Busy, busy

Not much posting here of late; I’ve been immersed in the gruesome process of trying to crank out my dissertation proposal. I’m always insisting that all I want to do is a nice, efficient, compact framing…why then, am I constantly finding Frankenstein on my desktop? Niklas Luhmann is to blame, obviously.

In the meantime, since ‘Broken Social Scene‘ seems as apt a description as any for my present situation, here’s a video from their truly superb album, You Forgot It In People.

Random notes from the year ‘2012′

* Sorta spoilers ahead.

1. Neoliberalism prevails through the end. Africa is the only continent to survive the great deluge, and what do the rich and politically connected do? Head straight there to set up camp! “That’s why they call it the Cape of Good Hope” Really? Really?

2. Speaking neoliberalism, the s*** (this is still a family blog) hits the fan, and the G20 is now back to being the G8. Ugh. Assholes.

3. Speaking of Africa, how come our brilliant but loopy chief scientist tells us that the only way humanity is going to survive the Apolcalypse is to head to the Himalayan hills, when we could have just could have a built a few big tents in the Sahara? It seems to have come out of the whole thing reasonably intact.

4. “‘Those Chinese are amazing. I never thought it would have been possible in this little time.” This after hinting that essentially the future of humanity, such as it is, was saved on the back of Tibetan labor. I bet those monks never got a ticket on the life raft.

5. The U.S. just gets out of from under a thick layer of ice, and it has to suffer the same special effects all over again. Crap.

6. Actually, worse special effects, since the USS John F. Kennedy has apparently grown to three times the size of the Washington Mall.

7. And the Poseidon has to get flipped over again, too. Ugh. Seasick.

8. ‘Old Faithful,’ supervolcano. Take that, turistas!

9. Woody Harrelson has stopped acting and become the prophet we knew him to be.

10. Gordon, the plastic surgeon, deserved better.

Short review: Don’t get me wrong. I love disaster movies. But this was three hours of dreck. I thought it would be perfect relief after a busy week. It wasn’t. The end.

Gay marriage

Nothing pleasing or pleasant (or really unexpected) to report from yesterday’s election news, but most unsettling was the decision by Maine voters to repeal gay marriage. James Kwak at The Baseline Scenario, however, posts on some reasons for cautious optimism, nevertheless.

For someone who takes the 1970s and the 1980s as the frame of reference, the shift in opinion vis-a-vis gay marriage over the past ten years has indeed been surprising and welcome. With progress, however, comes disappointment; but then again, I’ve come to think of disappointment as a part of the genetic code of our federal system of governance. In any event, I’d also be interested in knowing not only the source of shifts in public opinion, but within the gay community itself – if I’m not mistaken, commitment among gays and lesbians to such a ‘bourgeois’ ideal as marriage was hardly uncontroversial or widespread, even as recently as twenty years ago. I should read Tina Fetner’s book, which may have some answers.

Hire a focus group

and have a human sacrifice.

Saturday silliness

With apologies to all of the cat lovers, to whom I’ve done nothing but make fun of.