“California”

Right now, I’m listening to Mylène Farmer. I’ve written about her before in my livejournal. She can be wonderfully dark. Nice image, too, in her videos: She does the whole seductive dangerous woman thing quite attractively. The lyrics to a cool song of hers, “California”–yes, I’ve got the video–are rather interesting. It’s interesting how they sum up the whole outlook that so many people seem to have about California, as a land of sex and death and an interestingly creative sort of brutality.

French lyrics first, my English translation after, both taken from this website. (I’ve improved the English translation, I think.)

***

“California” (M. Farmer/L. Boutonnat)

Aéroport, aérogare
Mais pour tout l’or m’en aller
C’est le blues, l’coup d’cafard
Le check out assuré
Vienne la nuit et sonne l’heure
Et moi je meurs
Entre apathie et pesanteur
Où je demeure
Changer d’optique, prendre l’exit
Et m’envoyer en Amérique
Sex appeal, c’est Sunset
C’est Marlboro qui me sourit
Mon amour, mon moi, je
Sais qu’il existe
La chaleur de l’abandon
C’est comme une symphonie

C’est sexy le ciel de Californie
Sous ma peau j’ai L.A. en overdose
So sexy le spleen d’un road movie
Dans l’rétro ma vie qui s’anamorphose

J’ai plus d’I.D., mais bien l’idée
De me payer le freeway
C’est l’osmose, on the road
De l’asphalte sous les pieds
Vienne la nuit, c’est le jet lag
Qui me décale
L.A.P.D. me donne un blâme
C’est pas le drame
Se faire un trip, s’offrir un streap
Sous le soleil en plein midi
Six a.m., j’suis offset
J’suis l’ice dans l’eau, j’suis mélo, dis
Mon amour mon Wesson
Mon artifice
La chaleur du canon
C’est comme une symphonie

C’est sexy le ciel de Californie
Sous ma peau j’ai L.A. en overdose
So sexy le spleen d’un road movie
Dans l’rétro ma vie qui s’anamorphose

***

Airport, air terminal
But for all the money I need to go
It’s the blues, depression
It’s checkout for sure
Let the night come and the time pass
And I’m dying
Caught between apathy and gravity
Where I’m staying
Changing angles, taking the exit
Going off to America
Sex appeal, it’s sunset
And Marlboro smiling at me
My love, my ego, I know it exists
The warmth of abandon
It’s like a symphony

Sexy’s the sky of California
Under my skin, L.A. gives me an overdose
So sexy the spleen of a road movie
In the mirror, my life in anamorphosis

No I.D., but still the idea
Of taking the freeway
Osmosis, on the road
Between the asphalt and my feet
Let the night fall, as the jet lag
Puts put me back
L.A.P.D. gives me a fine, no tragedy
Having a trip, tasting a streap
In the sun, in full midday
Six a.m., I’m offset
I’m ice in water, I’m mellow, say
My love, my Wesson
My clever trick
The warmth of the barrel
It’s like a symphony

Sexy’s the sky of California
Under my skin, L.A. gave me an overdose
So sexy the spleen of a road movie
In the rear-view mirror, my life in anamorphosis

Music Videos

I’m downloading, via KaZaA, the last few music videos I can imagine wanting. It’s been expensive, what with me running over my limit in hours letting the computer download it, but I’ve accumulated an excellent collection, I’d think, some 3.5 gigabytes–Garbage, Eurythmics, New Order, Shakespears Sister, Sinéad O’Connor, and so on. I’ll post a list later, once I figure out how to tkae a directory listing in Windows XP and transfer it to a text file.

Another Comic

I owe this one to Charlie Stross:

http://www.angusoblong.com/cutietoon/pages/page0_jpg.htm

This is just too funny …

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-464533,00.html

and I found the link on freerepublic.com of all places.

Boasting

• I got 88% on a term paper on American history, on Progressivism as an acculturating force among immigrants.
• In the same class, I got a 95% on my notebook–my class notes, reading notes, in-class exercises. My professor said that she wished her notes were as good.
• I got 90% on my History 101 midterm.

In the past, I’ve tried too hard to suppress my ego. I’ve got accomplishments; I should be proud of them.

What Egyptian Deity are you? go to:the quiz!

Ruminations

I’ve finished watching a music video I’ve downloading via KaZaA, Sade’s “Smooth Operator.” It’s a nice video: Mid-1980’s cabaret singer loves a guy, she’s shown that not only does he smuggle weapons but he’s cheating on her, she has to keep a straight face as he’s in the club with her and his mistress. She’s underrated nowadays, I think; I’ve bought her latest album, and it’s good.

Which reminds me of a mid-1980’s cyberpunk novel by Victor Milán, The Cybernetic Shogun, sequel to another book, both set in the same world, where there have been two nuclear wars–the first a conventional NATO-Soviet exchange, the second some kind of Indonesian-Brazilian-Greater Queensland exchange following the nuclear destruction of Brisbane by one of the post-Three powers–leaving Japan on top. (At least for a time.) The main characters are concerned with the creation of artificial intelligences in a Japanese corporate lab; upon creation, the AIs are promptly tasked with the goal of trying to keep the world from completely collapsing. Two of the AIs further the collapse; at the end of The Cybernetic Shogun, the third is beginning the slow task of reconstruction. One sore point: No one is going to be launching starships if Christian fanatics are taking over Europe while the global economy collapses after not one but two nuclear wars.

I received my first Amazon orders today. I’ve blown, oh ~150 dollars Canadian on ordering books on-line using my credit card, half on amazon.ca, half on amazon.com. (Some books, like Robert Sobel’s For Want of a Nail, couldn’t be ordered via amazon.ca.) Only two books arrived today: Foucault and Queer Theory, and Bert Archer’s The End of Gay. I’ve heard a lot about Archer’s book, and I’ve skimmed it–I can read two thousand words a minute, I can do that quickly. it is quite interesting, like Marjorie Garber’s Vice Versa: Bisexuality and the Eroticism of Everyday Life. Yes, it makes plenty of useful points and provides a fair bit of conversation fodder. Another sore point: I don’t like people universalizing from their personal experiences. I mean, I had no idea about my sexuality until I turned 22, so how can anyone else claim to develop universal rules? Bi-capable people are definitely a minority of the population in my opinion, though a larger minority than is commonly thought. I have to admit happily that, yes, I am turned on by Lenny Kravitz’s “Black Velveteen.” A cute woman he had in the video, pity I can’t download it via KaZaA:

“Black velveteen/supple and clean/21st century dream”

Although having your artificial sex partner be programmed to wash dishes and recommend French nightspots seems, well, incongruous. Or something weird: I don’t think that misogyny is exactly the right word. Then again, I’m not a woman; or, for that matter, particularly knowledgeable about women.

Well. To type in my notes, now.

Oh: I’ve realized that I’ve missed the episode contained the scenes where Willow used her magical powers to wreak vengeance on Glory for sucking Tara’s mind. A pity: They were cool. If she could do that to a god … Well, look what happened to Warren, stupid misogynistic serial-killer fuck lacking magical powers entirely. An interesting prefiguring of Season 6 developments.

HIST 261 Thesis

Hi, everyone!

Can I get some feedback on this thesis for an upcoming term paper, between 2500 and 3000 words in length?

***

The 1856 cholera epidemic was one of the last major recurrences of cholera in Britain, as steady improvements in London’s infrastructure and the advance of medical knowledge limited recurrences of cholera, among other epidemic diseases. Indeed, the 1856 epidemic ended largely because of the intervention of John Snow, who famously identified the contaminated water at the public pump in St. James’ Parish as the source of the epidemic, prefiguring the germ theory of disease and the development of a modern medical science.

This intervention prefigured the development of the British state, in broader matters of public affairs as in the specific field of public health, as an essentially regulatory entity concerned with ensuring the proper functioning of the bodies of its subjects. As explored by Foucault, western European governments in the early modern era were concerned with prohibiting improper behaviour on the parts of their subjects, whether sexual, religious, or political. It was only in the 19th century, however, that the growth of modern medical science allowed the regulation of disease.

This regulation was manifested not only in terms of action against disease-causing elements–whether infestations of bacteria or virii or inadequate civic sanitation–but against behaviours, particularly those characteristic among working-class communities and the poor, which were viewed as causative or aggravating factors in illness. The regulation and limitation of disease was a primary function of the 19th century state; the ability to act in this area was widely seen as a necessary precondition for modernization, as the roughly contemporary case of the autonomous khedivate of Egypt demonstrates.

***

Cool link: The on-line edition of On the Mode of Communication of Cholera, by John Snow, M.D., available at

http://www.ph.ucla.edu/epi/snow/snowbook2.html

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