Tipper, Rush and the Ice People

[Steelhead]

Henry, again:

>Steely, c'mon! Censorship is just a buzzword here. I'd think a
>thoughtful person such as yourself would recognize that there is a
>difference between suggesting decent behaviour and censorship.
>You might as well suggest that all argument is censorship; then were
>would your argument be?

I haven't a clue where it would be, Henry. Really.

>I think, Steely, that sometimes you know better, but can't help being
>your argumentative self.

Ah, but how *can* we keep but being ourselves, Henry,...even when we know
different (if not necessarily "better")?  So much of our behavior has
already been pre-coded, programmed, centuries, even millenia, ago. (Is this
the damage Freud did to our...what was York Blaine's phrase?..."perception
of identity?" Simply pointing to the fact that deeply embedded
psychological programs, anolomies, perhaps, run so many weird parts of our
lives? Certainly, Levi-Strauss, Saussure, EO Wilson and Lacan were/are poking
around in the same dark basements of our consciousness, excavating all
sorts of bizarre cultural, linquistic, and genetic codes and secret
structures).

Speaking of Levi-Strauss (and everyone should run out and *buy* a copy of
his wonderful book of photographs and drawings from his years in the
Amazaon, recently published by the University of Washington Press, Saudades
do Brasil), this morning I came across this incredible passage in his
travelouge Triste Tropique that certainly has a particular revelance to
many of the amusing matters going on in V. and probably the forthcoming
M&D:

"Journeys, those magic caskets full of dreamlike promises, will never again
yield up their treasures untarnished. A proliferating and overexcited
civilization has broken the silence of the seas once and for all. The
perfumes of the tropics and the pristine freshness of human beings have
been corrupted by a busyness with dubious implications, which mortifies our
desires and dooms us to acquire only contaminated memories. Our great
western civilization, which has created the marvels we now enjoy, has only
succeeded in producing them at the cost of corresponding ills. The first
thing we see as we travel round the world is our own filth, thrown in the
face of mankind. So I can understand the mad passion for travel books and
their decptiveness. They create an illusion of something that no longer
exists but still should exist, if we were to have any hope of avoidin the
overwhelming conclusion that the history of the last twenty thousand years
is irrevocable. There is nothing to be done about it now; civilization
deased to be that delicate flower which was preserved and painstakingly
cultivated in one or two sheltered areas of a soil rich in wild species
which may have seemed menacing because of the vigour of their growth, but
which nevertheless made it possible to vary and revitalize the cultivated
stock."

Or, as my favorite film director Werner Herzog, said, somewhat more
succintly: "Walking is virtue, tourism deadly sin."

Freud's biggest mistake was to ever believe that any of this
could be cured by "Therapy."

But is argument part of the code? Is *that* how They've disfigured our
consciousness to make sure that we'll never rise up? Or is argument,
name-calling, speaking-in-tongues, abreacting, a resistance to it?  Is
dialectic dead? Was that damn Francis Fukiyama right? Is the era of
post-modernism over (YEAH!) and we've now slid imperceptibly into a long
grey epoch of post-history?

>Are you from the North East? I am, but I
>outgrew the automatic disputation.

This is an interesting twist on the Sun People vs. the Ice People Theory of
History. But no, I am from the Heartland of Indiana, though my family's
roots are buried in Thurso, Scotland, where my ancestors led much of the
Highlanders' futile resistance against the English barbarians--from the
time of William Wallace and Robert the Bruce to the bloody fields of
Culloden. Mark Twain once blamed the popularity of Walter Scott's novels
for the Civil War. I admit there's something to that.

>Tipper Gore! Great image, but it doesn't wash. Unlike the tipsy one,
>I've always been against censorship of any kind. ACLU and all that.
>But doesn't mean that I'm in favour of misogynist rap music. No one
>ever suggested revoking anyone's "privileges" on this list, so that
>buzzward "Censorship" just doesn't wash.

Henry, *you* brought up Censorship. Not me. You said that my writings were
a stronger form of censorship, than a call to have my writings (or Blaine's
for that matter) censored. Forgive me, if I think that's phenomenological
crap.

>Hey, Steely. The "Tipper" crack sounds like the kinda labelling that
>both Tipper and Rush could both enjoy.

Actually, I like Tipper's zaftig contours and think Al treats her horribly.
And what can I say about that Great Dirigible of Drivel, Rush Limbaugh? He
once insulted me on his program in terms not dissimilar to those used by
RedBug, as "a Loonie of the Left." It was all reprinted in the Flush Rush
Quarterly and
I've got the sound bite stored on my Mac. Funny guy, and that, of course,
is what makes his intolerance tolerable.

Steely

"We're in the same business. You break bones for a living, I break heads."
Ken Kesey to Sonny Barger, leader of the Hell's Angels