Only the Lonely Athletes Break 'US' records at WIERD...

Tuesday July 25th, 2006

Okay this week at WIERD the theme is going to be 'act like you are very desired by others' but make absolutely certain that it appears there is no way in hell this should be the case'!!!...very rare...are you up to it??? Anyone who is able to successfully pull this off gets to buy me a drink, but since I don't have to buy drinks, they you say, "Oh how cool, then perhaps you'd like to buy me a drink?" and I will say, "Oh but you are so radically popular, maybe you should get someone you actually 'want' to buy you a drink?" and you will say, "But Pieter I don't 'want' anyone, and noone 'wants' me", and I will say "Oh right... well that's very rare, and yet so well done! Cheers!!!"

But 'seriously' (and by the way its excellent when you say 'seriously' in 'public' to create quotes in your fingers in the air, complicated, try it, the uncomfortable, blank looks are truly WIERD...) this challenge is the world, and I spent much of this WIERD week trying to make sense of this looming vague WIERD philosophy of the 'contemporary' as manifest in several crucial recent populist 'events' of immense 'contemporary' import. Just to get them out of the way here's the info on the Masterbate-a-thon in London and the racist ringtone phenomena in South Africa, and the key is how these complications of social relations work through the logic of MySpace.com thinking...very rare...

http://www.masturbate-a-thon.com/pages/index.htm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/5190820.stm

So yes leave it to the English who as the spokesman for the even says 'want to change the image of 'the stiff upper lip' by displaying their 'openness' in public', problem of course is the act of public masterbation only further ingrains the derogatory cliches of 'self-involved', and 'up tight', literally in this case as all the groin muscles clench tight in the moment of (public) orgasm. The South African ringtone comes from a similar flawed ideal of 'expressing' one's non-PC feelings so as to find allies whom feel likewise etc., but it too only ends up annoyingly allegorizing the annoyance that any sell phone ring makes in public...as in this case the ringtone literally IS annoying...

So the point is I think both 'ideals' are problematic because they work through a MySpace 'utopian' logic and as I've always said technology and the internet can never be a venue for utopianism for as soon as it names itself as such, capital latches on, abstraction sets in, and the ideal only becomes an image of itself- thus the problem that MySpace presents of "Fuck I have 1300 friends I've never met, and I'm so alone in my sad little coldwave cublicle with only very rare twilight Ritual demo CDrs to make me feel 'real''...I'm making this up as I go so bear with me but the key thing seems to be in all 3 cases displaying the 'image' of 'being desired' and 'having rampant desire to 'give' '(social, sexual, political- despite how unpop-you(ll)-are) but the truth in each case being that the ideal for the individual is just to have the image of such attached to them as such. The question arises then as to why is there this desire for the image and not the fun/real connection the image suggests- fun with friends in the flesh, hanging out with real friends who you connect to because they are also racist or simply provocateurs like you, etc???

I'm not quite sure of the answers to this but I think the best way to start would be by setting up a MySpace sight called 'Racist Masterbate-a-thon Records' for as the above link states 'the goal is to break the US record!' Thing is the English want to beat the record set by a gentleman from the US'A' of 8 hrs 35 minutes, but since they forgot the 'A' they literalize the problem, and in the same problem all the liberal South Africans want to 'break the record' (an old one vinyl one with the song from the 40's supposedly) as its so offensive, and as the NYTimes announced last week MySpace broke the record for most hits on a website in 1 year. Amazing thing is all of these phenomena have broken the 'US' record and this notion of 'the broken US' literalizes the fact we remain alone as the 'I', and the plural 'US' never occurs...and as I guess this very rare 'essay' has taken a slightly sincere tone... this is why I do the WIERD so we're not alone... and we play only records, and they never get broken because they are simply too valuable because they are very rare, and forever WIERD... the US...

Pieter and Glenn spin the CD only version of 'US' on Racist Masterbate-a-thon Records!!!
Tuesday, July 25th, 11pm-4am
(happy hour and Belgan Coldwave retrospective-De Brassers, Struggler, De Kommuniste, and The Cultural Decay, midnight-1am!!!)
WIERD @ Southside Lounge
41 Broadway (Wythe/Kent), Wmsbrg, BKNY
J train to Marcy, L to Bedford
Info: (718)387-3182