January 18, 2004

• I was never really that at ease with the whole "you can tell they're invaders because their corpses disappear when you kill them" thing, but you really do have to be cruel to be kind sometimes.
• I always loved the semiotics associated with shows like this - if it's from the fifties/sixties and about aliens, chances are it's a Cold War analogy. If it's recent and about aliens, it's about the US and imperialism. (Well, I made that last bit up, but it seems fair when you watch the horror that is Enterprise.)
• Trac-- At first glance I agree it is seductively easy to pigeonhole our encounters with "The Other" in one of only two paradigms (enemies- to- be- outsmarted or fallow- resources- to- be- plundered), but then I rack my brains to come up with any OTHER possible characterizations of dramatic action. As we might agree, Conflict is the essence of Drama, from Aristophanes to the letters of Paul to late -century pop culture... To push the opposite trope to extremes, it is funny how any genre comprised of NON-lethal encounters with "Others" in a possibly compassionate or mutually beneficial manner is referred to as "Pornography" and is de facto marginilized... Great. now I've hurt my brain.
• Dizzy, please provide links to non-lethal encounters with "Others" in a possibly compassionate or mutually beneficial manner referred to as "Pornography"... Thank you.
• Wendell-- You're over 16, right? Sincerely, P. Townsend
• Sure, drama is conflict etc., but in, for example, Invasion of the Body Snatchers the point is that the victims of the insidious aliens look exactly like you and me.
• And Diz, careful with those capital letters. Big O Other refers to a relation constructed by the id, whereas the small o other is a relation which is primarily mediated by the ego. (In the Lacanian sense, O also = ucs, while o = the ambulant phallus.) Not that Lacan has any particular mortgage on truth or knowledge or (your word here), but this Other/other thing as picked up by Homi Bhaba, Edward Said, Fred Jameson and their respective epigones is taken from his Ecrits and the S
• Dang! ... I mean, dang!
• (but actually, W, I assume(d) we both mean the philosophical "Other", in the Derrida/Sontag/Lasch canon, which is why I cap the "O"...
• I like cheese!
• Derrida/Sontag/Lasch canon Derrida was a regular at the Friday seminars, so was Barthes, and so was one of my teachers (and I count him as a friend) Raymond Bellour. There is a diff
• I gave Sontag a kleenex once, and shared a stick of gum with that Edith Piaf. She too, said, "Vive diffrance!" I'm lactose intolerant.
• Well, I went to the University of Paris, and I ate lots of cheese while I did it. In fact, I ate entire books full of cheese.
• Yeah, well, I gave birth to Kofi Annan's love child while writing his seminal post-doc best-seller "Coffee Time with Kofi" while teaching three sections at the UNIVERSITY of the WORLD ( a private, secret, elite University within the U.N. for U.N. kids ONLY) AND doing cutting-edge research into the whole "Methane Triangle" of Highly placed Cheese Lobbyists, some shady meadow developments in Wisconsin, and the reasons rennett can kill you; AND I DID it ALL even though I'm a male and thus have no uterus. (I mean had Mr. K's baby. Which I certainly did.)
• *sfx: heavy breathing into telephone* Keep talking, mate. Keep talking.
• After a pretty rough yet deeply satisfying afternoon of breaking in a new truckload of sheep, Jim Loy was rooting through the minifridge he kept back by the Old Mill for a can of Fanta Orange ("Tastes just like tha' crap back in Da Nang" he'd cackle, his whiskers glistening and twitching in the Spring sunshine like a cut-down jungle awash in some personally carbonated jungle defoliant). There was something on Colonel Loy's mind, and it wasn't lanolin. Under his breath, tenderly as a prayer, four words sharp as the silver plates in Jim's head and hips dropped onto the cool waters of Hinky Creek: "Fred Maytag must pay." Yes. The founder of the beloved Maytag Blue, the winner of the prized Golden Curd award three years running-- would surely not live to see another State Fair. Not with Jim Loy on his trail...
• jeez wolof aren't you done yet?
• Dizzy, I can't believe you made babies with that cheeky darkie.
• Because he helped me off the smack (Kellogg's Sugar Smacks, that is) and showed me the balanced nutrition inside every Pop-Tart, I'd take a bullet for Mr. K. His wife was on an extended leave to mediate Theme-Park disputes (something about licensing agreements for the Walter Wal-Mart character at the soon- to- open "Wal-Mart: The Non-Union Adventure" near Orlando), and he had such soft, soft hands... Well, one thing led to another, I got a free round-trip to Brazil (you'd be amazed how many Germans they have there!) and then nine months later, I'm feeling a bit dyspeptic, I excuse myself, and Bob's-Yer-uncle out pops a cute little Kofi Kritter! Totally painless. And the German guy gave me for FREE a couple tubes of lotion for the stretch marks. So I'm just glad to help, you know?
• Nobody's forcing you to read the books, Diz. Just don't come on like you have if you haven't. It's unseemly at your advanced age.
• I like cheese! What, was that an early recording by The Boredoms or something?
• ...crap ...The Boredoms or something?
• W- What are you talking about? Why are you trolling me? (Again?) Please advise?
• I like Kofi!
• I like T!
• Won't you come and play with me?
• W & D: Stop it, the bragging heat is already making popcorn out of routers. Now let's forget our troubles with a big bowl of strawberry ice cream.
• So is "W & D" anything like "WMD?" 'coz if it is...
• I just watched Battlefield Earth on one of the HBO channels. I needed a place to cry out for help. This thread looked like the most appropriate place. I seriously am at a loss to describe my experience. I mean, how could it ever have been made? How could it actually be that bad? I need to be held.
• The best group of friends I ever had in my life was a gang of coworkers back in Missouri. We'd get together periodically, drink case after case of beer, and watch bad film, interjecting our own commentary MST3K-style. One memorable night we watched our movie after cooking rainbow trout in the dishwasher. But that was not the most memorable evening we shared. Our Battlefield Earth viewing night would ultimately come to hold that title, becoming nothing short of legend among us. It's the only bad film we ever screened that we actually stopped mocking about 45 minutes in, because the film was actually doing a better job of it than our commentary ever could. We watched, aghast and yet compelled forward by a level of concentrated suck we did not know could possibly be allowed by the very laws of physics. I submit that this one film is the only good thing ever to come of Scientology. That L. Ron Hubbard could give us all something this irredeemably horrid is its own mark of (however unintended) genius. Ed Wood on a good day couldn't match him, and I adore Ed Wood with every fiber of my being. I have the dishwasher fish recipe, if any are interested.