ALL CAPS LINKAGE

MEMES FROM AN ALTERNATE DIMENSION

VIA WAXY

HAPPY ALL CAPS TUESDAY.

Time For The Times

Doing too much at the same time, even at the risk of failure, is a core American trait that built the nation. It’s as American as Benjamin Franklin, “Moby-Dick,” the New Deal and a double cheeseburger with all the toppings.

David Foster Wallace And Hypertext

David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest just might be one of the most popular things on the internet. There are so many websites devoted to reading and re-reading IJ that I am refraining, right now, from linking to any of them, because it would just take too much time. There's a small irony here, because DFW's serpentine, infinity-recursive prose is just about the exact opposite of what you'd want you polished blog prose to be like, which is clean and concise. Anyway. I apologise if you've never read IJ; I encourage you to, and I also encourage you to join us here again tomorrow, when we might--MIGHT--talk about something interesting. Because if you haven't read IJ you just probably should stop reading this post right now, because it is inside baseball, at best.

My argument is that IJ is the first great novel of the internet age, even though it somewhat preceded it. Now. There's something interesting you can say about Infinite Jest's take on mass media, something very interesting, especially in the hypertrophied entertainment culture of O.N.A.N.ite USA. But that's not what I'm going to be talking about today.

I think that the densely allusive, footnoted prose of IJ is an almost perfect hypertext, in that original sense of hypertext which was an infinitely referenced network of texts, the ideal of the internet before the internet became real. I will show you what I mean. Here's just one paragraph, taken pretty much at random, which I have gone about and annotated as best as I could. It's from the brochure for the Union of the Hideously and Improbably Deformed, as read by Madame Psychosis on page 187 of my book, for those of you at home, following along:

'Those with saddle sores. Those with atrophic limbs. And yes chemists and pure-math majors also those with atrophic necks. Scleredema adultorum. Them that seep, the serodermatotic,. Come one come all, this circular says. The hydrocephalic. The tabescent and chachetic and anorexic. The Brag's-Diseased, in their heavy red rinds of flesh. The dermally wine-stained or carbuncular or steatocryptoic or God forbid all three. Marin-Amat Syndrome, you say? Come on down. The psoriatic. The exzematically shunned. And the scrofulodermic. Bell-shaped steatopygiacs, in your special slacks. Afflictees of Pityriasis Rosea. It says here Come all ye hateful. Blessed are the poor in body, for they.'

Infinite Jest has the sort of hyper-referenced information overload that swamps all of us these days in 2009, those of us who read lots on the internet. Though Wallace wrote before the wide-spread popularity of the internet, he expressed well the information overload of us blog-seeped netizens. I see a fully-referenced hypertexted version of IJ as entirely possible, and I could encourage anyone with connections in the publishing industry to pitch this idea. Hard. Just give me some props if it ever comes true.

Am I Internet Famous Yet?

My Kickstarter project might get a buck from Choire.

Someone should convince him.

Now Is Time To Help The Starving Artist

So I've recently finished a novel, and I'm trying to get it published. Writing a novel is pretty easy, all things considered. Getting it published is hard. I'm also pounding away at another novel. It is really a beautiful life, writing, I assure you.

But there's a problem. You see, normal human beings use money to buy goods and services, including housing and food, which are considered by most to be necessities. Writing fiction--especially when it is fiction whose only laurels to date are some absolutely glowing rejection letters--does not provide much of this money.

Yet, there is a solution. It is called the internet.

There's this neat website called Kickstarter, and I've started a project up there. The idea of Kickstarter is this: you give artists money, and you get stuff in return. If you give me five bucks--ONLY FIVE DOLLARS!--you will get an electronic copy of my novel when it is finished. If you give me seven dollars, I will chuck in a copy of my already completed novel. Wow! There are many other wonderful things you can get, including me being your personal writing slave, so I encourage you to check it out.

Now back to our regularly scheduled blogging.

A BRIEF SURVEY OF ALL CAPS LITERATURE

ALL CAPS HAS A BAD REPUTATION. ONE WISE IMMINENCE RECENTLY ADVISED ME THAT WRITING IN ALL CAPS SUGGESTS MENTAL UNBALANCE, ILLNESS, AND NOT AWESOMENESS. THAT IS WHY WE HERE AT RAISE HIGH THE ROOFBEAM, CARPENTERS HAVE PUT TOGETHER THIS BRIEF INTRODUCTION TO ALL CAPS LITERARY PRODUCTION, TO RAISE CONSCIOUSNESS AND ALL THAT, IN HONOR OF ALL CAPS TUESDAY.

MF DOOM



RAPPER MF DOOM'S NAME IS WRITTEN ALL CAPS. "ALL BIG LETTERS BUT IT ISN'T NO ACRONYM."

STEPHEN CRANE



BEST KNOWN FOR WRITING THE PERPETUALLY BOOK-REPORTED RED BADGE OF COURAGE, STEPHEN CRANE ALSO WROTE SOME PRETTY ALL CAPS POETRY. AND BY ALL CAPS, I MEAN LITERALLY ALL CAPS. CRANE'S COLLECTION OF POETRY, THE BLACK RIDERS AND OTHER LINES, WAS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN ALL CAPS, THOUGH LATER EDITIONS HAD NORMAL CAPS, WHICH SUCKS. I THINK THAT THE ALL CAPS VERSION IS MUCH BETTER, EMPHASIZING THE STARK, POWERFUL IMAGES IN CRANE'S LINES. HERE'S THE THIRD LINE, MY FAVORITE SINCE I WAS A LITTLE BOY:

IN THE DESERT
I SAW A CREATURE, NAKED, BESTIAL,
WHO, SQUATTING UPON THE GROUND,
HELD HIS HEART IN HIS HANDS,
AND ATE OF IT.
I SAID, "IS IT GOOD, FRIEND?"
"IT IS BITTER BITTER," HE ANSWERED;
"BUT I LIKE IT
"BECAUSE IT IS BITTER,
"AND BECAUSE IT IS MY HEART."

THE TELEGRAPH



DID YOU KNOW THAT BECAUSE IT WAS AWESOME, THE TELEGRAPH SYSTEM WOULD ONLY SEND MESSAGES IN CAPITAL LETTERS?

DO YOU, MY FRIENDLY READERS, KNOW OF ANY OTHER ALL CAPS LITERARY PRODUCTIONS?

What Makes A Compulsive Song Compulsive?

Right now I am listening to Okkervil River's Calling And Not Calling My Ex from their latest album, the Stage Names. (The embedded YouTube vid above is, in fact, a live recording of the song.) I have been listening to this song a lot. And by a lot I mean maybe three, four, five times a day, whenever I find a spare moment.

Now it doesn't take a Master's in psychology to figure out the etiology of this compulsion. I have been thinking a lot about an ex of my own. But we might find some interest in the details. What first drew me to the song was the line "I'm feeling pretty stupid now for ever having said goodbye." Which is exactly how I feel when I'm feeling, well, however it is that I feel. The sympathy I felt at that line made me stop, rewind the song, and start to listen again. Now, one way of explaining great art says that great art expresses what we otherwise find inexpressible. That great art alone can express these feelings because those feelings are too refined to be explained by our own poor powers of expression. But the emotions I find reflected in the song remain unexpressed by me, not because they are too ineffable or complicated, but because they are too cliched, too mawkish. I miss you. I never wish I said goodbye to you. The beauty comes from a simple sentiment, expressed simply, but a sentiment that if I actually said it would encourage my friends wonder whether I had turned emo on them. (Maybe, perhaps, I have.)

This has led me to think about obsessional songs. My housemate is currently listening over and over again to a verse by the British hip-hop legend Jehst (his verse starts at 1.10). In my sophomore year of college I listened to Mirah's song Mt St Helens every single morning when I woke up, much to the chagrin of my roomate, who at first hated the song, then grew to despise it, silently, while still in bed, trying to sleep, every day. (The song's first lines, "From the morning when I rise from my bed / to the evening when I lay my head in slumber" outright encouraged obsession--indeed, the song was compulsive because it was about compulsion. I blame you, Mirah, for mornings of moody music-listening, and for the discomfort you caused my roomate.)

These songs, I think, are just proxy obsessions: in my case, I am trying to find some way to channel my care for girls who, for whatever reason, are far away from me. In my housemate's case, he listens to Jehst ten times in a row because he is obsessed with the sheer skillful exuberance of the English language, with hip-hop, with speech.

Which is a little healthier, perhaps.

I don't know if what I'm talking about here is the already much talked-about earworm, but I suspect there is some difference. The earworm comes into your head unbidden. These songs, you invite them in.

I had first planned these paragraphs as an introduction to an open thread, and so will conclude:

TL;DR: What songs are you obsessed with, and why?

And again, the Times

An interesting thing is happening in this Times article on Jackie Chan's inadvertent reactionary activism--there's a YouTube link! In the lede! Since when did the Times start including external links in its web versions of print stories?

I feel like I have missed the boat on this one.

And here's a funny sentence, for your pleasure:

As the storm gathered, words turned to action: the mayor of Taipei, Taiwan’s capital, dropped Mr. Chan as an ambassador for the 2009 Summer Deaflympics in Taiwan.

More Red Flag Words

1. "Let's catch up soon."

2. "Whatever does not kills you makes you stronger."

3. "My personal philosophy."

4. Gratuitous use of scare quotes.

5. Chocotinis.

6. "X pokes you!" (On Facebook.)

7. "I'm sorry but I just have to be selfish right now..."

8. "I finished writing my novel."

A Fact So True I Wish I Had Made It Up Myself

Detroit hockey octopus throwing tradition. It exists.

Via mefi (thread contains MANY more octopi links, like my new favorite blog [sorry, Brendan!] Today In Tentacles.)

HAPPY ALL CAPS TUESDAY

IT'S TUESDAY AGAIN, THE DAY WHEN WE RITUALLY HIT THE CAPS LOCK KEY, AND THE WORLD--SUDDENLY, MIRACULOUSLY, BECAUSE OF THE MUSIC OF THE SPHERES OR SOMETHIN--BECOMES MANY TIMES MORE AWESOME THAN IT WOULD BE OTHERWISE. YOU GUYS KNOW THE DRILL. WELL, IF YOU HAVE NOT YET RECEIVED THE ALL CAPS MEMO, I WILL TELL YOU THE DRILL:

EVERY TUESDAY

ALL CAPS

SO, WITHOUT FURTHER ADO, HERE ARE SOME MEMES THAT I MADE.









ARE YOU ENOUGH OF A BADASS TO MAKE YOU OWN MEMES AND POST THEM ON THE ALL CAPS TUESDAY FACEBOOK GROUP? PROBABLY NOT.

I MADE THE DEPRESSION DOG AND ADVICE DOG MEMES USING THE TOTALLY ALL-CAPS MEMEGENERATOR.

A Papal Fact

Of all the popes, the most curious must of course be Gregory the Uncertain, who was pope for only three years, between 1012 and 1015.

Gregory entered the papacy enamored with the fashionable superstitions of the time, such as miracles performed by holy men, the wondrous properties of relics, and the existence of and communication with demons. In fact, in his first year as pope, Gregory entertained a near-record number of pilgrims, con-men, and supplicants, who filtered in and out of the halls of the Vatican presenting the finger-bones of famous historical figures, odd growths on their foreheads that looked like cauliflower, and talking animals who got suddenly shy standing in front of the pope himself and would barely be able to talk about the weather. Gregory was quite amused by all these visitors, and was often seen clapping his hands and laughing.

However, Gregory was a weak-willed man, chosen more for his political connections to the powerful Florentine merchants the Snarkerellis than for his spiritual or organizational might, and he soon grew tired with his amusements and began in earnest to think of the nature of worship. This initiated what were known as the Months of Confusion, as Gregory would issue decree after decree, almost daily piling up new ordinances and suggestions, often confusing, mostly contradictory. For instance, on one day, Gregory, after studying some scrolls made the more obscure by his poor Aramaic, proclaimed that Christians should not keep cats. Duly, there were many devout families who, on hearing the news, tossed out their cats to the night and praised god for it. However, not more than eight days later, Gregory issued another statement proclaiming that the keeping of all pets, cats included, encouraged the love of Christ, and was a blessing, confusing all those who had so callously tossed our their family pets not eight days before. Gregory’s fiddling touched topics as diverse as haberdashery, accounting, archery, meteorology, cooking (especially the drying of fruits and fish), alchemy, the training and up-keep of house-squid, the naming of children, and a spectacular, daily, three-week-long clusterfuck of decrees relating to the wearing and washing of undergarments whose various twists and turns of argument are utterly incomprehensible to the modern reader.

Pope Gregory, however, ensured his obscurity when he pronounced his last bit of advice, in which he, in mealy-mouthed Latin, proposed that maybe the whole dogma stuff of the Catholic church should be taken as a metaphor or something, because it really makes more sense that way, right? He was found dead three days later. He was canonized in 1456, and is considered the patron saint of stutterers and the indecisive.

This pope fact was requested by reader Melanie Poole. Request any sort of fact in the comments, and there you go, I will write you one.

Metaphor

Can I Has Relaunch?

So. I am posting more in this here blog. And I changed the title image. What do you think?

Also--tell your friends! Drop some comments.

Carousel

via Mefi

Why You Should Want Higher Taxes

Check it out. My colleague Ilan Moscovitz at the Motley Fool proposes that the financial crisis was caused, in part, by investors focusing on short-term gain rather than on the long-term health of the businesses they were investing in. He proposes a tax on short-term sales of stock to provide an incentive for long-term rather than short term investing. But why am I telling you this? Go read it yourself.

Nine Red Flag Words

Here at Raise High The Roofbeam, Carpenters! we are committed to providing you with the most up-to-date in conversational technology. That is why we present you today with this handy list of red-flag words, phrases which lift a metaphorical red flag to announce the potential approach of conversational danger. When your conversational partner utters any one of these phrases, we advise you to take care, plan your escape routes, and calmly assess the situation. Remember: don't panic! If you are prepared and watch for the warning signs, you too can avoid the pitfalls of interlocutory disaster.

1. "I'm just at a point in my life when..."

2. "Deconstruction" to mean destruction or taking apart.

3. "Deconstruction" to mean "Deconstruction".

4. "Vis a vis", also, "qua".

5. "I don't mean to be [racist/insensitive/stupid] BUT..."

6. "Yeah, I know that X is an asshole, but he's really nice once you get to know him."

7. "I only [dance/sing/talk to girls/go out] when I'm drunk."

8. Anything to do with quantum mechanics or neuroscience (fMRI studies in particular) when the person's only source is "Some article I read..." or, in a more extreme case, "Some video my friend told me about..." that 'scientifically proves' [telepathy/time travel/the existence of god and/or the afterlife] ESPECIALLY when included in a discussion of recreational psychedelic drugs.

9. "Yeah, I wrote something about that on my blog."

Please suggest your own red flag words in the comments.

Local Media Me

I will be an audience member on SBS' Q&A tonight. I won't be doing any Aing, nor will I be doing any Qing, but if you tune in you might be able to see my interested, beautiful face.

Nostalgia

Right now I'm living in Canberra, where I went to high school. I left six or seven years ago. At the bars I crane my head around, looking for ghosts of people who knew me in high school, or who I used to know, and I often find them. Someone came up to me in the supermarket who used to buy my zines. People ask me when I cut off my dreadlocks (about eight years ago).

One of the questions people ask me is whether it's strange to be back, since so much has changed. The city center of Canberra, which is really the social heart of the city, and the only place that mattered to me as a kid, has changed dramatically. A mall has grown up around the edges of it, where once there were big thirsty parking-lots, and embraced the open square of Garema Place with a stone-face curtain of shops and movie theaters. That has changed, certainly. But the strange thing is more how everything has stayed the same. There still sits the same sleepy Vietnamese restaurant you never saw anyone eat in, that you were sure was about to go out of business, with the same faded plastic sign, the same sun-faded menu. The same streets and trees and the same faces. The same feeling of gentleness.

But for me this place is haunted. And each place has for me a memory. I remember driving by this empty lot nearing to the Braddon Club, heading up towards my home just a couple weeks ago. It was just gone autumn and the gutters were beginning to brim with leaves. And I remembered, so immediate that it hurt, walking down that very street, going home, in the cusp of autumn, with a beloved ex-girlfriend, just as we were beginning to court each other. The memory was so close, it was surprising that it was seven or eight years old. The fact that she wasn't next to me, that I couldn't call her, that our relationship had grown older, more complicated, and adult, just struck me for that brief moment as impossible--how could she not be waiting just outside of my vision, about to take my hand? how could it have changed. And yet I looked around and in the car were strangers, absolute strangers. (I had hitched a ride home with some acquaintances.) She wasn't there. Once I made it home I touched that place with my mind again, hoping to find her, but could taste only a dim memory, half-cold and unappetizing. For the twentieth of thirtieth time that day, I wished to go back in time, and wished at the very same moment to be right exactly where I was.

Robert Caro On LBJ On Charlie Rose

Something to chew on

Are we then not beasts to call the labor which makes us bestial?

...Perhaps we are right to condemn ourselves for giving birth to such an absurd thing as a man; right to call it an act of shame and the organs which seem to do it shameful.

--Montaigne, from On Some Lines Of Virgil

Hitting the gym!

Guys, this blogging thing is pretty tough! I'm gonna go training!

via waxy.

What's The Use In Talking?

So Thucydides is writing about the Spartans' debate about whether to go to war against the Athenians, treating us to pages and pages of arguments for and against, well-argued and cogent. Yet in the end the argument that wins the day is a quick paragraph so full of platitudinous cliches it makes a Hallmark Birthday card look like Winston Churchill. Thucydides says this:

The Spartans voted... that war should be declared, not so much because they were influenced by the speeches of their allies as because they were afraid of further growth of Athenian power....

This made me think of Lyndon Johnson, who in the position of Senate Majority Leader, saw the magnificence of public speaking much like the way you or I would look at a sledgehammer, that is, a blunt tool, to be used by someone else.

Eloquence on the floor of the Senate didn't matter because it was not eloquence that changed votes. It was Johnson with his promises, threats, and compromises. Even after hearing the most moving speech, a Johnson crony would still vote, not with his conscience, but with Johnson, for voting with Johnson was how people got things done. Johnson's early success as Majority Leader came by way of limiting debate on the floor: he made the entire Senate much more efficient by using a hitherto little-used parliamentary technology called a unanimous consent agreement, which forced the entire Senate to vote on particular bills at a particular time, clearing up the traditional speechifying logjam of Senates past. Indeed, the only real importance that speeches had on the floor of the Senate in those days was the threat of the filibuster, and comparing the filibuster to normal eloquence is like comparing a fancy dinner with a competitive eating championship.

This happens in the critical moment in the debate about the 1957 Civil Rights Bill:

Once, when Everett Dirkson of Illinois rose to support [House Minority Leader William] Knowland with his special brand of empty grandiloquence ('I have been thinking much of Runnymede'), Johnson half-yawned and lazily scratched his chest, in a magnificent gesture of casual confidence.

That was Stewart Alsop as quoted in Robert Caro's magnificent biography, Master of the Senate. Here's Caro's quick gloss on Alsop:

The speeches didn't matter; Johnson's every gesture made that clear. What mattered was the votes--and he had the votes.

And he had the votes not because of speeches, but because he appealed to practical things. Yet still I think rhetoric is important, speeches are important, eloquence is important. Why?

The Secrets of An Exclusive Secret Society Revealed

It's the first day of the Easter long weekend here in Canberra, and I am sitting in my bed with an espresso battling the cloying demons of memories of previous Easter long weekends. So, here I will give you a quick squib I wrote a while ago. Enjoy.




“Is that the office of some sort of a secret society or something, that ornate building you guys are exiting now?”
Me and Ronnie were dressed in lavender robes leaving the Osiris Temple. It was two in the morning and we were being accosted by some drunk too lonely to know not to talk to strange men late at night. Ronnie shook his head and told the guy that we were just renting the place out for a convention and so we didn’t know if it was a secret society or not, but wouldn’t it sure be funny if it was a secret society now, wouldn’t it!
And that’s one of the best things about being in a secret society: you get to tell people you are most definitely not in a secret society.

Conversations I get to have now that I’m in a Secret Society
GIRL: Wow, look at this, this guy at the Exclusive Hollywood Party, a photo of whom is in the tabloid entertainment magazine I am currently reading, he certainly looks a lot like you, isn’t that strange?
ME: Yes that is strange.
GIRL: And is that Scarlett Johannsen giving him a rather amorous kiss on his cheek?
ME: Yes. It appears to be so.
GIRL: That guy is very lucky, isn’t he.
ME: I agree wholeheartedly.

COLLEGE FRIEND: I didn’t know that you knew my (boss / girlfriend’s father / pastor) so well. Thanks a lot for getting me out of that jam I got myself into through of a startling lack of foresight and wisdom that unfortunately is well within character. If it wouldn’t have been for you I would have lost my (job / girlfriend / position in the church choir).
ME: It was no problem.
C.F.: And you know what’s weird, I just got my utility bill today, and there must be a problem with my meter, because now they’re actually giving me money. Can you believe that?
ME: Yes. Yes I can.

GUY AT A BAR, TO ME AND RONNIE: What was that elaborate, acrobatic handshake you guys just did? It wasn’t a secret handshake for some sort of secret society or anything, was it?
RONNIE: Of course not.
G.A.A.B.: Because whatever it was, it looked really awesome and I wish you could teach me.
RONNIE: We could, but then we would have to kill you.
ALL:
RONNIE: That was a joke. We wouldn’t have to kill you.
ME: We’d just have to poke out your eyes.
ALL:
RONNIE: Actually, we wouldn’t have to do anything. We have an army of thralls to do our dirty work for us.

I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking: I bet you guys get up to some weird stuff. Probably with celebrities. And that it’s kinda gay.
And I’d say to you: The rituals of the Secret Society, while being continuously updated to reflect the changing times, are based on a proud tradition that dates back to the very founding of the Secret Society itself – which is a really mind-bogglingly long time ago (I can’t tell you how long ago, exactly, except that it pre-dated and was responsible for some pretty major milestones in the development of human culture, you’d be surprised) and while a few of these august rituals might seem a little, well, baroque to the outsider – even cruel – it’s still part of our tradition: and plus, they give the whole thing a sort of dangerous mystique which is so very integral to the proper coolness of a secret society.
And of course there are celebrities. But not the ones you’d expect. And they all go by their real names. And are a lot of fun at Charades, which, while not our official party game, is pretty close. Our official party game is one of our closest guarded secrets.

You know, the power, the celebrity friends, the parties – all of that is great. But it doesn’t make me happy.
What does make me happy is this. I get to go through the boring shit I have to do every day to keep up appearances and I know that underneath it all, behind the hours of work, beneath the restaurants and bars and strip-malls, lurking inside the television news broadcast smiles and the scientific discoveries there works a hidden but understandable intelligence. And it’s especially cool to know that I have some power over this intelligence. I live a parallel life in which the curtain hiding the truth of reality has been pulled back, and I can smile at the futility of it all, and the majesty. Which is pretty cool.

An Australian Fact

One of the most successful medicinal hoaxes of English-speaking history was perpetrated against the nascent Australian settlers in the mid-18th century. Posing as a Hindu yogi named Adulakar, the disgraced Scottish physician Dr. Sam Arkman sold a snake-oil cure for "recidivism, onanism, and malingering, used exclusively by the Hindoo Prince for upwards of three millennia, now for the first time available for purchase or barter to the White Man, whose industry has now made him a fit subject for this miraculous mixture, this potent brew, available for only 2d, or equivalent in goods or specie." Although the exact composition of Hindbrew, as the drink was called, is for the most part unknown, it was no more than a mixture of hastily distilled spirits, mud and tincture of semi-medicinal herbs. However, due to Dr. Arkman's intense charisma, and the penchant of the Australian people for drink, Hindbrew became a staple of the Australian landscape, only being removed from school lunches in New South Wales, for instance, in 1979. After a series of exposes by the Sydney Morning Herald, which bravely revealed the truth about Mr. Arkman and his popular cure in 1981, Hindbrew was quietly removed from the Australian marketplace, being replaced by an alcohol-free solidified substitute known as 'Vegemite'.

Books I Am Reading

Thucydides
David Mitchell--Ghostwritten
Jon Elster--Ulysses Unbound
Montaigne

Any other recommendations?

Daily posting will resume now.

Bad Metaphors Department

Wherever you go, money's the same color.