A Frozen Entry in Every Microwave, a TV in Every Room, Two Cars in Every Garage

Rain – I hear the rumble: it was dark on the western horizon as I drove in.  Jenny teaches English at Parkville High. Says she's proud to provide their foundation. Six days a week her sons do cross country early in the morning then she picks them up. It rained just enough to get everything damp. It’s getting dark again. Neon lights – window advertisements – reflects of the black asphalt – yellow and orange and a flashing red. But I can't read it - it's backwards and it blinks.

You can tell  you are in a blue funk by how you interact with other folks - when one minute you are jovial and friendly and in the next standoffish and aloof and you are wondering why everyone is staying far far away from you, it is then you bcome aware that another funk has descended upon you. If they are staring at you - it may only mean that you are paranoid. Then again you may have only forgotten to get dressed. When you least appreciate any intimacy it’s lavished on you. When you want affection or at least think that you do it’s nowhere to be secured. Now is the time to get busy writing. When you’re busy you don’t notice it and you are not wishing that you were not here and you are not wishing that this was not now. It would be nice to not be wishing at all. Not wishing would be bliss. When you die you stop wishing.

Like relishing the dusty air after a summer shower filled with the scent of roses. It had been so unbearably hot. Then a quick shower cooled everything off. Life is sweet once again. You’re a kid again gigging (giggling) for frogs at midnight – they freeze when you shine your flashlight in their eyes. Stab them – a honey locust throne tied the end of a stick. The mayonnaise jar is filled with lighting bugs. We’ve collected all the June bugs that we can find and tried to stuff them into the mailbox where they are refusing to stay, crawling out and flying away. But we stuff in more faster than they escape. You only notice the malodorous, then suddenly heavenly scents litter the atmosphere brought in by the summer storm. Now we are just sitting on the stoop with flashes of lighting dancing on the horizon – mom is calling us to come in and go to bed, but it is hot and it is muggy. Your sheets becomes soaked with perspiration. You don’t want to come in, before there was AC and the Gameboy.

I tend to be sympathetic towards liberals because they are currently incapable of putting their stupidity into practice. This is not so with the conservatives. And the middle of the road?  God Forbid! They seem to favor the most stupid ideas from both of these extremes. And why are there just two side to everything as if politics were two-dimensional? Everything abstract has at least one dimension less that anything real. One-dimensional man - homo economus.

A mechanical style of thinking, a mechanical memory, habit, a mechanical way of acting, signify that the peculiar perversion and presence of spirit is lacking in what spirit apprehends or does – G W F Hegel – Science of Logic, 1969

Nowhere – it is not ‘now-here’ but ‘no-where’

A big rain fell in the middle of the night – I had left two windows open – all the rain was supposed to be up on the Iowa-Missouri border. It had been hot and muggy. Record high heat in the panhandles. The temperature in Amarillo was 114. The windows were open and the fans on when I went to bed. The Internet is down.

Sodomy is about homosexuality like an axe murder is about an axe – Jay Michaelson 2/14/11

We must take it on faith

That the good lovers are

            The good lovers they claim to be

At least until we can try them

            Out for ourselves

And even then we can never be sure that

            We’re the great lovers

            That we ourselves have been claiming
                    To have been

Conquerors are seldom interested in a through going discovery of where they really are – Wes Jackson – Becoming Native to This Place, 1994 p15

A fool and his sheep are soon put to sleep

When the process of governing is incomprehensible, manipulation and propaganda thrive – Frances Fox Piven 2/8/11

A chipmunk in my pot

Roosevelt be praised

Trying to stay alive

Chip and Dale hopping

            About in the grass

One of them, I don’t know

            Which, runs up

My pants leg and I holler

            ‘Shit’, instinctively

They both run away

            Teetering, teeth
             Chattering

The murderous capacity of images, murderers the real – Jean Baudrillard

TV is the face

            Par excellence

Of Capitalism – totalizing

            And co-opting

Everything, It has

             No opposition

It oozes out of your

            Furniture

Excuse me, I must go out

And buy a another new car

Well not me - then who

             Someone does

Someone loses at the Casino

Someone pays for all the 

             Advertisements

TV is not a win/win proposition
              By far

Abstraction today is no longer of the map, the double, the mirror or the concept. Simulation is no longer that of a territory, a referential being or substance. It is the generation by models of a real without origin or reality: a hyperreal – Jean Baudrillard – Simulations, 1983

Smart people do live

            In Absurdistan

Otherwise they would

            Already be dead

The unintentional consequences

            Of evolutionary pressures
There are  intentional
            Consequences too
            But they are revolutionary
                 And not evolutionary

We have no time until / we know what time we fill, / why time is other than time was – W H Auden

The Consequences of Becoming a Theophosist

It rained during the night – I got acid reflux – drank too much wine – I ate too many potato chips which didn’t help. Trail dog is with me at the coffeehouse – he is watching the traffic – a chopper – pop poppa pop – lighting flashes – more rain – then the consequent rumble, but not as loud as the chopper. The river doesn’t appear to be any higher. The mayor is making a joke of it on TV. The town has become a tourist destination – people are flocking in to gawk at the rising water – the pizza place says business is up by at least 30%. I forget to move the wash into the dryer like I had been asked to do. I had been told that it would mildew. It doesn’t smell all that nice at that.

That you had parents and a childhood does not of itself qualify you to write a memoir – Neil Genslinger – New York Times Book Review, 1/30/11 p14

To praise the individual while condemning the group allows one to be “wounding without being rude”.

One of the abilities of genius is to make a little go a long way – Guy Davenport – Tatlin!, 1974 p125

No medication since Monday. Am I staring to feel it? I’m not sure. Just the other day I read that it all may just be in the head anyway (well obviously). The effects of selective serotonin uptake inhibitors may be imaginary anyway. The difference in double blind tests (when taking into consideration all tests and not just the most positive ones the drug companies use for FDA approval) between the inhibitors and inactive placebos was marginal. When active placebos (ones that have a side effect – all participants must be advised of the side effects) are used there is no difference in the effectiveness of the inhibitors and the placebos. The theory is that test participants on the inhibitor detect the side effects and assume correctly that they are on the drug and respond accordingly. So much for the Prozac Nation.

Having guests is tiring. Not the guests. It’s the changes demanded in my routine I suppose. I have to take  a nap in the afternoon; I have to speed up my pace; I have to do things a little differently.  Simple things like leaving my Muni pass so that my guest can ride around on the cable cars. I set out for the coffee shop. Like any Saturday afternoon it was packed. I considered several alternatives but they all involved Muni and I considered Frank’s Bohemian for a brewski,  but I really did not want a cold one but a hot one and wound up at Martha and Brothers with a cappuccino. It was that or skip writing anything today and that I would not do. Sea Lions, Ft Point, Golden Gate Bridge, Sausalito and the Headlands and back. My nap. Then up and at it again.

My nephew found a place that he liked the other afternoon. He had his mother and I by for an inspection. Did it fit all of his wife’s criteria? Well most of them and there was a long list and he won’t be able to do any better that than this. She said that it was OK only after he assured her that it had my approval. Somehow you have impressed her, he said. I was standing at the end of a swaying deck next to a gray fiberglass houseboat, a replica of the Taj Mahal.

If Jesus could be

            On TV

Would he have

Anything

Significant to say

Anything we would

Want to listen to

And  what would

It be that he would

            Say on TV

            Before they

Broke in with a commercial

And would we return

            When he came back

            After the break

Religion involves extraordinary use of ordinary cognitive processes to passionately display costly devotion to counterintuitive worlds grounded by supernatural agents – Scott Atran – In Gods We Trust, 2002 p51

No real person is

Any one person’s

            Person

When you dance with the devil, never fool yourself into thinking that you’re leading – Jim Hightower 2/8/11

Art is bounded

With property lines

Four walls and a floor

Signs having been

Previously posted

Everything is for sale
            At market price

It will be often fortunately that strawberries need straw / Or can they yes indeed have marsh grass ready – Gertrude Stein – Stanzas in Meditation, 1956 p25

I am coming to the end of Proust – it has been a long journey (three, maybe, four years). It is odd but he has run out of anything to say – what a sad way to end such a great book – now he is just blabbering about sexual perversion – maybe the death of Robert Saint-Loupes or de Charlus will revive this story. Very little has been underlined to jotted down in my daybook (except for some things about Zeppelins). Well St Loupes is dead – shot in the head retreating after an attack on the German trenches – the end is about to begin – the narrator has returned to Paris and it is several years after the war and he has begin to write this work.

He knew that. Roses. Are. Red. And Roses. And. Roses. Are. White. And Roses. Are Rose. Colored – Gertrude Stein – Stanzas in Meditation, 1956 p155

“Catch anything?” “Caught one. Caught nine over there this morning.” “What  do they stock it with?” “Trout” [said as if – ‘what else’] and I see one jump . Fishermen are resistant men (usually, sometimes they are not even men) engaged in a solemn, solitary endeavor (but sometimes with members of their family).

Instead of referring to something that is not a sign, signs are always signs of other signs – Mark C Taylor – The Moment of Complexity, 2001 p61

Man is a part of nature

Man is apart from nature

Man has a nature

The natural man

Natural selection is always bound by historically antecedent compromises between organic structures and environments – Scott Atran – In Gods We Trust, 2002 p32

The consequences of becoming

            A theophosist is to die

The consequences of not becoming

            A theophosists is to also die

The old boy had died, instantly, as the newspapers liked to put it – who could say… how long that instant might seem to the old one who was doing the dying – John Banville – Christine Falls, 2006 p144

The Calico Cat and the Gingham Dog

Filling sandbags today? Yep! Don’t they have a machine that does that yet? Filling sandbags is this community's equivalent to a charity bazaar. It is their regular community building ropes course. The river is due to crest at somewhere between 30 and 39 feet. The big flood of 1991 was thirty-three (I was later corrected - forty-three) feet. The prognosis on the crest  and its timing changes daily but everyone agrees that the breaks in the levee up-river does not diminish the height of the crest but only affects its timing. All that water eventually has to go somewhere – meaning downstream – it will eventually all pass right by here. The question is when?

Like most black-glove cops, [he] believed implicitly that if you ever backed down even for a moment in dealing with assholes and scrotes the entire structure of American law enforcement would crash to the ground in a mushroom cloud of dust – Joseph Wambaugh – The Choirboys, 1975 p30

Dave was telling me that Esmeralda’s real name is not Susan. Nor is Susan’s name Esmeralda (I had been calling her Susan except in my mind where I thought of here as an Esmeralda). It is Trisha and she resents serving assholes but is learning not to not show it so much he explains. She is learning how to perform service all on her own, he says. Dave says that he should know because he grew up in New Orleans where excellent service was the norm. Trisha, he says, is learning that service in itself is not demeaning. It’s just a way to make a living. The secret I say is not to observe yourself. He agrees. And I think that Dave has his own ideas about what kind of service he would have liked Trisha to have performed. The only thing that she had ever done for me was draw me a beer and she had always smiled when she sat it down if front of me.

America’s  most resent great achievement was the conversion of a comatose economy into the world’s greatest war machine and that had happened the better part of a century ago.

Sandbagging is pretty much complete – now for the wait – wait for the river to rise – sometime in the next week, someone says. The high water will last into August.

“The future / is all around us.” // It’s a place // any place / where we don’t exist  - Rae Armantrout – Versed, 2000   p68

The Calico Cat and the Gingham Dog

Simple language does not lie

Truth requires complexity

Falsehood demands details

Agent based interpretation of complex events… appears to represent a default strategy of the human mind – Scott Atran – In Gods We Trust, 2002 p49

Dial a 1-800 number at random – you have a 33% chance of hearing an advertisement for phone sex

We sleep together in the dark / but confuse light with love – Rae Armantrout – Versed, 2000   p103

Unlike the other apes (man, chimpanzees, bonobos and gorillas) orangutans prefer the use of their left hands

It is very curious to be curious. History is curious it is very curious to be history – Gertrude Stein – Stances in Meditation, 1957 p213

Having finished their cigarettes the musicians dribble back in – it is spoken word time at The Poetry Center – with music. This was the type of thing the Beat did so well in dark cellars wearing berets and dark sunglasses (I read just today that the US Army was abandoning the black beret and going back to the field cap. A ten year experiments as one soldier said of wearing a wet sock on your head – It had been a democratic process. The brass surveyed the men to find out what they liked and didn’t like – I’m sure that there were other things that they didn’t like). Someone when down stairs – the Poetry Center is on the fifth floor – to put up a sign. Someone wandering about might hear the horns from an open window – the sign was to invite them up just in case they might be curious. I don’t know that anyone was. I once heard an African rite taking place in a warehouse in Lisbon along the Targus and wondered what would happened if I just wandered in, but there was no sign saying that that would be OK so I didn’t. I would have liked to have seen this sign in many places but didn’t. Lots of opportunities missed. But then I don’t recall every having seen such a sign and wandering in either. And I was already here. So the sign didn’t do me any good either.

I’ll take the M train downtown. Walk to the Rex on Sutter. Hear Marcus Shelby.  I already have tickets – season ticket holder.  It will be my third concert today. They were only into their first piece here and I was already plotting my route to my next gig: the M line to Powell St Station, walk up Powell to Sutter and turn right. Walk for half block. Stop for a happy hour beer along Powell if and only if there is time or go up Sutter and investigate the White Horse. I noticed it before but had not stopped. Then I said to myself, “hold it buddy, hold it right there”. “This is now and that is then and you can only be at one place at a time and that is not there.” So I get into the groove and my mind didn’t wonder off again any more. I was getting lost but at least I knew where I was which was here. And when they blow the last note I will smile and said I was there.

It’s already  6 O’clock when I got downtown. By the time that I get to the Rex no time will be remaining to enjoy a happy hour anywhere. I get Oregon Porter at the Rex bar.

Knight Bachelor – a man knighted by the British Monarch but not a member of one of the organized orders of chivalry. There is no female counterpart. Most entertainers who have been knighted are allowed the honorific “Sir” due to their Knights Bachelor rather than their membership (which is generally as a junior member – ‘Commander’ or ‘Officer’) in an Order-of-Chivalry

We can only seek to do justice to a name, not to find its truth. Since a name has no signification, only a designatory function – Bill Readings – The University in Ruins, 1996 p160

Burning kerosene – jet fuel

Two pilots in mock combat

Race pirouette their crafts

Through my overhead space

They won’t go away

They won’t leave me alone

I want to smack them

            With a fly swatter

Sometimes they whine

Roaring as they make

            To run away

A red shift makes them invisible

            Except to the ears

It’s when they are far away

Or come in low that

            They really roar

It is quiet at this moment

They have returned to base

            To take on more fuel

The course of events must assume a certain definable shape, and until it is in a phase where some aspect is an accomplished fact, news does not separate itself from the ocean of possible truth – Walter Lippmann

“Marx was right,” I turned to Brian and said. “Money cranks the handle of the reality machine.” “Nice metaphor,” he replied

Thought is non-productive labor, and hence does not show up as such on the balance sheet except as waste – Bill Readings – The University in Ruins, 1996 p175

Two-thirds of all college grads in 2008 had accumulated a debt in obtaining their education. The average debt of a graduating student is $23,000. And then are all those who never graduate and there debts.

[The] surge lifted all yachts if not all boats – Lizzy Ratner – The Nation 2/14/11 p12

An abstract God

Is Just

            Another dollar

An insignificant

            Certificate

All consciousness is consciousness of language in its heterogeneous multiplicity. Understanding and misunderstanding, as it were, are entwined as the conditions of linguistic interaction – Bill Readings – The University in Ruins, 1996 p156

Tell me one more lie

            To counter all that

            You have already told

Tell me one more lie

            To console me

            Once again

Tell me one more lie

            That you do love me

            And always will

Tell me one more lie   

            That you won’t lie anymore

            That that was your last deceit

Tell me one more lie

            So that I won’t be

            Unhappy anymore

We can only agree to disagree if we can establish agreement concerning what it is that we are agreeing about and we can only establish communication if we can ascertain that we are in communication without first communicating that fact – Bill Readings – The University in Ruins, 1996 p182

Doing What I Must - When I Get Around to It, If I Ever Do.

I don’t like getting up until the sun is shinning into my tent. Now when it’s cold – say 35⁰ like it is at this moment it is hard to get up. They said it snowed here the other night. It takes the dog a while to wake up. I say ‘morning dog’ and it stretches and wobbly hops from the lounge chair onto my cot. I tuck it inside the sleeping bag with me and it stretches and I scratch him on his head and it yawns, a big yawn. Then it naps for a while longer. In a few minutes it will insist on getting up and when it finds it can’t get outside it will begin to bark. “Time to get up” I say and it hops up on the cot and onto my chest and tries to nip at my nose.  If it gets hold of it that will most likely hurt. It’s time, it insists for its morning walk. It is time to check to see if any other dog and been trespassing on its territory. It’s time to go and pee on its boundary markers. Refresh its ownership.

Uncle Iv Owens: he done / what he could / when he got round / to it – Jonathan Williams –Jubilant Thicket, 2005, p177

I have some rowdy neighbors – midnight drunks -don't quiet down until they pass out and fall flat on their faces. Topple over into their campfire. Fortunately it has gone out. Are they also bad parental role models I heard all evening – always hollering – forever making idle threats – If you don’t settle down…, come here now…, stop that this instance…, do what your told… we are going to leave, pack up the truck and go home. I mean it. You behave or we will leave. And when they get the boys settled down for the night they are the ones I think who have turned into the mean drunks. Do what your mother says, the old man chimed in backing up his wife for once, or we’ll go home. I mean it. That was the only time I heard him, so I can’t tell for sure if it’s the same voice as that of this drunk - voices in the night. Walking across the road and joining the couple over there. It’s mostly the men making all of this noise. I only occasionally hear a plaintive female voice. I eventually manage to fall asleep.

What appears to constitute change is actually the unfolding of a code implicit form the outset – Mark C Taylor – The Moment of Complexity, 2001 p69

I am unable to gain passage through Apache territory. I am turned back by a stern face emerging from a parked SUV and waving. I was trying to make a U-turn but he evidently thought I was trying to evade him. Just trying to cut across to the National Forest and he waved me back – back off the reservation – his reservation. He had a very stern face - being treated as the 'other' is never nice. Being on the reverse side of privilege - where white is not always right, is disconcerting.  It was useless to try and explain. He refused to even speak - just looked stern and motions towards the direction I had come. His intent was clear and precise. I was the Outsider.

In the planetary imperialism of technologically organized man, the subjectivism of man attains its acme, from which point it will descend to the level of organized uniformity and there firmly establish itself. This uniformity becomes the surest instrument of total, i.e. technological, rule over the earth – Martin Heidegger – The Question Concerning Technology and other essays, 1977

Writing is the act of being conscious of the conscious mind – the act of actually doing this is rare

The train halts. An engineer tells us we’re stopped because we’ve lost touch with the outside world. Things are happening ahead, but we don’t know what they are – Rae Armantrout – Versed, 2000   p84

Walter brings in for show and tell a 1:18 scale model of the new VW bus. He says that the real one is not out yet (this was in 2004). He prefers rear wheel drive, he says. This one has front wheel drive. Oh well, he announces, I still like it anyway. He goes burr, burr and drives his imaginary VW bus around the coffee shop. Walter has been staying up late at night with his credit card in hand enamored with e-bay. Can you see me driving this, he says. Of course I would have to be a little smaller. The Eritrean mother and daughter next to me look towards Walter and snicker. They probably have their village idiots too.

Money money money bolo - ching, ching - money, money bolo -- uhee - money, money bolo - sheaka - money, money… I’m trying to figure out how to write ‘sound’. I know it is not with capital letters and I know that the quote marks are unnecessary, but you can not write pure sound anymore than you can pure color. It needs some context. It is the contrast - subject versus object.

He does not receive any and this is a grief to him because he would liked to be rich – Gertrude Stein – Stanzas in Meditation, 1956 p219

It’s a dreary looking day

Everyone is so somber

They sit quietly and read

Two men are more animate than the rest

            They talk about ‘their’ churches

Whenever two or more shall

            Gather in my name they shall

            Constitute an unlawful assembly

The lady over there munches on a chip

            That she has extracted from a

            Single serving bag of “Miss Vicky’s”

                        (Frito Lay, Dallas Texas)

And then wipes her hand politely on

            A paper napkin. A phone rings

            Then she gets up and leaves

A man in a jogging suit (once called

            A leisure suit) is at the counter

            Placing his order, then he walks

Back and forth like he has to pee

This place is more alive than I

            At first had thought. Brand name

            Logos are awash. Even

God has his

Many believe / whatever happens is the other half / of a conversation – Rae Armantrout – Versed, 2000   p84

The three classes: the capitalist, the managerial and the popular

We are more free than we used to be… but we can no longer see what it is that our freedom is freedom from – Bill Readings – The University in Ruins, 1996 p164

The CIA killed at least 607 people in Pakistan last year and of that number only two of the reputed dead’s names appeared on a list of US most-wanted terrorists

Men who wish to know about the world, the philosopher had said, must learn about it in its particulars – Guy Davenport – Tatlin!, 1974 p1

The death of liberalism resulted from a rise of suspicion

We always function in society before we understand what it means to do so, and that we do so until death – Bill Readings – The University in Ruins, 1996 p148

It’s sunny – now!

It will make sense, now

It doesn’t ever

It never makes sense

            Anymore

Any sense now or ever

We do it forever – now and then

We have a feeling – now and again

It is not new – now

It was not then - forever

Now, what do you

            Say?

It’s sunny, by the way

Have I already said this?

Did I say it before?

Now, say what have you

            To say?

It’s your turn. Say what
             You have to say
NOW!

Word comes into contact with word – M Bakhtin

A Mediated Wilderness Adventure and a Turkey Dinner

Another bright day – no ice on the wash buckets – it did not freeze during the night. Spring is coming up here in the high country – the aspens are starting to leaf. This has been the longest drought I’ve ever known, said the old man. There was talk of hunting deer. Went up Dog Canyon beyond the line shack. It got me in trouble with the wife one Thanksgiving day. He had told her he was going hunting. Be back in time for dinner, she had said. He had promised her that he would. But he got the biggest buck that he had ever shot and they were further up the canyon than they thought, past the old line shack almost to the Mescalero Apache Reservation. By the time they came dragging in proud of their feat she was furious – having missed the turkey spread that she had worked all day to prepare.

Experience is never immediate or direct but is always mediated by organizing patterns and structures – – Mark C Taylor – The Moment of Complexity, 2001 p67

I went into Santa Fe and got the 10,000 service (AutoCare -first 25,000 miles free) for my truck. I got the taillight fixed too – Trail Dog got some treats – all the ladies ughed and awhed over him - It’s always like this I say to Frank, the service manager – Now I see, he says. I need a little dog too. Got on the Internet – updated Facebook – I had 171 E-Mails. Then after breakfast at Denny’s I headed back towards the mountains. My face felt hot when I had been indoors – It’s because it is sunburnt, I think – But I feel no pain. When one get older one always feels some pain – and one or two more aren’t even noticeable.

Windy is not weather / Rain which is weather / Sunshine which is weather / Dry wind is not also weather – Gertrude Stein – Stanzas in Meditation, 1956 p222

It was windy and warm yesterday. Today there is no wind. It is sunny today. The weather is perfect for once. This elevation has me winded. America’s Conservation Corp has a group of young people out here building a trail. Young kids? Not exactly. College students. I talked with a young woman from Germany – so how much trail did you build today? She thought for a while. Then she replied, oh, maybe ten meters. They are all camped over at the group site in a ring of two man (person) tents everyone (i.e. tent) a different color. In the morning and in the evening they hike between their camp and their work site. Unlike the seven dwarfs they don’t do it as a group nor do they sing. Not as a group but singularly and in small clumps – you can observe relationships developing by watching the pairings as they occur. I can hear the tamping of hammers and the hewing of axes during the day off in the trees. They walk along the stream bank and pass by my campsite. They have six days left to finish this project. I heard a tree fall early this morning.

The time of education is still addressed in general under the terms of a modernist meta-narrative that has lost its purchase: the passage from ignorance to enlightment in a particular time span – Bill Readings – The University in Ruins, 1996 p127

The ideal worker

            Labors contently

            At low wages

Which is best accomplished

By eliminating all his options

           

The search for the

            Ideal worker

            Goes on – Some employers

Dream of robotics

A Zombie is  a bio-robot

But the ones in the movies

            Are too dumb.

At least they don’t need

            Food nor shelter

Which is good. But they

            Refuse to work during

            Daylight and they are

Too awkward for assembly

            Line work

There’s got / to be more in a picture / than the billboard sight / we first / get // of it – Jonathan Williams – Jubilant Thicket, 2005 p268

The knowledge is dependent on how much you already know. The information is dependent on how much you don’t already know

The jacaranda, for instance is beautiful / but not serious. // That much / I can guess – Rae Armantrout – Versed, 2000  p20

A great poet becomes profound and then dies. Some poets are occasionally profound and never die

Public opinion contains all kinds of falsity and truth, but it takes a great man to find the truth in it – G W F Hegel

Tax the rich; they have all the money. If you try to tax the poor, you will go broke.

The curious homeopathy of American politics… means we need a large does of the same poison - Thomas Frank – Harpers, Feb 2011 p8

Five Economic Myths:

1)             The Great Moderation: we have tamed economic bubbles

2)             Efficient Market Hypothesis – the price is always right

3)             Dynamic Stochastic Equilibrium – monetary mechanism can match supply and demand to mitigate inflation before unemployment

4)             Trickle-Down Economics – economic intervention should always help profit-making

5)             Privatization – a worldview and first principle of Capitalism

Ruling ideas arise not from their persuasive power or inner logic but from the interest of ruling groups – Joshua Clovers – The Nation 4/23/11 p32

One can assist the producers
            Or subsidize the consumer

One can even do both

            But except for food stamps

            It is always those that have

                        Who get

America’s collective goal

Has always been to

            Support those who want

            Rather than those who need
                         Call it a  meritocracy

It only takes a small bureaucracy to

            Administer to the few

The point here is to refuse to equate accountability with accounting – Bill Readings – The University in Ruins, 1996 p131

Systems necessarily include what they cannot include

All of me is within the head, only the tail remaining outside: flagellant, spring-like… All is become mutable. I am monstrous, my head merges into the attic, the attic into blackness – Paul Metcalf – Collected Works vol.1, 1996  p11

Trail Dog? - God, Women Hate that Name - Crime Dog? Some Guy Thought I had Said. Kids Love the Name. I am Fond of that Name

A sign – “Steve Twiggs Ranch – 35.4 miles” – and an arrow pointed towards an unimproved dirt track down which a plume of dust was rising from a pick-up truck. About 25 miles away was a ridge of mountains. There was snow beside the road and snow capped peaks in the distance – to the west and to the north and to the northeast. No one else is out on the highway.

To the journalist, the event is a tryrant. It is the authority that grants him liberty to speak – Guy Davenport – Tatlin!, 1974 p194

I lit my campfire – first of the trip. A car drove by without stopping. A long way to cruise for a drive by. It had a bike on back and a kayak on top. I have six Buds on ice but don’t feel like drinking a beer (how strange). The little dog has already retreated into the tent. Trail Dog does not like fire. I checked the next morning to see if anyone had camped nearby – they had not.  Must have been looking for somewhere more sophisticated to do their recreating - them that sweat together, recreate together.  There were few places more primitive or remote than this place. I sit back and poke at the fire and watch the stars come out.

Things might always have been otherwise – Mark C Taylor – The Moment of Complexity, 2001 p56

The sun has finally risen enough to clear the canyon walls – its light touches me. It was so cold and I had hated to get out of my warm sleeping bag. I stumbled out to put on some coffee. The birds were chirping. The dog wanted to be taken for a walk. Trail Dog gets up first and if I don't then get up also he climes on top of me and tries to bite my nose. The first of the hot coffee. God! That's a little better. There is no clean water only the Canadian River which the cattle have muddied (and a lot more - defiantly not potable - Trail Dog won't even try it). Hence everything must be managed with a minimum of water. I minimize the number of dishes that I use. “Due to the drought – beware – bears are on the forage.”

Organisms that temporarly forsake immediate personal advantage in the expression of equivalent near-term reciprocation… [must] evolve ways of reliably discriminating between a cooperator and a defector – Scott Atran – In Gods We Trust, 2002  p28

God shall not be allowed

            To be self-contradictory

He shall not possess such

            A power, otherwise

God is omnipotent according to

            William of Ockham

God freely chooses his

             Potentia ordinata

Ordaining himself obedient

            To this constituted order

Both miracles and science

            Can thus co-exist

He can go no further. He can identify the full moon in the sky as a cubist guitar – Guy Davenport – Tatlin!, 1974  p39

While sitting up camp I had to stop and sit down and catch my breath about half a dozen times. I should be getting used to the routine by now, but I am not. First I blamed in on the heat – 98 degrees the other day, then I blamed it on the altitude – 7,000 feet today. But now I am beginning to thank that it might be  the medications that I am on. I asked about the potential side effects. The doctor didn't say anything about this.

There can be reasons too why there are reasons why / If they can be said as much – Gertrude Stein – Stanzas in Meditation, 1956p26

First there is a constituency then there is an ideology

It’s surprisingly common for researchers… to declare that A causes B when in fact it’s more likely that B caused A – Charles Seife – Proofiness, 2010 p50

It used to be primarily the health industry that tapped into our life savings and sucked them dry; now the financial industry has figured how to do the same. It used to be that in the end you just  died. Now, when you're broke you die.

We are terrified of dying in a plane crash but think nothing about speeding down the highway while talking on a cellphone. We don’t have an internal gauge of what behaviors are truly dangerous and what aren’t – Charles Seife – Proofiness, 2010 p71

81% of renters would like to buy a home.  81% of all Americans still believe that homeownership is the best long term investment that a person can make.

The cultural right is not rebeling against its exclusion from the center, but against the exclusion of the center, its reduction. The ‘cultural wars’ thus arise between those who hold cultural power but feat that it no longer matters and those whose exclusion from that cultural power allows them to believe that such power would matter if only they held it – Bill Readings – The University in Ruins, 1996  p114

I lack a good mysterious landscape

            But have plenty of paint

Someplace with picturesque

            Improvised villagers

            And spewing volcanoes

Where little girls can be

            Bought in the middle of the night

And recreation is a vacation

            From reality

Money cranks the handle

            Of the reality machine

Greed only works when there is

The option of running away

            With the spoon as

The cow jumps over the moon

Someone is already dreaming

            Of putting up condos there

The rich are different from you and me. They are ruder and less generous. They don’t get what other people are thinking. And apparently they don’t really care… This makes sense. People don’t craft personal collateralized debt obligations by calling on what they learned in Sunday school – Thomas Frank – Harpers, Feb 2011 p7

Congress at large (both the Democratic and Republican leadership at least) has escaped blame by the American public for the budget fiasco. Instead the public blames Obama and the Tea Party.

If the ideological has become visible, it is because the high-stake game has moved to another table – Bill Readings – The University in Ruins, 1996  p104

Wal-Mart’s Walton family owns as much wealth as the bottom 40% of the US population (more than 120 million Americans combined).

Now that the government has divested from the empathy business, we need the rich to discover brotherly love and fast – Thomas Frank – Harpers, Feb 2011  p7

The unabashed deployment of the state is the popular shortcoming of both extremes

The strong idea of culture arises with the nation-state and we now face its disappearances as the locus of social meaning – Bill Readings – The University in Ruins, 1996  p86