Culture of non sequiturs

This video serves as an excellent example of our culture that embraces and delights in non sequiturs. It counts among its disparate elements the act of punching, folks eating (or attempting to eat) a meal, ecstatic dances, a soundtrack of layered beeps and vocals, zombies, text, a Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego-esque tour of major cities/monuments and, in the final moments, a line ostensibly taken from a motivational poster hanging in a second grade classroom.

Now the first question might be why do all of these things need to be strung together? Some seem to come with a precedent (eg Michael Jackson's "Thriller" video with its zombies and dancing), yet others don't (punching someone just before they take a bite of their food?).

But the more interesting question is how does this SNL sketch become one of the most watched videos online? Somehow we've not only accepted this bundle of non sequiturs, but we, the community of people who have vorasciously clicked 'play again', have turned it into a hot little commodity. There's a cultural interest in this kind of material that fuels the creation of future bits of delightful oddity (the list of SNL digital shorts along these lines grows longer) that is utterly fascinating.

I bring this all up briefly because it's also a nice way of introducing a new endeavor in which I catalogue random associations . With Roland Barthes, Dennis Cooper and Tim Etchells as my personal trinity of inspiration (and a tip of the hat to Noam Chomsky and Rich Juzwiak), I kick off a new exercise that might include everything from posting various odds and ends to exploring the endless potential for intertextuality.