a post-blog
I admit it: an endless winter pinned me down, hours trapped in front of the computer or buried in books, and in this pit of overanalysis and abject paranoia, I abstracted Japan into a soulless sprawling mess. Browse the blog below: behind badly-behaved bears, backroom blacklisting, bias and bigotry, Big Brother, B-boys, Bape bashing, "Baby Blue" vs. Bacon, baroque Bach bricolage, baritone ballads, bilinguality, Beekeepers, Brill Building bandwagoneering, bastardized Bourdieu bunseki, Bush bitterness, and belaboured bilabial ballyhoo, there's a guy stuck in his room, in desperate need of some fresh air.
After some days outside to bask in the sunny splendor of Spring and a new school year, there's one thing that suddently fills my mind: Momus is right.
This idelogical change was probably inevitable over time, but lately I've been reading a tome called Postmodernism as Hedonic Spectacle by C.C. Gargel, which has an especially good section on the failures of Modernism - yes, My Modernism, the one that I love so dearly. I'm keen now to the fact that Marxist/avant-garde social critique does necessarily lead to authoritarian government, Rietveld's Schroeder house is just a big piece of furniture, and half-a-dozen other reasons why my usual emphasis on socio-economic structures is just an outmoded "meta-narrative."
And with this new baptism into Postmodernism - I've "seen the light" as they are wont to say - I've finally crossed over into where Momus is coming from: Japan has shed the baggage of obdurate, banausic Modernist critique so ideally and perfectly that whether we like it or not, this sleek island nation is the future. And complaining about certain parts is to advocate cultural ablation.
So I'm off for another wonderful day in Postmodernism where the cherry blossoms bloom, the Expo trains zoom, and the future of mankind is palpable.
Posted by marxy at April 1, 2005 1:42 PMHahaha, yeah right!
You and your friend Momus sure are funny!
heheheh .... prima aprilis uwazaj bo sie pomylisz!
Posted by: porandojin at April 1, 2005 5:34 PMI like this. You probably overdid it a bit. What Momus says is all true. Except for maybe that BBC radio program. I'm afraid to listen to it now. It may suck. Scary.
Posted by: Mike D at April 1, 2005 6:16 PMthe question is, who posted first, you, nick, or was THIS also a conspiracy?
best,
r.
Hehe. Ja, kjempefin aprilspøk :)
Posted by: erikhw at April 1, 2005 7:30 PMWe are both in the employ of Mayor Ishihara. Keep people talking about Tokyo, that's the name of the game: there's no such thing as bad publicity! Jeans Now is also on the payroll. In fact, I'm afraid you're the only one blogging about Tokyo without receiving substantial weekly paychecks, r!
Posted by: Momus at April 1, 2005 7:32 PM
Postmodernis makes for strange bedfellows.
What would a Momus/Marxy chimera be called, Marmus or Morxy?
Posted by: sparkligbeatnic at April 1, 2005 7:48 PM
This stunt is nearly as cheesy as the Koizumi/Gere dance.
Am i the only one that smells the reak of an April's fool?
Posted by: gilgamesh at April 1, 2005 8:51 PMI think you've been having too much potato and strawberry sandwiches and 'Boss' coffee... (from Sunkus of course)
Posted by: dzima at April 1, 2005 9:44 PMMarmus sounds like some kind of breast enlarging chewing gum.
Morxy sounds like some kind of anti-zit cream.
Posted by: r. at April 2, 2005 12:17 AMwill guys shut up about postmodernism shit and other shit that sounds the same. pricks.
Posted by: johnny at April 2, 2005 1:09 AMif you colapse the binary formed by the textual issuance of "postmodernism shit" and the uyoku funded paycheck that momus drinks away each week, while referencing the works of Rushdie, a predominant concept is the concept of materialist sexuality. Thus, Porter[1] implies that we have to choose between material narrative and subconstructive Marxism.
r once said something about "Class is dead," says Sontag; however, according to Pickett[3] , it is not so much class that is dead, but rather the failure, and therefore the absurdity, of class. The subject is interpolated into a dialectic neocultural theory that includes sexuality as a whole. Therefore, if material narrative holds, we have to choose between neostructural patriarchialist theory and prestructural feminism.
To which marxy replied Neocultural semantic theory implies that culture is capable of intentionality. But von Ludwig[4] suggests that we have to choose between Marxist socialism and Derridaist reading.
momus corrected us all at the end with an essay about how the feminine/masculine distinction which is a central theme of Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49 emerges again in Gravity's Rainbow. However, the main theme of la Tournier's[5] model of deconstructivist neocapitalist theory is the difference between class and sexuality.
Happy New Fiscal Year To All, And To All A Polite Elmo!
Posted by: Chris_B at April 2, 2005 3:21 AMbravo! bringing bundles of b's befits a bonnie blog.
Posted by: graham webster at April 2, 2005 8:00 AMaighh! find new ways to drive us mad why don't you...
Posted by: David at April 2, 2005 10:42 AMThis stunt is nearly as cheesy as the Koizumi/Gere dance
Probably so.
I think you've been having too much potato and strawberry sandwiches and 'Boss' coffee... (from Sunkus of course)
Nice reference to strawberry sandwiches. It's a Japan-only kind of item.
will guys shut up about postmodernism shit and other shit that sounds the same. pricks.
No, you shut up!
if you colapse the binary formed by the textual issuance of "postmodernism shit"
Yeah, yeah. Nice try at "fake academic prose" but the secret to the real stuff is using such obnoxiously large words and oblique references that you can't tell whether it's real or parody.
Posted by: marxy at April 2, 2005 10:46 AMthank http://www.elsewhere.org/cgi-bin/postmodern/ not me
Posted by: Chris_B at April 2, 2005 10:53 AMthank http://www.elsewhere.org/cgi-bin/postmodern/ not me
I see.
Why all this picking on Pynchon? Can't David Foster Wallace take up some of the slack?
Posted by: marxy at April 2, 2005 11:35 AM