{"id":146,"date":"2009-04-07T12:56:43","date_gmt":"2009-04-07T16:56:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.elsweb.org\/nsftmfx\/?p=146"},"modified":"2009-04-07T12:56:43","modified_gmt":"2009-04-07T16:56:43","slug":"exodus-167","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.elsweb.org\/nsftmfx\/2009\/04\/07\/exodus-167\/","title":{"rendered":"Exodus 16:7"},"content":{"rendered":"

and in the morning you will see the glory of the LORD<\/span>, for He hears your grumblings against the LORD<\/span>; and what are we, that you grumble against us? <\/em><\/p>\n

I’m not one who usually finds recurrent product & pleasure in programs that require physical stagnancy, like video games or television shows or quiet reading (which is a shame because I want so badly to want<\/em> to read, but my antsy legs have minds of their collective own), but there are ways to perform & receive stimulation through stasis, & some of them I’m finding I quite like.<\/p>\n

\"\"Mostly I’ve discovered it’s a matter of relevance & calculation – find one aspect of television you deem worthy, look forward to it, & sit down & watch it.\u00c2\u00a0 For the past month, this calculation has been college basketball, & there are few things in life that can pull me out of my seat faster than a buzzer beater.\u00c2\u00a0 In this way, the NCAA tournament becomes a strictly visceral experience, an Artaudian experiment of popular culture: find a language, a method, that moves the audience to their feet, moves them to tears, to expletives – find this & you speak directly to the hearts of man.<\/p>\n

Now that the tournament has ended (UNC holding onto the title as continuous bane of my existence, those athletically impeccable bastards), this reflection on sports culture as social performance is ever the more prominent.\u00c2\u00a0 Even if situated alone on the couch, give me a tied game with 8.3 seconds on the clock, possession arrow pointed the right way, & I’m a physical, blundering wreck.\u00c2\u00a0 The string of four letter words wakes the neighbor’s dog, the banister on the stairs is rocked precariously on its molding, my shirt could be torn my teeth are digging so far into the cotton — these are all purely physical, “gut” reactions to ultimately inconsequential performances taking place in a location sometimes hundreds of miles from myself.\u00c2\u00a0 And what does this teach us?\u00c2\u00a0 That the discovery of language that taps into the immediacy of man’s desiring is enough to control the social market?\u00c2\u00a0 Or perhaps that we perform as individuals much as we perform in self-functional circles so long as we preserve that self-functional role?<\/p>\n

In my mind, it’s mostly a question of reactionary performance: we observe, we react, & we dilute this reaction beyond a point of consequence.\u00c2\u00a0 As a result, college basketball controls minds, makes slobbering lunatics of citizens, & when it ends the world is all the better for it.\u00c2\u00a0 Now if only this helped my bracket.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

and in the morning you will see the glory of the LORD, for He hears your grumblings against the LORD; and what are we, that you grumble against us? I’m not one who usually finds recurrent product & pleasure in … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-146","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.elsweb.org\/nsftmfx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.elsweb.org\/nsftmfx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.elsweb.org\/nsftmfx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.elsweb.org\/nsftmfx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.elsweb.org\/nsftmfx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=146"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.elsweb.org\/nsftmfx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":151,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.elsweb.org\/nsftmfx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146\/revisions\/151"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.elsweb.org\/nsftmfx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=146"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.elsweb.org\/nsftmfx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=146"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.elsweb.org\/nsftmfx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=146"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}