Coffee, Capitalism, Pad Khee Maow

This will be a three-parter. Hope you're good and excited, because you're going to end up good and bored by the end...

1. I had a fierce craving for coffee last night while at dinner (see below for details on dinner.) After dinner, watching Mythbusters, then trying to fall asleep, I was stoked to wake up this morning and get to drink more coffee. And here I am, living the dream.

On an unrelated note, for the last few days I've been off the sauce. I realized that I've been tipsy every night since moving to Santa Cruz, which clocks in at, oh, just about three months. I felt fine and I felt functional, but in a perfect world, I would only drink on weekends. I'll probably treat myself to some more delicious cheap wine tomorrow, but I'll be trying to dry out a bit otherwise.


2. I'm linked to three brilliant anti-capitalists whom I know from UO:

1. My beloved friend and ally Ms. Rossi.
2. My esteemed Americanist francophile V.
3. My favorite decorative and erudite Spartacist.

I'm also participating in the capitalism/anti-capitalism reading group at UCSC. In the midst of this swirl of influences, I've been thinking quite a bit about the problems with talking about capitalism as such, the most serious of which seems to me to be the fact that the destructive things capitalism does (make some people rich and most people poor, advantage nations that are already wealthy over ones that aren't, gut safety nets in favor of false meritocracies) are not obvious in the lived experience of most Americans, and furthermore "capitalism" is such a tiny signifier in relation to that which it signifies that it becomes almost useless as a descriptive term. To really get a handle on how capitalism works seems to take the thorough and thoughtful reading of a great number of very, very dense books (starting with Marx and going through present-day critical theory like the stuff we're reading for the study group: David Harvey, Mike Davis, Hardt + Negri, etc.)

Meanwhile, most "capitalists, " among whom I'd include 99% of Americans who are just interested in living a decent life and owning some nice things, don't have to read a lick of theory or analysis. They just try to get a job and then try to get a raise. I don't even think it's particularly helpful to use concepts like "hegemony" or "reification" in trying to explain it because doing so implies a kind of "true" outside-of-capitalism consciousness that has been buried or subverted, but I don't think there's anything "false" about the way most Americans look at their own vocations, nor do I think the pursuit of comfort and advantage has been limited to modern capitalist societies.

That all said, I've never been more interested in and concerned about the (political and economic) state of the world. As a grad student, I will continue reading and talking about it. And as a watered-down political pragmatist, I'll vote for the Democratic candidate every single election.

3. We went out to Thai food last night. Ana + Colin ended up paying for it, because they threw money down on the check and refused to take it back. In the same sense that certain albums are just perfect all the way through (The Hives' Veni Vidi Vicious, Turbonegro's Apocalypse Dudes, Nick Cave + The Bad Seeds' Let Love In), certain meals just nail it every time. I will thus take this opportunity to salute Chicken Pad Khee Maow + Thai Iced Tea. You can't go wrong.