oh no they dihn't!

apple's blurb for the new imac:

"you can't be too thin"

yeah, so as everyone already knew, apple unveiled the new imac. and, as everyone already knew, its update was largely cosmetic; however the specs aren't anything to sneeze at (320GB in the higher-end 20-inch? really? and firewire 800?). after i've had all day for it sink in, i have to say i think it looks cool, but i'm not sitting here glaring at my 17-inch imac and muttering, you worthless piece of shit. in fact, i'm still quite fond of the thing.

what i like: the specs, the aluminum, the black back casing, the black border around the screen
what i fucking don't like: glossy screen

it's this last point that really kills it for me. i hate glossy screens. one thing i love about my computer is its matte screen. thing is fucking radder than fuck. someone at macrumors posited a theory, and i'm apt to believe this, that apple put glossy screens on this imac to deter hardcore professionals from buying them (and cutting into mac pro sales).

if i was still shopping around for a mac i would probably buy this new imac. like i said, the glossy screen kills it for me, but i need the space for the shit i do. as it is, i'm definitely going to have to upgrade to a pro at some point when i have around $3,000 to spend lavishly. for audio and video shit, you mos def need one of those beasts (16 fucking GB of ram possible), especially if you're going to run pro tools, reason, ableton live, final cut, etc. and similar programs. the imac is really apple's simple home desktop machine. plus, the imac was my first mac and i didn't want to go all hogwild, even though i've used pros in the studio before.

anyway, i'm feeling pretty gay and geeky at this point, so i'll shut it. one thing that did catch my eye, though: the new keyboard. might have to pick one of those puppies up this weekend.

update: engadget has a bevy of imac pr0n.

i've a feeling i'm about to get annoyed

apple is about to unveil its new thing-- whatever it is. most of the rumors have speculated that it's a new imac. these rumors focused mainly on cosmetic updates, which calmed me, being as i bought a new imac a couple of months ago for school and i don't really care if the new imac is aluminum or whatever. however, some have said that the new imacs may come equipped w/ a blu-ray drive, which, if true, will make me a very surly fuck.

oh, well. as my brother said, "there's always craigslist."

navigating the intertextual landscapes of thicketed perpetuity (the throes of a turkish loggerheads) a.k.a, academic rockstars

i don't know about you, but i get a kick out of postmodern writing. well, i should qualify that: i get a kick out of it when it "deconstructs" pop culture. take this popmatters article on martin scorsese, for example. quoth:

When any eager genrephile, from a rank and file movie-goer to a film scholar, tries to pigeonhole a Martin Scorsese film into a neat category, their attempts are almost unilaterally frustrated. Testosterone-laden male youths view his works as action “flicks” replete with headshot gratification, the older set looks upon his oeuvre as a chain of endlessly amorphous dramas that exposes the underbelly of society, and the 21st century intelligentsia waves the banner of Lyotard and calls Scorsese a filmmaker deeply entrenched in the postmodern aesthetic.

However, I find that Scorsese’s work is too complex—indeed polysemy is the very core of Scorsese’s filmmaking—to be satisfactorily subsumed under such simplistic headings. I posit, as an alternative, that Scorsese’s cinema is an admixture of distinct renderings of each of his respective narratives: that of hyperrealism and that of neo-realism. Through a mosaic of simulacra, a hyperbole, a-canonical plot structure, and a salient omission of clear protagonist antagonist demarcations, Scorsese creates what a sort of “grotesque neo-realism”. The dualistic nature of this style is precisely what has allowed Marty, as he is affectionately referred to by fans, to sit astride the division between popular and art filmmaking, and endlessly confound viewers who try to reduce his work to a singularity.

further:

A true taxonomy of every outrageous performance in a Martin Scorsese piece would rival the length of the combined credits of his oeuvre. Directing actors to play their characters in this manner, Scorsese’s players become archetypal grotesques. His figures play parodies of themselves and their baroque identities flesh out his diegeses as hyperreal. For virtuality to be fully constructed, it is insufficient for the world alone to be markedly simulated. The characters must be as well. In this way, Scorsese points his discursive finger at his viewers and safe-guards his schema from being misinterpreted as reifying the world as hyperreal. Rather, Scorsese shows his manifold of simulacra to be progeny of the figures which people his diegeses.

Here we will break from the topic of the grotesque and advance to that of the neo-real. This latter component rescues Scorsese’s films from the threat of absurdism and masterfully transfigures his exaggerated worlds into ones which viewers may relate to. This is not to say that Scorsese’s wielding of neo-realism immerses the audience in the diegesis and welds their humors to the sentiment of the film; spectators are rarely emotionally attached to Scorsese’s works. Rather, viewers are safely distanced from empathy by characters who are boors at best and alien environments such as the world of taxi drivers and aristocratic 19th century New York. However, the true faculty of Scorsese’s neo-realism is to ground his otherwise baroque narratives in some semblance of humanity. This serves as the bridge between the hyperreal and the everyday experience of members of the audience. As imitation of their reality, the neo-real aspect suggests that perhaps the hyperreal (with which it is conflated) is also a mirror of the viewers’ world.

good god, what hideous nonsense! has someone been reading baudrillard lately? yes? and now we feel the need to show off, hmm? very well. tragically, this article makes very little sense, simply because postmodernism itself is nonsensical. yet no matter how severe its grotesquerie, i'm never hard-pressed not to find chuckle-worthy gems. but it's not even that postmodernism fails to make sense so much as it gussies up very pedestrian ideologies in fancy words. take baudrillard's "hyperreality" bit-- basically, it's just fake environments, like las vegas. but instead of simply saying that, he had to coin a new term and drench it in tirelessly abstract, opaque prose.

the biggest offender, and possibly one of the grandest douchebags of the 21st century, is slavoj zizek. for an example of such buffoonery, i bring you his myspace "about me":

In Cyberspace all positive properties are externalized in the sense that everything you are in a positive sense, all your features can be manipulated. When one plays in virtual space I can for example be a homosexual man who pretends to be a heterosexual woman, or whatever: either I can build a new identity for myself or in a more paranoiac way, I am somehow already controlled, manipulated by the digital space.

this is not even syntactical, but whatever. again, it's somehow too proletariat simply to say: "i can bullshit online much like how i do in the classroom," but that would be too boring. and i find the whole "swinger" distinction frightening (please don't haunt me in my dreams).

but i do give postmodernists, and zizek in particular, credit for building careers out of shamelessly bullshitting people. hey, we all gotta hustle, right?

don't make me spit at you + then get annoyed when you cry about it

i know, you've always wondered, have i got asperger's? well, now you can find out! i scored a 17, which makes me an "average female scientist." scores over 32 "are generally taken to indicate Asperger's Syndrome or high-functioning autism, with more than 34 an 'extreme' score.'"

via edward champion.

afflict the comfortable

damn! m.i.a. delivers the smackdown in her interview w/ richdork media:

Pitchfork: So tell me a bit about Kala. I just heard it for the first time today, and--

M.I.A.: Diplo didn't make it.

Pitchfork: Uh, what?

M.I.A.: He never made Arular, but you guys keep writing it.

Pitchfork: 'He' being Diplo?

M.I.A.: You're not listening to me at all, are you?

Pitchfork: I'm trying. It's a little hard to hear you.

M.I.A.: Forget what I said. [Pauses] What do you think I said?

Pitchfork: I heard you say something to the effect of "he didn't make Arular and he also didn't make this record." I'm wondering who you're referring to, though I could take a wild guess.

M.I.A.: Yesterday I read like five magazines in the airplane-- it was a nine hour flight-- and three out of five magazines said "Diplo: the mastermind behind M.I.A.'s politics!" And I was wondering, does that stem from [Pitchfork]? Because I find it really bonkers.

Pitchfork: Well, it's hard to say where it originated. We certainly have made reference to Diplo playing a part on your records, but it seems like everyone plays that up.

M.I.A.: If you read the credits, he sent me a loop for "Bucky Done Gun", and I made a song in London, and it became "Bucky Done Gun". But that was the only song he was actually involved in on Arular. So the whole time I've had immigration problems and not been able to get in the country, what I am or what I do has got a life of its own, and is becoming less and less to do with me. And I just find it a bit upsetting and kind of insulting that I can't have any ideas on my own because I'm a female or that people from undeveloped countries can't have ideas of their own unless it's backed up by someone who's blond-haired and blue-eyed. After the first time it's cool, the second time it's cool, but after like the third, fourth, fifth time, maybe it's an issue that we need to talk about, maybe that's something important, you know.

dayamn, girl. loves it. of course, the rich dorks over at stereogum, do not love it. their post on this is entitled "bigmouth strikes again," because heaven fucking forbid someone (read: a brown woman from a third-world country) say something that doesn't sit well w/ scene politics. lily allen, of course, can say + do anything she pleases, no matter how revolting, simply because she's a privileged white kid. don't you just love these "liberal" scene people? anyway, she goes on to say:

There is an issue especially with what male journalists write about me and say "this MUST have come from a guy." I can understand that, I can follow that, that's fine. But when female journalists as well put your work and things down to it being all coming from a man, that really fucks me up. It's bullshit. I mean, for me especially, I felt like this is the only thing I have, and if I can stick my neck out and go for the issues and go through my life as it is, the least I can have is my creativity.

well, could be that it's not just a sexism issue-- there's also class to consider. i think this is why lily allen has become so popular amongst scene types + why m.i.a has become "played out." allen took m.i.a.'s basic template + stripped it of its grit, its balls, its originality + injected it w/ a bratty sense of privileged entitlement. since music is more about identity than anything else/ w scenesters, allen is much more appealing, as she is privileged, white, narcissistic, etc-- everything the majority of scenesters are. she's not weird + alien-looking like m.i.a. is. sure, m.i.a. has an exotic appeal, but that is a simple novelty.

anyway, i've always dug m.i.a.'s music, but now i have a whole new respect for her as a person. i can't wait for her new album-- it'll be money well spent.

wow wow wow, seriously seriously?

the world's most dangerous fucking band, the yeah yeah yeahs, on their new ep, is is, have a new song called "rockers to swallow"; obviously, the most awesome song title ever. "rockers to swallow." wow. amazing. almost as good as is is. this band is just so rad. never heard anything like them before. ever. new york city is so fucking cool, dude. all that talent. anybody who doesn't live there is such a loser.

mark my words

i know who killed me will become a kitsch classic.