Tara Stiles: Orthoskepsis: When Too Much Thinking Is A Bad Thing

Tara Stiles: Orthoskepsis: When Too Much Thinking Is A Bad Thing: 

"Perhaps thinking too much could be the problem. American physician Steven Bratman proposed the term orthorexia: 'orth' (right and correct) 'orexia' (appetite). The term refers to an unhealthy obsession with healthy eating. Orthorexia is not yet an eating disorder recognized by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. However, academic investigation is underway. I am convinced we also have an unhealthy obsession with thinking. What would that be called? Orth-o-skepsis (orth, plus the Greek skepsis: examination, doubt, skeptical philosophy). I just made that up. I threw in the 'o' so it would sound ok."

I'm not sure what I think about this.  On the one hand thinking too much is the cause of a lot of my misery, on the other trusting yr gut turns you into George W. Bush...

Conservatives lose first evolution vote | KXAN.com

Conservatives lose first evolution vote | KXAN.com: 

"AUSTIN (KXAN) - The drama over the potential inclusion of creationism or intelligent design in Texas biology curriculum is over for now as a coalition of six Democrats and two Republicans defeated an amendment that would have maintained discussion of evolution's 'weaknesses.'"

I love Texas.  It is nice not to have to be ashamed of it today.

Reviews: November 1979

Reviews: November 1979:

"Painter, playwright, novelist, aesthetician, and philosopher, Witkiewicz -- or Witkacy as he called himself -- belongs to the writers and thinkers known in Poland as catastrophists, who sprang up in the period framed by two world wars, the first of which brought the Polish state back into existence after nearly 150 years of dismemberment, and the second of which threatened the nation with total annihilation. Poised between cataclysms, Witkacy forecast an apocalyptic close to Western civilization and wrote with sardonic humor about the approaching end of the world."

Witkiewicz

Witkiewicz: 

"Reared in realistic ideology, we always ask of each work of art, 'Well all right, but what is it trying to say? What is it supposed to represent? What is the 'idea' behind this work?' As soon as we fail to get satisfactory answers to these questions, we turn away in disgust from the work under discussion, swearing more or less politely and repeating triumphantly, 'I don't understand.' We do not want to grasp the simple truth that a work of Art does not express anything in the sense in which we have grown accustomed to use the word in real life. Thus it always has been and always will be until Art comes to an end, which probably (and fortunately) will not happen in the form of naturalistic stagnation, as our stormy and anguished times prove. We do not understand that a work of Art is what it is and nothing else, since we have grown accustomed to think that Art is the expression of some kind of real-life content, the representation of some real or fantastic worlds, something that has value only when compared to something else of which it is the reflection. Even if we actually experience something else, which was and is the deepest essence of our individuality -- its directly given, irreducible unity -- we pay no attention to this impression under the impact of an ideology falsified by realism . . ."

Witkacy: Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz (1885-1939)

Witkacy: Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz (1885-1939): 

"He wrote: 'On leaving the theater, one should feel that he has woken up from some strange dream in which even the commonest of things possessed some strange unfathomed charm characteristic of dreams incomparable to anything else.'

This dream-like world is the only way, according to Witkacy that the theater can fulfill its task, which is to transport the spectator into an exceptional state, the state of sensuous comprehension of the Mystery of Existence which, in its pure form, cannot be reached so easily in the passing of daily life."

Witkacy: Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz (1885-1939)

Witkacy: Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz (1885-1939): 

"According to Witkacy, this Mystery can never be solved, but it can be experienced. In his theory of art, he claimed that through the experience of true art (primarily painting, drama, music) an individual intensifies his or her feelings of individuality and affirms his/her own uniqueness in the face of an alien universe. As a result, the individual restores temporarily what Witkacy calls Metaphysical Feeling of the Strangeness of Existence, which simultaneously creates a childlike sense of wonder and anxiety."

Text of President Barack Obama's inaugural address - Top AP Stories - MiamiHerald.com

Text of President Barack Obama's inaugural address - Top AP Stories - MiamiHerald.com: 

"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus - and non-believers."

The New #2

The Prisoner Reboots the Panopticon for 21st Century | The Underwire from Wired.com: 

"'We're run by the Pentagon, we're run by Madison Avenue, we're run by television, and as long as we accept those things and don't revolt we'll have to go along with the stream to the eventual avalanche.... As long as we go out and buy stuff, we're at their mercy.
'We all live in a little Village,' McGoohan concluded in the same interview. 'Your Village may be different from other people's Villages, but we are all prisoners.'"

There is a new Prisoner mini-series coming up.  I love the original, but will give the new one a chance.  A Prisoner for today could be great.

yeah, about that...

I demand
consistency
from others
that I do not
myself deliver.
I demand
devotion
that I myself
don't show.

how are you?

Polish culture: Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz (Witkacy)

Polish culture: Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz (Witkacy)

Witkiewicz's plays, unappreciated and largely misunderstood before World War II, were rediscovered in Poland in the 1960s and 70s. Largely characterized by a tone of parody, Witkacy reveals his derisive abilities in them with great force. All the literary references in the plays seem to reflect these abilities. What we have here is both mockery of the rhetoric of the Romantic and Young Poland movements, as well as a parody of motifs drawn from Ibsen and Strindberg, Shakespeare and Wyspianski, Rittner and Conrad. In Witkacy's works, humor almost always becomes macabre, a burlesque tone - an invariable ingredient of Witkiewicz's plays - combines with fantasy. Bitter irony and sarcasm strongly color the represented world, in which seriousness and "elevated" philosophical discourse are mixed perfectly with, and complement, the comedic tone. Konstanty Puzyna, in his classic introduction to the first full edition of Witkiewicz's plays, classified the writer as an exponent of the avant-garde current in European playwriting. Puzyna highlighted certain similarities with Expressionism, wrote about the parallels between Witkacy's plays and Alfred Jarry's UBU ROI, referred to the writer's poetic as Surrealist.

Polish culture: Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz (Witkacy)

Polish culture: Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz (Witkacy)

Witkacy wrote of drama that it should be akin to "the brain of a madman presented on stage."

and who can disagree with that?

Cool Scientist Alert

Why Did Western Drs. Promote Tobacco While the Nazis Fought Cancer?
| Health & Medicine
| DISCOVER Magazine: 

"It seems you have endless curiosity.

I’m amazed by people who don’t ask questions constantly. I was raised to think that the good life is asking questions and then always realizing that there are infinitely many more questions and that basically what we know is an infinitesimal part of what we might know. I’m interested in human suffering. I’m interested in the big, unanswered questions—in the massive infinity of ignorance that we swim in."

Hollywood and Fine - Marshall Fine Blog � Blog Archive � I hate myself for loving ‘24′

Hollywood and Fine - Marshall Fine Blog � Blog Archive � I hate myself for loving ‘24′: 

"Man, I love me some “24.”


I love the headlong pace. I love how much action, how many moments of confrontation, life-or-death decisions, jeopardy and fight-to-the-finish situations they pack into each 42-minute episode."

yup.  easily the most ideologically dangerous show I enjoy...

The Stooges mattered to me at a time when bands REALLY mattered to me. I still read Rolling Stone and SPIN regularly. I still sought out new music. I got Raw Power in high school. CBS nice price cassette. It was good. better than bowie. then freshman year of college I discovered the first album. Self-titled. That was the stuff. That wah guitar. There are, in my mind, two ways to use a wah pedal - like Jimi Hendrix or like Ron Asheton. Then, Oh My GOD, Funhouse. Calling from the funhouse, with my song... The best album ever made by white people. These records, this band, brought me to Sonic Youth, Mudhoney, Sugar Shack, Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane, and damned near everything that meant anything to me from the time I was 16 till, well, forever... There was a reunion tour recently and I didn't make enough of an effort to go. The reunion album - well, it just made me kinda sad - the new mudhoney album sounded to me like what i wanted a new stooges record to be... but I saw the dvd - and they rocked live - the old stuff still worked - and they were having fun... God I hope I have people like that in my life to have fun with years down the road... Some people say you can tell a lot about a person by asking, "The Beatles or The Stones?" I'd rather ask, "The Stooges or The Velvet Underground?" and for me, the answer is always, "The Stooges." ugh. I wanna be yr dog.

Marginal Revolution: Department of No

Marginal Revolution: Department of No:

"Of course they want a bailout but this is for me not a priority.� Given the new distribution of wealth, arguably we need more culture for lower-income people and less culture for the rich.� I don't think the old distribution of wealth is coming back anytime soon.

It's something to watch when the egalitarian and elitist tendencies of modern liberalism clash so strongly.� When it comes to high culture it's like this:� 'I don't think they should have so much money, but I sure like what they spend their money on.'� Yet if deflationary pressures are going to benefit lower class individuals with jobs, something has to give and that is, in part, the discretionary arts spending of the wealthy."

Interesting discussion in the comments...
some things for those of us in the arts to think about...
I hope to make theatre around the fire in the tent cities of the future - but I'm an optimist.

Jonathan Tasini: Conspiracy of Silence: Wage Collapse Caused Crisis

Jonathan Tasini: Conspiracy of Silence: Wage Collapse Caused Crisis:

"Basically, the basic bargain was roughly this--if you worked hard and became more productive, you would see that sweat of the brow in your wages. And from the post-war era until the 1970s, that deal basically held--as you can see from the lines that are basically close together until the 1970s.

Then, the lines diverge--dramatically. You can see it yourself. If the lines had continued to track closely together as they did prior to the 1970s, the MINIMUM WAGE would be more than $19 an hour. THE MINIMUM WAGE!!!"

Class War - the only war worth fighting - every other war is just them using us to fight each other...

I think things are going to get worse before they get better and the purposeful misunderstanding and misrespresenting of our current crisis is not helping.
The folks at the top of the pyramid are still concentrating on sucking any excess from those at the bottom.

I nearly got into a fight with some rich dude at Notsuoh on Jim's birthday. When I said that no C.E.O. works 800 times harder than I do he treated it like a personal affront. The idea that maybe the system is rigged and the elites exploit the middle and punish the lower he took as some kind of personal attack on his worth. maybe it was. if it wasn't at first, well, then, after he responded like a dick, it certainly became one... it took a cute 22 year old and a passed j. to diffuse the situation...

Spreading the wealth is the only way you richies are gonna get to keep even a portion of yrs... keep demanding it all and eventually we will rise up and take our share.

No Machine Can Do My Job As Resentfully As I Can | The Onion - America's Finest News Source

No Machine Can Do My Job As Resentfully As I Can | The Onion - America's Finest News Source:

"A machine can only contain wires, diodes, and gears, not the living, breathing sum of life's screw-ups, heartbreaks, and regrets."

Hullabaloo

Hullabaloo:

"Kurds who support circumcising girls say the practice has two goals: It controls a woman's sexual desires, and it makes her spiritually clean so that others can eat the meals she prepares."

Women are dirty and their urges have to be controlled because they're always tempting men to do things they shouldn't do. Same as it ever was.

"Devil woman you're evil like the dark coral reef
Like the winds that bring high tides you bring sorrow and grief
You made me ashamed to face Mary I barely had the strength to tell
Skies're not so black Mary took me back Mary has broken your spell

Oh devil woman devil woman let go of me..."

- Marty Robbins