Straight Up | Jan Herman

I didn't want to post this item, especially because I have no interest in writing anything that might be misconstrued as a defense of Goldman Sachs. But has anybody besides my staff of thousands -- Bill Osborne, to be precise -- noticed that Matt Taibbi's description of Goldman Sachs as "a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money," bears a peculiar resemblance to this cartoon? (It's from Der Stürmer.)

I don't know where Taibbi came up with the description, which appeared in Rolling Stone last July. But he has a lot to answer for. I also don't know why The New York Times, which cites his description in a front-page article this morning, leaves out the blood-sucking part and the smell of money -- unless it prefers not to call attention to rank anti-Semitism -- unlike Maureen Dowd, who relished it fully in her column the other day, as Osborne points out, along with "an encyclopedia of anti-Semitic tropes" including "the implication of murdering God."

"There's even a twist on the trope of Jews and the spread of disease in her column," he notes further. "The only common tropes missing seem to be the ones about sex-obsessed attacks on virgins and eating babies."

Go read Dowd's column and see what he's talking about. She begins this way, "The Great Vampire Squid has gotten religion," and concludes that "as far as doing God's work" goes, "I think the bankers who took government money and then gave out obscene bonuses are the same self-interested sorts Jesus threw out of the temple."

Somehow she failed to mention Judas or cannibal spiders marked with the Star of David. I'm waiting to see what the NYT ombudsman has to say about all this, if anything.

This is very bad news. Here's why.

Dave Teeuwen's Interview with Graham Masterton on William S. Burroughs is a gem -- every last word of it -- and especially the remark that Burroughs said "he felt as if he had never lived the life he was supposed to live, and that somehow he had ended up as an outsider on the edge of his own existence." It drills down to the heart and soul of the man.

From Video Poetry and Video Fictions, courtesy of Richard Kostelanetz, who produced the visual content in 1989, and Seth G. Samuel, who composed and performed the music in 2009.

Postscript: Nov. 2 -- A change from the change ... and I doan care if dey mispell Artur's name ...

Here's the truth, simply stated ... bookstores are suffering from a serious crisis of falling sales. Don't believe a single zero of all those editions claimed to be 100,000! 40,000! ... even 400 copies! just for suckers! Alack! ... Alas! ... only love and romance ... and even then! ... manage to keep selling ... and a few murder mysteries ... rather wanly ... Matter of fact, nothing is selling ... bad times! ... Movies, TV, appliances, mopeds, big cars, little cars, middle-sized cars really hurt book sales ... credit merchandise! imagine! and weekends! ... and those good old two! three month! vacations ... and posh cruises! ... hi there, little budgets! ...watch those debts! ... not a red cent to spare! ... so, you know, buying a book! ... a camper? well! ... but a book? ... easiest thing to borrow there is! ... a book gets read, for sure, by at least twenty ... twenty-five readers ... Hah, just suppose bread, or better yet, ham, could satisfy, one slice! some twenty! ... twenty-five consumers! what a windfall! ... the miracle of shared loaves would set you dreaming, but the miracle of shared books, and the writer working for free, is a well-established fact. This miracle takes place, no fuss, at the secondhand counters or, a bit more nicely, in reading rooms, and so forth and so on ... In every case the author goes a-begging. That's the main thing!

Those are the opening lines of Conversations with Professor Y, published more than half a century ago, though you'd never know it.

Here's the beginning of a nice little tale of blackmail and paranoia by the late Kurt Vonnegut. It's one of 14 previously unpublished stories in a new collection of short fiction, Look at the Birdie, just out from Random House.

I was sitting in a bar one night, talking rather loudly about a person I hated -- and a man with a beard sat down beside me, and he said amiably, "Why don't you have him killed?"

"I've thought of it," I said. "Don't think I haven't."

"Let me help you to think about it clearly," he said.

You can read the rest courtesy of the Los Angeles Times.

Did you see this? How could you not? It was frontpage -- front and center above the fold -- the kind of news that sends the mind reeling: Wounded Soldiers Return to Iraq, Seeking Solace.

Really.

Americans wounded in the Iraq war are being ferried back to the scenes where they were maimed to help achieve psychological closure, the first time such visits have been tried while a war is still in progress.

Carl Weissner, author of Death in Paris, his latest thriller, was bemused:

Bill Hicks is biting his ass in frustration for having to miss out on this one. This is worse than all the styrofoam Flat Daddies in the world. Dante, in fact, is weeping uncontrollably he's so frustrated and feeling left out.

Papers will be written at the Army War College on the healing action of business-class-cum-red-carpet all the way. Guys who have never flown business class, they automatically achieve closure; the minute the flight attendant says, 'Take yr legs off or whatever, boys, make yourself at home...' It's a medical fact.

To steal a quote from the Command Sergeant Major, "It's the new Iraq." Or to quote the walking wounded, "Hoo-ah!"

(Crossposted at HuffPo)

Malcolm Mc Neill animated Televolution 20 years ago. "I redid it for Charles Darwin," he said the other day, to celebrate the 200th anniversary of Darwin's birth and to pay tribute to On the Origin of Species. The 19th-century naturalist's masterwork was published in November 1859. Mc Neill's animated cartoon consists of 1859 frames.

Televolution originally aired in 1990, in Japan. "The iPhone was science fiction and the Internet had just gotten started," Mc Neill says. "Now wearable data-transmission devices are the norm, biophysical integration is just around the corner, and the conquest of gravity is on the way."

He dismisses the idea that "evolutionary theory has removed God" from the natural universe. "In fact," he says, "Darwin simply redefined Him as a kind of super Walt Disney who changes one thing into another on a whim. Life has been viewed as an animated cartoon ever since."

(Crossposted at HuffPo)

Postscript: After this item went live, Mc Neill messaged:

I'm not exactly a Darwinist -- or any kind of ''ist." Certainly not a Creationist. Evolution theory is only 150 years old. Flat earth lasted a whole lot longer. And every generation has its own version of a flat earth theory. Look at how smoking turned around in 30 years. Doctors used to say it was GOOD for you. And global warming. In 1976 scientists were so concerned about global COOLING that they were considering dumping soot on the North Pole. If Darwin was right, I only hope we can figure out what it was that made a fish turn into a rhinoceros and get ourselves the heck out of here. Human is a terrible state to be in. We've had thousands of years of carnage so far. If "flying wombats" is next let's get on with it.