Hoarders: The Bleak Transformation of Wealth

"It's all necessary.  It's all good."

I don't get cable at my place in Iowa, but several times a year, when I make my way south to Texas to visit my parents, I get to dip into the flow.  A show that I've now seen quite a bit of is A&E's Hoarders - and last night, a copycat show called Hoarding, which is functionally indistinguishable. The very fact that there's a copycat show is a testament to the amazing draw of these shows' central figures, people with a profound compulsion to accumulate stuff to the point that it interferes with their ability to live safely and sanely in their homes.  There's something here that speaks to the fundamentals of the way we live now, and I think it is this: where poverty was once defined by lack, the condition is now flipped.  It is the poor with yards and houses full of stuff, aimless and sprawling, while the wealthy live in empty space, moving through the air unencumbered.  Continued . . .

Only Just Returned – Jameson on Postmodernism at Iowa

Edit: Finally got this reposted.  Feel free to rehost and let me know.  Jameson at Iowa, MP3.  And if you can help me figure out how to get a free rapidshare account, let me know, I absolutely can't figure it out.

I just got back from the Ida Beam Visiting Professor Public Lecture, delivered by Fredric Jameson.  I’ve seen a number of lectures by brand-name intellectuals over the years at Iowa, and some of them, it must be said, have been really phoned in.  While I can’t say Jameson was some sort of impassioned attack dog, his talk was extremely useful, progressive, and thought-provoking.  A couple of topics in particular caught my ear, as Jameson commented on the internal contradictions of anti-essentialism, and on the transformative effects of communication technology on finance, particularly in the realm of finance.  Given some controversy I’ve been involved in over the last few weeks here at Iowa, I think it’s also worth delving into the question of Jameson’s accessibility (spoiler: I think he was in many respects a great model for clarity combined with seriousness).

New (ish) Teriyaki Boyz - Free DL

This is mostly a remix tape, but might be of interest for fans of Japanese pop in general - there's some really interesting collaborations here, with everyone from Tinnie Punx (a group featuring Ito Seiko, who some think of as the first Japanese rapper) to Towa Tei to . . . Michael Watts and DJ Shadow?  Worth checking.

Cyworld, Mixi and Facebook: The Fragmented Social Media Landscape

I just got through having a fascinating conversation with a Korean friend of mine, full of little tidbits too awesome not to share.  I mentioned one of the frustrating aspects of my time in Japan - being unable to join Mixi, Japan's most popular social networking site.  You see, Mixi (at least as recently as two years ago) required a mobile number to verify users' identity.  But because of rules partly justified as anti-terrorism initiatives, it's extremely difficult for foreigners who aren't permanent residents to get cell phones in their own names, leaving myself and many others to rent mobiles from third party resellers like Piccell Wireless (who I endorse - just don't download anything, data costs are brutal).  But since the phone is officially registered to the company and not the renter, it can't be used to verify a Mixi account.  I lost contact with a lot of people because I couldn't set up a Mixi account.

My friend noted that in Korea there is, if anything, a more restrictive regime on popular social networking sites like Cyworld.

Conspiracy of Dunces

I have a huge interest in conspiracy theories, which I've covered before. In order to have any hope of understanding the core of illogic that underpins our political system, we have to try and figure out what motivates people to turn to this mode of inquiry, what makes them unable or unwilling to confront the essential confusion at the heart of the moving world. Psychoanalysis and Buddhism have equally useful and roughly analogous things to say about the fundamentally pathological relationship to knowledge we have established for ourselves as a society, one in which only total mastery amounts to insight. This is the regime that produces the desire for sealed, lost boxes that contain the answers to every unknown. Over at PopMatters, Jesse Hicks has put up a very thoroughly backgrounded report on one of the latest upwellings of the irrational desire for truth, Conspiracy Theory with Jesse Ventura.

R.I.P. Def Jux 1999-2010

I’ve been pretty behind the curve on this, which should indicate how little I pay attention to U.S. underground hip hop as typically defined.  But apparently Def Jux decided to close down new releases effective a few weeks ago.  The L.A. Times has a thorough retrospective rundown of the label’s most exciting and important releases, many of which I was completely obsessed with during college, in particular Cannibal Ox’s The Cold Vein and El-P’s Fantastic Damage.  I recently did the writeup of The Cold Vein for Tinymixtape’s Best-of-the-Decade list, where it sits nobly at #17, up with Boy in Da Corner and Madvillainy in the territory that redefined rap and made possible things like (to cite only my most recent obsession) Die Antwoord

As sad as it is in some ways, I think the closure is a good call - It’s clear the label’s influence has waned mightily in the past five or so years, and it's better to go out with deserved recognition than to limp into half-remembered obscurity.   That same waning of significance is true of “the underground” as a whole.  You can look now at figures like Atmosphere and Aesop Rock, and they’re basically institutions delivering quality, predictable product to a stable audience.  Not that that's the worst thing in the world, but there's not much newness entering the world via that door anymore. The only really exciting guy in the realm is MF Doom.  And let’s not even talk about Anticon, who have made a rather graceless transition from some really edgy, weird hip hop to a much more indie-rock centric outlook that I can’t say I’m too down with.  In the end, things come and go in culture, and something as amazing and singular as Def Jux simply could not stay meaningful forever.

Die Antwoord - My Inner Fuckin' Colored Just Wants To Be Discovered.

So I woke up this morning hung over after hanging out at Iowa City's main gay bar for the first time.  It's a weirdly faux-glam, cheap looking place, with moulding glued rather than nailed around the doors and lots of metallic spraypaint.  It’s clear that the gays around here need to get their shit together.  All the same, I had a hell of a night, the fake glitz lending just the right amount of seedy energy to proceedings – and then I woke up to the weirdly appropriate discovery of Die Antwoord, the South African “Zef Rap” crew that’s been blowing up the internet since a post on Boing Boing two weeks ago.  This is totally amazing music, if you’ve got a hunger for loud, clangy dubstep/future rap beats and strident, chest-beating raps with the ends bit off, all of it given a twist of adventurous artsiness.  You can listen to their debut, $O$, in full at their website


“Zef” is apparently roughly equivalent to chav in England or a certain breed of hip hop-obsessed redneck in the U.S.  Beat culture isn’t some child that grew full-formed from the head of black America (just ask Grandmaster Flash about Kraftwerk sometime), but whether you’re talking about Kid Rock, Ali G, or now Die Antwood, the appeal comes from an underlying image of toughness and bravado, derived from a cultural sense of blackness that’s being recycled and transformed by white people.  Whether this is good or bad or neither can be debated endlessly – I go back and forth, personally, and where I fall pretty much depends on how good any particular appropriation is.