This “Vanity Fair”:http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2011/02/the-guardian-201102 piece on the journalistic politics of Wikileaks is well worth reading – it’s the most comprehensive account of the evolving relationship between Wikileaks, the Guardian and other news organizations that I’ve seen. I _think_ (this perhaps reflects my preconceptions as much as anything else) that the piece provides implicit support for two propositions. [click to continue…]
Since that Flaming Lips deal seems to have expired; since concerns have been expressed in comments, to the effect that the very category of Metaphysical McGuffin may constitute deplorably Platonic confusion about the very nature of art, I’ll offer some free music that settles all that. How about Of Montreal’s cover of “Color Me In”? (From this page.)
Something new and nothing to do
I’m just the idea
I must be real cause somehow I feel
That I’m just the idea
The original Broadcast version is here.
Is that clear?
A stray note on the history of science fiction, in relation to theatrical absurdity qua independent but relatable phenomenon, via the intermediation of McGuffins, actual and potential, scientifical, metaphysical and occasionally fistical, and suchish chickenegg castings of shadows …
The note is: Beckett’s 1930 poem, “Whoroscope”, seems like an interesting work to think about.
It also seems worth chicking and eggsamining how Beckett and co. came close to satirizing, avant lalettre, Gernsback’s glorious goose egg of a golden coinage, ‘scientifiction‘. But I see that Gernsback actually proposed the term a few years earlier, in 1926. So that would be upsetting the eggcart before the chicken. And we wouldn’t want to do that o no.
Why am I thinking these thoughts? In part because I’m reading Martin Esslin, The Theatre of the Absurd
Couple quick thoughts about that. [click to continue…]