Skip to main content

Marginalia on Marginalism in Contemporary Times

Marcos is gay in San Francisco, black in South Africa, an Asian in Europe, a Chicano in San Ysidro, an anarchist in Spain, a Palestinian in Israel, a Mayan Indian in the streets of San Cristobal, a gang member in Neza, a rocker in the National University, a Jew in Nazi Germany, an ombudsman in the Defense Ministry, a communist in the post-Cold War era, an artist without gallery or portfolio.... A pacifist in Bosnia, a housewife alone on Saturday night in any neighborhood in any city in Mexico, a striker in the CTM, a reporter writing filler stories for the back pages, a single woman on the subway at 10 pm, a peasant without land, an unemployed worker... an unhappy student, a dissident amid free market economics, a writer without books or readers, and, of course, a Zapatista in the mountains of southeast Mexico. So Marcos is a human being, any human being, in this world. Marcos is all the exploited, marginalized and oppressed minorities, resisting and saying, 'Enough'!


–El Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos





To refuse awards is another way of accepting them with more noise than is normal.


—Peter Ustinov





The marginality of intellectuals is a myth; even in the resolutely hermetic world of Washington, their voices are heard.


–James Atlas, 19 October 2003, in The New York Times

Norton Homo

The Corpse would like to announce the return of Little Man (Norton). Wilhelm Reich's admonition, "Listen, Little Man," seems to have finally found an ear (of corn).

Etiquette: A Beginner's Guide to Threesomes

Public speaking instructors invariably recommend visualizing your audience as naked to relieve the stress of giving your speech. This is in contrast to a very typical characterization of public humiliation: that you are standing in front of a bunch of people and none of them are naked except you. Well, I say compromise—everybody ought to be naked.

Our Evil Days

We have to teach the baby, begged our brother Linus. He dwelt in the Yellow Room, the brilliant canary walls of which kept siblings at bay. We can't let her forget her native language.

America?s Zen will have to happen without our conscious knowledge of it

(or The American DoubleBind)

In the west, in America specifically, there has been for a long time now the separation of church and state – that is the separation of religion from the state of being alive. Religion has been relegated to the reliquary and rules, in the majority of our minds, only the dark province of death.

Two Works

You may speak until the first obscenity. Then you will have to stop. That night was my first in company since my depression and I was anxious to appear “the life of the party” so I told my joke.

Sheherezade?s Ventriloquists

Although many classics have undergone profound metamorphoses over time, nothing compares to the variety of the Nights.

Floating with Alice

When I brought home yet another slightly substandard report card at fifteen, my father discussed it with me in the way that had become his wont. He grabbed me by the hair, which was getting longish, since the Summer of Love had already gone by, and banged my head against a wall until I repented my underachieving ways and pled for mercy.

Kill All Machines

Virus is accelerated to the brain universe that was processed the paradise apparatus of the human body pill cruel emulator corpse feti=streaming of the soul/gram made of retro-ADAM data=mutant of her abolition world-codemaniacs feeling replicant****I...

Sentencias

Two fat & lazy nickels can't equal the nervous intensity of a dime.

A Question in Georgia

A derived text sourced from An Education in Georgia: The Integration of Charlayne Hunter and Hamilton Holmes, by Calvin Trillin, 1966.

Perseveration happens!

Patients with recurrent perseveration as part of a fluent left temporal lobe aphasia often consciously intend to produce a requested target on confrontation testing in the clinic. However, suddenly and quite unexpectedly, they will have a perseveration happen to them...