Jan adds to it too

You all have tapped into something that I groan about every time I
inadvertantly catch a commercial while grading my endless stack of papers.
I have found that I am fighting a middle-aged crisis early enough -
what with all the deaths in my family while at WWU and seeing the gray in
my hair and my newfound wrinkles flowing from the corners of my eyes.
To me, its simply a depressing reminder that everything I cherished once
upon a time is now the background noise to a f***ing commercial. To
me, it's as akin to being sinful as possible to desecrate decades of
things I used to get stoned to, simply to sell a friggin' pickup truck.

I graduated high school in 1980, so I have the most room to rant! Even
more depressing, I showed The U.S. vs John Lennon to a freshman class
at Campbell University last week and half of them not only did not know
who the man was, but when the shots fired out at the end of the film,
most of them jumped out of their seats. They had no idea he had been
gunned down and taken from us so early.

But, alas, I got them thinking.....

miss you guys and gals!
Jan

Kyle adds to it

Drew and Lynda - although Derrida would be proud of you (drew) for
generating the term "ghostmodernity," I think what you are discussing
is a necessary condition of remediation, the inscription of prior
media onto "new" media, which is material not spectral.

Of course, you could always go psychoanalytic and call it a
melancholic response to the trauma we call the 80's.

But I was a toddler then so I couldn't really say.

Andrew responds

We've departed from postmodernity only to enter
ghostmodernity!

Lynda responds...

Andrew,
I don't feel adequate to speak to the appropriation of
80's music by the media and college freshmen, but I
was staring at my unread books on my bookcases today
and grabbed Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves To Death
and I think that it speaks to this issue...if only
insofar as it further complicates your question. What
does it say that today's culture is reaching back for
the things the amused previous generations rather than
(or while concurrently) create (creating) their own
amusements? (and what does it say about me that I'm
using someone else's intellectual work from the same
time period to address your question? ;) )
"Today, we must look to the city of Las Vegas, Nevada,
as a metaphor of our national character and
aspiration. . . . For Las Vegas is a city entirely
devoted to the idea of entertainment, and as such
proclaims the spirit of a culture in which all public
discourse increasingly takes the form of
entertainment. Our politics, religion, news,
athletics, education and commerce have been
transformed into congenial adjuncts of show business,
largely without protest or even much popular notice.
The result is that we are a people on the verge of
amusing ourselves to death." ~Neil Postman
. . . if, in the 80's, we were a people on the verge
of amusing ourselves to death: what's going on now?

Andrew's Delayed Email

the structure of feeling that inspired my initial
subject-heading seems to be growing, or is this just a
gen-x paraonoid reaction (Jim, Linda?)?

that structure is the resurfacing of 80s, and some
late 70s, tunes in the promotion of forthcoming season
premieres on tv: the cure for without a trace, cyndi
lauper for something, everybody wants to rule the
world for kid nation, and it goes on...thoughts??

also, i know this is one of the first signs of
schizophrenia, but it was as if owen wilson was
reading my mind/emails, leaving these millenial stars
to coke-car accidents and meditation retreats in rural
minnesota.

lastly, at rose's prompting, one of the best novels of
my past year:
*Christie Malry's Own Double Entry* by BS Johnson. A
rare gem indeed and certain to reenter circulation in
literature programs!!

A.

Engineering Haiku

I shared this with Kyle a while ago. I thought I'd share with the rest of you:

Sometimes I get bored with work.

Recently I turned a bunch of the drawing notes into Haikus. The plans didn't go out this way...but I had fun...(and I realize that I have not maintained the spiritual aspect behind the idea of the Haiku...but cut me some slack: I'm dealing with drawings of water and sewer lines... :) )

***
Existing guardrail

gravel to match existing

see standard detail

***

Double doors go here

dead bolt with dummy handle

solid door anchors

***

saw cut and tack coat

seal finished edges here

only crushed backfill

***

Note: plumb in drop tube

to drain oil from genset

note all louvers size

***
and a note to the cad tech who made the drawing:

Like warm winter snow

lineweights are heavy and soft;

makes plan hard to read
***
x,
L

Madness and the Hamsterwheel

Recently reading Truman Capote's *In Cold Blood* and there was Belligham as a significant place for Perry Smith, one of the two ciminals and allegedly the murder of all 4 Klutters. Throw in the DC sniper duo and The Ham starts to look much spookier than it ever did on my daily lovely walks from Fairhaven Creek Apartments on the woodsy trail down to Village Books.

Besides Gary Snyder's poetry, have any of you come across other Ham references in the Lit/Cinema world? I'd love to know for future planning of a Ham unit in a literary places of the PNW I'll teach in the future and on which I'd be interested in a collaborative construction of the syllabus.