The following is from Chapter 18 of Melville’s Typee. The character Marnoo is a “tabu” person who can travel relatively freely among all the tribes without eliciting historical animosities due to his “exceptional” qualities (one…
Posts Published by Douglas Storm
Douglas Storm is a host and producer for Interchange on Bloomington, Indiana's community radio station WFHB.
"Why then do you try to 'enlarge' your mind? Subtilize it..."
The Abject Failure of Humanity’s “Promise”
In Salon there is this horrifying little piece (“Let’s Watch a Murder“) regarding the popularity of reality horror-porn. Here’s how it begins: The YouTube video shows Robert, a 28-year-old from Dayton, Ohio, grimace and light…
Okay, I Guess, Whatever
The paradox of the mercantile culture we label “capitalism,” or probably more descriptively and truthfully for most of us, consumerism, is in its “false” interconnectedness. At the level of production, at the level of industrialized…
“Choice!” The Mindless Battle Cry of the Addicted
In a local newspaper opinion piece today the editors cry “Choice!” regarding the proposal by New York Mayor Bloomberg which seeks to ban the sale of toxic liquids in containers over 16 0z to human…
Drone Killing Is Humanitarian Don’t Ya Know
This is the most vile thing I’ve seen attempting to legitimize drone strikes and to justify the vast expansion of “drones use”–“they’re here to stay”–by Obama. Every other sentence attempts to justify the ambiguity of…
The Clarity of Thinking in Motion
I’ve been pondering trying to offer something more thorough on walking and thinking (and talking and thinking, but that for another time) and had imagined we have yet to improve on Aristotle’s method of philosophizing…
Indolence! Undercutting the Cult of Mammon
A recent report on Inequality in America from Stanford details the extent of the wealth disparities. Salon has a brief post on it (United States of Inequality) offering this example of the self-perpetuation of winners…
How We Learn: How We Don’t Learn
It’s possible that if I even hint at the name “Melville” to begin a piece anyone who sojourns here will click the “close” button and be well on their merry way. (Though surely there are…
I placed a jarhead in afghanistan
In Stevens’ poem “Anecdote of the Jar” we are given a figuration of the way mind creates order but further of the way mind allows the rules of order to imprison our perception and limit…
As a Flower Succeeds to Foliage
“…as a flower succeeds to foliage.”* (Melville “Lord, when shall we be done changing?” Hawthorne) Meeting Melville I liked him so much I made him an invitation prospective… of bringing out the glory of his…