Aerodunamis

Having now spent an entire day at the Denver International airport, I have had enough time to consider the ways in which the airport is the new metaphor for 21st-century American life.

1. The airport is a placeless space without history, depth, or context.

2. The airport is a faceless space. Anonymity incommunicado.

3. The airport is a voyeuristic space alight with the hum of averted glances and "people watching."

4. The airport is a timeless time. The main sport in the airport is "killing time" while the jet lag resolves and the time zones collide into one another.

5. The airport is a big box in the "ex-urbs." Airports grow on grassy steppes, on perfectly groomed, windswept land, moonscapes.

6. The airport is a continual state of emergency, a police state, a terror alert orange. The airport is where the word "homeland" is uttered most frequently. At the airport, everyone is a suspect subject to intimate search and x-ray.

7. The airport is the maturation of the mall - an enclosed pleasure prison where material needs are met with a continual circulation of disposable goods, consumption, escalators, and big brands.

8. The airport is an institutionalized caste system of front and rear, high and low. The most trivial and ephemeral item can be turned into an object of class distinction.

9. The airport is an Internetted rhizome of terminals and links.

10. The airport is the proving ground for the cybernetic organism, gilded with silicon from head to toe and blinking with lines of flight.

11. The airport is the contest between the machines of material commuting and the machines of immaterial communication.

12. The airport aesthetic is comfortable, spare, designed not for immediate appreciation or joy, but rather to keep traffic moving.

13. The airport features a clear division between the managerial/creative class and the service class, which is marked most clearly by race. This division is represented by the paradox of the itinerant citizen and the stationary immigrant, who converse across countertops like two answering machines addressing one another.

14. There is no dirt in the airport.

15. The airport is the most extreme contrast between absolute boredom and banality and the absolute exhilaration of flight. The seen-it-all-from-an-airplane-window attitude compounds the boredom. This is what it is like to be a god among ant-men.

16. The airport is proof that kids can turn anywhere into a playground.

"Militainment, Inc." Wildfire

If you want a quick and easy way to watch "Militainment, Inc.," a number of folks have posted the video online.

The YouTube competitor VeOh has got the whole 2hr thing up, and you can watch it straight through. This is the newest version, which was put up six days ago. It has gotten about a thousand hits a day since then, and it was listed among their top ten most popular downloads for the week.

It's on YouTube in 10 minute segments.

If you're into BitTorrent, you can download the film from Chomsky Torrents.

Or from PirateBay Torrents.

And you can download a higher quality copy directly from my school server.

I'm kind of overwhelmed by the spread of this film and the amount of activity. My web server downloads the film about 100 times a day. I just discovered the VeOh thing.

The Media Education Foundation will be distributing this video soon. If you want to inquire about when this will be or reserve a copy, I would suggest that you contact them. The video will be offered at an institutional price - probably in the range of $100-150.

I'm also planning a showing at the University of Georgia's Tate Center theater soon as well as the Athens Anarchist Collective. I'll be doing a showing at Lewis and Clarke College in Portland, OR on Tuesday, Feb. 27. And in around March 12, I'll be showing the film at the University of Delaware. So I'm pleased with the response. Enjoy.

Dainty Shapes / Hairy Apes

Last night I was invited to a dress rehearsal in town of a play that opened tonight in Athens: "Dainty Shapes and Hairy Apes: Or the Green Pill." My dear Kate Morrissey plays a young temptress. If you have a brain, I urge you to see this play. Very clever and unendingly hilarious. I was tickled up and down.

If you like dada-ist philosophical jousts between pure Platonic men and lusty Dionysian women, this one is for you. Plus you get to wear an animal hat and play an instrument in lieu of applause. The audience a good chunk of the show - as evident in the opening scene where two characters sit high above the stage on lifeguard chairs, scanning the wiley audience with binoculars - while we stare at Miss Kate displayed much closer to the earth in a dazzling red sequined dress. Cal Clements, the director, is a genius with this kind of stuff, and the play is a trip.

Playing all February, every Saturday at 8:30. See the article in the Red and Black.

Jokey Smurf is a Terrorist

I remember getting gas in West Virginia, and on the pump of all places was a sticker featuring a picture of Jokey Smurf and the words, "Jokey Smurf is a Terrorist." This got me thinking about humor and affective energy. The Jokester is also the Trickster is also the Abbie Hoffman dissident, and you can see where I'm going with this. Sudden outbursts of affect are becoming, it seems, more politically significant. Take Howard Dean and his "unpresidential" hooting. Not acceptable in a time of terror.

Well, now we have another icon for the age. An alien, a middle finger, and an ad prank. Looks like a bomb. Implicates itself into the signs of terrorism, however accidentally. Winds up a public relations circus. This is the place where performance art and guerilla advertising meet. This is also the place where advertising and terrorism meet (if terrorism wasn't already a form of advertising and vice versa). And certainly, if we are to believe in the recent buzz about the death of advertising and the rise of public relations, then we have our man. And however much contempt I have for advertising's nothing-sacred approach these days, I have to say that this press conference was freaking hilarious. Give us a circus, we'll give you a circus. Everyone has fun. A big obscene orgy of public relations, tabloid journalism, and the politics of fear. Feedback loops collapsing into black holes of infinite density.

Watch this.

"Militainment , Inc." Final Cut

I've finished a final version of Militainment, Inc.! In fact, I premiered the whole darned 2hr thing to an attentive and enthusiastic crowd last night at Steve and Noah's monthly salon here in Athens. There are still some things to tweak (like the intro), but the thing is ready for pressing.

You can download the video in one piece and in compressed format here. Please distribute freely. Use in your classrooms. It's 550MB or so and in Divx form, so if you don't have it already, you'll need the Xvid plugin, which you can download here. Run it, and it will load easily and automatically into Windows Media Player. The video is also in circulation as a BitTorrent file. You can get the torrent at ChomskyTorrents.org.