Oligarchs

"Snakes don't eat people."-- the incredulous Jennifer Lopez

Luis Llosa may have been offering a homage to Spielberg with Anaconda, but the film was ridiculous, barely lucid in its underlying subtext of preserving the Amazon's mystique. At this point in my life I fail to see why mechanical sharks and snake machines with a malevolent sense of humor shouldn't be made Secretary General of the United Nations, and if I ever get through The Feast of The Goat by Llhosa the novelist, I will have to view the filmmaker's adaptation, and this unwittingly brings me back to my trouble: my literacy fluency has done absolutely nothing for me, not in terms of personal security, and Llhosa has stated to English media repeatedly that he belonged to a Latin American left which thought it could change things. But that seemingly took forever in blue jeans.

Modernism changed literature and left it for dead, which does not mean that content will not continue to be sold as impulse products for consumers, but what has modernism done to the moral glue, the third chimpanzee's empathy? And by that I mean us, culling Jared's title. I have spent my entire life consuming the English novel and science fiction, and only later getting into the subtlety, sheer marvel, of the action taking place on the continent. Stendhal is more than Balzac's equal, and I can only wonder at where Marcel picked up his cues, not quite 100 years later-- but Joyce? If we were to superimpose Ulysses onto the scripts for The Following, aren't we saying that an abstract modality, taken to its absurd forms, makes it easier to clear the way for immolation? And yes, I get the subversive irony of the fact that James Purefoy brings the terminal degree scholar into the ever burgeoning tent of the American serial killer (hello to my internal vengeance driver). Late 20th century cold war thrillers were an early version of this video game mentality, with the real monster being the American operative flipped for money, or the thrill of it.

In the good old days, I would not have feared a Soviet agent. The Soviet agent believed in what Lenin and Stalin bequeathed, but today's Russian thugs lead us back to Bulgakov's ridicule, which doesn't need an apologia for its reductionist, dystopian tendencies. Bulgakov may not be the best counter example for me to use to bolster hostility towards Joycean meta-fictional overlay, because I may hear the jazz in Mikhail's masterpiece, but cannot say he is right about Christian orthodoxy, but unlike Joyce, Bulgakov is empathetic to the need for hope.

I said something stupid in group when some there asked me if I was a grad student. I said we have a lot to blame the Modernists for, in the accusative. Let me put it this way: I doubt Joyce could have foreseen Osama Bin Laden, but I can see what the rise of Al Qaida means when I read the mock epic of this over educated Anglo-Irishman.

Since I had my bowel impaction yesterday, went off schedule, and have to go to the store, I leave you with that questionable lucidity.