I Have a Thing for Monkeys it Seems But Not in That Way

It shall be another hot day – get out early while its still cool and walk the dog – find some A/C and hunker down for the duration of the searing heat - hunker down for life. This is life in the Sahara, a postmodern life. Enjoy it while there is still some reasonably priced oil. Become green, build with mud. Plant hard red winter wheat in your backyard. Victory gardens are on a comeback.

Elephant gun
Birdshot
Better mousetrap
Reach for the roach bomb
Road kill the other white meat
There’s a Bambi in my headlights
       Gun it! Damnit George!
Cow catcher shoving – bison shooting
        From the open train windows
This is sport
Keep on movin
Keep on groovin
Keep on keepin on
       Your long blond hair blowing in the breeze
       Looks lovely General Custer

By public use of one’s reason I understand the use which a person makes of it as a scholar before the reading public. Private use I call that which one may make of it in a particular civil post or office which is entrusted to him – Immanuel Kant

Expertise is often private reason parading as public reason

In the free labor outlook, the objective of social mobility was not great wealth, but the middle-class goal of economic independence – Eric Foner – Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men, 1970 p16

Revolutions fail when they betray their universal solidarity

There is a life outside the law and it has many depths – Osip Mandelstam – The Voronezh Notebooks, 1996 p46

The value of global illicit trade is estimated to be $140 
            billion:
       Illicit trade item           value at source
       Cocaine from the Andean
           region to North America   $38,000,000,000
       Cocaine from the Andean
           region to Europe           34,000,000,000
       Heroin from Afghanistan to
           Europe                     33,000,000,000
       Traffic in women for sexual
           exploitation                3,000,000,000
       Illegal smuggling of migrants   6,600,000,000
       Fake manufactured goods         8,200,000,000
       Counterfeit medicines           1,600,000,000
       Wood products                   2,500,000,000
       Wildlife and Bushmeat          10,000,000,000

I will not return my hired dust to earth / as a flowery white butterfly. / I want the thinking body / to turn into a street, a country, / where the vertebrate, charred body / will gather up the light ashes – Osip Mandelstam – The Voronezh Notebooks, 1996 p49

The historical problem of capitalism has been the spatializaiton of privilege – geographic zones in which some capital was more equal than other capital. But this is a problem that derives from the state-capital framework. Capitalism's new problem is be how to segregate the privileged from Others  without being obvious – this is a problem of the security state-scarce resource framework (a crises in market access).

Everyone knows that people without health insurance are more likely to die. But are they?… Perhaps few people were asking, because the question sounds stupid. Health insurance buys you healthcare. Healthcare is supposed to save your life – Megan McArdlo – The Atlantic [March 2010] p32

A normal life provides one with the illusion of normalacy

This winter touches me / like a gift late in coming, / I love its wild reach / that develops out of uncertainty – Osip Mandelstam – The Voronezh Notebooks, 1996 p59

Efficiency in the pursuit of stupidity should not be underestimated – we have yet to tap into the productivity of stupidity – perhaps technology shall provide the answer.

If you only look back [in the rearview mirror] you will end up in the ditch, but it helps to know where you have come from and who else is on the road – Margaret MacMillan

The illusion of significance is granted only to the worthy – there is no honor sleeping in your car - dented and scratched. But there is if it’s a brand new honking big RV where you can smile from the captain’s seat and wave at everyone while the wife is in back making herbal tea to be placed next to you in it own cozy cuppy to keep it hot in your  air-conditioned cabin with biological filtering. Meanwhile I can’t find a place to take a shit except in an old tin can which late at night I sneak out and empty onto someone’s lawn.

Poor is he who begs alms from the shadows / and is himself half-alive – Osip Mandelstam – The Voronezh Notebooks, 1996 p64

It is the most round thing
     I’ve ever heard in my life
Or did I just misunderstand
     When the words came rolling by
     Bouncing like a ball
Did I invent this game of basketball
     With words that I misinterpreted
     What would otherwise have been
           Nonsense – which is
Unacceptable – like a dream, yes
But you can comprehend when
      You are in a dream
      Its when you are out that the
Difficulty begins – and it doesn’t help
      That all rules are internal
      To a sport or to a political
            Party like in pinball
And you can even do it blind
     Tommy did

So that the wondrous goods of Pushkin should not fall into the hands of parasites, / a generation of Pushkin scholars learn to read and write in overcoats with revolvers – Osip Mandelstam – The Voronezh Notebooks, 1996