questions beget questions

1. Bring the symbolic violence

it’s about that time of year when the semester’s over and I fail a half-dozen kids. This year it might be twice that. Industrial education is irrevocably fucked and there seems to be no way to observe the Hippocratic Oath from within it: letter grades brand kids as of a certain class, and a certain percentage of future possibilities go by that brand. Complicity is all and I really have no truck with spending too much time worrying about it. May get out of education, but not directly because of a high-minded aversion to the System. But I do hope to sleep within the next twenty minutes.

2. Bring the Minutemen

We’re not so punk in drublic as to feel empty when the rotation completely lacks aggressive, simplistic ranting and spontaneous uncritical leftist proclamations, but we do like a little bump now and again and it’s been years since Ritalin or Dexedrine has been a credible option. Hence, the restorative joy that came over us when we happened upon a minutemen mix CD in a stray CD case – no songs, no album titles, and no idea – other than the choruses – what they may be but this is not to detract from the experience in the least.

3. R-Grossman

I know entire theses that tackle Grossman on Coldplay are in the fact-checking stage as I write this, but can you drop a little more acid in my cereal milk when I’m not looking just to give it all a semblance of meaning? If you don’t know, Rex Grossman – a schizophrenic quarterback for the Bears who exudes a strange febrile adolescent quality that simultaneously makes you protective of, and disgusted by, him - filled out a bio sheet and listed Coldplay as his favorite band. You don’t have to be emo to like Coldplay, nor do you have to be gay (in either sense). Anyone across the full range of individual continua that assess decency, aesthetic values, sense-makingness, etc. could potentially echo Grossman on this card. But it’s hard for me to understand how to build a conceptual bridge between foresaid taste for this band and the role of a franchise quarterback. Just not doing it for me.