I Do Not Fib You But Monkeys Do

I finally got my property tax paid – It wasn’t that big of a deal, it really wasn’t. So why had I made so much of fuss about it. The lady was very nice – even had another county fax over a copy of my 2008 receipt (otherwise she said I’d have had to pay it twice – I had a copy in the truck but didn’t want to have to go through security again). It only came to thirty-five dollars and some change and there were no penalties to be paid. I was expecting a bill of a hundred dollars or more. But I did have to stand in four lines (well three lines but I stood in one line twice). Line B to be told to go to Line C (where the nice lady was - once I enter the data she said I'd have to pay what they told me in Line B that I owed) then back to Line B to be told how much I neeed to pay and then to Line A to pay what in Line B I had been told that I owed.. But I did not have to go back outside and then come back and go through security all over again – I always seem to manage to tip over the basket and spill all my change all over the floor and there is always some residual piece of metal that makes the detectors go off – this time it was the reading  glasses  in my shirt pocket and something in my wallet (probably the magnetic strip on a credit card). It wasn’t that bad – it really wasn’t, but God do I hate serurity checks. Now for the tags and the safety inspection. I need to look up the location of the nearest DMV. I still have five day remaining to get all this done.

Every emotion structures the world according to its own distinctive categories… It is perversity to evaluate those judgments, which presuppose engagement, by standards that exclude any involvement or engagement – Robert C Solomon – Lying and Deception in Everyday Live, “What a Tangled Web”, 1993 p56.

The inability of a democratic system to articulate what a people really want or think is the ultimate manifestation of corruption

The cage is a hundred bars of lies / the perch and the little plank are slanderous. / Everything in the world is inside out… Osip Mandelstam – The Voronezh Notebooks, 1996

Banana your way up
     The Cargo coast
Apple the doctor to the
      Maternity ward now
Cherry him with a flurry
      Of kiwied fists to the face
It was cantalouped to me
      And it lemons here on this fob
Grape the future with it
      To within three blueberries

One of the most distinctive and most neglected features of lying is that it is surprisingly hard to do… It is always easiest… to tell the truth, but the next easiest is to believe your own lie – Robert C Solomon – Lying and Deception in Everyday Live, “What a Tangled Web”, 1993 p46

What they are afraid of is not some mythical demand but the re-definition of the tradition

Sometimes a name seems our most arbitrary possession, / and sometimes it seems like the grain in a rock / like a sculptor’s hunk of Italian marble: whack it / and you might get either your first glimpse of a saint or a pile or rubble – Lucia Perillo – Inseminating the Elephant, 2009 p37

Long legged women
In flimsy summer dresses
Can anything be nicer
        Maybe with floppy wide brimmed
               Straw hats
        Gently pinching sand between their bare toes
        And tossing back long black tresses
I'm in the twillight of my desire

An empty canoe glides on a waterless river. / Among the grasshoppers the word becomes forgotten – Osip Mandelstam – Tristia, 1987 p91

A worker is someone who follows the money; they don’t concern themselves with secondary cares such as ethics and justice – a worker is a special kind of widget, that is all (except when they are a CEO). In recruiting workers the only consideration is the eligible candidate pool. Stockbrokers, bankers and politicians are all workers. Not all workers are good workers. Someone who just does what they are told is either a laborer or gun for hire; they may concern themselves with ethics and justice but do not let it interfere with their performance. They are good at what they do because failure is not an option. Some concentration camp guards are both laborers and guns for hire. Some concentration camp guards are workers. Most contractors are workers. Concentration camp guards who are workers and drone operators (who are all workers) are always good workers.They pay close attention to performance measures.

The truth is but one of the many victims of violated trust and willful manipulation – Robert C Solomon – Lying and Deception in Everyday Live, “What a Tangled Web”, 1993 n p49

An estimated one million Americans were admitted for emergency room services last year as a result of abuse of prescription or OTC drugs – about the same as the number of admissions resulting in the usage of illegal drugs. Five years ago the admission of users of illegal drugs was twice that of the users of legal drugs.

Just as the expression of an emotion may be inappropriate even where the emotion itself is proper, an emotion may be absent where its expression is obligatory – Robert C Solomon – Lying and Deception in Everyday Live, “What a Tangled Web”, 1993 p52