Travels on the Bad F*cker Highway

[ Saturday, December 07, 2002 ]

  Well this has very little to do with my visit to my own personal homeland in North Dakota. But it is about Dada, and Dada, of course, is a travelogue, and Dada, of course, is also simultaneously against travelogues. But I thought I should note that, as yet one more example of capitalism's uncanny ability to absorb, co-opt, and then spit back out any form of dissent or weirdness, that an Italian e-commerce consulting company appears to be calling itself "Dada." ) Of course, this fools various search engines and searchers into thinking that their site, www.dada.net, actually may have some shred of artistic or creative merit (other than their admittedly cool logo). Despite the unfortunate capture of this particular "word" by the forces of ironic, self-referential, advanced capitalist internet consultants, there are, in fact, other sites which are good Dada places, and links to other good Dada places on the web, such as this Dada Links page. And as the Dada Server at www.smalltime.com says: This is DADA. All others, take your business to the void where it belongs. [12/7/2002]

[ Friday, December 06, 2002 ]

  I'm still in North Dakota, at my folks' house visiting. Since this purports to be some sort of a travelogue, I ought to say something about North Dakota - the land of wheatfields and missile silos. It is a paradox of mutually assured destruction, and the breadbasket of the homeland. Anyway, there are literally thousands of nuclear weapons in the state, which is home to two of the largest air force bases in the world. You can see the missile silos from the roads sometimes - many of which are decommisioned now due to SALT and START. There are realtors who specialize in selling these closed missile silos to the general public. To view some hot ICBM properties throughout the rural (and I mean RURAL) Midwest - check out www.missilebases.com , where you can browse and then purchase your own Titan missile command center with accompanying silos, wells, and 20 or 30 acres of surrounding land. The walls are built to withstand nuclear blasts of up to 200 lbs. of pressure per inch, so you don't need to worry so much about tornadoes or burglaries. Also, you can buy these "homes" for a fraction of the millions of dollars of your tax money that went into their construction. [12/6/2002]

[ Thursday, December 05, 2002 ]

  I landed in Fargo, ND, this afternoon, en route home to see my parents for a late Thanksgiving or early Xmas visit. The air was 19 degrees, and with the first sensation of the skin on my face beginning to freeze, I felt at home in some way, nostalgic, and somewhat uncomfortable. That lasted for the 30 seconds or so it took to walk from the terminal building to my rental car. I got on I-94, turned on the radio, and heard a Van Halen song that was playing when I left North Dakota in 1986. In the Midwest, some things never go out of style. I haven't been home in more than two years, and I'm looking forward to it. [12/5/2002]

  Meme Machine. 01 11 01 01 01 00 00 00 11 11. No Empire. No War. 11 11 11 01 10 10 10. No War. No War. 11 11 00 10 10 01. No War. No Empire. 11 01 01 00 01 10 11 10 00. No Empire. No War. 11 11 00 10 10 01. No War. No Empire. 11 01 01 00 01 10 11 10 00. No Empire. No War. [12/5/2002]

  About 90 or 95 percent of the web is vacuous commercial content, xxx sites, and boring self-righteous blogs broadcasting political ideology . . . oops, well, in any event, there was a study somewhere indicating that 13 percent of e-commerce is comprised by xxx web site traffic. I wonder what the rest of the economy would look like if 13 percent of it was comprised of xxx commerce? It seems like a lot to me, but in any event, its not any worse than our government devoting a quarter of the national budget to the military. Ergo, . .

Warning. Imminent political message: There is a lot of compelling evidence that the United States is addicted to war. Some of this evidence appears to have been documented in a book by the same name, at www.addictedtowar.com. Can a government, or a society per se, have an addiction? A predisposition, a predilection, or cultural or ecomonic imperative?

What if 13 percent of all web traffic consisted of ideological anti-capitalist rantings in personal blogs? All corporate e-commerce sites should be required by law to put up links to randomly selected blogs, just to increase the relative diversity of web viewpoints. [12/5/2002]

[ Monday, December 02, 2002 ]

  Warning: Contains political rants. The first day of December, and it's now more than officially the "holiday season." When I was younger, I loved Xmas. There were lots of good reasons to love Xmas, of course, the presents, the candy, the vacation from school, and it was one of the few times of the year when our family was together. As an adult, things seem a lot different. It has gradually occurred to me that Xmas is a primarily a spectacle of the mass collective insanity of commodity fetishism. I was heartened to see that some Canadian Mennonites put up a web site called Buy Nothing Christmas. Their message,among others, is that overconsumption by wealthy North Americans is one of the causes of global injustice and suffering. It's something to think about at Xmas, anyway. I probably won't have the self-discipline or creativity to "buy nothing" this Xmas season, but I have decided to buy A LOT less, and to try to make more of an effort to give gifts to friends and family in other ways. [12/2/2002]

[ Sunday, December 01, 2002 ]

  Warning: Tedious speculation regarding the illusive nature of identity. I am wondering when was the last time I spent more than a few days alone, or not talking. Most of us aren't used to living like that for more than short periods of time. I'm curious about it. I have heard of life changing revelations brought about by extended silence or meditation. Maybe our lives move too fast in a society like this (i.e., in advanced-uber-capitalist-information-overload-setting) to really notice or even miss the lack of alonemess, or lack of time to reflect. I wish I had read Walden. Vippisana, etc. I can't wait to , and I'm a little scared to, see who I am without all my stuff, property, possessions, home, routine, and entertainment. [12/1/2002]