(We might ask ourselves, before we begin, does the labyrinth have a definite topology, a predefined psychogeographic space that we can survey and map out, inch by inch?  What is the cartographic scale of this maze we've entered, that we already live inside?  Is there a key?  A holograp… Read full post »

The Internet is everywhere, it is in everything I encounter, always-already.  I have tried to get it off my tail (lizard or otherwise), but it keeps returning, popping up in front of me, jumping out of the bushes, sliding in under my door--far more persistent than TV, but different.  M… Read full post »

So what does this labyrinth we've entered tell us about ourselves?  For I am not so interested in exploring it--that might be the problem, after all, the constant enticement to this kind of exploration--as I am in determining what it reveals through its presence, or, whether it's worth going&nbs… Read full post »

Violence is just not what it used to be.  Violence in the media, like anything else, changes, morphs, evolves, goes through many mutations and variations, as history unfolds.  This fact is often lost, or blocked, in the fragmentary criticism of individual works and artists, which is the typ… Read full post »

(Above: Ending of 'The Hitchhiker,' episode of 'The Twilight Zone') 

In the '50's Alain Robbe-Grillet, an unemployed agronomist, stunned the literary scenes on both sides of the Atlantic with his debut novel, 'The Erasers,' a mystery where the plot becomes a seemingly en… Read full post »

It was not something I ever saw coming...Jon Stewart going through a Glenn Beck becoming. 

In response to Glenn Beck's recent bout of appendicitis, Stewart felt it was his duty to take to the airwaves and warn the nation of the impending raid on all our organs. 

 … Read full post »

What if you could time travel back to, say, early March 2008 and tell everyone on Wall Street about the impending crisis?  What if you could, somehow, convince all those high-profile, high-octane types running up and down the pad beneath the big-board at NYSE, and in London, and in Singapore, an… Read full post »

Recently a lot has been made by progressive commentators and academics in the news, economist Paul Krugman of the New York Times in particular, of the similarities, and differences, between our situation today and the period of the Great Depression.  But a more apt analogy might be made between… Read full post »

This video is a wonderful example of twinning, cloning, hyper-reality, self-reflexivity, and all those other fun things that even make it onto the retro medium of TV sometimes...beautiful.  And kinda funny.

Now, "Sparkle!"

(Just go to the profile below and choose the 'Formidable Opponent' video.… Read full post »

Illness has been in the news a lot lately, although its presence has usually been assumed rather than talked about.  In the rising and falling swells of attention being given to healthcare reform, the body politic has taken on something of the old coherent meaning it once had in its representati… Read full post »

Last night I saw a film that was equally fascinating and frustrating, a sure double measure that should accompany any recommendation of any film worth watching.  After all, we don't have much time, between the womb and the grave, and we should spend it doing something worthwhile--and this was ex… Read full post »

Gender is a touchy subject.  No, let me rephrase that--it's not a touchy subject, it's a subject we try to touch upon only in certain ways.  No, let me rephrase that again--it's a subject that everyone loves to touch, just not in certain places.  No, let me....

Over at O… Read full post »

Have you gotten your H1N1 vaccine yet?  Will  you?  Are you worried about the mercury?  Anxious about the short supply of vaccine?  Miffed the government hasn't closed all the schools?  Miffed they've closed too many?  Is your child protected?  Is your family?&… Read full post »

In the last election cycle, the personality most conspicuously absent from the debate was not the Republican candidate himself, although John McCain's team of handlers made every attempt to cause him to vanish by transforming his moderate image into a mediatized 'W' clone.&nb… Read full post »

What will happen to poor little television?  Long considered to be next on the chopping block for the internet's buzz-saw--the recording industry was its first real summarily sliced and diced victim--it lingers on.  Not knowing how to compete with the weird world of YouTube and MySpace, whe… Read full post »

To all the progressives out there who constantly complain about Obama's populist centrism, I don't get it.  Not because there's something I'm missing about the tug-of-war, 'everyone knows' attitude of political gamesmanship.  Yes, the progressives overstate their case, and the right answers… Read full post »

Introduction: And What Does Philosophy Have To Do With Anything Anyway? 

 Anyone who has been watching the healthcare reform debate in Washington this past summer must have noticed the widening gap between the president and Congress, whether one is considering the wild and wacky opposi… Read full post »