September 8 - Coffee Break - Kansas Citry Missouri

There is no hum of rubber this morning – drops of water falling form the tree branches in the fog – plip plip plop - otherwise it is quiet – it’s a holiday – except for the low chir of crickets and they will soon cease – occasionally a squirrel rustles in a tree, the birds have yet to begin their chorus. My only problem is coffee – where can I get it – Brenda has a pot ready to perk but said, don’t wake me up.

Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend. Inside a dog, its too dark to read – Groucho Marx

Marius and  Joe in the bar, they sit at a table and I at the bar. It's an unwritten rule in bars - people at tables are seekingr privacy - I only go over as I'm finishing my last beer and almost ready to leave – I’m reading the bio of Barthelme – Marius is curious – a postmodernist writer, Joe tells him. Marius doesn’t know what that is. Tell him Joe, tells me. The words mean different things depending on what it is you are talking about, I tell Marius. But primarily postmodernism is about the abandonment of a sacred tradition – in philosophy it is about the abandonment of the Enlightment project, in writing about the de-throning of narrative tradition and in architecture the downgrading of functionality. The word itself, “Postmodern’ is meaningless. It is a substitute or stand-in for a label which has not yet been conceived (or at least not recognized as universal). It represents a change that is not yet really understood and for which we are still waiting on a ‘official’ titlel, but until then we use the word ‘Postmodern’. Marius is a cardiologist. He says he doesn’t have much time to read. You have met Joe before (if not use the search feature at the top of the right bar). Marius asks if I read history and we discuss the tradition of “the humors” in modern medicine (Joe disagrees - says the concept died out in the 18th century - but Marius smiles) and Malaria in the Upper Mississippi (the origins of the term piker )and the White Death and its implications for the Romantic Movement.

Like empty beer cans, like discarded cigarette butts, / my days have been like that. / Like figures passing on a T.V. screen / and disappearing, so my life has gone – Ernesto Cadenza -m Pluriverse, 2008 p68

The hotties all know
      Each other
They intermarry
      Obsessively
You’re hot, your from
      New York
You must know Mark
Why yes, I married
       His second wife
She thinks I’m
       A hunk

And Samantha said that with my scraggly ponytail gone – this new look: bald head and neatly trimmed goatee – well, I looked really good. I hate to make it sound like your life before was a waste of time – I’m trying to make this sound like a compliment (compliments are difficult in this Samantha centered world in which she lives). And even though Wolf had paid for her big tits (he alwasys bosted of this - yes I paid for them), I had lost all my lust – they do exist but what a waste – and as she had sat down she had bounced them around and cupped them caressingly. She did not know who I was. I knew things about her and that disconcerted her – and though it was Joe who was conversing with her she was addressing her remarks towards me on the opposite side of the table. Joe was so wrapped in his story (or maybe it was her tits) that he never noticed. I found it amusing – this flummoxed look of her face (see I was not disconcerted and stared her in the eye as I talked) – and why does this stranger know all about me?

Addicts of any kind are willing to pay increasing amounts for declining satisfaction. They have become tolerant of escalating marginal disutility – Ivan Illich – Tools of Conviviality, 1973 p82

Education is effective when cross-fertilization occurs not when measurable performance objectives are achieved

The over determination of the physical environment renders it hostile – Ivan Illich – Tools of Conviviality, 1973 p60

I have secret information
I wink my left eye
A significant number
       Of people
Know that I know
       And want
       To know too
Some search me out
       I do not hide
       Nor do I tell
The rumor is
       That I’d die
       Before I’d tell
No one has yet
       Tried to
       Confirm this

Some shots were heard last night / Out by the burial ground. / No one knows who they killed, or how many. / No one knows a thing. / Some shots were heard last night / That’s all – Ernesto Cadenza -m Pluriverse, 2008 p40

The most venomous animal in the world is the box jellyfish whose sting can kill a human in less than three minutes

Maybe tonight you’re on the list! / And the night goes on. And there’s a lot of night left. / And the day will be only a sunlit night. / The quietness of night under the scorching sun – Ernesto Cadenza -m Pluriverse, 2008 p62

High speed transportation requires high investment and high traffic volumes and achieves this at the expense of low speed and low density travel. It is justified on the bases of the enhanced efficiency of those who can afford its fare. Those whose time is not so valuable are left stranded. It is either efficient travel or efficient transportation – one or the other, but not both.

There are so many reasons why this just ‘cannot’ be a good system. I surmise that there must be an overriding brilliant reason why it is – John Barlow - Everything but the Squeal, 2008 p210

The surveillance state
      Starts at home
      Domesticatus Surveillanus
Momma says – mommy sees
      Everything
Do we have to playback the tape
It started with Sports – instant replay
      That is were metaphors are born
      That and during wars
Then they invade the home
Let’s pretend that there
      Are cameras everywhere

Momma sees everything
      So you better come clean
Momma has eyes in the
       Back of her head
Oh. Momma I had
A  dream that I was Truman