A Word About the World, When the World is Just a Word

Damnit – I misplaced my reading classes again – I’m sure I put them in my shirt pocket this morning before I left home, but, now I can’t find them, again. I checked all my pockets, even the coat pockets, and there were no glasses anywhere to be found. So I got up and walked down the block to the Walgreens and bought another pair – the cheapest they had, $9.95 – what need had I for designer frames? I got bigger lens and less powerful lens (1.25 instead of 1.50). Now this is much better. Now I can write small again.

The only successful slave revolution in modern history resulted in 122 years of reparations as they paid for their live three times – once for living (as we all do), once for being caught and once for escaping. In the early 1900’s Haiti was paying 80% of its national budget on these reparations and the further loans it had to take out to manage this debt. The reparations to the former slave owners for loss of property were imposed as a condition for France to recognize Haiti’s independence and pledge not to invade the country again. The original debt was for 150m Francs. The original reparations and interest (equalivant to $21 billion today) was finally paid off in 1947

The ‘positive’ model inevitably begins to function as a norm to which reality is made to conform by the very policies derived from the model – Herman E Daly – For the Common Good., 1989 p142

Factoid: Of the 262 athletes from 13 countries who participated in the first modern Olympics (Athens, 1896), 194 of them were from Greece – makinge the average size of a non-host national team to be six athletes. The winner of the discus competition, American Robert Garrett, had never thrown a discus before arriving in Athens. The next two Olympics (1900 in Paris and 1904 in St Louis) were side-shows at the then extremely popular world fairs. Not until 1908 in London did the Olympic movement take off as an international event.

Peep is becoming a business. The business model, however illusory, seems to revolve around the idea that what people want is instant therapy, ongoing, online, primal-scream communion – Ned Niedziecki – The Peep Diaries, 2009 p 128

Sports are to our age as tragedy was to the Greeks

Opening / enormous tunnels / in grains of sand, / we discovered the mines / of flames and of chance – Pedro Salinas

Sometimes the world
When world is not just a word
Is so contemptible as a word
This  world that is not composed
      Of words
Words that do not represent
      This world
      Or any world
      This word or
           Any word
Words are the world
      Not its representation
      No compensation is demanded
No one word is adequate
      No text is sufficient
A word about the world
When world is just a word

Aesthetics is always serious when agreed-upon interpretations are changed or stolen or emptied out – David Hickey – Harper’s [Dec, 2009] p93

So why is it that tripling the size of the human population considered to be “good news” (gospel so to speak)? We constantly hear about what we must do to prepare for these additional humans. Has it something to do with the way we borrow against their future and an every increasing population is necessary in order to continue to borrow against? We must do this or we must do that in order to feed, house, fuel the automobiles of the billions yet unborn. At what point shall we be standing belly to ass hole and shoving each other into the sea?

Today’s civilization runs on energy for the simple reason that all ordered, complex systems need energy to survive and prosper – Eric J Chaisson – “Long-term Global Heating form Energy Usage” - Eos, 2008

Pygmalion Complex – to fall in love with one’s own work and analytical skills – in behavioral economics this is called “over confidence bias”.

The nostrils of slow horses / Breath evenly, / And the brown bees drag their high garlands, / Heavenly – James Wright – Collected Poems, 197ht p112

Sincerity makes inequitable relationships acceptable especially when the rules for judgment of progress changes as rewards become due. People don’t really believe that everything that authority does is rignt, but rather they have a sense of doubt that makes them unsure that they have a right to fight back

Eisenhower has touched hands with Franco, embracing / In a glare of photographers. / Clean new bombers from America muffle their engines / And glide down now. / Their wings shine in the searchlights / Of bare fields, / In Spain – James Wright – Collected Poems, 1971 p122

Class makes people conceive of themselves as spectators rather than as people gratified by new material goods – Sennett p165

As spectators we get set up for future consumption. Self-sacrifice allows one to fulfill fantasies about what living decently means – the respect of “anyone in America” must be earned for what one has sacrificed for the good of one’s family

Thought is the consequence of the provocation of an encounter. Thought is what confronts us from the outside, unexpectedly. - Elizabeth Grosz – Space, Time and Perception, 1995

There is a Performance art piece on Guerrero. An empty room except for a legged white bathtub in the center, wherein lays a woman with sod laid over her.  Grass grows from her head. A woman in a tuxedo is covering her with earth by the shovelful from a pile on the sidewalk just outside the door. A woman just inside the door sells red tickets that can be exchanged for drinks. There was a bench against the far wall upon which four people could sit and participate (I guess that means observe). Three young men were conducting a conversation on the sidewalk out front. I walked in and looked around but did not stay. Now I’m debating whether to return. Probably not. But I have ample time and its only a block away. OK, OK, I concede I will go back after the next beer. And the jukebox plays on - a reggae number - it is dub like without actually being dub. And I have another Sac Ale. Three dollars more and I pass a five, take a one in change and leave a dollar. The bartender slides his tip, a one from the bar. It’s baseball season again. I had received an e-mail from Lisa offering tickets for the opening game.

The function of the radical intellectual … is to struggle against what … functions to prevent thought - Elizabeth Grosz – Space, Time and Perception, 1995

The World Poker tour is on the television. There is a man in a cowboy hat glaring over the top of his lowered sunglasses. Oh, I’m so intimidated. I want kettle chips, hot crispy chips with jalapenos. I have been craving chips for three days now but have yet to indulge myself. I am showing such self-restraint. The folks behind me have two bags of kettle chips - one is cheddar and the other Jalapenos. I want to steal a few. They were sitting there unguarded a few moments ago. I missed my chance. Never pass up on self-indulgence. Just make sure that your really do want to indulge.

Cedric the Entertainer gets a Bud then a bikini wax. A guy in a red t-shirt is hollering Budweiser. The bartender tells him “I can’t hear you, you are hollering too loud.” “Budweiser” he repeats in a plaintive but quieter moan. On Thursday the Bass girls (the beer not the fish) will be on the premises. There is no sign on the door that I can see, but if it’s got a urinal, it must be the right place. The Elixir serves every beer in its own glass. Oh course every beer comes in its own glass. No, I mean every brand has a glass specifically for that brand of beer. Oh.

Freud regards the perversions as the opposite of neurosis…perversions avoid the repression that characterizes neuroses - Elizabeth Grosz – Space, Time and Perception, 1995

Patricia is the artist. It was her that was in the bathtub covered with earth and grass growing from her head. There is a chair at the foot of the tub. The gallery owner is sitting there as I walk in. I have a discussion with him regarding business models (he is obviously not into them). So this is your piece, I ask him? No, he replied, its Patricia’s. So my question is, I say, where did the dirt come from? Is it important, he asks?

Yes, I say. Let’s ask Patricia, he replies. Patricia, “I didn’t hear.” “Is the history of the dirt important”, I ask her? “Yes”, she says, “Certainly”. It was an automatic response - unconsidered. She is now having a conversation with a man with long hair and an olive jacket. I am not interested in their conversation.

Solutions to problems resulting from the way a society is organized cannot be implemented because they presuppose that that society to be other than it is. No society can address all of its problems. Some problems become the responsibility of the gods.

Each micro activity has an optimal scale, but the aggregate of all micro activities, the macro economy is supposed to grow forever and never exceed an optimal scale! How can this be? – Herman E Daly – For the Common Good., 1989 p145

Radicals – some want what they believe once was, some want what never was – some want the practical but impossible, others want the impractical but possible. None of them want what is cheap.

Real is what really happens… I mean, what happens really happens. Only not exactly in the way it’s shown – Ned Niedziecki – The Peep Diaries, 2009i p82

Sometime history is just too bizarre to be creditable, especially in its inanity and stupidity. Our rationally rebels – that is impossible. It just can’t have been that way, could it? In the end history is what happened, and it happened for the best of all reasons. This is the nature of rationality.

Fundamentalists rush in where liberals fear to tread – Michael J Sandel

Education means escape from creaturehood
But noncollusion only becomes an impossibility
And freedom becomes proportionally diminished

Great are the prerogatives of beauty, subduing even those not consciously aware of it – Jean Cocteau – The Holy Terrors, 1957 p14

That which you envy, you become – but not in the way you imagined it would be. Those who suffer the most form this are the dreamers.

The task of the university, its relation to society, its structural organization, and the concomitant organization of knowledge are not a proper topic of study once the decision has been made to accept the disciplinary organization of knowledge – Herman E Daly – For the Common Good., 1989 p125

Sports negate
      Money
Klaxon sounds
      Stop
Trading suspended
Eat your hotdog
      Mustard
Fries – mayonnaise
      French
Warm beer in a paper
      Cup
Pee a yellow stream
      Worth

The sorry spectacle of state and local governments competing in the zero-sum game of attracting footloose industries by offering tax breaks and lax environmental regulations only serves to weaken the true basis of community development, both locally and nationally – Herman E Daly – For the Common Good., 1989 p135

It’s not what one thinks but the confluences of the things that one thinks about that matter

Lying creates its own reality – Ned Niedziecki – The Peep Diaries, 2009 p87

The bullfight is a sport and an art and a religion all rolled into one event

My love is only water, / that always passes away, and does not deceive, / that always passes away, and does not change, / that always passes away, and does not end – Ramon Jimenez – Enternidades

The spectator is
       Either
Apollonian observer
Or Dionysian fan
And the spectacle is
      Neither
It is timeless but not
      Eternal

Only now, one hundred years later [after the invention of cinema], are we coming to grips with the notion that things happening specifically for the benefit of the camera, not necessarily faking, can be more compelling, more real, more “suffused with experience,” than anything that happens off camera or goes otherwise undocumented – Ned Niedziecki – The Peep Diaries, 2009

This working man sitting at the bar reminds me of Drew Carey. He arranged the quarter left by the German who had just left into a geometric design. Now he is reading the newspaper. He raps on the bar and shouts, “Not Fair”. Paddy collect the quarters that Drew had just arranged. Drew raves on but he is not pounding on the bar, “That’s what seem so hard… I am sure that at some point you will remember that… this morning…” Major Tom is play on the speakers. I am reminded that I had attended to go to Venue Nine tonight and watch Alma’s piece. Major Tom is her signature theme – dancers in red and white. I looked her up on the Internet the other day – she has since had a baby girl.

In my mind every woman is a lover and it is I who have rejected them – besides Alma there is Erica, I saw here on Saturday night. Drew orders a cheeseburger – medium well – and an Albatross (not my mistake it was a Shanghai instead). The man next to him in the suit orders a Swiss Burger

I am grateful that there is someone in charge for I know that I am not. But when you give the world meaning you become responsible for it. Can you shoulder this burden? I ask for an Albatross, “How about an Albatross?” “You’re a fucking Albatross,” Paddy says, but he didn’t say it to me but to the man in the suit. Drew orders another Shanghai. Paddy splashs a pint on himself. Tim takes over the bar. Paddy excuses himself and goes down stairs to change his shirt. Rumor has it that John Dillinger was cornered down there in the John back in the thirties by the Feds.

It was a pint and a half last night. It was two pints tonight. Tomorrow shall be a dry day. That’s what I did in the Army – start off with a single Scotch on the rocks and by the end of the week I would be up to five and then I’d take a few days off, and one would be sufficient again. I wanted to rush out and tell someone that I loved them so much that they made be dumb as in stupid otherwise I would not have been able to talk. Then I am reminded that I’ve set myself the task of discovering the third San Francisco bookstore to be named in honor of Charlie Chapline – the first two were City Lights and Modern Times.

As people think about the future they lean forward and as they try to recall a memory they lean slightly backwards – about a 2 or 3 millimeter shift one way or the other – the body seems to know how to re-enact metaphors (maybe that is why there are so many metaphors that involve physical directions – up, down, forward, backward, left, right). The study of abstract concepts being embodied in physical movement is called “embodied cognition” and is based on the implication that the brain may not be the only part of us with a mind of its own.

Factoid: 11% of the US population is gelotophobic. It is considered a personality trait and not an illness.

Stardom didn’t invent itself – Ned Niedziecki – The Peep Diaries, 2009

Young theologians are so bubbly
     Oh damn are they annoying
Effervescent Pollyannas with red hair
Yes. It so happens that I do
I have “Bible Works” on my computer
      Off to Zimbabwe on a missionary
           Study tour
Theological tourism is the new Eco-tourism
       – half the times working
In the fields and half of the time preaching
Churches can be so dysfunctional but
       That is the burden of a ministry

In the highly unstable world of chance and climate change many populations of humans simply vanished – Clive Finlayson – The Humans Who Went Extinct, 2009 p80

Come to Christ
Praise Allah
Are you a good Jew?
Spend your life
     Under the Bodhivesta tree

Nothing can evolve into its other if it at no stage overlaps with its other – Herman E Daly – For the Common Good., 1989 p130

An expert is a bureaucrat of knowledge - She didn’t believe it was right to be spending $90,000 to send people out to observe poverty

A culture is no better than its woods – W H Auden

Wipers wipe
Rain rains
Wheels go round and round


My heart breaks
I am so big hearted
Such a two hearted fellow


The baby bawls
It is big lunged
Here’s to the good life


Strollers stroll
Streams stream
Steam steams

Video turns people into characters… Characters are products not people – Ned Niedziecki – The Peep Diaries, 2009 p42

The essence of poetry is to resist explanation

Publicity is a full-time job… I taught myself to think in sound bites – Julia Allison

The information furnished herewith concerns an individual who is believed to be covered by the agreement between the FBI and the Secret Service concerning Presidential protection…
       5 ◙ Subversives, ultrarightist, racists and fascists who meet one or more of the following criteria:
             (a) ◙ Evidence of emotional instability (including unstable residences and employment record) or   
                  irrational or suicidal behavior
             (b) ◙ Expressions of strong or violent anti-US sentiment
             (c) ◙ Prior acts (including arrests or convictions) or conduct or statements indicating a propensity
                  for violence and antipathy toward good order and government
Irwin Allen Ginsberg – “potentially dangerous” – signed J Edgar Hoover – April 26, 1965

[The modern individual is an] entrepreneur of him or herself [who is] to conduct his or her life, and that of his or her family, as a kind of enterprise, seeking to enhance and capitalize on existence itself through calculated acts and investments – Nikolas Rose - Like a psychopathic ‘homo economicus’ on the rampage. We now only lock up the sane.

Who so would be a man must be a nonconformist - Ralph Waldo Emerson

I’m ready for my third half pint. The world comes to me, wherever I go. Mark Twain is supposed to have said, “Where ever you go, there you are.”

Turning your life into an entertainment product gives you the power to invent a new person – the person you think you should be, as opposed to the person you actually are – Ned Niedziecki – The Peep Diaries, 2009 p54

Paddy put my dollar tip into his cash register till and I told him that that was for the spittoon (the tip jar). He grabs a half-pint glass and asks me what I want. “Nothing”, I tell him. He is in a rush - the end of happy hour is approaching. Then over there is a short elderly man in an unpowdered English judge’s wig - he’s has a Mediterranean swarthy complexion, wears glasses with heavy black plastic frames to match his black costume - black t-shirt below a black suit coat He is accompanied by a younger blond man (dyed kinky hari) with a pastel green and white synthetic fur jacket. This younger is the dominate in this paring.

A world in which repair was not necessary would either be filled with unchanging, unbreakable eternal objects or a junk heap; things, people and relationships abandoned when they no longer function in the required manner - Spelman

It’s down to me - the time has come. Ginny flips in and Ginny then flips out. A young burnet in a tight pink sweater sits across from me - under my thumb - It’s down to me - she is waiting - a rendezvous - she faces the window and looks out - under my thumb… Her hair cascades down. He arrives and he sits down. He sips on a hot drink that she had waiting for him . He wears gray slacks. Her hair has a tint of red to it. She is slouched back in her chair. He has his legs akimbo and elbows on the table. She gets up and goes to the restroom. His face is tanned. Her face has the glow of recently applied makeup. Her black jacket has been carefully draped over the empty chair. She has been gone for a while. He is very patient – he is sitting there without moving. Then his eyes begin to wonde around the room, he is  looking at her coat, he is looking at the ceiling, he is looking at the passing #22 bus. He is allowing himself the luxury of acknowledging a world beyond her. His is impatient. She should hurry back.

The ideal value of neutrality is itself a value that is generally favorable to the status quo – Herman E Daly – For the Common Good., 1989 p131

She returns. They do not touch. She mostly listens, she is giving obvious signs of paying attention as he talks. Her head is tilted. She is nodding. Her eyes are focused on him. Now she leans forward with her right elbow on the table and her fingers playing with her hair. She smiles. She keeps her comments to very short statements. She leans in closer to him. His left knee is swinging back and forth. Now his right knee is moving, but not swinging as radically nor as fast as is his left knee. The swing of his right knee just misses her crossed left thigh. She is no longer staring at him but she is looking straight ahead, out the window. He stops talking and she is formulating longer more full sentences in  responses to his comments. The next time that I look up the couple has gone. A young fat girl in a red sweater sits opposite me, where the man in gray slacks had been. Where the lady in the pink sweater sat sits a large pastel blue purse with boldly colored flowers pasted on it. Mike wants to know if this heat wave has a name – say like the Pineapple Express?

Time is kept and curated in different ways by trees, and so it is experienced in different ways when one is among them – Robert Macfarlane – The Wild Places, 2009 p100

[If the wild was to be lost, we would be] committed wholly, without chance for even momentary reflection and rest, to a headlong drive into our technological termite-life – Wallace Stegner – The Sound of Mountain Water, 1969

I’ve heard the title of the film “Hurt Locker” mentioned several times this week. Are we supposed to get snow today? Or just this little dusting? Maybe it was the same guy – a funny little man (not old, not young) who likes to talk a lot – a lot about comic books and multi-player computer gaming. Maybe it was also in here that I last hear ‘Hurt Locker’ mentioned before. Have you seen it? Oh yes, I saw it on Joe’s recommendation. I usually don’t go to the movies except in the wintertime when I’m just trying to survive the blahs. I told Ila when I called here after getting her message about her recent surgery, “Sorry but I haven’t been in touch with anyone as I had the winter blahs.” “I know what you mean”, she said. She was getting cabin fever taking it easy while she recovered. She is in love with her doctor – Dr Rubby – Jerry said. He said, “She does everything he tells her to do. Jerry is even changing the cat’s litter box while she recuperates. (and god does he hate cats - that's what I call love).  I had been kind of hibernating – I hadn’t returned Robin's call from before New Years Day – I hadn’t congratulated Carla and Dan on the wedding – got the winter blahs, as if that excused it all –yeah, Ila replied, I know what you mean. And yesterday ‘Hurt Locker’ got billing along with Avatar in the Academy Award nominations. I told Sweet Cat that I hadn’t responded to her Christmas greeting as I had just woken up from my hibernation and god was I hungry – Ghrrr? And she replied “Good luck with your travels and get somthing to eat”. “You been here quite a while now,” Joe said, “are you ever going back on the road?” “Oh yes,” I replied, “I just had the road atlas out today, checking out possible routes.” “It’s going to be hot down there in Florida by the time you get there,” Jeff had joked. And just this weekend the East got a load of snow dumped on it. I’ve camped in the snow, but without a lot of wood to burn it can be miserable. Cold drizzling rain is even worse.

No fog – no rain – what a change
No rain, no fog for the second day in a row – but the cold has come back – and now it is beginning to snow again.

GIRL SCOUT COKKIE TIME
They get organized – the mothers
Send out the kids – Wanta buy
       Some cookies, Mister
How much? They rush back and she
       Tells Atticus – Three dollars
             And a half
He’s an honorary Girl Scout, she says
They hop about waving cookie boxes
      Wanta buy, wanta buy
      A box of cookies, they shout
You’ve already asked everyone back there
Only ask the ones who come in the door
       They’ll come back next week
They have until February 5 to turn in
        Their money, she says

You can not dismiss canned drama with a shrug of contempt, here is an industry to be controlled, and influence to be reckoned with – Walter Eaton (1909)

Nearsightedness as increased from a 28% indecence rate for the early 1970s to 42% in the first decade of this century. Research has linked nearsightedness to both a genetic predisposition and to excessive near work

We are drawn to the person product who seems to fit effortlessly into a society organized around the principle that people can and should be reduced to hits, ratings, views, box office gross. In such a system we are encouraged to believe that our participation could lead to us being recognized and lavishly rewarded just for going about our lives – Ned Niedziecki – The Peep Diaries, 2009 p2

Factoid: 65% of Republican voters say that would seriously consider voting for Sarah Palin for President but on 58% of Republican voters thank that she is qualified.

What makes the chimney swift approach the sky / Is ecstasy, a kind of fire / That beats the bones apart / And lets the fragile feathers close with air. / Flight too is agony / Stupid and meaningless. – James Wright – Collected Poems, 1971 p24

Factoid: 17% of Fox News viewers say that the network is “mostly liberal”

There is a profound discomfort about the whole process of trying to fit the square peg of humanity into the round hole of product – Ned Niedziecki – The Peep Diaries, 2009 p41

Factoid: Five times as many US veterans die due lack of health insurance as do US soldiers fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan combined

We happily perceive ourselves as rebels even as we actively seek to join the system in evermore cyborg-like symbiosis – Ned Niedziecki – The Peep Diaries, 2009 p51

Factoid: The chance that a female US street prostitute will have sex with a police officer is twice as high as are her chances of getting arrested

The market does not economize on moral capital; it depletes it – Herman E Daly – For the Common Good., 1989 p140

They are having a business meeting. The blond arrives first. “I got Paul’s information in two different messages”. She is wearing beige - Woman’s Business dress for success attire - jacket and skirt, brown high heels that barely conceal her toe cleavage. She sits cross-legged. Two men join her. They sit with legs splayed to occupy maximum territory. Her laptop and mobile phone occupy the tabletop. She has her scheduler open and a blue pen lying on top of it. She is ready to record appointments. She sits cross-armed with a big engagement diamond showing. The talkative man is attired in a suite and tie. The other man is dressed more casually. He is wearing a gray ribbed sweater with black slacks. She says “Did you get my message …”

Suit now has his calendar open. They are almost ready to conduct business. They are getting the last of the small talk out of the way. All three of them are good smilers – lots of bright white teeth show. There is a moment of silence as the suit pursues his calendar. It starts…he…this new shipment…she…on Monday…pens are poised. Suite gets some details from gray sweater and makes a calendar entry. Gray sweater… I’d say… Suit …What was the address?…She… Sutter S. Two hours and ten bucks…do you get an early bird special?…Oh you are talking about a different one…we’re talking about…Suit (to sweater)…you’re going to be alright You’re not going to get any flashbacks…She…I’m surprised that they don’t have it. I’ve got a question for you … Something catchy…Sweater who now has his laptop open is pointing to some icons on his screen…She …I want to put something that…Suit to Sweater…Did you run over your computer? Is it different?…Sweater to Suit…X31...She…do you know…Sweater…I do, but … they mads this switch … so when do you go on the road …

Suite is good at listening. He is now looking at the blond with his head tilted back so that he is peering down his nose and her. He nods his head as she talks…that is in our favor, he says. “Right” Nod, Nod. “Right”. The hierarchy is suite, blond, then the sweater. Blond to sweater “we don’t want them to think…” Sweater “You can put a prime character...” Lap tops close (blond and sweater that is, suite does not have one). Sweater is the first to close his. I missed their signal to close lap tops. Suite is writing something into his appointment book. Sweater, “We really don’t have … “ Suite continues to jot down appointment details. Blond, “I just didn’t want to …color…” Suite is wearing a wedding ring. Sweater, “Right. Right”, to blond. They are discussing the technical details for a presentation. Blond, “We have one hundred fifty targets and of these forty five are… We each have …Still….” Suite is functioning now  in strategic mode. Both Blond and Sweater are in tactical mode. Sweater lists the number of targets in the Bay area. Blond, “When we are done we an always go back and see another doctor … What’s funny is …” The three of them  have not hanged changed their leg posturing during the entire meeting. And now the meeting is nearing its end. They are switching from business talk to shop talk. They are talking about co-workers. Blond, “We learned some really interesting things … we went to two hospital pharmacies …

The patient just wants to know ‘Is it cancer. Is it serious…He knows all of us, he knows all of the rap…It’s hard to talk to him…We’re seeing a lot more of…That was probably the biggest eye opener…They were saying…

Chatter – chatter –  the card players are reformed alcoholics – first time I’ve been without a dog in thirty years – that situation requires counseling too – it is very stressful, is it not? Thirty years! That would have been 1980 which seems only a short time back – unlike say the period 1860 to 1890 which seems like a long long stretch  of time. After all what has changed in the last thirty years – we now have flat screen monitors, the Internet and mobile phones and don’t forget GPS for our cars. I feel that the most important technological advance of the twentieth century may just be quality wine in a box. The windows have become all steamed up – there are too many people in here chattering – there is no way to actually overhear any conversation – there is just too much competition – you can hear a word here and a word there – isolated words from a dozen different conversations – you can tell enough form this on and that one  to know that you don’t really want to strain yourself  eavesdropping.

I started by chasing the evidence and found that there was none – Clive Finlayson – The Humans Who Went Extinct, 2009 pvii

And the fog lifts
Everything is suspended
Times comes to a halt
The cop on the corner
      Yells, Stop!
      In the name
      Of love
Stop, love’s a thief
Ninety days of bread
      And water
Please don’t go
      I want you so
A dozen red roses
      Fog nurtured
      Frog serenaded
On a clear day you can
       See forever
Which I can’t

Demographically, the growth of the prosperity gospel [God wants everybody to be wealthy] tracks fairly closely to the pattern of foreclosure hot spots – Hanna Rosin “Did Christianity Cause the Crash?” – Atlantic (Dec 2009) p42

Factoid: $250b worth of commercial loans are going to roll over in the next few years – many landlords will be caught short, as well as their bankers – only a fraction of these loans are securitized.

The idea that there is a competitive “private sector” in America is appealing, but generally false. No one hates competition more than the managers of corporations – Luke Mitchell – Harper’s (Dec 2009) p4

Factoid: Deprived of the sun or other external navigational clues, people will walk in circles

After 21 years of research, billions of dollars of investment in public and private funds, and more than 13 years of commercialization, GM crops have done nothing to significantly increase yield. So much for the “feeding the world’s hungry” spin – Andrew Kimbell – The Huffington Post


I have moved to the right most position along the bench away from the late afternoon sun, but still it finds me. It is nibbling at my thighs. I get a little tacky sitting here in this long sleeve shirt. I desire  this brightness but am uncomfortable with its accompanying heat. San Francisco’s late winter heat spell has everyone’s mind on the weather. The mailmen are huffing and puffing. Fat people are ringing out their underpants.

Aska doesn’t think it right that I should be journalizing my encounters with her and Scott. “What if someone picks up a book and finds themselves in it,” she wants to know. I don’t think that they will mind even if they recognize themselves which I doubt they will be able to do anyway, I tell her. . Besides isn’t that putting the cart before the horse? There is a genre for that type of literature – I think is called a Roman Cliff or something like that.

I’m getting ready for my second half pint of Battle Row Porter, I have a fiver on the bar as David Bowie’s Major Tom plays and I can recognize the tune without clearly hearing a single distinct word from the lyrics. Alma Espranza Cunningham is to blame for that. It’s five o’clock and shadows are getting long. The cool night makes me glad that I wore this long sleeve shirt afterall.

She is standing beside me - middle age woman, maybe thirty, maybe more getting a glass of white wine. I had noticed her on several previous occasions - always with a white wine. She had just finished playacting an en garde with the chef using the tip of her umbrella (her epee). “Did you win”, I ask?

“No”

“I’ve seen you in here several times”

The shadows are getting longer and the sunlit areas are getting smaller and David Bowie plays on

The earth knows how to handle the great dead / Who lived the body out, and broke its laws – James Wright – Collected Poems, 1971

80% of men are judged by US women to less than normally attractive while only 40% of women are judged by US men to be less that average in attractiveness. Men I think are a lot more desperate.

Next mental disorder to make the American Psychiatric Association manual: PAEDD – Post Avatar Ecological Depression Disorder

To shut out society is transcendental

Creep along on this patch of black ice – any slip and you’ll be on your ass. You’ve already fallen four or five times this winter and any one of them could be disastrous. Oh, but that you were ten – then this would be so much fun. One little slip and boom! It’s all over so fast – before you’ve realized what happened, your on your ass – no time to react. Cautiously feel the traction before you put your weight down – how long can you balance, especially went your momentum is headed down hill? Carefully, carefully before you step – baby steps – tip tip tap. To add to the uncertainty a fog is obscuring your vision – as thick as pea soup – slice it with your knife – but it not thick enough to hold you up.

Economists want the market to perform well. They are deeply convinced that when the market performs well, people in general benefit. Most of their research is geared accordingly in one way or another to understand what makes the market function well – Herman E Daly – For the Common Good., 1989 p63

Ask him
       If when he had
            This desire
He was wearing
       Any underwear

The orange fire popped bright sun-flares out into the darkness. Resin hissed, and wood cracked, as it tore itself along its grain. Sparks rushed in flocks into the darkness before passing out of sight – Robert Macfarlane – The Wild Places, 2009 p34

It’s been a morning in which
      Tall women saunter in
      Wearing long coats
      Or dressed in slacks
It’s been a morning in which
      Men discuss Catholic
            School sports
      Especially soccer – it’s
            A great sport
It’s just been this morning that
      He shoved the printout
            Across the table
      We get these from the
            Home office, he said
It’s been a morning during which
       The snow has been melting
        Piled up along the curb
              No longer pristine
Glad to see it gone but not
By the end of this morning

Wildness is a quality to be vanquished… it is a quality to be cherished – Robert Macfarlane – The Wild Places, 2009 p30

Factoid: Children with older fathers score lower on cognitive tests than do those who have younger fathers

There is a subspecies of the cottontail – the Lower Keys Marsh rabbit, that has the scientific name Salvilagus palustris hefneri. Yes, I kid you not, it is name for Playboy publisher Hugh Hefner. But the amazing thing is that six years ago it was declared endangered – there are only 300 Hefner bunnies left.

It is doubtless the same poem continuing. If themes sometimes blur, they only recur somewhat later, all the more clearly, virtually identical – Alain Robbe-Grillet p84

There is a 50% chance that a child in the United States will be on food stamps at some point during his or her upbringing

A new Research 2000 poll of more than 2,000 Republicans, conducted for the liberal blog Daily Kos, has some eyebrow-raising findings:
-- 63% of them believe President Obama is a socialist
-- 53% believe Sarah Palin is more qualified to be president than Obama is
-- 39% believe he should be impeached
-- 36% believe he wasn't born in the United States
-- 31% believe the president hates white people
-- 24% believe the president wants the terrorists to win
-- 23% believe their state should secede from the union

I bought a laptop today - a Toshiba Satellite. Will have paid $1100 after all the rebates (it lasted five years when some of the keys would no longer work and by that time is was a clunky box compared to the newer models – but in the long run it only cost 60¢ per day). I still want to get a digital camera (it took another three years before I did get one). I also need to get my passport renewed. I turned the computer on - it works!

It is insufficient simply to appropriate the articulation of a culture, without understanding its logic – Barbara Browning – Infectious Rhythms: metaphors of contagion and the spread of African culture, 2000

Sweet Home Alabama - four part harmony - white Ebonics - trailer trash - the Chronicle’s Young become De Young, a museum. He was shot by an evangelist, a womanizing holy man - is there any other - one dollar microbrew – not a stout but a very chocolaty porter. A song and a dance is just a step on your toes - just a shot away.

It’s a small world - there’s so much we share, that it’s time we’re aware. It’s a small small world - Disney - 1964 World’s Fair.

I went off and forgot my reading glasses – oh well. I can walk across the street to Walgreens and get another pair or sit here and try to make out the letters on this here screen. Besides the ones I left were getting scratched. You left them on the coffee table last night when you took them off to watch TV. Now don’t forget to pick them up when you go up to the get the dog for its walk – and the books, get the books that you were intending to read the night before. I did, I went up put the leash on the dog who jumped up and down, and I picked up the books and left leaving the glasses where I left them the previous night. This problem is easily solved, get up and walk across the street and get another pair and you need a new pair anyway. Dwayne called and said he found Dave’s hearing aide – God, they are expensive to replace. Put them on a chain that you wear around your neck, I told him. And to make up for what he saved by having them found he wrecked the front end of his car going off into a ditch in the snow and ice. One big bill turned into another – at least it didn’t double.

Perhaps their faith was so absolute that it resembled fatalism, which is a type of fearlessness – Robert Macfarlane – The Wild Places, 2009 p27

We love best what is rare
We worship mysteries
We adore the unrepentant


Yet we demand security
        A lowering of our risk
        An accommodation with
                  The predictable and mundane
We want what we can depend upon


But we do not desire this
We want our thrills
       Only upon demand
Cheep thrills at the carnival
       Of life

That ‘uninformed state of mind’ – and the organizations looking to fill the vacuum it creates – is the crux of the problem when it comes to consensus – Leslie Berliant – SolveClimate, Nov 24, 2009

An artist overcomes
     Circumstances
Just as a businessman takes
     Advantage of them

Some of the limitations and failures of economics result from its modeling itself on the discipline of physics rather than on biology or of history. But for economics to have defined itself as a subdivision of biology or history would have had other limitations – Herman E Daly – For the Common Good., 1989 p32

Receiving a windfall of cash causes cognitive dissonance – we think it would make us elated, it does not – it makes us sad, we suffer from mental strain and anxieties which can only be elevated by making ourselves feel as if the money was as deserved as earned income. Hence financial executives always feel that they have earned those huge bonuses – we are always willing to fool ourselves regarding our self-worth.

It is beyond dispute that the sign of standard economics is the fallacy of misplaced concreteness – Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen – The Entropy Law and the Economic Process, 1971 p320

Darkness is identified
     With evil
This is untrue for evil
      Is not dark
Evil is claustrophobic
Evil and the unknown
     Are not the same

 I’m in a home supply store owned by my uncle, I think (that is I think that my uncle owns this store not that I'm unsure of where I am). There is a back room were martial arts classes are conducted. A transsexual Chinese martial arts master uses me to demonstrate a specific pressure point - one that supposedly is very rare. She notices that I have this unusual pressure point because I have undressed, I was in the locker room getting ready for the next class. I was taking the same class - the one held right after this one. I have several lockers in the store in which I keep extra changes of clothing. I go to one of these lockers and put on a very colorful robe. It is made to slip on over the head rather than opening in front and it is tied with a sash, obi like - but it is not a kimono. The Chinese Transsexual and I discuss Oklahoma and World War II singers. (The Andrews and the Boswell Sisters, the Ink Spots and sweet Deanna Durbin).  I gather that she is old enough to have personal experience with the that time though she does not look that old at all. I hate being confused - about age, about sexuality, about what my place is in all of this but espically about what I should wear.

The cost of a hobby is limited only by your resources

I go to another of my lockers and find a bunch of clothing that I have squirreled away. “So that is why”, I say to myself, “I seem to be missing so many pairs of pants” (why are they always referred to as pairs when there is only one anyway?). I put on a pastel orange pair of slacks and the light blue long sleeve shirt. I had worn the same outfit the day before. I encounter a man casually stuffing jewelry into a bag. He asks me if Bailey knows that I am in here. I tell him “Yes, I am his nephew”. “He died you know” he tells me. “I didn’t know that,” I tell him and then he informs me that he is in charge now.

But as long as you pay tithes, believe in a goat if you like - Bishop Andrzei Zebrzydowski