Americotrop-ism: n. literally, a tendency or habit of moving towards America; hence, a tendency or habit of adopting American culture, vocabulary and usage when one is not oneself American. | -ist, -ic(al) [Americ(a) + -o- + tropism, on the analogy of phototropism, chemotropism, geotropism, etc]
• “The Guardian-reading community displays a marked Americotropism.”
V. disappointed by China Miéville on BBC Radio 4’s Book Club (Sunday 1st November). It took him eight minutes to say “in terms of”.
All right-thinking folk are agreed that the Peckham-based author and visionary Michael Moorcock is a core colossus of the counter-culture. As the Guardian put it in 2007, he’s “the incendiary keystone of the visionary vortex that crystallized around New Worlds magazine in the 1960s, sparking a transgressive tornado that has sculpted paradigm-defying narratives of mutant sexuality, psychology and politics on an almost daily basis for over fifty years.”
But how often have keyly committed components of the Moorcock-fan community wished they had some objective mode of metricizing the coreness of the colossusness of his counter-culturality?
Well, the wait is over dot dot dot
site:http://www.multiverse.org/ “in terms of”
About 4,910 results (0.56 seconds)
• in terms of sci-fi recommendations, I gotta go — Moorcock’s
• They’re really rebellious in terms of gender, in terms of sex, in terms of politics, the portrayal of society and race, and I really want that to be …
• In terms of games I am rediscovering Zelda: Majora’s Mask with updated graphics and sound.
• … and to describe such elements in terms of Good and Evil seems (as I hope I demonstrate) a rather useless way of looking at our problems.
• We’ve reached a point, in this new century, that can be identified as both technologically and sociologically, futuristic, even in terms of the very recent past and …
• I’m wondering about stillborn-siblings in terms of esoterica: are they the next sibling born after the stillbirth, making a short appearance (i.e. is …
• I can say I’ve had one good experience with a press release distribution service, in terms of acquiring reviews.
• In terms of chronology, however, it would have to fit in somewhere between the novels The Fortress of the Pearl and The Sailor on the Seas of [Fate]
Elsewhere other-posted:
“The Naz and Matt Foundation was announced at a special service held in London for Nazim, two weeks after his funeral. The service featured contributions from a gay Muslim, gay Hindu, a gay vicar, a trainee Rabbi and a lesbian interfaith minister.” — My boyfriend killed himself because his family couldn’t accept that he was gay, The Guardian, 21/iii/2015.
Proviously post-posted (please peruse):
• Oh My Guardian #2
Q. How many Guardianistas does it take to change a light-bulb?
A. In terms of an initial / preliminary response around this obviously loaded question, I’d like to begin by problematicizing the notion that it is possible to erect an overt illuminational hierarchy whereby notions of “light” are privileged over notions of “darkness” through deployment of an “objective” and/or “value-free” modality of environmental interrogation via soi disant “sensory” channels. Next, it will (of course) be vital to undertake an in-depth consultation-exercise / impact-assessment with any and all vulnerable minority-communities of ethnicity, sexuality, gender-fluidity and/or other alternate ontology. We must ensure, on a keyly non-negotiable basis of absolute core non-negotiability, that their “fringe” inputs are prioritized on an on-going basis in terms of the decision-making process taking place around the problematicized notion of “changing” the allegedly “dead” so-called “bulb”. Issues around adequate resourcing of the consultation-exercise / impact-assessment must be addressed as a matter of urgency, with ring-fenced contingencies in place safeguarding provision of all necessary trauma counselling for vulnerable communities and/or individuals adversely impacted on a negative basis by the “bulb”-transitioning procedure and/or (indeed) the consultation-exercise / impact-assessment it/them/self/ves. Furthermore…
There’s only one word for it: toxic. The proliferation of this word is an incendiarily irritating abjectional aspect of contemporary culture. My visit to Google Ngram has confirmed my worst suspicions:
Toxic in English
Toxic in English fiction
“Feral” isn’t irritating in quite the same way, but has similarly proliferated:
Feral in English
Feral in English fiction
Noxious note: In terms of majorly maximal members of the Maverick Messiah community (such as myself), it goes without saying that when we deploy such items of Guardianese, we are being ironic dot dot dot
Previously pre-posted (please peruse):
• Septics vs Dirties
• Ex-term-in-ate!
• Reds Under the Thread
• Titus Graun…
The Guardian undertakes a close hermeneutical analysis of some respected figures in the rap community and their complex and challenging lyrical interrogation of issues around neo-liberal capitalism:
In contemporary America, success in overcoming adversity (and often systemic racism) is most often represented in financial terms, and it’s a recurring theme in hip-hop. Consider Kanye West:
I treat the cash the way the government treats AIDS
I won’t be satisfied til all my niggas get it, get it?Or Dr Dre:
Get your money right
Don’t be worried ’bout the next man – make sure your business tight
Get your money right
Go inside the safe, grab your stash that you copped tonight
Get your money right
Be an international player, don’t be scared to catch those red eye flights
You better get your money right
Cause when you out there on the streets, you gotta get it – get itOr even TI himself:
Regardless what haters say I’m as real as they come
I’m chasin that paper baby however it come
I’m singin a song and movin yay by the ton
I bet you never seen a nigga gettin money so young.
“The recent election of Syriza in Greece offers a vibrant glimmer of hope for the future of social and economic democracy in Europe.” — from a letter to The Guardian by Judith Butler, Slavoj Žižek, Jacqueline Rose, et al.
I hope that nobody thinks I’m being racially prejudiced when I say that, much though I am fascinated by her, I do not find the Anglo-American academic Mikita Brottman physically attractive. It is her mind that has raised my longstanding interest, nothing more.
Honest.
This is because, for me, Ms B is like a mirror that reverses not left and right, but male and female.
Obviously, we’re different in a lot of ways: I don’t smoke and I don’t have any tattoos, for example.
But there are big similarities too.
We were born in the same year (1956) and we were both keyly core contributors to seminal early issues of the transgressive journal Headpress Journal.
And we have various other things in common, like our mutually shared passion for corpse’n’cannibal cinema, our Glaswegian accents and (at different times) our season tickets for Hull Kingston Rovers.
So it is that, looking at Ms B, I have the uncanny experience of seeing myself as I might have been, had I been born female.
But it’s not just uncanny.
It’s horrifying at times too.
Okay, I’m comfortable with the idea that, born female, I would have been less intelligent and more conformist. So I don’t mind that Ms B is a Guardianista. Not particularly. I can face the fact that I would quite likely have been one of them too, as a female.
But there are worse things than being a Guardianista, believe it or not.
Ms B has a PhD in EngLit.
A PhD!
In EngLit.
It’s not at all easy for me to face the fact that I might have had one too, as a female. It really isn’t. But how can I deny it? I might have. That despicable, deplorable, thoroughly disreputable subject might have attracted me. In fact, it would probably have attracted me.
<retch>
But it gets worse still.
Ms B is a psychoanalyst.
A psychoanalyst.
Ach du lieber Gott!
See what I mean by “horrifying”?
I mean, even if I’d been born female I wouldn’t have sunk to such depths, would I? Would I? No, I have to face facts: I might. But I don’t think so. I have a feeling that there’s more to Brotty’s interest in Freud than her gender statusicity and her key commitment to core componency of the counter-cultural community.
But I’d better say no more. Verb sap.
“…We’re not so much a reaction against what’s going on – it’s more down to the music that we’re into – but in terms of guitar music there hasn’t been much in terms of louder groups.” – Bored of cookie-cutter conformity in music?, The Guardian, 6/iii/ 2014.
Elsewhere other-posted:
Overlord In Terms of Core Issues Around Maximal Engagement with Key Notions of the Über-Feral 