LOLtheorists: Todd Strikes Again

LOLtheorists continues to spark creativity in some of you (hint: if you haven't tried one, see what you can do). Todd is rocking the Casbah. I'm glad we've finally gotten to Foucault, and this is a good one:

And at the risk of bending the rules of LOLtheorists, I can't help but add this additional Todd effort (especially since Kathy Griffin is a friend of this blog).

As far as I'm concerned, there is never a bad time to say: Suck it, Jesus. Kudos to Todd for his work!

LOLtheorists: The Power of Todd

Todd is one of my best friends ever. He's also a graphic designer. Neither of those facts is that relevant to his participation in the LOLtheorists thread. He sent these three submissions within hours of the original post. I love all three, and vacillate as to my favorite.

Kant:


Hobbes:


Socrates:


Actually, I think the Hobbes one is the most brilliant. More later!

LOLtheorists: More, More, More!

I don't care about the threats of Mere (bring it on, Mere!): LOLtheorists will continue for the foreseeable future!

Todd has created some doozies this week. Here are three more from his fertile mind...

Here's Bertrand Russell:

I once had a boyfriend who told me that he'd never heard a convincing refutation of Ayn Rand's philosophy. Guess how long that relationship lasted (not long). So how much fun is this Ayn Rand picture?

And I've saved the best for last... I give you: Noam Chomsky.

It's filthy. It's funny. I LOVE it.

LOLtheorists Returns!

Sunday night (well, actually Monday morning), Fosco took this late-night study break while reading French philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy. See, the joke is that J-L Nancy's surname is easy to confuse (in English) with the dwarven heroine Nancy in the eponymous comic strip. After all, Fosco is using a lot of J-L Nancy in his academic work; and at the same time, the classic comic strip "Nancy" is always worth a read:

Both Nancys are good reads, although whether "Nancy" or J-L Nancy is more incomprehensible is an open question (especially considering the above strip).

Well, it seems that all of this "fun with Nancy" inspired the inimitable Todd to perform a resurrection of Fosco's once-popular feature, LOLtheorists. Here is Todd's laugh-out-loud depiction of Jean-Luc Nancy as an LOLtheorist:

Well done, Todd. I love it.

If you care to read Jean-Luc Nancy, there are two of his works that are aimed at the general reader and that offer reasonably accessible descriptions of Nancy's project of "The Deconstruction of Christianity." You could purchase them here:

It's like LOLtheorists, but with boobies.

Recent Discovery: You can give the LOL treatment to anything, even dirtee pitchurz (NSFW, from Fleshbot).

LOLtheorists: Kung Fu Theorizing

kungfuramone, as I have learned from his blog, is a sharp and witty historian of the mid-20C philosophical Left in France. As such, he is the perfect person to provide us with an LOLtheorist riff on Sartre:

Thank you, KFR. I'm still giddy about this one.

Coming Soon: Soleil Moon Frye's Philosophical Ontology

Fosco is completely exhausted and maybe a little ill after a weekend of working hard and playing hard. Because he has no energy today (and still some work to finish), he's going to postpone "Music Monday" until tomorrow--at which point it will become "Muesic Tuesday" or something like that.

For your Fosco Lives! pleasure today, I can offer you this brief anecdote. Yesterday (Sunday) afternoon, Fosco decided that he needed a specific academic book immediately for his paper-in-progress. The book is Basic Philosophical Writings by Emmanuel Levinas. The cover looks like this:

Because Fosco was in Daly City at Oz's place, the UCSC library was not a good option. Fosco decided that the most likely bookstore on the entire SF Peninsula to carry this book would be the Stanford bookstore in Palo Alto. Fosco called and reserved the book at said Stanford bookstore (they had it in stock!) and stopped by Palo Alto on the way to visit a friend in Santa Clara. I won't go into details about the difficulty of locating the Stanford bookstore (just know that it was hard).

Once inside the bookstore, Fosco went to retrieve the book from the Information Desk. That's where he had the following conversation:

FOSCO: You're holding a book for me?
MIDDLE-AGED LADY EMPLOYEE: What's your name?
FOSCO: [gives his name]
EMPLOYEE: [fetches book from shelf, glances at the cover.] Emmanuel Lewis?
FOSCO: [assuming that she's making a (pretty clever) joke] Something like that.
EMPLOYEE: [looks at cover again] Oh! Emmanuel Levinas! I read it wrong.
FOSCO: That's okay, I think that's funny. [starts to walk away]
EMPLOYEE: [calling out after Fosco] "Whatchu talkin bout, Willis?"

I think there are numerous lessons that we can learn from this interaction:

1. A book's cover design is key--splitting the author's name into two separate fonts that point in two separate directions is a recipe for disaster.
   
2. People tend to confuse Emmanuel Lewis and Gary Coleman (or, even worse, tend to assimilate Lewis completely to Coleman).
   
3. TV's "Webster" lacked the necessary sassy catchphrase that would have made the show memorable twenty years later.

I can already imagine the LOLtheorists pix that some of Fosco's loyal readers will submit... Todd?

Hegel Can Has Cheezburger?

No doubt, Fosco is behind the curve on this one but he's had some laughs this week at a thing called LOLcats. You make an LOLcat by taking a picture of a cat and adding a cute caption (using misspelled words and grammatical errors--just like real cats would!) This whole phenomenon is explained in detail at I Can Has Cheezburger? And it's spreading: I give you LOLbees and, merciful god, LOLbrarians (oh Mere, what's wrong with your people?).

You probably can guess what's coming...

Fosco Lives! presents... LOLtheorists!

Let's begin (as one always should) with Nietzsche...


Make your own. Send them to foscolives |at| gmail.com

If you hate LOLtheorists...

...this is not your lucky weekend.

Here's a new submission from Todd. I was wondering when someone would get to Freud.

As Todd notes: "wow, this is way more fun than it should be." I could not agree more.

Here's another one from Fosco, who is a big fan of Roland Barthes.

Giggle. He totally should have been a French film star.

LOLtheorists: Refuses To Die!

Damn, this is fun! Fosco spent all last quarter with Marx, so how could he resist making this one?

I'm sorry kids--I just can't help myself.