Right now!

Curated by my dear pal, Ryan de la Hoz:

Last night at the Rickshaw...

In other news, Har Mar Superstar was one of the most impressive live shows I've had the pleasure of witnessing in awhile. Short, fat, balding, naked man in sequined gloves singing electro pop ditties about drinking and babes and male camel toe. Instant classic, duh.
p.s. Enchanting photo courtesy of Jeff Luger's flickr, acquired via Kayvon.

On College and Forgetting

Upon entering college, I had presumed that by the time I got out I would have attained such a solid grasp on my field of study that it would be impossible to lose. Well. It's been about 3 years since I graduated, and although I have retained an impressive amount of my acquired knowledge, I came across an item today, while cleaning out a box of papers, that gave me pause. During Winter quarter of my senior year I took a course called Modernity and Its Discontents in the History of Consciousness department. As I'd already had the pleasure of reading a good deal of the material on the syllabus, it was intended as an easy foil to the incredibly difficult Senior Seminar (on Anarchy, no less!) that I was taking the same quarter. A good deal of it would be rehashing and/or narrowing the focus on things I had already learned. I breezed through the course and easily got an A. So today, when I came across the topics list for the final paper for that same course, I was stunned to realize that I can no longer easily provide a lengthy and articulate answer to every one of the proposed topics. They were as follows:

1. Discuss Marx's idea of dialectical materialism.
2. What, according to Adorno and Horkheimer, is the legacy of Enlightenment reason?
3. Discuss the relationship between love and aggressivity in Freud's Civilization and Its Discontents.
4. What does Hannah Arendt mean by the phrase 'banality of evil'?
5. Discuss Fanon's reading of Hegel's master-slave conflict in Black Skin, White Masks.

None of these is a tremendously advanced concept in political theory. Not easy, to be certain, but also not unbelievably difficult. Now, I know I could still give a roundabout, stumbling, and wholly unsatisfactory response to any one of these, but... really? Is it really so easy to lose 4 years of excruciatingly hard work? I find this incredibly disheartening and frustrating. Not to mention, it's going to make my graduate school applications a hell of a lot harder. So... I suck.

I think I'm in love.

I have a new cat. She is 3 and I named her Claudine. Everyone should rush out to the SFSPCA immediately and adopt a cat, because they were all wonderful.

A show to attend

So, there's this band called Casy & Brian, and they're pretty good, and they're playing a super awesome show on February 7th at Kimo's, as well as one at Bottom of the Hill on the 18th, which will also be super awesome, and everyone should go, and the fact that it's my boyfriend's band has absolutely nothing to do with my promotion.

Toys for fascist children!

In case you are currently training your little one in, say, management of a police state, or the imposition of martial law, here is a nice little toy set that will help you in said endeavor. Playmobil, my beloved childhood toy of choice, now manufactures a security checkpoint set.

http://www.amazon.com/Playmobil-3172-Security-Check-Point/dp/B0002CYTL2/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top

Check out the customer tags and reviews; they are a laugh riot. I wonder how many other products on Amazon.com can claim tags under "police state," "tyranny," "fascism," "fear," "martial law," and "1984." Some sample gems from the customer reviews include:

"...Worst of all, since the suitcase did not actually open, the baggage inspector made a call to the FBI and ATF bomb squads which then segregated the family's suitcase (which btw was the only suitcase they provided for our educational family experience) and according to the advanced TSA regulations, had to blow it up, (since they could not otherwise mutilate the luggage, break off the locks and put one of those nice little advisory stickers on it), which we had to simulate out in the backyard with a few M-80s and other fireworks."

"My 5 year old son pointed out that the passenger's shoes cannot be removed. Then, we placed a deadly fingernail file underneath the passenger's scarf, and neither the detector doorway nor the security wand picked it up. My son said "that's the worst security ever!". But it turned out to be okay, because when the passenger got on the Playmobil B757 and tried to hijack it, she was mobbed by a couple of other heroic passengers, who only sustained minor injuries in the scuffle, which were treated at the Playmobil Hospital."

"Thank you Playmobil for allowing me to teach my 5-year old the importance of recognizing what a failing bureaucracy in a ever growing fascist state looks like. Sometimes it's a hard lesson for kids to learn because not all pigs carry billy clubs and wear body armor."

So basically, amazing.

Way to go!

The Palestinian death toll has passed 500. Israel claims the casualties have been primarily militants, placing the civilian casualty count at below 100. Is there anyone out there who believes this? Considering the tolls come from the mouths of Israeli officials and reporters are currently barred from entering Gaza, I certainly don't. The fact that Gaza's hospitals have already been overwhelmed doesn't inspire confidence in those claims, either. Not to mention, Israeli rocket fire landing in the middle of a marketplace in Gaza City, where civilians were stocking up on necessities for the coming raids, doesn't inspire confidence in the Israeli promise to avoid soft targets. Nor, for that matter, did their striking a U.N. school in Gaza, which had been opened to house those seeking refuge. Way to go, Israel!

Not that I have much confidence in the United States right now, either. The United Nations Security Council attempted to issue a formal statement calling for an immediate cease-fire, only to be blocked by - guess who? That's right, the United States! Way to go, U.S.A.! It would seem that, according to our strict humanitarian standards, the fact that we can't verify whether or not Hamas will abide by a cease-fire is cause enough to continue brutalizing Gaza.

And, per usual, President-elect Obama is still deferring publicly to the Bush administration, so as not to leak his pro-Israel sentiments while he still has the avid support of the would-be Left. Way to go, Obama!

This is the arm of a little girl who was killed in the strike at the U.N. school. I wonder what Obama would have to say if this were one of his little girls.