Daniel Pearl Will Have His Revenge On Karachi

He'll come back as water, to drown all the fakirs,
Leave a prayer mat of sludge on the ground
- with apologies to Kurt Cobain

Lessons From Snooki On Sexuality

The stars of Jersey Shore are said to be stupid, but I think Snooki might be on to something when she says "Men don't know how to treat women and that’s why the lesbian rate is going up in this country."

There are two competing PC narratives about sexuality. The one, sexuality is fluid, we're all a little gay (or presumably, straight). The second, sexuality isn't a choice.

Obviously there exist total straights and total gays, but there are also a number of people somewhere in between. I wouldn't be surprised if among this number, many are retreating to their own sex and increasing the lesbian rate.

Unfortunately I can't remember where, but I read an interesting critique of homosexuality ("Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve" is not an interesting critique) once. The author argued homosexuality was basically narcissism. While men and women in heterosexual relationships are forced to learn to accept and love otherness, homosexuals are both literally and figuratively engaged in mutual masturbation.

Since our culture teaches us that otherness is a myth and differences are socially constructed, many men don't know how to treat women anymore. By the same token many women don't know how to treat men, but progressive bromides aside, the onus is still on men to take the initiative. When we take the initiative as if we were dealing with a member of the same sex (aren't we are taught men and women are the same?), we fail and so heterosexuality fails.

Being gay is easier than being straight. The social stigma is made up for by the fact that it is incredibly to meet people and have sex. As Stephen Colbert says, men know what men want. If I were bisexual, I'd certainly err on the male side, because that way less miscommunication and head games lie.

As it stands I'm hopelessly straight. Yet by all accounts, females are more fluid in their sexuality than men. So surely it's reasonable to suggest more women are becoming lesbians due to a combination of male ineptitude fostered by cultural delusions of equality and the general narcissism of the times.

Love Thy Fellow Man

Really. Do it. Love thy fellow man. Not for God's love, not for cocaine. Because we are all sagging sacks of skin that poop, masturbate and die. God's image? Maybe once in a lifetime. Otherwise it's boredom, boredom, beastliness, boredom. Talk for hours. Talk religiously. Convention? Ten years from now we'll all look retarded. A hundred years from now? We can't even imagine. Convention is the putrid shell of the times. Socrates, Jesus, a caveman, me and Napoleon have this in common: we are sagging sacks of skin that poop, masturbate and die... and probably love, hate, try, fail, think, act stupid. The rest is window-dressing, really. Nationality? Who remembers the Armenians? Who remembers the Visigoths? They may be in your blood, even my blood, but we don't remember. Maybe they survive in the way you glance furtively? Every thought has been thought before. I'm saying nothing that hasn't been thought probably five, six, seven times before. All I can do is restate it in the current idiom. Love thy fellow man. As ugly as they are, so are you!

Song Of The Day

Figures that the only good contemporary protest song was written by a guy who's been around since the 80s. (Equal opportunity offender, he also has a song wishing St. Paul had died in a shipwreck.) Kids these days don't know shit, rap and rock are both dead. Luckily we have Julian Cope. C'mon, play it MTV!

Julian Cope - All The Blowing-Themselves-Up Motherfuckers (Will Realise The Minute They Die That They Were Suckers)

All the blowing-themselves-up motherfuckers
Will realise the minute they die that they were suckers (x4)

Babe, we're from the future
& they're from the past
It's strictly verboten
For them to have a laugh

Babe, we think it's funny
When we hear what they believe
But it ain't so funny
Now they're making us grieve

All the blowing-themselves-up motherfuckers
Will realise the minute they die that they were suckers (x4)

Hey, they're from the future
& we're from the past
Our Western experience
Was not built to last

They better get serious
& show them respect
Their god is mysterious
& they're the insect

All the blowing-themselves-up motherfuckers
Will realise the minute they die that they were suckers (x4)

Hizbullah

The Myth Of The Hipster

Hipsters don't exist. They are meta-meta-figments of the cultural imagination. Seriously, they are so ironic that even blogs devoted to hating hipsters talk like hipsters. To wit:

We talked about fashion and shit on Lemondrop. Revel in our on-camera awkwardness. How to Dress Like a Hipster (and Ditch a One-Night Stand Like One)

This article is totes irrelevant seeing as how the day I submit to producing progeny will also be the day I put on sweatpants and go for a jog in Central Park with my super supportive contingent of workout buddies (read: never to the 10th fucking power).

If you guessed by the combination of awkward self-consciousness and unconscious narcissism the above was written by women, you guessed right. Slavoj Zizek is something of a hipster too, but he says something relevant between two-thirds gobbeldegook:

. . . the most sceptical attitude, that of deconstruction, relies on the figure of an Other who 'really believes'; the postmodern need for the permanent use of the devices of ironic distantiation (quotation marks, etc.) betrays the underlying fear that, without these devices, believe would be direct and immediate as if, if I were to say "I love you" instead of the ironic "As the poets would have put it, I love you" . . .

Obama begets Tea Party, Weimar begets Nazi party, because people hate this "post-" (racial, national, sexual, cultural, modern) shit. Fortunately hipsters don't actually exist, or else there'd be a real backlash.

The King Of Illiterature

Sources say:

Us Weekly reported this morning that Spencer Pratt is penning a tell-all book about his relationship with ex Heidi Montag, including new details about her tormented relationship with her mother, Darlene Egelhoff. (No mention of a publisher.)

Two comments. One, how can you write a tell-all about someone completely devoid of interest? Isn't this akin to writing a horror story about a friendly ghost? A fantasy story about life in a paper mill? A science-fiction story set two days from now? You could pick someone randomly off the street and write a better book.

Second. I'm sick and tired of any old asshole writing a book. This goes for celebrities in particular, but also academics writing about tea rituals in fifteenth century Korea and assorted people "living a year biblically" or some other moronic gimmick. There should be no more than fifteen books published a year, to be chosen by a committee of elders.

The Street

Closer to 9/11, I remember hearing a lot of talk about the "Arab street." We had to listen to what the Arab street was saying. Now it's clear to me, as a perusal of a comments section or poll numbers show, an American street also exists. This street has not forgotten the Arab street dancing with joy on 9/11, and judges Islam accordingly.

I am not part of the "street." I'm far too judicial. But I also recognize the value of such folk. No nation can survive without a mass of gut-driven patriots. They're the ones who enlist in the army (another reason why the attempt to win "hearts and minds" through soldiers is retarded). A nation of pure liberals cannot survive. Of course, a nation of pure conservatives doesn't deserve to survive, and dies a slow death of stagnation: see the history of the Ottoman Empire.

Getting the support of the street matters more than getting the support of liberals, because liberals will support you anyway. They're judicious like that. The Muslim campaign against Islamophobia may impress liberals, but what Nixon identified as the silent majority has an operating bullshit detector. Political correctness in general is not only intellectually repugnant, it's counter-productive. People may mouthe what they have to mouthe professionally, but they resent being told what to think and will think the reverse out of spite.

This is why, as a Jew, I have intense dislike for "anti-Semitism is everywhere" hysteria. People like the Anti-Defamation League defame Jews by making us seem like cowards who can't take a joke. Fortunately the American street tends to like Jews, probably because we don't bomb things and generally contribute to society. On the other hand, the Russian street, German street, etc. sure hated us, so I'm cognizant of the dangers of populism.

I don't want to see anti-Muslim pogroms. But if Muslims really want to approve their image in the West, they need to address the street, not merely the liberals who are already in their corner. They're not going to do that through provocative gestures like building a mosque at Ground Zero. If the whole aim of the project is to improve Muslims' image, do the organizers not see it is having the reverse effect?

Muslims need to focus their ire, publicly, on the people who are committing what Jews call Chillul Hashem. I'm frequently angry, and most Jews are frequently angry, at people like Bernie Madoff whose actions are invariably taken as representative of the whole. (A rabbi said of Lev "Trotsky" Bronstein: "The Trotskys make the revolutions, the Bronsteins suffer for it.")

Bin Laden is worse for his people than shady Jewish financiers and commies because he explicitly committed his atrocities in Islam's name. When people do something in your name, you have an obligation, at the very least to your own sense of dignity, to loudly proclaim, "not in my name." Not to get defensive, to be equivocal, to say "yes, but..." Speak to the street, not the ivory towers. (Says the man in the ivory tower.)

To Thine Own Self Be True

I'm not sure how facetious a column entitled Why I Wish I Were A Guy is meant to be, but taken at face value it suggests a distinct flavour of ressentiment. The columnist notes:

The inbuilt failure of womanhood is brought home to me every time a list is published. . . . Time magazine recently published a list called Best 100 Novels of All Time. There were only 16 women on it. . . . There are 35,000 works of art in the Louvre’s collection and only 13 are by women.

Do such statistics represent a failure of women to produce works of genius, or a patriarchical power structure keeping women down? There's a similar ambiguity around statistics like the disproportionate number of blacks in jail. Are blacks targeted by police, or are they simply more prone on average to criminal behaviour?

The ancient Greeks distinguished physis (nature) from nomos (social order). Everything is socially constructed... up to a point. You can't deconstruct a penis (or at the very least you shouldn't). My race, sex, appearance and to a large extent culture are non-negotiable givens: they are fate. The major point I take from Nietzsche is that one must love fate without falsification.

The self-hating Jews, the self-hating Westerners, the self-hating males and females are abortions. Judaism is an interesting example of how nomos blends into physis. Is Judaism a race or a religion? It is both. You can reject the religion in good conscience, but to reject one's blood is spiritual suicide. We must all learn to live with and love the face our ancestors gave us, even its blemishes.

On that note, the columnist writes:

As a man I wouldn’t have to be good-looking. Believe me, women don’t care about this.

I don't believe you.

Beyond The Pale Is The Place To Be

I don't normally comment on municipal politics (because they're boring), but I'm making an exception for Toronto mayoral candidate Rob Ford. Here's the Toronto Star's take on the "controversy":

The controversy began Tuesday night at a mayoral debate televised by CP24. A Tamil member of the audience asked the candidates to comment on the role of refugees in the city.

Ford responded: “We can’t even deal with the 2.5 million people in the city. I think it’s more important that we take care of the people now before we start bringing in more.”

Ford — who in 2003 said there should be a “refugee freeze” in Toronto —went on to say that the official city plan indicates a million people will be coming to the city over the next decade.

Advocacy groups pounced on the statements. By the afternoon, even the premier was weighing in.

“I just don’t think it’s representative of Canadians. I just don’t think it’s representative of the society that we aspire to build here together,” Dalton McGuinty told journalists at Queen’s Park.

The other candidates' response:

Waiting patiently for their turn, one by one, over and over again, the leading mayoral candidates stepped forward Wednesday to eviscerate frontrunner Rob Ford over controversial comments on immigration he made at a Tuesday debate.

George Smitherman declared it a “turning point in the election” and said ‘sorry’ wouldn’t go far enough.

Sarah Thomson said Toronto had finally seen the “real Rob Ford.”

Joe Pantalone asked if the Etobicoke councillor wanted him to “get back on the boat.”

"Sorry" wouldn't go far enough?! He is implying he wants migrants to "get back on the boat"!? My faith in the people of Toronto has been restored (actually I never had any in the first place) by Rob Ford's lead in the polls. Low political participation in the West may, may have something to do with the fact that most politicians speak liked hollowed-out shells without original thought mouthing groupthink bromides.

Canada is a huge country. Saying maybe all new migrants shouldn't congregate in Toronto is beyond the pale? Personally I'd go further and force them to live in underpopulated areas, but that's just me.

A columnist writes:

It was always anticipated that the more Ford spoke, the less voters would like him. The controversial councillor is living up to expectation.

There is no evidence voters are liking him less the more he speaks. I for one like him more, simply because he's a big fat man who plays by his own rules. I like Prince Philip, I like Silvio Berlusconi, I like Joe Biden, I like "gaffes" and I like people who don't apologize for "gaffes" even better. Rob Ford hasn't apologized. Three cheers!

Unchristian Feelings

Despite its affirmation of the necessity of war, Gandhi intepreted the Hindu text Bhagavad Gita as a symbolic account of man's struggle with himself. Despite being founded by an arguably naive pacifist, Christians have killed millions in his name. I am thus skeptical of clear-cut distinctions between peaceful religions and warlike religions.

That being said, Islam is in the unique position of being the only major religion founded by a warlord. One can certainly interpret jihad in purely spiritual terms, but the founding example of violent jihad obviously creates difficulties. Liberal protestations cannot change human nature, which is prejudical for reasons of survival. When most people see Muslims committing atrocities in the media, they associate those atrocities with the doctrine they are committed in the name of and judge individuals accordingly.

Like all religions, Islam is a great confusion of literalist stupidity and allegorical beauty. Christ was a master of allegorical beauty. Yet although I admire the tenacity required to turn the other cheek, as a Pharisee I am committed to legal reciprocity. I will not donate money to Pakistani flood victims because I know they would not do the same for me.

Holy Apocrypha: Unorthodox Verses

My heart has opened unto every form: it is a pasture for gazelles, a cloister for Christian monks, a temple for idols, the Ka`ba of the pilgrim, the tables of the Torah, and the book of the Qur'an. I practice the religion of Love; in whatsoever directions its caravans advance, the religion of Love shall be my religion and my faith.
- Ibn al-`Arabi

No abyss is deeper than God. He embraces everything: himself and everything else.
- Hans Urs von Balthasar

To place oneself in the position of God is painful: being God is equivalent to being tortured. For being God means that one is in harmony with all that is, including the worst. The existence of the worst evils is unimaginable unless God willed them.
- Georges Bataille

The pride of the peacock is the glory of God.
The lust of the goat is the bounty of God.
The wrath of the lion is the wisdom of God.
The nakedness of woman is the work of God.
- William Blake

The ancient poets animated all objects with Gods or Geniuses, calling them by the names and adorning them with the properties of woods, rivers, mountains, lakes, cities, nations, and whatever their enlarged & numerous senses could perceive. And particularly they studied the genius of each city & country, placing it under its mental deity; Till a system was formed, which some took advantage of, & enslav'd the vulgar by attempting to realize or abstract the mental deities from their objects: thus began priesthood; Choosing forms of worship from poetic tales. And at length they pronounc'd that the Gods had order'd such things. Thus men forgot that all deities reside in the human breast.
- William Blake

The atheist staring from his attic window is often nearer to God than the believer caught up in his own false image of God.
- Martin Buber

A man who was afflicted with a terrible disease complained to Rabbi Israel that his suffering interfered with his learning and praying. The rabbi put his hand on his shoulder and said "How do you know, friend, what is more pleasing to God, your studying or your suffering?"
- Martin Buber, Tales of the Hasidim

God is not without sins: He created the world.
- Bulgarian Proverb

In most cases we attach ourselves to God in order to take revenge on life, to punish it, to signify we can do without it, that we have found something better, and we also attach ourselves to God in horror of men.
- E.M. Cioran

If truth were not boring, science would have done away with God long ago. But God as well as the saints is a means to escape the dull banality of truth.
- E.M. Cioran

In pious times, ere Priest-craft did begin,
Before polygamy was made a sin...
- John Dryden, Absalom

We shall find God in everything alike, and find God always alike in everything.
- Meister Eckhart

The text of the Bible is but a feeble symbol of the Revelation held in the text of Men and Women.
- Havelock Ellis

God builds his temple in the heart on the ruins of churches and religions.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Conduct of Life

Anthropology is the secret of theology. God is man worshipping himself. The Trinity is the human family deified.
- Ludwig von Feuerbach, Essence of Christianity

Devout believers are safeguarded in a high degree against the risk of certain neurotic illnesses; their acceptance of the universal neurosis spares them the task of constructing a personal one.
- Sigmund Freud

Man is the species that can always destroy itself. For this reason, religion was created.
- Rene Girard

The forms and phrases by which a religion is transmitted must be regarded as nothing more than the symbolic expression of a spiritual reality. As that expression is of quite a different order from factual knowledge the one cannot in any way confirm or invalidate the other.
- Maurice Goguel

God didn't build himself that throne
God doesn't live in Israel or Rome
God doesn't belong to the Yankee dollar
God doesn't plant the bombs for Hezbollah
God doesn't even go to church
And God won't send us down to Allah to burn
God will remind us what we already know
That the human race is about to reap what it's sown
- Matt Johnson, Armageddon Days Are Here (Again)

We have seen the highest circle of spiraling powers. We have named this circle God. We might have given it any name we wished: Abyss, Absolute Darkness, Absolute Light, Matter, Spirit, Ultimate Hope, Ultimate Despair, Silence. But never forget, it is we who give it a name.
- Nikos Kazantzakis

Man is to be found in reason, God in the passions.
- Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

God often, as it were, hides himself, and will not hear; yea, will not suffer himself to be found.
- Martin Luther

The chief contribution of Protestantism to human thought is its massive proof that God is a bore.
- H.L. Mencken

Somewhere in the other side of nowhere is a place in space beyond time where the Gods of mythology dwell. These gods dwell in their mythocracies as opposed to your theocracies, democracies, and monocracies. They dwell in a magic world. These Gods can even offer you immortality.
- Sun Ra

Atheism must mean the destruction of the moral God not only as the ultimate source of accusation but as the ultimate source of protection, as Providence. But if atheism is to have any religious significance, the death of the providential God should point toward a new faith, a tragic faith which would be to classical metaphysics what the faith of Job was to the archaic law of retribution professed by his pious friends.
- Paul Ricoeur, The Religious Significance of Atheism

The divine is perhaps that quality in man which permits him to endure the lack of God.
- Jean Rostand

To believe in God is to yearn for His existence and, furthermore, it is to act as if He did exist.
- Miguel de Unamuno

If God has created us in His image, we have more than returned the compliment.
- Voltaire

. . . the Godhead moves and manifests the world in much the same way that a centipede manipulates a hundred legs - spontaneously, without deliberation or calculation.
- Alan Watts

God is absent from the world except through the existence of those in this world in whom his love lives.
- Simone Weil