you are some body!

Isn't it amazing/terrible/weird how words don't really mean anything? All the time spent writing/texting/messaging/editing/mailing and for what? Anyone who has studied a little critical theory knows about Saussure, Derrida, and the slippage of the signifier. Of course I know about this, but I guess until recently I haven't really wanted to pay attention to it, and truly accept it as a part of real life. That is probably because I am being paid to write everyday, and to write something "meaningful" and "significant" to a certain academic community. Basically I have to buy my own hype in order to get through this project. But the truth is that maybe a handful of people will ever see my work, and I know that its influence isn't going to extend very far. In fact, this crappy blog will probably get more play.

This rant was inspired by the catch phrase that titles this post. I heard it on TV or something, some commerical. It is a ridiculous affirmation, the kind that actually means less, the more it is bandied about by the disembodied voices of TV announcers. It was desperate to convince me that as "somebody" I was entitled to the products for sale or whatever. It was trying to tell me I was special, but as I started thinking about it, I realized that being "some body" was probably the most unspecial thing I could be. That this word actually meant the dead opposite of what it was being used to say.
This happens all the time -- even I do it sometimes! It just leaves me thinking how strange/sad it is that, in this world where communicating has become so easy, words have become basically worthless. A metaphor of currency inflation comes to mind here, and it seems that the only "solution" in sight at the moment is to print up a bunch more bills.

So then, I will see you here again tomorrow, right??

i wrote this awhile ago...

09.19.05 – 1.13am
I read and I never write. Well, I never read anymore either, if I don’t have to. This is all in the way of a disclaimer, by the way. Or a confession – take it however you will. But the fact of the matter is writing is trauma. Right now as I type I feel like I am vomiting. I tried to put something about this feeling in a footnote of my dissertation prospectus, and let me tell you, it didn’t really go over so well. Let me see if I can find it.
Okay, well I can’t because I erased it after I wrote it. It seemed like the kind of thing you aren’t supposed to write about, or talk about, not unlike bulimia. To summarize, it basically said that I oscillate between representation and reality to the extent that it makes me feel nauseous. That is what writing does to me, that is how it makes me feel. So you can see why I have resisted the temptation to put anything like this down for sometime.
The irony is that this is my job. Now this is a tawdry sort of irony, I realize – I imagine it is sort of the way a porn star must feel when she goes home to her boyfriend or whatever. Like, ‘I fucked all day at work and it would just gross me out to do that again now, in some real and significant way.’ Am I saying I feel like a whore? Well, I guess if I ask I must know the answer.
But I guess this is what makes writing so strange, as opposed to talking (or fucking, to extend the metaphor). It can be such a solitary pursuit. I mean lets just cut right through the bullshit – who are you? Who is my ‘audience’? Really its just me, hacking away at the keyboard, producing product. Perhaps it is because my work writing presumes or even worse/better, actually does have some sort of audience, that it makes it rather difficult for me to just gush all over the page like this – I know that is judgmental and there I go again with the sex metaphor, but really, I do feel the desire to write, even if I am doing my best to suppress it and reform it into this disciplined work that is so (not) valued by the academic community, aka my audience.
Jesus Christ. Get over yourself, you/I say. At this point I must refer back to paragraph 1, sentence 3. This is all just one big excuse for doing exactly what I’m saying I don’t like to do – writing. Oooh, so (not) transgressive! Whatever girl, its just words on the screen, or is it? Should I go back and edit this now, or not? Another glass of wine – how about that instead?