all the news that print will fit.
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| notes from underground - societal whispers all the news that print will fit. |
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Friday, February 25, 2005 np: friday night rock party with maddog on WQFS 6pm - 8pm every friday we have one of wqfs' longest running djs (15 years) bringing all sorts of great rock to the masses. his show is always a hoot. -- he's currently playing ben lee's new song "catch my disease" (which i played on my show on wednesday), but that's not something i would wish on any of you. by that i mean, i'm currently beseiged with a bout of strep throat. as i said to charlie on wednesday or thursday (boy, the days run together when you're sick like this): "ohhh...existence is pain!" and indeed it was. luckily, i visited my local doctor and got a diagnosis and prescription for amoxicilin. within 24 hours the stuff has set me fairly right. amoxicilin was my favorite drug to receive as a child. if you get the pink, liquid form of it..mmm..delicious. i thought about asking the doctor yesterday for it, but then didn't. -- sadly, the illness has kept me out of school for the past two days and leading into next week's state writing exam, it's been rather poorly timed. on the plus side, the hour and a half wait in my doctor's office waiting room yesterday gave me time to start re-reading 1984. i had recently been remembering 1984 as a novel i really wasn't that impressed with, but given the constant references culled by the left half of the blogosphere, i thought about giving it a second chance. it was middle school, after all, when i first and last read it. well, wow. in 50 pages the novel makes a whole different set of sense to me. particularly poignant is orwell's knowledge and use of the idea of language framing which i'd been exploring a lot lately as a political tool. i had read george lakoff's don't think of an elephant: know your values and frame the debate and had become really intrigued with the idea of language manipulation. my kids wonder why i pound vocabulary into their heads. well, so that they're largely less susceptible to this kind of word game, for one reason. orwell's newspeak is a brilliant play on the ever growing knack of politicians' knowledge of framing issues in certain lights. -- and yes, sara, the new josh rouse is out. and it is magnificent. and yes, i'm not so happy with the new comment system either, but blogger was starting to get fidgety with my use of haloscan for some reason. so for now, this will do. posted by J. Neas | 2/25/2005 06:41:00 PM
Comments:
The pink stuff??? Blech! I had super-frequent ear infections when I was a kid and had to take that stuff all the time. It was TERRIBLE. I was so happy when I was old enough to take it in pill form, but then the pills were so big I thought I was going to choke. That stuff is vile.
I'm so glad you are re-evaluating 1984. My love for that book is immense, and so many people don't like it, and I just don't understand. As brilliant as the futuristic/political aspect is, though, I always loved the book for what it said about human relationships. Basically, that no matter how much we love someone, and how dedicated we think we are, when it comes down to it, we will always fuck them over to save ourselves. Pessimistic? Of course. But I think it applies not only to interpersonal relations on a small scale, but political/economic relations of an entire country or the entire world. 1984 was Orwell's last novel. He was such an avid socialist, and I can't help but wonder if this was part of his frustration with people. Well, I'm sure it was, really. The only way to save ourselves is to fight for other people. Sounds nice in theory, but look how it plays out.
I don't think Orwell's point was that everyone will fuck everyone over, but rather it is to the advantage of people who increasingly use newspeak-type languages to make people think that that's the case. That there is no loyalty except to higher government authority. That there is no reason to love other humans. As Seth Tobacman's political cartoon collection title so prominently points out, you don't have to fuck people over to survive. That's the great lie, even of people like the Bush administration. That we somehow think we have to.
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Besides, you're going to tell these people it's not worth fighting for others? And that it doesn't in the long-run help save ourselves? |
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