De File

The current governor of California is demonstrating that he is a worthy rival to President Bush in the quest to become the American leader most likely to inspire comparisons to Mussolini or Hitler:

The prospect of an acrimonious, months-long battle, with tens of millions of dollars in hard-hitting advertising being tossed onto California's airwaves, already has Schwarzenegger casting the election in apocalyptic terms: a battle of good versus evil, of the people versus the special interests, for the soul and the future of California.

"November 8 is judgment day," the governor said.

Indeed. If he achieves his goals on November 8th, the phrase "state of exception" will have a new wrinkle.

This copy comes from part of the spam I just received:

Out of debt, out of danger. Veranda with her gracious body starts off the scene nice and slow. Thoughts are but dreams till their effects are tried. Her swollen, dripping hole ached for that meat deep inside her for 30 minutes of cruel video! Experience does not err. Only your judgments err by expecting from her what is not in her power. One weeps not save when one is afraid, and that is why kings are tyrants.

Now I know that the reason for this strange syntax and stranger juxtapositions must lie in an attempt to evade spam filters. Yet, just as I find beauty in those "postmodern" found poems that consist of a list of words with no intrinsic connection, I'm intrigued by several details here: the words "gracious," "cruel," and "err," not to mention the architecturally resonant name "Veranda;" the lone exclamation point; the antiquated sound of, "One weeps not save when one is afraid;" the disjunction between the final sentence and the one preceding it. I think someone should start a library documenting the aesthetic dimension to spam. Indirection is, after all, the foundation of artistic expression.

Lately I've been overwhelmed with the feeling, not triggered by anything obvious, that the David Lynch film Mulholland Drive contains important clues for me in my attempt to make sense of my present circumstances. I mean, it's a strong feeling, inexplicable yet ineradicable. There. I suppose I would have to revisit Lost Highway and Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, the other parts of the trilogy I've fashioned in my mind, in order to really make progress in solving this mystery. But it's Mulholland Drive that always comes to mind first and strongest.