August 26 - The Coffee Girls - 75th & Wsahington - Kansas City Missouri

Out walking Nick Nick – oh what a cute little dog – what happened, he asked gesturing towards the top of his head – I got run over by a lawnmower – and no I did not start lecturing him of Convivial Tools – I had done something similar yesterday with the neighborhood committee on health care – and that had been a disaster. But any form of activitism will get you involved in other areas and this is good – there is a Nietzschian hammer hanging over the heads of all reformers – and when they fail as they must, they either  give up or take down that hammer and begin swinging. I explained that it was not a healthcare system but a health industry (I didn’t explain the difference – only gave them some statistical nightmares). You can’t tell someone how to think or even use rational argument with them if what your asking of them is to unthink – you must do something to disturb their mental equilibrium. Its much like teaching, they may even get good test scores, but what really counts is something they do ten years down the road and its something good and something they wouldn’t otherwise have done  (at least you like to think) it hadn’t been for your influence.

And he laughed when I said I had been run over by a lawnmower – he was a man of conspiracies and could take a crackpot so  long as he would listen to his conspiracy theory. "They’re scooping out the neighborhood at night," he said in confidence. Who was - UFOs, the FBI, terrorists? I was afraid to ask who they were. I was expecting a thirty-minute tirade – but no in this case he only meant the niggers, but he didn’t use THE word, even poor whites have learned to be PC. He said "The Blacks" (but he was able to say it in a way that made it sound just as sinister). "They are coming around at four and five in the morning while everyone is asleep." Now this little cracker enclave is overrun with dogs and everyone has a gun and several years ago a neighbor did a stand down with the police that made national news after shooting several and dieing in the ensuing infernal. The idea of a bunch of kids casing this neighborhood in the middle of the night was a little ludicrous. And when anyone called the police, their standard response was always " if they come on your property shoot ‘em" . And what did any of these crackers have to steal that would make it that worthwhile. Now how stupid would a Nigga have to be? Then he saw a neighbor and went off to gab and left me alone to continue walking Nick Nick.

The great dream of ‘tourism’ then, comes close to fruition today in Laza. As tourists we want to taste the authentic, the local, the genuine. Effectively, we want to go where there are no tourists – John Barlow – Everything But the Squeal, 2008 p64

The velvet painting is getting attention
Unlike most of the art on the wall
And it only differs for dogs playing
       Poker by a tiny anthromophized

Cartoon duck standing
My the old mill pond in the moon light
And I supposed that that is supposed
       To make it ironic
       Or is it merely moronic
Replacing the cause with the effect
The problem with the symptom
And everyone points to the duck
       And chuckles

You can’t comment on what is plain to see – Jean-Claude Carriére – Please, Mr. Einstein, 2006 p162

But they do, everyone does and although they can’t do anything about it, they are always commenting of the weather. And doesn’t your partner always want to know how he/she was – was it as good for you as it was for me? Maybe it is only the universe for which it is true – see that, it’s the sun and it makes the crops grow. It’s big and bright and that’s good too! When the obvious is questioned a negative answer is never acceptable

A person who makes an assertion will always fine someone to contradict him. It’s harder when someone makes an observation. His contradiction has to make an observation of his own – Jean-Claude Carriére – Please, Mr. Einstein, 2006 p167

And I don’t agree that it’s the sun that makes the crops grow! Crops don’t grow at the North Pole – not at least in the wintertime, do they! Just as they don’t grow in Antarctica not in the summertime. Yes, but that’s due to the cold. Right, and what make it cold? That is due to the absence of the sun.

In view of the fact that theoretical science is a living organism, it would not be exaggerating to say that this attitude [economics seen as ‘the mechanics of utility and self-interest] is tantamount to planning a fish hatchery in a moist flowerbed – Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen – The Entropy Law and the Economic Process, 1971 p40

The is something Panglossian in formulistic conservatism as there is something Quixotic about a liberal

The self-confidence of learned people is the comic tragedy of [our] civilization – Alfred North Whitehead – Science and Philosophy, 1948 p103

Equi for Gerstler

Thou shall look
Through chocolate
Decadent eyes


Barbequed
Angles wings
Takes the cake


In this almond
Eyed salty autumn
We admitted defeat

The capitalist system is a market economy, but markets are not an institution that belongs exclusively to Capitalism. It is important to distinguish between the Market and markets – Serge Latouche – interview with Claudia Ciobanu IPS News Agency Aug 5, 2009

Institutionalization ensures that simplicity yields to complexity; that access becomes controlled; that desire yield to need – by institutionalization a process becomes justified not by what it satisfies but for the good of society – it proceeds from the real to the abstract, from responsibility to accountability – institutionalization is inherently efficient and fascist and independent of its original purpose

Three hooded TV men stomped on their way to the parking lot. The presenter in particular is not looking happy. I want to remind him that he is getting paid to attend a Dionysian festival that’s been celebrated for an unbroken thousand years… but I don’t say anything. After all he’s just been whipped in the face with a bramble by a teenager in his underpants – John Barlow – Everything But the Squeal, 2008 p79

That area of politics called progressive
Is often mistaken for liberalism
While any solution that does
         Not constitute more of the same
Is labeled socialism
And this is why those claiming
To be socialist is rapidly growing
Politics is all contained in its specific epithets

I don’t think it’s fair for an enemy to die / and rob you of victory, go and leave you, fist still / shaking in the air – this isn’t the end of this – Elaine Equi – Ripple Effect, 2007 p39

What I do, I can do out of my backpack. This is true even if my backpack is small - a day pack. It is no big handicap to work like this. This is also true of astronauts but they also need to tanks of oxygen like a scuba diver, but not me. I am not burdened by weight and there is no trade-off.

Our imaginations have been industrially deformed – Ivan Illich – Tools of Conviviality, 1973 p15

Chattel slavery was an experimental form of wage slavery. It had the disadvantages of lack of flexibility and inefficiency, but most of all it tied up capital in labor rather than in tools. What kept it alive was need to recover invested capital which was substantial – less developed economies are needed as dumping grounds for obsolescent investments

It [slavery] was not instituted by us – we are not responsible for it. It is unfortunately fixed upon us; we could not do away with it if we wished; our duty in only to make the best of a bad thing; to lessen its evils as much as we can, so far as we have to do with it individually – Fredrick Law Olmsted – Cotton Kingdom, 1861 p259

No man, to listen to him, is ever responsible for the moral or ethical situation that he inherits (along with its privileges which he forgets). And after all there is a chance that even greater evil might result if he did (this cannot be disproved)

It might be argued that the state was taking a larger role in policing sexual behavior, precisely because the inhibitory effect of public opinion was decreasing – Andrew Hodges – Alan Turing: The Enigma, 1983 p462

Looked at it this way the conservative desired power to be exercised when social authority waned while the liberal desired political power to be exercised where social authority had failed. For one political power is a substitute for social authority and for the other a replacement of it.

No science has been criticized by its own servants as openly and constantly as economics. The motive of dissatisfaction are many, but the most important pertains to the fiction of ‘homo economicus’. The complaint is that this fiction strips man’s behavior of every cultural propensity, which is tantamount to saying that in his economic life man acts mechanically – Nicolas Georgescu-Rogen – The Entropy Law and the Economic Process, 1971 p1

The collective memory abridges everything – Jean-Claude Carriére – Please, Mr. Einstein, 2006 p147