Thursday, October 30, 2008

My Summer Wrap-Up

I just looked at my blog, theselfisaviciouscycle.blogspot.com, after months of silent contemplation in my shadowy summer home, when I realized that I may have let my readers down. How many of you look to me, David Pollock, prominent post-Lacanian of the new Literati, for cultural interpretation, literary analysis, sexual deviance? And I have not posted since mid-late July.

In a way, this is fortunate. For now I can tell you how I spent the half of my summer when I was not writing. I call it Netherland, named after the contemporary classic by Edward O'Neill:

Oh, but where have I been all this time? In the shadowy summer house. It is only P.G. Wodehoser and me, living and re-living the travesties and tickles of Wooster the snotty-nosed rooster and his man-slave Jeeves. If only I had a man-slave, then I would make him put on the wig. The jewels around his neck. Aura's of smoky blue around his eyes. A pink handkerchief. Oh, sister, my sister, I would say and wrap my arm around him. Then we would dust togther.

--Yet to read Wodehoser, to feel the British sting, is this a way to live your summer?

--Oh, the questions you ask. Tell me something, lovers of fine literature. Why do we resort to British class comedy in the pleasant summer, the chill of ice bags on our ankles, and laugh aloud as if we were intelligent? What's next? Waugh? A name that sounds like a German cough?

As you can tell, my summer was relaxing. I enjoyed British class comedy. Now I've returned to reality, where there is no more shade, and it looks like an old white Scottish man will become president-elect. He and that divine speciman of North Woods woman. I see them now, marching along the White House Mall, hand in hand. Lovers? Perhaps. Only the Giant Eye Doth Know.

A rather uninspired entry, I'm afraid. But I've been on vacation. Maybe tomorrow I will enter the mysterious world of Atheism and discuss the works of Sam Harris. In particular, The End of Faith, in which Mr. Harris states that it is not God who does not function, but His believers.



Charming. I think I will.










Sunday, July 20, 2008

Emily Gould Wants what You Want

Dear readers, it's not often I post two blogs in a day, but I came across this entry by young model of desire, Emily Gould. Granted, her understanding of Lacanian thought is limited, I consider it a good try. There may be hope, after all. Add this as -6) to my top 5 list:

Yesterday morning I was walking to the LIRR when I crossed paths with a Lacanian teenager who was handing out postcards featuring the master discourse on the corner and each one came with a free granola bar. I took the granola bar and the postcard and at the next trash can I threw away the postcard. Then, two bites into the granola bar, I accidentally dropped it on the ground. A bum picked it up. I think he wanted it because I wanted it.

from http://www.emilymagazine.com/

The List

Hello readers. I have been too sad to blog regularly. Though I have noticed that many of my colleagues, when they are too sad to blog, will create lists. Here is my list. This is my top five. I hope that this will lead you to create a list. Then, perhaps, you will add your list to your blog.

5) Joyce Carol Oates is exactly like Joan of Arc.

4) Maureen Dowd believes that Barrack Obama is not funny enough. One need only look at the man's diet.

3) Michael Chabon's first book, published when he was 36, Mysteries of Pittsburgh contains not one mystery; I feel cheated.

2) The war in Iraquois rages on, yet the president is criticized for having made a mistake. Would his detractors have preferred a shorter war?

1) Let's all clap our hands and welcome Iowa resident, Nam Le, as the newest member of the post-Lacanian literati. His first book of short fiction The Hovercraft takes us into the future, the past, and searches beneath the surface of the fiery present!

0) Food vs. food-like products. Where is the semblance?

-1) There's already been Oscar talk this year, and it's not even August.

-2) Bonnie "Prince" Billy's cover of Little Wing, properly titled Inagaddadedenhoney.

-3) Am I the first blogger to realize that one may take their top five list into the negative numbers in order to create a top eleven list?

-4) My advice to young, aspiring writers? Keep rereading Proust until Bolano's Swann Song is finally translated into English.

-5) Or else learn Spanish. It is America's 2nd Language!

Friday, June 20, 2008

Rivka Galchen and the New Identity Crisis

I promised long ago that I would not write about literature anymore. What brought on this sudden decision were some temporary, contemporary conditions, such as depression and incestual temptation. But those are all over now. These problems, I'm happy to say, are tropes of the past. And now I am concerned with a book.

A week ago I was at a writers' banquet with some other members of the current post-Lacanian literati. There was Benjamin Kunkel fiddling with the karoake (?) machine so he could sing the Beatles' classic rock song "I'm Looking Through You, You're not Insane" (appropriate, appropriate). In a corner somewhere, Tao Lin lectured on psychic exchange between New Orleans Katrina deceased and Lil' Wayne's current masterpiece, and how the voices of the dead trail through sexualized beats like robots on the verge of seizure ("This is what angels sound like," he said, "in our modern age.") Zadie Smith had just stepped off the stage after giving a repeat lecture on applying Lacan's I-R-S triad to the identities of a blogger who works during the day at a Barnes & Noble and masturbates at night with an Abu-hood on his head to symbolize nothing to no one (disturbing and eloquent, nothing if not relevant). Then Lil' Badiou (Keith Gessen), who was accompanied by a thin woman in heavy masscarra, with not two, but three engagement rings on her fingers! asked me if I had read a new book by an unknown, entitled Atmospheric Disturbances. The unknown who wrote the book is an ex-med student named Rivka Galchen. There is a new ideological perspective that can be applied to her work. I call it "Lovelessness (S/a)"

Atmospheric Disturbances Synopsis: Welcom to the 27th Century. The sky has turned the color of a bruised peach. Our husbands and wives slog through their work lives, stopping in the restroom to spit in the sink or pretending to urinate, only to avoid their duties. Our protagonist, a doctor named Ladislaw, has become obsessed with Pynchon's novel Against the Day, particularly the anarchist faction of the cast. And he has become convinced his wife is something of a mine owner, except she is a house wife, she owns nothing, plus she has only read Slow Learner, which Ladislaw believes does not count as a Pynchon book. A supplement, he calls it. Most of the novel passes in a blur, like traffic. What sticks out are the countless scenes in which the protagonist hides small explosives all over their house, blowing up the oven, the empty bird cage ("the canary's memory was more poignant now than its chirps ever could have been"), the herb garden. Then he beats her repeatedly with his belt. Why I think this book is a masterpiece, despite its stylistic dependency on Pynchon himself, it ends happily. As a matter of fact, the last line of the novel: "Ladislaw wrapped his arm around her, kissed her cheek and told her never to mention the name Scarsdale Vibe again. That name was a force, true, but they would never see that face, and this was their saving grace."

Lovelessness (S/a) is an ideology I'd like to discuss in greater detail in the future. Perhaps tomorrow, or the day after. But I have a platonic dinner date with an old friend tonight and have to shave. I don't mean to drop names, but Bryce Tenderfoot is already waiting for me at Teabag, where we will discuss the legacy of one Sophie Kinsella and her documentation of "marriage" in the "free" world.

Until next time, my dears. Remember: You are not what you think you are; your neighbor is.

Sunday, March 9, 2008

I've Been Hacked!

No, I haven't really. Though I know some overly trusting bloggers who have, and I've some thoughts on the matter. I've collected them into a short outline I've entitled Designs. Below is just a portion, also entitled Designs. The complete content listing of the Designs outline is as such:

1) Passwords: Purpose, nothing cute, please.
2) Designs.
3) Catch the tiger by its tail, nothing cute.
4) Tandem (Designs #6)
5) Sometimes we change our passwords because the loves of our lives have passed.
6) Don't be cute with your password, a hacker can always tell.
7) Branching out is not a good idea, especially when you bear no fruit.
8) Designs pt. 2.

Here is 2) Designs.

No small business, the design of the hacker. He sits in front of his computer. His sister, Patrice, she is normally near by, nibbling on a piece of puckerish fruit, licks a spot of juice from the corner of her mouth.

-- Now tell me, hacker, how do you plan on breaking in?
-- The keys are here in my mind. The question should be, How do you plan on stopping me?
-- I don't plan on stopping you. I plan on allerting all of my friends. You're a dog.

Please, don't be cute. The hacker's sister, Patrice, she was cute. We need only remember her tree-ripened breasts, and how she lifted the puckerish fruit to her brother's lips, and that a ghostly wind from the outside managed its way in beneath a cracked window. This was not a time of the year for cracked windows.

-- The dating website is complete, sir.
-- Now unsuspecting bloggers shall find fuck-buddies.
-- All across the U.S.

Patrice didn't know where to stand while waiting for her brother, so she chose in front of the card shop. A trolley passed, but this was on a chain. Of sorts. No need to worry. A car. Oh, cars were something else. When your brother is a hacker, even the empty darkness, a chilly august night, even that has eyes.

-- May I ask you sir -
-- If you must.
-- What will become of my sister? We were on good terms. She had no intention of getting in the way of our work. She only wanted to feed me the fruit -
-- Where are your loyalties, boy? Don't you know that you hack? You must be alone. There are designs. Don't you understand? An important element of this design is that you must remain alone. All of the time. There is no room for a sister.

**** To Be Cont'd*******

Monday, January 14, 2008

Time Takes Time

It's been a while since I've written a blog, and I will be honest with you, honest readers, as to why that is. I have given up on literature. I will not be writing about literature anymore.
And why? you ask. The answer, you don't want to hear, because, like most honest people, you are offended by truth. But I, David Pollock, have suffered a bout of mental illness.
Yes! Mental Illness! And instead of talking about books (books I haven't written because they are not very good) I would like to talk about myself.

You'll notice the title of this entry is "Time Takes Time" This is what my therapist, Sir Redmond Scott, tells me. And I agree with him. All of my problems go back to unclean relations I've had with my younger sister, Patricia Cornwell (No relation to the author, her last name is a product of her imagination which I have condoned).

I'm afraid I can't be very entertaining. Only that the bedlight was lit and blue, and that she asked I call her Margerie, after a neighbor we had, age fifty-six, with the ripest breasts this side of Blackville.

The very mention of my sister's name causes me distress. We, Patricia Cornwell and myself, are of the damned. You, faithful readers, hopefully are not.

When I am well, I will write again. In the meantime, here is my belated year-end reading list:

5)Tree on Smoky Water by Dennis Johnson
4)My Sister's Tree-Ripened Breasts by Nadine Gorimer
3)Carrie by Steven Khing
2)The Brief Wonderous Life of Junot Diaz by Oscar Wao

and...

1)My Mother, My Sister and Me by Susanna Sonnenburg