June 25, 2004
Kowloon Walled City
I found out about this place called Kowloon Walled City from my friend Dan, and man was that place fucking cool! It was an architectural and historical anomoly, a part of Hong Kong that was originally a military outpost of Mainland China, came into contention, and was eventually abandoned and occupied by squatters.
Largely unmolested by Hong-Kong police (with the exception of a stunning series of 3000 raids to break the hold of the Triads) it became a kind of stacked red-light district, a refuge and a microcosm, a human termite mound, and, apparently, producer of about 80% of the fish-cakes in Hong Kong. I've ordered the definative english-language book on the subject. Unbelievable...I can't belive they tore it down to make a fucking park.
That's the real beef I've got with the "urban green" movement. Yeah, parks are nice, but our environments are largely not ones of leisure. We need better enviroments to work in and live in, first of all. Strolling only a distant third, if that. Leisure was the same cover-story Robert Moses used to build all these highways -- "think of a lovely drive with the family" -- and look where that has ended us. Bullshit, don't be bought off so cheap. I want better than sanctimonious chapels to nature, no-drinks no-moneychangers kind of places.
That said, my plan to "rejuvinate the waterways" of Manhattan is to have Vietnamese-style floating market. No location in Manhattan can thrive without commerce. We're just too fucking business, and there ain't no getting away from it. Let's fight to control what kind of business it is. (In fact Molly has made a passionate and persuasive argument for sex in parks.)
WE GOTTA LET THE CITY BREATHE! City life is an exchange between the public and the private, and the more and varied the exchanges are, the spaces that connect these two realms are, the more fertile our culture will be.
Posted by Sam on
06:49 PM
|
Comments (1)
June 24, 2004
Bloomberg promises to reduce homeless by 2/3rds
...with well-placed cuts.
The news has this story all wrong. It should read something more like this:
Mayor of offers unfunded dreams, attacks housing rights
NEW YORK, June 23
Earlier today, autistic billionaire Michael Bloomberg unveiled his plan to undermine the right to housing in New York City. Overflowing with flowery rhetoric about ending homelessness, he promised more supportive housing units despite having no clear source of funding. At the same time, he continues his vendetta against the Emergency Assistance Unit, the de facto bottom rung of the housing system, and the only protection many of the city's homeless against a life on the street.
During the last decade, the real estate industry has made a bonanza at the expense of New Yorkers. The homeless shelter population has more than doubled, to 38,000, while the number of affordable housing units (those costing less than $600 a month) has dropped by half a million, etc, etc, etc...
The point is, this is classic: promise a few full-service units (which housing activists have been asking for), in exchange for reducing eligibility for people coming in off the streets. Basic con.
Housing security in the city is about mass low-cost housing, free housing for the unemployed and those unable to work, and available services for those who need them, not an elaborate administration for a few "noble" (or lucky) to pass elaborate tests. Everyone deserves a place to live. Period.
Posted by Sam on
01:30 AM
|
Comments (1)
June 14, 2004
2nd Street Mural
On 2nd Street between Avenue B and Avenue C there is a building with this cool mural. I like it because it is outside the usual style of street artwork. Across the street there is also an empty lot with a graffiti gallery in the more usual style.
Large version (213 kb)
Posted by Sam on
10:31 PM
|
Comments (1)
June 12, 2004
Word Virus: Introduction
"We must find out what words are and how they function.
They become images when written down,
but images of words repeated in the mind
and not of the image of the thing itself."
-William S. Burroughs, via "The William Burroughs Files"
"My general theory......has been that the Word is literally a virus, and that it has not been recognized as such because it has achieved a state of relatively stable symbiosis with it's human host....The Word clearly bears the single identifying feature of a virus: it's an organism with no internal function other than to replicate itself."
-William S. Burroughs, via http://www.lucaspickford.com/burrwords.htm
"There are generally six steps that take place in viral replication. Adsorption (attachment to the host cell), penetration, uncoating, genome replication (viral synthesis), maturation, and release."
-from "Wikipedia: virus"
"The origin of viruses is not entirely clear, but the currently favoured explanation is that they are derived from their host organisms, originating from transferrable elements like plasmids or transposons."
-from "Wikipedia: virus"
"The word may once have been a healthy neutral cell. It is now a parasitic organism that invades and damages the central nervous system. Modern man has lost the option of silence. Try halting your sub-vocal speech. Try to achieve even ten seconds of inner silence. You will encounter a resisting organism that forces you to talk."
-WSB, via http://novatrilogy.tripod.com/wordjunk.htm
"Viruses typically consist of a protein coat (the envelope), a protein core (the capsid) that encloses the viral genes and the viral genetic material itself. The envelope, normally derived from the cell membrane of the previous host, protects the viral genome contained within and also provides the mechanism by which the virus infects its host."
-from "Wikipedia: virus"
"I'm glad you liked the article [Confidence Trick]. I think words have a lot more power over us than we often think. When we use words we bring other people right into our brains. Reading these words right now, I am speaking inside your head, in your own voice. It is a much more intense process than is usually acknowledged. We allow other people to inhabit us, to posess us and manipulate us as veritably as a ventriliquist's dummy. Is it really that heretical to suggest that we may be controlled by words carelessly incorporated into our vocabularies?" me, in draft I wrote for the another blog's comment section
"Viruses can serve as vectors, trasporting genes from cell to cell, a process known as trasduction. General transduction occurs when host DNA, fragmented in the course of the viral infection, is incorporated into new virus particles that carry these fragments to a new host cell."
-from Biology, 5th edition, my high school textbook
When writing Confidence Trick, I was using Bill Burroughs' great theoretical insight -- the idea of the "word-virus" (a "bit of word and image"), as a jumping-off point. I was trying to make a kind of innoculation against what I consider to be an ugly and dangerous mutation. But not all words are parasites -- the co-habitational, mutagenic capacity of language is the greatest power of humanity.
Since starting this blog, I have continued analyzing words with the idea of the word-virus in mind. I like to tinker with the genetics of words to purify useful strains as well as to create vaccines against harmful ones. To consolidate and extend this work, I'm going to start a category of "Word Virus" posts collecting all of the related posts in one place, a kind of bio-engineering facility to culture and experiment with language. Let's take it from here...
To the virus lab!
Posted by Sam on
12:39 AM
|
Comments (3)
June 04, 2004
criticism, self- & other-
So, like I said, we are much too hard on ourselves. It's easy to be cruel to oneself, and doesn't really do any good. This whole "drill-sergent" attitude -- "work through the pain," etc -- is utterly bogus. No one ever did anything that way. There is always another part of the brain, the grunt mentality, that is the productive counterpart. It says: "small jobs. One foot in front of the other." This is a useful method. It is also a concentration camp mentality. Even when the future is impossible, it can still be measured one step at a time.
So you ask yourself: "isn't this proof that the drill sergent voice works? gets results?"
This would only be true if the grunt voice cannot exist without it, and I'm here to pop that little bubble. There is no arguing with necessity, and therefore no need to shout, all puffed-up boors aside. Just watch what happens when you say "no" to a drill-sergent -- they fall apart. Be careful they are not in a position to kill you, though, because they will try. And this goes for the inner drill-sergent, too.
So what about other-criticism? We are too hard on ourselves, and it makes it almost unbearable to take criticism from others. "Comradely affection is often shown better with slaps than pats," says pinky. And this is true. We can take a lot of slaps from other people, and use them productively, but only if we rise to meet them. It's tempting to try to slap yourself harder than anyone else can, and before, as well, but this doesn't really help. And as for trying to fill in your self-wounds with praise from others -- difficult, very very difficult.
I don't know, this stuff is too simple, and I can't say it simply enough. I'll be trying again...
Posted by Sam on
05:56 PM
|
Comments (1)
