JAW ON THE FLOOR: Starbucks to Release Sonic Youth Celebrity Compilation (WTF)

Why else should we desire things?

The quote yr responding to was predicated on this: "things are meaningful to the extent that we desire them." But I don't know that desire and satisfaction are the only way to construct meaning. We can base meaning on the desires of some diety. Or on the dictates of absolute truth and justice. Or as the product of the intrinsic beauty of the universe. Etc. There are lots of ways to construct meaning.

Last one to Euler.

From what I've seen of modern society, NOTHINg is being marketed as meaningful

I disagree with this entirely, good lord: every single thing you do or buy is totally coded with cultural meaning, on levels that even aspire to the spiritual! You can't even pick up a furniture catalog without it saying "it's not furniture, it's a LIFESTYLE, it's a WAY OF BEING" -- this is everywhere. And it's completely off to imagine that even the people who just want to grab coffee and go do not view the Starbucks purchase as having cultural meaning; the place's rep has blanded out a bit for sure, and Britney Spears is not helping, but there is still a coding of urbanity and sophistication that goes with getting a half-caf latte and scone (vs. a McMuffin!), and that kind of thing is precisely the sort of meaning that people piece their lives together out of.

and that kind of thing is precisely the sort of meaning that people piece their lives together out of.

Or at least seem to. That's what I'm wringing my hands over here. Again, thanks for sorting and saying it so clearly.

(In fact another efficient marketing success for Starbucks has been to put VALUE on being a grab-and-go store user: "You are an awesome sophisticated go-go-go-getter, and you need your morning cappucino to feel vigorous and businesslike.")

(xpost - This is not some kind of grand lie, either: I can certainly remember getting my first office job and having the morning coffee pick-up become an awesome-feeling routine that signified I was no longer a post-collegiate slacker record-store clerk but now a clever active worker in nice slacks. I consider that kind of thing meaningful, yeah; it's the bits of the tenor of your life that you piece together into feeling and narrative, you know? I think those things are terrifically important, which is part of why I do think there's significance in whatever we're calling the airportification of space.)

you mean this to be like a current cultural conceit, right?

I suppose so, insomuch that I studied computers instead of history and can't off the top of my head point at specific examples in ages past that show that this, too, is a fact of life on Earth rather than a social construct that's arisen as a side-effect of modern life.

I disagree with this entirely, good lord: every single thing you do or buy is totally coded with cultural meaning, on levels that even aspire to the spiritual!

That's kind of my point, Nabisco; if everything is laden with "meaning", nothing is actually meaningful.

And it's completely off to imagine that even the people who just want to grab coffee and go do not view the Starbucks purchase as having cultural meaning; the place's rep has blanded out a bit for sure, and Britney Spears is not helping, but there is still a coding of urbanity and sophistication that goes with getting a half-caf latte and scone (vs. a McMuffin!), and that kind of thing is precisely the sort of meaning that people piece their lives together out of.

This is really reaching. I'm willing to wager that more people go to Starbucks because it's the ubiquitous coffee place rather than it's the ubiquitous coffee place; in fact, the people I know who actually care about that kind of thing specifically avoid Starbucks in favor of independantly-owned clones precisely because everyone else goes to Starbucks.

right, nabisco, so one way to understand Bob is that he wants people to stop desiring what's coded as urbane and sophisticated but isn't really, and instead to desire what really is urbane and sophisticated; another way to understand him is that he wants people to start desiring things coded with other meanings (something "more lasting", I guess, here I don't know what the view is); or else he's saying that the problem is that desire and meaning are linked at all. I am not following the view very well though.

ARGH.

"I'm willing to wager that more people go to Starbucks because it's the ubiquitous coffee place rather than it's the POSH coffee place;..."

Everybody go read LOST IN THE COSMOS

Um, no.

(Unless it has sci-fi boobs in it...?)

no it's got some pretty funny questionnaires in it though

Dan you're evaluating "posh" on a kind of top-down scale here, like versus other coffee shops. That's not what I mean. I'm saying that for a great deal of America, grabbing a latte on the way to work still reads as urbane behavior -- as opposed to going to McDonalds on the way to work, or stopping in a small-town diner for a cup of black coffee. Whether or not it's actually the posh spot, that's part of what it sells, or what it offers you the potential to feel like. And again I will tell you from experience that when Starbucks started appearing in smaller Midwestern towns, the prevailing reaction was a bit "oo la la," and the people who frequented those places were very much placing themselves, in the context of their towns, as being somehow ... sophisticated. Urbane.

And I think it's a bit of an easy paradox to say "if everything's laden with meaning, then nothing is" -- the point was things are very much marketed in terms of meaning. But sometimes the meaning sticks, and sometimes it doesn't; some products are successful in creating that sense around themselves (haha APPLE), and others are not

right, nabisco, so one way to understand Bob is that he wants people to stop desiring what's coded as urbane and sophisticated but isn't really, and instead to desire what really is urbane and sophisticated; another way to understand him is that he wants people to start desiring things coded with other meanings (something "more lasting", I guess, here I don't know what the view is); or else he's saying that the problem is that desire and meaning are linked at all. I am not following the view very well though.

Geez. Under the microscope.

I do not want people to desire "what is really urbane & sophisticated". Nor do I want people to desire things coded with other meanings.

What I'm saying is that it makes me sad to live in a time when putative and intrinsic meaning have become so entirely separated from one another - to the point where "intrinsic meaning" seems absurd, and coded meaning is the only kind we accept. The fact of this separation doesn't make me sad in and of itself. In isolation, it's actually pretty fascinating. But inhabiting, day to day, the eroded social/cultural/physical landscape that results depresses me terribly.

That's kind of my point, Nabisco; if everything is laden with "meaning", nothing is actually meaningful.

I think a number of monks would disagree with this - that's forty-five degrees off of what you're saying I know, but I just wanted to aside that abundance of meaningful actions/stimuli doesn't have to detract from the general fund of meaning

But we can degrade the value and function of meaning by separating it from any sort of objective reality and manufacturing vast piles of it to suit our every need.

The air-quotes are important there; my argument hinges on the central thesis behind all of our metaphysical posturing, namely the codification of false meaning into things that are ultimately "unimportant" (ie, luxuries).

Bob, please stop.

Actually I should stop, too; going home to see my wife is more important than this conversation.

The air-quotes are important there; my argument hinges on the central thesis behind all of our metaphysical posturing, namely the codification of false meaning into things that are ultimately "unimportant" (ie, luxuries).

yes, this is OTM. Assignation of meaning to things that don't merit it is a neat parlor trick, and a popular one, but is pointless/probably harmful

HD: You've pushed this along just as much as anyone else. If you've got an objection to what I've said, just lay it out. Keep the playground gamesmanship to yourself.

warning: more bullshit

It's been a long time since thinking things were "intrinsically meaningful" was credible in our culture. Like, since the seventeenth century.

I read folks like Rilke as trying to make objects speak their meanings to us again, but Rilke seems to have seen himself as a "medium" for the transmission of meaning. So that's not really intrinsic meaning either, but meaning mediated by the sensibility of a person. What we've seen in "modernity" is how powerful we can be when we get good at serving as such a "medium"---advertising is a pretty good example of this.

Bob, I take issue when people start talking about "objective reality" in support of arguments about the devaluation of individuality because it really makes it clear that the central point of their argument is "Why doesn't everyone think like me?"

yo dan:
http://blog.wired.com/games/2007/12/boy-survives-mo.html

also see http://www.figureprints.com/

I take issue when people start talking about "objective reality" in support of arguments about the devaluation of individuality because it really makes it clear that the central point of their argument is the central point of their argument is "Why doesn't everyone think like me?"

I think you misunderstand me. I'm not saying that I believe in any kind of "objective reality" that we all can or should share in. I know that we (humans) have been in the process of rejecting that kind of thinking for quite a while now. In fact, at this point in our history, we're so comfortable with the idea that ALL meaning is manufactured and disseminated for selfish purposes that we've reached a point of almost perfect cynicism with regard to "the real". But it's not the loss of the real that I'm bemoaning (I don't think I have any more access to objective truth than anyone else). I'm expressing concern about the total cynicism and ruthless efficiency with which willfully truth-neutral meaning is manufactured and consumed in the modern world.

That's kind of why I don't like Starbucks, or malls. They're this dense field of supposedly comforting, encouraging signs, but they feel hollow underneath (to me anyway, I'm only talking about my experience). The dissonance between the attractive, meaning-dense surface and the absence of personally relevant meaning underneath makes me feel bad.

I suspect that this despair-inducing dissonance is a product of the very sophisticated mechanisms we now use to create and disseminate custom tailored meaning.

Really? I personally find places like malls and Starbucks to be incredibly comforting and happy places, as does everyone I know. We'd totally go to those places to hang out and spend time even if we had no intention of buying or drinking anything there. Your opinion is so unique and original, I'm glad you articulated it for us.

If all you ever wanted to say was that you agree with me, you could have spared both of us a whole lot of bullshit.

did you just read a baudrillard book or somthing

No. Why?

"Fear of a Starbucks Planet"

200 posts in a day?? sheesh! i wasn't really expecting that when i revived the thread to make a flippant joke about the album title. anyway i mean, i love SY and all, but when their last album was Rather Ripped (aka: Rather Adult Contemporary), why is everyone all outraged about SY at Starbucks? how is this any different than any other form of promotion such as song placement in movies, TV spots/ads/commercials, radio airplay, etc.? it's all just a means of getting the music out there and making enough money for the band to stick around.

mark s has claimed several times to me that he actually very much likes Pitcher and Piano (a chain of homogenized, blandly corporate pubs in London) specifically for meeting (work-related) people at; he says the anonymity of these places relieves the pressure of taste and judgement that often does nothing more than get in the way

see also: pizza express!!!!

JAWN ON THE FLOOR

Did you guys know that a lot of coffee shops in Seattle don't even sell drip coffee? You have to order an Americano, and forget about cheap refills.

let the lol-tes hit the floor

01 Bull in the Heather (selected by Catherine Keener)
02 Sugar Kane (selected by Beck)
03 100% (selected by Mike D)
04 Kool Thing (selected by Radiohead)
05 Disappearer (selected by Portia de Rossi)
06 Stones (selected by Allison Anders)
07 Tuff Gnarl (selected by Dave Eggers and Mike Watt)
08 Teenage Riot (selected Eddie Vedder)
09 Shadow of a Doubt (selected by Michelle Williams)
10 Rain on Tin (selected by Flea)
11 Tom Violence (selected by Gus Van Sant)
12 Mary-Christ (selected by David Cross)
13 World Looks Red (selected by Chloë Sevigny)
14 Expressway to Yr Skull (selected by the Flaming Lips)
15 Slow Revolution (exclusive)

people with fish eyes and brown socks ... at least Chloe has taste.

JAW STILL ON THE FLOOR

NIGHTMARE

Actually, I just copied that tracklisting from Pitchfork. They forgot one:

Superstar (selected by Diablo Cody)

which is slotted between "Disappearer" and "Stones."

I'm curious if Dave Eggers and Mike Watt both just so happened to pick "Tuff Gnarl" or if that meant as a collaborative choice.

LOL. "Mr. Watt and I had a lengthy discussion about this."

I could see their e-mail exchange being a McSweeney's piece

No 'Eyes And Teeth' :(

I really like the cover art.

I could see their e-mail exchange being a McSweeney's piece

Heavily footnoted.

I hope they make a lot of money.

09 Shadow of a Doubt (selected by Michelle Williams)

Michelle, can you handle this? I don't think you're ready for this jelly.

If you're going to do a "Sonic Youth's Greatest Hits" CD, this is pretty OTM (except for the omission of "Dirty Boots").

04 Kool Thing (selected by Radiohead)

??????