I Don't Think Like Usual People, Who Think Like Usual People

- Random Factual Anecdote #2,: So, I used to live in Littleton, Colorado. I lived there when I was a young buck skaterboarder dude, Kindergarten to 5th grade. All I would ever dude is skateboard or play basketball with my brother. This was our pathetic, but extremely fun existence: skateboard, basketball; skateboard, basketball; repeat. Oh, and I guess there were computer games, too (Sierra games, stand up!), but mostly skateboarding and basketball. Anyway, we used to skateboard with our neighbors and whoever else we ran into that we thought was cool enough to roll with us. Somehow, we met this kid Byron Kliebold. I dunno how we met him, but we did and we ended up skateboarding with him a lot. We built a ramp outside of his house one day and were doing all sorts of stupid lil' kid I-aint-never-scurred shit off the ramp and having a grand ol' time. Yay, yay. I'm not exactly sure why we built a ramp all the way at Byron's crib, but I suspect it had something to do with the fact that his parents were never around and my parents probably would've been tripping the fuck out if they saw me and my brother jumping off this ramp with no protection (raw doggy for life). Anyway, the parental footnote is only relevant because Byron had a little brother. His name was Dylan. If you don't know where this story is going yet, well, you will in a second. Anyway, only thing I remember about little Dylan was that he was just a fucking little kid. That's all. He was Byron's little brother. Fast forward a decade or so and little Dylan Kliebold is bucking motherfuckers in Columbine Highschool. So, yeah. I used to skateboard with dude's older brother. Silly, huh?

- Emo Hairdryer: Peep this fucking hairdryer. It's so ridiculously, deliciously emo. Pull trigger, out comes warm air. Brilliant.

- Bansky: Most of you have probably heard about this by now, but that dude Bansky is killing it, again. Scroll down a bit to see him "vandalising" museums by hanging his pieces up. Hilarious. Go to his page, too. It's real.

- ...like, Identity and Shit, dude: I'm re-reading Jeffrey T. Nealon's wonderful book "Alterity Politics" at the moment. It's all about reconfiguring a "politics of Identity." The main thesis is that "Identity politics as a project is doomed to fail because every specific identity likewise fails to be complete, falls short of some kind of plenitude" precisely because "any particular identity is actually predicated upon (and thereby inextricable from)" differences and otherness (3). In other words, we can think of identity like a language where-- just as words only obtain meaning through their relationship to each other ("differences without positive terms")-- our current understanding of Identity can only be identified by what it isn't (i.e. "I am a heterosexual white male because I am not homosexual; not female; not black, etc.") But, of course, the "etc" in the previous paranthetical is instructive: as Nealon says, "no discourse of otherness can hope to map the entire conflicted terrain of alterity in the postmodern world(s)"-- there is no way to fully account for what Judith Butler calls "the embarassed 'etc'" that inevitably and necessarily fails to account for every single possible identity. The identity of a heterosexual white male is based on the infinite spectrum of differences that aren't "heterosexual," "white," or "male" [and there's a very interesting chapter about how since identity is currently understood in negative terms-- i.e. i am white because I am not black, yellow, brown, etc-- this reliance on otherness/difference for one's identity often surfaces itself in resentment (think Rush Limbaugh and his angry white males)]. Thus, Nealon's book is all about rethematizing "Identity." Instead of looking at "Identity" as a static effect (a noun) [a process that is doomed to fail because of the "embarassed 'etc.'"], he wants to challenge us to redefine "Identity" instead in terms of "Alterity"-- a constant and performative engagement and re-engagement with "otherness." It's really fucking fascinating stuff.

- Juni-who?: O-Dub's new guest poster on his blog killed it recently with a 50 Facts that are difficult for me to believe list. Shit's hilarious. I dunno who dude is, but peep. In other O-Dub related news, I have to say that I have no idea why smart people like O-Dub and Hua Hsu are wasting their breath talking about the Black Eyed Peas. Those fuckers were NEVER good. NEVER. Even when I was into underground rap I thought those dudes sucked. And, "they're like the fugees. except you don't have to think"? The fuck? I mean, the Fugees are cool and all, but they certainly aren't very "think-y" are they? Am I missing Pras's challenging and nuanced sociopolitical commentary? The Black Eyed Peas are like the Fugees in that they have a girl in their group and that they're not gangsta rap. That's about it. Well, and the fact that the male emcees suck. But, whatever. I'm an idiot for even wasting time telling people that they're wasting time talking about the BEPs. So fuck it.

- Even More Oschino: I posted the entire Oschino mixtape over on the shrimp for you fuckers. Go get it.

-e