The Mumpsimus

In the chaos of the internet, I missed Matthias Stork's response to critics of his video essay on Chaos Cinema, posted at Press Play back in December as " Chaos Cinema, Part III " (with the other two helpfully embedded on the same page). I watched it today after reading Steven Shaviro's text from a talk, "Post-Continuity" . I was interested in Stork's response, because I had had a fairly strong initial reaction to his essays, and I've continued to think about it all, especially after using Gamer  in a class last term. My own viewing of such movies has been deeply influenced more by Shaviro's approach than others, but I also like to show students the first two "Chaos Cinema" essays as well as Jim Emerson's video essay on a scene from The Dark Knight . Watching the third "Chaos Cinema" essay, I discovered that Stork responded specifically to one of my criticisms. It's a very fair and, I think, accurate response ...

I suspended this blog before John McCain suspended his campaign to work on the economy, so please vote for me on election day. My running mate is an androgynous simulacrum of Eugene Debs and Emma Goldman who spends most of its time arguing with itself about the role and value of government in effecting meaningful change. I will be de-suspending the blog soon, though, because today I am going out into my backyard to talk with the squirrels about my plan for the economy, a plan that rests its many tentacles on a single bodily proposal: to release all non-violent offenders from prison to make room for various denizens of Wall Street. And to provide free feather boas to everybody who wants one. Oh no! One of my cats just ate the Squirrel Majority Leader! The squirrels are in an uproar! The whole economic plan is now in jeopardy! Bad kitty! BAD! My friends, I'm afraid I'm going to have to suspend the blog for a few more days while this crisis is resolved.