Disqus - Latest Comments for reynard

Re: Do You Believe the Eclipse Is Going to Happen?

reynard seifert — Thu, 17 Aug 2017 16:43:49 -0000

I agree with Mr. Hamblin.

Yes, the moon will blot out the sun. And yes, this is partially caused by the moon. But until we know how much of the eclipse is caused by the moon and how much of it is caused by the sun, we can't let the moon stop us from looking at the sun! We have to get this right.

Thank you, sir, for having the courage to speak out.

Re: A Ride on Libran Winds

reynard seifert — Sat, 05 Nov 2016 00:10:55 -0000

Re: Exciting reading in 2016

reynard seifert — Fri, 28 Oct 2016 20:21:27 -0000

Nell Zink's Mislaid was fun and you can get the ebook from the devil for $2

Re: Would Love Your Thoughts

reynard seifert — Wed, 26 Oct 2016 14:23:23 -0000

I think a good writing teacher is more like a coach than a math teacher. It's not necessary to teach people how to run - they are generally born with the instinct to do it because we've had to run away or after things for like forever - but a person's running can be improved by a good coach, who watches them run and advises them on how to adjust in order to run faster or longer or whatever. A good coach can also tell you which runners to watch and learn from. But when writers "race," there's no course, just a start and finish on either side of a national park, and there is no winner.

Re: The First Hispanic President?

reynard seifert — Wed, 17 Jun 2015 02:39:03 -0000

I wouldn't vote for Jeb Bush if someone held a gun to my head and told me to, but that headline is idiotic. I realize it is meant to be funny, but the guy actually does speak Spanish. His wife is from Mexico. Does David Frum speak Spanish? Bush is trying to get Latino votes, to reach out to them. Every serious Democrat butchers a paragraph of Spanish at least once an election cycle. Don't forget those "Si se puede" posters Obama used, appropriated straight from Cesar Chavez. Remind me, what is wrong with reaching out to Latinos? The tone here suggests a kind of privilege that doesn't see its own sleeves.

Re: The Strickland-Needleman Carousel

reynard seifert — Sun, 26 Oct 2014 21:01:45 -0000

is this hell?

Re: Signing Up

reynard seifert — Thu, 23 Oct 2014 23:46:33 -0000

beets?

Re: Signing Up

reynard seifert — Thu, 23 Oct 2014 18:49:08 -0000

pootyaxe

Re: Syllabus Share

reynard seifert — Sat, 11 Oct 2014 12:33:26 -0000

♥

Re: Htmlgiant’s Last Day is October 24th

reynard seifert — Fri, 10 Oct 2014 01:35:23 -0000

shit gene! where am i gonna post an essay every six months to a year to two years? what am i gonna send things to people? i'd rather turn my ideas into paper airplanes & send them screaming into the black air of this ghost town.

well, it's been a nice ride anyway. it was great meeting some of you in new orleans, but i don't think i'll ever regret not going to awp.

Re: "Boyhood" and Race

reynard seifert — Thu, 11 Sep 2014 02:50:04 -0000

"I think one must say, in all honesty, 'Boy, that Martin Luther King Jr. sure had a big vagina." - William Pope.L

Re: "Boyhood" and Race

reynard seifert — Thu, 11 Sep 2014 02:17:25 -0000

James, I don't think the author was expecting you to want anything. It seems like he's just saying it would be nice to see and maybe it would do some good. It's just an observation, one example of how race is ignored by the content of most films, despite being something people care about. Usually when race is addressed it's like the only thing the movie is about. And as the author says at the beginning, what's interesting is how this film has been received critically, over and over again, as a universal story, despite not addressing race. Obviously we don't all have the same experience and I think the author's review is not of the film, but of the reviews. There was a time, not so long ago, when people like Hitchcock thought nothing of putting nothing but white people in their movies. The history of "the universal" was created by and has been maintained by white people and only recently has occasionally and in a tear-jerking way been extended to stories about people of color. It's an element of the puritan empire that continues to cast its longs shadow over our thoughts as we've had them made by the world. bell hooks wrote a great book called Reel to Real in which she argues that the cinema doesn't just reflect reality, it creates reality. You and I know what Houston and Texas State are like (I went to Texas State) but film logic says what it says and is specifically not the world, but a comment on it.

Re: "Boyhood" and Race

reynard seifert — Thu, 11 Sep 2014 01:41:17 -0000

No one is talking about your personal life. This article is about a MOVIE. A MOVIE has nothing to do with your personal life or your feelings about other people and everything to do with what is NOT YOU. Representation matters. Everything that happens in the process of a representation matters and says something particular to people. Just because the president is black that doesn't mean things have changed. Maybe it is getting better (one can only hope), but people deal with real racism that sometimes becomes violent every day and every day people are profiled because of their race. That's not internet nonsense like so many of you have decided to spew on this stupid field. It's real. Have you ever thought about how systems of oppression might work on people who don't look like you when they walk down the street? Have you ever asked your friends of color how they feel about it? O no I forgot, you don't even see race, right? Right. You don't even think about those things, so why would you talk about them? Maybe your friends don't care or notice... I don't know. Maybe they don't say anything because they're of a certain class and so it's not supposed to matter. And in a perfect world, it wouldn't. Anyway, I feel sad for this whole generation of internet thumbnails here.

Re: "Boyhood" and Race

reynard seifert — Wed, 10 Sep 2014 20:55:25 -0000

When will trolls find a strategy other than taking arguments they don't like to their logical extremes?

Re: "Boyhood" and Race

reynard seifert — Wed, 10 Sep 2014 20:32:50 -0000

It's not about hating white people; it's about acknowledging inequality. You can't be neutral on a moving train.

Re: "Boyhood" and Race

reynard seifert — Wed, 10 Sep 2014 19:42:07 -0000

I don't think there's any evidence that he's a racist (the way you're saying that means something very particular) and the author of this article didn't say that, but it's good to notice when a movie that's trying to talk about social issues ignores a big pink elephant in that room. That omission raises a lot of interesting questions. Why are they ignoring the elephant? Are they afraid of it or do they just not see it? Do they not know how to look at the elephant? Do they not know how to talk about it? You just want to take what I said and extend it as far as it'll go because you want to be a stickler to "logic" and I get that but that's certainly not what I meant.

Re: "Boyhood" and Race

reynard seifert — Wed, 10 Sep 2014 19:20:26 -0000

Lol we're talking about a movie! It's the job of movies like this to critique culture. Anyway, I'm not sure you know what that word means.

Re: "Boyhood" and Race

reynard seifert — Wed, 10 Sep 2014 19:19:34 -0000

Houston may be diverse but it's easy not to notice when you're there because of the extent to which economic segregation and institutional racism dictate the distribution of that "diversity." I was born in Beaumont and now live in Oakland. Worlds apart.

Re: "Boyhood" and Race

reynard seifert — Wed, 10 Sep 2014 19:02:27 -0000

Nice. I haven't seen it yet, but it's too bad I'm not surprised. I wish these commenters would realize that the point is not that race should have been talked about, but that, given all the other topics the film apparently discussed, it ignored one that's equally important. Omission is a form of critique. In this case, not saying anything is the same as saying race doesn't matter. As exemplified by the strong feelings you all are exhibiting, it does.

Re: Closed Post

reynard seifert — Sat, 06 Sep 2014 23:27:50 -0000

that's not a puppy that is a baby land seal

Re: Dianna Dragonetti’s Response to Janey Smith/Steven Trull’s “Fuck List”: The “Art” of Rape Culture

reynard seifert — Fri, 05 Sep 2014 19:08:40 -0000

people use the flimsy justification of 'art' to excuse things like this because it makes the thing's transgression a question of what art is and what it should or shouldn't do or whether it should or shouldn't do anything other than simply be, rather than a question of what content we should support or tolerate. people are usually more willing to oppose censorship than to support anything resembling it, so that makes it easier to transgress.

i get what you're saying about his male entitlement as a central point. i guess anyone can think of their actions in the context of art, but other people don't have to agree with it. obviously in this case, a lot of people don't. i don't mean to get in the way of that. i just wanted to tell about my own interaction with these works. as i said, i'm against it.

Re: Dianna Dragonetti’s Response to Janey Smith/Steven Trull’s “Fuck List”: The “Art” of Rape Culture

reynard seifert — Fri, 05 Sep 2014 17:21:28 -0000

i 'know' (i.e. have met) steven, so my personal view of being on his fuck list was that it 'seemed funny,' but i am a white cis hetero male and had already met the author, so it's not surprising that i wasn't threatened. i can definitely see how many people would feel otherwise, given their own context. i thought it was in poor taste, but didn't say anything and probably never would have had this not come up.

when i read about we're fucked, i considered buying it for a few seconds. then i thought, no, that's exactly what peter bd wants. not having met this person, i did feel weird about my name being used in someone's book and not being able to see how it's used without purchasing that book. that, for me, would have felt like a kind of rape. so it did strike me as a violation of my personhood. there's a reason people put "All persons fictitious" disclaimers on books. the reason is that you can be sued for libel. i tried to message peter bd on the tumblr of his 'collected works,' asking if and how i was fucked, which i felt i had the right to know, but shaun gannon replied saying that peter bd doesn't manage the site, etc. i felt like, well that's lame. and then i guess i forgot about it. but again, i have certain privileges. i can see how other people might have felt personally violated, even harassed.

by asking whether or not this is art, dianna, you are letting steven frame the context of this discussion. the creation of art doesn't mean it has to be hung. for instance, i don't hang black light posters in my room anymore, not because i don't think they're art, but because i don't like them. if there were a black light poster of me (that somehow very clearly identified that it was me) that i didn't approve of, not only would i not have to hang it on my wall, i could sue the person who made it for something like defamation of character, and ask that it not be on anyone else's wall either. i might not win, but depending on the context, i might have a case, especially since i'm not really a public person. libel is easier to prove.

like most people, i have a personal definition of art. i decide whether or not i like it. if i like it, i call it art. i may like it because it's so ugly that it makes me feel something, and i find that something interesting, for whatever reason. one way or another i like it enough to call it 'art.' so i don't think everything is art, but i also don't think that has anything to do with what's being discussed here.

what i see being discussed (in various ways) is the ownership of your name (maybe even your 'brand,' if you call it a brand), and whether that name represents you enough to be considered 'you,' or if it's just a proxy. maybe it doesn't matter whether your name is 'you' or a proxy. maybe it shouldn't be tolerated. and that's a question only a community can ask of itself. and really, it's a question for the people who wield power over the means of production, which in this case is this website and plain wrap press. so thank you for asking the question and suggesting an answer.

actually, this whole thing was pretty well covered in an essay called "Color Theory," by jeff chang, in the new issue of n+1. it's about a 1970s exhibition of charcoal pieces with a racist title and the dialogue it sparked in a new york art community. but anyway.

i see it as a question of consent and representation. how far is too far? is this it? is that what people need to hear? my vote is for yes, this is too far. i see no reason to do this stuff in the name of fun. it's disrespectful, irresponsible, and potentially illegal. let's not do this, and not support it either. it's using conceptual art as an excuse to make people feel uncomfortable and then call that the performance. that's whatever it is, but you don't need to like it, and you don't need to have it in your home, and if it represents 'you,' then you have the right to say that you don't want to be in other people's homes either. there's an interesting way to do this kind of work, but this is not it. it goes back to at least the autobiography of alice b. toklas.

that said, i do think it's important to note that steven's "fuck list" came on the heels of josef kaplan's (also controversial) Kill List, which was and is a free pdf. ben tripp wrote about it on this website.

Re: Venus & Jupiter: The Conjunction of Brown & Powell

reynard seifert — Thu, 04 Sep 2014 17:28:28 -0000

As you know, I didn't call Brown a child. I think that characterization is absurd. It's literal infantilization. I agree that that general left view is not complicated enough. I don't think I was trying to uncomplicate it. I did my best to say things that I could be pretty sure were 'true' and leave things out that I doubt.

That account of Powell's shooting seems pretty bad to me. Bad in that they probably got all of their 'evidence' from police statements. I have no evidence to support my claim, except I guess my own interpretation of his actions as seen in the video, which only exists inside my head. I don't really know why you want to split hairs on this, but I'm done. I didn't write this essay to have a debate. That's the kind of crap that makes me not want to write, which is what I do most of the time.

Re: Venus & Jupiter: The Conjunction of Brown & Powell

reynard seifert — Wed, 03 Sep 2014 13:38:20 -0000

I would never suggest that all shoplifting is civil disobedience. Acts of civil disobedience rely on their context. Powell didn't just shoplift, he did so in a certain context and then he made a certain show of it. That'd be like saying Gandhi just wasn't hungry. Powell's actions place it in a political realm, rather than I guess an economic realm. It seems clear to me that, whether or not he was "emotionally disturbed" or "mentally ill," he was protesting systems of repression and oppression.

If Darren Wilson had walked into a store and shoplifted, it would have meant something else entirely. That actually would be sort of "crazy." I would never say that Brown's situation was imposed on him, either. Short of pulling out a gun, nothing a person could do at the range from which Brown was reportedly shot could ever justify the use of deadly force. Anyway, that's not even what this essay is about. I'm responding to your comments as insinuations because you are commenting on a piece of writing I made, not the other way around.

I called your question stupid because I feel it lacked intelligence and common sense, not "logic." I see your logic, but I think it's mangled in its unfortunate attempt at clarity. And yes, I fully believe that things are complex and jagged.

Re: Venus & Jupiter: The Conjunction of Brown & Powell

reynard seifert — Wed, 03 Sep 2014 11:29:41 -0000

I didn't call Wilson a murderer. I said he was homicidal. Brown's death was ruled a homicide. I'm not going to answer your question though, because it's stupid.

I didn't say Powell was murdered either. I said he was slaughtered, as in manslaughter, which is what police have been charged and convicted of before, along with excessive use of force. They may be protected by protocol, but that doesn't make it any less of a slaughter. I can't speak to Powell's thoughts, obviously, but I feel that his shoplifting was an act of civil disobedience.