Rhea Myers

Satire

  • How To Write Net Poetry

    string of contentious vaguely poetic fragmentary every day another
    markov chain me to a desk a substitute for a machine one in fact
    orphan drift tedious by hand atrixo and rhythm but never read whole
    democracy inverted a negative space better by association better buy
    sleevehearted ribbon on your breast alone the wind dragged sand
    pounding rhythmic three days blue-black bars over retinal lag
    anyone can but only those who do are anyone to be anyone good
    patti smith’s corpse between magnets drives the city lights to your words
    destroy rock and earth colours everything you seep from intermittently
    spinning bottle decades commodifying ignorance commodifying
    hi-hat flurries salivated for all tomorrow’s arty faux fire at will you be

  • How Postmodernists “Think”

    There is no such thing as toxicity. A toxic substance is only toxic to a given system. Therefore we are mistaken if we identify the system-given property of “toxicity” with a particular substance, or example of such a substance.

    If we are to accept that the property of toxicity can therefore be culturally conferred on particular substances (or examples of such substances), then obviously the property of toxicity can be conferred on any substance. Therefore any substance can be regarded as toxic.

    This being the case it is perfectly OK to drink poison, as everything is toxic anyway and most things we drink have no harmful effects, thus disproving the entire idea of toxicity.

    Of course even if we accepted the ridiculous idea of toxicity, we’d have to work out what the word “poison” refers to in order to actually find some to drink, assuming that words can actually refer to anything, which obviously they can’t, except in essays by postmodern “thinkers”.

  • The Internet…

    “The internet is about the free exchange and sale of other people’s ideas.” – Kidnappster executive, Futurama.

  • One-Step Logic

    “There was a time but it’s long gone
    Janie got a crush on the Vietcong
    Burning through downtown Saigon
    Me I’m sold – down the Mekong”
    – ‘Dr. Jeep’, The Sisters Of Mercy.

    Remember, kiddies, if the deckchairs on the Titanic had been a different colour, it wouldn’t have sunk.

  • Smash Global Capitalism! Spend Less Money!

    Via Idle Type:

    http://www.thismagazine.ca/issues/2002/11/rebelsell.php

    Yes, selling glossy magazines and fat books that eschew empowering analysis of economic and class relations in favour of arguing over what colour the curtain should be are not really changing the face of capitalism all that much. Or at all.

    The first place that I saw AdBusters and No Logo was the graphic design bookshop on Tottenham Court Road. The prosecution rests, or would if only it wasn’t actually doing something about its own production rather than just complaining about others’ consumption.

  • The Fiction Of The Western Tradition

    “Chinese or African or African-American or Native American aesthetics are much more accessible to my students than the works of ?their own? tradition (whatever that means; my students have multiple origins, and the ?western tradition? is a fiction anyway).”

    Auto-oppression reaches new heights. Or depths. Crypto-imperialism, rehabilitating cultural difference as cultural difference. How people can keep a straight face whilst comparing the “fiction” of Western Culture to the romanticised projections of “Other” (sic.) Cultures I’ll never know. But whilst enjoying the frisson of superior moral inferiority, do bear in mind that other canons may just be based on exclusion, or even be fictions themselves, and that fiction is not exactly a marginal element of human culture.

    http://www.aesthetics-online.org/ideas/sartwell.html

  • I Thought We Were The Judean People’s Front?

    This site is excellent, but the debates they link to very quickly go all Wolfie Smith:

    Socialism In an Age Of Waiting.

  • Ethics & Aesthetics (via eu-gene)

    …both aesthetics and ethics are axiomatic restrictions on form. Aesthetics is concerned with pleasure, ethics with pain. (OK, the second sentence isn’t true, but it was too good not to type 🙂 )

    I sometimes claim that philosophy is a subset of aesthetics, but anyway. 🙂

  • Petals Around The Rose

    Because this is one of the very few misdirection puzzles I’ve ever figured out 🙂 :

    Petals Around The Rose

    And because it’s very funny once you get it. I particularly recommend it for anyone you know who’s big on mathematics…

  • Kinkade on QVC

    Thomas Kinkade was on QVC this evening in the UK. He cam across as insincere, or possibly jet-lagged, or possibly someone who has sold something they love too many times before. I believe he is sincere at some level below subject-matter and above technique. If Jeff Koons can sell ironically to collectors, Kinkade can sell super-sincerely to the masses.
    Kinkade’s technique is pre-modern, oriented to pre-calculated effect. Or is that postmodern? He mentioned Millais. I think of Wright of Derby when I see his work, if only because of that cottage on fire. I want to know if Kinkade takes the differing gamuts of oils and inks into account when painting what are in effect masters for reproduction.
    There’s lots of satanic imagery that can be found there for the looking: the ghosts in the smoke, the spirits in the waves, the serpents of the bridges and houses. Spooky.
    He called the prints “product” at one point then backtracked. Everyone has to sell their work. Kinkade’s inbetween the Diamonique (fake diamond) and non-brand brand cosmetics.
    The thing that interested me above all was the effect of the canvas on his prints. It adds visual noise. That noise is like the noise at dusk or when you close your eyes. That quality gave his works that are printed on canvas a curiosly realworld, meditative effect. But oh, as I posted to aesethetics-L, the horror…