minkya! che linkya !

"what good are roots if you can't take them with you?" - gertrude stein, from paris (in geertz)

speaking of which, my misspelling of minkya! the other day was still a good enough rendering for my friend marco to point out that it's actually an italian exclamation (of mild, funny vulgarity), which makes a lot more sense than, say, romany-carny, seeing as my dad's mom's folks came to cambridge via palermo, and since - far as i know - no one in the family ever spent much time "down the lake."

maga blog !

bravo, aaron fox! long one of my favorite ethnos, aaron has followed up the publication of his excellent book on country music and working class culture, real country, by embracing web technologies, offering musical examples (in mp3 format), additional (color) photographs, video clips, a portal to reviews and supporting materials, and a blog for continuing the conversation around the book!

black sheep been blogging on their myspace. this one's my favorite:

rap vs crack

Current mood: contemplative
Category: Music

sup?.. been a sec.. with our return, we kinda look at the "game" (music industry) and see it from a different perspective... its as though everybody is content in what the record is saying.. and we're puzzled by everything it's not...

they say the rap game is like the crack game... if thats the case... we know what crack did to our community.. we know what we did and didnt do with that money.. the people who died over streets and product... over ethics and ego... we saw the effect on our brothers, sisters, mothers, children, selves... we hustled and we thought that money would be forever.. it wasnt..

we didnt move together and pull the strength out of the paper we hustled... we went for self.. we took the bumps and bruises that are required reading with streetlife.. some make it thru.. most don't... at this point in life... we have friends who have worked their entire life.. went to school (various levels)... and beside having damn near everything that some of my hustling friends have... they have a peace of mind.. some of them don't even realize.. the freedom that opportunity presents to you... a chance to do more than just make fuckin money... a chance to live life...

they say the rap game is like the crack game....

i think we gonna sell weed... do some hip hop

say word.

finally, since we're in a cut'n'paste mood, please permit me - c/o michael berube (whose jamie stories, from which this comes, never fail to surprise and delight us) - to reproduce a quotation he offers from a jim coetzee book. i will quote it in the context of berube's post:

...the more radical implication of Jamie's remark - that you can train an animal to think - is really interesting. And it reminded me of my favorite passage in Coetzee's Elizabeth Costello, about which I also blogged briefly about two years ago. From one of Ms. Costello's (problematic) lectures on animal rights:

Sultan [a chimpanzee] is alone in his pen. He is hungry: the food that used to arrive regularly has unaccountably ceased coming.

The man who used to feed him and has now stopped feeding him stretches a wire over the pen three metres above ground level, and hands a bunch of bananas from it. Into the pen he drags three wooden crates. Then he disappears, closing the gate behind him, though he is still somewhere in the vicinity, since one can smell him.

Sultan knows: Now one is supposed to think. That is what the bananas up there are about. The bananas are there to make one think, to spur one to the limits of one’s thinking. But what must one think? One thinks: Why is he starving me? One thinks: What have I done? Why has he stopped liking me? One thinks: Why does he not want these crates any more? But none of these is the right thought. Even a more complicated thought—for instance: What is wrong with him, what misconception does he have of me, that leads him to believe it is easier for me to reach a banana hanging from a wire than to pick up a banana from the floor?—is wrong. The right thought to think is: How does one use the crates to reach the bananas?

Sultan drages the crates under the bananas, piles them one on top of the other, climbs the tower he has built, and pulls down the bananas. He thinks: Now will he stop punishing me?

The answer is: No. The next day the man hangs a fresh bunch of bananas from the wire but also fills the crates with stones so that they are too heavy to be dragged. One is not supposed to think: Why has he filled the crates with stones? One is supposed to think: How does one use the crates to get the bananas despite the fact that they are filled with stones?

One is beginning to see how the man’s mind works. . . .

At every turn Sultan is driven to think the less interesting thought. From the purity of speculation (Why do men behave like this?) he is relentlessly propelled towards lower, practical, instrumental reason (How does one use this to get that?) and thus towards acceptance of himself as primarily an organism with an appetite that needs to be satisfied. Although his entire history, from the time his mother was shot and he was captured, through his voyage in a cage to imprisonment on this island camp and the sadistic games that are played around food here, leads him to ask questions about the justice of the universe and the place of this penal colony in it, a carefully plotted psychological regimen conducts him away from ethics and metaphysics towards the humbler reaches of practical reason. And somehow, as he inches through this labyrinth of constraint, manipulation and duplicity, he must realize that on no account dare he give up, for on his shoulders rests the responsibility of representing apedom. The fate of his brothers and sisters may be determined by how well he performs.

we'll stop there for now. enjoy the weekend. if you're in the (oh so dreary) boston area and reading this in the next couple hours (sorry), don't miss the latest opening at artinteractive - a sure bet for cool, interesting, techy art!