Archive for October, 2009
Somebody give her a medal
Eugene, OR -24 Feb. 2009- Staff. Leslie Michten, a 21 year old Junior at Oregon University, has officially been expelled for behavior that university administrators described as “outrageous and unacceptable in a community of scholars.”‘
Michten, who until recently majored in Art History and Literature and was also active in several campus-based independent and experimental theatre groups, was expelled for numerous code of conduct violations relating to a “Life Character” performance which was stretching into its seventh week.
The goal of the ambitious project was for Michten to assume every Daniel Day-Lewis character simultaneously for as long as possible. Michten and a fringe theatre group, The Mod Bods of EarlCastle, concocted the idea after studying Mr. Day-Lewis’ method of “Deep Character Immersion,” which proscribes a gradual, though eventually complete, adoption of a character on and off the set.
As a new twist, Michten and her associates decided that she would meld portions of every character Mr. Lewis had played in the recent past into a single personality. She would then take on this personality to a greater extent each day while her crew introduced supporting characters at random and filmed the whole experiment.
“We thought it would be totally sweet and meta to invert the character development process and dramatic presentation,” said Mod Bod’s of EarlCastle’s Associate Director, Arnold Binsly. ”The idea is to create an overhanging dialogue that supersedes even the archetype itself. Here, though, we ran into a lot of resistance.”
Indeed, when Michten began to have violent outbursts during classes, teachers and students alike took a dim view of the project. Psychology Professor Dr. Albert Cheng recalls the first time Michten assumed Mr. Lewis’ persona in lecture.
“She threw a chair across the amphitheater and began screaming about a milkshake,” he said. ”She had drawn a mustache on her upper lip, and she was dressed in some thrift store overalls. When I asked her to stop, she only became more aggressive, calling me a ‘nancy boy’ and a ‘Baby from a basket’ and strutting around the front of the class.”
While Michten eventually came out of her character that day, as she spent more and more time as Mr. Day-Lewis, the disturbances only increased in size and frequency. Finally, after the Provost delivered the last of many written complaints and Michten had failed to appear at several mandatory disciplinary hearings, University Policy arrived at her dorm room to escort her off campus.
At this point, however, Michten had built a shanty outdoors and was pretending to stalk deer in the main commons, witnesses say. When officers approached, some say she attempted to attack them with a stick. Accounts differ, but witnesses largely agree that Michten started the altercation that resulted in her arrest. She was formally expelled shortly after she was taken into custody.
Neither the University Police or the University would comment on the confrontation, as it still under investigation, but they provided the following statement via email:
“The University is a center for scholarship, and it is our duty to ensure that every student is able to depend on an orderly and safe environment to learn and grow. We will continue to enforce the Student Code of Conduct to fulfill this duty and prevent behavior which is outrageous and unacceptable in a community of scholars.”
Michten could not be reached for comment.
Autopsicografia
The poet fancying each belief
So wholly through and through
Ends by imagining the grief
He really feels is true.
And those who read what he has spelt
In the read grief feel good–
Not in the two griefs he has felt,
But one they never could.
Thus to beguile and entertain
The reason, does he start,
Upon its rails, the clockwork train
That’s also called the heart.
-Fernando Pessoa, trans. Roy Campbell
The Dance of Death
Our speed is constantly increasing, and it does not matter where we are going. We are caught up in the madness and hubris of the dance of death: the important thing is the dance… We are no longer worried about what will emerge from it or about the void it points to. We are content to die of dancing. Our generation is not even capable of cynicism… Read More, it takes a kind of terrible greatness to say, “After me, the deluge.” No one says that today; on the contrary, everyone is glutted with promises and regards the mad dance as a way to authentic renewal. Yet there is no goal, nothing transcendent, no value to light the way; the movement is enough.
The nihilistic revolution has succeeded. Today’s political activists who still claim to be revolutionaries have nothing to put in nihilism’s place. Movement for movement’s sake, thorough study for study’s sake, the revolution for the revolution’s sake: that, they say, is the only way to escape the system. It is a remarkable thing, however, that this system renders mad not only those who are part of it but those who reject it as well. The system is now the god that makes us mad, but it is a god we have created with our won minds.
-Jacques Ellul
Bubbe’s Wisdom
We weren’t rich, but we always had enough. Thursday we baked bread, and challah and rolls, and they lasted the whole week. Friday we had pancakes. Shabbat we always had a chicken, and soup with noodles. You would go to the butcher and ask for a little more fat. The fattiest piece was the best piece. It wasn’t like now. We didn’t have refrigerators, but we had milk and cheese. We didn’t have every kind of vegetable, but we had enough. The things that you have here and take for granted. . . . But we were happy. We didn’t know any better. And we took what we had for granted, too.
“Then it all changed. During the war it was hell on earth, and I had nothing. I left my family, you know. I was always running, day and night, because the Germans were always right behind me. If you stopped, you died. There was never enough food. I became sicker and sicker from not eating, and I’m not just talking about being skin and bones. I had sores all over my body. It became difficult to move. I wasn’t too good to eat from a garbage can. I ate the parts others wouldn’t eat. If you helped yourself, you could survive. I took whatever I could find. I ate things I wouldn’t tell you about.
“Even at the worst times, there were good people, too. Someone taught me to tie the ends of my pants so I could fill the legs with any potatoes I was able to steal. I walked miles and miles like that, because you never knew when you would be lucky again. Someone gave me a little rice, once, and I traveled two days to a market and traded it for some soap, and then traveled to another market and traded the soap for some beans. You had to have luck and intuition.
“The worst it got was near the end. A lot of people died right at the end, and I didn’t know if I could make it another day. A farmer, a Russian, God bless him, he saw my condition, and he went into his house and came out with a piece of meat for me.”
“He saved your life.”
“I didn’t eat it.”
“You didn’t eat it?”
“It was pork. I wouldn’t eat pork.”
“Why?”
“What do you mean why?”
“What, because it wasn’t kosher?”
“Of course.”
“But not even to save your life?”
“If nothing matters, there’s nothing to save.”
-J. Safran Foer’s bubbe
The White Ghost of Disaster
In early 1912, writer Mayn Clew Garnett submitted a story to Popular Magazine. “The White Ghost of Disaster” told the story of the Admiral, an 800-foot ocean liner that strikes an iceberg at 22.5 knots in the North Atlantic and sinks, killing more than a thousand passengers, largely due to a scarcity of lifeboats.
On April 14, while the story was in press, the 882-foot Titanic struck an iceberg at 22.5 knots in the North Atlantic and sank, killing 1,517, largely due to a scarcity of lifeboats.
The story appeared in May.
-From Futility Closet
Schizms
Objectivity is presumably the opposite of schizophrenia. Which means that it is nothing but acceptance of everybody else’s notion of reality. But nobody’s perception of reality is the same as everybody’s notion of it, which means that the most objective person is the real schizophrenic.
-R.A. Wilson
