Literacy and Its Discontents

The Prophet

I only bother to look once in a great while. So it happened only this evening that I noticed the "whybother.com" domain next door had fallen into the hands of some breed of Adventists, evidently the kind of Christians convinced that atheists are doomed to plunge into the depths of despair, their lives meaningless, teeth-gritting bouts with emptiness, anguish and enui, until they hit bottom -- Praise the Lord! -- and click on FindGod.com. Yes, such is name of the tediously god-infested site to which poor whybother.com is now undignified portal, and such is the design of the apparatus, the page layout of the lure. I'm not going to dignify either with link. If you want to look, you'll have to do it yourself.

Raoul (Jul '13)

How I Learned My ABCs

"a" word "b" word "c" word "d" word "e" word "f" word "g" word "h" word "i" word "j" word "k" word "l" word "m" word "n" word "o" word "p" word "q" word "r" word "s" word "t" word "u" word "v" word "w" word "x" word "y" word "z" word We are a nation of children....

Raoul (Jul '07)

The Chantelle Show:
The Discovery of America

Coming Columbus Day Indigenous People's Day, October 12, 2004.... I'm not at all sure what or if it meant, the fortuitous discovery of that quarter deck of card-sized Chantelle photos in Derrida's Of Spirit shortly after his death; less, what I might or might not have intended in sequestering them there almost a decade ago; even less, what last month moved me to photograph the photographs spread upon the back of Wilson leather, the classic black jacket, one of the happiest things I now own, long denied me by another's image of who I was and ought to be, until I reached San Diego....

Raoul (Oct '04)

Jacques Derrida

Jacques Derrida 1930-2004...

Raoul (Oct '04)

Cryptonomicon

Stephenson has played with each of his parallel stories and has developed so many interesting plot thread that when he must necessarily converge the stories, they don't quite splice nicely, leaving unconnected threads sparking annoying voltage. The splice becomes a 3 inch long ugly weld bubbling melted iron and copper on what could have been a wonderful fiber optic cable.

mrbdawg (Nov '00)

$12000 Detention

I have noticed that the building at Fort Mason where I take my improv workshop classes is also home to the Waldorf High School. This campus on National Park land incorporates big, empty, white-wall rooms with cheap-ass posters of vacation spots and one room with a pink sheet on the door that says "Detention" and a list of the usual crimes that land a kid in detention.

mrbdawg (Jun '00)

LDR, 25 Poems

LDR lives in Pacific Beach, California. This is a small sampler of her poetry.
(Copyright 1998, 1999, 2000. Reprinted with the author's permission.)

Raoul (Mar '00)

The Gong Show

Sadly, change is not on the horizon. There is no public consensus or even widespread inkling that education might ideally accomplish more than certifying prospects for flexible global labor markets, aside, that is, from keeping kids from killing each other before they graduate. To judge by the rhetoric of our current presidential candidates, the Internet in every classroom, a metal detector at every door, and "we" may not have much of a problem with education as it is.

Raoul (Oct '99)

On Owning Reality

This power of words, in the largest sense, to bound and shape our most basic human realities is the reason we should be frightened by the wave upon wave of global corporate media mergers of the last two decades.

Raoul (Sep '99)

The Global Melting Pot

It's too bad the Chinese government isn't here to crackdown on this whitewash public relations cult, but no wonder that it's being funded through Southwest Voter by Disney, Arco and AT&T, and reported glowingly by the Times Mirror Company. Certainly, none of these corporate giants need much reminding that Latinos will not be a numerical minority in California much longer, however much the Southwest Voter Leadership Academy seems devoted to training young Latino activists to forget it.

Raoul (Aug '99)