Americans are idiots thread

[BO]

Because that about sums it all up in a 'nut' shell. And because I need a place to satisfy my misanthropic rantings and save funny videos.

[pan]

Jo is putting together her tenure portfolio (again).  Yesterday she had a melt down resolved only by a bike ride and my statement that "if they want to get rid of you they will find a way" (and, of course, a Valium when we got home).  She was trying to prove a negative, to "resolve" the perceptions of collegial concerns put forward the last time. Of course, proving that perceptions exist is easy - all one has to do is to state that the perceptions exist.  And, collegiality is the charge used by protected fat lazy fucks to put down the unprotected people who they are being non-collegial to.  Jo works very hard and is very good - they are neither.

The Dean is using the Shock Doctrine - an analysis of the Uni that found the one year old Dance Major lacking in enrollment (the other two state Unis excused programs 3 yrs old or less from the analysis) to "save" the Program by bringing in the proprietor of a local dance studio with no university training/degrees who is backed by the local Rotary Club to completely revamp the entire program and make it a very old school ballet conservatory.  We are collateral damage in this.   Makes it even easier to tell Jo to relax about it as the Dean is going to find a way to get rid of her no matter what.  She has to get us out of the way so she can return the program to the turn of the 19th century.  I hate academia.

[BO]

Rotary Club??? Bwaaahhhhaaahhaaa!!! May as well offer a class in band marching and batton twirling.

Sorry, Pan. Humor is the only way I can deal with all the dumbing-down taking place in this f-upped country.

Probably a good analogy to your situation is Good Morning Vietnam with Robin Williams. Watched it again on Netflix the other night. Basic theme: incompetent bureaucratic soul-crushing assholes assuring the destruction of anything they don't understand or can't do themselves. Which is pretty-much includes all forms of art.

My condolences and sympathies.

[pan]

Thank you.  I enjoy the marching band and baton twirling analogy.  Even though this threatens our financial security it is so bizarre we can (occasionally) laugh at the absurdist humor of the whole thing.

The Chair of the School/department who we have nicknamed Chihuahua due to his propensity to be a proper lap dog but is, in his heart, a decent guy who wants to do the right thing, has actually started to not be able to ignore the overt  and hubristic abuse of authority by someone who has no comprehension at all of the discipline that she intends to remake.  Not that he is willing to actually risk his additional pay of a 12 month, rather than 9 month contract, as director of the school. People sell their souls at such a cheap price these days......

[waldopaper]

MOR WRDS.   Let's give you a bone before invading Poland.  

[pan]

Here in the postmodern everything is relative and the Canon does not matter.

Of course the paradox of postmodern is that it has established its own canon - Foucault, Derrida, Lyotard, Bataille, et al

Recently thoroughly enjoyed reading  The One and the Many:  Contemporary Collaborative Art in a Global Context by Grant Kester.  He takes on the postmodern art critics who dismiss social action based upon their embrace of the favored French philosophers who, he says, developed their ideas in response to the failure of Paris '68 (and, of course, disenchantment with Stalinism) - the Revolution was a failure because Man had not evolved to the point of being able to sustain it.  All action is doomed to failure.  The only "enlightened" stance is ironic disaffection.

First we become stupid by thinking the symbol is the idea it represents.

I pledge allegiance to the flag....

[BO]

Hope you guys and gals can make time to watch Gore Vidal's autobiography, "United States of Amnesia." It just popped-up  on Netflix. Hopefully that means it's available elsewhere. Maybe youtube soon.  

So refreshing to hear someone tell the truth about this country. And with style and grace and courage. I was totally captivated and in total awe for 90 minutes.

[waldopaper]

quick note BO- thanks.   halfway thru.  awsome.  gotta get back to it now.   

[waldopaper]

Gore Vidal:  epigrammatic. (sounds like a meme)   The United States of Amnesia.  

My legacy:  "I couldn't care less."  

The 4 Most Beautiful Words in the English Language (SEO style):  "I told you so."   

capital letters.  

[pan]

Tom Tomorrow has figured out how to get real things done in the US:

[stonefruit]

speaking of idiots, i resemble that remark

http://www.cityrag.net/an-idiot-in-augusta/

[pan]

Years ago an older friend remarked that, in the 50s and 60s it was possible to seek out alternative ways of being but now it isn't because it is too expensive to live in poverty these days.

[stonefruit]

here's my next two. can't decide which to do...

An Idiot in Augusta, part 2

"We got this"

by Stonefruit

October 11, 2014

 

One night I was lucky enough to catch a shift working the back door at the Disposition Bar. Lord knows I needed the money.

 

I rode home along the bike path on the river at 3 a.m. It was eerie, mysterious, weird, thrilling. The moon was at its lowest ebb. There was not a sliver of silver, not a trace of light. I could only see my way forward by looking askance. I heard strange things going bump in the night. Was that a human racketing through the brambles? An alligator? It was scary. Why the hell couldn't I be normal and take Broad?

 

Sometimes you can hear the weight of things if you listen closely. 70 pounds. 80 pounds. Not a human. Something smaller. Perhaps something more nimble and deadly? A jaguar to bite a joint? Every stroke of the pedal took me deeper into the heart of darkness, the primordial soup of time. Everything that was once alive in the southeast - on the continent - was alive that night. Big cats, snakes, raccoons, possums with attitude, you name it.

 

The unfathomable fecundity of this continent before the white man came to fuck it all up became clear to me. I felt it in the fulminating darkness,

 

I felt my family's 250 year old roots in the Carolinas. The old gravestones with family names in the Baptist cemetery. The streets with family names in the foothill valley.

 

Why did we waste this bounty? How could we have, as humans? There was too much to even waste. Yet we converted it all in to mini marts and expressways. Such it is, so it goes and there is no going back now. We are where we are.

 

When I first arrived in town, I envisioned using this forum to sculpt a persona and create a narrative arc, a "Hunter S. Thompson or Charles Bukowski-type making his way as a newcomer in Augusta and the local arts world." Some things have happened to make me change my approach.

 

Such a tactic might work for someone like Thompson, who parachuted into events and locales dominated by the greed heads and pearly swine, leaving a trail of mayhem and debauchery behind. It might also work for someone like Bukowski, in a city as gigantic, anonymous and hideously depraved as Los Angeles. But it won't work in Augusta.

 

Augusta is a small town. Pseudonyms don't hide fuck all. I can't talk about the people I have met through pseudonyms without immediately identifying them - and myself. And that would be disrespectful. Because personally I don't trust journalists any further than I can throw them. If the people I have been talking to knew I was a surreptitious quasi-journalist while we were talking, they would not have been as remotely forthcoming and nice as they have been. What they said was in confidence.

 

I have spoken to a number of well-placed people in the arts, government, academia and downtown. They have all been generous with their time, helpful in seeing where I might fit in with their contacts and areas of expertise, and frank about the challenges and opportunities that face Augusta. I am looking for an academic or artistic gig but also keen to rejuvenate downtown through culture. This usually gets me a pretty warm hearing. Admitted challenges remain. We all know them. They are not really worth itemizing for the umpteenth time. My pet project is to rehabilitate an underutilized downtown building for live-work studios for artists. This is not beyond my competency and professional experience.

 

For all the challenges Augusta faces, one or two breakout successes could model success and catalyze a number of other related initiatives.

 

I keep hearing about how awesome Savannah, Athens, Columbia, Charleston, and such are compared to us. Fuck that. Enough with "potential." We got this. Let us do it already.