so, apple conveys democracy to the middle east, we bring apple to demos; modern means, archaic imagery...
gallery.ipodlounge.com/displayimage.php?album=topn&cat=-131&pos=0
(thanks to my wonderful friend michael bell-smith and and his wonderful friend cory arcangel for gathering this and other such oddities at www.burncopy.com/bestoftheweb.html.)
anyway, click the link: what follows is probably the most meaningful online photo gallery to date. fuck citizen journalism, this is military-civilian-historical-world-forming. journalism should shoot itself in its ugly face, if it has the cajones.
anyway, it's clear what's represented here--this is what separates us from the animals--we are world-forming, whereas animals only have the capability of responding to environmental stimuli (never properly 'acting', whether in or on the world). husserl described the 'umwelt' as the "intuitively given surrounding world," or, in relation to his genealogy of humanity, the "prescientific life-world," that which precedes and precludes conscious differentiation.
"It is that from which science abstracts and of which it is the interpretation, the world of objects pos sessing both primary and secondary qual ities, the world of spatial aspects belonging to vague and approximate types and not a world of geometrical idealities. On the other hand it is a world and not a mental representation of the world. It is 'subjectively relative' by comparison to the intersubjective agreement the scientific interpretation affords, but it is not 'merely subjective' in the sense that it belongs to the mind."
or, if you please, from an avid reader who goes by the name, 'Jack Priest, Sailor Home from the Sea':
Sometimes I like to play my iPod all night long in places where there is no electricity. Like on a camping trip or on an ocean crossing or just a two day sail. Yep, you guessed it, I'm a sailor, spent several years on a boat and let me tell you, when you are standing watch on a dark night your iPod can be your best friend. Nothing like John, Paul, George & Ringo or even Mozart to help you wile away the hours. But those nights can be long and if you've been sailing awhile, your Pod's battery is gonna run out of it's charge and with nowhere to plug it in, what will you do? What will you do?
* * *
or, even, if i could employ a bit of synecdoche and have the central character of 2pac's "shorty wanna be a thug" represent this whole movement toward political singularity...
He was a nice middle class nigga
But nobody knew the evil he'd do
When he got a little bigger
Get off the final blaze
While puffing on a Newport
plottin' on another way to catch a case
Was only sixteen, yet convicted as a felon
With a bunch of old niggas
But you the only one who ain't telling
I tell you it's a cold world, stay in school
You tell me its a man's world, play the rules
And fade fools, 'n break rules until we major
Blaze up, getting with hoes through my pager
Was raised up, commencing to money makin' tactics
It's getting drastic, niggas got automatics
My fingers on the trigga, Tell the lord
To make way for another straight Thug Nigga
I'm sitting getting buzzed, looking for some luv
from the homies, cuz shorty wanna be a Thug
so, america, i ask you this: "when is it going to stop? when will you have made enough money?" and, more grist for the mill, "what the fuck are you going to do about china?" come on, mr. jobs. we're dying here; even springsteen thinks so.
