"we pledge allegiance to rock and roll..."

i want to write a thesis on this!

In his 1987 culture war manifesto The Closing of the American Mind, Allan Bloom [...] sees music as a generational obsession with no historical equivalent. It is "society's greatest madness." Literature, film, technology, career choice...nothing defines the young identity as thoroughly as musical affiliation. We pledge allegiance to rock and roll, the lowbrow howlings of cosmetic revolutionaries and pelvic ministers. The beat of rock music is the beat of sex, and the fandom of twelve year-olds is their premature induction into sexual maturity; Bloom's nightmare is young children singing "Brown sugar, how come you taste so good?" They cannot authentically be erotic, so they just gyrate and masturbate and spoil all their potential. It's not the loss of innocence or lack of family values he laments, but that the soul under these conditions becomes really boring. All the erotic tension that used to keep us tight like a bow, hungry with a desire that motivates us to transcend the mundane, is dissipated by premature ejaculation, so to speak. Eros used to fill kids with wonder and longing. Now it is all wasted like so many dribblings of ejaculate on the sheets.

the awesome part? this is the introduction to an album review for Britney Spears' recent attempt to reintroduce herself into the realm of pop cultural relevance.

rhetorical questions

today, while watching the Daily Show, a number of things occurred to me. (pardon my inertia if these are really duh, but they were pretty a-ha to me about a minute ago.)

1) why is it that conservatives champion the "joe six packs," but refuse to pay them living wages? seems like one doesn't follow the other...

2) Trojan Brand Condoms is imploring Americans to "Join the movement to help America evolve. Use a condom every time." i thought that was interesting marketing, because the first thing that came to mind was "wow, i bet the creationists are going to have a problem with that." and then i remembered that creationists are probably also the same bunch teaching abstinence-only sex ed and not using birth control.


i thought the use of the word "evolve" was an interesting choice as well, considering the implications of "the smart choice," the non-ape-ish thing to do. but there's also the idea of "survival of the fittest" – thinning the gene pool and leaving only those best able to survive current conditions. and i thought that maybe in our current state of environmental, political, economic, financial, existential and spiritual duress, how maybe what we need is less "ignorant" people. and i thought of how maybe the "smart" thing to do would be less human reproduction. but then, isn't Trojan missing the demographic that needs birth control the most? hmm... ?

also, i found this segment from the Daily Show on undecided voters particularly on point:



"[McCain and Obama] are totally different! why can't you decide??!!"


my thoughts exactly, Sam Bee.

-stef lee


p.s. whilst organizing and editing tags today, i discovered that "rhetoric" is pretty much a greatest hits of free rad!cal writings. who knew? not me.

p.p.s. scary what-if: Palin as President. just try opening the windows and doors in that office. creeepy!

dessicating + de-sexing

from the pages of a notebook, which i sought to represent as closely to the original hand-written version:

i've noticed a weird vibe about the ppl here. i'm struck by how attractive everyone is:

tall, leggy blondes; thin, well-spoken women with perfect bone structure in skirts and stilettos all the time

but what's remarkable about it is there is nothing really attracting about any of them.
none! and it occurs to me: they're too perfect, they're almost eery

it reminds me of Vonnegut's short story "Welcome to the Monkey House" and the suicide mistresses (/waitresses?) and how they were required to dress in skin tight body stockings and knee-hi boots, but no one was attracted to them & they weren't sexual beings themselves b/c ppl were doped up on these numbing pills [that made them lose all sexual urges]

and it seems to me it's the same way with [the women here]. everyone is so obsessively focused on [a] "mission" that they're blind, deprived of their basic humanism, dried up and numb

i feel like since i got here i'm feeling myself become... a prude/ dried up/ sapped of sexual urgency/ desire or spontaneity or fervor... it's hard to say

but you get closer to what i'm thinking if you think about it this way: sex as a ferile desire/ need/ a wild passion/ an urgency/ an animal veracity/ferocity that grips you, right? something a little depraved, perhaps a little messy, a little too animal and a little too human

= too much reality and rawness for this environment, which is drying up all our sexual/human urges

i think of corporate suckers, how those poor bastards spend so much goddamn time in suits, in meetings, in these glass facade buildings [spending all day repressing their human needs and desires] so that all they wanna do when they get back to their posh hotel rooms is don a pair of lady's stockings and fuck each other doggy style.

or, i think of school teachers we've all had, those crusty old spinsters who we pitied on some level as kids b/c we knew they were [probly] terribly alone and had probably never known a night of real passion in their lives.

and i wonder: is that what i'm getting into?

-stephanie

(as i wrote this i listened to "the twist" by Frightened Rabbit, off their album Midnight Organ Fight and one quote kept recurring at exactly the right moments: "i need human heat."

i need human heat. i need human heat. i need human heat. i need human heat. i need human heat. i need human heat. i need human heat. i need human heat. i need human heat. i need human heat. ...)