EPluribusUnum, or Women's History Month

I'll tell you all about my messiah complex later on, but for now want to talk about now, and bring to your attention some services that came to my attention this afternoon. This week, Flavorpill, which you should just go-Ogle, is promoting a free party at Webster Hall by two "activity-enabling orgs," MyOpenBar and HeyLetsGo. Were we not in haste to go get some reading done, we would think about the inefficiency of spaces between words. Both of these are social networking services. They collect people by collecting email addresses. They are party-minded objective spirit, which I have been given to understand is a fancy pseudonym for social institutions. Oh wait, we had the thought while we were writing: losing the spaces between the words is a way to draw attention to the objectivity of the service, to articulate what they do. EPluribusUnum, as it were.

Also, there is GoodReads, where you can post what you're reading, what you were reading, what you want to read. Why not? Claire, I imagine, will never forcibly collect those syllabi from the rest of us, anyway.

As these media show no sign of slowing their reciprocal proliferation and consolidation, one can merely hope that the soft, Mac-white anaesthesis that they radiate is not, as the ice-pick Modernists have feared, malignant. As objectivity draws itself together with all the inevitability of a dying star, let us aspire to actually *using* it, to reaching into the instantaneous transference of information and grasping inside that magnificently-organized storm an equally human hand.

By which I mean, nothing more than my class of seven women continuing the conversation about art criticism when my male teacher ran out of the room with a nosebleed, and nothing less than recreating our political system online, if that's what it fucking takes. Speaking of which, ladies, do me a fave and talk about HISTORY with one another. Whatever strand you want -- music, hairdos, marriage, education, weapons, politics, philosophy, philanthropy, philadelphia, the rocky mountains, judaism, elephants -- just talk about it.

From the vaults: men of ancient times

"The understanding of the men of ancient times went a long way. How far did it go? To the point where some of them believed that things have never existed — so far, to the end, where nothing can be added. Those at the next stage thought that things existed but recognized no boundaries among them. Those at the next stage thought there were boundaries but recognized no right and wrong. Because right and wrong appeared, the Way was injured, and because the Way was injured, love became complete. But do such things as completion and injury really exist, or do they not?"

_Chuang Tzu, Discussion on Making All Things Equal

Ceci n'est pas une blague

I was born to have a messiah complex.

Smartest ever

This guy.

I'm not kidding. Check out the full-size pic.