Big snow fell – very powdery. It’s 14 today. The snow started yesterday afternoon it was still snowing when I went to bed. It is lightly snowing now. The forecast is for it clearing off but not for the temperature to rise any. I stayed at Hoopers until the after work traffic cleared off and got home around seven. Big fluffy flakes are waffling in the sun that glares in through the frosted coffee shop windows. Keep that door shut. It is impossible to keep warm. My shoes are damp and moisture is soaking into my socks. Soothing music and a big comfy chair are nice. I slice into a puffy hot cinnamon bun.

My next adventure - an excursion to the cross atop Mt Davidson and to McLaren Park as part of a project to climb all of San Francisco’s hills. The seven hills of Rome?

Clap, Clap. I look around. “They [San Jose] won. Three and Oh.” And I am complacent. Someone down the bar asks that the King’s game be put on. The San Jose fan’s phone rings – Hello - That was an amazing win. At Colorado you have got to realize…You were talking to Stacey? So how is that girl doing in Kentucky…Haw, haw, haw. So I guess everybody has those cars already….Whatever…So did you get to Kim’s place … It’s the playoffs Two Thousand and Four - Sacramento 33 and Dallas 37.

Jenny was in a tizzy this morning (nothing new there). Her biggest projects, which she assures me never ever happens, are both due and PG&E shut her power off for two days and she didn’t meet her deadlines, and she was up all night and she is beside herself, and … and…and. - Yes, I tell her I do see two of you. Ugh, she replies. All is normal with Jennie.

And Michael says “Oh, my God, it’s a dead bird”.

She has a mass of dirty white feathers perched on her right shoulder- no it’s a faux owl. I’m Minerva, she announces and shows us the little cloak that she had made for the fake owl. It had hold of her with green wire talons. So is this International Minerva Day, I ask? Yes, she says and turns the owl’s head and flaps its wings before she departs as abruptly as she had appeared.

San Jose, we picked her up then and then dropped her. Are you from Boston? No. Yes. Went to Boston College. It’s the first and the second final. And he said, OK, there are not rock stars to be found. I haven’t been here since Thursday and the whole place went to hell. Do they really enforce the two hour parking limit? Yeah. And it cost $300. I guess I ought to move my car. I’m afraid so. Either that or whip off the chalk mark.

If you write enough crap, you will eventually write something worthwhile - it’s the monkey and the typewrite hypothesis. But not today.

It was for a measure
         Of her beauty
         That she asked that
                 For the mirror
To quantify it. It replied
         40% more beautiful
         In just seven days
Or I can slip her a poison
         Apple she said
Yes, that will work also
         Her reflection mouthed
She glared into the glass
         And turned in a huff
        Stomped out and headed
For her laboratory
She was heard to be humming
         A cheery little tune

Many live their lives for the few, and political and economic institutions operate in such a way as to make this situation either bearable (liberal authoritarian) or painful (totalitarian) – Marcus Raskin – Being and Doing, 1971

The three social classes: the drones, the wantabes and the be’s

When I was young, I guess I was looking for something I could do. Then for something I could be. Finally just for something to want, or to think, or to believe in – Lillian Hellman – Days to Come

56% of US retirees had outstanding debt when they left the workforce

The wonders of the intellect are by no means a way to Truth – J G Merquior – From Prague to Parise, 1986 p58

Older debtors have 50% more credit-card debt than do their younger counterparts. 75% of them cite medical or funeral expenses as the cause of their debts.

Whatever happened to your childhood
         Sweetheart
Go onto the Internet and find out
         Now imagine how it might
         Have turned out differently
Such a miserably and futile experience
         We look for what had been possible
         Rather than probable
It is irresistible and so easy
        And come away with a heartache
        And a good cry and then
Pick yourself up and go on
        It would never have happened
       That way anyway
Never tell your spouse that you think
You might have a better home awaiting
        In the bye and bye

[In] the rules of fiction, where (unlike life) something has to happen – Susan Sontag – Where the Stress Falls, 2001 p15

Lost Connections, Misplaced Alleginces, More Confusions - Ithyphallic Projections

19⁰  - another week of below freezing temperatures are ahead.  It was after dark. Bang, bang. I stuck my head out of the door, someone was screaming. Help! Help!. It was coming from across the street. A pickup truck was blocking the road and an SUV was spinning its tires in the ditch. I grabbed my phone. I put on my shoes. The SUV was now gone. You Ok? You OK? Need an ambulance, I asked. No! Want me to call the police? Go ahead. And then after my 911 call he had second thoughts – he might have an outstanding warrant for an old speeding ticket. They might just arrest him instead. I tried to get his story straight as I talked to the dispatcher. A vehicle is on the way, she said. How long will it take. It is an emergency response, sir. It will be there as soon as it can.

All private property… has always required police protection but in the paradigm of immaterial production there is an expansion of immaterial property, which is ever more volatile and uncontrollable, posing new security problems – Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri – Multitude: war and democracy in the age of empire, 2004 p180

And when the police cruiser arrived it shone a bright light in our eyes. The man that had been run over was hollering for them to turn it off. I said, they need to make sure that they themselves are not at risk (meaning that we were not armed and did not appear to be menacing). Then they got out and approached on foot and he began to relate his story. The tall officer bent over and pulled something for the snow bank. It was a piece of vegetation. Things are usually not what they appear, he said. The truth lies somewhere else, he proclaimed. That’s for you to figure out, I said and left.

As Mallarme once told Degas, literature is made up of words, not ideas – J G Merquior – From Prague to Paris, 1986  p29

Paddy starts to draw a Doppel Weisn. I say, NO, NO, Something cold and light this time. How about an Albatross this time and he draws it. I am refreshed. After miles of beaches, sand dunes, ice plants, spruce trees and concrete and except for the ride out and the ride back in, I have been walking, walking, walking, in the heat, in the surf and across the dunes and the hills, discovering Bufano anew along the way.  The first two I just happened across. It was a serendipitous triumph. I shall inventory all of his works in the City. Then I shall visit each one.


Benny Bufano public sculptures:

• - Madonna - Great Meadow, upper Fort Mason
• - St Francis - City College
• - Sun Yat-Sen - St Mary’s Square
• - St Francis II - Taylor & Beach Streets
• - St Francis III - Grace Cathedral
• - The Penguins I - Sidney Walton Square (Front, Davis & Jackson)
• - The Penguins II - Pine & Powell Streets
• - Bear & Cubs - 530 Parnassus St
• - Polar Bear - Randall Museum

The Seahawks and the Bears
Does Seattle stand a chance?
             Not a pray, she replied
I had already closed that town’s
            Chapter I thought.
            That education was over
                   I thought. I had
             Healed, I though

My lost love had died in June and now
            After so many years
            I could finally grieve
I found a death notice. But no
            Obituary. Complications
            Due to malaria I was told
            I had found
The clue in her daughter’s novel
            Her photo on the jacket

            Mother and daughter looked alike                
“To my mother Dr Angelina Mbauya”
It has been thirty years since Seattle
            I had long counted
            Her among the dead
For a short while a reconciliation
            Had seemed possible
            But not now; it had all 
            Been in my head
As it turned out neither team
            Would be going on
            To the Superbowl
But there remained a gnawing
            In my stomach
            About how it could have been
            And all the anger I never got over

The more metaphorical the relation between us and the animal concerned (as in the case of birds), the more metonymical are their given names, borrowed from our daily environment. Conversely, the more metonymical the beasts’ relation to us (as with dogs), the more metaphorical, or ‘symbolic’ the nicknames will be. The pattern is therefore inversion: what most resembles is exactly what differs most – J G Merquior – From Prague to Parise, 1986  p50

It is a slow evening. I decide to try Eldo’s. That will only leave one brew-pub in the City that I have not yet visited. I’ll make the final minutes of its happy hour. Running into Michelle on the street had delayed my arrival. “What's Happening?", I say as she hailed me down. "Just taking a walk", she replied. "I didn’t mean at this specific moment," I say. "I mean with your life." Our courtship had been that way too, talking past each other. She was looking for a man and I was just looking to see if I was looking and if she might worth looking at. We had both just talked past each other till we gave up and just nodded hello. She thought I should have done something and I was wondering if I wanted to do something. I mention work. "Oh", she says, "I don’t work there any more." "I know", I reply. And I say, "I don’t go there very often anymore." "I’m on my way to EldosJuda. I conclude that she must have found someone who wasn’t just wondering. I continue north on up Ninth Avenue.

Eldos attracts a twenty something crowd. I am tolerant of being the only gray hair. I reach out and shake an offered hand. No, I don’t know who it is. Their rules not mine. Sports is a big thing here, I don’t know that I can reach out that far. Only I and an Asian woman are drinking dark beers, everyone is drinking pales. Innocuous jazz plays on the stereo. But San Franciscans are a gregarious sort and they mix will with about any one. The guy next to me is hollering “Score”. I look up. There is a hockey game on the monitor, but there had been no score. There is nothing out of the ordinary happening in the game and I look at him. He’s on his cell phone - I’ll take to you later - and he signs off. He chuckles to himself. And the hockey fan says “one more for the score” and pushes his glass towards the bartender. A pale ale of course.

Among his profound struggles (and it is a question all serious poets put to themselves) is with what to do with the particulars – Dan Chiasson – New York Review of Books, Dec 9, 2010 p41

It takes a poet to not know

And make a fetish of this

It is a duty to establish

            The difference

Between what is not known and

What it is to not know

The business of thinking is difference qua difference – Martin Heidegger – Identity and Difference, 1969

God, Sex and Football

She was shot full of Novocain. The muscles of her lower back were giving her trouble. She wanted to explain it: how painful these shoots really were. God, she said, it hurts. I asked her if she could tell me every excruciating detail. I was being cynical. What she really wanted to do was to complain. She declined to give me the details.  She asked to hear about my experience in the court room today. I was on jury duty today.  She wanted me to help her in naming her line of hand-made  soaps. One had blood orange, lemon and other citrus essences. I suggested Carrivra. She said that she thought that blood oranges grew in the Sierra foothills and was thinking about “Sierra Citrus”. I told her that that would work too. She said that there was someone up in Washington State 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).  

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

The County Poorhouse

Had stood in the woods

A few scattered sticks

Bricks that once constituted

           A communal fireplace

Made to feel different

Wearing shinny trousers

           Gathered up and mended

           By the church ladies’

           Sewing circles

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

God doesn’t need an objective yardstick to warn him of the consequences of our sins. Her handmade soaps will not wash them from our hands – “Cynbegon”. Risk is either urgent, threatening and real or it is negligible and unreal. It is up to us. Our particular perceptions and evaluations are the determinate.  How do you feel today, I asked her? We had done our duty, a jury nullification, I told her without waiting to hear how she felt. What does that mean? We refused to convict even thought we believed he was guilty, I replied. Several jurors felt that if the police had arrested him then he must be guilty. It was impossible to acquit him. The DA thought we should go back and try harder after all it was eleven to one.  But you don’t understand, I said. It was only the one who was for conviction. I hear indignation form otherwise liberal people that we could avoid a trial where someone is obviously guilty – like when it was done on TV. They’ve been watching too many NFL play reviews. The Arena is God’s House, is it not?  And who shall make the determination and how shall we draw the line? I tried to explain that there was a philosophical difference between “factual guilt” and “legal guilt”.  If you are to maintain an adversarial system you can’t be arbitrary. He’s obviously guilty. Yes, I agreed, but legally innocent. It's a matter of defining our duty. Is it to dispense justice or is it to punish? God, God, oh God, she exclaimed during an organism. Others made other ejaculations – Oh Shit, was one. Harder, harder, faster, faster, Oh Superman!

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 – Ernst Becker – The Denial of Death, 1973 p42

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 litigation).

With such self-assurance

He is dangerous

        He’s explaining God’s

               Plan

With such self-presence

Everyone is opening out

          Their Bibles

And reading the passage

            For themselves

Darwin is Dead

God is Alive

He don’t like to joke

People misunderstand

          He says

And take what he says

           For a Meme of God

He walks in trepidation

           Afraid of

           His own power

God himself couldn’t

Have done it any better

God is Alive

            In this Bible

God doesn’t have

            A sense of humor

            He says

And neither do I

The continual political appetite for a global war on terror has led 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.

You struggle to become Gods and yet you die!

Time for a Dress Rehearsal

Prepare

Preparing to

Preparedness is next

      To Godliness

The prepared shall

      Inherit the earth

Having prepared nothing

      To do but wait

Are you prepared

I think so

The assumption is always that normality will return – disruptions are both temporary and amendable. Continuity will prevail – the future shall be a continuation of the past.

And Robert wanted to know if coprophagia would cause death in humans (he though it did – having read Pynchon – and I don’t think that Pynchon is an expert on the topic, I told him) – I could not find any specific health problems documented but most health experts seem to believe it leads to number of bacterial infections (E coligest of his interest – didn’t he know that Darwin is dead?).

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

Is it a plan – Oh Superman

Oh oh oh – Superman

Faster than a speeding bullet

More powerful than a locomotive

It is not acts of terrorism that are destroying our institutions of freedom and democracy but the anticipation of acts of terrorism. Our response to the possibility is not due to fear per se but the inability of our institutions to deal with the unknowable – the free flow of capital requires a knowable unknown. Ultimately the security state cannot ensure security but only claim to be the cause of what has not yet happened. The state has no option but to respond even if ineffectively (and heavy handedly) because not to would be an abandonment of its primary raison d'etra. The reaction of the state has greater consequences for us than do the acts that it responds to.

“Sir, step back. "Take off your glasses and try again” the deputy says. I try again - beep - I step back remove my wallet, ID badges and change. Again - beep. I step back and remove my coat. My entry is beep free. I fumble around for all of my belongings lying on the table. I knock my glasses and coins onto the floor. Finally I get it all retrieved and by the time I make back to Judge Stewarts Court Room they have seated three perspective jurors. I am number twelve. Unless pre-empted I will have to serve on this jury.

Celebrityhood Gets You Laid - Just Enough Time for a Quickie in your Allotted Quarter Hour

9⁰ this morning with a low tonight expected to be around zero. The dog didn’t get very far before he started hopping on three legs. I picked him up and carried him back home. I put him down when we got to the driveway. The slope is steep. I’m fearful of slipping. I need all the mobility I can get. I don’t need a dog under my arm. I’m an old man. Every year I fall at least once. I’ve already had a nasty one this year. I put the dog down and took baby steps down to where the driveway flattens out. There  are still the steps to negoiate. They are the first to ice up. And banging one’s head on a riser might prove fatal. And then what would the dog do when its paws froze as it stood beside my body barking? It sounds like a duck when it barks – quack quack! QUACK! What would it do when I didn’t get up.

The decline of the national ideology means that capital no longer needs to offer the middle class this ideological sense of belonging and is happy to proletarize them – Bill Readings – The University in Ruins, 1996 p52

Claiming to be a poet

            Maybe it is charming

            But will it get you laid? Only

If the lady lives on the Swanee

            And you can pay your own
Way. You’re just another worker 
            With another product for sale

Take the river less traveled and

            Wind up marooned in the middle

            Of the ocean - if lucky
But have you published? Can I find
            You on the shelf?

At nineteen, one lives in utter idolatry, therefore the extreme superstition of sex. Monstrously exaggerated tales about sexual feats, which we listen to greedily determine our expectations. The disappointments are correspondingly great – Gregor Von Rezzori –Memoirs of an Anti-Semite p68

There is more than man and nature (or body and soul) there is also ‘ideology’ without which there would be no language in which to express this, and hence no ‘cognito’ to proclaim here.

There is nothing in the mind that is not already in precis – except mind itself – Leibniz

Stardom predominates every hypercommercial transaction. Celebrityhood sells. Celebrityhood pays.  Celebrityhood is imaginary. Celebrityhood gets you laid. Celebrityhood is shit.

Do not, I beg you, look for anything behind phenomena. They are themselves their own lesson – Goethe

It is not so much a process of converting everything to its economic value (who gains by that?) but of subjecting everything to the needs for capital

A conditional situation determines the limits and possibilities for human action and behavior. Faced by it, there exists only two possibilities: (i) to choose between the distinct alternatives within the situation… ; or (ii)… to change the conditional situation in order to permit other possibilities of action – Theotonio Dos Santos

Is it an insurrection if carried out by the constituted authority – it is not terrorism that a victor had committed. We reserve insurrection and terror for an act that fails to gain legitimacy over history.

I couldn’t understand about things, and it scared the hell out of me… when you don’t feel yourself anything, I mean any part of anything, that’s when you get scared. I was that way for a long time – Lillian Hellman – Days to Come

In a world where the bureaucracy/corporation holds hegemony – the administrator is King.  Extreme wealth is only tolerable when administrators hold all the power.

“Questions” of the day were “treated”, as social problems, suitably “solved”, and the stage, like the history book, became a means of that end – Oswald Spangler – The Decline of the West, 1965  p84

What was once viewed as a scourge is now proudly boosted of – the erstwhile robber barrons have become the represenatives of cultural consciousness

Our standards of modernity are a system of flattering illusions, which permit us selectivity to colonize the past, as are our ideas of what is provincial, which permit some parts of the world to condescend to all the rest – Susan Sontag – Where the Stress Falls, 2001 p40

The beauty of ‘downsizing’ as a strategy is that it turns its oppoisition into a defender of the status quo. The liberals  abandon their platforms and become subject to the synptoms of cognitative dissoance – they ignore their own critique, the act agaist their own interest. They defend what they don't believe in.

The furniture of a home expresses, in its quantity and kind, the division of the concerns of the soul – Paul Goodman - Commitatus p183

Does a consumer need ideology? Yes indeed, if he is to be an object of marketing.

Symbols are… unsought impressions of defining meaning and are incommunicable by process of reason – Oswald Spangler – The Decline of the West, 1965 r p87

Once you lose your faith nothing

Makes any sense – then again

            Maybe it never did

How immortal can you become

            By having a plaque with

            Your name on a park bench

            Even if cast in brass

Or over the door of  the university library

            Maybe your name on a sports arena
            Or a freeway would be best

Or you can leave in your will a request 
            To have daily novenas for your soul

            Read for  ninty-nine years 
Will that  be sufficient?

Everything become is mortal – Oswald Spangler – The Decline of the West, 1965  p90

Do dumb people know that they are dumb? Obviously not you’d have to be smart to know that. The dumb one behind me is talking about another dumb one (herself having been excluded of course). She might in a moment of excitement, exclaim “God that was dumb” or “What a stupid thing to do”. But she will only say it to herself and really doesn’t mean it. And she might say it out loud while she was on her cell phone when she fails to notice that red light and goes sailing right on through it. What’s that? What did you say? Her friend in another car is asking. Oh, nothing, she says. Never mind. Never mind. She has looked around to see if there are any cop cars near. There doen’t seem to be (but them maybe there was a camera). She sees no marked cars. She is thankful no one ran into her. And she goes back to talking on her phone. Whew, that was close, she says to herself. And lets (or at least she does) hope she does’t get a red light running ticket in the mail.

Any piece of writing that features an awareness of its own means and methods should be understood as in the first person, whether or not the main pronound is “I” – Susan Sontag – Where the Stress Falls, 2001 p32

What pushes us onward?
       It is never enough
What holds us back?
       It is always too much
How can you justify
       What you did?
       There is no excuse
How do you explain
       Any lack of progress?
What are you going
       To make of it?

If no one questions me, I know; if I would explain to a questioner, I know not – St Augustine

US drivers collectively spend 500,000 person-years waiting at stoplights. This non-productive time results in an economic lose of $87b (but only if it makes them late for work or miss their appointment – after all non-productive time is just non-productive time, isn’t it).

Part of the wealth of migrants is their desire for something more, their refusal to accept the way things are – Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri – Multitude: war and democracy in the age of empire, 2004 p133

We can taste more than just with our tongues, it is known that there are taste receptors in other parts of the body – lungs and stomach for example. But they may not be a conscious part of our taste sensation just as the brain that exist in our stomach does not generate a consciousness. It has only been within the past several decades that a second human organ of smell – the Jacobson organ, was discovered. The mysteries are far from over.

We are presumptuous and no less in supposing that we can ever set up ‘the Truth’ in the place of ‘anthropomorphic’ conceptions, for no other conceptions but these exist at all. Every idea that is possible at all is a mirror of the being of its author – Oswald Spangler – The Decline of the West, 1965 p190

Asians were still migrating to the Americas as late as 5,500 years ago. They are migrating there now but lets limit the discussion to prehistory.

Understanding consists in the reduction of one type of reality to another [for] true reality is never the most obvious of realities – Levi-Strauss – Triste Tropiques

We as citizens are ill equipped to deal with institutions – our experience must be hard won over a limited time. Instructional memory is cumulative and intergenerational. By the time we discover or deception it is already to late to compensate. We must each learn anew and our learning does not accumulate. That is our limitation and the strength of the institutions we create.

Never to think, that is the good life – Sophocles

We do what we do in a hypercommerical society not because we want to do that, but because we cannot bear not to do it – just as we vote not as a symbol of support but because we cannot stand the opposition. It is not that we chose one thing over another but we cannot allow ourselves to be excluded.

To the historical vision the actual data are always symbols – Oswald Spangler – The Decline of the West, 1965 p 83

Sitting in the January
         Morning sun
The days are noticeably
         Longer now
There is a longing returning
         For warmer days
The dog found a garter snake
         Today
The sun rose a little further
          North


Its bright
This is good
Light reflects with
          A glare


Dead leaves swirl
          About in the breeze
          Her name is Louise

In regard to the physical, one becomes more experienced and more mature, and one adjusts one’s ideals more flexibly to the insufficient realities – Gregor Von Rezzori –Memoirs of an Anti-Semite p111

Young couples are better than long-term partners at discerning each other’s preferences

Virgilia was a beautiful sin, and it is so easy to confess a beautiful sin! - Machado De Assis - Epitaph of a small winner, 1952 p145

Northern Europe was settled by our human ancestors by at least 800,000 years ago

The essence of divinity is to give aid to mortals – Erasmus –In Praise of Folly

A Man Was Coming Out of the Woods With a Gun.

Consumer choices: First movie this year. First movie for almost a year – The King’s Speech – Sir! Sir! The first show has not yet let out. I know, I said. The next showing was at 1:50 and I had almost 30 minutes to wait. I read in the lobby outside of screening room number 14. I had bought David Foster Wallace’s Consider the Lobster. I had wanted Infinite Jest it was not in stock at Barnes & Noble. Then I walked around the corner to the theater. Later I bought Infinite Jest on Amazon. It arrived my mail yesterday.

I was not in love with her, far from it, but I certainly did want her – especially now, after having described the lucid sparks we threw off – but probably not so much her as a person as the role she played in my little melodrama; any other actress would have done as well, just as any understudy could have stepped in for me – Gregor Von Rezzori –Memoirs of an Anti-Semite p181

Your scent signature is
        Unknown and I want
        To bark but put it off
Such a threat could be deadly
        But instead you must
        Be dealt with teeth
Torn asunder rendered
        Harmless if not benign
And for this stealth is
         a necessity

If a rock falls on your head that is certainly bad for you. But shame, disgrace, reproaches, curses do harm only insofar as they are perceived – Erasmus –In Praise of Folly p49

Revenue from foreign films as a percentage of total US box-office revenue:
        1975       10%
        1985        7
        1998        0.5

Folly’s praising folly leads into a maze like that of the Cretan liar. Folly is being praised and therefore is praiseworthy, but what Folly praises can hardly be praiseworthy. What is said often seems right, but if we consider the source, we know it must be wrong - Clarence H Miller – The Praise of Folly, Introducit9on, 1979

The estimate of the number of stars in the universe has recently been tripled from 100 billion to 300 billion

The highest to which man can obtain is wonder; and if the prime phenomenon makes him wonder, let him be content; nothing higher can it give him and nothing further should he seek behind it; here is the limit – Goethe

The only real question is – how much (do you/will it/does it) make –meaning – well, no mystery here, everyone knows – everything is about the same thing, its all about what it is worth – for how many dollars it can be sold, that is, it is all about its money value, was this even necessary to say?

Fear obscurity… fear everything that is not big. Look here, there are different ways for a man to amount to something, but the surest of all is to amount to something in other men’s opinion – Machado De Assis - Epitaph of a small winner, 1952 p79

Life is a gradual process of eliminating everything (all one’s options) other than for suicide

It is something beyond comprehension, that transformation of future into the past, and true time, in its contrast with space, has always a queer, baffling, oppressive ambiguity from which no serious man can wholly protect himself – Oswald Spangler – The Decline of the West, 1965 59

The familiar smells better if at all

Sexual pleasure, the propagation of the human race, the pleasures of the table, friendship and marriage, the glories of warfare, the investigation of science, the inventions of technology and vainglorious aspiration. Natural fools are among the happiest of men - Clarence H Miller – The Praise of Folly, Introduction, 1979

When it is only utility that you demand, it’s ideal is of no consequence – a cube is a cube even if all its faces cannot be seen simultaneously. If there were a truth it would have been discovered by now. It may have been discovered but be too ubiquitous to have received your notice. The obvious must always be delineated

All of the multitude is productive and all of it is poor – Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri – Multitude: war and democracy in the age of empire, 2004 p134

The population of bumblebees may half dropped by much as 96% and their geographic range has contracted by as much as 87%. The annual contribution to the global economy from bees is estimated to be at $26 billion. British beekeepers have just found out that the trade association logo has been sold to market the very chemicals supported to have causes the bee collapse. They are pissed (mad as hornets?).

Our universe of infinite space… simply does not exist for Classical man. It is not even capable of being presented to him – Oswald Spangler – The Decline of the West, 1965 p61

True tone deafness or amusica only affects about 4% of the population. An amusic in addition to being tone deaf cannot recognize a simple melody, cannot keep or maintain a tempo with a piece of music, and is unable to determine if a pitch is above or below another pitch.

But then they [the aged] have lost their grip on reality, some one may say; their minds are wandering. True enough, but that’s what it means to return to childhood. Isn’t childhood distinguished by a weak grasp of reality and a wandering mind? Isn’t the principle charm of childhood the fact that it knows nothing? - Erasmus –In Praise of Folly p21

It’s ok to do stupid things, but when you are aware that they are stupid you should cease doing them for to continue them is to be truly and irrevocably stupid.

At eight one is truly God-fearing – I mean in a fundamentalist way – Gregor Von Rezzori –Memoirs of an Anti-Semite p183

Handling cash register receipts from the store may enhance your risk of cancer

The question… is how an outsider can be sure that one school of thought is less entitled to our trust than a rival one. In many instances such confidence would be unwarranted. Certain indicators of bad faith, however, are unmistakable – Frederick Crews – Follies of the wise, 2006 p10

It is estimated that there remains more species of marine life undiscovered than has yet been species identified

Every culture possesses a wholly individual way of looking at and comprehending the world as nature; or … it ‘has’ it own peculiar ‘nature’ which no other sort of man can possess in exactly the same form – Oswald Spangler – The Decline of the West, 1965 p78

Its noble to be the champion of the underdog, especially when you don’t happen to be one yourself

The poor have no need of poor laws – Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri – Multitude: war and democracy in the age of empire, 2004 p137

Well done. I congratulate myself. One problem solved.
There’s a man coming out of the woods with a gun. It is getting dark.
All problems are contained within their own solutions.

I, who had thought of going to meet death, didn’t dare force it when it came to meet me – Machado De Assis - Epitaph of a small winner, 1952 p62