horse power at his disposal. In the ancient word of my people. "Oy."
Torn between the forces of civic responsibility and filial loyalty, I will take this opportunity to alert all the good people of Westport Connecticut to this local peril.
NOTE TO MY FATHER OF THE DAY:
Dad, in case you're reading this, you know I love you. But hey, truth is truth. And absurd is absurd. And menace to society is menace to society.
LITERARY NOTES OF THE DAY:
Read Laughter in the Dark--a book of Nabokov's I'd never read before. Nice, but it sort of felt like Lolita Light. Or, as the marketing manglers of the mother-tongue would have it: Lolita-Lite. But still enjoyable. I hadn't realized this sexual preoccupation with the inappropriately young was an enduring theme in his work. And I'm sure it had some basis within his own psyche. In fact, when I was talking about this with a friend, he suggested that perhaps Nabokov's famous fascination with butterflies was really just a cover for his deeper fascination with caterpillars. :)
Also read The Debt to Pleasure by John Lanchester--current editor of the London Review of Books and former food critic for the London Observer. Really enjoyable. The narrator is a hyper-refined, anglo-epicurean, uber-effete lunatic reminscent in some respects of Nabokov's Humbert Humbert. Organized loosely around a collection of exquisitely described seasonal menus, the book is superbly written, impressively researched and laugh aloud funny. But be warned: It's a kind of gastronomic porn and, if you wish to keep your copy of the book in presentable condition, you are advised to wear a drool cup before beginning to read.
ALIENATION QUANDARY OF THE DAY:
I don’t know which I’m more alienated by: The tediously pretentious play about Sylvia Plath that I saw or the colleagues who don’t know who Sylvia Plath was?
NEW TRUISM OF THE DAY:
The recent injury to Orlando El Duque Hernandez suggest a modification to a recent cultural truism:
While 40 may be the new 30, 40 without steroids is the new 50.
IRAQ GOOD NEWS OF THE DAY:
To the best of my knowledge, there are no 80 year old walker-dependent men tooling around in 320 horse power German coupes on the streets of Tikrit. And there is not yet a teen ethos of authenticitude.
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Posted on 10/25/2006
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