Lazy rascals, spending their substance, and more, in riotous living

Happy Gay Christmas

Via Warren Ellis, I hear of the term “Goth Christmas” for Halloween. It’s also, at least here in the Bay Area, Gay Christmas. I like that there’s an, as it were, contingently gay holiday; and anyway, the American fall holidays are the best holidays: Halloween, a holiday celebrating dressing up, and Thanksgiving, a holiday celebrating eating. Anyway, for your Halloween pleasure, here’s a happy-hardcore remix of Tubular Bells.

Difference and repetition

The new Britney song’s not that great, but the video is really quite extraordinary. It appears to be some kind of schizo-masochistic delusion:

Watch: Britney Spears – Womanizer

I’m impressed that Britney’s recovery from tabloid madness simply involves the universalization of madness to her entire career. I guess it’s not actually surprising, but it’s nice to see it done so well.

Socialism is when you nationalize the banks without compensation

When you compensate the banks without nationalization, I think that would be the opposite of socialism. One of the odd things at first about discussion of bailout plans was the lack of actual macro-economic suggestions: the plan in Congress is about giving money to the banks, left-wing critics have suggested giving money to home owners; individual solutions, nothing structural. But it can’t be that structural changes are unthinkable; indeed, they’re kind of obvious, given that, as far as I know, economics departments do still teach macro-economics. David Harvey:

Surely it cannot be lack of imagination. The academy, for example, is full of explorations of the imaginary. Read moreā†“