digital emunction

Under Construction

Bobby — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 06:45:23 +0000

I’m making a few changes around here, hopefully for the better. It’ll take a few days to get everything fixed up, but if in the interim you find something that’s not working (which is likely) please don’t hesitate to let me know. Thanks!

Iquitos Photos

Bobby — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 20:57:43 +0000

Like James Bond, I recently spent some time in Bolivia (Peru too) and now that I’ve had a week back to readjust myself to this wondrous new reality of Obamamerica–thank you all!–I’ve started culling my way through the 1200+ photos I took there. The first batch of thirty-odd...

Gone, Baby, Gone

Bobby — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 13:36:58 +0000

As of 11:30 this morning, this blog-like entity is on hiatus for the better part of the next month. I’ll be out of the country, and I trust I can leave it to the rest of you to wrap up this election without any nasty surprises. Please don’t disappoint. –The Management

Kent Johnson’s Homage to the Last Avant-Garde

Bobby — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 03:29:58 +0000

I recently received in the mail a copy of Kent Johnson’s newish book from Shearsman, Homage to the Last Avant-Garde. It’s something of a selected poems in miniature, collecting work from other books like Epigrammititis and I Once Met, as well as one poem, “Into the Heat-Forged...

Will Somebody Shut Him Up?

Bobby — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 16:59:01 +0000

Bloomberg is reporting, and Drudge is blaring, that Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi discussed a plan by the world’s political leaders to suspend the financial markets and “rewrite the rules of international finance.” Which would obviously be rather frightening, on many...

Uh, Never Mind

Bobby — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 06:36:35 +0000

So, those tiny bright spots I mentioned this morning? Not so much. From Nouriel Roubini, who titles his post “The world is at severe risk of a global systemic financial meltdown and a severe global depression”: The U.S. and advanced economies’ financial systems are now headed towards a...

A Little Good News, But Don’t Get Too Excited

Bobby — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 14:24:23 +0000

Things on the economic front still look very bad out there, what with a stock market in free fall, Iceland on the verge of bankruptcy, and, oh, did you hear that we’re pumping another $38 billion into AIG? It’s all ugly, and it’s probably going to get worse and stay bad for some...

Sorry, But No: Defending the Homeland Edition

Bobby — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 16:59:05 +0000

Megan McArdle, responding to the Obama campaign’s new attack on McCain’s Charles Keating links, writes: [I]n fact I think that the Ayers connection is too tenuous to be interesting. But there is a nugget of a real critique at its heart, which is that the academic culture Obama belongs...

Peeling the Onion

Bobby — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 18:59:17 +0000

I think Ben Smith and Jonathan Martin are on to something about the subtext of all this Ayers stuff billowing up out of the McCain campaign these days. Martin writes: At best, this is to say that Obama doesn’t believe in American exceptionalism. At worst, and this is where the new ad goes,...

Good Question

Bobby — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 01:49:12 +0000

From a 10/18/65 letter from Norman Mailer to William F. Buckley, in last week’s New Yorker: What the hell does emunctory* mean? You have here gone to far, sir, even for Buckley. I even heard one Roman turn over distinctly in his grave as the word went by and whisper to his neighbor,...