Organizing Facts - Hoarding Cats

Here I am again. I am at the coffee shop again. It is morning again.“So Linda - do you have dreams with subplots.” “Ugh , no!” “It’s a lot like reading Shakespeare – very literary you know; you wake up confused and with a headache again. Do you dream in color or in black and white?” “Color", she replies. “Do animals talk, in your dreams like they do in mine?” That stops her short. “Occasionally”. “Any specific animals?” “What?” “Are there any specific animals or species of animals that talk and the others do not? Say like your little dog Bumpers?” “I can’t think of any that always do and others that never do." She is obviously getting perturbed by my apparently aimless rapid fire questions.  “I’m taking a survey,” I explain. That always puts people at ease. People like to have a structure. Yesterday Walter took a survey. He had asked, “paper or plastic?” I had immediately though of the grocery store. “Plastic”, I replied. Linda said, “paper”. Linda and I usually agree. I would have thought the opposite, Walter said.  I explained about the store metaphor. Walter said that he had been thinking of money when he asked. Bruce says to Linda, “I tried to pat your dog and it barked at me.” “It wasn’t my dog,” she replied. “Bumper might get up a whimper or a moan or two,” she said, “but a bark, never.” “So when did this happen?” “Just now, out side.” “Oh that’s not Bumper,” she said. “Then who’s dog was it?” he asked.

Most writers as well as readers of literary fiction see it as a refined form of entertainment or instruction – Pankaj Mishra – New York Times Book Review 1/2/11 p10

News loses its value in its telling, but it is its telling that is its only value. Consumption is the conversion of value into utility - the future made present. Having been told, news is no longer news. News is a promise for the sharing of a secret. Without titillation, news is not news; it is just the unknown - not even what we don't know for what we don't know, we know that we don't know.

Literary criticism… [is] devised to yield particular knowledge about a self-contained realm of elegant consumption – Pankaj Mishra – New York Times Book Review 1/2/11 p10

The Libyan no-fly zone cost the US $100 million to $300 million per week – that translates into $5 billion to $15 billion a year. The US purchases 200 Tomahawks each year at a cost of $2 million each. That comes to almost half a billion dollars a year. A seven month supply was fired off in one day into the North African desert and its not yet even the Fourth of July. The earth consumes munitions and grows bomblets. Hate is self-sustaining. Love needs nurturing.

According to the headlines, they [the cruise missiles] were fired by American and British warships. Indeed they were. The Americans fired 122. The British fired two. Stephen L Carter – The Daily Beast 3/22/11

It is not that we are surprised by the truth; it is that it gives us an increased confidence in what it is that we believe. Without any perception of the truth, we would be just zombies. Well in fact many of us are.

The authority a word may carry is [not] the result of its having been read, studied and finally judged convincing. The reverse is true: reading derives from a prior conviction – Vincent Descombes – Modern French Philosophy, 1980 p4

Ownership of stuff:

-       allows the owner to do or accomplish something (we need things to do things)

-       provides a sense of security (a nest)

-       an integral part of one’s sense of self

A tree lightly connected / to its blossoms. / For a tree it is a pleasant sensation / to be stripped / of what’s white and winsome – Kay Ryan – The Best of it, 2010  p51

“Who’s your favorite Founder?” Glen Beck asked of Sarah Palin. “Um,” she replied, “you know, all of them.”

Break the rhythm that excludes thinking – Zadie Smith – Changing My Mind, 2009 p266

The history that you can tell is an imaginary history. You can tell your story but not our story.

You get what you fooled: / all of Little Red Riding / from her shoes to her head – Kay Ryan – The Best of it, 2010 p71

For all time  and

In no time, no time

            At all

Did time

Got time

Spent time

Hard time

Served time

Time and again

Time before time

Time after time

The body of your youth stays with your youth – J Nozipo Mararire – Zenzela, 1996 p44

At least 100,000 birds a year die from chashing into windows in New York City. For every bird cut to pieces by a wind turbine, 1,000 are killed by domestic cats.

Crust was a kind of bridge but there was no river – Robert Kelly – Kali Yugen 1970

The most popular category of book likely to get stolen is a book on ethics

Philosophers have sought to interpret the world in various ways; the point is to change it – Karl Marx

91.9% of all Americans will never receive an inheritance (except perhaps for a few keepsakes). Only 0.6% of Americans would be subject to any estate taxes if they died.

The generations of men / sing & demand their sons. Work is to be done. / Girls to be stripped of clothes. Hell / of its inadvertencies. Words of their ease – Robert Kelly – Kali Yugen 1970

Collections of interconnected artifacts acquire properties not present in the objects themselves.  A network of technologies has needs. Words may be invented but it is their solution to a need that sustains them. Life is ripe with self-organizing processes. Life itself is a self-organizing process.

We are standing on the most frightening territory in all of history. Everything is explained to us and we understand nothing – Thomas Bernhard

Collecting is the field of study for economists; hoarding is a problem for a  psychologist. One is pathological and the other the norm. Collecting has a theme and a collector actively pursue a desired object. Nearly all children are collectors. Hoarding does not have a theme nor a desire for a specific object. There is pleasure in collecting. There is no pleasure in hoarding. For a hoarder, collecting is a spontaneous act. For a hoarder, organizing is a mental process rather than a physical process.

Fucking American Patriots - It all Depends On Who You Stick and Where

It is warm enough to sit outside. The jonquils (both yellow and pale, pale yellow – almost white) bloom. The trees buzz in a greenish haze. Rain has been forecast. It may continue for the rest of the week. The wind is out of the south-east. The cast iron table at which I sit wobbles. The glass sliding doors onto the patio are open. I take an ibuprophen gel tablet for my sore wrist. It is getting better, but very slowly. I am still wrapping it in a self-adhesive ace bandage. I stopped for a tank of gas for my truck. I paid $3.33 per gallon. Pastels are the colors of spring.

WINTER FEAR: Is it just winter / or is it worse / Is this the year / when outer damp / obscures a deeper curse / that spring can’t fix, / when gears that / turn the earth / won’t shift the view, / when clouds won’t lift / through all the skies / go blue – Kay Ryan – The Best of it, 2010  p165

At the depths of mid 19^th Century, literacy rates in rural English counties was on average 52% and ranged from 45% to 80%. This has been determined by assessing the number of individuals able to sign their name rather than making their mark in the parish marriage registers. It is estimated that those who could actually read was about one in six and those who could write was  as few as one in ten. Statistics is all in the counting. One can read without being able to write, but one cannot write without being able to read.

No that is wrong. Yes, it is possible to write but not to read. A case was reported by French neurologist Joseph Jules Dejerine in 1892 – that of Monsieur C. “Now he writes from memory whatever he wants, but whether it be his own spontaneous writing or from dictation, he can never reread what he has written.”

Can an animal think? – There is no doubt an animal can think, and that it can remember //  Why do we growl like animals when we are hungry? – A hungry man is an angry man // Why does oil make a wheel go round more easily? // It all depends on where the oil is put – Cynthia Zarin – The American Scholar, Winter 2010

Most everyone who asks “What would the founders do?” already knows the answer. They already know what the founders would do. It is a rhetorical question. And who is it that would have answered these inquires if they had not been merely rhetorical regardless of how many quotes have been memorized and regurgitated. 

No man has a claim to credit upon his own word when better evidence, if he had it, may be easily produced – Samuel Johnson

The writer of the Pledge of Allegiance, Francis Bellamy, was a socialists and wrote it for children to recite. It was published in the Boston children’s magazine, Youths’ Companion in 1892

All roads go Roman. / The path not taken / is not kept open – Kay Ryan – The Book ot It, 2010 p52

When the right-wing talks about an ‘elite’ they don’t mean the wealthy – they mean a click of bureaucratic ‘czars’

The house dick’s / our secretes, / logbook / of the restless hotel – Robert Kelly – Kali Yugen 1970

Facticity – verification that the facts really are facts

Green grass writ Sanskrit / to worm below as well hawk a speck beyond cerulean. / All stone to flue aspire – Roland Johnson – ARK, 1996 ARK 63

Heavy drinkers exercise more on average than do non-drinkers (Harpers Index), but not by much.

Life is boredom, then fear / whether or not we use it, it goes – Philip Larkin – Dockery and Son

17% of young Americans (ages 18 - 29) think that violence against the US government is justified (Harpers Index)

The great undertaking of each generation is to settle the debt handed down by the proceeding one…[and] in doing so, each generation calls into existence, the obstacles that are to confront its descendents – Vincent Descombes – Modern French Philosophy, 1980 p3

Fucking someone who has fucked

Someone famous is a Kevin Bacon

            Experience – only one degree

            Of separation – a space shot.
No, a time shot - or rather a time capsule

Thought not quit as awsome as the

            Challenger disaster. A concerted
            Effort to find the crew capsule

Squeeky Froum tried to assassinate

            President Ford. That alone

            Should have made Charlie

Manson famous
It's never quite clear 

Without a scorecard
            As to who screwed and
            Who got screwed

Welcome symbol needs of early morning after too much nada all the night – Robert Kelly – Kali Yugen 1970

We Are All Capable of Lying to Ourselves But At Critical Moments We are Called Upon to Be Honest

"Call me a police officer, I need to call a police officer" the man is hollering. He had been pounding on the door, trying to push rather than pull. Osama says "No! You can't use the phone. Use a public phone." He demands the phone book? "I don’t have a phone book and besides if you want to call the police just dial 911." He wants Osama to show him the phone. "I can’t see any phone." He is standing next to the phone. Finally he spots the phone. He quiets down. He makes his phone call. He sits down in front of the café near the phone. All third party phones are required to provide 911 access. He is accosted by two street people who he proceeds to he chase off, street people are very territorial. He returns and is shouting at Osama again. Osama orders him out again. "It won’t do you any good," he tells Osama. "You can’t get me for trespassing this time for I have called the cops myself." "I don’t want you in here," Osama says and orders him out again. He retreats and is pacing back and forth in the intersection then tries to get back inside the café again and is evicted again.

We did not hope, nor did we expect, to be integrated into the prevailing system of economic, political, and cultural power – Stanley Aronowitz – The Knowledge Factory, 2000 p.xvi

David says, "if I miss a day I get cranky. Do you find that you do too?" "I don’t miss a day or at least I haven’t since December," I say. "I always at least write the date and place and have never failed to write at least one page in my notebook. It would be unimaginable to have missed a whole day." He is trying to write a screenplay about Emperor Norton but lacks a source of conflict. I then headed to the Abir and asked for a Prohibition Ale but it came out looking like very week piss and the barmaid said, "This is not beer."  I had a Fat Tire instead. The cash register goes beep when button for beer is pushed and the shift supervisor says this is happy hour and the price goes down  by fifty cents. Hurrah for happy hour.

Acts of love, because they are unattached to the world of commodities are radical propositions – Zadie Smith – Changing My Mind, 2009h p206

The public good

            Is a private grief

While a private

            Good is merely greed

The financial leaders of America and their political servants have seemingly reached the cynical conclusion that our society is not worth saving and have taken on a new mission that involves not creating wealth for all, but simply absconding with whatever wealth remains – Matt Taibbi –Griffopia

Biblical Capitalism: the belief that unregulated capitalism is biblically mandated

One of the greatest authenticity dreams of the avant-garde is this possibility of becoming criminal – Zadie Smith – Changing My Mind, 2009 p94

It is not a revolution until a revolution becomes revolutionary. It is not a revolution if it stops short of being a revolution.

You can take the ruling class by surprise every few decades, and the ruling class duly spends the next few decades making sure it doesn’t happen again – Alexander Cockburn – The Nation 12/17/10 p9

It said SAVE THIS AD

            So I did

I came across it

            Yesterday

Yellow and crumbly

I still have

            It

If I can’t use it

            Someone else

            Might

It is for tires

I don’t have

            A car anymore

But I know someone

            Who does

Someone has to push the rubble / to the side of the road, / So the corpse ridden wagon / can pass. –Wislawa Szymborska

At critical points in history we need to become intolerant of our own lies

We are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue… Intellectually it is possible to carry on this process for an indefinite time: the only check is that sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield – George Orwell – In Front of Your Nose

Even Al Gore Admits Now that He Made a Mistake - Whatever You Do, It's a Zero Sum Game

And a gray ship with undelivered Hyundais slipped behind Alcatraz Island into the setting sun  as it headed out towards Long Beach and the last rays of the sun reflected off the Chevron refinery at Richmond making it look like two giant 747s waiting to take off and I was anxious to spot some parrots and although I hear a number of birds, none of them sound like parrots to me. And if I climbed even higher what then would I be able to see? And if I climbed even higher what more could I hear? That gray ship is now sailing beneath the Golden Gate or more properly 'through' the Golden Gate and I can now hear a flock parrots squawking.

Hunks of bread glasses of efface a window / high over the empty street / that was how it got him, he didn’t / love anybody any more / & maybe worse – Robert Kelly – Kali Yugen 1970

Motorcycle mama and me, a truck driving man, you have it in for me - don’t you? Ride all day and hide out all night - don’t you, your Harley and you? You say that I embarrass you and that you’re not sure if you want a boyfriend or a girlfriend. Why not have both? I don’t care. As I’m not so sure as to whether I want any friend at all. And we blame each other and you not wanting anything but silence clinging on to you from behind. Your motorcycle daddy wants to talk, but knows that he can’t be heard over the wind and the valves. And to you my voice is just part of the cacophony. The real music of your life is those two wheels screeching around the tight turns down the coastal highway towards Monterey.  I an hanging on for my life. You’re my road trophy or am I yours. You slow down. I get off. You ride away. I don't watch you go. I look out towards the ocean, a big grey container ship is heading south. I will call you when I get back from my next haul, but you couldn't hear over the roar of your knuckleheads.

BREAST BIRDS: Breast birds don’t bred true. / Once you let them out of you / their vividness is brief; / their orange or blue / fades back to brown / as quick as your relief. / Oh, love, oh loneliness, oh grief – Kay Ryan – The Best of it, 2010 p78

One sixth of the world’s corn supply is burned in American cars. Enough corn to feed 350m people goes up in smog due to $9b in federal subsidies needed to make ethanol "economical". Worldwide the production of biofuels consumes 6.5% of the grain supply and 8% of the vegetable oil supply with food pieces themselves rising to their highest level since the UN began tracking the prices. Even Al Gore says he made a mistake.

Less stiff and less secretive than pride, the altitude of fatuous vanity [is] the conspicuous badge of amorous merit – Machado De Assis – Epitaph of a Small Winner, 1952 p199

It’s the banality of the programming that gives the advertising its aesthetic qualities

Great novels are always a little more intelligent than their authors – Milan Kundera

Money is one of the few things that naturally floats upstream. Affluence makes maturation run in reverse.

Someone is trying to

            Make money

Someone is trying to

            Get my attention

Blaring, screaming, blinking

            Keep in touch

Using aromatherapy and

            Smell’a-vision too

           

I am an easy touch

Reach out

            And touch

Me some time

Ten stamps, ten cappuccinos; new card starts the series again – Zadie Smith – Changing My Mind, 2009 p85

Nothing except a battle lost can be half so melancholy as a battle won – Duke of Wellington

Blue Dog Democrats in the Nov 2010 elections lost more than half of their members in Congress while the Progressive caucus came in about even – losing three incumbents and gaining two.  The election was less a victory of conservatives that the conclusion of the party shift of Southern Democrats to the Republican Party that began in the 60’s. It completes the old ideological alignment of Congress along party lines that began with Civil Rights. It was about time. Now both sides can vote along party lines.

Identity politics, the only authenticity to survive the twentieth century – Zadie Smith – Changing My Mind, 2009 p77

In a zero sum game, what happens to the loser(s)? Does one lose more than the other? Is one who loses less than they might or one who loses less that the other, the winer?

Writers love boozing… The language is all cinema and violence – Colum McCann – The American Scholar, Winter 2011 p18

World’s youngest grandmother – 23 year old Romanian Rifca Stanescu

The Bridges that Must be Crossed so that We can Get to Parrot-dice

There is a man and a women standing to my right talking. They are comparing parrot soup recipes. So do you trap your parrots up on Telegraph Hill?, I ask. Parrots!, he mutters quizzically. Yeah parrots, I repeat. Oh you mean carrots, he conjectures. That would make more sense, I must admit. Carrots and Ginger soup. Yeah, they are not that easy to catch, he admits. And I can’t imagine them having much meat, I say. Hardly worth all that effort.  And I am on my fourth Doppel Weisen and have to take a piss and I think about swinging on the stairway rails going down to the basement like they were parallel bars  but I’d probably wind up a whimpering heap at the bottom of the stairway on the cold concrete lying is someone else's piss. While I am contemplating this I am squeezing my penis with one hand so as not to leak down the front of my pants.  I am wondering if all that beer had impaired my judgement. Good thing I don't have to drive.  I want to say yes that it has but then claim no, that it has not. I am not really sure. Lying in heap down there would be an impairment for sure. I finally decide that my first priority is to take a piss, and that this is probably not the time to stop and reflect on the state of my judgement. First things first. Taking a piss is why I'm standing here.  I don't take the swing. I try not to watch my feet, which makes me dizzy and the stairway is steep. They say the Dillinger was once cornered by the cops down there in the john and that Jack Dempsey once worked here as a bouncer. It’s the Beatles that they’re playing  – is that from Abby Road? - Love, Love, all you need is Love. I wonder if parrot soup would taste any different than chicken soup. Everything exotic taste like chicken they say. "What does it taste like?" "It tastes like chicken."

An interest in knowledge and a love of difficulty are not easily disentangled – Paula Marantz Cohen – The American Scholar, Winter 2010 p77

The last (LAST) of the snow melts, what didn’t melt yesterday will melt today. It may get as high as eighty today. The Army recruiting sergeant has three recruits out drilling in the parking lot across from me. I’ve got four phone messages

I saw a cloud / shaped like a cloud. In the / sky it was – Robert Kelly – Keli Yuga, 1970

In a femtosecond the Concord flies less than the width of an atom

In utter emerald cornfield / till the cows come purple home – Roland Johnson – ARK, 1996 ARK 34

23% of all mortgaged homes in the US are underwater (have a negative equity). In a healthy market only about 5% of homeowners would have a negative equity. The total amount of negative homeowner equity in the US is currently $73 billion.

I like a novel to be a novel. I expect it to be about something or someone… I get annoyed. It is foolish to act annoyed. One can cure oneself, and should. It is foolish to insist that a novel be a novel. One must take what cones along, and see if its good – E M Forster

Principles are fine

            So long

As they don’t

Make you

Go blind

What footprint is left in the snow of flesh by an event? Thinking about thinking moves atoms – Roland Johnson – ARK, 1996 BEAM 12

The percentage of heterosexual women who have reported same-sex encounters decreases with education while the percentage of heterosexual men who report same-sex encounters increases with education. 15% of adult women and 12% adult men who describe themselves as homosexuals have never had a same-sex experience

Indeed, the human body is composed of a great many parts of different nature, which requires continuous and varied food, so that the whole body may be capable of doing everything which can follow from its nature, and consequently, so that the mind may also be equally capable of conceiving many things – Spinoza

US National Security spending in the 2012 budget – estimated 
                              total: $1,2 trillion

             $558.0b          Budgeted for defense

              118.0b          Operations in Iraq and Afghanistan

               19.3b          Nuclear weapons

                7.8b          Misc

                8.7b          State Dept counter-terrorism

               55.3b          “homeland security” not otherwise 
                                   fund by DOD 

              129.3b          Veterans programs

               48.5b          military pensions

               20.0b          civilian DOD pensions

[The] ‘Stream of Consciousness’ as we subliminally lurch from one unrelated (and usually unwanted) stimulus to the next like floating dust particles buffeted by the random forces of air currents - Spencer Wells – Pandora’s Seed: the unforeseen cost of civilization 2010 p116

We can have lifestyles that do not require our presence.

Forgive many things in others; nothing in yourself – Decimus Magnus Ausontus

Where does saved time go?

The more time that is saved

            The smaller its increments become

Do energy savings accumulate?

The more energy we save

            The more energy we use

Does time work the same way?

What exactly is a ‘speed-dial’ button”

What does ‘automatic’ dialing mean?

            Do you save time?

            Can you get it back?

Where does time go?

Was that the time

            Of your life?

            Was that it
                    Just now?

When is it time?

What time is it?

Whose time is it?

Which time was it?

Where has time gone?

Lost time

Time gained

Time after time

            It didn’t happen

No time – never happens

Just in time

In time

Time out

On time

Time for

With time

Time of

Big time

Small time

Short time

Long time

Dead time

Real time

Savings time

Face time

Quality time

Time saver

Time maker

Time waster

Big time is a small town

Big fish is a little pond

There is a time

            To sow

There is a time

            To reap

There is a time

            For all things

Woman shakes the womb; I am poured out like water into the dust of death – Roland Johnson – ARK, 1996 BEAMS 21,22,23

The American flag is the trademark of a good brand

Other people’s worth are the bridge you use to cross from where you were to wherever you’re going – Zadie Smith – Changing My Mind, 2009 p102

Cracking Each Other on Bare Butts with Rolled Up Towels and Shouting

I asked Clair - "Is a taco a sandwich or not." She said that she came down firmly on ‘NO’.  I told here about Walter’s dream. He was at the ballpark you see and he had hollered ata stadium vendor for a sandwich and the vendor had tossed to him a taco and Walter had wanted to know, "Was a taco a sandwich?" We argued about the definition of a sandwich. What exactly were its critical attributes?  We agreed that it must be held in the hand and be food but on little else. The covering does not have to come in two pieces. The hero sandwich and the hot dog being clearly examples of sandwiches made from a single piece of bread. Did a sandwich have to be savory? No, there were jam sandwiches and there were ice cream sandwiches. There were Oriel sandwich cookies so it was not even necessary to have the filling contained within bread. Yes some type of enclosure that was firm and was made from grain was necessary to qualify it as a sandwich.  Lasagna it was agreed was definitely not a sandwich (it could be held in the hand, but that would be messy - assuming of course that it was cold and not hot, in which case you would have to wear gloves). We were trying to help Clair hone her legal abilities. Help  Clair with her logical reasoning ability. She was just staring her classes in Law. She was attending thethe same law school that Hunter S Tompson’s Dr Gonzo had gone to (some years before of course). We were disappointed. We thought she held to convention too dearly. Another Dr. Gonzo she was not. We let her get back to her textbooks. And then there was the open-faced hot roost beef sandwich with mashed potatoes and gravy.

Nobody ever forgets where he buried the hatchet – Kin Hubbard

There are a lot of Christians out there looking for a place to worship…. I’ve talked to a lot of marketing people… and we need a charity… and that’s the bottom line… we are tasked with… and he waves his open right hand in a circular motion with his arm held at an angle just above horizontal… and he proclaims, we don’t need a white knight. His jaw muscles are well developed like some fugglehorn blower. Everyone responds to his booming voice with mousey responses while he nods his white haired head and then again his voice drowns them out with more Christian marketing ideas.

Supernatural thoughts are mesmerizing decoys for the brain areas that encode places, objects, animals, and human beings – Stanislas Dehaene – Reading in the Brain 2009  p312

When They Blow Them Horns

Boys in white – Once, but

            At the start of the year

            Infrequency of laundry

            Tending towards dingy

Or too often with bleach giving

            A propensity for yellow

Girls in snowy brilliance

            Their drill team twirls

            Majorettes’ blue pleats

            Of short skits unfurling

Four in a row with budding breasts

            Onwards they march
            Christian soldiers
            Teeth glistening

Damp from running laps

Left in the bottom of the locker

            To mildew

  

Take a seat over there on the

Bleachers – a section pulled out

            To the edge of the basketball court

An announcement is made

President Kennedy has been shot 
            In Dallas

         

We snickered – hee hee – sitting

            There in dingy smelly t-shirts

            And yellowing shorts 

 – then we showered

What did we know – This is a solemn

Moment – This is a tragic event

In the history of this country

We are told.

And we flipped each other off on bare

            Butts with our rolled towels

            And snickered – bang bang

Your dead


And what did I think on 9/11
When the towers came down?
I had said to myself - I guess we
            Got our comeuppance
            At last
Gee, he said, I had never heard
            An American say that

They might be homosexuals. That would be a natural conclusion, of course, since there were two grown men talking about “beauty” instead of scratching their crotches and cursing the goddamn government trying to run everybody’s business - B H Fairchild – The Art of the Lath, 1998 p11

Spreadsheet of cruelty – the draconian slashing of social programs under the pretense of budget balancing, while leaving big-ticket items and wealthfare intact and not even that but actually increasing  their funding but less than they would have liked to have done (they have the gall to proclaim their decreasing these increases as cuts).

Problems cannot be solved from within the same paradigm in which they were created – Annie Leonard – The Story of Stuff, 2010 p.xxiv

There are six million public sector employees who by state law are not eligible for Social Security and who depend exclusively on their pension and their personal savings for retirement. In addition their pensions are not quarantined by the federal Pension Benefit Guarantee Corp – and hence will receive no bail out if a state is allowed to and choses to abrogate its pension fund agreement.

Through money, democracy becomes its own destroyer, after money has destroyed intellect – Oswald Spangler – The Decline of the West, 1965 p396

Retronym – re-naming a thing after it is superseded by a new technology to distinguish it from the newer technology – acoustic guitar, snail mail, rotary phone, sailing ship, solid wood, organic farming.

You’ll fight – maybe  you’ll smash that and maybe you won’t: the main thing is to fight. Life is struggle . A life without fighting is a dead sea in the universal organism – Machado De Assis – Epitaph of a Small Winner, 1952 p206

One side wins on the ground and the other makes films. One side defends it’s space and the other conquers time – that’s what winning “hearts and minds” really means.

In every healthy State the letter of the written constitution is of small importance compared with the practice of the living constitution, the ‘form’ which has developed of itself out of the experience of time [and] the situation – Oswald Spangler – The Decline of the West, 1965  p361

The tools of the rich are in their character; the character of the poor is in their tools

A tool / made out of thought / pillar of salt – Roland Johnson – ARK, 1996 ARK 40

Grids eat men; pen them up – fence them in – confines them to property lines. Posted – Keep Out - No Tresspassing - No Hunting or Fishing Allowed.

If in a world of truths it is ‘proof’ that decides all, in that of facts it is ‘success’. Success means that one being triumphs over the others – Oswald Spangler – The Decline of the West, 1965 p396

We Should Always Ask Ourselves, "What would Ronald Reagan Do?"

New York City accounts for 40% of all of the nation’s transit trips. Salt Lake City spends more per capita on public transportation than any other city and the city is ranked 18^th in terms of passenger miles traveled while 43^rd in terms of size.

Cultural evolution suffers from inertia and does not make rational decisions – Stanislas Dehaene – Reading in the Brain 2009 p188

The Cat and Mouse wars continued on into the following century when the mice took to sea and established supply bases in the Azores. Felix took command of his new ten-cat boats sending them north to blockade any further advances by the rodents. After the disastrous failure at Tumblinka, Felix developed this fourth generation of his famous Scorpion class boat but its range was severely limited by the cats’ fear of ope  water - for that matter any water at all. It was Admiral Felix who was known for having said, “Damn it don’t open the hatches until you see their beady little eyes”. But since only near sited cats could be spared for the war at sea, he had very few victories. Their land operations were much mor conclusive.

“No way!” “Yes way!” And Ginny said, “Its good to learn a little history”. And I said, “no way”. “According to Walter” – it is a series of illustrated historical homilies. He has, he claims, invented a new form of poetry. The invention had something to do with four o’clock in the morning and finding something to do other than to watch infomercials:

There was a young man from Nantucket

Who kept show and tell in a bucket

Things that he found just lying around

“Nice”, I said, “but isn’t it sort of a Limerick only without the allusions to fornication?”  And he replied, ”well, I told you that it was based on an older form.”  According to Walter “a lemon half squeezed is no better than a lime” And I replied that, “A lime a day will keep you in the Navy.”

Between 1999 and 2009 the US manufacturing workforce contracted by 31% resulted in a lose of 5.5m jobs

“Just” principles… are simply the idea that a ‘class’ forms of its own legitimate claims – Oswald Spangler – The Decline of the West, 1965   p360

It’s a slow slow tune

Winter is not yet gone

It’s snowing but it

            Won’t stick

Sorrowful, mournful

            Mellow

There’s a steady drizzle

It’s all so dreary

            Black, stark, melancholic

The coffee is still warm

            Bitter thick and dark

: the mind becomes its own subject matter – Roland Johnson – ARK, 1996 BEAM 25

Recipients of government social programs are unaware that they ‘use’ such programs:

            Social Security – 44%  of recipients claim not to use a social program

            Home Mortgagee Interest Deduction – 60%  the the programs participants don’t feel
                  that they are recipients of federal assistance

            For Pell Grant recipients  the number is 43.1%

            For Medicare recipients it is  27.8%

           And for Food Stamp recipients it is 25.4%

Faith and ‘knowledge’ are only two species of inner certitude, but of the two faith is the older and it dominates all the conditions of knowing, be they ever so exact – Oswald Spangler – The Decline of the West, 1965  p189

I shall return. I wondered

Where you were. What are

            You doing. She said

            I’m doing fine

It’s Friday night

I though I heard someone

            Say “Almost flamingos”

“I’m kind of busy now”

            She said. “Well when

You’ve got a moment,” I said

Everything is fake you know.

No, I did not know

This

All animals have an auditory range which includes hearing what they can eat and what can eat them – Roland Johnson – ARK, 1996, BERM 7

Pres. Reagan increased the federal payroll by 61,000, while Pres. Clinton reduced it by 373,000. Pres Reagan reduced the portion of the national GDP spending by the Federal Government by 1% while Pres. Clinton reduced it by 3%.

We simply need to ask in every situation that arises what would Reagan have done? – Dinesh D’Souza – Just maybe we need to be asking what would Bill Clinton have done? No, on second thought, let’s not go there.