The Politics of Desire are the Same as the Politics of Fear

Michael has been shot full of Novocain to relax the muscles in his lower back. He wanted to tell me how painful the shoots were. I ask him if he could tell me every excruciating detail. What he really wanted to do was to complain. He declined to tell me. He wanted to hear about my jury duty instead. He wanted help naming his line of hand-made soaps. One had blood orange, lemon and other citrus essences. I suggested Carrivra. He said that he thought that blood oranges grew in the Sierra foothills and was thinking about “Sierra Citrus” I told him that that would work too. He said that there was someone up in Washington who was selling 10,000 bars a month to just one distributor in Japan. She had names for her soaps like “Fish Off” (for removing the smell of fish from your hands). Maybe that will work with the Japanese but not the denizens here in Pacific Heights..

The rich need the poor much more than the poor need the rich

Understanding does not lead to a unity of knowledge. Knowledge does not provide confidence.

The notion of an objective yardstick against which degrees of risk can be measured overlooks the fact that risks count as urgent, threatening and real or as negligible and unreal only as a result of particular perceptions and evaluations – Ulrich Beck – World at Risk, 2008 p13

The continual political appetite for a global war on terror has let to a commodification of ‘actionable intelligence”, which is a product chiefly of human prisoners – Peter Bartogiewicz – The Intelligence Factory (Harper – Nov 2009)

That we can even talk about torturing human beings in such an unemotional and technical language is indicative of how acceptable torture has become to us. Translation – trading in human beings and extorting information from them through torture is now a routine business arrangement justified by our desire to feel secure. We have met the enemy and it is we.

With self-assurance
He is dangerous
        Explaining God’s
               Plan
With such self-presence
Everyone is toting
          Their Bibles
Darwin is Dead
God is Alive


He don’t like to joke
People misunderstand
          He says
And take it what he says
           For a Meme of God
He walks in trepidation
           Afraid of
           His own power
God himself couldn’t
Have done it better

At least we cannot live to see it all; no comfort / Reset in this. Yet, this record is not empty of flags – Kenneth Patachen – Collected Poems, 1967 p7

The County Poorhouse
Stood in the woods
A few scattered sticks
Bricks that once constituted
           A communal fireplace
Made to feel different
Wearing shinny trousers
           Gathered and mended
           By the church ladies
No time to lounge
Must be about sloping
           The hogs
On a working farm
A marginalized existence
With no place else to go
When the corn stalks froze
            In the field
But into a fresh hand dug
            Grave
Just another chore that
One performed for his keep
Fed and housed  by the lowest
           Bidder

Dominance may be cruel and exploitative, with no hint of affection in it. What it produces is the victim. On the other hand, dominance may be combined with affection, and what it produces is the pet – Yi-Fu Tuan – Dominance & Affection: the making of pets, 1984 p2

Factoid: Each death penalty trail resulting in an actual execution is conducted at a cost to taxpayers three million dollars more than a non-death penalty murder trial would have cost (this does not include any - and there are many - post trial legal expenses).

The political costs of omission are much higher than those of over reaction – Ulrich Beck – World at Risk, 2008 p54

Sunrise
Sunset
Photograph


Daytime
Primetime
Television


Weekday
Weekend
Slave away


Everywhere is to Rome
This house has no dome

In the universe now there was no longer a container and a thing contained, but only a general thickness of signs superimposed and coagulated, occupying the whole volume of space – Italo Calvino – Cosmicomics, 1965 p39

Factoid: Only one in four of the workers laid off in a recession ever regain their lost income

The more emphatically world risk society is denied; the more it becomes a reality. The disregard for the globalizing risks aggravate the globalization of risk – Ulrich Beck – World at Risk, 2008 p47

All solutions that involve substitution
Result in higher levels of anxiety
Greed has replaced guilt
What can be done, man
        Is a greedy beast
If I don’t get mine now there
       Won’t be anything left
Get while the getting is good
We’ll count the cost once
       The feeding feast is done

Neither science, nor the reigning politics, nor the mass media, nor business, nor the legal system, nor even the military, is in a position to defend or control risks in a rational way. The individual is forced to mistrust the promises of rationality of these institutions – Ulrich Beck – World at Risk, 2008 p54

This is how astroturfing works
Channeling corporate contributions
This is the way astrology works
Clairvoyants stashing it away
So unseemingly of a demagoguery
Foretelling the future is natural for those
         Doing the waterboarding

Modern society has become a risk society because it is increasingly engaged in debates over self-generated risks in an attempt to manage and to prevent them – Ulrich Beck – World at Risk, 2008 p50

The visual is not a source of understanding – it is the genesis of action (awareness). Seeing is not believing but acting.

To knock a thing down…. Is a deep delight to the blood – George Santayana – Reason in Society: the life of reason, 1905 p81

Cartier-Bresson goes to China
Cartier-Bresson photographs the people there
Cartier-Bresson comes back
Cartier-Bresson’s photographs show that
China is full of Chinese
Cartier-Bresson will not be returning to China
Can we be sure that there are still Chinese there

Risks enter the global story after God has made his exit – Ulrich Beck – World at Risk, 2008 p92

Photographs are to time as money is to desire

The challenges of the beginning of the twenty-first century are being negotiated in terms of concepts and recipes drawn from the early industrial society – Ulrich Beck – World at Risk, 2008 p28

Put Away the Speedboats, Stop the Locomotives and Chase the Monsters from Under the Bed

It’s raining again – the leaves are no longer intermittingly but consistently falling – waffling in the air – sticking to the wet ground. All the green is gone (or nearly gone) even the grass is beginning to turn brown. Already there are a few bare branches poking into the gray sky. And after each rain the little dog thinks that it must re-scent its landmarks – where does it keep all this pee? You can now put away the mower for the winter. The boats have already been put into storage.

We have this history we make: it is not the same / As money; it is not theirs as goods or change – Kenneth Patachen – Collected Poems, 1967 p7

It’s that O Shit!
Moment of realization
Of an impending catastrophe
Lying immobilized
Mind awake without

      Any body to command
Just waiting now for the
      Other shoe to drop
Monsters lurking
       Under the bed
Global warming descending
        From the ice shelves
It would be much better not
        To know
What you do not know
Is only an over active
        Imagination
Let us hope
If I could only
       Move my arms

The future is colonized by the present – Ulrich Beck – World at Risk, 2008 p212

Time for a Dress Rehearsal
Preprare
Preparing to
Preparadness is next
      To Godliness
The prepared shall
      Inherit the earth
Having prepared nothing
      To do but wait
Are you prepared
I think so

Spies aware of danger grasp for guns / not straws – Kenneth Patachen – Collected Poems, 1967 p25

And on the International Bridge

      Into Peking
Two soldiers with bayonets
Tips gleaming in the midday sun
High above their helmeted heads
      Halt! They yelled in unison
And what kind of tree
      Is this – They demanded
I looked where one of them
      Was pointing


I was unsure but ‘Yew’
       Came to mind
Life and death was also
       On my mind
I knew it was neither pine, nor
       Spruce nor a fir or even cedar
Yes, they agreed, it could be
Autumn is glorious
       Is it not – I agreed
Last year by this time
All the leaves had fallen
       I replied. We just
Arrived, one of them said
The cold winds are already
       Sweeping across
       The Manchurian plains
The other one said


The bridge formed a high arch
Impossible for automotive traffic
       Maybe one of their little tanks
       Could creep across it
They stood at parade rest
I was bored by military
       Discipline
They say the war in the Far
       East started here three three days
       After this

Ironically our continually perfected scientific-technological society has granted us the fatal insight that we do not know what we do not know – Ulrich Beck – World at Risk, 2008 p47

Someone has a plan
A man a plan a canal
God has a plan for you

Obama has a plan
       For this nation
Everyone has a plan
It is a plan – no Superman
Oh oh oh – Superman
Faster than a speeding bullet
More powerful than a locomotive

The point is not to be upset, to be able to confront the horrible equanimity. But this look that is not (mainly) compassionate is a special, modern ethical construction: not hard hearted, certainly not cynical, but simply (or falsely) naïve – Susan Sontag – On Photography, 1977 p41

39% of Americans think that the US government should “stay out” of Medicare

To take… specimen after specimen, seeking an ideally complete inventory, presupposes that society can be envisaged as a comprehensible totality…. In America every specimen becomes a relic – Susan Sontag – On Photography, 1977 p65

The odometer that takes a beating and keeps
      On ticking off the clicks
The hour hand that spins round and round

      The mulberry tree
Tear the pages out
Set the clocks back
Turn into butter


These young girls seem so clean
      And pristine. She says
That she’s getting married
I though she smelled of Prell
      And ivory soap


Yearning for the smell
      Of clabbered milk
As fast as one checks out
Another one checked in
Even this spiral of the Milky Way
     Is on a schedule

Guilt is there because, the body casts a shadow on the person’s inner freedom, his ‘real-self’ that – through the act of sex – is being forced into a standardized , mechanical, biological role – Becker – The Denial of Death, 1973 p42

Once we know what it is that we are looking for, it becomes much easier to find it. To maximize success it is best to stick with what is already known – of course circumstances do change – success in not assured. The “tried and true” is synonymous with yesterday’s solutions for tomorrow’s problems - or should that be – tomorrow’s solutions for yesterday’s problems. A slogan in time saves nine.

The grace and the strainless impermance of old poems spread out upon the wind like ghostly sails of so many long ago unaccounted for ships… Kenneth Patachen – Collected Poems, 1967 p451

Waking up with Rabbit Ears and a Fear of Shotguns

It rained after five this morning and I was up and gone before seven – I went to bed way too early – and oh how I ache now – but I was falling asleep in front of the TV. One no longer wakes up to a test pattern – that bull’s eye target with its head of an Indian chief in fuzzy black and white and the crackle of white noise on hi-fidelity stereo-speakers of a consol TV with rabbit ears atop. It’s in the middle of the night when and you are trying to figure were you are – Now everything is  24-7 except for public transportation – so you know your still at home – your safe at least you know that much.  Get up and go to bed! It just doesn’t happen anymore – everyone has a monitor near their bed and a remote – everything is as convenient as the flick of the digit – given that the batteries haven't gone dead.

All the energy of the state now goes into holding the state together. Law and order has become and end in itself – V S Naipaul – The Return of Eva Peron with the Killings in Trinidad, 1981 p107

Evil is an excuse to not-think – it exonerates and empowers its opponents

Fear determines the attitude toward life. Security is displacing freedom and equality form the highest position on the scale of values – Ulrich Beck – World at Risk, 2008 p8

What we have lost in the last half century is the ability to act as affective individuals without having lost the responsibility or accountability for our individual actions. We lost both our innocence and our relevance and have learned to fear.

The essence of the Oedipal complex is the project of becoming God – Norman O Brown – Life Against Death, 1959 p118

So many of the really important problems, the all-consuming problems, have to do with abstractions and the meaning of symbols, but if we can busy ourselves with biological functions we can ignore all of that. But the one that we cannot ignore is death – or its alternative - the futility of turning ourselves into Gods

The dominant relations of definition accord the engineering and natural sciences a monopoly position – Ulrich Beck – World at Risk, 2008 p34

She has her project
Her particular project
A project can be demanding

       Something about planting
Some projects demand fund
       Raising – hers does
We needs to know about
       Those people
Get a Job! That’s your project
                         Today
Get Good Grades! – Momma’s
        Little helper – Parent
                         Of an Honor Roll Student
This mother’s son and/or  her daughter
        Is in the military – maybe even Iraq
                          Proud Army Mother
                          Support our Troops
                          Baby on Board
       When the Rapture Happens
                          This Car will be without
                          A driver


Her project status depends
        On her project plan
If it involves a spreadsheet
                           Count me out
Describe your project in fifty words
                           Or less
        To make this a better place to live
Goals and objectives are monitored
      Via performance measurers


This is my project and I’m sticking
                            To it
Her project intersects with Tulips
                            On Troost
Someone from Parks and Recreation
       Is advising her on plantings
The biology student and the theology
       Student should think about
                             Radically different projects
So good to meet you and good luck
                            With your project too

Everyone who is openly or secretly a supporter of the Popular Front should be shot… We have to sow terror. We must eliminate without scruples all those who do not think like ourselves…If I found my father amongst my opponents, I would have him shot – General Emilio Mola

You struggle to become Gods and yet you die!

The three pillars of security are crumbling – the state, science, and the economy are failing to provide security – and are naming the ‘self-conscious citizen’ as their legal heir – Ulrich Beck – World at Risk, 2008 p45

The pleasure and passion of pure frustration - to conceive without providing an example of what was concieved

Break it / Up young men their guns are pointed / At you are pointed at all the mad flaming / Grandeur which killers can never make die – Kenneth Patachen – Collected Poems, 1967 p26

It’s back to the jury room again this morning. We have a holdout. Will he have changed his mind? Will there be bargaining for a possession verdict in return for a not guilty on the intention to sell charge? I don’t think we were given that option. The narrative is written in blood – it’s the Older White Male vs. the World.

Acceptable risks are those that are accepted – Ulrich Beck – World at Risk, 2008 p13

Reality is constructed from technicalities.

Two young ladies are on their way to a court appearance. You called me on my cell phone and hung up. Don’t you call me and hang up. An old man’s papaya gets loose in the back of the bus and rolls under the seats toward the front. We all got out at the Hall of Justice. “Strike” I asked. “No gutter ball”, he replies. He went in through the employee entrance. The rest of us have to go through security.

Global risk is the staging of the reality of global risk – Ulrich Beck – World at Risk, 2008 p10

We send a note to Judge Stewart saying that we believe ourselves to be deadlocked. Then we go to lunch. I went to the Flower Market Café. No verdict is reached with the jury eleven to one. The assistant DA wants us to go back and try a little harder. We explain it is eleven to one in favor of acquittal. He was unable to comprehend such a state of affairs.

The moment risks become real… they become catastrophes – Ulrich Beck – World at Risk, 2008 p9

Flag-a-cab Taxi School work sheet no.2 and a city map, the man in the t-shirt and blue jeans is studying to become a taxi driver. He has the Valley Yellow Pages spread out in front of him. It’s getting dark and I am planning on making Kim Nalley’s tribute to Nina Simone at 9PM this evening. This is a break with tradition – going out late on a rainy work night. I start with a visit to my favorite bar for an Alcatraz Stout. All of the regulars are there. Just up the block on Columbus - Love Me Porgy with Kim Nally. Daddy Deep Inside Me.

The recapturable nostalgia of nostalgia / for a life. I might have hated, thus mourned // but do we really need anything more to be sorry about / wouldn’t it be extra, as all pain is extra – Frank O’Hara – The Collected Poems of, 1994 p300

The State of Our Health and the State of Our Fears and the State of Honest Services as Guarenteed by the Constitution

It’s time for the Kansas City Marathon again – not that I’m running in it – not that I know anyone running in it – not that I really care – but it is so annoying – Dave and I got caught in it before, was that last year – the cops guard the barricades rather than direct the traffic – all the cars circle around and around looking for a way out – it was almost over when a break came and the cop in the motorcycle boots started hollering GO GO GO – and I had to start my truck and I fumbled and he hollered even louder. I had called Dave and told him not to bother meeting me at the coffee shop – It took almost an hour but there was no one at the coffee shop and plenty of parking when I got there. Why had I been so anxious – it was the parking. It was getting so late and there wouldn’t be any place to sit at the Broadway. Everyone was having the same problem – they don’t tell you what streets to take was the common complaint. Everyone’s a half an hour late, he says, they have the whole city shut down – you have to drive all the way around and they don’t tell you what streets to take. It took me an hour to get across the route – but what need had I to hurry. Then he started hollering – Go Go Go. A marathon is not a spectator sport especially in the back where their limping and waddling – and God the fifth time I had to listen to “We are the Champions” at the re-hydration station next to which I was stalled. Oh the crunch of the empty paper cups as they get stompeled.

Pain is life’s only reality, Greater than faith, or hatred even – Kenneth Patchen – Collected Poems, 1967 p369

The Supreme Court Looks For Honest Services

Honest services
An intangible right
At heart one should not
Bargain away public trust


How can one make a dishonest
      Dollar anymore
Wrong doing can be done
It would seem without even
     Taking the money
And who needs to run
     When there’s influence
     That can be peddled


“A scheme or artifice
      To deprive another
Of the intangible right
      To honest service”


It’s a statement of our state of civility
When the unspoken has to be said
Critics say it’s defined with too few words
       And that they are self-referential
Honest service is carrying out your half
        Of the contract - can it be that
       Honest Serivce really means Honest Serivce


The well being and self-image of the smokers splits off from the suffering assigned to the non-smokers who with the new sense of power conferred by public attention and recognition, seize upon the possibilities for exclusion and stigmatization also afforded by the logic of risk. Thus the smokers who not long ago fueld the locomotive of growth as free consumers, find themselves devalued and stigmatized as ‘drug-addicted social vermin’ – Ulrich Beck – World at Risk, 2008 p146

The only difference between Postmodern and Late Modern is that we must invent the one and suffer the other

There is everything to fear, including fear itself - – Robin Tolmach Lakoff – The Language War, 2002

Everyone now knows that the United States has the most expensive healthcare system in the world – Monoco is the only country in the world that comes close to spending as much as the US does per capita. What most do not realize is that almost half of the cost of our healthcare system is paid for out of public expenses (this would be even greater if tax subsidizes did not help finance most private insurance plans). But what is not is well know is what we actual buy with all these dollars (2nd highest percentage of GDP in the world – next to Timor) – thus I have graded our performance according to UN national data on healthcare:

A+ - Adult mortality due to T B
A  - Adult mortality due to HIV/AIDS
B+ - Prevalence of TB
B  - Mortality due to cardiovascular disease; childhood mortality due to
        pneumonia; healthy life expectancy;   adult mortality due to non-
        communicable diseases
B- - Life expectancy; childhood morality
C+ - Infant mortality; neonatal mortality; life loss due to communicable disease
C - Adult mortality; adult mortality due to injuries

D - Life loss due to non-communicable diseases
F - Life lose due to cancer; childhood mortality from
     miscellaneous causes; life loss due to injuries;
     childhood mortality due to injuries

The wishes of children ride handsome yellow horses – Kenneth Patchen – Collected Poems, 1967 p221

More health statistics: Food safety - cases of contaminated food per 100,000 population

United States    – 26,000 (resulting in 5,000 deaths and 325,000
                           hospitalizations  per year)
Australia        - 27,000

United Kingdom   – 3,400
France            – 1,200

One must ask what do the food chains in the US and Australia have in common that those in France and the United Kingdom do not? What level of illness and death is acceptable to ensure corporate profit?

Space without a sign, was once again a chasm, traveled, without beginning or end, nauseating, in which everything – including me – was lost – Italo Calvino – Cosmicomics, 1965 p35

‘Old’ terrorism is an all-or-nothing game motivated by the establishment of a new state – from illegality to legality; from violence to control of a state’s monopoly over the means of violence 'New' terrorism while certainly all-or-nothing for the terrorist is anything but an all-or-nothing game.

It was a place of comfort for a worrier, because it created a snug, smug atmosphere of security – never mind how false - Christopher Isherwood – Christopher and His Kind: 1929-1939, 1976 p2

A 650 ml bottle of Flying Horse Larger puts me out – dead on my couch in dream land. Its almost five now. Earlier it had been a do nothing rainy day as I sat in the Laundromat (due to an overflow in the coffee shop) drinking a China Black tea form a paper cup (God, I hate paper cups almost as much as I hate Styrofoam cups). There’s a man that looks like Bruce Dern setting next to me – unshaven and dirty – he’s leering at a young lady sitting across from him.

The paucity of evidence is increasing in the could-be society – Ulrich Beck – World at Risk, 2008 p106

“How are you?” he had said. “What?” she asks. “How are you?” he repeated. “Fine” she replied getting a little leery. He mutters something about her appearance. She says “What”? He says “I mean you look nice like someone a man would want…” I give him a “you are on shaky grounds, buster” look. He quits down for the moment.

Control of the control of control can become a source of threat and side effects of threats without end – Ulrich Beck – World at Risk, 2008 p19

He’s still staring at her. He is muttering something that sound like ‘must be six feet tall’.. She is trying to hide behind an open newspaper

When there is a new beginning, there are new possibilities of action – Ulrich Beck – World at Risk, 2008 p49

He dons a single glove with which he picks his nose – not exactly Michael Jackson is he – a concern with hygiene and cleanliness that was not evident in him.

I squat on my hock, raise my head / To the moons, and howl. / I dig my nails into my sides. / And laugh when the snow turns red. / As I bend to drink, / I laugh at everything that anyone loves. // All my dream horses climbing to heaven – Kenneth Patchen – Collected Poems, 1967 p189

The young women went and locked herself in the restroom a half an hour ago . The barista tries to coax her out. She kept assuring her “oh he’s harmless”. But it was not her that he had been leering at. It’s disrupting the routine – others desire to use the restroom too.

In the late twentieth century, one of the two ultimate arguments for virtually anything is “scientific studies show”. Its only competitor is “It says in the Bible…” – Robin Tolmach Lakoff – The Language War, 2002

The worst type of non-knowledge is not knowing what you do not know – the consequences of this type of non-knowledge can be fatal and at best it is profoundly disturbing

The preventive measure against catastrophic risks themselves trigger catastrophic risks, which may in the end be even greater than the catastrophes to be prevented – Ulrich Beck – World at Risk, 2008 p119

A Friend Pest Request, Sweet Valentine and the Irony of Power without Authority

Facebook spam - I got my first friend pest request of – an alumni of mine or so he claimed only problem was that had graduated when he was a year old. His portrait had him flipping the bird – and I stuck up my middle finger too aimed towards this screen and said ‘fuck you too! Arsehole’.

No one wants to be part of a fiction, and even less so if that fiction is real – Paul Auster – The New York Trilogy: The Locked Room, 1986 p265

Zero tolerance
      UNTIL
It touches you
This is not the intent
      OH GOD
Save me from the vice grips
Or as the case may be
      This Camping Utensil

This game of power without authority indeed begets a new character type … the ironic man - R Sennett – Flesh and Stone: the body and the city in Western civilization, 1994

Not all of these red Valentine balloons have gold hearts, some have white ones and say “I Love You”. So maudlin – would not “I Luv U’ be more appropriate. Whether white or gold each pair is tied on each parking meter so that one rises almost, but not quite above the other. Across the street is the doggy bakery. I can stand it no longer. I must escape from Cow Hollow and catch the first buss to anywhere else. I wind up at Washington Square in North Beach. The local flock of parrots just flew over. I’m at the corer of Stockton and Union on a bench facing away from the park. It is the only sunny spot not occupied by homeless men stretched out soaking up the rays.

The mask of cooperativeness are among the only possessions workers will carry with them from task to task, firm to firm…These windows of social skills, whose ‘hypertext’ is a winning smile – R Sennett – Flesh and Stone: the body and the city in Western civilization, 1994

St Peter and Paull is chiming noon - There are many ways to fail but very few ways to succeed

It isn’t that simple but it’s simple enough / the rock is least living of the forms man has fucked – Frank O’Hara – The Collected Poems of, 1994 p302

A bus has just passed turning left off of Stockton onto Union headed towards Russian Hill. St Peter & St Paul chimes the half hour. I have not stirred. The Italian Restaurants of North Beach are in cook mode - their aromas permeating the air. I’m sitting just across from the Flor d’Italia which claims to be the oldest Italian restaurant in America. I wander on down Columbus to the San Francisco Brewery. Josh asks me “Burger and a beer?” “You serve the special on weekends?” I asked. ”No” he says “I guess your right” “Well I guess I should not have asked? Make that a King of the Hill” I tell him. The King is a stout barley wine.

Teamwork…can hardly claim our affections…in its fictions and it’s feigning of community - R Sennett – Flesh and Stone: the body and the city in Western civilization, 1994

5:50 and its starting to get dark. The cherry trees have just passed their peak and are starting to display their foliage. I’m sitting under a burnt out lamp.

Failure is the great modern taboo - R Sennett – Flesh and Stone: the body and the city in Western civilization, 1994

I shall stop now and read the Sunday Chronicle and drink my coffee, while it is still hot. Sunday is the only day that I buy a paper. Walter just came in and plunked his paper down on the table next to the window. “Morning Walter”. “Morning Fred.” He is pissed about the doubling of the price of the Chronicle as soon as its contract with the Examiner had expired. He trying to abstain.. I am satisfied with reading a second hand paper - most of the time I can find one, but not on Sundays. I can find a second-hand copy so long as I can forgo the sports section – which I can.

Those that cannot be readily penetrated become objects of deep fascination - – Robin Tolmach Lakoff – The Language War, 2002

I finish my laundry. It is clean and dry. About half of the t-shirts I have to reverse before folding.

Women are meant to be penetrated and interpreted; a woman who resist is no woman… [but] a woman who permits herself to be penetrated by strangers is no lady - – Robin Tolmach Lakoff – The Language War, 2002

When you hear hoof beats, think horses, not zebras.

Therapists are our new authority figures - – Robin Tolmach Lakoff – The Language War, 2002

Favorite Car Colors (% of cars sold)
              North America       Europe            Asia
Silver          20                   35              37
White           18                   11              14
Black           17                   24              13
Red             13                    8               8
Blue            12                   12              11
Neutrals         9                    6               7
Green            4                    3               4

The Little Dog Grieves and the Little Lady Gets Her Own Place - It's a Struggle To Make it All Work

The dog has this thing it does where it snaps its neck up and snaps its jaw shut making a clacking noise like it was trying to catch a fly but it does even in the dark. It may have eaten something that it is trying to regurgitate like a cat does with a hairball but no it’s not that either – its annoying and I kick it out of  bed. No I think it is grieving. Missing its mistress who packed her clothes in the car and is gone. Maybe it was wrong to have kicked her out of bed.

Violence, in the hands of the people isn’t violence; it’s justice – Juan Peron

Extortion: first they
      Make you pay them
      Then their friends
And if you are unable
They’ll arrange for it
       With the loan sharks
They have a contract out
        On your life
Who are they anyway
As if you really didn’t know

The truth of memory struggles against the memory of truth. Years have passed, the dead and the hatreds pile up; exile is a cow that can give poisoned milk – Juan Gelman – Unthinkable Tenderness: selected poems, 1997 p57

I get a refill. It’s a struggle to get to the counter. A woman has joined the group – the only one. Fans are still arriving. They occupy every chair in the place. They are sitting on tables. Every available chair that could be dragged in from the laundry or out front has been brought in this small space. It standing room only in the back and there are many. The game has resumed. Ossama turns the volume level back up. Tunisia just scored - there half a dozen Tunisians in the room. Fans from both Tunisia and Morocco seem to get along – unlike Moroccans and Algerians who had to be segregagted.

[He] didn’t have the ugliness of an exploiter because his own state of degradation put him on level with the natives and made him sympathically picturesque. But this was a colonial situation, nevertheless – Christopher Isherwood – Christopher and His Kind: 1929-1939, 1976 p32

Politics is the art of re-alignment

But what was hard / Was when you got a snoot full and all you can think to say starts with s / And you know damn well you’re a good guy and you’ll never meet a dame / Who really has your address, who can really dot your t’s and cross tour I’s // Come back when it’s old homeweek in this particular hell / And you can bum enough nickels to take the fallen angels out – Kenneth Patchen - Collected Poems, 1969 p131

The woman is given a seat - in the corner by herself. She good naturally becomes the sole occupant of the women’s section. The trash can had to be moved to create her separte space. She made a few gestures of protest and then assumed her honored throne. One young man offered Linda a seat in the ladies section. She declined saying that she already had a place in the laundry room.

In as much as men and women / in their infinite goodness / believe in God / is it possible that God / in his infinite goodness / believes in men and women believes in me / right now when my heart is purple with sadness – Juan Gelman – Unthinkable Tenderness: selected poems, 1997 p121

Only the psychopath is capable of living the good life

Most people…think of words as stones, as great unmovable objects with no life, as monads that never change – Paul Auster – The New York Trilogy, 1990 p90

How much time is left on the clock. The man next to Yousef says “exactly thirteen”. It is now 7:40AM. There is now only one minute and twenty second to go. No its one minute and twenty seconds into the fourth quarter. The game ended. Tunisia won. By 8:10 - the café has been cleared out and they say “its all back to normal now”

Experience only teaches us how one event constantly follows anther, without instructing us in the secret connectdion, which binds them together, and renders them inseparable – David Hume – An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding

There is no need to choose your enemies – they will choose you

THE DELUDED: hope fails us often / grief; never / that’s why some think / that known grief is better / than unknown grief. / they believe that hope is illusion. / they are deluded by grief – Juan Gelman – Unthinkable Tenderness: selected poems, 1997 p167

Two groups filed lawsuits against the city for violating state law defining a marriage as between a man and a woman. They were told to return to court on Tuesday to seek a temporary restraining order. City Hall will be open today from 10Am to 4PM and for the rest of the three-day weekend for ‘anyone’ to get a license to marry. 590 same sex couples had been married. The words ‘bride’ and ‘groom’ have been crossed out on the licenses and the phrases ‘first applicant’ and ‘second applicant’ have been substituted. Technically I should have said I had been abandoned among the gay ‘second applicants’. PC language sounds so bureaucratic – why is that – without any mystery or romance.

The whole problem is to find out which is God and which is the Devil. And the one sure guide is that God appears always unreasonable, while the Devil appears always to be noble and right. God appears unreasonable because He has been put in prison and driven wild. The Devil is conscious control and is therefore reasonable and sane – Christopher Isherwood – Christopher and His Kind: 1929-1939, 1976 p2

History is all incidentals but nevertheless well written

You smell of double humanity, the one that murders and the one murdered. / Centuries have passed, and the beauty of the vanquished rots your brow – Juan Gelman – Unthinkable Tenderness: selected poems, 1997 p85

Factoid: One fourth of all items of sports wear sold in the US (by value) is branded with a logo from the NBA, NFL, MLB or NHL ($13 billion of a total market of $55 billion)

The alternative to government for the sake of big business isn’t government for the sake of big government - Drew Weston – The Nation (Oct 19, 2009) p7

The City Hall Café has never before sold so much Champagne. The city has hauled in $50,000 in wedding fees. It’s a new all time record.

The Scheduling of Reposibility while Gays get Married - I file a Request for a Grant for the Arts

Ladder Truck 17 – the crew are all here inside getting hot coffee (more likely lattes or machiadies). Their big red truck is parked in the middle of the street – amber lights blinking. All their duties like any production worker have been scheduled – when to wash the truck, roll out and inspect the hoses, when to refill the respirators and replace the axes, when to change the oil. It is all on a roster with every man’s responsibility delineated – all except for this coffee break and the next alarm bell (assuming it’s not a drill). All four of them load up back into the front cab – something else they failed to schedule, who would drive the rear cab – the little guy had to crawl over his buddy without spilling any coffee, and go to the back of the bus – then they drove off.

With every rendezvous-with-death we are giving away… / An autographed photo of J.P. Morgan taken in the frontline trenches – Kenneth Patachen – Collected Poems, 1967 p144

Dave came by – he has the doggie in the car – can’t leave him there too long – gotta go soon. He drinks his coffee – we chat for a while – he leaves.

Household dogs are well looked after and yet they rarely grow old in the human family; they are disposed of long before they reach a ripe old age – Yi-Fu Tuan – Dominance & Affection: the making of pets, 1984 p114

When in doubt
       Opt for doubt
       Or Not
It makes all the difference

Irreducible uncertainty

Makes it possible

       To Just Say no

       Or maybe yes

Depending on immediate

       Gain

       Just Do It!

If A is a success in life, the A equals x plus y plus z. Work is x; y is play; and z is keeping your mouth shut – Albert Einstein

I called the boss this morning. We chit-chat about my recent jury duty. What kind of case was it? How’s it going? That type of thing. Then I say “Well Brian, I’m ready to check out”. He tells me to hang in there for another couple of weeks and he would see if he could get me decent severance package. I said that I would but that I may be sick on some of those days (it was a veiled threat but not to veiled - I retained plausible denial). Michael is hanging up his coat and goes “hack hack” like he was clearing his throat at that last comment. Just to emphasis the point, I tell Brian “Michael just went ‘hack hack’” “Just hang in there and do any work that comes your way. I'm going to meet with Sue in London next week. Wait until I get back” I promised him that I would. Michael asks after I had hung up “Did you tell him what you would do if you did not get the repositioning?” “It was implied” I told him. “Yes, but did he understand” “I assume so” I replied, “otherwise he has no business being the manager”

Purposive–rational bureaucracy, transforms universal culpability into acquittal, and as an unintended side effect threatens the very basis of its claim to rational control – Ulrich Beck – World at Risk, 2008 p92

By 4:30 I’m at Cassidy’s the bike messenger bar on Howard (the leather and sex club district) nursing a Guinness. My crew at Venue 9 are in a last minute tizzy about getting the tax grant application finished. I sign the letter acknowledging that the board has approved this request for $30,000. Mary Alice is onto Laura about right justifying the figures. Mary Alice is now trying to explain to her about spacing. Now there is a commotion about a “wrong balance” sheet attached. “Someone has substituted the wrong balance sheet” Its business as normal. The Proposal was due by 5PM. It is now almost 5:30. No one has a car. Shall we call a taxi. How long do we have to wait? Why don’t we walk? Why not! It’s raining. Yes but it’s only a drizzel.

Listen; history is a mess, just one damned thing and then another. Believe me, I know. I was there. The door of history closes, opens. It opened, I went through – B F Fairchild – Usher: poems, 2009 p114

How many umbrellas do we need? More decision making. More confusion. Finally we set off at a brisk pace towards City Hall eight blocks away. My ankles are killing me and they are picking up the pace. I say “go on ahead. Don’t wait for me”. I follow up the steps and into City Hall. They pass through the security station but I get held up there. They have vanished. They took my advice and did not wait. I have no idea where they might have gone. I notice a crowd of people lined up. There is a lot of the commotion. Then I recall that this is the second day of the great same sex marry-off that Gavin Newsome had initiated.

Flavors! My friend, be delighted with what you like: but with something. / Be delighted with something. Yesterday for me it was watching sun on stone: wet stones. / I spent the morning in the wonder of that. A delight of god’s size – Kenneth Patachen – Collected Poems, 1967 p441

I hear a “Fred? Fred” I look around but don’t see anyone that I know. Then I spot Joe approaching. “Do you have the papers” he asks? I hand him the bag that I was carrying. My mistake. I should have held on to it and followed him. He takes off around two corners and I lose sight of him again near the line of gay brides. It was almost 6PM by now and there were still perhaps fifty couples waiting for their nuptials. There was an occasional whooping and hollering – shouts of glee, swishing and camping. Lots of scurrying about with big bouquets of showy flowers. Some were even pushing baby prams. There were some mixed couples – maybe well wishers – maybe I was mistaken. This was Valentine’s Eve – how appropriate

Stories without endings can do nothing but go on forever, and to be caught in one means that you must die before your part in it is played out – Paul Auster – The New York Trilogy: The Locked Room, 1986 p278

No wedding, no libations, no limousine, no flowers for me. My compatriots had abandoned me. It was back onto the streets, seduced, abandoned and alone in the early night. The big game had started at 6PM. It is underway at the coffee shop. Tunisia scores quickly. Only one chair remained unoccupied. Yousef turns to me and asked “Your are not a soccer fan?”. “Yes, But I’m an outsider to this” I tell him. “So am I” he says. “I’m an Israeli. But they don’t know that” There must be almost fifty Tunisians in the place by now and only three non-nationals - Yousef, myself and the other Fred. Yousef and I sit on the far bench. There is no longer any room for customers to get to … - Morocco just scores, every one is on their feet. Hands are all in the air. They are yelling. The excitement takes a while to subside.

Wasn’t Berlin’s famous “decadence” largely a commercial “line” which the Berliners had instinctively developed in their competition with Paris? Paris had long since cornered the straight girl-market, so what was left for Berlin to offer its visitors but a masquerade of perversions? – Christopher Isherwood – Christopher and His Kind: 1929-1939, 1976 p29