Verpasste Anschlüsse! // Zmeškání Přípoje!

An anonymous aristocrat and long-time devotee from Eastern Europe has sent me the following transcription of a “Missed Connections” post-board from 1890’s Prague. In return he has merely asked that I sign off on several boxes of Earth from his native soil which are to be deposited in the old abandoned school building at Cumberland and Murray. This will go well.

beautiful girl at prague station with the wall-eye – m4w

It was 9:34 in the morning when I saw you getting off the train from Minsk. Whether you saw me or not is another question for the physiologists at Heidelberg. It was either me that caught the blessed ray of your single mannerist glance, or the damned dachshund beside me. I understand that the dachshund and yourself both have crossed eyes, and that there is therefore a natural connection between you. Nevertheless, I should like to plea my suit to you at length. Chaperoned tea?

Old Jew -- You Told Me You Were Going to Cracow!!!

You told me you were going to Cracow. You really wanted me to think you were going to Lemberg, but I knew you really were headed to Cracow, so why did you lie about it?

mensch, 47, pickled herring

You were carrying a beautiful looking jar of pickled herring on the corner of Szlaski and Coleslaw. I would very  much like to purchase one or several of these comestables at a reasonable rate. It has been all but impossible to get them, especially since Old Schmuyl caught the Geschraken in his Chutz. I am destined to leave Prague in a fortnight and would be harangued day and night by my seven bastard shadow-children in Lemberg if I return to them as herringless as I left. I just need that fish so damn bad.

Hunchback in my House on Himmelstrasse – husband 4 wife

The marriage agent assured me you didn’t have any blemishes at all. Turns out you have a hunchback! And now we’re married. How am I supposed to console myself? You are at least making a nice soup for supper I hope. See you at 4:30.

Where is my umbrella?

I had just purchased a marvellous black umbrella from the street vendor. So genteel! I left it at the door of the medical lecture. One of you scumbags made off with it like a cat mit a knackwurst. Who are you to go around taking people’s umbrellas?

Are you married?

Saturday Afternoon, Green Fan at Don Giovanni – gentleman 4 duchess (or higher?)

You were coquettishly cooling yourself with a green fan at last week’s performance of Don Giovanni. You laughed most heartily at Leporello’s recitatives, but turned away yawning at Donna Anna’s aria. The fellow with the red neck kerchief was clearly in your good graces at some point, but the manner in which you derided his snuff-box shows your intentions with him could never be serious.

A game of whist?

Beans

You tried to guess what I ate for supper yesterday. You guessed beans. You were wrong, I had beans two nights ago. Only later did I realize you were looking at some beans that were caught in my beard. It’s not often that happens. I like to take a bath at least once a month – whether I need it or not! But anyway, if the beans looked good to you, I could probably bake you some.

Golem -- Friday Night at “Das Ghetto” - m4w

They called you “the Golem” at the club because you were so Rubinesque. I nearly dropped my seltzer when I first laid eyes on your tuchus. When the Klezmer cover of Blue Danube started up I asked you for a dance. Such Tverking there was! But then your friend in the head-dress totally shmuck-blocked me. What a kleine nachtmusik it could’ve been…

Give me a ring some time -- we grab some supper ! I know a great Borscht place. (It’s my mother’s house).

shouting "to belgrade!" before the statue of radetzky - w4m

I saw you yesterday - a plump man on crutches dressed in Austrian military uniform. You were shouting "to Belgrade!" before the statue of Radetzky. Maybe you saw me? I had a pink dress on and I'm a little cross-eyed. I am from Minsk and am looking for a crazed, homeless local to show me around the city... Do call on me with flowers, or herring.

at the bottom of the moldau – a creepy poem! - m4w

I saw you walking dreamily by the Moldau looking all gothic and bohemian. Literally. Are you from Bohemia? Do you know my uncle Jaroslav? Anyway, I thought you were cute enough to write this creepy poem for. Enjoy!

At the bed of the Moldau

Wander the brinefish

There lay three Kings buried in Prague

The great doesn’t stay so

The small doesn’t neither

The night has twelve hours

And then comes the day,

And then comes the day.

The Seven Liberal Samurai Arts

Have you noticed the liberal arts degree is in “crisis”? With the recent weekly dump of editorials on the subject, I’ll bet dollars to donuts you’ve read at least ONE “omg the humanities!” type article in the last month. What is with these damn things? Has nobody else noticed how weirdly histrionic they are? I am shocked by how quickly they can move from a position of the loftiest self-praise to an account of persecution so paranoid that if a friend of mine started talking like that I would be advising him to seek medical help from two rooms away as I was reaching for my vacuum-cum-impromptu blunt defensive object. Who are these Quixotes, and how many books did they read to get that goddamn crazy?

*

Perhaps the most stirring scene in Kurosawa’s The Seven Samurai is the one right before the end of the first half: the samurai, gathered by economic desperation to defend a village of peasants, are treated skeptically by their charges. Finally, when the time comes to abandon three outer houses in the village for the greater defense of the whole, the inhabitants of the houses in question decide to drop the fight and to defend their homes on their own. Suddenly the righteous military method of the Samurai comes alive – the music swells into the Bushido leitmotif – Kambei runs up with his unit of well-disciplined farmers and cuts off the deserters:

You, pick up your spears and return to you units. There are only three houses beyond the bridge and there are twenty in the village. We cannot endanger twenty because of three. And if the village is destroyed, those three will not be safe  anyway. War is like that. If the defense is  for everyone, each individual will  be protected. The man who thinks  only of himself, destroys himself.  From now on, such desertion will be punished.

How often do those with a liberal arts education feel just like this when leading disillusioned charges through the militaristic discipline of writing a paper, preparing a thesis statement, or using a correct historical or literary allusion! You face the despair of your ill-prepared charge as they resign themselves to mediocrity; the sudden power of years of training in writing and critical thinking takes over: “Pick up your pen and return to your thesis” etc. Moments like that, just like the scene in the movie, serve as subjective justification for the clerisy just as the discipline of the Samurai seems to shine through the screen. One thinks, “how splendid! How could something so fine die out?”

And yet that is what the whole movie is about. The grandeur is just a fading shadow of what it once was; a stirring speech about war and death suitable before the walls of Osaka Castle is spoken in the comic context of the defense of a small village cynical peasants. Eventually most of the samurais die; it is right that they should do so. The remainder leave the village sad and dispirited, continuing their descent into living anachronism by a society that no longer needs killers. This perceived tragic state is how the proponents of liberal arts seem to see themselves today. Indeed, complaining about the state of the liberal arts is becoming a career-making position in its self.

*

I urge you to be critical about the recent dump of essays dealing with the state of the liberal arts. The systematic targeting of liberal arts programs for funding cuts cannot simply be a pogrom of the intelligentsia by the barbarian overbelly of society (managers, business men, suits etc). Nor is it the infection of the liberal arts by “scientizers” who want to empiricism the great and mystical tradition of the Great Books. The question is a complex one, but I suspect it is motivated by a structural need that engenders, rather than depends upon, the outer shell of the debate: a simple war of ideas. A sane consideration would require treatment beyond these histrionics about the misinterpreted “value of education”, as if the problem could be solved with just a spirited Socratic speech delivered to a crowd of knit-browed gentlemen blowing their noses with dollar bills, suddenly converted to the true meaning of education like the Grinch Who Stole Geist.

The people who write these essays are some of the dullest, most naïve, and least critical thinkers in academia. You will notice that they represent an increasingly reactionary tendency against the erstwhile domination of theory; what they preach is the (by no means well pedigreed or historically founded) pseudo-religion of the “great books” – essentially a faith in reading “in general” as the salvation of humanity, values, and tradition. Along with salvation, however, they are also sure to sneak in a pragmatic twist or two: the value of critical thinking for business development or the scarcity of “good writers” among communications students etc. 

Incidentally, I would be hesitant to concede to these people even that which they preach with regards to "Great Books". A lot of them remind me of Bible-Belters who stand by the truth of the Bible with really no interest in reading it. Somehow or another the Bible comes to the defense of the U.S.A, Israel, the Republican Party, Country Music, tax cuts for the rich etc. Their "reading" tends to exclude most of the actual content of the Bible - it serves as an origin rather than an ongoing source of truth. The sanctity of the Lumpen-GreatBooks are similarly often a justification for the economic back-end of the University System as it stands today.

My general requests to these hacks would be: Stop defending culture in my name, or in the name of all people who read books. Stop trying to start shit between me and Scientists. Stop trying to justify money in your pocket with smokescreens like "the death of culture" and stop pretending like what you do is anything like promoting free thought. Also, read more.

*

What these book lovers do not ever seem to do is an analysis of the problem from any perspective other than that of some Haroldo-Allanian Bloom decay of kultur. As soon as the topic of the institution is brought up, a strawman of a “clash of ideas” is immediately put in its place. Ignoring any sort of social or economic analysis of the institution of the University, the structural relation of MONEY to specific programs, the internal politics of funding and funding sources, or the viability of maintaining the system of an arts degree in today’s world, they rather settle on a vague position akin the Hegelian “Beautiful Soul” under siege by the barbaric tendencies of the age. Attacked from all sides, the supposedly objective presentation of great ideas in books simply read without a theoretical framework is being poisoned by demands for pragmatism and science on the one hand and biased, narrow minded European theory on the other. What we are left with is the standard pose of melancholy by a presumed over-class of aristocrats in decay. It is an entirely mythological view of the problem.

Lukacs said: “A conceptual mythology always points to the failure to understand a fundamental condition of human existence, one whose effects cannot be warded off. This failure to penetrate the object is expressed intellectually in terms of transcendental forces which construct and shape reality, the relations between objects, our relations with them and their transformations in the course of history in a mythological fashion.”

Perhaps the true question to ask is why the crisis itself is doing so well. The liberal arts degree as it is currently structured is not an ancient institution – it has, as long as it has existed in its contemporary form, always been in crisis. It is almost as if the right to plead for the liberal arts in the face of barbarity is the very thing one earns when one gets the degree. One is taught how, and then granted the qualification to, speak from the side of culture against the rest of society.

What these articles represent is actually a mindset entirely opposed to the supposed goal of a “liberal education”. They are precisely representative of a sect that is unable to see its interests as part of a greater whole; the worldview expressed in them presents a shockingly dulled sensitivity to the totality of the university system as such. It’s as if a censor had forbid them to actually discuss the bureaucratic operations and relations of the institution, leaving them with only allusions and obscure references in the world of fairy tales to get their subversive message across.

Benjamin Girls

These unpublished letters between the philosophical shyster Walter Benjamin and his pal, Kabbalah scholar and Go partner Gerschom Scholem were discovered in a chest in a Jerusalem closet labelled "String and Elastics", which Scholem was very keen on saving in his golden years. Also discovered was a pictured of Hannah Arendt with a Hitler mustache doodled on. I publish them here for the first time because that's usually considered a pretty cool thing to do:

Liebe Walter,

It has been months since your last letter, and we here in the Holy Land shake our heads in confusion or because there is a big wasp buzzing around. They are crazy big here. Why are you so silent? The last we heard was from that jerk Hannah Arendt, who wrote that you were hanging around with that communist hussy Asja again. Really Walter, I cannot stand the idea of you rising with the proletariat. Why bother with Moscow sluts? We’ve sluts a-plenty here, why, dozens! You should see how their soft European skin blisters in the horrible desert heat! I cannot accept that you truly believe in this socialist doctrine. I know you far better than that, Walter. You are at heart a theologian, a lover of enigmas, and a man who knows how to save string. In other words, Walter, you are Jew. Come to your people! Are you truly naïve enough to believe the Party will stand for your one-liners? Try the one you pulled on Herzl back in 1914, you know, when you asked him whether he was an Essene who believed in low-flying Angels, because his fly happened to be undone! Try that on your Comrade Stalin and see where it takes you! Trust me, Walter – my brother is a communist, and he smells like cabbage.

                We are looking forward to your piece on Heinrich Heine, Moses Mendelsohn, and the Question of Latkas. I cannot imagine this progressing without a knowledge of Hebrew, which, as far as I can tell, you still haven’t bothered to learn. Your laziness astounds me. To that end I have spoken to a friend at the budding University of Jerusalem (the Arts faculty at present consisting of myself, 3 rabbis, one angry Hegelian Jew from Koln and 3 chickens (that belong to the rabbis)) to recruit you for the faculty, and to send you, in order to entice you to our mother tongue, a stipend of considerable sum to come here to study Hebrew. I hope, by hook, crook, or shekel, to draw you over here as soon as possible.

With greatest kicks in the tuchus,

-Gerschom Scholem

P.S. The Arab question here is, I will be honest, worsening by the day. These fellows are intolerable and most un-European. I have personally got into a row with a nasty fellow named Abdelhadi, with whom I had the misfortune of meeting at a supper, and, having accidently trod on his toe, demanded immediate satisfaction or the purchase from him of a herd of goats. I am nearly at my wits end, and am on the cusp of purchasing the animals due to his constant harassment. Particularly irksome is his method, which involves hiring a Bedouin troupe to strategically and maliciously leave camel droppings in hidden areas around my common haunts. Clearly he learned these guerrilla tactics from Lawrence during the war. I am nearly at my wits end with him.

Liebe Gerhardt

Either your last letter carried with it the geistige scent of the Holy Land, or you must cease mixing garlic with cardamom in your supper. I am more than excited to hear about the stipend. Please have it sent over as soon as possible – I feel myself suddenly compelled, as if by a higher entity, to begin again the study of that tongue which I have for so long avoided as “stupid, hard, and totally gay”. In the meantime, I must beg your tolerance of Asja. I don’t know what Hannah may have said about her, but I assure you they really are that big. But she not only offers a testing ground for philosophical manoeuvres – she has also introduced me to many in her circle.

 Perhaps the most exciting is one Bertolt Brecht – a true Marxist who, upon meeting me, slapped me in the face and begun shining my shoes, claiming that a proletarian must do both at the same time. His play How I Met Your Mother, based on Gorky, has made me re-appraise the entire question of Rom-Coms.

I have abandoned the Latkas bit for a piece in a similar, though perhaps more secular vein – namely, Dialectical Materialism and the Mechanical Reproduction of Croissants in the Age of Baudelaire*. You will forgive this vein of inquiry – to be honest, I feel a true split, one side of me longing for the theological categories of our shared mystical youth, and the other, to knock hats off of bourgeois gentlemen in the street while screaming “hoopla!” I can only hope that Asja continues to drop her spoon every time the argument gets too heated – a trick, I admit, that has won over many for the Party before me.

With mostly smiles,

-Walter Benjamin

P.S. I am sorry to hear about this Abdelhadi. Have you tried reasoning with him, or is it a case of kismet on the brain? What will you do with goats, Gerhardt? I hear these Arab nobles have a great fondness for chess – perhaps you could challenge him to a game, the winner walks away with satisfaction, and the loser, the goats? Remember the opening I always taught you, and be sure you do not use it. It is a horrible opening.

* The unfinished drafts of this essay were later purchased by Kanye West, who used their theories on speedy confectionary to great effect in "I Am a God".

Liebe Walter,

I am surprised by your last letter. My friend at the University claims you have already received the stipend – a move I in no way approved of, since it will surely mean your endless procrastination of the trip itself. You are sketchy as an Alexanderplatz fruit salesman sometimes, dear Walter. I am sure you have already spent the cash to pad out your lavish collection of children’s books. What was the last one you showed me? A first edition of Der Struwwelpeter, in which all the naughty boys and girls are subjected to torture by an evil Demiurge. Fate, Walter. I wonder that you do not see your own doomed end in the dilly-dallyings you have with this Muscovite BBW.

In short, Walter, communism is stupid. I have met this Brecht once before – it was at a dinner in Berlin. I accidentally trod on his toe, and the nasty fellow, dressed like a cab-driver in all leather, demanded that I buy a row of tickets for some awful show of his. In all honesty, Walter, I am happier with the goats.

In suspense of your latest sus move,

-Gerschom Scholem

P.S. I took your advice and challenged Abdelhadi to a game. I do not know if it was the strong Turkish coffee or the heat of the afternoon. Try as I might, Walter, I could not help but use your terrible opening. The day was lost, all is lost, except the goats, which have run rampant in the yard. I fear for my rosebushes.

Liebe Gerhardt,

                Excuse my brief letter, which cannot possibly make up for the last one you sent, as well as the charming essay you forwarded on The Golem and its Relationship to Professional Wrestling. Thank you very much for translating it out of Hebrew. I will get right on that stuff, I swear.

You are quite right! The money did make it over after all. It turns out that it really didn’t go very far. I am planning to begin to make preparations to embark for Jerusalem at once. I will go by way of Spain, and the lovely islands of Majorca. You cannot imagine how poor I am, Gerhardt. Nobody will buy shit from me. I tried to pawn off a marvellous essay on the Origin of German LOLspiel to the Warburg Institut but they were having none of it. Only that creepy guy with the weird eyes who always mutters under his breath about jazz – you remember him from that awkward party in the Freienwald? Adorno! He and his gang are showing the slightest bit of interest in me. You wonder why I turn to Marxism – it pays the bills, Gerhardt! Judaica can barely be sold to wrap a wurst in.

P.S. I am sorry, truly sorry, that you fell into the temptation to use my awful opening, and are now in possession of far too many goats. I only assume you did not sell them right away because you were observing the Sabbath. Or is there another reason? I am wondering if you mightn’t send one over here to teach me Hebrew. Those goats pronounce it so beautifully, don’t you think?

Annual Book Sale – Expect Tolstoy, Sluts!

THURSDAY TO FRIDAY – Annual University Booksale!

Thousands of titles to be had, including:

• Sir Walter Scott
• Tolstoy
• A brown book
• Victorian children’s poetry books that smell like scotch and quinine
• Dead spiders
• Books with hair in them
• The Collected Works of NOT FOR RESALE
• Sluts, like, all over the place
• Live spiders
• The Wonderful Colours of Monet – (black and white plates only)
• A shitty early translation of Nietzsche on “The Superman”
• Seriously, sluts love used books
• Old Sawburgh Jahosaphet’s Book of Humourous Tales 1907, including “Mother, The Smoked Herring!”
• First garbage novel by awesome modern author and nothing else
• Automative Repair Manual ‘87
• A book with inappropriate terms for ethnic groups you should buy to show your friends
• Woody Allen: Interviews – This Shit Has No Jokes
• A book of Victorian medical practices you will buy for 25$ and never look at again
• Mein Kampf, but stamped “Perth Public Library – Young Adult”
• A History of Scottish Presbyterianism, Vol. VI Only (MUST PURCHASE WHOLE SET)
• No Jane Austen after 9:15 thanks to that bitch over there
• A box full of nothing but shredded newspaper
• Antonio “Toni” Negri and Michael “Mikey” Hardt – Holy Moly, Revolutioly!
• The Vice Guide To Ethical Butt-Buggery and Fuckbuddery
• The Poems of Alfred Tennyson x 600 copies
• Hearken Not to the Kaiser
• Dual language texts that make Latin students unduly excited: Pominius’ List of Roman Chamberpots
• Edgar Allen Poe – Misc. Unscary Tales – “A New Bedford Jaunt”, “The Dictionary Man”
• Dated fashion magazine your mom makes you buy for your sister not to read
• Pamphlets for things that don’t exist anymore using words you find confusing together
• It’s in old German Fraktur font but check it out I think the title says “Boner”
• The Unpurchasable Works of Rudyard Kipling
• The Cuntlickingly Offensive Book of Limericks (Paris, 1933 how did they know that word)
• A big pile of bags – sorry we’re out of bags
• Grover’s Garlic Garnish - A Utopian Tale
• The Thousand and One Nights - illustrated etchings of Dore w/ Titties Edition
• That lone book in Hungarian
• Christianity – It’s The Only Religion, Stupid!
• Escapades in Far Off Burma Old Bean Lemon Squash Wot
• A Glimpse at the Future: Life As it May Be in the Year 2000 – (moon chalets, top hats)
• No you can’t just leave them here while you get more, I am not a faithful Japanese guard dog
• The Collected Works of Lenin With His Face On The Front – buy this and try not to look insane
• Learn to Play the Sackbut
• That girl over there likes Dostoyevsky and I need to give her my patronymic
• Thomas Pynchon Book, sweet cover, ok, he did WHAT in her WHAT?
• A shitty hymnal you will buy because you thought it was “beautiful even though I’m an atheist”
• Avid book collecting enthusiast who mispronounces “Goethe”
• The Reference/Dictionary section you stand in until somebody moves over in modern lit
• A coursepack with notes in pink pen (“OMG he never even called her”)
• Jacques Derrida’s Really Unpopular Book On Film Or Photography Or Something
• Judaism, Judaica, Jumanji
• Breadmaking for the Nonce
• Tom Brown’s Blah Blah Blah Blah
• The Tactics of the Waffen SS  – A Book For Men In Fedoras
• Oh My God a Book On Etiquette From Like A Million Years Ago
• Commercial Cobblery
• A German Cookbook That Seems Normal Until Page 7 – Pork Foreskin Goulash
• Slavoj Zizek – Something Borrowed, Something Blue: Reading Lacan in the Antepenultimate Times

…And, like, more!

Kant avec :(

The following "ecrit" was put together by the famous rogue psychoanalyst Jas Pecan in his very fruitful outpouring of the early 2000's, known as his "symbolic" period. During this epoch of Pecan's thought, the motif of symbolic representation was probably touched upon at some point, although no one can say for certain. What is certain is that this text, condensed from the lost source for "Seminar XXCL: iPodipus Comp(r)ex", which was also probably pretty weird.

Kant avec L

That the work of Lacan anticipates the emoticon, be it in respect of the catalogue of mathemes, symbols, rude words etc. is a stupid thing to say, which gets repeated endlessly among literary types; the fault, as always, belongs to the Internet.

Rather let it be said that Lacan "anticipated" nothing except the "emoticon" with all of his "matheme bullshit".

The question that immediately arises when one considers the thousands of variations on the emoticon is that of the originary, or rather the Ur-moticon. A classical liberal would suggest L, the nasty, brutish, and short response to the original text message of birth. On the other hand, the Jacobin believes the J must fulfill this role; “L'homme est né libre, et partout il est dans les fers.” Is it perhaps the K, a tabula rasa? The Pagan :D? The Biblical :O ? Or does the “moticon” predate the “emo” entirely? Is Ur­-moticon the Poundian ideograph? Hieroglyph? Cave painting? Is it not the terror of the mask, but the horror behind it? And what if that horror were a banana? What then? Or even worse - no banana at all.

Sometimes a banana is just a banana.

Actually, Ur-moticon is no image at all. It is something closer to the notification noise, vibration, or shock before the message is even opened. Ur-moticon is the terror of the pure signifier. The confrontation of absolute nullity – the void behind the veil of Sais, once ripped aside, revealing the originary gap (gross!) sabotaging from the get-go all attempts to posit meaning or connection, flawed ab initio, ex nihilo and ad nauseum. It is a quantum operation – as soon as the message is opened, the "blank" notification is given its signification - meaning is posited retroactively; that "jerk really did eat all of the Doritos", as such. Only after the message is “received” can Ur-moticon allow itself to die – except that, try as it might, it cannot die.

It cannot die precisely because the emoticon is the birth of subjectivity ($>OMG) itself. The Dharmic cycle of Samsara only begins with the positing of the subject, the “I” and its caravan, spinning endless text msgs for itself in the great cosmic dance of WTF. A dance that can, by no means, STFU by its own efforts.

What is the relationship of the emoticon to the Lacanian matheme? Actually, there is no “emoticon” as such. There is only ever actually Ur-moticon. The emoticon arises when Ur-moticon is integrated into the symbolic order by an act of traumatic violence-via-text. But it is never a stable state; the signification of the emotion, once read, is the opposite of finality. An emoticon never stands on its own; it always demands textual and contextual interpretation. And not just for the receiver. An emoticon is not a sexual act; it cannot communicate, it can only masturbate. (S > $keet$keet).

The sadface does not say to the Other “this is how I feel. I feel X”. It says, rather, “che vuoi? What do you want from me?” and in so doing, establishes itself as a hysteric subject to be communicated with. The text is never received from the sender, it is always stuck in the endless cycle of the Outbox. Even if you reset the phone. Even if you call your service provider. Even if you screenshot it and send it as an attachment. There are no such things as emoticons.

This is different from claiming that there are non-emoticons, which of course everyone will readily admit. These are often encountered in the form of Emojis, shockingly specific or subversive emoticons which are (temporarily) effectual precisely because their precision overrides their “generic” status as an emoticon. One is not shocked by the Emoji in relation to the context of the message, one is shocked by the Emoji as such – how can it exist so minutely? Who the fuck has an emoticon for horseracing?

Nevertheless it is an illusion. An emoticon cannot be translated; an Emoji can be. One cannot account for the effect of J as “smiley face” etc., but with the multiplicity inherent in an Emoji, precisely because it is not generic but only appears in the style of the generic, as it were, it is completely translatable into words. An Emoji always originates as a phrase. It is therefore a fetishistic stand-in for the original loss of Ur-moticon – “if I cannot have a meaningful message, then the medium will itself be the meaning”. 

McLuhan masturbating in front of a camera while shouting his infamous slogan.

One might claim the emoticon as the extreme endpoint of the Deleuzian facial (gross!). Deleuze and Guattari, who see the face overcoded everywhere and on every each thing in the schizophrenic and altogether wacky world of capitalism, would have been the first to deny that the emoticon represents the mere facializing of speech as such, or some Heideggerian interpretation of its masking the technological etc. The emoticon is no face. That is the terrifying thing about it. There is no hidden gaze or overcoded machinery in the emoticon itself. The emoticon cannot emote. It cannot even whistle awkwardly and leave the room to "get some fresh air" while the subject shuffles to the corner.

But if it is not a face, then what is the emoticon which does not exist? The emoticon which does not exist is a mask for the most unnecessary, stupid, ugly, and ultimately and non-existant part of speech: the punctuation mark. Antiquity had none such marks, and despite the tyranny of modern grammar, usage always resists their codification, their utility. They have always been a superfluity; are always untenable by themselves; always require context to give them any meaning at all; truly there is no such thing as punctuation. What is the emoticon but the horror of the punctuation’s inability to die?

This is where we stand, then. A text message is sent from the Big Other, the dominant discourse of the symbolic order. It gets stuck in the outbox. The message contained three items: a word, a punction, an emoticon. Ur-moticon reduces these three to the originary "terror" of the neighbour with a cell-phone plan. The message is still stuck in the outbox. What does it contain? The true terror lies in the fact that one can only read it from the phone that sent it. What does it contain, encore?

Hey! sup :P

And so the terror of the Real emerges.

Kendrick Contra Wagner

The music world was set a-flame today when hotshot rapper and self-defined "eiffel tower" Kendrick Lamar claimed the title of "the King of Bayreuth". Not content with the recently claimed title "King of New York", as well as his previous distinctions of "Viscount of New Edinburgh" and "Welterweight Thumb Wrestling Champion", Lamar has this time decided to go after the big names in classical music. On a guest verse in a recent release by overshadowed rapper Kurly Frie$, Lamar suddenly dropped a "hall of fame" lyric listing off the big names of history's greatest composers:

I'm usually homeboys with the same meisters I'm sprachstimmin' wit
But this is art music and them mensches should know what time it is
And that goes for Vivaldi, Mozart, Bach
Mendelssohn, Webern, Wagner, Offenbach
Schubert, Schumann, Buxtehude, Charles Gounod
I got love for you all but I'm tryna murder you maestros
Tryna make sure your posterity never heard of you maestros
They dont wanna hear not one more bar or reverb from you maestros

Notably lacking on the list is the name of Gustav Mahler, which Kendrick has long since despised as "overripe" and "decadent". But that verse alone was made twice as contentious when Lamar claimed the title "King of Bayreuth":

I'm important like the Pope, I'm as mean as the Kaiser
I'm Otto Bismarck's offspring, I'm the King of Bayreuth

The small Bavarian town is the living site of Wagner worship, where the composer founded his famous "festspielhaus" or "happy fun house" for the performance of his serious and not-for-dicking-around "music dramas". How, where, why or when the west-coast rapper from Compton can lay claim to this site is still something of a mystery. However, rumours are circulating that Lamar is attempting to put on a production of Parsifal, the most esoteric of Wagner's operas and once strictly restricted by the composer to performances only at the Bayreuth stage. Kanye West, J. Cole and the Wu-Tang Clan are all said to be involved, sending the message out to the opera world loud and clear: dooodoodooddoodooo brrrap.

Meanwhile, responses to Lamar's claim have been somewhat slow in coming. Unlike the rapid vitriol and fast verses that followed Control within a matter of hours, the latest controversy has proven more difficult for Kendrick's competitors to match up to. On the list are nonetheless a String Quartet in G Minor by Action Bronson, A Versace Tone Poem by Migos as well as a Gilbert and Sullivan style Operetta piece by Odd Future, featuring Frank Ocean and Tyler the Creator in drag searching for their lost goat.

"This is just what classical music needed" tweeted conductor of the New York Philharmonic James Nevine. "Classical music has always been about competition, and Kendrick did just what needed to be done to re-ignite the old beef of Brahms vs Wagner, or Handel vs Bach. Too many of these composers nowadays are just sucking each other's dicks."

Energy East, 2013

I understand the need for a pipeline.
It helps the economy.
Is a nationwide boon.
Jobs from here to Alberta.
How much natural landscape will
Really be affected?
Think about the great projects of nature:
Isn't the Natural World
One big Pipeline?
Or how about the Spiritual Plane;
In the last book of his Republic
Plato posits that the souls of rational beings 
Are pumped across the Elysian national dreamscape
A la tube.
I think Hegel saw history as something
Of an interplay of natural resources
Criss crossing the bare skeleton of nature
In pipelines of Absolute Reason.
Lenin would like them well enough.
Mao would love them.
Pipelines will defeat Nazis and Communists
By becoming Nazi and Communist.
A pipeline is the worst form of government
Except for all those others.
A pipeline is the stuff of Habermasian communication,
Democracy, friction-less capitalism,
The Internet!
A pipeline!
Love in the abstract
Is a swirling cascade of my natural gases
Pumped to your processing plant!
Don't you grasp how important this is!
The future is not just about stasis,
Not just about ideals,
Not just about the triumph or fall of Party or Nation,
Not just the return of divinity to
Mortal substance...
The future can be about making money too.