I love to shoot zombies

((I could literally blow the heads off zombies all day long. I wish it were an actual job. No, wait, actually I don't. Well, yes, I do.)))

Let's carve us some witch.

Things that aren't nation-states

(((Bruce Sterling just posted some notes for a sci-fi novel he's working on. It's a dense annotated child's garden of fringely global politics. This thing deserves hyperlinks. It's like a whole semester's worth of poli-sci 101))

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"BEFORE AND AFTER WESTPHALIA: Or, ENTITIES THAT SEEM RATHER LIKE NATION-STATES, but aren't

The United Nations (association of states)

The European Union (post-state economic regulatory zone)

Trading blocs (NAFTA, ASEAN, Hanseatic League)

empires and confederacies (multi-states)

dictatorships (one-man state)

aristocracies and kingdoms (family states)

Communist dictatorship of the proletariat (non-state class rule)

megacorporate multinationals (the global private sector)

moguls (one-man private sector)

mega-cities (city-states)

police and security organizations (police states)

military (military dictatorships, martial law, occupied zones)

espionage (siloviki states, secret-police states) organized crime (shadow governments, kakistocracies)

Classified areas (state-supported labs, weapons-testing zones, secret prisons, Area 51, slave labor areas, puzzle palaces, black money projects that lack official existence)

social classes (capitalists, laborers, creative class, technocrats, white-collar, blue-collar, pink collar, underclass, aristocrats, the super-rich)

religions (papal states, holy cities. theocracies, Sharia, Quakers, Amish)

colonies, territories, protectorates (sub-states)

secessions, frozen conflicts, liberated zones, warlord havens (illegal states)

failed states (collapsed states, hollow states, black globalization, narcoterror areas)

embassies (embedded mini-states)

emergency rescue camps, refugee camps (damaged states)

migratory hordes (mobile stateless peoples)

slums, barrios, ghettos, favelas (under-states)

the international scientific community

prisons (states without individuals)

monasteries, asylums, retreats (antisocial micro-states)

conspiracies (Carbonari, Al Qaeda, Freemasons, Red Brigades)

cultural movements (Modernism, the Enlightenment, feminism)

The Internet

social-software networks

gaming environments, virtual worlds

International regulatory agencies and standards boards (WIPO, WTO, WHO, ITU, etc)

supra-national political parties (Communists, fascists, socialists, neocons)

benevolent associations (Elks, Kiwanis)

labor unions

universities and colleges

non-governmental organizations, quasi-autonomous non-governmental associations, blue-ribbon panels, independent prosecutors

private banking and investment networks (Medici, Fuggers, Rothschilds)

private postal systems, private logistics networks (Thurn and Taxis, Wal-Mart, Amazon)

Languages

Ethnicity

Phantom folk-sources of state-like power and authority: The Mainstream Media, the Gnomes of Zurich, the Wall Street Exploiters, the Ruling Class, the Elders of Zion, Secular Humanism, the Old Boys' Network, Jesuits, Freemasons, Illuminati, etc

"complexes": the military-industrial complex, the military-entertainment complex, the medical-industrial complex

tongs, clubs, voluntary associations

Insurgencies

pirates, bandits, gangsters

festivals, temporary autonomous zones

tribes

castaways

hermits

the dead: cemeteries, organized memorials, archives, museums

the unborn

areas devoid of human beings -- high seas, involuntary parks, wilderness, poles, outer space, ocean abysses, deserts, ruins..."

Speech textbook: 1593

(((From Henry Peachum's Garden of Eloquence. If I had two lifetimes, I would learn all the strictures and rules of Elizabethan Rhetoric. Total elegance.))

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"SCHEMATES RHETORICAL

Schemates Rhetorical be those figures or forms of speaking, which do take away the wearisomnesse of our common speech, and do fashion a pleasant, sharpe, and evident kind of expressing our meaning: which by the artificiall forme doth give unto matters great strength, perspicuitie and grace, which figures be devided into three orders.
The first order

The first order containeth those figures which do make the oration plaine, pleasant, and beautifull, pertaining rather to words then to sentences, and rather to harmonie and plesant proportion, then to gravitie and dignitie, and the figures of this first order I devide into fower kinds, according to their sundrie formes, of which the first are of Repetition, the second of Omission, the third of conjunction, the fourth of separation.
Figures of Repetition.

* Epanaphora
* Epiphora
* Symploce
* Ploce
* Diaphora
* Epanalepsis
* Anadiplosis
* Epizeuxis
* Diacope
* Traductio
* Paroemion

These are called the figures or repetition, by which one word may with much comelinesse be rehearsed in diverse clauses, and may ten maner of wayes be pleasantly repeated: and likewise one and the same letter by Paroemion may be repeaated in the beginning of diverse words.
Epanaphora

Derive: Pedestrian with paradigm schisms

(((The Situationist critical theorist (read: philosopher with cool edge) Guy Debord invented the concept and exercise of "derive." It's not walking, it's an internal revolution. Echoes of Parkour.)))

"One of the basic situationist practices is the dérive [literally: "drifting"], a technique of rapid passage through varied ambiances. Dérives involve playful-constructive behavior and awareness of psychogeographical effects, and are thus quite different from the classic notions of journey or stroll.

In a dérive one or more persons during a certain period drop their relations, their work and leisure activities, and all their other usual motives for movement and action, and let themselves be drawn by the attractions of the terrain and the encounters they find there. Chance is a less important factor in this activity than one might think: from a dérive point of view cities have psychogeographical contours, with constant currents, fixed points and vortexes that strongly discourage entry into or exit from certain zones.

But the dérive includes both this letting-go and its necessary contradiction: the domination of psychogeographical variations by the knowledge and calculation of their possibilities. In this latter regard, ecological science -- despite the narrow social space to which it limits itself -- provides psychogeography with abundant data.

The ecological analysis of the absolute or relative character of fissures in the urban network, of the role of microclimates, of distinct neighborhoods with no relation to administrative boundaries, and above all of the dominating action of centers of attraction, must be utilized and completed by psychogeographical methods. The objective passional terrain of the dérive must be defined in accordance both with its own logic and with its relations with social morphology."

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Project Gutenberg and Secret Technology: Is it all just "digital art?"

(((These are two of my favorite things)))

(((Listening to Mark Twain and Ambrose Bierce on Project Gutenberg))
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(((Playing Jason Nelson's interactive flash games. This is kind of what I think digital art should be all about. Then, again, in this Warhol era of copied image and plural coding, hasn't it all become "digital art?" Even e-books of Twain and Bierce?)))
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Carl Sandburg, Cabrini-Green, and Modernism

(((The mostly demolished, Cabrini Green Projects of Chicago. A triumph of modernism. A majestically failed public works project. An attempt to do good. A hellhole. A Civic Wart. Vertically-developed, dense urban blight.

Where are you now, my Prairie School? Was Frank Lloyd Wright alive to see these things? What about Ezra Pound? Eliot? Dreiser?

I bet Carl Sandburg probably wrote some poem about them on their inauguration in the 1950's that went like this:

"My Cabrini-Green"
by Carl Sandburg
Bilious balustrades of clanking, steam-driven modernism.
The longshoremen in his shirtsleeves.
Oh, you topplers of the beefshares!
Busking and destroying--you

Broggerbankbuock the Abelard!

Wherein the nubile prairie scapegrace tough spits glances at

Huckleberry dames on Halsted who
offer him their ((beefshares)).

Rubberbuckbanktruck! The Stark lad, lo!

Utilitarian majesties and T.S. Eliot
Cackle in their beefshares and the coral cock,
In the walled arch city of the breadbasket
On the wonderful flowing waters
Of the turgid Mississippi.

Gurgleledurd ra ammalagog! Bertrand, the Samovar!

My Cabrini-Green,
My sweet, blonde tit
My most excellent beefshares.
My most excellent modernism imitation.

Omfug.