i feel that, despite some little crises this year, i wrote well. here is some of what i'm happiest with.
i think that this ecstatic love thing is the best personal essay i've written.
russ smith and splice today have been great for me, i think, and i really have done a variety of things,
such as this thing about partying with inxs in 1984, this celebration of miranda lambert, this history of mullet country and a memoir of richard rorty.
then there was the amazing concept of why they suck, whose victims included dylan, the boss, stephen hawking, and pablo picasso. i produced a methodological treatise on the science of suckology. pretty happy with my year in review. i'm of two minds about suckology because sometimes it feels relentlessly negative. on the other hand i do mint a good insult, i think, and you've got to use the talents what god gave you. also, honestly, i see the emperor's white ass and you can't! haha! if i do not find complete inner peace, future annihilations may well include lou reed, the beatles, allen ginsberg, and ludwig wittgenstein.
on and off the political columns for splice were pretty good, i think. i like this pair about gender and the election: commander in chief of appearances and trump's a dick. after the election i used the philosophy of history to diagnose the pathetic wimpery of the response of hillary voters after the election.
i self-published four books this year, growing marginally more competent as i went along (linking the paper versions; they are also on kindle):
waterway: a new translation of the tao te ching, and introducing the wu wei ching;
american defiance: classic writings from the colonial period through the 19th century;
and the ya novel, written with my daughter emma, spyder's rebellion, or how to overthrow your school.
meanwhile, my straight-up magnum opus entanglements: a system of philosophy is due from suny in march.
on the blog i ragged on demographic politics, which has been idiotic. on a number of occasions, i rolled my eyes at the nytimes op-ed page, which was pathetic and/or evil this year.
i wrote some of my better book reviews this year, although i couldn't necessarily place them. i puzzled at the exhausted persistence of marxism in a review of frederic jameson and slavoj zizek's absurd yet disgusting 'an american utopia: dual power and the universal army'. i got into a bit of a wrangle with the the tls over my review of the stone reader, eds peter catapano and simon critcheley. unusually for me, i did not want much editing, because i sort of thought it was perfect, or the best review i can write, anyway. i did sell them a review of a collection of the writings of benjamin fondane, unknown existentialist.
i'm not going to do a top ten albums this year, but i particularly loved records by atmosphere, sister sadie, and brandy clark. also i celebrated post-painterly nihilism and yoko ono's conceptualism.
repeatedly and perhaps too emphatically i did spend a lot of time ragging on academic philosophy, which is a profoundly sad place for the discipline to end up. also, pc'd to death: my internment in academic guantanomo.
this entry will link you to a pretty wild series of posts on race, which i think are...interesting. in feb, i predicted that the hillary clinton campaign will be used for decades as a lesson in how not to run a campaign. i like this take on contemporary feminism. what is american philosophy?
now, there may have been some little screw-ups this year as well. but you'll have to read everything i wrote in order to enumerate them, because i just do not have time.
