Accomplice to a murder or potential date?

Imagine my suprise at turning to the arts section of the NYT today and discovering an article on a new installation at the Whitney. Not that interesting, you say? Well, the article opens with a lead-in on the composer of the music for the installation. It happens I know the guy. It happens that he is an accomplice to murder. It happens that the reason I know him is that my friend tried to hook me up with him the last time I was in Norway. Before telling me he was an accomplice to the second-most famous murder in Norway in the last 20 years (after "trippeldrapet"--a triple murder for inheritance). Thanks, darling. I've always wanted to date a death-metal musician. Or something.

I'd recommend visiting the installation, by the way, if for no other reason than that my friend's boyfriend (who is sweet and has never killed or assisted in killing anyone) plays on the musical soundtrack.

More seriously, the Times started a series that highlights the continuing importance of class in America. While I'm not too impressed with the level of analysis so far, that anyone is talking about the wholly taboo subject of class is encouraging to me. The Marxist dictum that "all that is solid melts into air" in the current world is given an interesting twist by the Slovenian philosopher and psychoanalyst Slavoj Zizek. He considers the presentation of the markets as rational places that reflect real-world considerations the premier example of ideology in the modern world. In other words, markets present themselves as responsive to material, on-the-ground facts. This stock went up for xyz reason, this currency fell for abc reason. Translation: although markets seem ephemeral and irrational, they really are about actual people and products--a classic ideological move to cover up the fact that markets really are ephemeral and irrational.

(Yes, I will blog about the Times. I'm retro that way--I also don't think blogging is the greatest advance in the history of journalism nor that globalization has completely voided all classical economic analyses nor that the rise of the religious right is unprecedented and inexplicable nor that religion is outdated or the opium of the people nor... well, more later.)