bacchus wasted

John Hinckley Jr. wasn’t much of an assassin.

On the 30th of March 1981 John managed to pump six shots in the direction of the president. Six shots, and not a single one hit the target. However, Karma would intervene and one of John’s bullets ricocheted off the amour plated presidential limo finding a path into Reagan’s chest, just missing his heart. The bullet might have actually done more damaged had John not decided to use the terribly unsuited .22 pistol (the pea shooter of hand guns) for the job.

John Hinkley Jr. tried to impress a girl by killing the president, and botched it horribly.

Dionysus_Stoned wasn’t much of a blogger. He ‘re-members’ some fifty posts, and now, almost all of them are gone.

In the novel Beloved, the characters use the term re-memory to highlight the ways in which history and narrative inaugurate the truths and realties of our world. Re-memory always implies specific choices, ommisions, styles basically everything that goes into the fictioning of an-other history.

But then what kind of a history was DS fictioning? He thought it would be more difficult to delete them, but once he got started it was easy. He felt nothing for those words - mainly about smoking ganja- all of them shit.All of them accept one.

He couldn’t delete one blog, the attachment was too strong. So he saved it. It wasn’t that it was particularly clever (in fact it was more then a little silly) or even well written. Maybe it was just a ricochet effect; a bullet that found a path into his chest by the intervention of the forces of coincidence. Still it seemed to him that behind the pretentious ‘fucking up’ of other people’s ideas, there was something worth re-membering. Something to make an-other history with.

For some folks, re-memory is means through which the silences and omissions of the dominant order are animated for the living present. It is a revolutionary process through which affect, emotion and subjectivity become central to the ways in which meaning is constituted in the world. A way for subjugated knowledge’s to come alive in/for the here and now.

He started a blog in order to make Raj Patel’s blog roll, but botched it horribly. He re-membered some fifty post by deleting them, all, except one-

Schizoid Writing: The Ricochet Effect

Distracted. Bored. I wonder about the voice Bacchus_Wasted - or rather the box it operates.

There are always at least three-and a function. The first is a legal identity, the second, a public representative, and the third is desire. Each is a separate identity and yet it is impossible to separate them. Their names are convenience… the mark of a conditional independence. Like a Deleuzian machine, it ‘works only by breaking down’-breaking apart! a unity-me .

Convenience: The function f(x), where x is the Name

Of the three the f(DS) has dominion. In psychoanalytic terms we call this the repression of f(BW). But every now and again f(BW) takes over and we don’t care-anyway the ‘I’ is better for it. -or rather, the ‘I’ is lost in the fact of creation-

I add that this is all playful-reckless rubbish that collapses under the weight of the masters that it invokes (deleuze, marx, lacan-) - one or two philosophers are tuning white in terror at sight of my blasphemous-far fetched fucking up of their ideas, albeit it in their graves. Still, in the FICTIONING of an identity, anything/everything is possible-so fuck them-

This was written in the voice of f(BW) so that f(DS) can post something on Baccus_Wasted’s blog to make clear to all, that both are full of shit-.however only f(y) can be blamed-

look out for part three: Re-membering Blogmark(provisional title)

Raj Patel made him do it. But DS can’t blame him!

In summer of 1976 John Hinckley Jr. watched martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver fifteen times. Not surprising then, this yarn about precarious male subjectivity left an indelible mark on the impressionable mind of 21 year old boy from Texas. But Hinckley’s fascination with the movie would also set in motion a series of events that resolved into one of the most notoriously tragic stories of unrequited love in US history.

Years later, as John made the final preparations for assassinating US president Ronald Reagan, he wasn’t thinking about some nobel cause worth killing and dying for. He wasn’t thinking about the dozen or more ’secret service’ agents guarding the president either. He wasn’t doing this for Castro, the pope, Hitler, or any other prophet. No, John was thinking about love and he was doing it for her. The last thing he did before leaving for the presidential engagement at the Hilton Hotel was to write a letter to the woman he loved; Jodie Foster.

In the five years that had passed since he first watched Taxi Driver, John’s growing obsession with guns was matched only be his obsession with the movie’s young star. His final letter to her was simple - plainly addressed ‘Dear Jodie’ and written with great care and tenderness. He knew he might be killed in the attempt on the president, but he wanted her to know that he loved her and was doing this for her:

I will admit to you that the reason I’m going ahead with this attempt now is because I cannot wait any longer to impress you. I’ve got to do something now to make you understand, in no uncertain terms, that I’m doing all of this for your sake! By sacrificing my freedom and possibly my life, I hope to change your mind about me. This letter is being written only an hour before I leave for the Hilton Hotel. Jodie, I’m asking you to please look into your heart and at least give the chance, with this historical deed, to gain your love and respect.
John Hinckley’s Letter to Jodie Foster

John was obviously crazy, and there was probably alot more that was wrong with him as well. But the crazy gunman in me, safely tucked away in the paradoxical arrangement i calls my psyche, feels bad for John Hinckley Jr. locked away in a high security psychiatric facility. I imagine a sorrowful old man - sitting by a window overlooking a security fence, his legs tucked away under a blanket - wondering ‘how the fuck did I get so messed up?’. I have no idea what he tells himself, but I am sure he doesn’t blame Jodie.

Some time ago, DS read Raj Patel’s blog and it was an inspiration. He wanted one as well.

Alot has happened since then. The blog started and abandoned on blogger. the +/- fifty posts on blogmark. the blog he I still hasn’t got around to reinstalling. And then, in a fit of regret and anger deleting all his posts in order to start again. Alot indeed, but then all of it was empty.

DS wonders; ‘how the fuck did I get so messed up?’

He is out of Rizla. He grabs the phone book and tears out the page listing the surname van de merwe, and uses it to roll a joint. He blazes up and begins reading what BW has written. Like our imagined Hinckley, he is trying to make sense of series of tragic events that led him here; The only thing he is sure of is that he can’t blame raj anymore then John can blame Jodie.

This is part of a series of blogs grouped under the title Self Reflexivity. Look out for part two: re-memory.