New low

"Césaire, by redeploying the sexual and textual excess that had for so long marked his inferiority, by marketing encephalitic démesure as priapic virility, attempts to draw a profit from colonialism’s cultural and material investment – both of value and of lack – in his physical, cultural, and textual bodies."

New thing: marketing lows as highs

uptake update

Circuits are back in circulation, but always already post-(a )posteriori (in our postprandial world, un/fortunately, all logic is circular).

When I thought I was turning the lever all the way Off, before turning it back On, there was a tiny metal bar that kept me perpetually in passage through the middle.

Out of sheer frustration and with a glimmer of my own cleverness I plunged through it, and escaped my limbo of cold wet psychopolitical darkness, much like Cesaire.

But, much like Cesaire, I risk (re)valorizing the (masculine) body. Or I risk effacing violence? Or I'm performing figurative castration? If all women would do more weightlifting, these issues would be less pressing. Or more?

But I Had Just Taken a Crumb of Adderall, So This Has Been Fun, And Seems Like Something to Share

My apartment is freezing. Mostly I huddle under blankets next to my space heater, hoping it will start a fire as such things are apparently wont to do; for days after I burned myself with tea months ago, that splotch of leg was unfailingly warm, through and through.

My mom sent me another space heater, for the rest of my space. Being a stereotypical girl, cold and dumb (physically, mentally, sexually), I plugged it into the same outlet as my other one, which, perhaps predictably, caused the electricity to go out. I manned up and braved subfreezing (seriously! well like 31 degrees) temperature and found the fusebox and reset the thing like I saw a boy do one time.

Then this morning I did it again. I thought because I used two different outlets, one in my culinary workspace and one in my academic workspace, it would be okay. But it was, I now understand, the same circuit. It was the kind of spatial and disciplinary separation that allowed 18th-century philosophes to bemoan their spiritual slavery because the economic slavery that supported their lives of mind was displaced to the Caribbean.

Repeated attempts to reset failed. I called my landlady, whose answering machine wished me a day full of moments of joy. My phone and computer are about to die. I have very important papers due, to do, imminently. It's raining.

market analysis

Some Saturdays and Sundays, I sell strawberries.

Saturday, Berkeley Farmer's Market:

Blond 8-year-old boy whose progressive parents had apparently allowed to roam the market unconstrained, like a happy free-range chicken, before conscientiously accepting a ripe late-season strawberry that I held, tantalizingly, by its long stem in front of his face: "Is it organic?"

Sunday, Oakland Farmer's Market:

Black 8-year-old boy who was, under some unclear business arrangement, "helping" the guy selling eggs, mostly by criticizing his hairstyle, manner of speaking, and choice to display publicity material for area farms: "Why you advertising for other people? You got to advertise fo YO'SELF"

As I surveyed the field of strawberries before me, culling the specimens of the appropriate size, color, and stem length for the sample selection, I couldn't help but wonder: which kid was more annoying?

From Zagat Guide to Paris Found on Street On Way Home From Yoga

Editeurs (Les)
4, carrefour de l'Odéon, 6e (Odéon), 01 43 26 67 76;
fax 01 46 34 58 30; www.lesediteurs.fr
Voici un "endroit sympa pour prendre un verre en terrasse et regarder passer le monde", de cet emplacement de choix à l'Odéon - où le "décor de bibliothèque", "rempli d'étagères de livres colorés" et "de recoins confortables" en fait un best-seller aussi; hélas la "cuisine de brasserie classique" "n'est guère plus que correcte", mais "la jeune clientèle branchée" trouve l'endroit "parfait pour un snack" ou pour "draguer la serveuse américaine", qui est "charmante" même si "elle ne parle point le français."

El Mansour
7, rue de la Trémoille, 8e (Alma-Marceau), 01 47 23 88 18;
fax 01 40 70 13 53
Ce "vrai son of de betch" ("ne vous inquiétez pas" de l'article défini du nom, il n'est "pas du tout méxicain") produit des fils qui pavoisent de leurs "belles bites", soit de "taille extraordinaire", soit de "couleur parfaite."

temps vide

The other day I drank coffee, a rarity, and thought about how awake it made me feel. A few hours later I forced myself to eat a piece of unsweetened baking chocolate, because it is, perhaps counterintuitively, very easy for me to digest. Today I took down the spice rack from one inner cupboard door and reinstalled it on another. I had to improvise, as I have few tools.

I listen to my local public radio station as I weave and unweave at the loom of language, blend greens into pesto. These people stutter; I miss MI-chelle Norris. Because of the Internet, we may simply develop a higher tolerance for embarrassment. My skin is variously discolored, more or less explicably. I have a splotch on my hand that appeared spontaneously but looks exactly like the 2-month old burn on my knee from scalding tea. I seem to be suffering from a cognitive disorder that I can't identify...aphasia?

onomythopoesia

As I began to read some Levi-Strauss, it occurred to me that the modern "meme" meme must have evolved, by memesis, from the "mytheme," and that this notion, far from being an insightful observation on my part, was probably, in fact, a meme.