imomus

y u always look so tired momus

CUT YOUR HAIR MOMUS

hitler? AGAIN?

NO THIS IS WHAT JAPAN IS SUPPOSED TO BE

ANONYMOUS TRYING TO BE FUNNY BUT DOESN'T MAKE ANY SENSE

i really love [insert musician i'm currently obsessed with here] more than you momus I HATE YOU

why do you only hang out with japanese people? why do you only hang out with white men with japanese girlfriends?

YOU KNOW NOTHING ABOUT ART

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"why do you only hang out with japanese people? why do you only hang out with white men with japanese girlfriends?"

Does anyone else cringe at the way momus pretty much always refers to specific people of minority by their race/sexuality like it's their profession or title or something? Like he's trying to add an "ethnic/minority flavor" to his pieces?

Remember that "Welcome to Britain" entry where he mentioned the black guy getting out of the car, and someone started lampooning him on the follow up thread by writing this reversed scenario:

"okayokay just one more:

A white man gets out of the train and comes into the flat to reform them. 'Look at yourself, mate, you've got to stop using the stuff. Clean up your flat, man, have some aesthetic, get out of this state you're in, it's a fucking shame on you, man!' He's a winner, the junkie's a loser. Clean up a flat, have an aesthetic, get a laptop, join the winners.

-- ken c (ken c), Wednesday, 29 December 2004 16:20"

Momus man, stop unnecessarily mentioning the race/sexuality of the minorities you hang with. I'm not accusing you of racism/homophobia, it's just the only people who are that conscious of race/sexuality are my grandparents or middle English white tories who hardly ever encounter minorities because they're from the home counties.

You were born in 1960 right? You're officially a babyboomer, and it shows. JAPANESE PEOPLE ARE NOT FASHION ACCESSORIES.

Just think, if you were born in 1961 you could have been a generation X'er and you wouldnt be saying that shit. Or better still if you were born 20 years later you could have been a Generation Y'er and been even more cool.

CHECK THE CRAZY SHIT US GENERATION Y FOLK ARE UP TO:

American Apparel are now selling ironic vintage clothes for your motherfucking dog. We are the coolest fucking generation ever. In fact, after we become old there should be a nuclear holocaust because nobody will ever top this shit. ever.

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The world is divided into people who think that differences-that-make-a-difference should be mentioned because they make a difference and those who think that differences-that-make-a-difference shouldn't be mentioned because they shouldn't make a difference. I fall into the first group. You're either with us or you're against us, Kumakouji!

From: (Anonymous)

you hurried to leave the first comment of the new year just to be a rudie tudie??? this is not in the holiday spirit at all, jealous much?

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BAH HUMBUG!

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electricwitch.livejournal.com

LOL N00B

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are you secretly an italian plumber momus?

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Happy 2008, Microworlds! Nice piece of prolepsis (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prolepsis) there!

New Year is a great time for prolepsis, because it's a time for anticipations, for looking forward. We could look forward to the book my brother (http://www1.uea.ac.uk/cm/home/schools/hum/lit/People/Professor%2BMark%2BCurrie) is supposed to be publishing this year, "The Unexpected", for instance, which explores "issues of anticipation and prolepsis in relation to contemporary fiction and the philosophy of time". We could look forward to my own work of metafiction, due later this year, "The Book of Jokes". Or we could simply celebrate the fact that Click Opera manages to anticipate (http://imomus.livejournal.com/340088.html) articles on the BBC News website (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7166159.stm) with uncanny accuracy. You anticipated it here first, folks!

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DON'T USE THAT PHALLIC SQUID ICON WITH ME, MISTER!

How many siblings do you have? AND WHY DO THEY ALL LOOK LIKE YOU? I don't know, it kind of freaks me out a little bit. None of my siblings look like me, one of my sisters is unnaturally tan so we tease her and say that she's the daughter of the UPS man that delivers packages to our house. For me, I'm the daughter of Saddam Hussein. I'm mourning the loss of my father, just so you know. ;____________;

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I have one brother, one sister. Actually, they don't look like me. It's more a case of us all -- the male Curries, anyway -- being just the most shameless Bowie impersonators:

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In my opinion you do! When people say that I look like my sisters, I say the same thing.

And that image is killing me, by the way. It might replace my sad puppy (http://i2.tinypic.com/836uw5k.jpg) wallpaper. I just have to decide if I want your face appearing every time I log on to my account or not.

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petit-paradis.livejournal.com

GELUKKIG NIEUWJAAR!

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Wow, a tanuki outfit that you can wear like a portable duvet! Performance art-ready at all times!

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That's in very poor taste, post SF-Tiger, Kuma. What if the glass had shattered and the polar bear had gone on a killing spree?

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I dont care about the polar bear escaping; I'm dressed as a cat. The girl dressed as a seal cub is the one who should be worried.

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Now, why did you have to mention the species of animal you're dressed as? In fact, mention of the species of any of the four animals involved (human, cat, bear, seal) is specious boomer rubbish! As would be any reference to their age demographics, of course.

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Polar bears eat seal cubs, but they dont eat cats. Therefore, specific relevance.

I dont need to know that your neighbours are Japanese when all you did was hang out with them for NYE (happy new year by the way)
I dont need to know the friend youre having coffee with is a communist homosexual. etc.

Everytime you mention someone, I want you to mention their race and sexuality from now. Especially all the white hetrosexuals. I want you to say "Mark E. Smith, a white heterosexual, released a track this year...etc" or " welcoming Shizu (a Japanese heterosexual) and David (a white heterosexual) from Tokyo".

It sounds weird doesnt it? Thats what you sound like to us younger, cosmopolitan folk, like.

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It doesn't sound any weirder than describing it as an age issue. Which you're entirely welcome to do, by the way, as long as you realise that by saying my age group categorizes and yours doesn't, you're somewhat undermining your point by... categorizing.

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Age can have relevance in this particular discussion -- Britain's younger generations are much more likely to have grown up around people of other races and being gay isnt anywhere near the big deal it was in the past, therefore taking away its novelty. but yes, ultimately its an individual issue, which is why I only mentioned the boomer thing with my tongue in my cheek. Next you'll be thinking I genuinely think we need a nuclear holocaust...

(I DO REALLY)

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Well, I can't at all accept the idea that you -- or people your age -- are more "cosmopolitan folk" than I am, or that you've lived more around other races. I'm the son of an itinerant EFL teacher, we lived in all sorts of different cultures when I was growing up, I married a British Bangladeshi, I've lived all over the place. I really don't think younger people are more cosmopolitan than that.

Let's talk again when you've travelled as much as I have, and been as close to people from other races and cultures, and then we might agree that it's exposure to different cultures which actually brings home the realisation that culture is a "difference that makes a difference". In other words, I mention people's races, nationalities, genders, sexual orientations and so on precisely because I've seen at first hand how determinant they are.

Labels like "Japanese" are a shorthand way of telling you a huge amount of information about people and situations. And sure, it's stereotypical information if the only thing you know about the category invoked is a stereotype. But if I say "Japanese" to someone who knows a lot about the culture -- you, for instance -- it's going to invoke a much more sophisticated set of associations than if I were to say it to, for instance, my grandparents.

So the shorthand is only as reductive as the person I'm talking to's knowledge is reduced. If it's an expanded knowledge, the shorthand expands to something pretty impressive. The moral imperative, then, is to make sure you keep educating people about what "Japanese" really means, rather than trying to say that "Japanese" means nothing.

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Stereotypes exist for the following reasons:

a) they represent an accurate trait of a majority of a group (English people like tea)

b) they represent an accurate trait of a minority of a group thats in the public forefront, thus overshadowing the majority (homosexuals are effeminate)

c) they represent an inaccurate, culturally fabricated trait of a group, widely known to the public (black people are thieves, English people are highly intelligent and well spoken, Americans are fat and loud)

Trying to determine the source of every stereotype going is very difficult indeed, in fact, a, b and c can sometime overlap. Not only this, but of course everyone is an individual, making stereotypes much less valuable on an individual level.

I think its fair to say that stereotypes only have relevance when you know whether they fall into group a, b or c and when youre talking about the group as a whole. Your neighbors are not a group as a whole, theyre individuals. Stereotypes tell me very little about them.

Even if you disagree with this, Im just telling you that a lot of people will find your need to point out someone's minority group ("black, gay, japanese, etc") as slightly off colour and a little strange. You rarely say "white" or "heterosexual" which shows your cultural bias, even if you're as well traveled and exposed to minorities as you say.

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There's the IT and there's the OTHER. In order for the OTHER not to vanish from all visibility / audibility, you have to specify the OTHER by name. If you don't, people will assume you're talking about the IT. Unless I say (or, more likely, insinuate "between the lines") that someone is gay, the assumption will be that he's straight. Unless I say specifically that a program is for Mac, the assumption will be (if no platform is mentioned) that it's a PC program. If I tell you that, in Germany, I spent New Year's Eve with the neighbours, there'll be an assumption that they're, if not German, at least Caucasian. So if they're Asian neighbours I will specify that. And I'm not quite sure why you'd want me not to, really.

That said, last night there were British, Americans, Japanese, Polish, Germans and Russians at that party. But at a certain point I noticed that a kind of filtration took place; one room became all Japanese (plus me), the other became Russian-Polish-German. It was very interesting the way it developed. Basically, all the Japanese people were watching slides of the Biwako Biennial (host Yoshito just spent three months as one of its organizers). The Russians and Poles were chatting away, and suddenly felt the rest of us (ie the Japanese and me) gazing silently at "them". In fact, we were watching the screen. The Russians and Poles realised that we were watching the slides, laughed, said something about how they'd been worried for a moment, feeling all those eyes on them. Soon after, they drifted off to the other room, where their chatter wouldn't bother us. There was a certain quietness and seriousness in the Japanese room, as we watched slides and films. The space of the apartment organised itself, at that point, on cultural lines. There were two different parties with two different atmospheres.

I noticed a couple of times during the course of the evening German males, slightly drunk, trying to "cheer the Japanese up" with some surreal, whacky jokes. The Japanese responded with polite laughter, but basically this approach wasn't really encouraged, and the "whacky" German males drifted off to watch fireworks or find more beer. There was a certain atmosphere when the Germans left, when it was just the Japanese (and me!) in the room. It's an atmosphere I like very much, naturally. Quite an introverted but also a relaxed and sensual one. There's a lot of attention to food (rather than drink) in that situation, a lot of attentiveness to others' needs ("have you tried this yet?"), but also space for someone to drift off to sleep on a couch if they want to. There's a refreshing absence of grandstanding and cockish behaviour disguised as "humour".

I always feel specially privileged to be able to share that atmosphere. It's one of my life's leitmotifs -- wanting to be the only non-Japanese in a room full of Japanese, to sort of soak up their way of being by symbiosis. I am a man with "marked preferences" -- another word, if you like, for love.

From: (Anonymous)

When Shaun Ryder wrote a column for the Daily Star, everytime he mentioned someone's name it preceded their age in parentheses.

What do imomus and Hikikomori think of that?

happy new year.

Anonymous Smoker (6' 2", Scots/Irish/American/English/ White/Heterosexual/omnivore/ favourite colour green/24 teeth/ 4 highers/ no driving license/ favourite band - Spiritualized

From: (Anonymous)

etc etc - forgot the close bracket)

From: (Anonymous)

... sorry I meant 'height', not age.

So much for smoking being Alzheimer's buffer

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Was Ryder satirizing newspapers' tendency to put ages in brackets after people's names?

Anyroad, I think the more categories the merrier. I really appreciated your self-categorization:

Anonymous Smoker (6' 2", Scots/Irish/American/English/ White/Heterosexual/omnivore/ favourite colour green/24 teeth/ 4 highers/ no driving license/ favourite band - Spiritualized

Because, while you are obviously a hell of a lot more than that and I don't want to "fence you in", I vastly prefer having that information about you (assuming it's relatively accurate) than just having an IP address and thinking of you as another grey ghost, another Anon.

Do I want to wear a blindfold? To I want to respond to everyone irregardless of their specificities? NO! Because, contrary to what we're told, that's not justice. Blindfold Justice cannot be just.

From: (Anonymous)

The accuracy point is a good one - I mean, Spiritualized are only my favourite band because they made my favourite LP. But I don't listen to it that much anymore - don't need to, it's printed onto whatever bit of my brain stores the music. (See 'mild autism' below)

24 teeth? Well, I just counted the other week, but it's still not the whole picture. I've got a molar that's had its amalgam fall out, so is that a tooth or a half tooth? Then there's the caps not counted, held in place by roots that are of biological origin but are long dead.

Brian Eno's diary has an entry where you define yourself "father" "son" "musician" etc, then you go back and give yourself marks out of ten for each.

Yep, I'm much more than my three line description, For one thing, midly autistic. I like to listen to music I like repeatedly to the exclusion of all other music. The current music is "Mule Variations" played thru the speaker of a mobile phone. It really works in mono. it's like Tom's alive and trapped in the phone. But Spiritualized - that music is brain food, although it only works in stereo or in memory.

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Oh, I do that with music too. I'm basically only listening to Akio Suzuki's "K7 Box" over and over at the moment.

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alphacomp.livejournal.com

Ah, but do you want to be a stock photo?

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JEALOUSY

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alphacomp.livejournal.com

EVERYBODY WANTS TO BE A STOCK PHOTO

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NOT EVERYONE CAN BE AS FABULOUS AS ME ALRIGHT

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electricwitch.livejournal.com

THIS DISCUSSION IS SO INTERESTING

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xvs.livejournal.com

happy new year! :)

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cap-scaleman.livejournal.com

Happy new western year. I can't wait until the year of the rat arrives sometime in the end of january/early february.

From: (Anonymous)

Do you think the 1969 moon walk was a hoax? I'm not convinced myself.....feliz ano nuevo

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Who knows? I mean, there was some competition with the Russians.

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obliterati.livejournal.com

A lot of the material used to debunk the moonlanding(s) are items which could be made with Photoshop or with the basic reasoning a lawyer uses to "prove" a false argument, but what gets me stuck is the Van Allen radiation belt (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van_Allen_radiation_belt). There really shouldn't have been a way for astronauts to survive passing back and forth through it, but somehow all the Apollo astronauts passed through unscathed. Pretty interesting problem there!

From: (Anonymous)

Yeh, but if you read the rest of the Wiki page you link to, it says that the astronauts had limited exposure within safe levels.

If you want conspiracy theories, they'll need to be a bit more convincing than a link to a page that clearly states, in very basic scientific language, that the radiation belt wasn't even a risk to the astronauts.

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obliterati.livejournal.com

People want to doubt the veracity of numerous news organizations, President Nixon, NASA, all the astronauts themselves and every technician along the way, but a wikipedia page stating "the crew's short-term exposure was still within acceptable levels" must obviously be true.

Here (http://www.clavius.org/envrad.html) is a superior website describing the point about the radiation belt, from a pro-NASA viewpoint. They suggest that shielding wasn't as important as traveling through the the right location in orbit, and this site apparently even includes a quote by Dr. Van Allen himself to back it up. The idea is that astronauts travelled quickly enough through the right areas to have avoided a lethal dose, but no one else thinks it's possible. By "no one else" I mean other services which send people into orbit. Again, it's reality versus media, what does a web designer know that a cosmonaut does not?

It will be most interesting if the Chinese actually get there in the next decade as planned! I've been most curious to see what they might find!

From: (Anonymous)

Err, don't understand what you're saying. You're (probably?) kidding when you say the Wikipedia page 'must obviously be true' - if so, why link to it?

The views, fantastic or otherwise, of "other services" that "send people into orbit" aren't much of a help here:

- "into orbit" of what? If you mean into the Earth's orbit, then these agencies are talking outwith their own experience. People have orbited earth for decades, safely far away from the radiaton belt, cos they don't pass thru it in order to orbit the earth, do they!!

- if these "other services" are sending people into orbit of other plantes or satellites, well, that's another question entirely. One I'm sure star goalkeeper David Icke (unintentional space pun) could answer, in his own unique style.

So -if the Chinese government sends people to the moon, all they'll find is grey dust, craters and the United States flag.

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obliterati.livejournal.com

Maybe Chinese taikonauts will land and they'll force the grey dust to relocate so they can build a dam! Or maybe they'll find a Tibetan flag instead!

re: "other services", the Russians have explicitly said it's too dangerous for humans to be exposed to that kind of radiation, and numerous cosmonauts have expressed great trepidation about attempting it. And despite the vast Russian superiority to the American space program (and also their open willingness to irradiate their citizens actually) they never tried sending a person to the moon, in all these decades. Why is that? Is it because it's impossible? I'm not saying I believe the conspiracy exactly, I'm just curious about technical details.

(I did not in fact read the entire wikipedia page before posting the link. I probably rely on wikipedia too much for technical descriptions actually. Thanks for the catch.)

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