The Laws of Nature Do Not Apply To Me

He had reached his pre-determined limit and quite. Can’t win every time, he said pensively. Barbara had lost too. But next time they would do better, come away a winner, next time. There is always a next time and next time they will win. Gamblers always believe this. They are worst than fundamentalist. Lady luck will smile on them just as God responds to personal petitions. A gambler is incapable of understanding the basic principles of statistics. Oh they understand what the odds are. It is what the odds means that they can’t comprehend: its that they think that odds are cumulative – the more times that you lose the greater your odds the next time. It does no good to explain that each roll of the dice or toss of the coin is an independent event. And its not that odds are cumulative either, because Lady Luck is smiling on me. You can overcome house odds if just play enough times. And if you walk away while you ahead you can win, which is true, but one rarely does or at least not for long. No one brags about how much they have lost. An atheist does not make a good gambler, not a real atheist. A true gambler believes that the laws of nature will not apply this time not for him. He was waiting for Walter. He sat at the table with his chin resting on his clenched fist. He said that he wanted Walter to modify some wine crates – shorten them so that he could use them to display his product and the upcoming Fillmore Street fair.

Cleanliness might not be next to godliness but it is certainly adjacent to horniness. A hotel room is horny because it is clean: the sheets are clean, the toilets are clean; everything is clean, and this cleanliness is a flagrant inducement to – what else? – ‘filthiness’ – Geoff Dyer – Otherwise Known as the Human Condition, 2011 p316

Due to their common origin

            The were all gifted

Zeus was their father

Memory was their mother

            With her lovely braids

No one is without pain

            For what we don’t share

The fear that some number may begin to grow in my brain until there is no more room for it inside me, … the fear that I may start screaming, and people will come running to my door and finally force it open, the fear that I might betray myself and tell everything I dread, and the fear that I might not be able to say anything, because everything is unsayable – and the other fears…. The fears – Maria Reiner Rilke – Ahead of All Parting: selected poetry and prose, 1995 p251

He had set up a shell game right here on this Muni bus. On an open magazine in his lap he sallied forth. He had three yellow bottle caps and under one of them was supposed to be a red pea. After a few simple movements he asked one of the onlookers to pick the cap with the pea under it. She did. “You are a winner. Let me pay the winner one hundred dollars. Or at least I could have if you had put up a one hundred of your own”. If someone had, I can assure you, it would not have been as obvious. And you odds would not have been a statistical certainty either. There is a reason that the term “shell game” has come to be synonymous with fraud. He was not very good. He got no takers; anyone willing to lay their money down. Not that he was not good and manipulating the pea. At that he was good. The man and his game got off at the next stop. You got to keep moving in this line of work and perhaps a bus is not the best place to carry on your trade. If its his game and you win you are usually the shill. If its your game and you lose you’re an idiot. The rule is simple, unless its your game you can’t and you don’t always want to if its your game or not at least until the end. Demand to handle the shells and turn each one to reveal that there is probably no pea under any of the thee.

Language allows us to distinguish between appearance and reality, but it also allows some of us to persuade others that appearances are realities – Mark Kingwell – Harper’s, July 2011 p21

The morning news – man shot in the butt by his dog

From the very instant they first boot up their computers in the morning, their in-boxes comprise an unbroken catalog of outrage stories ideologically tailored to their preexisting obsessions – Jonathan Kay – Among the Truthers: a journey through America’s growing conspiracist underground, 2011 p240

With the legalization of marijuana traffic accidents fall (about 9% so far in states that have done so). The apparent reduction is attributed to the substitution of marijuana for alcohol. Marijuana is safer for both its user and the society than is alcohol.

Life will always be bad enough for the desire for something better not to be extinguished in men – Maxim Gorky

The Do’s and Don’t of Repulispeak:

            Don’t Use                                                       Use Instead                            

            Capitalism                                                       Economic Freedom, Free Market

            The government taxes the rich                     The government takes from the rich

            Middle class                                                     Hardworking Americans

            Jobs                                                                  Careers

            Government Spending                                   Waste

            Entrepreneurs/Innovators                              Small Business Owners/Job Creators

            Sacrifice                                                          “We’re In this together”

Space reaches ‘from’ us and construes the world – Maria Reiner Rilke – Ahead of All Parting: selected poetry and prose, 1995 p173

It costs New York City $500,000 a year to provide security for Rupert Murdock’s New Corp headquarters on Sixth Ave. This expensive detail is billed as a “counterterrorism initiative”. The NYPD does not provide any security details of any other news operation in the city, not for CNN or for CBS or for ABC or for NBC. All of these organizations provide security at their own expense.

[The bullshitter] does not reject the authority of the truth, as the liar does, and oppose himself to it. He pays no attention to it at all. By virtue of this, bullshit is a greater enemy of the truth than lies are – Harry Frankfurt

There are now stories circulating of the police in New York City having  directed newly released inmates of Rikers Island to the Occupy site at Zuccoiti Park

There is so much crap in the world, and then suddenly there is honesty and humanity – Ryszard Kepuscinski

People are organisms defined by geography and time. Organizations arise spontaneously and die without being mourned. They serve a function unlike an individual. They have no life that needs to be respected. Life is meaningful without having meaning. Institutions have meaning without being meaningful.

Planes roar in the air / cars race thru streets / I know where they go / to death but that is OK – Allen Ginsberg – Kaddish and other poems, 1961  p42

Bubbles result when the future that gets collateralized is not the future that actually occurs

Those who can’t forgive the past are condemned, not without pathos, to re-enact it – Christopher Hitchens – Love, Poverty, and War, 2004  p200

Music encompasses the community. Text defines the individual. Sound precedes the quest for meaning

There is no medium of communications better suited to political propaganda than film. Literature and the spoken word can be used to bombard a person with facts, but only cinema can transport him wholesale into an invented world – Jonathan Kay – Among the Truthers: a journey through America’s growing conspiracist underground, 2011 p250

Compared with the past, the present is confining and boring,  The future will be different. Dreaming is our salvation.

Sane conspiracists subconsciously erect a rigid mental firewall that insulates their real day-to-day lives from the life-and-death implications of their fantasies – Jonathan Kay – Among the Truthers: a journey through America’s growing conspiracist underground, 2011 p184

In 1980 there were only 12,301 women incarcerated in the United States. Today there are more than two million in prision. The good news is that the female prison population is more racially balanced that is the male prison population.

Bad boys attract good girls, but bad girls like them too – Deborah Martinson – Lillian Hellman: a life with foxes and scoundrels, 2005 p84