2013.05.04 13:00 - On "The Wire"

The Guardian for this meeting was Bruce Mowbray. The comments are by Bruce Mowbray.

Bruce Mowbray: Hello, sinequanon.
sinequanon Sahara: Hello Bruce
Bruce Mowbray: Welcome to the PaB fountain!
sinequanon Sahara: Thank you
Bruce Mowbray: You've been here before? I don't think you and I have been properly introduced.
sinequanon Sahara: no, we are meeting for the first time...but I have been here before
Bruce Mowbray: But, then, I haven't been coming to very many sessions here... Usually just this one each week, which I am responsible for.
sinequanon Sahara: I love the way you capitalize the initial word :)
Bruce Mowbray: kk. Good to hear you've been here before.... That means you probably know the ropes already -- about the "drops" every fifteen minutes.
sinequanon Sahara: yes I am aware of that..
Bruce Mowbray checks back to see his capitalizations...
Bruce Mowbray: Probably the ex-English teacher coming out in me.
sinequanon Sahara: does Pema come here these days?
Bruce Mowbray: You know, I've not seen Pema for some time.
Bruce Mowbray: Last I saw Pema was at our last Art as Being project -- in the Dome.
sinequanon Sahara: humm lost in his super computer
Bruce Mowbray: probably so!
Bruce Mowbray: yes!
Bruce Mowbray: checking out the decay of stars, perhaps...
sinequanon Sahara: while everything rots around us
Bruce Mowbray: Oh my.
Bruce Mowbray: You're a fan of entropy, then?
sinequanon Sahara: was referring more to anthropy than entropy
Bruce Mowbray: Ahhh!
Bruce Mowbray: Well, I guess there's little to argue with on that score. . . .
sinequanon Sahara: i had been watching a series...the Wire..heard of it?
Bruce Mowbray: Vaguely...
Bruce Mowbray: Please say more.
sinequanon Sahara: its set in Baltimore
Bruce Mowbray: a TV series?
sinequanon Sahara: yes tv
Bruce Mowbray: kk, please go ahead.
sinequanon Sahara: has the usual suspects, drugs, addicts, dealers, and cops
Bruce Mowbray: yes,,,,,?
sinequanon Sahara: that's basically how it starts
Bruce Mowbray: hmmmm....
sinequanon Sahara: things don't get any boring do they
Bruce Mowbray: The significance of the title, though?
sinequanon Sahara: but oh my, then you're in for surprises
Bruce Mowbray listens.
sinequanon Sahara: cause it's not your usual cops nor the usual robbers
Bruce Mowbray: hmmmm....
sinequanon Sahara: what we are used to is the cops turning out winners in the end
sinequanon Sahara: and pride hath a fall and all that
sinequanon Sahara: but not here
Bruce Mowbray: kk, still listening.
sinequanon Sahara: it's true life, the game is always the game, the game never stops, the game is always rigged
sinequanon Sahara: for everyone
Bruce Mowbray: Hmmm.... Sort of reminds me of a movie.... "The Game" -- or something like that...
Bruce Mowbray listens.
sinequanon Sahara: yes michael douglas i think
Bruce Mowbray: Yes, that's the one!
Bruce Mowbray: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119174/
sinequanon Sahara: they move deeper, into how the department is run, how the dealers run their things, etc etc

--BELL--

 
sinequanon Sahara: then it moves to the ports, the school, the courts, the newspapers, the city
Bruce Mowbray: hmmmm.
Bruce Mowbray: showing the inner workings of each of these?
sinequanon Sahara: how systems are structured and interact with each other and how the telluric decay eats into everything
Bruce Mowbray: hmmmmm.
Bruce Mowbray: human nature at work?
sinequanon Sahara: not just that...its too easy to blame human nature
Bruce Mowbray: yes, I agree.
sinequanon Sahara: humans are essentially good people
Bruce Mowbray: (being, myself, a sort of existentialist)....
sinequanon Sahara: like you and I
Bruce Mowbray: of course, especially you.....
Bruce Mowbray: but does "Wire" make that point?
Bruce Mowbray: that humans are essentially "good"?
sinequanon Sahara: but what does a child do if he has the specter of multiple convict father hanging over him?
sinequanon Sahara: ok i might be crashing
Bruce Mowbray: kk. I will wait... no problem.
sinequanon Sahara: but it never makes any counter-point either
sinequanon Sahara: ah ok it works now
sinequanon Sahara: yes it ate a couple of my sentences
Bruce Mowbray: The Columbus (Ohio) schools are now in courts because at the highest levels, they conspired to fake-out the feds -- and students with low test scores were falsely "transferred" out of the district ....

Bruce Mowbray: so that their scores would not be figured in -- when time came for rewarding the schools with federal funding.
sinequanon Sahara: it shows exactly that
Bruce Mowbray: I wonder if that sort of thing happens in Baltimore.
sinequanon Sahara: how the schools juke their test results
Bruce Mowbray: yes.. I thought so.
Bruce Mowbray listens for more.
sinequanon Sahara: hey this chat already has too many spoilers
Bruce Mowbray: ha ha!
Bruce Mowbray: Is this program shown only on cable TV?
sinequanon Sahara: its an HBO series
sinequanon Sahara: i wouldn't know how it works at your end
Bruce Mowbray: kk. Unfortunately (perhaps) I cannot get any cable stations, otherwise I'd like to watch this series.
Bruce Mowbray: too far out in the boonies.
Bruce Mowbray: only get over-the-air telecasts.. through an antenna.
sinequanon Sahara: well i am an anarchist myself,,..i download it off the net
Bruce Mowbray: (the old-fashioned way!)
Bruce Mowbray: Oh! I could do that, then.
Bruce Mowbray: I will definitely check it out.
sinequanon Sahara: you can't blame someone for intellectual puppetry rites when they live 200 miles from the nearest toilet bowl
Bruce Mowbray: [I use VUZE for peer-to-peer downloading of all sorts of stuff....]
sinequanon Sahara: yes you could
sinequanon Sahara: or bittorrent
Bruce Mowbray: I DO, and have for years!
Bruce Mowbray: But there is a down-side...
sinequanon Sahara: what
Bruce Mowbray: I have to have satellite for my ISP...
Bruce Mowbray: and they limit me to a certain amount of gigs per month,
sinequanon Sahara: how many?
Bruce Mowbray: go I can't go hog-wild, as it were.
Bruce Mowbray: but I surely could get some of the "Wire" programs.
Bruce Mowbray: Well, I used to get 25 gigs per month,
Bruce Mowbray: but I've lowered that to only 15 now.
Bruce Mowbray: too expensive for 25.
sinequanon Sahara: that's a lot,,,,a season is roughly 4 gigs
Bruce Mowbray: Great! I will check it out.
sinequanon Sahara: you can span it over a couple of months
Bruce Mowbray: kk.
Bruce Mowbray: I downloaded the entire second season of SPARTACUS episodes.
Bruce Mowbray: yes, i could spread it out.
sinequanon Sahara: http://isohunt.com/torrents/?ihq=the+wire
Bruce Mowbray: but at least I will check out the first few episodes of "Wire" to see if it is my cup of tea, as it were.
Bruce Mowbray: Thanks!
Bruce Mowbray hastens to copy....
sinequanon Sahara: oh btw the language is quite offensive, all that street talk

--BELL--

Bruce Mowbray: WOW! It has been on for five seasons, already!
Bruce Mowbray: Nothing human offends me. Especially the language of the people.
Bruce Mowbray: Heya, Qt!
Qt Core: Hi all
sinequanon Sahara: every sentence comes punctuated with some novel variation of the F word
Bruce Mowbray: The f-word becomes meaningless after a while.
Bruce Mowbray: unlike its poignant usage in the e.e. cummings poem "I sing of olaf glad and big"
sinequanon Sahara: Hello Qt
Bruce Mowbray: How powerful it was in the cummings poem...!
Bruce Mowbray: "I will not kiss your f-ing flag"
Bruce Mowbray: I used that poem once when I was teaching high school English....
sinequanon Sahara: very Coetzian
Bruce Mowbray: fortunately, that was in Berkeley, where folks are (were) a bit more tolerant.
Bruce Mowbray: and long ago, alas.
Bruce Mowbray: 1965, to be exact.
Bruce Mowbray: I'm afraid we've retreated toward the Middle Ages since then.
sinequanon Sahara: i didn't come across it before
sinequanon Sahara: sorry lag again
Bruce Mowbray: My "take" on being offended by four-letter words is this: One must first make oneself offendable.
Bruce Mowbray: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15408
Bruce Mowbray: That is the full poem.
sinequanon Sahara: a difficult place to reach
Bruce Mowbray: "Olaf (being to all intents a corpse and wanting any rag upon what God unto him gave) responds, without getting annoyed "I will not kiss your f-ing flag"
Bruce Mowbray: the original publication of the poem said f-ing...
Bruce Mowbray: without spelling it out, lest folks become offended -- those who had made themselves offendable, you understand.
Bruce Mowbray: so, "Wire" is also something like that?
sinequanon Sahara: reminds me of the book i finished the day before..Cotzee, Waiting for Barbarians
Bruce Mowbray: oh, please do say more about that!
sinequanon Sahara: well he isn't left to the dungeons to die...pointless aint it
sinequanon Sahara: they let him rot in his filth
sinequanon Sahara: and his excrement
Bruce Mowbray listens....
sinequanon Sahara: until he begs for mercy, on the top of his voice, like a foul jackal
sinequanon Sahara: and then they just let him go
Bruce Mowbray: yes?
Bruce Mowbray: hmmmm....
Bruce Mowbray: to what end?
Bruce Mowbray: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waiting_for_the_Barbarians
Bruce Mowbray: simply to demonstrate that they had broken him?
sinequanon Sahara: oh not at all, he was never the centre of their attention, he just was
Bruce Mowbray: hmmmm.... so the indifference of it all?
sinequanon Sahara: yes, like an irritating fly
Bruce Mowbray: hmmmm.
Bruce Mowbray: Thus, the necessity of individual choice and action -- an existential theme.
Bruce Mowbray: The prisoner will define himself.
sinequanon Sahara: oh Niall Ferguson blundered again, did you hear?

--BELL--

Bruce Mowbray: no, please say more after this drop.
sinequanon Sahara: well he is the present chronicler of 'Empire'
Bruce Mowbray: http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2013/05/niall-ferguson-doesnt-trust-gay-economists.html
Bruce Mowbray listens.
sinequanon Sahara: yes that
sinequanon Sahara: comes backed with a solid oxbridge base
Bruce Mowbray: hmmmm.
sinequanon Sahara: currently such and such professor and harvard for so and so, you know..all that jazz
Bruce Mowbray: How could Oxford-Cambridge blokes possibly be wrong?
sinequanon Sahara: ah then let me share something else
Bruce Mowbray listens for more.
Bruce Mowbray: yes?
sinequanon Sahara: http://www.lrb.co.uk/v33/n21/pankaj-mishra/watch-this-man
Bruce Mowbray: kk... a lot to read there. WHY should we "watch this man"?
sinequanon Sahara: this will be a long read, you can do it later, it will require all our faculties
Bruce Mowbray: kk.
sinequanon Sahara: he is one of those 'imperial messengers'
sinequanon Sahara: he used to be a financial historian
sinequanon Sahara: tracking the rothchilds etc etc
Bruce Mowbray: From Niall Ferguson - "It is not my habit to reply to hostile book reviews, but a personal attack that amounts to libel is another matter. Pankaj Mishra purports to discuss my book Civilisation: The West and the Rest, but in reality his review is a crude attempt at character assassination, which not only mendaciously misrepresents my work but also strongly implies that I am a racist" (LRB, 3 November).
sinequanon Sahara: oh yes that was magnificent...his threat...
sinequanon Sahara: it never materialized of course
sinequanon Sahara: he knew he was treading on thin grounds
Bruce Mowbray listens.
sinequanon Sahara: eventually it was all quietly borne
sinequanon Sahara: this was followed by a couple of articles
sinequanon Sahara: by others
Bruce Mowbray: hmmmm.
sinequanon Sahara: his reputation is kind of soiled now, umm except with his 'friends at high places'
sinequanon Sahara: he was an important intellectual cog in the neo-con base camp
Bruce Mowbray: so, is he racist and homophobic, or what?
Bruce Mowbray: or are those terms wayyyyy to broad?
sinequanon Sahara: he is a teleocrat, and to achieve those ends he can be whatever he deems necessary
Bruce Mowbray: the ends justify the means, in other words.
Bruce Mowbray: Hello, Vorder!
sinequanon Sahara: not a racist as such, but certainly a white-supremacist
sinequanon Sahara: hello Vorder
Qt Core: Hi Vorder
Vorder Forder: hello
Bruce Mowbray ponders how one could be a "white-supremacist" without also being a racist.
sinequanon Sahara: yes a thin line to tread isn't it
Bruce Mowbray: i would not wish to tread it.
sinequanon Sahara: neither would i
sinequanon Sahara: there are ways in which even nationalism can be racism
sinequanon Sahara: for its a philosophy based on exclusion
Bruce Mowbray: That was surely the case for America... on many levels.
Bruce Mowbray: and still IS the case...
sinequanon Sahara: i am a martian because i am not from earth , not from jupiter etc etc
Bruce Mowbray: in many situations.
Bruce Mowbray: Yes, you have an "out" that the rest of us earthlings cannot use.
Bruce Mowbray: I am from cyber-space myself.
Bruce Mowbray: from the Wire, as it were.
sinequanon Sahara: i recall a line by ursula...to love a place and then to put a name to it, and a boundary and to not love anything that falls outside
Bruce Mowbray: Hmmmm. sounds like the route of some traditions... if you're not one of us, then you're a heathen, an outcast
sinequanon Sahara: i think she writes that in the dispossessed

--BELL--

Bruce Mowbray: I have to be going. THANKS, sinequanon, for this fascinating discussion. I will check out the links you have suggested. Meanwhile, may all be safe and well.
sinequanon Sahara: was fascinating
Qt Core: bye bruce
sinequanon Sahara: bye Vorder
sinequanon Sahara: i must beg leave as well
sinequanon Sahara: you have a lovely day Qt
Qt Core: bye then, sinequanon
sinequanon Sahara: bye