R.I.P Paul

There's been a celebrity death. If you haven't heard, brace yourself. Are you braced? ARE YOU?? Good. Here we go. The beloved cephalopod mollusc, a one Paul the Octopus, has died. Wait. What?

Paul the Octopus. He's dead. Dead I said. (I'm feeling a bit of a Dr. Seuss eulogy coming on here. I must refrain.) You remember Paul, don't you? He was the octopus in Oberhausen, Germany, who lived at the Sea Life Center. Paul was able to correctly "predict" the winner of all of the matches that Germany played at the 2010 World Cup, including the final. Here's how it worked: One of the Sea Life Center folks would put an octopus treat (I'm guessing something similar to a Scooby Snack) in two clear plastic boxes. One box had the flag of Germany on it and the other box had the flag of Germany's opponent on it. Whichever box that Paul opened first to get his little Octopus Ort (it just doesn't have the same ring to it as Scooby Snack does), that was supposed to be the winner. And, surprisingly enough, in this case, it was the winner...seven times in a row.

But now he's dead at the ripe old octopus age of 2-1/2. Apparently, that is normal for an octopus. And while that may be interesting to you and me, I highly doubt that ol' Paul is finding the fascination in it right about now. But the way that this is being treated in the press, you'd think that one of the leaders of the free world had just croaked it. It seems to be getting an awful lot of ink (pun probably intended) for an octopus. But not everyone is in mourning (or craving calamari) right now. No, according to The Hindu (the publication, not a random guy), a one Diego Maradona, the former coach of the Argentina team, is not in mourning. The chap seems to be rather happy, as indicated in a freaking tweet that read, "I am happy your gone Psychic Octopus, it’s your fault we lost the World Cup." I see. After someone explains to Mr. Maradona that there is no such thing as a "psychic octopus", could someone then explain to him that "you're" is the correct form of "you are" that he was looking for there? Thank you.

And see, I would have found it amusing that someone was so into the whole dead octopus scene if it were not for this blurb at the end of the article: "Paul died early Tuesday of natural causes. His passing was mourned by the world football community and the aquarium in Oberhausen announced it would set up a small monument in his honour." Oh, for cryin' out loud.

A small monument? For a lucky octopus? Really? What kind of a small monument are we talking about here? A large bowl of cocktail sauce, perhaps? I don't get it. And as long as I'm on the subject of things I don't get, what was I supposed to infer from learning that he died of "natural causes"? As opposed to what? Being snuffed out by his lesser known cousin, The Unlucky Squid? Well, that would depend on who you're asking. Wait. What now?

If you ask a Chinese filmmaker named Jiang Xiao (pronounce that however you'd like) she'll tell you “I am 60 to 70 per cent sure that Paul died on July 9th (two days before the World Cup final) and the Germans have been covering up his death and fooling us for a long time.” Really? 60 to 70 percent sure? A little over half sure? Well, OK, then! Seriously? Really? That's like a C-minus at best. I'm not so sure that I'd call that grounds for "a cover up". I might call it grounds to get some inane publicity for your forthcoming film about nothing, though.

Really. According to something called The Spec, "Shortly...after picking Spain over his native Germany in the semis, he received anonymous death threats." Someone threatened an octopus? How would the octopus know? Could this octopus also read? Did it correspond with fans? What the hell is going on over there in German aquariums?! That seems to be the real issue at this point!

The unpronounceable conspiracy theorist filmmaker (there's a title for a business card for you) claims that the "Paul" that was in the tank making all of the predictions was really another octopus that had been switched out. What evidence does this nutjob have for this theory? "(Octopuses) all look the same. It is impossible to tell the difference.” You know what else looks the same? Crazy. Crazy looks the same no matter who it is who's boasting all of the crazy. The octopus is dead. Get over it.

And P.S. If he had picked all six winning Powerball numbers one week, then you would have had my attention. Actually, if it had been something other than soccer you would have had my attention. Couldn't he have been put to use for a more exciting sport?

Sunday TV News FAIL + New Animation(s)

Why on earth do I waste any time watching the Sunday morning and afternoon TV political shows?  If the definition of madness is doing something you know to be wrong again and again--

To give just one example, I stomached about two segments of Candy Crowley's CNN show State of the Union, by which I mean I was able to stomach two consecutive doses of hard-right-wing propaganda before I started commenting loudly back at the screen, and C suggested I turn it off. In the first, billionaire Mortimer Zuckerman and multimillionaire Steve Forbes represented the ideological range and diversity of opinions on the current economic crisis. As you might imagine, their responses to Crowley's non-sequiturs-as-questions had little to do with the reality of the world most of us live in. Zuckerman, on a "deficit" hysteria high, ranted about business leaders being very unhappy with (business-friendly) President Obama and the failure of the stimulus, and suggested that we needed fewer regulations so that businesses would be happy, and lower taxes for the "middle class" to turn things around, while Forbes suggested that we needed a three-year "moratorium" on the new health insurance reform bill and financial regulations, and of course, a continuation of the massive deficit-increasing W. Bush tax cuts, and like magic, the economy would be booming again. Oh, and both slammed Obama for the 9.5% unemployment rate, which resulted in part from businesses' "uncertainty," and not the fact that they were sitting on cash, that bailed out banks weren't lending, or that the vicious cycle of unemployment, tightened credit and financial distress meant no return to the consumerism of the last decade and a half.

Crowley noted that from her (wrong) understanding of economics, "raising taxes" (i.e., allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire) on the wealthiest Americans during a tough economic period like this would be the worst thing we could do, in line with and to the approval of Forbes, but Zuckerman, to his credit, disagreed with her and noted that in fact, the slightly increased tax burden on the rich wouldn't be that much of a burden, really, before quickly returning to his mantra of cutting the deficit and having fewer regulations. After several rounds of this, with Crowley offering no serious challenges to anything they were saying, including Zuckerman's non-response on rising foreclosures--he went on about the "bubble" and the failure of people to buy houses--she effusively thanked them for their expertise (!?), and then proceeded to her next guest, former Bush CIA director Michael Hayden, who, when questioned tepidly by Crowley about the host of deeply troubling allegations in the recent multipart Washington Post series by Dana Priest and William M. Arkin, "Top Secret America," on the dangerously secretive, inefficient and possibly unconstitutional National Security-Military Industrial complex, graciously responded by emphasizing that an attack on Iran was "inexorable"....

I'm aware that quite a few people no longer watch these shows, and that they exist primarily to reinforce the echo chamber in Washington, but I guess that's what disturbs me most, that echo chamber effect and its ramifications on the policies that emanate from the White House and Congress. It's not enough that corporations, their lobbyists, and the megarich have the ears (and pockets and throats) of those in power, but they also have this self-reinforcing medium to propound and pound, day in, day out, their propaganda. One might argue that it does offer a window directly into what their aims and preoccupations are--more wars; more secrecy; more corporate socialism and wealth transfers to the rich; more shredding of the already threadbare social safety net; etc.--but the cynical and frustrating aspects of this include the inability to directly challenge them or force them to change course. And speaking of courses they're on, high among their priorities is slashing Social Security, with this President's and Congress's direct help.

And speaking about the successes of disaster capitalism, in Detroit, they're getting skilled labor for a song. Now, I ask you, did any of the GM or Chrysler executives pay back any of those bonuses or the compensation they received during the years they were running these companies into the ground?  Were they forced to, by the government, the courts or anyone else?

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Shifting gears, here're two newer animations, the first on soccer (I created it the night Spain won the 2010 FIFA World Cup), the second on the theme of art. And speaking of soccer, welcome Thierry Henry!

Golazo!


Art

FIFA 2010 World Cup Underway

Amid my reading of the final versions of the novellas, and the conceptual art projects, I've taken some time to catch some of the FIFA 2010 World Cup games, which began yesterday with host country South Africa's match against Mexico. To the relief of the South Africans, and perhaps the Mexican fans, the match resulted in a 1-1 tie. Draws in fact have dominated the tournament's first day; in the other opening day match, France and Uruguay finished 0-0. On Day 2, today, South Korea trounced Greece 2-0, while Argentina beat Nigeria 1-0, and nearly scored several more.
The match to catch (and I missed it because I've been at a poetics conference), however, was England vs. the USA. Despite having a team packed with Premier League stars, England could only manage a 1-1 tie, which counts almost as a win for the Americans.  The game started in heart-dropping fashion for the US when English midfield Stephen Gerrard scored only 4 minutes into the contest, based on a defensive lapse, the sort of harbinger of a US debacle to come. Yet the Americans were able to hang on from that point onwards, even surviving a potential injury to their star goalie, Tim Howard, when England forward Emile Heskey slid cleet-first into the Howard's chest, and, in one of the most remarked moments of the tournament thus far, tied things when Clint Dempsey kicked a squibbler towards the English net and goalkeeper Robert Green couldn't hold onto it before it crossed the goal-line. From that point onwards the US team made no significant mistakes, despite being outshot 10-4 and corner-kicked 8-4. A great deal of credit goes to Howard for unflappable play, and to Dempsey and Jozy Altidore, who nearly got another US goal, for penetrating the English defense.

Tomorrow's games should provide some excitement, though I forsee Germany tromping over Australia, and Ghana v. Serbia ending a tie while I predict Slovenia will defeat the unheralded Algerians. The game I'm waiting for is Brazil's opening match, on Tuesday, against North Korea. In tribute to the match, I even wore my Brazil socks yesterday.  Below are a few of the photos from the games that I was able to cull thus far.

South Africa's goalkeeper Itumeleng Khune (R) and defender Aaron Mokoena (C) try to stop Mexico's striker Giovani dos Santos (L) from scoring during their 2010 World Cup group A first round football match on June 11, 2010 at Soccer City stadium in Soweto, suburban Johannesburg. (GABRIEL BOUYS/AFP/Getty Images)

South Africa's midfielder Kagisho Dikgacoi vies with Mexico's striker Giovani dos Santos during their Group A first round 2010 World Cup football match on June 11, 2010 at Soccer City stadium in Soweto, suburban Johannesburg. South Africa and Mexico play in the opening match of the 2010 FIFA World Cup. (PIERRE-PHILIPPE MARCOU/AFP/Getty Images)

France's striker Nicolas Anelka (C) and France's striker Sidney Govou (R) fight for the ball with Uruguay's midfielder Alvaro Pereira during their Group A first round 2010 World Cup football match on June 11, 2010 at Green Point stadium in Cape Town. (FRANCK FIFE/AFP/Getty Images)

CAPE TOWN, SOUTH AFRICA - JUNE 11: The French team line up ahead of the 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa Group A match between Uruguay and France at Green Point Stadium on June 11, 2010 in Cape Town, South Africa. (Photo by Jamie McDonald/Getty Images)

England's Jamie Carragher (L) fights for the ball with Jozy Altidore of the U.S. during a 2010 World Cup Group C soccer match at Royal Bafokeng stadium in Rustenburg, June 12, 2010. REUTERS/Brian Snyder (SOUTH AFRICA - Tags: SPORT SOCCER WORLD CUP)

U.S. goalkeeper Tim Howard fails to stop a goal by England's Steven Gerrard during a 2010 World Cup Group C soccer match at Royal Bafokeng stadium in Rustenburg, June 12, 2010. REUTERS/Brian Snyder (SOUTH AFRICA - Tags: SPORT SOCCER WORLD CUP)

 Clint Dempsey of the US celebrates after scoring during a 2010 World Cup Group C soccer match against England at Royal Bafokeng stadium in Rustenburg June 12, 2010. REUTERS/Brian Snyder (SOUTH AFRICA - Tags: SPORT SOCCER WORLD CUP)

Recent Events from Around the Horn

Over the last few months, weeks or days I've been following a few stories from afar. These include:

The riots by and attacks on undocumented African migrant workers in Rosarno, Calabria, southern Italy (photo at left, EPA). The workers, paid almost nothing for their work and living in slave-like conditions outside the town, protested by rioting after a Togolese immigrant was shot at, with a pellet gun, by an unknown gunman or gunmen. A number of the immigrants, as well as many locals, were injured in the subsequent conflagration, which rocked the streets of Rocarno. Some locals beat the protesters with tire irons, and another tried to run over an immigrant with a bulldozer. (Rosarno is just across the Straits of Messina and up the Italian coast from where C and I were in Sicily.)

Update: The Africans have either fled or been out of the town to immigrant detention centers, and locals are celebrating. According to the New York Times, the mafia are suspected culprits.

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The deadly attack by separatists against the Togolese soccer team, in Cabinda, an oil-rich breakaway region of northwestern Angola (that I have written about in some of my fiction, strangely enough), just before the start of the African Cup of Nations soccer tournament, which has not been canceled. (The World Cup will take place in neighboring South Africa later this year.) Three Togolese have died, and eight members of the team have been injured in the attack, in which separatists machine-gunned the Togolese buses as they were passing through the area. Team captain and international star Emmanuel Adebayor, pictured above, was not injured but was badly shaken along with the rest of his teammates. Bizarrely, the CAF (African Football Federation), along with Angola's president Jose Eduardo Dos Santos, are saying that tournament games will still be held in the Cabinda region.

Update: The Togo team has, unsurprisingly, withdrawn from the tournament, which will neither be postponed nor canceled. According to NBC Sports, "In a telephone interview with AP on Sunday, Tiburcio Tati Tchingobo, minister of defense in the self-declared Federal State of Cabinda, denied his Front for the Liberation of the Enclave of Cabinda forces, or FLEC, were responsible for the ambush. He said that whoever was responsible was sparked by a level of frustration that could lead to more violence."

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Unde the current economic crisis the funding situation for higher education is increasingly grave at a number of institutions, especially public ones, which has led some academic officials to push for increased privatization and neoliberal policies. Faculty and students have not taken it sitting down.

-Faculty members were on strike at Oakland University.
-UC Berkeley faculty and students led a 3-day strike that faculty and students across the UC system signed onto and the Governator's threats against California's once trend-setting system are being taken very seriously.
-Students at UC Santa Cruz occupied a building to protest tuition hikes and budget cuts.
-Protesters occupied a building at San Francisco State University.
-Graduate students went on strike at UIUC.
-There is a New School in Exile site to address ongoing problems at the New School University

In addition, students at the University of Maryland protested the ouster of a popular diversity official; Howard University students protested slow paperwork that has led to problems; University of Pittsburgh students protested the G20 summit taking place in their city; and students and faculty at the University of Vienna have protested funding and other issues, sparking solidarity protests across Europe.

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This drama about Harry Reid's reported comments on Barack Obama's candidacy. Though inartfully stated (off the record, no less), I don't think Reid was being racist nor was he incorrect, and certainly I had heard many black people I know say similar things. ("Negro dialect" is a bit antiquated, though, Senator Reid.) Seriously and unfortunately for me to put it so bluntly, but if Obama spoke even like Jesse Jackson, say, and were dark-skinned, I think he'd have had a harder time as a candidate. I should add, however, that I think the larger issue of Americans' increasing comfort with politicians of color, especially black and mixed-race politicians, and Obama's political and oratorical skills, cannot be understated, and it's a tribute to the American people that we took a tremendous leap throughout the 2007-8 primary season and, most importantly, in November 2008. As to where it's gotten us is another question.

Update: Of course now the GOP's chosen and currently out-of-control minstrel, Michael Steele, is trying to exploit these remarks. As did Liz Cheney this morning. I say consider these rancid sources; no more needs to be said.

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Commercial real estate in New York is finally meeting Great Recession reality. There are "920 football fields" worth of office space sitting unused. Meanwhile, as I witnessed all fall, longtime stores and restaurants (including the 92-year-old Café des Artistes and Manhattan's oldest soul food restaurant, The Pink Tea Cup) are being shuttered because landlords refuse to lower rents or cut deals. New York has been through this scenario before: some refuse to learn.

Also, the Stuyvesant Town boondoggle has collapsed. What was to be the transfer of Manhattan's largest pocket of middle-income housing into the hands of the luxury market is now an official FAIL. My questions include what is going to happen to the 20,000 tenants now?

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Buy me, I'm going to be better than the rest!

Apple very well may be launching yet another pace-setter with its iSlate (iTablet?), which is allegedly slated to appear on January 27. There are all sorts of predictions about what its specs are, what it'll look like and what software it'll possess, and though it's unlikely I'll be getting one anytime soon, both because I usually like to wait until Apple gets these things right, cool as they always are, and because I can't afford another new gizmo, I am dying to see one up close. By which I mean, pick one up, play with the screen, and be mesmerized by yet another offering from the Apple product family. Given the suggested debut date of this delightful device, I'll have to go to the Apple Store on Michigan Avenue before my graduate class that night to inspect one, though something tells me that store will be more mobbed than it usually is. That is, if it really does appear in Apple Stores that day. We can hope, can't we?

Soccer Shocker: USA 2-0 Spain, Confederations Cup

A sports shocker: The USA national soccer team defeated the world's top-ranked squad, Spain, 2-0, in the Confederation Cup in Bloemfontain, South Africa (which will host the upcoming 2010 World Cup), to reach the championship match, the first time the USA has ever reached a FIFA final since 1916. Only a week ago the USA team was on the verge of heading home, having lost their first two games and staring at a 1-7-1 all-time record against No. 1-ranked teams.

In addition, Spain, the European champion, had won 15 straight games and run up a 35-game undefeated streak. Yet 19-year-old New Jersey native and sensation Jozy Altidore's (above, center, Martin Meissner/Associated Press) goal in the 27th minute, coupled with excellent defense and Tim Howard's impenetrable goalkeeping, brought a US victory. Clint Dempsey added an insurance goal in the 74th minute.

The US will play either Brazil, to whom they lost 3-0 in their second match of play, or host South Africa, but in a sense they have already won the biggest match of the tournament, and one of the most important in US soccer history. Let's hope they can carry this winning style of play into the final and also into next year's World Cup.

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Vile Bellow + Roiling Rhetoric/Obamaphobia + Manchester United Wins

I actually had to laugh at this dithyramb to one of the most overtly reactionary, yet critically praised US novels of the 20th century. Do you know which one I'm talking about? If not, it's Mr. Sammler's Planet, Saul Bellow's relentlessly grim, culturally pessimistic rant, a toxic abyss of fear, anxiety, loathing and hate whose discourse wouldn't be out of place in a volume by Spengler or Weininger, a cobbled-together brew of skewed Platonism and Niezschism, whose objects of hatred and disgust are women (naturally) and Negroes (ibid.), and whose climax involves a scene that has few peers in American literature: a tall, smartly dressed, anarchic and diabolical black thief, or, as Bellow describes him, an "African prince or great black beast . . . seeking whom he might devour," whom the helpless Mr. Sammler has been observing manipulating and robbing poor white bus riders, many of them elderly, over a series of weeks. This embodiment of the racist and sexist unrepressed corners poor Sammler and, in an apotheosis of countless repellant fantasies and nightmares, doesn't stab or shoot or bludgeon him; he flashes him with a large, black, uncut penis, before tucking it away and fleeing.

The novel, a transcript of racist, misgonyistic and classist panic and social declinism, has to be read to be believed--for a copy go to the library, please, don't patronize the Bellow estate on this one--and you may draw your own conclusions, but really, it's so over the top that whenever I read someone lauding--and this reviewer goes so far as to claim that the "black" crime wave of the 1970s and 1980s, attributable to the Enlightenment (I kid you not!), liberalism, etc., and not the particular socioeconomic and political conditions of that era, approximated the terror of the Nazi Holocaust!-- it for any reason other than the felicities of Bellow's prose and his materialist prescience, alarm bells go off concerning the reviewer. In this case, I consider the source. But I also say, if someone suggests to you that racism ended long ago or, despite the many cases studies available even in just the current presidential campaign, do point them in the direction of Magnet's review. I can think of several German publications from the late 1930s in which it would fit without much trouble, just as there are a number of "mainstream" news organs today where it wouldn't be out of place. I'm just surprised it hasn't been elevated to canonical status by the far and neocon right, but then again, I guess there's always time, especially when Obama is elected President. I doubt Magnet and his clique will worry about carrying it around in brown paper covers then.

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Speaking of similar rants, this is another gem that you might almost think was an Onion piece, though it's clearly in keeping with the widespread rhetoric on display these days. (In addition to being a homophobe, she also doesn't have a high opinion of...women!) But then, Pat Buchanan (whom I used to call "Putzi" when he was running for office some years ago and giving his Enoch Powell-esque speeches, which, as some wag once noted, were "better in the original German") is a regular "mainstream" commenter on multiple MSNBC shows, so what do I know? I mean, this is a man who, as a colleague noted, uttered the other night without shame or irony hat voters chose Hillary Clinton because she was one of "us," rather than Obama, who was one of "them." Does it get any more volkisch than that?

OBAMAPHOBIA 3.0 (Obama as "Apostate"--Again)
And we ignore this sort of smear at our peril. This is attempt no. 2. The first was in the New York Times, while this one is in the Christian Science Monitor. (This article is now linked all over the web, to blogs, right-wing sites, you name it. That's the point. Is it psy ops or white ops?) Not Fox News, not the Washington Times, not some right-wing rag. That's the point. By printing trash like this in "mainstream," "establishment" publications, no matter how utterly trash it is, the trash gets legitimated.

When the swiftboating begins in earnest, please don't say it took you by surprise. They have been laying the groundwork for over a year.

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Au revoir, Florent!

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Manchester United defeated Chelsea 1-1 on penalty kicks in this year's European Championships. I didn't have a favorite in this contest, being an Arsenal fan. Here are some photos. From the London Times Online:


Christiano Ronaldo heads the opening goal for Manchester United (Graham Hughes/The Times)

The effort from Frank Lampard hits the back of the Manchester United net (Marc Aspland/The Times)

Manchester United players mob goalkeeper Edwin van der Sar after his save wins them the Champions League (Graham Hughes/The Times)