A Black Metallish Image

...of oil destroying things:

English Is a Creole

re: the recent immigration "debates" in the House.

I hate to break it to you, people trying to promote forcing English to be the official language of the USA. But English isn't actually a language. That's why it's so effective as a language! It's a creole.

I don't mean pidgin forms of English. I mean all English is a creole. It's a kluge of other tongues, heavy on nouns imported wholesale from everywhere. And very low on rules (if there are any). Various Germans tried desperately to impose some in the eighteenth century, to little effect.

So you can walk into your local drugstore and say "Two packets of gum, an ounce of smack, this jar of sunscreen and some Twizzlers please." It's designed for trading, namely, for exchange between different races and cultures. It's designed for long lists of objects...

Forcing people to be proficient in English is a fantasy--there is no such thing as proficiency in English! Because English is not a language. So you can be Sarah Palin--face it Chomsky, there is empirical proof that generative grammar does not inhere in brains!

Discuss.

Massage as a Path to Sanity

Very kindly my new friend Tedd got me a massage this week. It was the best one I've had since 1995 in Boulder. Really powerful. It became clear, as I was having quite a bad day, that the physical body has, as I've experienced a little bit and thought quite a bit for some time, a number of paths to greater sanity within it.

Personally I would explain this by saying that the masseur kneaded my channels quite a bit, and that the synergy between the subtle body and the physical body got reset. Put me back in my body--the bad day was to do with Intellectual Stuff (never a good thing--we should be paid danger money!).

When you meditate and all that, you begin to realize how the physical body, and physical objects in general, are a bit of a miracle. Just basic "gross" bliss (as Rinpoche would put it), what an extraordinary thing.

A Simple Request

Adrenal glands, do you have to be so productive? Does there have to be so much adrenalin? I mean I'm only proofreading Hyperobjects here.

Pacifica Interview Today

This was an awful lot of fun. C.S Soong is a genius at his job. It airs at noon pacific time.

Against the Grain on Pacifica Radio airs on KPFA 94.1 FM in the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond, and on KFCF 88.1 FM in Fresno and California's Central Valley. It also broadcasts worldwide via kpfa.org.

Proofs Checked

The random citation check indicated that everything was as perfect as it could be.

This book is semiotically the shortest I've ever written at about 76000 words. But it won't be physically the shortest. With the color insert and index it will be about 220 pages. The press has nice big margins too.

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International Perspectives on Feminist Ecocriticism

Just out! With an essay by me on Barad, Irigaray and objects.

If you want to get into trouble, do write about Irigaray!

Karl Steel on Genes

This is very good. It gets to the heart of the matter, which is that DNA is a physical and a semiotic entity, a strange loop moreover in which the boundary between physical and semiotic can't be drawn in advance.

Hyperobjects Proofs

They have arrived. Extraordinarily, this book is going to appear, and on time too.

What I'm going to do today is drive to school with my small people and print it up. This also gives me a chance to do my ritual: the random citation check.

When I get proofs I choose at random several citations to check. If they are correct, I assume that the others are correct: they have of course been doubled and triple checked at previous stages.

Evening Walk

And now it's time for our evening walk, which consists of a block or so to the Menil Collection, past the Rothko Chapel, and into the University of St. Thomas. There is a very good labyrinth there, and it's good to do walking meditation on it.

MBV AUG

That's right. We happen to be in Denver in August after the Wordsworth Conference in Cumbria, and My Bloody Valentine are playing at the Ogden Theater. Haven't seen them since Glastonbury 1992 when they headlined. Of course one thinks that they are the most special band ever.

Irigaray

What is it about Irigaray that winds some people up so much? I must remember to use her work much more.

The International Social Science Journal

I'm just copy-editing my essay for the excellent Tom Ford, for that journal. The topic is "states of theory." I think Jameson will be in it. The issue was held up because of a funding controversy, involving UNESCO, the parent of the journal. Tom has been so patient.

"If It's Depressing It Must Be True"

Isn't that a nice line? It's by my friend Jeffrey Kripal. He is talking about the trouble with thinking in modernity.

Snowden Speculative Judgment

So the Ron Paul libertarian has ended up--as a gift to the Chinese.

"A popular Communist Party-backed newspaper...has urged China’s leadership to milk Snowden for information rather than expel him, saying his revelations concern China’s national interest."