It got down into the single digits last night – I won’t get above freezing for at least another week – BURH! I made my first loaf in the bread machine. It was not hard. Just dump in the measured amounts as specified in the recipie. I did not add any gluten and got a very dense loaf. It is good for toasting. I burnt the pizza and ate it anyway. I had indigestion all night long. The truck is still missing (bad fuel probably). I bought some stuff to add to the gas tank as Dave had advised – supposed to clean the carburetor and the fuel injectors. The rear view mirror came lose. My Crazy Glue does not seem to stick (either it got to cold or it got too hot sitting in the truck over the summer – either way it will not set). So I unhooked the electrical connection  for the cab light and took it off – it was just hanging there banging against the front window glass.

Verse makes up for what languages lack – Stephane Mallarme – Selective Poetry and Prose, 1982

Factoid: There are and estimated 400,000 (1 million worldwide) ‘Gold Farmers’ in China. The total trade in virtual gold probably exceeds one billion dollars (in real currency). There are perhaps ten million online game players worldwide who buy gold or services from these farmers. In “World of Warcraft” 1,000 gold units is currently selling for around $10. The average monthly earnings of a “gold farmer” in China is about $150 (12 hours a day, seven days a week).

Niche construction creates a new evolutionary loop in which the transformed environment begins to put new selective pressures on the organism that made those modifications – Robert Aunger – Electric Meme: a new theory6 of how we think, 2002 p279

Factoid: The top three generators of online paid revenue: music downloading, gaming and dating. Online matching services generate almost one billion in revenue

The control of sex and pornography is a major part of promulgating a puritanical political culture without ever imposing an overt censorship regime. Sexual repression, often through the allegation of “deviate”: fantasy crimes, is the designated stand-in for violations of the social order that are hard to crush in a courtroom – Alexander Cockburn – The Nation (Nov 16, 2009) p9

It is bitterly cold
I had a dream
     Saw a city from a hilltop
I crept along on the ice
     To avoid falling
I imagined what I would eat
     Then I fell asleep
When I awoke I drove
     A car into the dark
It was bitterly cold

Economist are tempted not to take economics seriously when their political predisposition or personal ambition assumes cenrtre stage – Poatha Dasgupta, “Science as an Institution: Setting Priorities in a New Socio-Economic Context”, 1999      The same could be said of Suprem Court Justices

Factoid: The virtual gold bubble popped earlier than the subprime bubble. Between 2005 and 2009, virtual currencies were devalued by 85% against the US dollar

We caught the sleeper-train north from London…. The romance of the train, its Edwardian miracle of conjuring you to a different land while you sleep, was still perceptible. We left Euston Station… and woke to chilly air, white mist and a stag disappearing into the drizzle – Robert Macfarlane – The Wild Places, 2009 p73

Bark – Pay – Root
Dig – Lick – Fly
Dogfuck


Shine on moonbeam
Linger on honeybunch
Live my dream
Cry yourself to sleep

Successful personal blogs… are not about events, they’re about emotion. Grrr, I hate people who talk on cell phones in public places.! Arrggh, I forgot my labtop! – Ned Niedziecki – The Peep Diaries, 2009

We tend to live our lives as if the first time around was merely a dress rehearsal

The Germans have a term for it – Dopplegedanken, perhaps: the sensation, when reading, that your own mind is giving birth to the words as they appear on the page. Such is the ego that in those rare instances you wonder, “How could the author have known what I was thinking?” Of course, what has happened isn’t that at all, though it’s no less astonishing – Leah Hager Cohen – New York Times Book Review (Nov 29, 2009) p1

Factoid: Between 2003 and 2009 there have been 145 journalists killed in Iraq

The white moon takes the sea away from the sea / and gives it back to the sea. Beautiful, / conquering by means of pure and tranquil, / the moon compels the truth to delude itself / truth become whole, eternal, solitary / through it is not so – Juan Ramon Jimenez – Diario de Poeta y Mar

It’s cold (still) – the bus did not come – the young girl’s father had her in the car, keeping warm, motor running, lights on, condensation pouring from the tailpipe – sitting at the end of the road when I took the dog for its walk – when I returned carrying it after it began to hop on two feet and cry – when I returned to start my truck. He drove up behind me and rolled down his window – the rear right tire was one of those undersized spares – “What time you got?” I had to take off my gloves and fish out my mobile phone, “7:49”, I replied. “The bus was due at 7:25”, he said. “Is it running late?” “I don’t know”, I said and I didn’t, but he was waiting for something from me to tell him whether he should continue waiting or return home. I returned to my truck. He rolled up the window and drove off. Later at the coffeeshop one of the woman was saying about her little girl that she had asked this morning if they were going back to school today. Yes, I noticed now that there were school age kids about – another snow day no doubt. What do working mothers do but take the day off too. Now, I would have had an answer form him – “No, its another snow day, just like yesterday. You can go back home now. There will be no bus coming this morning.” And he would say, “Thanks” and roll up the window and drive back home and I would have then driven here to the coffee shop. And I probably wouldn’t have written this.

For the individual the core value of any ideology is a function of how well it defines the institutions under which he must live and the type of person those institutions constrain him to be – William L Barney - The Road to Secession, 1977 p198

Factoid: The US could reduce its green-house gas emissions by 183,000 tons by reducing it’s obesity rate by 3%

The killer is serene
Death is supreme
The murder is sublime
The demise is extreme

Regionalism is a term of opprobrium, condescension or contempt. The term ‘regionalist’ doesn’t really say anything about a writer except that the writer prefers writing about a specific place.- Donald Harrington (The Arkansas-Democrate-Gazette, 2000)

I go to the Modern Times Bookstore out in the Mission – A book tour talk on “The Modern Woman Revisited” - Paris between the wars with its editors Whitney Chadwich and Tirza True Latineer - The discussion evolved around the image of dandies, - their class and gender - how dandies had originally took on effeminate concerns of image (ignoring ruffles). I ask “so you are saying that cross dressing in Paris in the twenties was a reterritorialization?” “ No, a deterritorialization” Triza replies. “But if you are saying that that men by assuming an effeminate concern of pride in appearance, then women imitating that would be pushing the same territory that those dandies had occupied in the nineteenth century. I would call that a re-territorialization.”

Just as primitive people adopt the western mode of denationalized clothing and parliamentarism out of a vague feeling that these magic rites and vestments will at once put them abreast of modern culture and techniques, so the economist have developed the habit of dressing up their rather impressive ideas in the language of infinitesimal calculus – Norbert Weiner – God and Golem, Inc, 1964 p89

I stop off at New College to see if they have posted any new performance announcements, Dwayne and Erica appear - “Have you come for our five o’clock student show?” “No, but tell me more. I just dropped by to see if there were any upcoming shows. But I will. I will be back. Then I go to the Phoenix pub and have an Anchor Steam while I wait. I return just before five. “This is just your type of thing”, Erica tells me. She is probably right. We do show up at the same venues frequently. “OK” I tell her and find a seat. The work is rough but worth but I like work in progress.

A bleach blond David Bowie trannie sets next to me. He/She taps me on the shoulder, “Do you think anyone will get upset because I am eating?” “I can’t speak for anyone else, but I will not throw you out”, I tell her/him. And I wouldn’t either – trannies are hyperfemine, although they can be very annoying.

It’s no use making up contrary possibilities, since things are the way they are: reality stays the same – Alain Robbe-Grillet – Jealousy, 1977 p75

I had tried explaining performance art to Aska last night. I did not do a very good job. She was proclaiming that I was a pervert.

Ideas, like waves, have fetches. They arrive with us having traveled vast distances, and their pasts are often invisible, or barely imaginable – Robert Macfarlane – The Wild Places, 2009 p29

Factoid: The carbon footprint of a German Shephard is three times higher than an SUV (by weight, I wonder or by volume – surly not per unit)

All the background noise in America – motivational speakers, positive prayer, the new Journal of Happiness Studies – these are not the markers of a happy, well-adjusted psyche uncorrupted by irony – Hannah Rosin – New York Times Book Review (Nov 8, 2009) p7

Factoid: There are two drug-company lobbyists in Washington DC for ever member of congress

Publish. / The Book, where the satisfied spirit dwells, in case of misunderstanding, is obligated, by some struggle to shake off the bulk of the moment. Not personalized, the volume, from which one is separated as the author, does not demand that any reader approach it – Stephane Mallarme – Selective Poetry and Prose, 1982 p80

There was a 680 highway shooting. It was not believed to be related to the 580 shooting. 8AM and sunny. A red Durango driven by a man named Salazar who was shot in the face through the right window. The police worked the 580 case over the weekend looking for a thirty something white man. It’s 9:30Am and I’m at the Baghdad Café at Fifteenth & Market having a California Omelet (bacon, jack cheese, green chilies & sour cream) and coffee. The fashion is camouflage shorts and Abraham Lincoln chin beards - sometimes just a lower lip beard, a triangle for growth above the chin – a just another Leigh Bowery wig transferred to another orifice. Some baseball beards are about – the ubiquitous equilateral triangle chin beard with connecting mustache. After an An afternoon nap, its back to the coffee shop. Osama asks “where you in this morning?” “Yes, and where was I this morning?”, I ask.

White collar criminals are principally white. That’s might white, I opine.

People are always more alert to dangers imposed on them by others - either by force or by manipulation - than to dangers emerging from self determined behavior –Williard Gaylin – The Perversion of Autonomy: coercion and constraints in a liberal society, 2003

I pass the same person as I did this morning on the way here. We acknowledge each other for the second time today. He said something which I was unable to decipher, some like “we meet again”. I mumble something back that would have acknowledged what it was that I had through he had said if I had understood him and if he had been able to understand my response, which neither of us did – but we had both played our roles – what more was there to understand? We each patronize the Royal Ground. He is a doctor at the office just up the street and beyond the ally. The office is in the old Victorian which had been relandscaped about a year ago after some foundation work had been done. I have been watching the rose bushes that are trellised along the black iron fence.

The individual is a creation of mankind - Irving Howe

Things are beginning to drip – warm up – melt – the eaves drip from the melting snow – the black ice melts away – it is safe to walk – it is mostly safe to drive. I’m getting cold. I put on my coat. Someone just went out the door. The heater kicks in. I get a refill of coffee. I go and take a pee.

Tramping is a straying from the obvious, even the crookedest road is sometimes too straight – Stephen Graham – The Gentle Art of Tramping (1926)

That I should die
     Facing the firing squad
My hatred aglow
     Firing my soul
So proud to have been
    Of service
So happy not to have
    Been marginalized

Raising my cup, I toast the bright moon, / and facing my shadow makes friends three, // though the moon has never understood wine, / and shadow only trails along behind me – Li Po – The Selected Poems, 1996 p43

The slave trade was outlawed by the United States and Britain at near its peak in 1807. Such a viable commercial process would have stood no chance of proscription in today’s alliance between big business and big government. Today we would propose a cap and trade system to control it. Moral choices are no longer practical (or efficient).

The free flow of capital and goods (instead of goods only) means that investment is governed by absolute profitability and not by comparative advantage. The absence of a free flow of labor means that opportunities for employment decline for workers in a country in which investments are not being made – Herman E Daly – For the Common Good., 1989 p214

Factoid: Europe is now a “continent of migrants” with more than 10% of it’s people living outside their countries of birth

Everything that differentiates domestic from international trade depends, for Ricardo, explicitly on the international immobility of capital (labor immobility between nations was taken for granted) – Herman E Daly – For the Common Good., 1989 p214

Western European words for ‘slave’ – esclavo, escarvo, Sklave, esclave, schiavo – stem from the Latin for Slav, sclavus

Freedom Day +1 – And shit, I have to go into the office this morning to work out my transition. I will have to turn in all my company property by the middle of the month. Then das est alles - kaput, all over, fini - an artificial life of work over, career in the trash - don’t let the door hit you in the rear on the way out - hit the road Jack, it’s the open trail for me, don’t get lost in the woods.

The more mummified an object is, the more intense its ability to yield experience, a sense of the authentic - Andreas Huyssen – Twilight Memories, 1995

I will send my “Its my turn now” e-mail and close this chapter, this volume. I’ve already started a new page and as you can see it is no longer a blank. A number of possibilities come into being New, exciting and adventurous opportunities await.

Longing for the authentic is a form of fetishism – Andreas Huyssen – Twilight Memories, 1995

I’m out of the office by Two PM with my farewell notification sent, a forwarding message recorded and my good byes said. Bea sat beside me on the bus. We introduced ourselves. “You’re in the coffee shop a lot aren’t you?” she says. I had always thought that she and her husband Larry, were real estate agents. She it turns out is and interior designer and he is an investment banker. “Sorry not to have said Hello to your before”, she says. “No problem”, I reply, “this is the first time that we have actually had a one on one conversation.”

Structural adjustment programs devoid of safety-nets for those who are vulnerable – are defective – Patha Dasgupta “Science as an Institution: Setting priorities in a new social economic context,” 1999

I love women of non-descript ethnicity, dark complexion and hair; Indian, African or Fijian. Indistinguishable until they speak and they have no exotic accent - just American – what a disappointment. This is more a wine bar than a pub. It’s a neighborhood bar. Most of the patrons are young ethnic professional - YEPPIES. I spot a woman in a tweed coat, frizzled hair, glasses and big silver earrings, a white female professional. But every one is a professional now that my career is passé. Is it only because I relished being an outsider so much that I had missed out on being a professional too - no mini-mes for me, thank you very much. People are meeting people. People exchange greetings. They do hug each other and even give each other full tongue kisses then they laugh. This is all so routine. I notice yes, but do I care. No, I’m not part of the norm here. I’m now just an observer. And I must run and take a piss after each beer? I am such a lousy lounge lizard

Ordinary injustices result when a community of legal professionals becomes so accustomed to a pattern of lapses that they can no longer see their role in them – Amy Bach – Ordinary Injustice: How America Holds Court

Money and poetry both act as catalysts, and they bring together objects and experience that wouldn’t have anything to do with one another otherwise – David Kirby – New York Times Book Review (Nov 8, 2009) p6

I’m sitting on a bench at 8th and Baloba waiting for the number 31 downtown. I’m on my way to pick up a box of personal items from my former office. There no fun in playing hooky when there is no hooky to be played. I tell myself – I will now know adventure. This is both exuberating and anxiety creating. It’s a series of one-day stands, will any of them lead to anything more substantial than sitting on this bench?..

Most of these places, however, were not marked as special on any map. But they became special by personal acquaintance… A word might be exchanged with a friend or partner, a photograph might be kept, a note made in journal, a line added to a letter. Many encounters would not even attain this degree of voice. They would stay unarticulated, part of private thought – Robert Macfarlane – The Wild Places, 2009 p236

A little bit of old with a little bit of new. I’m back at the New Village Café on Polk for breakfast where they already know what it is that I want. I picked up the last of my stuff from the office. I encounter my nephew Scott at the Brewery. This is the second time this week that he had appeared out of nowhere. He was in the area dropping off resumes and notices their four o’clock happy hour. “Hello”, he says as she sits down. I say “Hello there” as if this was our normal routine.

It is not the country that progressively creates the town but the town that creates the country – Giles Deleuze

I stroke my beard. I do it automatically. I do it quite often. It has become a habit – as I read, as I stare out the window. I do it often – it feels like a horsehair sofa – there is a bit of eroticism to it – there’s a bit of honeysuckle in bloom without any bees about it – the fletch of cigar smoke blown in your face deliberately. Others notice how often I do this – I am sure of this. I beat my pen on the blank page of the notebook like a drumstick and then twirl it between my fingers in a rocking motion – I notice what I’m doing – Is this a substitute for stroking my beard – then I do it again and then again and force myself to stop rocking the pen or drumming on the blank page – but then I go back to stroking my beard or pulling on my ear lobe or picking my nose or even worse.

Ideas, knowledge, art, hospitality, travel – those are the things which should of their nature be international and conveniently possible; and, above all, let finance be primarily national – J M Keynes

The sun glows brightly on
     The wall
The man sings softly on
     The radio
This hot coffee fills
     My cup
There is no shame in
     Any of this
I shall never sin
     Again
     Then
The sun goes down
The radio was been turned
     Off
The cup has been set aside
     To be washed

There’s a bird among blossoms calling, // and when I ask what season this is / an oriole’s voice drifts among spring winds / overcome, verging on sorrow and lament, / I pour another drink Soon, awaiting // this bright moon, I’m chanting a song. / And now it’s over, I’ve forgotten why – Li Po – The Selected Poems, 1996 p18

S K Thoth is doing one of his solo operas. He should be taken seriously. Really. He takes himself and his work very seriously. Art is what an artist does. If he is an artist, what he does is art – but how is to be determined if one is an artist? It has nothing to do with certification or recognition and everything to do with tradition and standards. His sincere effort draws you in, even if your first inclination is to snicker. You do become absorbed into his world. It is self-absorbing and as Forest Gump would have said ‘Serious is as Serious does’. And was his mother not an artist? Was she not a violinist with the Sympony Orchestra. And was that not him in one of those Cullen MacCulken “Home Alone Movies” at the tunnel entrance to Central Park just before Cullen encountered the Pigeon lady? I don’t’ think he was wearing his loin cloth in the New York snow but there is only one person who prances like that (sort of like Jethro Tull/Ian Anderson) while playing his violin.

SONG OF THE MERCHANT: On heaven’s wind, a sea traveler / wanders by boat through distances. // It’s like a bird among the clouds: / one gone, gone without a trace – Li Po – The Selected Poems, 1996 p25

Then I am off to the Intersection for the opening of “Beautiful Ugly Violence. Kevin, Hesper, Monica and Sean. Then its over to the Elixir for two Sac Brews.There’s a strange crowd here tonight - a mixture of gay, straight, black & brown, sports fans, dog lovers, roommates and lovely dovey couples. The young man is insisting on only the most expensive wine for his new boyfriend.

Thinking of East Mountain: it’s forever since I face East Mountain. / How many times have roses bloomed there, // or clouds returned, and tinned away, / a bright moon setting over whose home? – Li Po – The Selected Poems, 1996 p46

Its been an evening of whackos, cranks, weirdoes. Where do you look when you have men on the prowl staring back at you. Do you avert your eyes? Do you keep your head down and write in your journal. Work is over. Flown away. Arreviderci, adious, adieu, Bon voyage. Calvin had told Hobbs at the top of the hills after a brand new snow during the night - “It’s a new Day!” – I had kept that panel cut from the paper on the last day of the Calvin and Hobbs strip on my wall since I had left my previous job seven year before.

The demands of money making almost always take precedence over the needs of individuals and communities – Ned Niedziecki – The Peep Diaries, 2009 p270

A cute girl is learning the cash register. The conversation is melding into a background swill. It’s rolling and breaking. One could surf on this. The combined cacophony is its own symphony. The experienced barmaid is very attentive. She is watching constantly. She notices the near empties and acknowledges their consumers’ thirst. She is quick to the site of any needed action. The apprentice bar girls are being shown how the stock is laid out. The music, the conversation, the yelling, the trying to be heard above it and in spite of it all; it just rolls on, breaking, rolling as in a storm. It repetitively swishes at your feet. Its cold. Again and again. You eventually acclimate to it. But swill after swill its just keeps rolling in. Repeating. Repeating.

Three cups and I’ve plumbed the great way, / a jarful and I’ve merged with occurrence // appearing of itself. Wine’s view is lived: / you can’t preach doctrine to the sober – Li Po – The Selected Poems, 1996 p44

The irregularities become regular as conscious is submerged in the noise. An occasional voice, one word maybe two can be made out, before they are again consumed by the roar. The waves are breaking all around. You are in the middle of the ocean now. You have been carried offshore by the rip tide, but you do not feel afraid. You have surrendered to the commotion. You try to imagine working this bar is such a roar. Its no use. The experiences bartenders are in their milieu They are killer whales hunting seals. In the pounding surf the seals make a quick rush for open ocean. Most succeed. There is five seconds of quite and the din gathers momentum.

Young love, new untarnished love. That first love that comes once to everyone and never comes back again – Cornell Woolrich – I Married a Dead Man, 1948

This has been a great day for having gotten laid off. I’m feeling fine, independent, irresponsible and ready to rumble. I’m enjoying being here now, the ambient noise, the suppression of consciousness. “How’s it going. Excuse Me” So far I have only consumed half a pint - and, oh yes - there was that glass of Zinfandel at the Intersection - and I am drowning in the midst of multiple conversations, the dogs, the basketball on TV and the juke box. They are all going at once; adding, adding, adding to the din in an exponential manner. I drink it in, this intoxicating elixir.

Isn’t it clear that weapons are the tools of misery? / The great sages never waited until the need for such things arose – Li Po – The Selected Poems, 1996 p59

More beer. now its approaching ten o’clock and I am musing in my suds. I fit right in. Being the only gray hair in the place has not be a deterrent to my fitting in. This is my milieu. What if I hung out here every night. Would its exoticness, its attractiveness wear off. Would it be normal, boring, mundane - God forbid. So let this be a rare occasion. Let keep it exotic. Are there parrots in the trees? I just got splattered by beer. It was like bird droppings. If you can’t stand the shit stay out from under the trees. Love it. Love it. Love it. But never get used to it. There are four behind the bar now; two newbies and two pros. A pro will pull five draws before a newbie spots an empty glass.

I sing, watch cloud and moon, empty / song soon long wind through pine – Li Po – The Selected Poems, 1996 p24

Iron Chef Japan Rules While Spent Hens Go to School

Bitterly, bitterly cold and will remain so for another week – not due to rise above freezing until next Monday (a week from today). The dog wanted to go out – it froze its paws in less than a hundred feet – standing there on two legs and crying – I had to pick it up and carry it back. Last night it made it to the corner before beginning to hop on three legs and cry and refuses to go on. And I carried it back then too. I put it down to go down the driveway – It’s slippery and I might fall and crush the little fella. And what would I do if I slipped on this ice and fell and broke my hip – lay there and cry in the dark. Who would come and rescue me before I froze to death, with the little dog licking my face – I’m told its not a bad way to die. Robert Scott scribbled in his diary to his wife before dying in Antarctica: How much better this has been than lounging about in to great comfort at home. But I would not have the consolation of having done anything heroic and home would be only fifty feet away – how mundane would that be!

The controversies of man, the hurricanes of history in her eyes, trifles: her sickness alone prevailed over time and space – E M Cioran – A Short History of Decay, 1975 p24

In the United States, more people believe that houses can be haunted by the dead than believe that the living can cause climate change. Is this simply a scary Halloween tale or our frightening future?

International trade, despite the name, is not trade between nations, but trade between individuals that crosses national boundaries – Herman E Daly – For the Common Good., 1989 p221

And the limits Jack in the Box and other big retailers set for certain bacteria in their burgers are up to 10 times more stringent than what the USDA sets for school beef. For chicken, the USDA has supplied schools with thousands of tons of meat from old birds that might otherwise go to compost or pet food. Called "spent hens" because they're past their egg-laying prime, the chickens don't pass muster with Colonel Sanders- KFC won't buy them - and they don't pass the soup test, either. The Campbell Soup Company says it stopped using them a decade ago based on "quality considerations."

Our culture still contains much mythological residue based on the assumption that an immoral and flagrantly unjust system of labor [slavery] could not possibly be congruent with long-term economic and materials progress – Brion Davis – New York Review of Books (12/17/09) p73

In the past three years, the government has provided the nation's schools with millions of pounds of beef and chicken that wouldn't meet the quality or safety standards of many fast-food restaurants, from Jack in the Box and other burger places to chicken chains such as KFC

She reached into the darkness, and traced her hand along the wall beside the door, and a light went on. It had very little shine. It had very little to shine on – Cornell Woolrich – I Married a Dead Man, 1948

Factoid: One-fourth of the total number of slaves shipped across the Atlantic where transported after the abolition of the slave trade (1807) in spite of the efforts of the British navy to suppress the trade

But I walk dogged by misfortunes, / Not straight ahead and not aslant, / But to nowhere and to never, / Like a wrecked train – Anna Akhmatova – The Complete Poems, 1992 p465

Privatization is ever accomplished by the public’s assumption of risk, thereby undermining the classic economic case for privatization

They were both doing little things. All life is that, the continuous doing of little things, all life long. And then suddenly a big thing strikes into their midst – and where are the little things, what became of them, what were they? – Cornell Woolrich – I Married a Dead Man, 1948

Factoid -Balance of average US 401(k) accounts – 1998 - $62,000; 2009 - $45,000; 46% of all 401(k) accounts are worth less than $10,000

It is amateurs who have one big bright beautiful idea that they can never abandon. Professionals know that they have to produce theory after theory before they are likely to hit the jackpot – Francis H C Crick – What Mad Pursuit, 1988 p95

The Obama administration has spent about $250,000 for each job it claims to have created. The figure is about the same as that for jobs created by local governments under “Tax Inducement Funding (TIF). Mighten this be a matter of subsidizing big business rather than job creation – a factor not of government inefficiency but of effective big business lobbying. Or as Lincoln might have put it – a government of big business, for big business and by big business.

For the white equalitarian, slavery was more crucial as a technique for race control than as a labor system … The extremist spokesmen of this class were already arguing that slavery was a natural and necessary ordering of society and that, therfefore, all labor, regardless of race, should be enslaved – William L Barney - The Road to Secession, 1977 p70

Factoid – Automobile repairs cost 37% more at new car dealership than they do at independent auto-repair shop – the is practically due to priority tools and knowledge needed to repair each model and make of car. How much must you pay over the lifetime of a car for its high-tech features – many a high tech good can be sold at less than cost with the profits being made in parts and services

It is because of those day dreams we have, before we resume our reading in a garden that our attention strays to a white butterfly filtering here and there, then disappearing – Stephane Mallarme – Selective Poetry and Prose, 1982 p85

Factoid: The market for workplace monitoring technology has increased by 43% since 2007

For what is relative immortality – especially since we are often immortal in the minds of idiots – Stephane Mallarme – Selective Poetry and Prose, 1982 p86

Which do you love the most?
    Iron Chef America
    Or Iron Chef Japan
A la cuisine
Bang a gong
There you have it – bam!
    The Food Network
     Emeril vs Flay in
A showdown

Once I was a scuba-diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski – Nicholas Carr “Is Google Making Us Stupid/” – Atlantic (July 2008)

Misappropriation of Public Space is no longer Just a Misdemeanor ( Up to 30 Days in Jail and/or a Tousand Dollar Fine)

This was another case of inappropriate use of public space when the chairman of the nursing faculty committee that had sent her that letter telling her that her teaching did not meet their academic standards held a conference with her. She brought all her documentation. She was pointing and explaining and he was telling her that it had no relevance. I could feel the anger in her voice. Either she was paranoid or had managed to piss someone important off. He maintained that the process was above suspicion but all this evidence could not be considered because it did not meet the committee’s criteria. All the issues that she was raising needed to be taken up in another process, he was proclaiming. She would have to make an appeal to them. He was very polite and perhaps naïve. She probably was not paranoid considering the nature of his conciliatory behavior and his willingness to have such a meeting outside of the system ( a little guilty consciouse on his part). I don’t think she is paranoid – having had too much exposure to bureaucratic behavior myself – but she sure was whinny. She said that she had been praying for him and that they had turned a joyous time of the year into a hell for her. Why did they have to come here and become an embarrassment – such a public places is no place for such a conference – no place at all.

It’s been three years. Your scent still lingers; // your scent gone and yet never ending. / But now you’re gone, never to return – Li Po – The Selected Poems, 1996 p18

Numbers are to mathematicians
What words are to poets
Stanzas and formulas
      Are synonymous
Fibonacci all in a row
      At the carnival
It all adds up


A poem has symmetries
Words have recursive sequences
The order is not random
     This can be proven
     They are interrelated
I am elated


A formula does exist
My proof consists in showing
That an infinite sequence
Can be captured by
      Something finite

And so now maladies of the soul have emerged, unhappinesses which are complicated products of the distance we have set between ourselves and the world – Robert Macfarlane – The Wild Places, 20 p203

Factoid: Contractors now compose 69% of the US Department of Defense’s workforce. At present there are 104,000 contractors in Afghanistan. The number of Defense contractors there rose by 40% between June 2006 and September 2009. The number of armed contractors there doubled during that time period from 5,000 to 10,000. With the coming surge there will be an additional 56,000 in the country. There are also a number on none Department of Defense contractors there (3,600 Department of State and 14,000 USAID). A year from now the likely number of US-funded civilian personal on the ground in Afghanistan may exceed 220,000 and costing in excess of $16 billion a year

Our armies moving down White-Ascent Road, / Mongols probing along Sky-Blue Seas - // Soldiers never return from those forced / marches ending on battlefields. Countless // guards lookout across moonlit borderland / thinking of home, their faces all grief – Li Po – The Selected Poems, 1996 p26

Where power and expertise coincide, there truth will be self-evident

It’s no surprise, Eastern seas become / Western streams shallow and clear, // or the melon-grower at Ch’ing Gate / once reigned as Duke of Tung-ling – Li Po – The Selected Poems, 1996 p30

Searching for historical analogies we latch onto historical themes intuitively: French collaboration, inter-war Britain, the American dis-union. We plunder the past to gain knowledge about the present but understand neither. But at least we are not ignorant – we have analogous situations.

That winter hour, upon the summit ridge with the stars falling plainly far above, it seemed to me that our estrangement from the dark was a great and serious loss. We are, as a species, finding it increasingly hard to imagine that we are part of something which is larger than our own capacity – Robert Macfarlane – The Wild Places, 2009 p203

How sad that time should be
      So momentous
So as not to be allowed to write
      About the mundane
We are making history and this
Is no time to waste
     With nonsense


What a lose that one cannot
      Eat history
Or that I cannot embrace the hero
     Who is made of steel

No one understands now. Those who could / hear a song this deeply vanished long ago – Li Po – The Selected Poems, 1996 Po p28

Factoid: Between 1680 and 1820 the flow of migrants across the Atlantic included about five African slaves for every European settler