Another video challenge for 5 November from my favorite masked man:
Light a candle and tell the world what you remember. Post yours now. Together we can light up the world.
Category Archives: philosophy
Empire, or Humanity? What the Classroom Didn’t Teach Me About the American Empire, by Howard Zinn
Passed along from NagOnTheLake by Metro, here is a thoughtful autobiographical essay by Howard Zinn, a former soldier and current thought leader (what we used to call philosopher, before we decided that old words were old-fashioned).
The Atene Button goes dark
Sigh.
Oh, it’s not like it hasn’t happened before. And it’s not like I didn’t expect it to happen again. Actors are … actorish, and this is what they do. They’re like cats on the doorstep…I want in…I want out…I want in…but unlike cats, you can’t exactly stick your foot under their butts and decide it for them. For one thing, most of them are bigger than you, if you happen to be me. For another, the whole virtual butt-kicking thing works much better in fetish DVDs than in motivational emails.
So I’ve heard.
But fame or no fame, actor or no actor, I’ve been down this pixel trail a time or two (dozen) before, and frankly, you can’t push people. They come or they go, and it can mean a great deal to the “audience” or it can mean nothing at all, but that makes no difference whatsoever to whether or not the person returns for the long term. I’ve seen people come back for twelve hours. I’ve seen people come back for just long enough to register a digital avatar trail and say “see, I went.” I’ve seen Brian Atene come and go and come back and go again over the course of a couple of years. But it’s the same process and we are just exactly as impotent.
I could email. I have his email. But I don’t for a second believe he’s playing coy: I think the man is honestly backing off, and that nothing is creepier than opening your email to see a mass of zombie grab-hands springing out from it, trying to draw you back. I’ll leave him be. If he returns, he returns; if he doesn’t, I hope he’s making shitloads of money and eventually sends me that autograph he owes me, which, no, I don’t think I’ll ever see. I’m like that myself, you see, and the list of things I owe to people I’ve never seen in the flesh is longer than I am tall. Even if I were, like, tall.
And if you think this is just about Brian Atene, you haven’t been paying attention at all.
Labor Day, Labour Day
Labour Day isn’t just an excuse for a long weekend. The idea behind a weekend is, some people actually do work hard enough through the week that they need two days of rest at the end of it, or the value of their labour will steadily decline over a relatively short period of time.
I’m no longer (thankfully) in the group for whom that is physically true, but posting seven days a week is exhausting in several rather unexpected ways, and so I’m taking time off the blogs and will see you all on Tuesday.
Of course, quite a lot of people (most people in the US, according to several studies I’ve seen) no longer have full employment with two days off each seven; the average worker has one to three part-time jobs, and substantial difficulties synching up their days off. This, plus the outrageous protests of, say, the fruit industry that they cannot find workers (try having fewer convictions for slavery and assault, more benefits, better wages…you get the picture) to pick one at random, is proof that those battles need to be re-fought. Some day they’ll be won again.
Meanwhile, enjoy this hands across the ocean video of Billy Bragg’s “There is Power in a Union” set to a slideshow of American workers through the 20th Century.
Stolen from Cord at the very good Mollygood, and here you thought gossip blogs were all fluff!
Every Day I Write the Blog Post
and every night someone complains about it.
Nonetheless, every time someone clicks Play on this YouTube, a new blogger gets her keyboard.
It’s true. It’s a fact.
If you haven’t looked out at a crowd of your friends and family and thought, Ah, material! you’re not really a writer.
Every Day I Write the Book, by Elvis Costello
Lyrics over the jump: Continue reading
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