The Party of Order and the Party of Loss

I’ve been looking at some of the smaller sports marketing agencies in town. He is talking up a storm – who he had talked with, who else is looking for work, what he liked and didn’t like about each of the agencies – he has a network of sports related connections it seems which he wants to capitalize on – the NCAA seems to be frequently mentioned – he’s thinking of contracting part time or maybe even freelancing. Let’s see how this might go – say x dollars a week for sixty days and then sit down with them again and discuss how it is going. His companion things that this is a workable plan

Conservatism is not the Party of Order as Mills and others have claimed, but the party of loss – Corey Robin – Conservatism and Counterrevolution from Burke to Palin

A square mille of pelicans
In a fifty mile preserve
     Shad for breakfasts, shad for lunch
And shad for dinner
The autumn sun brings out the last
     Of the summer flies
And ugly black crickets are hopping
     About
Cottonwood leaves are very leathery
     But eventually yield
Osage oranges – hedge apples
     Litter the ground

I hesitated sometimes, not knowing whether to open these memoirs at the beginning or at the end, i.e., whether to start with my birth or with my death –Machado De Assis – Epitaph of a Small Winner, 1952 p19

The Crocodile’s dilemma – a crocodile tells a woman that he will return her child if she correctly foretells what he will do. If she says he will, he has only to eat the child to make her wrong. If she says he will not, she will be wrong unless he eats it.

Age finds place in the rear / All wars are boyish and fought by boys / The champions and enthusiasts of the state – Herman Melville – Battle-pieces and Aspect of the War, 2001 p59

We are only conscious of what has passed – the having become. This is only true of man. All other creatures only know a presence. A consciousness that only knows the past necessarily has to recognize death.

It is seldom indeed that one does part on good terms, because if on were on good terms one would not part –Marcel Proust – The Fugitive p9

When the prices of gasoline goes up, say by 100% then consumer adjust their spending habits:

• The frequency of their shopping trips decreases 20%
• The volume of items purchased decreases 6%
• The overall dollars spent of goods decreases 14%
• The number of one-stop shopping trips increases
• The number of advertised items purchased increases 29%
• The number of private label items purchased increases 3%

Nothing is ever so cherished as that which we no longer possess – Corey Robin – Conservatism and Counterrevolution from Burke to Palin

And there is hidden gold here. Hidden gold from the California gold rush, supposedly. A party of successful forty-niners were ambushed by Indians supposedly. They buried their gold near the salt plains and when they returned later could not find it. In 1904 samples from a drill bit assayed for gold, so the story goes, but the underlying quicksand prevented its recovery. The search was finally called off in 1940 when the dam was built over the site.

Let us leave pretty women to men with no imagination – Marcel Proust – The Fugitive p25

Are there any irreversible gains to be made in our understanding of the world from our daily grind or has meaning been rung out of it?

Just as the capitalist yearns for a labor force of obedient worker-monkeys, military administration imagines an army of efficient and reliable robot soldiers along with a perfectly controlled obedient population – Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri – Multitude: war and democracy in the age of empire, 2004 p53

The real is always more interesting than is the canonical

People will readily refuse wealth and risk death, where as we imagine that pecuniary interests and fear of dying rule the world – Marcel Proust – The Fugitive p32