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Instead of "gook" our soldiers are using the term "hadji" to refer to an enemy combatant (sorry, liberatee) in Iraq and Afghanistan. (As in "killing some hadjis" or "mowing down some hadjis.") This article spells it "hajji" or "hodgie" and says it refers to the Arab term for "pilgrim to Mecca," but the writer is either over 60 or grew up in a country without TV because any fool knows Hadji, the Calcutta orphan with occasional mystical powers, who was Jonny Quest's sidekick. I mean, duh. The show has been in endless syndication since the '60s so it's not just a boomer thing. A semi-educated guess is the trend started in Afghanistan and spread to the Iraq theatre; maybe that's wrong, but it seems a lot more likely than appropriating "pilgrim to Mecca" as a derogatory term.
--from Bartcop. The site serves up heaps of unsubtle, sometimes verging on Hustler-style humor aimed at the pious thieves who control all three branches of government and the media. Lots of Photoshop gags, many gut-busting funny. Nazi references abound. If you are consumed with the newly identified (by conservatives), supposedly irrational trend known as "Bush hatred," this is the place for you. Laughing makes you feel better and helps release the accumulated poisons that build up watching greedy fake Christians destroy the country.
1. kelly's world of cheerleading (hat tip to paper rad); 2.-4. tien's ultimate dbz dimension; 5. homestar runner (sweet cuppin' cakes); 6. tien's ultimate dbz dimension; 7. krystal ishida; 8. lugia pokémon (artist unknown); 9. artist unknown
Steve Mumford wrote a nice review of an Albert Oehlen show a few years back for an art mag called Review. Quite unlike Oehlen's multilayered, idiosyncratic work, the paintings Mumford was exhibiting at the time--thickly-brushed renderings of classic American automobiles--were blandly illustrational. The drawings he's sending back from Iraq, part of his Baghdad Journal on artnet, continue the tradition: they are as lifeless as courtroom sketches. A bunch of these sepia-toned watercolors are on exhibit at Postmasters right now, and based on what's been shown on artnet, one could be forgiven for not making the hike to Chelsea. Being able to draw is cool but art isn't just observation. At some point anger or joy or sorrow--or an idea--should travel from your insides to your arm to the page. Mumford's losing energy somewhere along this drive train. Or maybe it's not there to begin with. Anyway, those pictures are dead, people. I'll stick to reports from Robert Fisk and photos from the foreign press--I don't need to see the Art Students' League turning the slaughterhouse into tastefully smeared contour studies.
Soldiers Host Orphans in Mosul
"[...] Each child was also given a lunch of hamburgers, french fries, soda and ice cream. The restaurant on the CMOC (Civil Military Operations Center) grounds provided the meals. The restaurant also provided many of the decorations on the grounds.
"Another event of the day was face painting. A local caricature artist painted designs on the children’s faces and colored the skin of a few soldiers as well.
"Soldiers interacted with the children, swimming with them, playing soccer and simply being a friend.
"The children each received a gift bag when it was time for them to leave. The bag contained items such as a t-shirt with the 101st insignia, a beanie baby, a soccer ball and personal hygiene items."
While troops are being killed and wounded all over Iraq, that's the kind of stuff being posted on the Centcom website. What is Centcom, exactly? The U.S. Central Command is essentially the military governor of our newest colony, a region including "25 culturally and economically diverse nations located throughout the Horn of Africa, South and Central Asia, and Northern Red Sea regions, as well as the Arabian Peninsula and Iraq." According to the Centcom site, "the entire Central Region is larger than the Continental U.S., stretching more than 3,100 miles east-to-west and 3,600 miles north-to-south." If you're looking for news at the website, though, forget it. The press releases come out of Florida, and it's one story after another about schools, rebuilding schools, paying for schools, helping children, entertaining children, and getting toys for children.
War News for Today. From the Today in Iraq blog. Each item is preceded there by the phrase "Bring 'em on," a pissed-off reminder that all this carnage is happening because of one determined and barely adult man (and many misguided enablers such as the "liberal hawk" contingent, who egged on the war). This is reposted here because the regular media would have you believe the California fires are "today's top story," rather than a frighteningly organized offensive that caused our troops to actually vacate their headquarters. In military terms this is called losing ground, despite the administration's attempt to spin it as victory. Sorry to be a politiical bore, but I think all this needs to be documented and discussed as much as possible. I get as numb as you probably do hearing all this disaster recited, and I think the bad guys want that (meaning our bad guys); nevertheless, not to recite it seems worse.
Two US soldiers wounded in firefight near Fallujah.
Two US soldiers wounded in bomb ambush near Balad. (Second-to-the-last paragraph of this story.)
US soldier killed, two wounded in mortar attack at Abu Gharib prison near Baghdad.
US troops reportedly open fire after bomb ambush in Fallujah. Four Iraqis killed.
Mortar rounds fired into US administration compound in central Baghdad.
Two US soldiers killed, two wounded in bomb ambush in Baghdad.
Suicide bomber kills 18 at Red Cross headquarters in Baghdad.
Ten wounded, including seven Iraqi policemen, in bombing at western Baghdad police station.
Suicide bomber wounds seven at Al-Shab police station in Baghdad.
Three Iraqi policemen killed, ten US soldiers wounded in bombing at Al-Elam police station in Baghdad's Khark district.
Al-Sayidah police station in Baghdad struck by car bomb.
F-Factor 2: detail (actual orientation)
Following up on my Jonathan Lethem post, I'm going to out-geek him here by noting that the cover he describes for an imaginary science fiction book (by "F. Fred Vundane") actually blurs two distinct eras of sf book illustration. The Miró/Tanguy-style cover mostly came out in the early '60s (below, left), a wildly experimental and exciting time (imagine: quirky abstraction on book covers!) but by the '70s, the period Lethem is describing, book jackets got much more blandly illustrational (right); the "computer style letters" he mentions, however, would more likely be seen in the latter decade. The "electric yellow," "Peter Max" influence did survive into the '70s (e.g., Brian Aldiss's Barefoot in the Head cover), but never with as much style as those early '60s editions. A nice picture essay on the Ballantine book covers, from which the blurry images below were taken, is at Strange Words, a regrettably-not-very-active sf e-zine.
Lethem also plays fast and loose with his Marvel Comics chronology, muddling Silver Age ('60s) stories and characters (eg, Silver Surfer, Black Bolt) with books produced almost a decade later (Luke Cage, Power Man). In 1974 he has kids looking at a book that wouldn't come out till 1976 (Dr Strange #12) and another that in '74 would be hopelessly vintage (The Incredible Hulk #115, 1969). OK, maybe the latter's not so implausible. Also borderline but still dubious is whether a kid would say "Use the Force, Luke" the "morning after the last afternoon of seventh grade" in 1977 when the movie opened in limited theatrical release May 27. (Star Wars opened in a few select theatres and word of mouth built over the summer; if Dylan had been part of the first-month vanguard for this generation-defining epic, you'd think Lethem would have at least mentioned it.) The discrepancies only irk because Lethem's so casual about forsaking the dweebs he claims to be one of--he doesn't have to get his facts right because these people don't matter any more; the readers and writers of Great Novels he wants to run with can be easily fooled with some comics lore tossed off for "authenticity."
My point here isn't to engage in literary class warfare but merely to express disappointment that Lethem has written an old-fashioned bildungsroman after a few forays towards a new kind of narrative, with one foot in popular trash and the other in post-humanity. For a writer grappling with the realities of the disassociated, multitasking electronic media age, the novel, Great American or otherwise, is a limited and convention-bound vehicle. Being obsessively true to pop culture without shucking literary skill could be a way to a different, more relevant verbal art, in the tradition of Burroughs, Kathy Acker, et al (and from there to performance video, games on CD-ROM, web-writing...) Hmmm. This may be circling back to the "Why is Wm. Gibson Writing and Not Blogging?" question. Theory in progress--more later. Also, I really need to finish Fortress before popping off again.