hey, you read "illuminatus!" which is like 555,000 pages long!

anyway, i think this is more mind-blowing than rudy rucker.

also, i know you despise e-readers and shit, but a pdf opens up nicely on a kindle.

the translated version has better typography than the french one. does anyone know how to change fonts on a pdf? on a mac? i mean, without adobe acrobat. i was able to change background colors for night reading but fonts no. they use print fonts and stingy spacing (trying to save paper?).

fuck those photon producing e-readers! I want my photons reflected off of the fibrous pulp of deciduous trees.

agreed. it was like Octavio Paz The Pyramid only about french chicks. Actually quite good, some of it a bit meh redundant but the golden parts were just that, solid gold insights.

If only they'd stop trying to rethink 1968.

i know.

from page 2 (preliminaries, section iii)

read more slowly mang

well, they did have their may 68. don't be jealous!

i've seen mentions of it here but i haven't finished yet so i don't know exactly what you mean (if you mean it about this particular text)

Oh, I got that it was a bigger, existential/economic text, but the lens from which the economic structures was analyzed was that of a 20-something girl, and since it was French, I inferred a 20-something French girl, particularly because many of the descriptions and insights resembled NOTHING of any American 20-something girls ;)

really? to me the description resembles that tv nincompoop phil dunphy, or the banality or so many people right on this board. just look the fuck around you.

some of my favorite quotes from the first part:

The most extreme banality of the Young-Girl is still to have herself taken as something "original."

Why must the Young-Girl always feign some activity or other? In order to remain impregnable in her passivity

The Young-Girl resembles her photo.

--

and have you been on facebook/twitter lately?

The Young-Girl only exists in proportion to the desire that "people" have for her, and is only known by what they say about her.

that is true, but again, the lens from which this caricature of banal post-modern life was examined is a 20-something woman. After all, the word "Young-girl" is repeated about 25,000 times ;)

yesbut yesbut yesbut.

EVERYONE WHO LIVES FOR THEIR APPEARANCE IS A FUCKING YOUNG-GIRL.

EVERYONE WHO IS OBSESSED WITH "YOUTHINESS" IS A FUCKING YOUNG-GIRL

in other words, MORE AND MORE PEOPLE EVERY DAY.

oy! i get that the label is misdirecting but you're reading without tact (tact: a polite attempt to understand). e.g., looking for jungian essentialisms-- does not apply. that's not what they meant at all. it's something else. try making your eyes blurry and see if you can see. like those 3D pictures? *make your eyes blurry*

!@#$%!, that is fine, that is how you read it, I disagree, I think that while everyone can insert themselves as a 20-something woman, that in particular, 20-something women fit the best in that author's economic and cultural analysis. You don't have to be scoffing and say "You're reading without tact" simply because YOU can't just read words literally enough sometimes. And please, enough with your whole "more academic than thou" attitude yo, its lame. Everything's lame. ;)

Why would anyone be jealous of a defeat?

yeah it was a brutal defeat, but come on, for a moment, they thought they had a chance. "if only", etc.

of course they will be marked by it.


i "see" her/it as more of a teenager (13+ up?) but this is about the creatures of capitalism rather than "women".

It seemed clear from the empowered context that such women were in their 20s rather than teens. Teenage girls don't assert half as much power and influence as 20-something women, and yet 20-something women always have that same appeal as teenage girls, if not more so. How are women NOT creatures of capitalism?

Again. Stop bogarting the interpretations. That is what literature is for. You can read it your way, and your insights are cool, valid, and important. HOWEVER, they don't negate anyone else opinions simply because they only half-agree with yours. I've conceded that the book was about macro-economics, but the microscopic analysis was again through the lens of the young woman, who are also the driving force of most economies as they have been for 100,000 years or so ;)

say whatever you want, but i insist that i think you read it too fast, and rather than let it fuck with your brain you've subordinated it to your preexisting interpretations. maybe i'm overreacting but this shit is like nothing i've read in a loooong time. maybe i just haven't read anything in a long time. ha! but i think it can be mind-altering if you let it (unlike most shit which is just repetitions of repetitions and i'm tired of them)

The 'young girl' isn't gendered (or aged) in any literal sense, but 'her' use as a symbol clearly is, which is why some feminist critics are having such a problem with it.

ha ha ha. thanks for the links! i mentioned in my initial comment something about high chances of protracted celibacy and old resentments on the part of the (likely male) writer(s). will read the rest of the review in a minute.

meanwhile, professore, and if not you someone else who read and understood the text and won't obfuscate their lack of comprehension with obscurities-- can you(s) clarify some of the words i'm running into here?

namely:

Empire - who's?
Spectacle - i remember this from vaguely post structuralist readings on late capitalism. whose coinage is it and what is it exactly (or approximately)?
Bloom - lost me there. mrkgnao!

dense shit, needs translation footnotes, and it's making me wanna read stendhal and proust, which i've previously attempted with only failure as a result, but i have a nice lazyish summer ahead of me and so why not (huayno).

okay, society of the spectacle is guy debord

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Soc..._the_Spectacle

more shit to read!