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diff --git a/age_of_oil.otx b/age_of_oil.otx index 6f61ea5..e86db58 100644 --- a/age_of_oil.otx +++ b/age_of_oil.otx @@ -1,11 +1,11 @@ % ---- init \sdef{_pgs:fold}{(8.5,5.5)mm} -\margins/2 a5 (1,0.65,0.65,1)in +\margins\slash 2 a5 (1,0.65,0.65,1)in \nonfrenchspacing\raggedbottom \baselineskip=15pt \fontfam[fbb] -\typosize[11/13] +\typosize[11\slash 13] \def\dq#1{``#1''} \def\booktitle#1{{\it\dq{#1}}} @@ -22,7 +22,7 @@ \def\ae{æ} % --- design -\_def\_chapfont{\_scalemain\_typoscale[\_magstep3/\_magstep3]\it} +\_def\_chapfont{\_scalemain\_typoscale[\_magstep3\slash \_magstep3]\it} \_def\_printchap #1{\_vfill\_supereject \_prevdepth=0pt \_vglue\_medskipamount @@ -584,7 +584,7 @@ All photographs can be tipped on one of their corners and thereby form the diamo To move from ear to air to loudspeaker to sterco with its pickup needle is not a far-fetched progression, despite the usual ignorance that accompanies our perception of the music-saturated air. The star that is heard is now, and always has been, the star that is scen, both hearing and seeing mediated by the diamond-idea. -The star (in a photograph) is framed by a diamond. That diamond then becomes the diamond that plays the words and music of the star. As well, to stare across such vast distances of a music hall, to its record player, to its needle, to the time and place of the record's taping, even to the bedroom of the star, simply shows the incredible curiosity on the part of the listener to see into what he/she is hearing. The tininess of the diamond stylus is contradicted by the desire to see such a stone reflect its gleams, and its gleams are seen, at least in the hallucination of the record's cover, photographs of the star, movies of the star, etc. Within the diamond stylus or diamond photograph, the two being interchangeable, lives the star, the star we want to stare at. Hearing will not suffice, thus our tremendous curiosity to see up to that point, that diamond stylus point, that diamond stylus-photograph point, all the way to the bedroom of the star. +The star (in a photograph) is framed by a diamond. That diamond then becomes the diamond that plays the words and music of the star. As well, to stare across such vast distances of a music hall, to its record player, to its needle, to the time and place of the record's taping, even to the bedroom of the star, simply shows the incredible curiosity on the part of the listener to see into what he\slash she is hearing. The tininess of the diamond stylus is contradicted by the desire to see such a stone reflect its gleams, and its gleams are seen, at least in the hallucination of the record's cover, photographs of the star, movies of the star, etc. Within the diamond stylus or diamond photograph, the two being interchangeable, lives the star, the star we want to stare at. Hearing will not suffice, thus our tremendous curiosity to see up to that point, that diamond stylus point, that diamond stylus-photograph point, all the way to the bedroom of the star. The paths of the stars in the sky are recreated every moment a song or film is played over the radio or television. Stars are in the sky, and we can see these distant stellar objects, but not the stars that are human beings who course through the heavens until we eventually sce them on our television sets or hear them over our radios. The distance of the stars (in the sky) and the distance of the stars (on TV, on radios) is quite far, the former more so than the latter. Both distances are insurmountable, a condition that propells us to be closer to the very thing so far away. Looking into the sky, in order to traverse such great distances, will always be the most extreme or sublime effort taken by the scopic drive. Even within the word *sky" there is already "eye," much like "star" that always has "stare" issuing from it. \e{Sky} rhymes with \e{eye}. Since \e{k} and \e{g} are similar consonants, we can obtain from \e{sky}, \e{sgy}, its anagram \e{gys} or \e{gaze}. We \e{gaze} into the \e{skies} or \e{skeyes}. The \e{sky} will draw our \e{eye} into it or the \e{skies} our \e{gaze} or \e{eyes}. @@ -598,11 +598,11 @@ We see sound by seeing the diamond photo or we hear sight by hearing the diamond With every champagne bottle a cork is used to prevent the froth from spilling over. The strength of the cork is attested by the ability to shake the bottle vigorously so that the pressure inside can be contained. Once opened, the loud "pop!" and the ensuing foam signal the absence of the cork. The cork has left, just as much as the mysterious froth of letters lets \e{cork} cease its sequence for that of \e{rock}, as anagram. \e{Cork} and \e{rock} are then another example of "wit as the anagram of nature" in the words of the famous German writer, Jean-Paul. -The containing of a wild foam, a mass of liquid, once shaken, bursts out of its confinement, bursts from under the cork/rock, the cork that is placed over any confinement, cither the confinement of letters in their stipulated sequences or the confinement of liquid, here champagne. Every bottle of champagne (and every bottle of wine or beer for that matter) has this cork/rock, but what is the ultimate import of the cork, this rock, that seals something that would inevitably gush and explode from its imprisonment? +The containing of a wild foam, a mass of liquid, once shaken, bursts out of its confinement, bursts from under the cork\slash rock, the cork that is placed over any confinement, cither the confinement of letters in their stipulated sequences or the confinement of liquid, here champagne. Every bottle of champagne (and every bottle of wine or beer for that matter) has this cork\slash rock, but what is the ultimate import of the cork, this rock, that seals something that would inevitably gush and explode from its imprisonment? -Standing on the floor of the very place where the cork-rock is opened is also a cork/rock of sorts. The floor of the bar locale is also the cork/rock that has been opened, about to explode with a "pop" and its ensuing fizzle. What shakes and froths below the floor/rock as the champagne bottle froths with its liquid about to gush? +Standing on the floor of the very place where the cork-rock is opened is also a cork\slash rock of sorts. The floor of the bar locale is also the cork\slash rock that has been opened, about to explode with a "pop" and its ensuing fizzle. What shakes and froths below the floor\slash rock as the champagne bottle froths with its liquid about to gush? -Every floor is the ground we stand on, the layer of carth that covers the hot brewing mass of lava found closer and closer to the center of the earth. A ground too is implicated in the idea of language as Holderlin's Patmos gives expression: \ld\ \e{und furchtlos gehn/Die S\"ohne der Alpen \"uber den Abgrund weg/Auf leichtgebauten Br\"ucken} (\ld and fearless over/The chasm walk the sons of the Alps/On bridges lightly-built). The "lightly-built" character of a bridge is a floor, truly a flimsy, breakable, collapsible thing. And the floor we stand on is always about to break asunder, this cork/rock that goes "pop" as this floor/rock could go "pop" in some volcanic conflagration. To open a champagne bottle reproduces what happens in nature, a voleanic eruption, an abyss of super-hot matter, hotter than any piece of selfsufficient substance once it is subject to the temperatures that make it molten lava, about to burst through the crust/cork/rock of the earth/champagne bottle. +Every floor is the ground we stand on, the layer of carth that covers the hot brewing mass of lava found closer and closer to the center of the earth. A ground too is implicated in the idea of language as Holderlin's Patmos gives expression: \ld\ \e{und furchtlos gehn\slash Die S\"ohne der Alpen \"uber den Abgrund weg\slash Auf leichtgebauten Br\"ucken} (\ld and fearless over\slash The chasm walk the sons of the Alps\slash On bridges lightly-built). The "lightly-built" character of a bridge is a floor, truly a flimsy, breakable, collapsible thing. And the floor we stand on is always about to break asunder, this cork\slash rock that goes "pop" as this floor\slash rock could go "pop" in some volcanic conflagration. To open a champagne bottle reproduces what happens in nature, a voleanic eruption, an abyss of super-hot matter, hotter than any piece of selfsufficient substance once it is subject to the temperatures that make it molten lava, about to burst through the crust\slash cork\slash rock of the earth\slash champagne bottle. Alcohol, in its pure state, burns with the contact of fire, just as oil does with any combustion. And oil, as anyone knows, lies beneath the earth's surface, and like lava, it is about to burst, gush and soak us in its ooze as it did to James Dean in \filmtitle{Giant}. Being coated in oil, crude oil, is similar to being coated with alcohol, the champagne gushing over the rock-opener's hands and body once the "inside's" @@ -610,7 +610,7 @@ pressure is relieved. To lift the \e{cork} from \e{rock}, the uncovering of \e{rock} from \e{cork}, the uncovering of \e{rock} in its proper sequence of letters, shows what froth letters, taken in the broad sense of wit or the German \e{Witz} uncovers as well. Wit, the joke, the unexpected discovery of a relation, is a "dissolution of spiritual substances which consequently, before the sudden separation, must have been most intimately intermingled." The quote is from Friedrich Schlegel, the man who said he wrote in fragments because he thought himself a fragment. This pervasiveness of wit could take place in milieus where champagne bottles are uncorked in all the possible refractions that the fragment "cork" allows. Again Schlegel writes, "Good definitions cannot be made offhand, but ought to occur to us spontancously. A definition, which is not witty is worth nothing, and for every individual there is an infinite number of real defintions." ("\e{Eine Definition, die nicht witzig ist, taugt nichts.}") To define experience needs wit, or rather \e{Wissen} needs \e{Witz}, where knowledge and wit are practically puns in the German. The correlation has wit as its more perfect expression, since a play at the level of the letter is involved, or more broadly, since the form of an idea is under play, a form that makes for a new idea, at best a truer idea, a new definition. -For every form there's a foam, upsetting the form just as the form is about to restrain a heterogencous foam. Champagne, lava, oil, the unconscious are all sheathed by something that prevents the spillover: a cork/rock, a mantel of earth, a rind, the ego. Chaos is found in a bottle, but the manuscript never ceases foaming. To joke is to let spill the foam when in every joke we spell everything differently. I'll spill the proper spelling just as I'll form the foam when I decide to unrock the champagne bottle. As Schlegel observes, "Imagination must first be filled to the point of saturation with life of every kind before the moment arrives when the friction of free sociability electrifies it to such an extent that the most gentle stimulus of friendly or hostile contact elicits from it lightning sparks, luminous flashes, or shattering blows." +For every form there's a foam, upsetting the form just as the form is about to restrain a heterogencous foam. Champagne, lava, oil, the unconscious are all sheathed by something that prevents the spillover: a cork\slash rock, a mantel of earth, a rind, the ego. Chaos is found in a bottle, but the manuscript never ceases foaming. To joke is to let spill the foam when in every joke we spell everything differently. I'll spill the proper spelling just as I'll form the foam when I decide to unrock the champagne bottle. As Schlegel observes, "Imagination must first be filled to the point of saturation with life of every kind before the moment arrives when the friction of free sociability electrifies it to such an extent that the most gentle stimulus of friendly or hostile contact elicits from it lightning sparks, luminous flashes, or shattering blows." And if the unpopping of a cork into that of rock elicits laughter, that laughter only confirms the very foam that is released after such an unpopping, uncorking, unrocking. Freud, in his \booktitle{Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious}, discussed laughter that issues from the joke or witticism (\e{Witz}). He states "the discharge of an inhibitory cathexis is similarly increased by the height of the damming up." Laughter can only be the result of a discharge of an energetic barrier, the inhibitory cathexis or, in this instance, the socially maintained restriction against allowing cork to be rock, a repression of recombining letters which would introduce an unwanted chaos in social discourse. Wit relieves us of rational constraints while laughter signals that relief, its discharge being made from ideas and associations formerly held under, again, by the cork that resists the foaming over into that of rock. @@ -618,7 +618,7 @@ And if the unpopping of a cork into that of rock elicits laughter, that laughter While I was explaining to a friend the difference between sign and referent at the closing time of a bar, a portly gentleman, the bar's bouncer, was telling everyone to leave the premises. I continued to elaborate that all language is bound to an extralinguistic event, a thing, a referent, despite the fat man's edict. The man persisted, "Gentlemen, please leave this area." My friend gradually became aware of language always aligned to a referent. He made a joke, "Jike a referee." At that point the bouncer loomed ominously over us. We immediately broke out laughing. Of course the bouncer was the referee, his command meant precisely what we were supposed to do, just as language with its signs are bound to referents, "referents" a pun on "reference." A referent, by our wit at that moment, became the "referee" of language. "Gentleman, you have to go." We resisted when someone exclaimed "reverend." When we did leave, fulfilling the referent of his command, our convulsions grew in intensity. Any further wordplay on our parts had to cease since the bar was about to close. We had to "leave," we had to obey the referent of leaving just as we had to obey the referee. To make "referent" into "referee" meant we were releasing "referent" from its standard, denotative value. But again the empirical reality of the bouncer, the referee, still referred us to the exit. With our wordplay at an end, my friend at least knew the inescapable unity of sign and referent despite the dream that language could take flight into better wit once freed from the edicts of referces and referents, impossible and futile as that hope may sound. The answer to all this constriction was to hang out at an after hours bar. -The bar we decided to visit had lots of dancing going on. I recalled those famous lines of Yeats: "O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,/How can we know the dancer from the dance?" Part of the last line has become a title to a "gay" novel by Andrew Holleran. Just as I was demonstrated earlier by the incident with the referee, the poem, too, asserts, "How can we know the difference between a sign and a referent?" While dancing at this gay club, I asked my friend whether we can know the dancers from \booktitle{Dancer from the Dance}. How can we make a distinction between the men who are dancing and the men who embody the "dancers" described within \booktitle{Dancer from the Dance}? +The bar we decided to visit had lots of dancing going on. I recalled those famous lines of Yeats: "O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,\slash How can we know the dancer from the dance?" Part of the last line has become a title to a "gay" novel by Andrew Holleran. Just as I was demonstrated earlier by the incident with the referee, the poem, too, asserts, "How can we know the difference between a sign and a referent?" While dancing at this gay club, I asked my friend whether we can know the dancers from \booktitle{Dancer from the Dance}. How can we make a distinction between the men who are dancing and the men who embody the "dancers" described within \booktitle{Dancer from the Dance}? Gay people are implicated in this rhetorical play. They might call themselves "gay " but by so doing they fall prey to referential, denotative \e{straight}jacketing. Gay culture prides itself on its irony, its exuberant "lying," hence making the designation a rhetorical play, an ironic figure. To make homosexuality gay" or "homosexual" a possible lie, into a referent, as does "gay liberation," seems false in terms of the idea of a "gay sensibility" with its ironic and aesthetic trademarks. @@ -656,7 +656,7 @@ I took a taxi home, cheered by my refusal to disfigure my illusion but unsettled \chap Calling All Cars -{\typosize[9/] +{\typosize[9\slash ] {\it\noindent\hfil You clinking, clanking, clattering\hfil\nl \hfil collection of caliginous junk!\hfil\nl} @@ -680,13 +680,13 @@ The human body is never composed of metal, but the love of cars in our \e{cul}tu Billy Wilder's masterpiece, \filmtitle{Sunset Boulevard}, has Max, the chauffeur, say to Joe Gillis, Norma Desmond's lover, "It's not Madame they want. It's her car they want to rent." He says this when "Madame" is visiting Paramount studios with the hope of starring in a "return" to the cinema under the aegis of Cecil B. DeMille. She erroneously supposes that the calls from Paramount Studios were for her, but they were for her Isotta Fraschini, her antique handmade automobile that cost her \$28,000. It is the car, not Norma Desmond that the studio wanted. -This film then states that movie stars are cars and if they no longer are young, beautiful, box office potential, the car will thus assume its ideal up against the disfigured star, the car whose smooth running and impeccably shiny surface prove to be more dependable than a corruptable, ageing human being, a Norma Desmond. Thus the movie star has to be a car, the movie star has to be as smooth and shiny as the car they often act in. When they get older, they may get sur\e{ger}y to crase the indicia of time, just as cars, when they get older, may get custom work done to erase the dents they're subject to. The star/human being grows s\e{cars}, while \e{cars} grow more delapidated too. +This film then states that movie stars are cars and if they no longer are young, beautiful, box office potential, the car will thus assume its ideal up against the disfigured star, the car whose smooth running and impeccably shiny surface prove to be more dependable than a corruptable, ageing human being, a Norma Desmond. Thus the movie star has to be a car, the movie star has to be as smooth and shiny as the car they often act in. When they get older, they may get sur\e{ger}y to crase the indicia of time, just as cars, when they get older, may get custom work done to erase the dents they're subject to. The star\slash human being grows s\e{cars}, while \e{cars} grow more delapidated too. And what do stars or cars travel down? They drive down films or roads, the title \filmtitle{Sunset Boulevard} equivalent to the road Sunset Boulevard. The allegory is now complete: Stars are Cars that Act or Drive down Films or Roads. -At this moment the CAR drives into the picture. Every star, now subject to the metaphoric transfer into that of car (the \e{driving} into car), must in some way or another mimic the very thing they are inexorably compared with, a car, and that mimi\e{cry}, springing from letters incised by invisible tires, speaks the CAR, the magical invocation of Hollywood publicity departments when they, like automatic writing, concoct pseudonyms. Certainly if the emerging star has a \e{Car}ol or \e{Char}les in their original names, then the studio produ\e{cer} won't be so worried, but if their names veer too far from the CAR combination and all its bypaths, a suitable name will have to em\e{erge}. The simplest series, the o\e{rig}inal order for CAR, has produced the following star/cars: \e{Car}roll Baker, Claudia \e{Car}dinale, Kitty \e{Car}lisle, Art \e{Car}ney, Leslie \e{Car}on, Leo G. \e{Car}roll, Johnny \e{Car}son, \e{Car}olyn Jones, Ri\e{car}do Montalban, \e{Car}l Reiner, Brenda Vac\e{car}o, \e{Car}ol Burnett, George \e{Car}lin, Keith \e{Car}radine, \e{Car}l Betz, Linda \e{Car}ter, and so forth. (Carroll Ba\e{ker}, \e{Cla}udia Cardinale and \e{Geor}ge Carlin all have another echo of CAR.) The series can angulate into GAR as with the following: Greta \e{Gar}bo (a cryptophor for "car \e{beau}" or "beautiful car"), Ann-Mar\e{gar}et, Dirk Bo\e{gar}de, Humphrey Bo\e{gar}t, \e{Gar}y Cooper, Ava \e{Gar}dner, Judy \e{Gar}land, Greer \e{Gar}son, Mar\e{gar}et Hamilton, \e{Gar}y Merrill, Art \e{Gar}funkel, \e{Gar}rett Morris, \e{Gar}y Lockwood, Samantha Eg\e{gar}, Ed\e{gar} Bergen, etc. (\e{Gre}ta Garbo, Ann-M\e{arg}aret, D\e{irk} Bogarde, \e{Gre}er Garson, Gary \e{Loc}kwood and Edgar B\e{erg}en embed other echoes of CAR.) The ever-permuting series, as unpredictable as Alban Berg's\fnote{i itch to italicize} discovery of tonal relationships in the course of composing twelve-tone rows, stammers KER: Carroll Ba\e{ker}, Deborah \e{Ker}r (pronounced "car"), Forrest Tuc\e{ker}, Robert Wal\e{ker} (this transfer does not permit him to "walk," but only to "'drive") \e{Keir} Dullea (diphthongs are permissible), Dan Bloc\e{ker}, Bob Bar\e{ker}, etc. Less obvious permutations are possible, as is the case with KLE: Henry Win\e{kle}r, Art Lin\e{kle}tter, Don Ric\e{kle}s, Schnec\e{kle}gruber, Hal Buc\e{kle}y. (Schneckle\e{gru}ber has another echo.) Even the combination LUG produces some surprises: Bela \e{Lug}osi and Jack K\e{lug}man (also \e{Klu}gman). QUEL gives us: Jac\e{quel}ine Bisset, Ra\e{quel} Welch (also W\e{elch}), Jac\e{quel}ine Susanne (\filmtitle{Valley of the Dolls}), and if this person isn't a \e{cel}ebrity, Jac\e{quel}ine Kennedy/Jackie Onassis, what are all the others then? John Fitz\e{ger}ald Kennedy, Ri\e{char}d Nixon, \e{Ger}ald \e{Ford}, Jimmy \e{Car}ter and Ronald \e{Reag}an all support my argument for the CAR as America's supreme pleasure-word. +At this moment the CAR drives into the picture. Every star, now subject to the metaphoric transfer into that of car (the \e{driving} into car), must in some way or another mimic the very thing they are inexorably compared with, a car, and that mimi\e{cry}, springing from letters incised by invisible tires, speaks the CAR, the magical invocation of Hollywood publicity departments when they, like automatic writing, concoct pseudonyms. Certainly if the emerging star has a \e{Car}ol or \e{Char}les in their original names, then the studio produ\e{cer} won't be so worried, but if their names veer too far from the CAR combination and all its bypaths, a suitable name will have to em\e{erge}. The simplest series, the o\e{rig}inal order for CAR, has produced the following star\slash cars: \e{Car}roll Baker, Claudia \e{Car}dinale, Kitty \e{Car}lisle, Art \e{Car}ney, Leslie \e{Car}on, Leo G. \e{Car}roll, Johnny \e{Car}son, \e{Car}olyn Jones, Ri\e{car}do Montalban, \e{Car}l Reiner, Brenda Vac\e{car}o, \e{Car}ol Burnett, George \e{Car}lin, Keith \e{Car}radine, \e{Car}l Betz, Linda \e{Car}ter, and so forth. (Carroll Ba\e{ker}, \e{Cla}udia Cardinale and \e{Geor}ge Carlin all have another echo of CAR.) The series can angulate into GAR as with the following: Greta \e{Gar}bo (a cryptophor for "car \e{beau}" or "beautiful car"), Ann-Mar\e{gar}et, Dirk Bo\e{gar}de, Humphrey Bo\e{gar}t, \e{Gar}y Cooper, Ava \e{Gar}dner, Judy \e{Gar}land, Greer \e{Gar}son, Mar\e{gar}et Hamilton, \e{Gar}y Merrill, Art \e{Gar}funkel, \e{Gar}rett Morris, \e{Gar}y Lockwood, Samantha Eg\e{gar}, Ed\e{gar} Bergen, etc. (\e{Gre}ta Garbo, Ann-M\e{arg}aret, D\e{irk} Bogarde, \e{Gre}er Garson, Gary \e{Loc}kwood and Edgar B\e{erg}en embed other echoes of CAR.) The ever-permuting series, as unpredictable as Alban Berg's\fnote{i itch to italicize} discovery of tonal relationships in the course of composing twelve-tone rows, stammers KER: Carroll Ba\e{ker}, Deborah \e{Ker}r (pronounced "car"), Forrest Tuc\e{ker}, Robert Wal\e{ker} (this transfer does not permit him to "walk," but only to "'drive") \e{Keir} Dullea (diphthongs are permissible), Dan Bloc\e{ker}, Bob Bar\e{ker}, etc. Less obvious permutations are possible, as is the case with KLE: Henry Win\e{kle}r, Art Lin\e{kle}tter, Don Ric\e{kle}s, Schnec\e{kle}gruber, Hal Buc\e{kle}y. (Schneckle\e{gru}ber has another echo.) Even the combination LUG produces some surprises: Bela \e{Lug}osi and Jack K\e{lug}man (also \e{Klu}gman). QUEL gives us: Jac\e{quel}ine Bisset, Ra\e{quel} Welch (also W\e{elch}), Jac\e{quel}ine Susanne (\filmtitle{Valley of the Dolls}), and if this person isn't a \e{cel}ebrity, Jac\e{quel}ine Kennedy\slash Jackie Onassis, what are all the others then? John Fitz\e{ger}ald Kennedy, Ri\e{char}d Nixon, \e{Ger}ald \e{Ford}, Jimmy \e{Car}ter and Ronald \e{Reag}an all support my argument for the CAR as America's supreme pleasure-word. -This argument for a relation between name and thing goes back to Plato's \booktitle{Cratylus} where \e{Cra}tylus asserts to Hermogenes that there is a "natural fitness of names." (So\e{cra}tes actually said this, but it's Cratylus's argument.) Hermogenes's name would not be naturally his since he only believes in convention and its arbitrary character yet \e{Herm}ogenes evokes \e{Herm}es, the god who deals with speech, that messenger, thief, liar or bargainer, the interpreter (\e{hermeneus}). The CAR in a star's name (its rhyme with \e{star} another example of the motivation) asserts this ancient debate between the name and the thing it embraces. If stars are to behave like cars as they act or drive down films or roads, then that CAR ineluctably enters into the construction of their names, an activity that is also found in the denomination of cars: Cou\e{gar}, Mer\e{cur}y (also M\e{erc}ury, like the god that drives his messages everywhere), C\e{hry}sler, M\w{erc}edes, V\e{olk}swagen, Cadil\e{lac}, Toyota \e{Cor}olla, Rolls \e{Royc}e, \e{Ly}n\e{x}\fnote{?} (a perfect name for a car, simply because the condensation is so economical, only four letters, three of which are echoes of CAR: l/r, y/a, x/c). +This argument for a relation between name and thing goes back to Plato's \booktitle{Cratylus} where \e{Cra}tylus asserts to Hermogenes that there is a "natural fitness of names." (So\e{cra}tes actually said this, but it's Cratylus's argument.) Hermogenes's name would not be naturally his since he only believes in convention and its arbitrary character yet \e{Herm}ogenes evokes \e{Herm}es, the god who deals with speech, that messenger, thief, liar or bargainer, the interpreter (\e{hermeneus}). The CAR in a star's name (its rhyme with \e{star} another example of the motivation) asserts this ancient debate between the name and the thing it embraces. If stars are to behave like cars as they act or drive down films or roads, then that CAR ineluctably enters into the construction of their names, an activity that is also found in the denomination of cars: Cou\e{gar}, Mer\e{cur}y (also M\e{erc}ury, like the god that drives his messages everywhere), C\e{hry}sler, M\w{erc}edes, V\e{olk}swagen, Cadil\e{lac}, Toyota \e{Cor}olla, Rolls \e{Royc}e, \e{Ly}n\e{x}\fnote{?} (a perfect name for a car, simply because the condensation is so economical, only four letters, three of which are echoes of CAR: l\slash r, y\slash a, x\slash c). The offramps of a highway are also the p\e{lac}es where the CAR can drive its letters, or rather, there are metonyms of the car that enter into stars' names, objects that are contiguous with the car. There are also variant names of the car (wagon, van, Ford, Olds). The car's brand name may not necessarily have to have CAR buried within it, but it is sufficiently recognizable to give us the following series: Joan Craw\e{ford}, Glenn \e{Ford}, Peter Law\e{ford}, Mary Pick\e{ford}, Ann Ruther\e{ford}, Harrison \e{Ford}, as well as the Fondas, whose \e{n} can be truncated and produce the following: Henry \e{Ford}a, Jane \e{Ford}a, Peter \e{Ford}a. Another auto company, General Motors, bears the "body by Fisher" emblem. Was it responsible for the careers of Eddie \e{Fisher} or Carrie \e{Fisher}? An "Olds" abbreviates Oldsmobile and thus yields: Burt Reyn\e{olds}, Debbie Reyn\e{olds} or Marjorie Reyn\e{olds}. Other brand names register \e{Chevy} Chase (Chevrolet or Chevy), \e{Royce} Wallace (Rolls Royce), while types of vehicles register Martin \e{Landau}, Peter \e{Lorre} (for lorry), Burt \e{Convy} (for convoy) and then there's also parts of the car that register Richard \e{Gere} (gear) or Patricia \e{Brake}. Rex Harrison starred in commercials for the car Volare. What's odd is that \e{Rex} is a homonym for \e{wrecks}, something no star or car should be subject to. The car's motions (to drive, to park, to turn) yield the following: Robert \e{Driv}as, Burt \e{Parks}, Michael \e{Parks}, Fess \e{Parker} and Lana \e{Turner}. The van or wagon gives further credence to Cratylus's argument: Lindsay \e{Wagner}, Robert \e{Wagner}, Lyle \e{Waggon}er, Porter \e{Wagon}er, Jo \e{Van} Fleet (the \e{Fleet} visualizing a fleet of vans), \e{Van} Johnson, Dick \e{Van} Dyke, \e{Van} Heflin, Dick \e{Van} Patten, Jo \e{Van} Ark (her \e{Ark} a perfect permutation of CAR), Billy \e{Van}, Vivian \e{Van}ce, and on and on. Those ramps, exits, streets, roads, ways, paths, the general surface upon which the "literal" tire writes itself (notice the \e{tire} in l\e{iter}al), writes out \begitems\style N @@ -695,16 +695,16 @@ The offramps of a highway are also the p\e{lac}es where the CAR can drive its le * \e{rue} (Fr. road): Jack La \e{Rue}, Cash La \e{Rue}; * \e{strada} (It. street): Erik E\e{strada}; * street: Sidney Green\e{street}; -* way: Faye Duna\e{way}, John \e{Way}ne, Jeff Con\e{way}, Gary Con\e{way}, \e{Way}ne Con\e{way}, \e{Mae} West/\e{Wae} West/\e{Way} West (the M is inverted); and +* way: Faye Duna\e{way}, John \e{Way}ne, Jeff Con\e{way}, Gary Con\e{way}, \e{Way}ne Con\e{way}, \e{Mae} West\slash \e{Wae} West\slash \e{Way} West (the M is inverted); and * miles: Sarah \e{Miles}, Ray \e{Mil}land, Ann \e{Mil}ler. \enditems -\noindent Even the \e{tire} finds its tracks in John MacIn\e{tire}, Jaime \e{Tire}lli, or Macin\e{tyre} Dixon while its anagrammatization seeps into Fred As\e{t}a\e{ire}, Marlene D\e{ietr}ich Thelma R\e{it}t\e{er}, Barbra S\e{trei}sand (for someone as addicted to producing "tire tracks" or "grooves," such a name seems perfect with the "natural fitness of names"), Shelley W\e{i}n\{ter}s, John \e{Rit}t\e{e}r, and \e{tire}'s extensions into: Patricia \e{Wheel}, Mark \e{Wheel}er, Eddie \e{Firestone} and the improbable conjunction of the Ernie \e{Flatt} Dancers. Every car has to \e{burn} oil and so do stars, as do George \e{Burns}, Audrey Hep\e{burn}, Katharine Hep\e{burn}, Mike \e{Burns}, Gene Ray\e{burn}, Carol \e{Burn}ett, whereas the \e{bu}r in \e{burn} is echoed in Billie \e{Bur}ke, Ellen \e{Bur}styn, Richard \e{Bur}ton and the burning of a \e{pyre} in Richard \e{Pry}or/\e{Pyr}or. Oil helps that burning and so its anagrams help the careers of the following celebrities (there's a Chevrolet model called the "\e{Cel}ebrity™): \e{Lo}u\e{i}s Armstrong, \e{Lo}u\e{i}se Brooks, G\e{lo}r\e{i}a De Haven, G\e{lo}r\e{i}a Swanson (\e{Gloria} is an anagram for \e{oil rag}), \e{Oli}via De Haviland (\e{via oil} for \e{Olivia}), G\e{ol}d\e{i}e Hawn, Laurence \e{Oli}vier. These tires \e{car}ve the strangest incisions and skid down all sorts of detours and out-of-the-way trails. +\noindent Even the \e{tire} finds its tracks in John MacIn\e{tire}, Jaime \e{Tire}lli, or Macin\e{tyre} Dixon while its anagrammatization seeps into Fred As\e{t}a\e{ire}, Marlene D\e{ietr}ich Thelma R\e{it}t\e{er}, Barbra S\e{trei}sand (for someone as addicted to producing "tire tracks" or "grooves," such a name seems perfect with the "natural fitness of names"), Shelley W\e{i}n\{ter}s, John \e{Rit}t\e{e}r, and \e{tire}'s extensions into: Patricia \e{Wheel}, Mark \e{Wheel}er, Eddie \e{Firestone} and the improbable conjunction of the Ernie \e{Flatt} Dancers. Every car has to \e{burn} oil and so do stars, as do George \e{Burns}, Audrey Hep\e{burn}, Katharine Hep\e{burn}, Mike \e{Burns}, Gene Ray\e{burn}, Carol \e{Burn}ett, whereas the \e{bu}r in \e{burn} is echoed in Billie \e{Bur}ke, Ellen \e{Bur}styn, Richard \e{Bur}ton and the burning of a \e{pyre} in Richard \e{Pry}or\slash \e{Pyr}or. Oil helps that burning and so its anagrams help the careers of the following celebrities (there's a Chevrolet model called the "\e{Cel}ebrity™): \e{Lo}u\e{i}s Armstrong, \e{Lo}u\e{i}se Brooks, G\e{lo}r\e{i}a De Haven, G\e{lo}r\e{i}a Swanson (\e{Gloria} is an anagram for \e{oil rag}), \e{Oli}via De Haviland (\e{via oil} for \e{Olivia}), G\e{ol}d\e{i}e Hawn, Laurence \e{Oli}vier. These tires \e{car}ve the strangest incisions and skid down all sorts of detours and out-of-the-way trails. Perusing my \booktitle{Great American Movie Book}, which lists over 1,500 performers, I found many names of drivers, chauffeurs and the like with the CAR embedded in their names. These people are the \e{true} actors since they fulfill the allegorical function so well, they act \e{and} drive down films \e{or} roads. The drivers are as follows: Francis \e{Ford} (In \filmtitle{Old Chicago}), \e{Jer}ry Lewis (a "mad driver" in \filmtitle{It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World}). Billy \e{Cur}tis (\filmtitle{My Gal Sal}, a midget driver), Sol \e{Gor}ss and \e{Char}les Sullivan (\filmtitle{They Drive by Night}), Max \e{Wagner} (echoing \e{wagon}, again \filmtitle{They Drive by Night}), \e{Ford} Dunhill (\filmtitle{Viva Las Vegas}), John Pi\e{kar}d (\filmtitle{Wake of the Red Witch}). The taxi drivers, more numerous, have not had the privilege of Robert de Niro, and unlike him oftentimes cryptically embed CAR in their names: Dick \e{Cro}ckett (\filmtitle{Breakfast at Tiffany's}), Donald \e{Kerr} (\ft{Detective Story}), \{Geor}ge Davis (\ft{Gentlemen Prefer Blondes}), Kit \e{Guar}d (\ft{Here Come the Waves}), Peter F\e{alk} and Leo \e{Gor}cy (\ft{It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World}), Jack \e{Car}r (\ft{The More the Merrier}), Lloyd In\e{gra}ham (\ft{Mr. Lucky}), \e{Arch} Johnson (\ft{Niagara}), Mushy \{Cal}lahan (\dt{The Nutty Professor}), \e{Geor}ge Davis (\ft{One Hour With You}), \e{Geor}ge Chandler (\ft{Since You Went Away}), \e{Charl}es Hall (\ft{Swing Time}), Connie \e{Gilchri}st (\ft{Thousands Cheer}, two cryptophors, \e{Gil} and \e{chri}), Pedro \e{Reg}as (\filmtitle{Waikiki Wedding}, not to mention the \e{gas} at the end of Re\e{gas}), \e{Gar}ry Owen (\ft{Watch on the Rhine}). Not as numerous as cab drivers, the chauffeurs go as follows: \e{Reg}inald Farmer (\ft{Car Wash}), Billy \e{Way}ne (\ft{Dangerous}, the \e{way} is significant), Bud \{Gear}y (\ft{Dead End}, \e{Gear} is also identical with the \e{gear}shift), M\e{org}an Wallace (\ft{Grand Hotel}), James \e{Cro}mwell (\ft{Murder by Death} and his name was Mar\{cel}), \e{Char}les La Torre (\ft{Three Coins in the Fountain}), \e{Cre}ighton Hale (\ft{Watch on the Rhine}). There are several truck drivers: Fred \e{Gra}ham (\ft{The Asphalt Jungle}), Max \e{Wagner} (\ft{Black Legion}, echoing \e{wagon}), \e{Char}les Sullivan (\ft{Easy to Wed}, notice the \e{van}), Bobby Mc\e{Gri}ff (\ft{The Last Picture Show}), Boyd (Red) M\e{org}an (\ft{Pillow Talk}), \e{Cle}gg Hoyt (\ft{That Touch of Mink}), \e{Way}ne Hazelhurst (\ft{Up in Smoke}). Stage drivers, so frequent in Westerns, still permute CAR even though they drive more antique vehicles: \e{Cli}ff \e{Cla}rk (\ft{Fort Apache}, also \ft{Clark}), Bud Mc\e{Clu}re (\ft{Destry Rides Again}), Poodles Hanne\e{ford} (\ft{San Antonio}), Jennings \e{Miles} (how many miles did he travel in \ft{Winchester '73}?). Motorcycle cops, aptly eulogized in the TV series \tvtitle{Chips}, evoke CAR despite their cy\e{cles} being miniature versions of the former: Tom \e{Gre}en\e{way} (the echo of CAR and the crucial \e{way} in \ft{How to Marry a Millionaire}), \e{Gar}ry Owen (\ft{Notorious}). One bus driver, \e{Char}les \e{Jor}dan (\ft{Cat People}), and one ambulance driver, Fred \e{Gra}ham (\ft{No Way Out}), are the only other drivers in a vast repertoire of actors who must have had to acquire drivers licenses to act in all those films or roads. Incidentally, E\e{ric}h von Stroheim, the chauffeur in \f{Sunset Boulevard}, did not know how to drive, "which humiliated him" (\fb{Swanson on Swanson}), so the Isotta Fraschini was pulled by "ropes the whole while." At times the Cratylitic limits traverse into the oddest of conjunctions. \e{Gar}ret Morris stars as \e{"Wheels"} in a TV show called \tvtitle{Roll Out}, his acting a mimicry of his names? In \filmtitle{Cool Hand Luke}, where the \e{Cool} and \e{Luke} both echo the CAR, \e{Cli}fton James is named "\e{Car}r." The perfect name for a star, according to this method of the anagrammatic cryptophor of CAR, is \e{Clu Gallagher}, since the \e{Clu} echoes CAR, as well as \e{Gal}, as well as \e{lag}, as well as \{gher}, a repetition of CAR made four times within the entire sequence of letters of this proper name. \filmtitle{Tea and Sympathy} stars Deborah \e{Kerr} and John \e{Kerr}. The one piece of visual information I have from this film is both Kerr's in a tender emb\e{race}. James Dean, a "car" if ever there was one (he was fond of racing and died in a car crash), starred in \ft{East of Eden} and was called "Cal," a perfect respelling of CAR, \e{l} being \e{r}'s substitute. The drama was set in the state of \e{Cal}ifornia, land no doubt of many cars and stars. Jayne Mansfield's decapitation in a car accident represents a perfect al\e{legor}y of cinema, all those "\e{cro}pped" heads within the frames of cameras had their \e{gri}sly equivalent in her specta\e{cul}ar death, when always already CAR inhabits the \e{ca}me\e{r}a. -Not wanting to swerve too far from our subject, the CAR and all its permutations, the names of stars are also based in part on the mimicry of the word AMERICA. America, besides containing CAR, also contains the crucial words ARM, MAR, RAM, etc. The proliferation of Norma, Mary, Roman, La Mar, Morgan, Mark, Norman, Marilyn mimic the first four letters of \e{Amer}ica. A psychoanalysis of Hollywood must begin with the letters of America within the letters of a star's name. After all, stars are only letters: what else are empty spaces filled up with? Letters/ letster/letstar. Picking a star's name is a precise ritual that follows from several sources: 1) mimicry of CAR; 2) mimicry of synonyms/metonyms of ROADS; 3) mimicry of AMERica; 4) mimicry of STAR; 5) mimcry of synonyms/ metonyms of EYES and EARS (the two drives involved in the perception of films): 6) mimicry of I or JE; In the 1937 version of \fr{A Star is Born}, Esther Blodgett becomes Vicki Le\e{ster}, a repetition of STAR. +Not wanting to swerve too far from our subject, the CAR and all its permutations, the names of stars are also based in part on the mimicry of the word AMERICA. America, besides containing CAR, also contains the crucial words ARM, MAR, RAM, etc. The proliferation of Norma, Mary, Roman, La Mar, Morgan, Mark, Norman, Marilyn mimic the first four letters of \e{Amer}ica. A psychoanalysis of Hollywood must begin with the letters of America within the letters of a star's name. After all, stars are only letters: what else are empty spaces filled up with? Letters\slash letster\slash letstar. Picking a star's name is a precise ritual that follows from several sources: 1) mimicry of CAR; 2) mimicry of synonyms\slash metonyms of ROADS; 3) mimicry of AMERica; 4) mimicry of STAR; 5) mimcry of synonyms\slash metonyms of EYES and EARS (the two drives involved in the perception of films): 6) mimicry of I or JE; In the 1937 version of \fr{A Star is Born}, Esther Blodgett becomes Vicki Le\e{ster}, a repetition of STAR. The common myth of stardom is that one attains ultimate recognition on all levels: artistic, emotional, sexual, financial, the entire prism of \e{col}ors that shine from that as yet unobtainable \e{car}rot. Initially the "road" is a long one, but once the horizon is reached, the speeds one can drive at in that nether-nether land are in\e{calcul}able. The movie star demagogue (the \e{movie} prefiguring an even vaster \e{mov[i]e}ment), or anyone intent on being at the "top of the heap," becomes the swiftest set of wheels ever to incise on any extant road. Any obstacles in their path are ruthlessly wrenched from their position so as to let the \e{Gre}at \e{Car} \e{Cour}se to \e{Glo}ry. But the \e{gre}at ins\e{cri}ption and its formidable wake, those t\e{rac}es, ghosts, ventri\e{loqu}ies, only \e{reac}h that t\e{rag}ic m\e{arg}in, the Sunset Boulevard \e{cul}-de-sac, the End-of-the-Road, the \e{car}eer that \e{car}eens to a \e{cra}shing death. @@ -712,9 +712,9 @@ What happened along that Road, that Career's Course where the Car began to corru D\e{rug}s, whose \e{rug} refracts the CAR, resembles the gasoline that allows cars to drive. Any kind of drug is an interiorization of oil ("high octane" as a taxi driver friend expressed it) since they enable one to "go" far, perhaps on a "trip," that may or may not end up driving you \e{cra}zy. Drinking and driving don't mix, but then \e{alcohol} echoes \e{oil} as in the misspelling, \e{alcohoil}. "Alcohol" has also been suggested as an oil-substicute for turbine engine cars. A can of beer resembles an oil drum, besides what are all those "drums" emptied of, beer or oil, once thrown in trash cans so often former oil drums? Cocaine's similarity to oil occurs in the drug's tendency to induce vivacity, restless activity, mania, sleeplessness, properties that would not take place in a car deprived of fuel. John DeLorean, the tycoon of the DeLorean Automobile Company, was arrested for intent to smuggle \$24 million worth of cocaine to save his enterprise from default. Here the equivalence is cocaine for cars since the drug would have "salvaged" his automobiles. Such a vast supply can corrupt someone's nose and collapse it into the powder that destroyed it; the tycoon could thus instruct his engineers to customize another fender of human flesh. Speed or dexadrine cannot help but associate with the high "speeds" cars attain or what large trucks do, their drivers often resorting to the substance in their marathons across the country. Any cigarette, tobacco or marijuana, echoes the ignition of a car's engine, their smoke the transubstantiation of exhaust. Tranquilizers and opiates, although dissimilar to the manias induced by cocaine and speed, still allow one to "go" somewhere else, their alteration of consciousness a detour down unfamiliar paths, something all drugs accomplish. -A milder substance, coffee, is also what those truckers quaff when they stop for gas, the two liquids metaphors for each other. No wonder the star/tar Margaret Hamilton endorsed tar-evocative Maxwell House coffee, the "good to the last drop" substance. Another one of its commercials featured a carpool of executives (worried over the high prices of oil), cautiously drinking a rapidly diminishing cup of that coffee. Coffee, so similar to oil by virtue of its darkness and the "energy" of the caffeine, finds itself composed of \e{wax} after we invert the M in \e{M}axwell House: \e{W}axwell House/Oil well House. When I worked for an oil company, my boss, a Mr. Moore (intent on mining \e{more} and \e{more} oil), fetched all the fellow workers coffee in the morning. Throughout the country of Mexico, Pepsi signs are placed beside gasoline stations. The su\e{gar} and caffeine in that soft drink will propel the driver as will Mobil oil propel the drinker's car. Pepsi ads (it was once endorsed by that famous star, Joan Car[w]ford) announce themselves in the colors of the American f\e{lag} just as Mobil oil ads do in similar tricolor heraldry. Junior eats Sugar Frosted Flakes in the morning (induced by its cute \e{car}toon ti\e{ger}) while Daddy loads up with Esso Oil (induced, like Junior, by another cute cartoon tiger who says, "Put a Tiger in Your Tank.") +A milder substance, coffee, is also what those truckers quaff when they stop for gas, the two liquids metaphors for each other. No wonder the star\slash tar Margaret Hamilton endorsed tar-evocative Maxwell House coffee, the "good to the last drop" substance. Another one of its commercials featured a carpool of executives (worried over the high prices of oil), cautiously drinking a rapidly diminishing cup of that coffee. Coffee, so similar to oil by virtue of its darkness and the "energy" of the caffeine, finds itself composed of \e{wax} after we invert the M in \e{M}axwell House: \e{W}axwell House\slash Oil well House. When I worked for an oil company, my boss, a Mr. Moore (intent on mining \e{more} and \e{more} oil), fetched all the fellow workers coffee in the morning. Throughout the country of Mexico, Pepsi signs are placed beside gasoline stations. The su\e{gar} and caffeine in that soft drink will propel the driver as will Mobil oil propel the drinker's car. Pepsi ads (it was once endorsed by that famous star, Joan Car[w]ford) announce themselves in the colors of the American f\e{lag} just as Mobil oil ads do in similar tricolor heraldry. Junior eats Sugar Frosted Flakes in the morning (induced by its cute \e{car}toon ti\e{ger}) while Daddy loads up with Esso Oil (induced, like Junior, by another cute cartoon tiger who says, "Put a Tiger in Your Tank.") -Even if the ac\e{cel}erating \e{cel}ebrity were to be actually driving, loaded with drugs as their cars are loaded with oil, the possibility for them to suffer another crash in\{cre}ases the density of the allegorical scheme onto another level. The star/car that acts/drives down films/roads now meets its rhetorical inversion: \e{peripeteia}, the reversal of fortune, the "sudden-unexpected reversal of the action in an opposite (unfortunate) direction." (Lausberg) Peripeteia's compliment, \e{anagnorismos}, is a "sudden process of recognition that proceeds from a change of direction of the course of action." The simplest example of peripeteia is from Aristotle's \e{Poetics:} "\ld as it is for instance in Oedipus: here the opposite state of things is produced by the Messenger, who, coming to gladden Oedipus and to remove his fears as to his mother, reveals the secret of his birth." The light said "go" and when we drove on, another car came upon our left, smashed it, injured our flesh and hospitalized us. Our lives changed in different degrees of intensity from that point onward. Car accidents, as well as the "pitfalls" of success (peripeteia is etymologically related to fall, \e{piptein}), reverse the ascension into Glory into the descent into obscurity, the same peripeteia or Fall that met Adam and Eve when God expulsed them from Paradise. +Even if the ac\e{cel}erating \e{cel}ebrity were to be actually driving, loaded with drugs as their cars are loaded with oil, the possibility for them to suffer another crash in\{cre}ases the density of the allegorical scheme onto another level. The star\slash car that acts\slash drives down films\slash roads now meets its rhetorical inversion: \e{peripeteia}, the reversal of fortune, the "sudden-unexpected reversal of the action in an opposite (unfortunate) direction." (Lausberg) Peripeteia's compliment, \e{anagnorismos}, is a "sudden process of recognition that proceeds from a change of direction of the course of action." The simplest example of peripeteia is from Aristotle's \e{Poetics:} "\ld as it is for instance in Oedipus: here the opposite state of things is produced by the Messenger, who, coming to gladden Oedipus and to remove his fears as to his mother, reveals the secret of his birth." The light said "go" and when we drove on, another car came upon our left, smashed it, injured our flesh and hospitalized us. Our lives changed in different degrees of intensity from that point onward. Car accidents, as well as the "pitfalls" of success (peripeteia is etymologically related to fall, \e{piptein}), reverse the ascension into Glory into the descent into obscurity, the same peripeteia or Fall that met Adam and Eve when God expulsed them from Paradise. Tragedy's most powerful clements are its Peripeties and Discoveries, so says Aristotle. Epic poetry also "requires Peripeties, Discoveries, and scenes of suffering just like Tragedy." So \e{the} American Tragedy is the car that didn't go, it stopped too soon, it went off at the wrong time, it turncd up the wrong street (as did Joe Gillis's in \filmtitle{Sunset Boulevard}) and no doubt its other failures along life's journeys. Drinking and driving don't mix (carousing), otherwise the incompatible activities will perform what everyone knows is an ambiguity in the phrase "falling star." The Great Crash of 1929 was also a "sudden or unexpected reversal of circumstances or situation" of the Roaring Twenties when another reversal of fortune took place, the emergence of the talkies after a decade of silent films. The next decade, the Depression, reversed the mythologies of quick success into the realities of nagging poverty, something that could take place at any time knowing the capriciousness of capital, which, like any text we read, gives us no idea as to what it's up to. Missing an exit sign (the "change in direction") and its Discovery by reversing one's tracks, as on our interstate freeways, resembles rereading an entire passage from a novel because we didn't discover $X$ was married to $Y$. Going forward, and remaining \e{there}, however contradictory that sounds, is \e{the} dilemma that besets those success stories who have been "driving" or "smooth sailing" all along and are now faced with the problems of maintaining their former speeds. The Allegorical Car encounters the Careening Peripeteia. Hopefully the victim will come to his senses and recognize or discover the means to change direction. @@ -722,23 +722,23 @@ The peripeteia is sudden, unexpected. Right away, in the dictionary, even with w The \e{ca} in \e{car} is an echo of \e{go}. (And an echo of \e{go} is in e\e{cho.}) The \e{ca}(r) must \e{go}. Another ambiguity: the car \e{must go}, 1) either it goes forward, in its fated direction, 2) or it gets discarded, thrown away. Of course it can "go backward" in order to "go away." Forward or backward, on course or reversed, car or right, all are contingent upon "going" in whatever direction. Verbs that convey movement enact the same transitivity of their referents. A movement of the eyes, reading, requires a registration of the word "movement." When "movement" disappears, we move on. We don't read in a car direction but just to the \e{right}. Here the homonym with \e{write} is a mysterious \e{rite} in our culture's habits of \e{right}-oriented eye movement while reading and in its bearing to the \e{right} lane while driving. But then as intense as the metaphor is, we veer left while reading only to stay on course to the right. In a car we may sit to the left, but we hug the right. We may choose the Left (whose version of history is a peripeteia of capitalism by means of revolution) or the Right who oftentimes only distinguish themselves when they \e{right} social order as they \e{write} out or supress the Left. Maybe the reason why a communist revolution in America will fail is because everyone has to drive on the right. Bearing right is a cryptic anthem to conservative politics, while understanding the \e{double entendre} demands reading to the left a little. -Write/right/rite/tire enter into another meaning, style, where the plural of \e{tires} most closely evokes that of \e{style} once certain transformations are accomplished: tires/stire/stile/style. Through anagrammatization and switching the \e{r} into an \e{l}, \e{tires} becomes \e{style}, a relation not far from each other since the tire is a stylus of sorts, a pen that leaves its marks on roads, like styluses that incise record grooves, like draughtsmen who design clothes. +Write\slash right\slash rite\slash tire enter into another meaning, style, where the plural of \e{tires} most closely evokes that of \e{style} once certain transformations are accomplished: tires\slash stire\slash stile\slash style. Through anagrammatization and switching the \e{r} into an \e{l}, \e{tires} becomes \e{style}, a relation not far from each other since the tire is a stylus of sorts, a pen that leaves its marks on roads, like styluses that incise record grooves, like draughtsmen who design clothes. The style of one's tiring or attire, the clothes designed by a famous name, incises the CAR throughout its discourse, the proper names, brand names, slogans and advertisements surrounding such articles. The names of designers, like the brand names of cars, closely evoke the CAR. We may simultancously think of the person who designed the piece or the product itself that has such a name attached to it. Among the many names that repeat the CAR within the designers' names are: \e{Cal}vin \e{Kle}in, Os\e{car} de la Renta, Pierre \e{Car}din, Nino \e{Cer}ruti, \e{Chri}stian Dior, \e{Cla}ude Montana, \e{Cour}ri\`eges, Diane von Furstenb\e{erg}, Un\e{gar}o, \e{Kar}l \e{Lager}feld, Tri\e{gere}, Kay Un\e{ger}, Thierry Mu\e{gle}r, \e{Glo}ria Sachs, Anne \e{Kle}in, Sonia \e{Rykiel}, \e{Kri}zia, \e{Reik}o, Nina \e{Ric}ci, Guy La\e{roc}he, and Gianni Ve\e{rsac}e. \e{Cal}vin \e{Kle}in, \e{Karl} \e{Lager}feld, T\e{riger}e, Sonia \e{Rykiel} all have multiple repetitions of CAR within their names. Gianni Ve\e{rsac}e possesses an anagram of \e{cars} within his while \e{T}h\e{ier}ry Mugler has \e{tire}. -Fashion products also evoke the CAR. Dresses include: St. \e{Gil}lian, \e{Cri}cketeer, \e{Chlo}e. Other \e{clo}thing articles (hosiery, shoes, purses) comprise: \e{Car}ess (purses), \e{Gar}olini \& \e{Gal}o (shoes), Ly\e{cra}, F\e{lex}atard, \e{Ger}be and Le \e{Gour}get (hosiery), \e{Cal}deron (belts), B\e{lac}k\e{gla}ma (furs). Jewelry and watches go as such: Van \e{Cle}ff \& Arpels, \e{Car}tier (car and tire), \e{Cel}lini \e{Col}lection by Ro\e{lex} (the word \e{col}lection is often found in fashion periodicals), \e{Kre}mentz, Ma\e{joric}a, Con\e{cor}d \e{Quar}tz. Perfumes, so often a mystification of oil, are the most highly refined product. One perfume, Nocturnes, is made by \e{Car}on. Even the stores where these products are sold have the CAR haunt their names: Neiman-M\e{arc}us, B\e{erg}dorf-Goodman, Mc\e{Cur}dy's, \e{Col}lin's, Mi\e{chel}le's Boutique. Another area of bodily adornment, of tiring, is skin\e{car}e: \e{Cli}nique, \e{Cla}rins, Pres\e{cri}ptives, \e{Geor}gette \e{Kli}n\e{ger}. Throughout the language of the advertisements for these collections and products one finds a plenitude of CAR-haunted words: mas\e{car}a, \e{cli}ni\e{cal}, \e{cel}lular, fa\e{cial}, spe\e{cial}ist, \e{cla}ssic, \e{cla}y, \e{cle}anse/\e{cle}anser/\e{cle}ansing, \e{col}lagen, \e{colog}ne, \e{col}or, \e{cre}me, \e{cry}stal, all\e{erg}y, \e{gel}, \e{gla}mor, \e{glo}w, \e{gol}d, \e{gra}ins, pro\e{gra}m, f\e{ragra}nce, \e{gre}at, s\e{ilkier}, m\e{ilk}, \e{leg}, \e{liqu}id, \e{look}, comp\e{lex}ion, \e{lux}ury, \e{reg}imen, \e{rec}overy, en\e{ric}h, ind\e{ulg}e. Sometimes their congruity produces the following conjunctions: M\e{ilk} \e{Cle}ansing \e{Gra}ins, Spe\e{cial}ist \e{Cell}ular \e{Rec}overy (whose \e{rec} sounds like \e{wreck}, the opposite of \e{rec}overy), \e{Max}imum \e{Car}e Eye \e{Cre}me (\e{max}-beginning words always evoke \e{wax}), All\e{erg}y Tested/F\e{ragra}nce Free (for \e{Cli}nique), Supp\e{leg}en Firming Moisture \e{Cre}me, Skin \e{Car}e/Skin Repair. Indeed everytime the word "care" is used, its closeness to car only enforces the quasi-natural relation between bodily maintenance, the care or attention we give to our health, and automotive maintenance, the care or attention we give to our cars. Cosmetics like "S\e{car}let" or "Jolen \e{Cre}me B\e{leac}h" metaphorically glide into car-waxes, polishes, buffs, and the like. Revlon's "Back at the Ranch Collection" describes itself as a "\e{ric}h \& restless \e{collec}tion of \e{col}ors" where the CAR redundancy confirms its status as a \e{cry}ptic \e{gar}land of our \e{cul}ture's most magi\e{cal} permutation, Merle Norman is an organization that calls itself "the place for the custom face" where women undergo its "no-nonsense make-over" in order to become more beautiful and confident with their appearance and wardrobe. Such a drastic change resembles Detroit's yearly restyling of its cars, as is also proved by a Revlon slogan (R\e{evlo}n embeds love): "New Year, New You, New Colors for Fall." Paco Rabanne, true to fashion's blending of the flesh-proximate (perfumes) with the not-so-flesh proximate (cars), markets a product called "M\=et\=al." The pretentious diacritical marks mystify the consumer into thinking that it's not metal that their bodies are aspiring to (which they, in fact, are). The edge of the body begins with clothes and then moves on to the car. Cosmetics are the closest to the body, perfumes almost of the body's very essence. This veil or flimsy appurtenance at flesh's very edge simply gradiates towards its architectural enclosure: the car, the apartment, the office. The language of furs, the most luxurious and protective of the body, repeats the CAR: "Fur, \e{Racier}, \e{Rug}ged, More Elemental" and "\e{Cry}stal Fox \& \e{Cro}ss Fox." +Fashion products also evoke the CAR. Dresses include: St. \e{Gil}lian, \e{Cri}cketeer, \e{Chlo}e. Other \e{clo}thing articles (hosiery, shoes, purses) comprise: \e{Car}ess (purses), \e{Gar}olini \& \e{Gal}o (shoes), Ly\e{cra}, F\e{lex}atard, \e{Ger}be and Le \e{Gour}get (hosiery), \e{Cal}deron (belts), B\e{lac}k\e{gla}ma (furs). Jewelry and watches go as such: Van \e{Cle}ff \& Arpels, \e{Car}tier (car and tire), \e{Cel}lini \e{Col}lection by Ro\e{lex} (the word \e{col}lection is often found in fashion periodicals), \e{Kre}mentz, Ma\e{joric}a, Con\e{cor}d \e{Quar}tz. Perfumes, so often a mystification of oil, are the most highly refined product. One perfume, Nocturnes, is made by \e{Car}on. Even the stores where these products are sold have the CAR haunt their names: Neiman-M\e{arc}us, B\e{erg}dorf-Goodman, Mc\e{Cur}dy's, \e{Col}lin's, Mi\e{chel}le's Boutique. Another area of bodily adornment, of tiring, is skin\e{car}e: \e{Cli}nique, \e{Cla}rins, Pres\e{cri}ptives, \e{Geor}gette \e{Kli}n\e{ger}. Throughout the language of the advertisements for these collections and products one finds a plenitude of CAR-haunted words: mas\e{car}a, \e{cli}ni\e{cal}, \e{cel}lular, fa\e{cial}, spe\e{cial}ist, \e{cla}ssic, \e{cla}y, \e{cle}anse\slash \e{cle}anser\slash \e{cle}ansing, \e{col}lagen, \e{colog}ne, \e{col}or, \e{cre}me, \e{cry}stal, all\e{erg}y, \e{gel}, \e{gla}mor, \e{glo}w, \e{gol}d, \e{gra}ins, pro\e{gra}m, f\e{ragra}nce, \e{gre}at, s\e{ilkier}, m\e{ilk}, \e{leg}, \e{liqu}id, \e{look}, comp\e{lex}ion, \e{lux}ury, \e{reg}imen, \e{rec}overy, en\e{ric}h, ind\e{ulg}e. Sometimes their congruity produces the following conjunctions: M\e{ilk} \e{Cle}ansing \e{Gra}ins, Spe\e{cial}ist \e{Cell}ular \e{Rec}overy (whose \e{rec} sounds like \e{wreck}, the opposite of \e{rec}overy), \e{Max}imum \e{Car}e Eye \e{Cre}me (\e{max}-beginning words always evoke \e{wax}), All\e{erg}y Tested\slash F\e{ragra}nce Free (for \e{Cli}nique), Supp\e{leg}en Firming Moisture \e{Cre}me, Skin \e{Car}e\slash Skin Repair. Indeed everytime the word "care" is used, its closeness to car only enforces the quasi-natural relation between bodily maintenance, the care or attention we give to our health, and automotive maintenance, the care or attention we give to our cars. Cosmetics like "S\e{car}let" or "Jolen \e{Cre}me B\e{leac}h" metaphorically glide into car-waxes, polishes, buffs, and the like. Revlon's "Back at the Ranch Collection" describes itself as a "\e{ric}h \& restless \e{collec}tion of \e{col}ors" where the CAR redundancy confirms its status as a \e{cry}ptic \e{gar}land of our \e{cul}ture's most magi\e{cal} permutation, Merle Norman is an organization that calls itself "the place for the custom face" where women undergo its "no-nonsense make-over" in order to become more beautiful and confident with their appearance and wardrobe. Such a drastic change resembles Detroit's yearly restyling of its cars, as is also proved by a Revlon slogan (R\e{evlo}n embeds love): "New Year, New You, New Colors for Fall." Paco Rabanne, true to fashion's blending of the flesh-proximate (perfumes) with the not-so-flesh proximate (cars), markets a product called "M\=et\=al." The pretentious diacritical marks mystify the consumer into thinking that it's not metal that their bodies are aspiring to (which they, in fact, are). The edge of the body begins with clothes and then moves on to the car. Cosmetics are the closest to the body, perfumes almost of the body's very essence. This veil or flimsy appurtenance at flesh's very edge simply gradiates towards its architectural enclosure: the car, the apartment, the office. The language of furs, the most luxurious and protective of the body, repeats the CAR: "Fur, \e{Racier}, \e{Rug}ged, More Elemental" and "\e{Cry}stal Fox \& \e{Cro}ss Fox." From flesh to clothes to cars, so goes the metonym. Bill Blass has designed women's clothes just as he has designed an automobile, the Lincoln-Mercury Division's Mark VI, the "Bill Blass Edition." A multi-paged advertisement which appeared in the October 1982 \journaltitle{Vogue} (whose \e{V} mimics the styler's pen or scissors) promoted both Ford cars and Bill Blass fashions. Three cars, the 1983 Mark VI, 1983 Continental, 1983 Lincoln, were photographed next to three models (a word that also means car) posing in different Blass outfits. Right away the language is ambiguous: "The Lincoln Commitment---It's built into every Lincoln \e{model} for 1983." Substitute Blass for "Lincoln" and you'll have identical praise. The CAR seeps into such phrases as "only \e{cars} of the highest \e{cal}ibre\le", "chec\e{ker}boards of bold, \e{rac}y, potent \e{col}or," "a \e{car} of sin\e{gul}ar \e{qual}ity and \e{style}," "a \e{cel}ebration of Ame\e{ric}an \e{cre}ativity and \e{style}." Bill Blass has eyes that are "far-\e{reac}hing," the same kind of eyes needed when driving? He designed the M\e{ark} VI (wouldn't every car's tire make a mark?) that featured "custom appointments that show off the inimitable touch of Blass." The ad further claims it's "a marvelous expres checker sion of the Lincoln commitment to originality. And fashion. And image. Your image. Imagine the pleasure of owning a car as elegant as you are." The car's image is identic to "your image" for it's just "as e\e{leg}ant as you are. From car to "you," the one wealthy enough to buy his \$1790--\$2600 dresses, will undergo the transformation into the car-model or carideal our culture consistently proposes. Its last page featured cars under wraps, implicity asserting that the human wrapped in Bill Blass clothes equals the cars wrapped by sheets, whose "lines are deftly drawn." Designing clothes and designing cars are equivalent pastimes since the entities that will be contained in them will be human beings. Blass rhymes with class, and these cars exult in their tastefulness, "with the far-reaching prestige that emanates from owning a luxurious, spaciously comfortable car." Acquiring taste and "far-rcaching" prestige are accomplished by driving in Bill Blass designs, be they \e{cars} or \e{clo}thes. Some other examples. An advertisement for Benhill clothes says: "Benhill Overhaul will have you running on all cylinders. \$109." The poster shows a man standing beside a car wherein a girl is sitting at the driver's seat. He is presumably decked out in the "Benhill Overhaul." The ad goes on to say, "high-octane selection of suits, slacks, jackets\ld" and "You'll love the mileage your clothing dollar gets at Benhill." The fashion store Plymouth! shows that the clothes one puts on and the Plymouth that one drives in are identical even though a mere exclamation mark suggests some difference. A model who walks down a runway in a Plymouth! dress corresponds to a Plymouth that drives down a highway. Why do John Weitz fashion ads appear on the back of buses? Many of them feature a cartoon of a sports car, an oblique reference to his line of sports jackets or his sports car racing pastime? -The diamond stylus that travels down a record groove is an allegory of a car traveling down a highway. The stylus (car) repeats its incision on a groove (road). Thus the sound \e{cre}ated by the stylus associates with the sound cre ated by the car. Whether our radios are on or not, the sound happens all the time. Nearly everyone lives near a road from which issues the sound of tires grating down the pavement. Nearly everyone possesses a radio from which issues the sound of a stylus grating down those grooves. Notice in \e{radio} a repetition of \e{road}, \e{radio}, an anagram for \e{I road}. I rode down the road of the radio. Listening, too, simply metaphorizes into driving. (The \e{phora} in \e{metaphora} means "change with respect to location.") Dancing late into the night resurfaces into driving late into the night, the marathons of cross-country travel are met by the marathons of dancing until dawn on oil-evocative drugs. We're also probably wearing our jeans/sneakers, those clothes that repeat the car/tire idea since once out of our car, these clothes continue the metonym from flesh to clothes to metal, from body to jeans to car. The music-saturated air can happen inside the discotheque as well as inside the car. One stipulates dancing, the other driving. Dancing and driving don't mix, but the music essentially eulogizes the interior rumblings of the car. There's even a music to those studded winter tires that \e{cre}pitate once they strike the surfaces of roads. That de\e{lic}ate, watery sound, \e{lik}e the aftermath of waves dripping from myriads of pebbles on \e{roc}ky beaches, has often met my ear even through the dense cover of forests. The pervasive car and tire static accompanies nearly every other sound, filtering ubiquitously into every other aural event, \e{cra}shing surf, \e{cre}aking trees, \e{gro}aning wind. Every car possesses a muffler to attenuate the loud bangings inside, and every car interior is protected from that engine's loudness by solid metal surfaces, another muffler of sorts for the occupant on the inside. Radios, on full blast, displace the less harmonious sounds occuring inside. So much burning of oil in the engine encounters so much tribute to se\e{xual} passion and romantic love, subjective states that popular music calls "hot," "on fire," "burning up," virtual states for the combustion of the car's fuel. Such lyrics on these vinyl records confirm that this sound is the voice of oil, its prosopopoeia. Nothing is in the stylus' way as nothing is in the way of the car's path. A skipping record evokes thresholds one never wants to encounter in a car, proving once again that "dancing is dangerous." +The diamond stylus that travels down a record groove is an allegory of a car traveling down a highway. The stylus (car) repeats its incision on a groove (road). Thus the sound \e{cre}ated by the stylus associates with the sound cre ated by the car. Whether our radios are on or not, the sound happens all the time. Nearly everyone lives near a road from which issues the sound of tires grating down the pavement. Nearly everyone possesses a radio from which issues the sound of a stylus grating down those grooves. Notice in \e{radio} a repetition of \e{road}, \e{radio}, an anagram for \e{I road}. I rode down the road of the radio. Listening, too, simply metaphorizes into driving. (The \e{phora} in \e{metaphora} means "change with respect to location.") Dancing late into the night resurfaces into driving late into the night, the marathons of cross-country travel are met by the marathons of dancing until dawn on oil-evocative drugs. We're also probably wearing our jeans\slash sneakers, those clothes that repeat the car\slash tire idea since once out of our car, these clothes continue the metonym from flesh to clothes to metal, from body to jeans to car. The music-saturated air can happen inside the discotheque as well as inside the car. One stipulates dancing, the other driving. Dancing and driving don't mix, but the music essentially eulogizes the interior rumblings of the car. There's even a music to those studded winter tires that \e{cre}pitate once they strike the surfaces of roads. That de\e{lic}ate, watery sound, \e{lik}e the aftermath of waves dripping from myriads of pebbles on \e{roc}ky beaches, has often met my ear even through the dense cover of forests. The pervasive car and tire static accompanies nearly every other sound, filtering ubiquitously into every other aural event, \e{cra}shing surf, \e{cre}aking trees, \e{gro}aning wind. Every car possesses a muffler to attenuate the loud bangings inside, and every car interior is protected from that engine's loudness by solid metal surfaces, another muffler of sorts for the occupant on the inside. Radios, on full blast, displace the less harmonious sounds occuring inside. So much burning of oil in the engine encounters so much tribute to se\e{xual} passion and romantic love, subjective states that popular music calls "hot," "on fire," "burning up," virtual states for the combustion of the car's fuel. Such lyrics on these vinyl records confirm that this sound is the voice of oil, its prosopopoeia. Nothing is in the stylus' way as nothing is in the way of the car's path. A skipping record evokes thresholds one never wants to encounter in a car, proving once again that "dancing is dangerous." -Various New York discos I've visited, such as Studio 54, the Saint, the Roxy, mimic this car/road stylus/groove idea. The DJ booth at Studio 54 (where they play 45s) resembles a pickup ncedle as it hovers above a partially curved dance floor. The Saint's entire dance floor is round and its dan\e{cer}s are again the stylus that "dances" down the grooves. The Roxy is a roller-disco, but for those occasions when dancers don't have to wear rollerskates, their ordinary \e{heels} almost have w\e{heels} as they did on all the other evenings. The series could proceed as such: cars drive on roads as styluses course down record grooves as dancers dance on dance floors. A stylus is related to a stiletto and the pointed tips of cowboy boots (so often capped with silver, a precious substance like the diamond) evoke the stylus that writes out sound into the air. One track of a dancer's stiletto incises just as deeply as all the wheels of chariots that had worn down the stones of the \e{Via Appia Antica}. "Another disco allegory" bemoans the listener when he hears such lyrics as "Circles, circles," "It's my turn now," "Your love keeps me going round and round." What do songs of \e{love} mean over disco sound systems when the \e{v} in lo\e{v}e mimics the diamond stylus as the rest of love's letters, \e{loe}, recombines into \e{oel}, a near-spelling of \e{oil}? Or what about \e{groove} whose \e{r} can substitute with an \e{l} and produce g\e{loove}, a reverberation of \e{love}? We never tire of hearing the word love in our ears since \e{love} always monumentalizes the stylus that writes down oil/vinyl records, those g\e{roove}s of \e{love}. +Various New York discos I've visited, such as Studio 54, the Saint, the Roxy, mimic this car\slash road stylus\slash groove idea. The DJ booth at Studio 54 (where they play 45s) resembles a pickup ncedle as it hovers above a partially curved dance floor. The Saint's entire dance floor is round and its dan\e{cer}s are again the stylus that "dances" down the grooves. The Roxy is a roller-disco, but for those occasions when dancers don't have to wear rollerskates, their ordinary \e{heels} almost have w\e{heels} as they did on all the other evenings. The series could proceed as such: cars drive on roads as styluses course down record grooves as dancers dance on dance floors. A stylus is related to a stiletto and the pointed tips of cowboy boots (so often capped with silver, a precious substance like the diamond) evoke the stylus that writes out sound into the air. One track of a dancer's stiletto incises just as deeply as all the wheels of chariots that had worn down the stones of the \e{Via Appia Antica}. "Another disco allegory" bemoans the listener when he hears such lyrics as "Circles, circles," "It's my turn now," "Your love keeps me going round and round." What do songs of \e{love} mean over disco sound systems when the \e{v} in lo\e{v}e mimics the diamond stylus as the rest of love's letters, \e{loe}, recombines into \e{oel}, a near-spelling of \e{oil}? Or what about \e{groove} whose \e{r} can substitute with an \e{l} and produce g\e{loove}, a reverberation of \e{love}? We never tire of hearing the word love in our ears since \e{love} always monumentalizes the stylus that writes down oil\slash vinyl records, those g\e{roove}s of \e{love}. -Much of these symptoms occur in the "fast lanes" of gay society. The "tight jeans" crowd, those addicted to impeccable surfaces, oil-derived music, stimulants, mus\e{cle}s, amyl nitrate (a snorted drug that smells like oil), smoking tarrife faggots (cigarettes), appear to have assimilated the car-ideal quite thoroughly. \e{Gay}, so close to \e{car}, is even closer when the CAR reverses its R; CA\turn{R} the upside down R then embeds a Y: \turn{R}/Y. Taking the reversals of C into G and the R into Y into effect, the CAR then becomes the GAY. Gay life always narrates its successes and failures to live up to its car-ideal or ego-ideal, the car being the standard from which its imaginary (n\e{arc}issistic) captations take p\e{lac}e. +Much of these symptoms occur in the "fast lanes" of gay society. The "tight jeans" crowd, those addicted to impeccable surfaces, oil-derived music, stimulants, mus\e{cle}s, amyl nitrate (a snorted drug that smells like oil), smoking tarrife faggots (cigarettes), appear to have assimilated the car-ideal quite thoroughly. \e{Gay}, so close to \e{car}, is even closer when the CAR reverses its R; CA\turn{R} the upside down R then embeds a Y: \turn{R}\slash Y. Taking the reversals of C into G and the R into Y into effect, the CAR then becomes the GAY. Gay life always narrates its successes and failures to live up to its car-ideal or ego-ideal, the car being the standard from which its imaginary (n\e{arc}issistic) captations take p\e{lac}e. Undoubtedly there are mysteries such as \e{gal} or \e{girl}, two words that are perfect echoes of the CAR. Even the figure of incision, the \e{v} in lo\e{v}e or Le\e{v}i's or groo\e{v}e, resembles the genitalia of the female, another tire that incises the extensive trails of allegory. What then is a girl's best friend? Stylish attire? Crystalline drugs? Valentino? Cremes? Gels? Mascara? Diamonds? Diamond styluses? Might they all provide as faithful a service as do chauffeurs who never tire in their driving chores? Attired in such luxurious riches, the girl might feel like Sch\"onfeld's "Triumph of Venus" where the painting depicted the goddess of love in a car pulled by all the other gods. Vulcan's labor assures the gentler sex that she'll be well-protected behind the armor of the car, now that she's also swathed in furs, diamonds, perfumes, a virtual inventory of car-related tropes. Diamonds are a girl's best friend just as cars can claim a similar status, both nearly indestructible substances that incise paths. "To incise paths" equivocates with id.as of coitus, further confirmation of the allegorical line's density and unconsciousness. @@ -750,13 +750,13 @@ A crypt always comp\e{lic}ates the opposition between inside and outside. The va So what does this have to do with the car? -If Americans want to attain the attributes of the car, they must interiorize its characteristics in differing degrees of intensity. The movie star who changes his/her name with the CAR shows us a moment of such encrypting, a moment when the outside, the car, enters the inside, the person's proper name, the seal and stamp of subjectivity. When this happens we can safely say that the movie star has incorporated the CAR, both at the level of the letter and in the steps of introjection when the star proposes the car as its ideal. But the rescrawling of the proper name also becomes a rescrawling of the body, another example of the inorganic triumphing over the organic, the mechanical over the biological and thus fashions something as indeterminate as the crypt's status as "inside" or "outside." +If Americans want to attain the attributes of the car, they must interiorize its characteristics in differing degrees of intensity. The movie star who changes his\slash her name with the CAR shows us a moment of such encrypting, a moment when the outside, the car, enters the inside, the person's proper name, the seal and stamp of subjectivity. When this happens we can safely say that the movie star has incorporated the CAR, both at the level of the letter and in the steps of introjection when the star proposes the car as its ideal. But the rescrawling of the proper name also becomes a rescrawling of the body, another example of the inorganic triumphing over the organic, the mechanical over the biological and thus fashions something as indeterminate as the crypt's status as "inside" or "outside." The following might be an appropriate parable of our Industrial Age, the time when flesh becomes equatable with metal or the bounties of Nature must mingle with the technological achievements of Man. When our bodies decay through disease or age, medical science can augment or replace the delapidated organs, much like a car mechanic who can substitute an ailing engine with another better running one. This area of medicine is called "spare-part surgery" where man-made objects take over nature's fabrications. However there are those who will assert that man is a product of nature and thus such devices are "natural" in a sense. My argument only points out that human tools can change what invented it: man. That independence from "nature" demonstrates that man's products are not determined by the substratum of their creation. For now we'll simply assume an incompatibility between nature and man even though nature could account for everything that is "man." No one would be so naive to believe that the body \e{is} a machine, for Donald Longmore, the author of \booktitle{Spare-Part Surgery: The Surgical Practice of the Future}, says that the body is "of infintiely greater subtlety." Already medical technicians have invented "extracorporality machines" that take over the functions of the heart, lungs and kidneys, but not the liver and intestines for they're ""far beyond our skills." The heart-lung machine, an aid for the surgeon performing open-heart surgery, perfects the identity between man and machine, but such surgery is not without its dangers: "Some years ago I compared the surgeon's task in attempting to repair a defective heart with the job of repairing a defective engine in a singleengined aircraft halfway over the Atlantic on a stormy night." Along the lines of this aircraft analogy Longmore also states that the "ricky parts of operating a heart-lung machine are while going into and coming off bypass." For those whose limbs have failed them, prosthetic limbs are also short of perfection: "The chief barrier to progress is our inadequate materials technology: strength-to-weight ratios are far too low; power packs, whether of bottled gas or electrical cells, are short-lived and too heavy; gas- and electric-powered motors respond crudely compared with the line responses we can achieve with our muscles; mechanical joints are clumsy and unadaptable; and so on." The machine's ultimate giveaway is that "there is no prosthetic substitute for touch, temperature, pain, position, pressure, or slip." When accidents of birth or circumstance force people to be bound entirely to a wheelchair, "the `hand' will be part of the `chair' (which may, in fact, be a walking bed)\ld" Sometimes amputees divide the prosthetic limbs into a "cosmetic" hand for social occasions and a "split hook" for work or at home. The "split hook" oftentimes is more "efficient" than a regular hand. It is better equipped to operate a "linotype composing machine, drive a suitably engineered vehicle, run the signal box of a mainline terminus, use approachradar facilities, or fly a Gemini spacecraft---and in each case to move the controls much quicker than a man using using his hands." -Various materials, such as artificial heart suture threads, glues and metal parts have found themselves inside the body of many a human being. As Longmore states, "Their use has taught us a good deal about the interaction between living tissue and manufactured materials." The threads that surgeons used were silk and gut, but both were proteins and "liable to attack by the body's defenses." Nowadays "high-tensile man-made fibers" constitute the surgical thread. Stapling machines or barbed rivets ("miniature arrows with double arrowheads at each end of the shaft") facilitate sealing blood vessels. Plastics, such as epoxy and polyurethane resins, have also done the job of scaling vessels. However the "most effective glue so far is the monomer made by Eastman Kodak." Metals are also within the field of spare-part medicine, provided they don't "corrode" or "fatigue." "They can be formed into complex shapes. They can be plated or polished to give a smooth surface finish. They conduct electricity. And they do not provoke the immune response." The metals that have been used are Vitallium ("an alloy of 65 percent cobalt, 30 percent chromium, 3 percent molybdenum, and traces of manganese, silicone, and carbon), 18/12 stainless steel ("steel with 18 percent chromium and 12 percent nickel"), and "commercially pure (99 percent) titanium." +Various materials, such as artificial heart suture threads, glues and metal parts have found themselves inside the body of many a human being. As Longmore states, "Their use has taught us a good deal about the interaction between living tissue and manufactured materials." The threads that surgeons used were silk and gut, but both were proteins and "liable to attack by the body's defenses." Nowadays "high-tensile man-made fibers" constitute the surgical thread. Stapling machines or barbed rivets ("miniature arrows with double arrowheads at each end of the shaft") facilitate sealing blood vessels. Plastics, such as epoxy and polyurethane resins, have also done the job of scaling vessels. However the "most effective glue so far is the monomer made by Eastman Kodak." Metals are also within the field of spare-part medicine, provided they don't "corrode" or "fatigue." "They can be formed into complex shapes. They can be plated or polished to give a smooth surface finish. They conduct electricity. And they do not provoke the immune response." The metals that have been used are Vitallium ("an alloy of 65 percent cobalt, 30 percent chromium, 3 percent molybdenum, and traces of manganese, silicone, and carbon), 18\slash 12 stainless steel ("steel with 18 percent chromium and 12 percent nickel"), and "commercially pure (99 percent) titanium." The dream of a perfectly running artificial heart (after all "the heart is a pump") would fulfill the identity between an automotive engineer and a surgical pioneer. "The earliest experimental hearts were powered by electricity---a clean fuel, with no exhaust problems." Electricity is still the power for the "best foreseeable artificial heart," even though Longmore suggests a "minute nuclear reactor\ld\ implanted in some convenient body cavity." The material for the prosthetic valves have been fashioned out of "Dacron, Teflon, Mylar, Ivalon, sponge, Stafoam, and polyurethane without liberating clots into the bloodstream." @@ -963,7 +963,7 @@ Freud distinguished between Word-presentations and Thing-presentations, the latt Dare we read the letter that begins "Dear\ld"? These "things in the ear," \e{dare}, \e{read} and \e{dear}, pass before our eyes when we see "Dear\ld". "Dear\ld" also commands, "Read\ld," even for the one who writes the letter. No letter, my dear, is sent just to you. And no letter remains merely intact in the letters to friends or in whatever we read. -There are more things to read. Such as the word \e{heart}. A meaningless anagram for \e{read}, \e{eard}, evokes \e{heart} whose \e{h} is simply a harder breathing of the subsequent \e{e}. \e{Heart}'s \e{t}, too, corresponds to \e{eard}'s \e{d}, for both are dentals, consonants pronounced at the front of the mouth. \e{Heard} from \e{eard}/\e{read} rings not far from \e{heart}, for both have \e{ear} dinging in their hearts: h\e{ear}d and h\e{ear}t. +There are more things to read. Such as the word \e{heart}. A meaningless anagram for \e{read}, \e{eard}, evokes \e{heart} whose \e{h} is simply a harder breathing of the subsequent \e{e}. \e{Heart}'s \e{t}, too, corresponds to \e{eard}'s \e{d}, for both are dentals, consonants pronounced at the front of the mouth. \e{Heard} from \e{eard}\slash \e{read} rings not far from \e{heart}, for both have \e{ear} dinging in their hearts: h\e{ear}d and h\e{ear}t. Are we getting to the h\e{ear}t of \e{rea}ding? If reading is an "ear ding," we notice a complication between the "ding, ding" of the ear and the moment that it presents the hallucinated Thing. "Ding, ding" goes the Thing, the signified, the Mystic Rose. Ding! \e{Ding!} The veil of truth rises and naked it stands where? here? hear? \e{Hear! Here!} When truth is \e{here}, it happens at the moment the Thing is \e{hear}(d). The presentation of the heard Thing comes \e{here} just as it comes \e{hear}(d), here in the ear. Ding! \e{Ding!} Ding! Thing! @@ -995,13 +995,13 @@ It is no wonder that Diana Ross was once photographed for an album cover with de An additional allegory of photodeveloping is tanning. The short time it takes to develop a picture meets up with the length of time it takes to develop a tan. The tanned body, when photographed by admirers, contrasts with an Instamatic's brief registration of light to skin's hourly or daily or weckly exposures. Like a lamp-filled photographer's studio, there now are lamp-filled tanning salons so as to "Flash 'em a Coppertone Tan!" These tanning salons have perhaps accelerated the natural tanning process just as photo-technology has accelerated developing speeds. -\e{Jean} Harlow died of sun-exposure. Dyeing one's hair (exactly how did she dye?) allegorizes photodeveloping, from original dark hair to light hair from original print paper to light-registered paper. Overexposed Deborah Harry left her hair in the developer too long. In order to \e{shock}, people dye their hair, or rather they dye a \e{shock} of hair. \booktitle{Webster's Dictionary} defines a shock as "a thick bushy mass (as of hair)." Dyed blonde shocks shock the public so as to further the emergent celebrity's public exposure. Light print paper becomes darker like dark hair that becomes lighter like dark jeans that become lighter. Light hair, like light paper, also changes color to darker hues as do prints in developing baths. The cliché of a Hollywood home with its swimming pool becomes a giant developing bath: starlets in chlorine pools bleach their hair while $8\times 10$'' prints, once immersed, also alter their original hues. The innocent ritual of swimming, either in pools or the sea, henceforth metaphorizes into fixer/developer baths. Swimming and tanning appear to be best on the beaches where celebrities and models swim (Malibu, Hamptons, Fire Island). +\e{Jean} Harlow died of sun-exposure. Dyeing one's hair (exactly how did she dye?) allegorizes photodeveloping, from original dark hair to light hair from original print paper to light-registered paper. Overexposed Deborah Harry left her hair in the developer too long. In order to \e{shock}, people dye their hair, or rather they dye a \e{shock} of hair. \booktitle{Webster's Dictionary} defines a shock as "a thick bushy mass (as of hair)." Dyed blonde shocks shock the public so as to further the emergent celebrity's public exposure. Light print paper becomes darker like dark hair that becomes lighter like dark jeans that become lighter. Light hair, like light paper, also changes color to darker hues as do prints in developing baths. The cliché of a Hollywood home with its swimming pool becomes a giant developing bath: starlets in chlorine pools bleach their hair while $8\times 10$'' prints, once immersed, also alter their original hues. The innocent ritual of swimming, either in pools or the sea, henceforth metaphorizes into fixer\slash developer baths. Swimming and tanning appear to be best on the beaches where celebrities and models swim (Malibu, Hamptons, Fire Island). Photographs are also connected to a highly nostalgic impulse since they are records of a former life however hard we try to revive a past now irrevocably absent. The mourned for Jean could become the mourning for our jeans that are no longer young, unfaded, unworn, these connotations allowing us to think of the disfigurations that await us when we age, "develop." But then all of us look forward to the time when our jeans will fade just as we look forward to the time when we will be photographed. \chap Tell Me Why -{\typosize[8/] +{\typosize[8\slash ] {\parindent=0pt\leftskip=1in\it \ld c'est comme si dans l'onde j'innovais\nl @@ -1053,7 +1053,7 @@ Yet to find a friend at the Y one must first look like the letter Y. The gay mus \sec -Gay clubs usually feature loud disco music played to a clientele that invariably wears 501 Levi's and/or possesses bodies in the shape of a Y. No less significantly, the music that is played there requires a diamond stylus to sound out the grooves of records. These V-, or more accurately Y-, shaped bodies assume the same general configuration of a V-shaped stylus. Now that gay men desire to enlarge their chests and narrow their waists into a V-shape, they also desire to look like the stylus that they dance to. This mimicry of a diamond stylus stems from identifying so strongly with the music to the point where one becomes the very instrument that produces such enjoyable sound in the sloping contours of a developed physique. Having a hard, adamantine body that resembles a sound-producing diamond gives the sound-saturated dancer a visual representation for what can only be heard. The invocatory drive (hearing) is inevitably accompanied by the scopic drive (seeing), otherwise one undergoes a diffuse anxiety, like when sound from a television falls momentarily silent. +Gay clubs usually feature loud disco music played to a clientele that invariably wears 501 Levi's and\slash or possesses bodies in the shape of a Y. No less significantly, the music that is played there requires a diamond stylus to sound out the grooves of records. These V-, or more accurately Y-, shaped bodies assume the same general configuration of a V-shaped stylus. Now that gay men desire to enlarge their chests and narrow their waists into a V-shape, they also desire to look like the stylus that they dance to. This mimicry of a diamond stylus stems from identifying so strongly with the music to the point where one becomes the very instrument that produces such enjoyable sound in the sloping contours of a developed physique. Having a hard, adamantine body that resembles a sound-producing diamond gives the sound-saturated dancer a visual representation for what can only be heard. The invocatory drive (hearing) is inevitably accompanied by the scopic drive (seeing), otherwise one undergoes a diffuse anxiety, like when sound from a television falls momentarily silent. This intimacy between sound listened to and the shape of bodies that mime the sound-creating diamond takes place whenever gay men lift 45 Ibs. freeweights. While lifting 45 lbs. weights, they are probably listening to visually similar 45 LPs played over their gym's sound system. 45 LPs are round, usually black discs just as 45 Ibs. freeweights are round, usually black, but much larger, discs as well. Even \e{lps} equate with \e{lbs} since the letter \e{p} is a flip-flop reflection of a \e{b}. One lifts 45s to resemble the diamond that plays 45s. @@ -1087,7 +1087,7 @@ Still in all seriousness dancing is often intended to seduce a "trick," the stra \sec -Without end, the mystery of the 501 continues. Why did the famous cultural anthropologist Levi-Strauss, when discussing the gay resort Fire Island in \booktitle{Tristes Tropiques}, not discuss Levi Strauss & Co.? Why is a famous porn-star named after a pair of jeans, Jack \e{Wrangler}? Further, why is Fire Island called such in light of the near misspelling of fire for five? The horny gay man wears the five because he is on fire, because he is on Fire Island or at the \e{Pines}/\e{Penis}. Norma Jean or Marilyn Monroe sang the line "Guadeloupe 105! in the song \songtitle{Heat Wave}, the last and most intolerably warm temperature in a long itinerary of Caribbean locales and temperatures. The hundreds of other instances where the word "fire" is mentioned in disco songs give unconscious, mutual reinforcement to the sexual passion of "fire" and its contiguity to sexual organs as emblematized in \e{fire}-O-ones. Even the name of a popular discjocky, Michael \e{Fier}man (who plays at the Saint and on gay nights at the Palladium), anagrammatizes into \e{Fire}man. As Norma Desmond utters in \filmtitle{Sunset Boulevard} regarding her dead monkey, "He always liked fires and poking at them with a stick." +Without end, the mystery of the 501 continues. Why did the famous cultural anthropologist Levi-Strauss, when discussing the gay resort Fire Island in \booktitle{Tristes Tropiques}, not discuss Levi Strauss & Co.? Why is a famous porn-star named after a pair of jeans, Jack \e{Wrangler}? Further, why is Fire Island called such in light of the near misspelling of fire for five? The horny gay man wears the five because he is on fire, because he is on Fire Island or at the \e{Pines}\slash \e{Penis}. Norma Jean or Marilyn Monroe sang the line "Guadeloupe 105! in the song \songtitle{Heat Wave}, the last and most intolerably warm temperature in a long itinerary of Caribbean locales and temperatures. The hundreds of other instances where the word "fire" is mentioned in disco songs give unconscious, mutual reinforcement to the sexual passion of "fire" and its contiguity to sexual organs as emblematized in \e{fire}-O-ones. Even the name of a popular discjocky, Michael \e{Fier}man (who plays at the Saint and on gay nights at the Palladium), anagrammatizes into \e{Fire}man. As Norma Desmond utters in \filmtitle{Sunset Boulevard} regarding her dead monkey, "He always liked fires and poking at them with a stick." Add five and one, six results. The Latin word for six is \e{sex}, identical to the English "sex." Homo\e{sex}uality always already embeds $5+1$ within it, \e{sex}. \e{Sex} always seems to happen at \e{six} anyway, since after \e{five} one is on \e{fire}. @@ -1115,7 +1115,7 @@ Perhaps what unifies The Age of Oil is this question of the letter or, if I may Given that oil is hidden and stored in tightly sealed containers, the notion of a crypt appears to be entirely transposable to that realm. As well, given the \e{secret} secret to \e{secret}ary, my obsession with its disclosure could have been predetermined by the title of my occupation. Yet the secrets that secretaries are occasionally privy to, the private lives of their bosses or the confidential nature of their documents, were not as secret as the secrets I was writing while typing. My secret was to write, not to type. Yet I appeared to be typing when I was actually writing, or rather I was typing my writing, not dictated tapes, stenographed letters or handwritten pages of my employers. As a man in a labor pool composed mostly of women, I was refusing to be the mere receptacle of one whose higher wage entitled him to say, "I am who I am." -Oil or letters are shitty but made respectively less so by refinery experts when they process the crude into octane or when secretaries accurately transcribe the spoken words into typo-free sequences. Secretaries in many ways are surrogate mothers who attend to the incunabula of their bosses, where incunabula has the double sense of swaddling clothes in Latin or of books and manuscripts in English (though mostly before 1501). The swaddling clothes could also be either the briefs of attorneys, their legal documents, or their underwear. One secretary I remember complained of her boss: "He and his shitty briefs!" By fussing over nearly countless questions of wording, spacing, grammatical and typographical errors, the usually female secretary is in sum changing shitty incunabula or briefs into "clean" (as in "clean copies") or "presentable" ones. Just as \e{secret} silently inhabits the phrase, "I am a \e{secret}ary," so does \e{shit} secretly inhabit my last name, \e{S}m\e{ith}/(m)\e{Shit}. And I've often thought that I ought to change it into something more "refined." +Oil or letters are shitty but made respectively less so by refinery experts when they process the crude into octane or when secretaries accurately transcribe the spoken words into typo-free sequences. Secretaries in many ways are surrogate mothers who attend to the incunabula of their bosses, where incunabula has the double sense of swaddling clothes in Latin or of books and manuscripts in English (though mostly before 1501). The swaddling clothes could also be either the briefs of attorneys, their legal documents, or their underwear. One secretary I remember complained of her boss: "He and his shitty briefs!" By fussing over nearly countless questions of wording, spacing, grammatical and typographical errors, the usually female secretary is in sum changing shitty incunabula or briefs into "clean" (as in "clean copies") or "presentable" ones. Just as \e{secret} silently inhabits the phrase, "I am a \e{secret}ary," so does \e{shit} secretly inhabit my last name, \e{S}m\e{ith}\slash (m)\e{Shit}. And I've often thought that I ought to change it into something more "refined." The hands and fingers of the mostly white, upper class males who extract surplus value from secretarial workers become dirty after they have finished their subway ride read of \journaltitle{The New York Times}. The \e{grime} from the \e{Times} that covers their white hands is eventually washed off as is also the graffiti \e{crime} that covers those surfaces of New York subway trains. While the white struggles to erase the train surfaces so as to resemble their light faces, the black struggles to trace the train surfaces so as to resemble their dark faces. Erasing the objective exteriority of writing for the objective interiority of speech reproduces what the white male capitalist does whenever he dictates a letter to a black female wage slave. As long as the hierarchy of speech over writing prevails, so will the hierarchy of white, upper class males over racially diversified, impoverished females. Women, because of their perpetually eccentric position to the paternal law and its linguistic aftereffects, often just "type." By merely transcribing the speech of males, their relation to language becomes inessential, cosmetic, as it were. "Liquid Paper," a substance that paints over typographical errors, now offers as nearly a variegated prism as any line of nail polish, not to mention that both feature a tiny brush and handle in common. Once a page has been "eye-lined" (proofread), "polished" (ungrammaticalities expunged) and "combed" for any other infelicity, the smooth, appealing surface can be signed, the white maidenpaper invaginated. The unsightly blemishes and wrinkles women worry over play their parts again when etters fail to preserve the homogeneity between ideal, spoken intention and written, visually attractive presentation. One brand of makeup I have had recourse to when acne spelled its letters on my cheeks went by the name of "Erase." Correcting typos and correcting blemishes somehow ultimately confirms my conviction that letters are tar since blemishes are oil. |