The Post-Apocalyptic Techno Poem

Michael Kimmel on how the actions of ultra right wing terrorists like Anders Breivik and Timothy McVeigh must be understood not just in terms of the globalization of society, but also in terms of gender. The importance of these men's perceptions of masculinity and of emasculation cannot be overstated here.

Paul Krugman on how centrism is destroying America.

And some follow-up from d r i f t g l a s s:

For 30 years, the staunchest ally of the unhinged Right has been the craven Center: that army of Beltway automatons who profit handsomely from propping up the Right’s every act of depravity with one outrageously false equivalence after another. This is the "But the Democrats" brigade, on well-coiffed display every Sunday at what I I have been calling "The Mouse Circus" for the past six years.

Unchecked this state of affairs will continue for another 30 years or until we as a nation are finally burned to the ground and sold off for scrap by the Right, right under the noses of the Center who will be busy sternly lecturing Left on the need for more Compromise and greater Reasonableness, and compulsively masturbating into the pages of the New York Times about how an awesome new Third Party full of Radically Reasonable Compromisers would solve everything.

Strangely pertinent words from George Orwell's 1984.

...

And finally, Severus Snape wants you to know that it gets better:



I totally love this clip, not just because the gentleman in question does a magnificent impersonation but also because he actually calls the Harry Potter series of books out for being sort of tedious - which they really kind of were.

Jessica DelBalzo presents her abortion experiences: why she needed it, how she did it, what it was like, and why--even now--she considers it one of the best decision of her life and something that made her sincerely happy.

Krugman presents some graphs on the cost differences of private healthcare and medicare, pointing out that people who suggest we make a major shift from public to private should be ashamed of themselves.

Sherman Alexie writes beautifully of the transformative power of honest and even brutal young adult fiction, aptly defending YA fiction from those would say that young adults are too young for intense fiction. (And, in fairness, here's the article he was responding to, which offers the other side of the argument and is worth a look--if for no other reason than to get a list of books to read. ;> )

I want this hoodie.

In preparation for my comprehensive exams, which I'll sit in late December or early January, I'm planning to do some intensive reading in the subject of Japanese political history. I've got books and articles covering the Kofun through Muromachi periods--roughly one-thousand years of cultural development--and with any luck I'll have read the majority of them thoroughly in the next two weeks. (I know, right?)

Here's my list, in bibliographic form, ordered alphabetically, for anyone who's interested in it:

* Adolphson, Mikael and Edward Kamens and Stacie Matsumoto, ed. Heian Japan, Centers and Peripheries. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2007.
* Berry, Mary Elizabeth. The Culture of Civil War in Kyoto. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997.
* Borgen, Robert. Sugawara no Michizane and the Early Heian Court. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 1994.
* Conlon, Thomas. The Culture of Force and Farce: Fourteenth-Century Japanese Warfare. No. 2000-01 of Occasional Papers in Japanese Studies Cambridge: Harvard University, Edwin O. Reischaeur Institute of Japanese Studies, January 2000.
* ---. State of War: The Violent Order of Fourteenth-Century Japan. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan, Center for Japanese Studies, 2003.
* Hall, John W. and Toyoda Takeshi, ed. Japan in the Muromachi Age. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977.
* Hurst, G. Cameron III. Insei: Abdicated Sovereigns in the Politics of Late Heian Japan, 1086-1185. New York: Columbia University Press, 1976.
* Mass, Jeffrey P. The Kamakura Bakufu: A Study in Documents. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1976.
* ---. "The Origins of Kamakura Justice." Journal of Japanese Studies 3 no. 2 (Summer 1977): 299-322.
* ---. The Development of Kamakura Rule, 1180-1250: A History with Documents. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1979.
* ---. "Translation and Pre- 1600 History." Journal of Japanese Studies 6 no. 1 (Winter 1980): 61-88.
* ---. "Patterns of Provincial Inheritance in Late Heian Japan." Journal of Japanese Studies 9 no. 1 (Winter 1983): 67-95.
* ---. Lordship and Inheritance in Early Medieval Japan: A Study of the Kamakura Soryo System. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1989.
* ---. Antiquity and Anachronism in Japanese History. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992.
* ---. "The Missing Minamoto in the Twelfth-Century Kanto." Journal of Japanese Studies 19 no. 1 (Winter 1993): 121-145.
* ---. Yoritomo and the Founding of the First Bakufu: The Origins of Dual Government in Japan. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999.
* ---. Family, Law, and Property in Japan, 1200-1300. No. 2000-03 of Occasional Papers in Japanese Studies Cambridge: Harvard University, Edwin O. Reischaeur Institute of Japanese Studies, December 2000.
* McCullough, William. "The Azuma Kagami Account of the Shôkyû War." Monumenta Nipponica 23 no. 1/2 (1968): 102-155.
* Piggott, Joan R. The Emergence of Japanese Kingship. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997.
* Varley, H. Paul. The Ônin War: History of Its Origins and Background with a Selective Translation of The Chronicle of Ônin. New York: Columbia University Press, 1967.
* ---. Imperial Restoration in Medieval Japan. New York: Columbia University Press, 1971.
* Williams, Yoko. Tsumi: Offense and Retribution in Early Japan. London: Routeledge Curzon, 2003.

I appear to be reading every Jeffrey Mass book/article known to man, but he is the go-to guy for Kamakura period history, so...

Wish me luck.

...such is human nature that it finds a little tameness in mere morality. Mere virtue belongs to a charity school-girl, and has a taint of the catechism. All of us feel this, though most of us are too timid, too scrupulous, too anxious about the virtue of others, to speak out. We are ashamed of our nature in this respect, but it is not the less our nature. And if we look deeper into the matter, there are many reasons why we should not be ashamed of it. The soul of man, and as we necessarily believe, of beings greater than man, has many parts beside its moral part. It has an intellectual part, an artistic part, even a religious part, in which mere morals have no share. In Shakespeare or Goethe, even in Newton or Archimedes, there is much which will not be cut down to the shape of the commandments. They have thoughts, feelings, hopes--immortal thoughts and hopes--which have influenced the life of men, and the souls of men, ever since their age, but which the 'whole duty of man,' the ethical compendium, does not recognize. Nothing is more unpleasant than a virtuous person with a mean mind. A highly developed moral nature joined to an undeveloped intellectual, an undeveloped artistic nature, and a very limited religious nature, is of necessity repulsive. It represents a bit of human nature--a good bit, of course, but a bit only--in disproportionate, unnatural, and revolting prominence...

from "Wordsworth, Tennyson, and Browning: or Pure, Ornate, and Grotesque Art in English Poetry" by Walter Bagehot. In Collected Works of Walter Bagehot: The Literary Essays, Cambridge, 1965, Vol II, p.351 (emphasis added).

When it comes to odd mythological creatures, no one can top the Japanese for sheer inventiveness and practicality.

I've become utterly convinced of this since I began reading about the handscroll sets known as "The Night Parade of the Hundred Demons" (Hyakki yagyô emaki) for a seminar paper. The latest edition to the pantheon of magical creatures that I know about is the kaichi 獬豸 (also read kaitai). It is defined as follows:

An imaginary beast resembling a cow. When the kaichi sees a fight it will gore with its horns the person who is evil; when it hears an argument it will bite the person who is wrong.

Can you imagine political debate in this country if we had one of these? A great many folks wouldn't sit down for a week.

One of the best things about living in Japan for a year is the opportunity to expand my art book library. (I can see my dad cringing as he reads this; my dad always gets stuck having to help me move my damn books around the country.) But there really are all kinds of wonderful books here that are just not accessible in the States, and since I one day hope to be an educator in the Japanese art history field these books are going to be invaluable to me in the future.

At least, that's what I keep telling myself when I start to wonder about how on earth I'm going to get all these volumes home.

Today, between a trip out to the Tokyo National Museum and an hour spent browsing the spring Used Book Festival in Yokohama Station, I acquired six more books. I've been purchasing with a greater sense of strategy of late, however. I bought a book about Japanese symbols, and two books on the Edo period - one book on art terminology associated specifically with ukiyo-e and one book a catalog for a exhibit of the fusuma paintings of Kano Eitoku in the Daitokuji. I'm not an Edo specialist, but I recognize that I'll eventually have to teach the Edo period. (Although I'd really love at some point to put together a course that specifically focused on the Warring States period and the relationship of art and war in a "pre-modern" context. Blah blah blah.) Anyway, it's worth having major Edo-related touchstones at my fingertips.

I also bought two catalogs from Tokyo National Museum exhibitions - one that focused on depictions of children in Japanese art and one that was all about Sugawara no Michizane and Tenjin! The catalog on children in Japanese art will hopefully come in handy in helping me to think through some questions that I've developed in connection with my most recent project, and I've been trying to get my hands on a Tenjin-based catalog for a long time now. (There are similarly-themed catalogs from the Kyoto and Kyushu National Museums as well, and one day they will be mine). So all in all, not a bad haul.

But I think I need to go back to the book sale again. They had catalogs on Tendai art there as well, but I was out of money. Cash-only sales are a bitch. ;>

Yes, I'm terrible.

But I could be blowing all my money or drugs or whatever. So I suppose I can be kinda-sorta forgiven? Maybe? Please?

My Saturday was spent in cleaning up around the house, organizing materials, and chatting with some friends and family that I had been out of touch with recently. Consequently, I needed my Sunday to be kick-ass in terms of productivity.

I was up at nine to prep for hitting the coffee shop. (Working at home can be highly problematic, particularly if I really need to bust it out.) I reached the shop a little after 12:30 and proceeded to work for close to seven hours straight. Yeah, baby.

When I couldn't take it anymore, I packed up and treated myself to some kaki furai (battered, deep-fried oysters) at the local tonkatsu joint. The meal came with all-you-can eat miso, rice, and cabbage salad, so I dined well, taking time to make notes over a cup of after-dinner green tea.

It's little pleasures like these that keep us crazy folks going.

Recently, I've tentatively gotten back into reading X-Men. They finally brought Psylocke back from the dead - for real - and the recent Psylocke mini has favorably impressed me thus far. The writers have taken the characters in much darker directions (believable given everything they've seen and done over the years), but without the misogyny that generally makes Frank Miller books such a waste of time. So, I've got even more things with which to reward myself - provided that I'm a good girl. ;>

Starting tomorrow I'll have to run the weekly gauntlet of extra-curriculars, so how much time I actually devote to my newly re-found comic book habit remains to be seen.

"It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains." So begins Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, an expanded edition of the beloved Jane Austen novel featuring all-new scenes of bone-crunching zombie mayhem. As our story opens, a mysterious plague has fallen upon the quiet English village of Meryton—and the dead are returning to life! Feisty heroine Elizabeth Bennet is determined to wipe out the zombie menace, but she's soon distracted by the arrival of the haughty and arrogant Mr. Darcy. What ensues is a delightful comedy of manners with plenty of civilized sparring between the two young lovers—and even more violent sparring on the blood-soaked battlefield as Elizabeth wages war against hordes of flesh-eating undead. Can she vanquish the spawn of Satan? And overcome the social prejudices of the class-conscious landed gentry? Complete with romance, heartbreak, swordfights, cannibalism, and thousands of rotting corpses, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies transforms a masterpiece of world literature into something you'd actually want to read.

Although, to make a full disclosure, I did actually want to read Pride and Prejudice. (So much so that I occasionally re-read Pride and Prejudice.) But seriously! The only thing that could make it a more awesome book than it already is, is zombies.

Rock. On.

Link.

Thanks foxxydancr for the heads-up!

~ Quoted in Richard Bowring, Religious Traditions of Japan: 500-1600, p.122 (emphasis mine).


For some reason, I can't help but imagine a crazed (and masked, naturally) Samsāra hiding out in a sorority house with a knife, lying in wait for a naïve victim in a short skirt and tank-top.  That is, of course, because there is something seriously wrong with me.

"It is a natural tendency for people to try to make decisions based solely on their own reasoning. The problem with this is that people are motivated by self interest, and their decisions can appear as scheming, narrow-minded, and weak. This is not the way of Heaven. Unless one is divinely inspired, it is wise to consult an objective party when making a big decision. This person will be fair because he has nothing to gain. In this way you will appear strong and evenhanded, like a mighty tree supported with a strong root, instead of like a twig stuck in the mud."

~ from The Hagakure by Yamamoto Tsunetomo.