Mondays for Beauty

More music, more sunlight--the city is ravenous for Summer. Bring on the mountain ranges, the barefoot runs, the afternoons at Gasworks, the hot dogs with cream cheese.

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Killer first line of the moment:

"We didn't come Mondays for beauty,"

from "Open Mic" by Kurt S. Olsson
(What Kills What Kills Us, Silverfish Review Press, 2007)

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Same with the name, Operation Geronimo. The imperial mentality is so profound, throughout western society, that no one can perceive that they are glorifying bin Laden by identifying him with courageous resistance against genocidal invaders. It’s like naming our murder weapons after victims of our crimes: Apache, Tomahawk… It’s as if the Luftwaffe were to call its fighter planes “Jew” and “Gypsy.”

-Noam Chomsky responds to the death of Osama bin Laden, over at Guernica

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The reasons for these trends can be expressed in a single word, or buzzword: efficiency. Contingent academic labor, as non-tenure-track faculty, part-time and full-time, are formally known, is cheaper to hire and easier to fire. It saves departments money and gives them greater flexibility in staffing courses. Over the past twenty years, in other words—or really, over the past forty—what has happened in academia is what has happened throughout the American economy. Good, secure, well-paid positions—tenured appointments in the academy, union jobs on the factory floor—are being replaced by temporary, low-wage employment.

-via The Nation

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Hippy jam-fest dance yawp.