There Are No Bohemians Here. It is Winter Here

40 degrees this morning – almost all the snow is gone. Gone except where the plows piled it high. The grass will soon be getting green. The tips of the branches of the trees shall soon be swelling.

Two young he-man businessmen are engaged at their all American sport. The one is in the suit. He is the one that needs to be impressed. The other one is doing his best. He is letting his belly be scratched. Discussion: ...rich man...  four billion each ... and the ironic thing is, says the big man, they can not spend four billion in a lifetime. You would have to have a horrendous cocaine habit to go through that much, says the other one. The Suit is impressed by this local. An over the counter social club, his subordinate says. I’m impressed, the overlord repeats. His underling is beaming. An opening at the other end of the bar becomes available and I move away, as far as I can get. I wonder if there are such things as a she-woman business woman? Yes there are, but I want to meet up with them even less especially in here. The he-man businessman in the suit bumps my elbow on his way out and doesn’t even acknowledge my existence. I would have smashed him in the mouth,  had I been a real man. Lee reminds me for the umpteenth time that he has a cracked vertebra. He is a regular here and I’m only an irregular regular here - the familiar stranger here.


[Anthropologists] don’t study villages – they study in villages –Clifford Geertz

Step stop
Slip slop


Know glow
Gnaw grow


Wish fish
Hiss miss


Snake Shake
Worm wiggle

And on the other side of me someone is rambling on about being assaulted by a guy outside wearing a serape. He says, he as a friend in New York who had always told him “at least in Vietnam you knew what you were up against, but over here… well anyway it could always have been worse." “After it gets so bad, it no longer bad at all," I hear myself saying. He grabbed me by the right wrist. Then he forgets what he was saying and tries to interject a few comments into someone else’s conversation. And the man with the sun burnt face listens to the crazy lady who is drinking wine and ranting right next to him. He is trying to make some sense of what she is talking about, but mostly he is just nodding his head. She Talks, talks, talks with lots associated (but uncoordinated) hand motions. He is being very stoic about it all. He acts like a social worker but I know for a fact that he is really a deep-sea diver. His attentiveness to her ranting is appreciated. It saves us from being the focus of her attention. Then Lee and a guy with a big white mustache and another guy at the end of the bar near the door get into a shouting match. The guy near the door is wearing a serape. And the crazy lady has almost finished off her bottle of wine but still has a half pint of beer. Lee is mumbling again. The guy with the mustache checks his watch. I go back to drinking my beer. I had wound up with five half pints somehow, all in a row, somehow. A row of half pints right here in front of me neatly arranged along the bar. Right there.

Every writer, in trying to convey his or her experience transmutes it into something impersonal and (as soon as it is interpreted by others) untrue to its living source – J G Merquior – From Prague to Paris, 1986 p113

Scientific explanations differ in accounting for complex events of uncertain origin from religious and commonsense interpretations by excluding rather than conjuring up agent based accounts.

Socialist political representation has run parallel to liberal and constitutional representation in the history of modernity and finally failed in a similar way – Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri – Multitude: war and democracy in the age of empire, 2004 p249

Adult on demand
Child by default

I was sick and tired of the other man’s curtains, his chairs, his rug, his sofa, all the things that would not let me forget our duplicity – Machado De Assis – Epitaph of a Small Winner, 1952 p128

Americans still support increased spending on education and veterans. They support decreased spending in general but not for any specific programs except for global poverty assistance. Overall support for spending on health care, environmental protection, agriculture, military defence and unemployment has eroded significantly during the past year (Pew Research).

Money does not pass politically, form one hand to the other. It does not turn itself into cards and wine. It is turned into ‘force’, and its quantity determines the intensity of its working influence – Oswald Spangler – The Decline of the West, 1965 p394

The woman had been married since
She had been twenty
She had never experienced
       Being alone
       Before
And now she was a widow
She was getting on well
       She said
He asked her, wasn’t
       Your husband
       A fly fisherman?
And did she still have
       His gear?
She suspected that
       She did
And she made arrangements
       For him
      To come by

Aesthetic enjoyment is made up of this multiplicity of excitement and moments of respite, of expectations disappointed or fulfilled beyond anticipation – Levi-Strauss – The Raw and the Cooked

The term ‘sodomy’ was coined in the 13th Century as a legal classification for specific sins of Catholic priests

There was nothing Bohemian about sexual intrigue in a cold climate – Amanda Vickery – Behind closed doors: at home in Georgian England, 2009 p80

A Hot Society Requires a High Degree of Inequity - Viva La Difference

“So what is an Africore?” I ask.  “It’s a short latte with less milk,” the barista tells me. As Italian opera plays in the background.  I say. “I’ll have one.” . And there is a man just inside the doorway in a fedora hat. He might have been Fellini. But he was not. If he had been he would have been sitting at his regular table in the far back corner in the dark. The man pearling away says that his yarn is pure silk. He has hanks of pink, navy blue and silver. I decide to go parroting? Why not? It’s just a small walk away to the park - or “a short row” as Fellini would have said.

The set of all pink and blue things constitute this group, the ‘infantile’, but each member of the set must be one or the other of these two colors and not any others.

I was neither able to spot nor to hear any parrots up in the trees at the park. Marilyn and Joe had got married at St Peter and Paul’s across the street. I could see them coming down the steps. She was wearing white. He gave a big grin and doffed his hat to the crowd. No one wears hats any more – just caps - mostly baseball - Joe only wore one at work or when he drove a tractor which I don't know that he ever did.

The multitude needs a political project to bring it into existence – Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri – Multitude: war and democracy in the age of empire, 2004 p212

Between 1990 and 2007 the top 5% of New York City income earners boosted their share of the city’s income from 30% to 58%. During the same period the median average wage dropped 8.6%. The bottom half of the city’s income earners claim less than 8% of the city’s annual income earned.

A hot society draws energy from differences within its own system; it uses gaps in wealth and power to extract as much work as possible. Cold communities are egalitarian; hot social structures are class societies – J G Merquior – From Prague to Paris, 1986 p69

How many times have I now used the word ‘ubiquitous’ today? Why not use ‘plenipotentiary’ occasionally.

Drive go
Go eat
Chew go


Sit go
Go go
Gone

Labor that produces an immaterial good… is fundamentally a performance: the product is the act itself – Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri – Multitude: war and democracy in the age of empire, 2004 p200

Unemployment in the nation’s lowest income decile (less than $12,500) hovers at 29.4%. The second-lowest decile (income between 12,500 and 20,000) is 20.1% and for those with incomes between $20,000 and $30,000 unemployment is 14.9%.

Deprivation… may breed anger, indignation, and antagonism, but revolt arises only on the basis of wealth, that is, a surplus of intelligence, experience, knowledge and desire – Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri – Multitude: war and democracy in the age of empire, 2004 p212

The cost of corn and soybeans represents 10% of the total US food costs. In the last six months the price of corn has doubled from $3.50 to $7.00. The increasing demand for corn for ethanol production is a major cause of these price increases.

One discharges fancy homunculi form one’s scheme by organizing armies of such idiots to do the same work – Daniel Dennett – Brainstormes, 1978


The bricolelur is no
     Engineer
     Au contrair

The last man, when he says farewell to the cold, exhausted sun, will consult his watch in order to know the exact time of his death – Machado De Assis – Epitaph of a Small Winner, 1952 p109

It takes a net gain of 150,000 new jobs a month just to accommodate the growth in the size of the working age US population – any thing less means an increase in unemployment. And yet last month the creation of only 36,000 new jobs resulted in a decrease in reported unemployment of 0.4%. This drop in unemployment was accomplished by the withdrawal of 504,000 people considered to be “in” the labor force. The participation rate of US employment (the percentage of eligible workers actually working) is 60.4%

The glory of war falls short of its pathos – Herman Melville – Battle-pieces and Aspect of the War, 2001p242

Monkeys Writing Poems; Monkeys Riding Golf Carts

I forgot my notebook this morning. I felt half naked without it. I fumbled around at the coffee shop this morning looking for something to do. I even fished the date section out of the trash. Linda said that she would never be so desperate as to do that and then she discovered that her Chronicle was missing it’s date book section and she asked if she could borrow mine. The guy next to me when he left had deposited it in  a sidewalk receptacle two doors down from the Royal Ground. Why couldn’t he have just left it on the table like everyone else? I went outside and I retrieved it. Stuck my arm down into the bin and retrieved it. I’m desperate, I said. I need something to keep me occupied. I forgot my journal this morning, I told her when I returned. After telling me that she would never be that desperate, she discovered that her Date Book was missing and asked if she could see mine when I finished with it? But instead of waiting she goes and buys a second copy of the paper. It would serve her right if it is also missing the entertainment section. She made sure that she the comics and crossword.


Walter says, “Fred’s reading again”. "What this time", complains Linda? "Oh, I’m not reading from my notes", I inform her.  I assure her that I left my notebook at home this morning. I am reading, I tell her, about how the Yoruba in Africa have a numbering system that is a superior calculating machine to our digital system. Our decimal system has to use graphic representations to compensate for it’s lack of flexibility. I am explaining. This is just the type of obscure thing that Walter likes to become an adept of. I try to convince him to become a Yoruba numerator,


James Taylor has seen a lot of fire and rain lately. This is the third time in a month as I recall of having heard it broadcast here in the coffee shop - but I only saw that I see you again - don’t notice which way a cold wind blows!


In a hypercommercialized system everything is self-referential. Everything becomes its own source of excellence and its own source of value.


The ultimate goal of the human sciences [is] not to constitute, but to dissolve man in the reintegration of culture in nature and finally of life within the whole of physicochemical conditions – Claude Levi-Strauss – The Savage Mind

Some day we will look at golf carts with wistful nostalgia and tender love. We will restore them to mint condition; build low-rider golf carts - ‘Le Flea’ and mount them on giant wheels - ‘Monster Ant’.

“Too big to fail” should be replaced by “To bad to reform” as our silver bullet

I… discovered a sublime law, the Law of the Equivalence of Windows, and established that the way to compensate for a closed window is to open another window, so that the conscience may always have plenty of air – Machado De Assis – Epitaph of a Small Winner, 1952 p106

How can you stay
Always mad
When she’s now
          Dead
You can’t and that
In itself was enough
         Of an excuse
To have wished that
         She was
But now she is
And your sad
Can't you ever
          Be content

Woman’s adulation is different form men’s. The latter comes close to servility; the former takes the guise of affection – Machado De Assis – Epitaph of a Small Winner, 1952 p153

Modernity – the priesthood of experts and administrators in accordance with a criteria of “excellence”.

His ambition, although tired of beating its wings without being able to fly, was deathless – Machado De Assis – Epitaph of a Small Winner, 1952 p113

Nothing lends more credibility
Than do the particulars


But too many specifics
Is an indicator of deceit

Modern physics, as a science, is an immense system of indications in the form of names and numbers whereby we are enabled to work with Nature as with a machine – Oswald Spangler – The Decline of the West, 1965 p189

The sun shines over my left shoulder. The sun came out yesterday afternoon off of the back side of an metal street sign outside. We never notice it when it everywhere, every present - the sun.

We’ve had 125,000 generations of humans, but only the last eight have had growth. So what’s considered normal? – Peter Victor

The Revolution will not be
         Televised
The Revolution is now on
         Channel nine

The organic history of a style comprises a “pre-“, a “non-“ and a “post-“ – Oswald Spangler – The Decline of the West, 1965 p107

Walk talk
Go fuck
Rant rave
Bend spend
Pay play
Run dun
Hate Bait
Live rend

Private property is traditionally based on the logic of scarcity – material property cannot be in two places at once – Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri – Multitude: war and democracy in the age of empire, 2004 p180

Constu'd to be Good

5 degrees with an expectation of a warming into the mid-twenties later – piles of snow plowed from the parking lot makes maneuvering difficult, one lane paths and a scarcity of spots. Cars sliding around. Confronting each other head to head. Anxious to get that last spot. Tempers flair. Try to be conciliatory.

In a polyphonic conception of narrative, there is no center that dictates meaning, but rather meaning arises only out of the exchanges among all the singularities in dialogue – Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri – Multitude: war and democracy in the age of empire, 2004 p211

As food prices rise – so does rustling – from chain saw attacks on cattle in Wyoming to the disappearance of sheep in England’s Lake District. More than 10,000 sheep were reported stolen last year, a rate more than twice as high as the year before. Most of the theft results in mutton being sold in local off-markets. Farming equipment theft is also on the up rise, supposedly for transhipment to Eastern Europe where agricultural demands outstrip availability of equipment.

Elementary subsistence and security cannot be neglected by any social order; they are political needs, prior to economic needs – Paul & Percival Goodman - Communitas, 1960 p189

Again - just a modest exercise of my finger. I withdraw it for a lingering sniff as if it were a fine wine - which in a way it is. And I almost got an erection recalling it - well as least a burning sensation which is as good as it gets some days - Amen - Let’s hear it again, the Reverend Billy hollers - Amen and we all repeat, Amen - Say it again - Amen. And I just read that there is a similar sentiment express  in the Bible of all places. It’s in one of Soloman’s Songs. The key phrase for the Bible discussion of sex is "the feet" but that the washing of Jesus' feet is a literal description and not an allusion to anything else.

Café Trieste where strawberries are exchanged between middle aged hippies – plopping them into each other’s agape mouths and I enjoy a Cappuccino Grande not having to be weary of having to speak “Starbuckise”

I’m sitting at Sit & Spin (a gay laundromat in the Castro) - well at least I’m not spinning at the Spin & Sit. I promised Michael I would stop by. Michael is working today. It is also a coffee bar. Michael says that the owner of the Edge is sitting him up with a blind date for tonight. Its an AIDS benefit dinner at the Tangerine. I told Michael that maybe we could go together to the Edge. It’s not the type of place that I would be comfortable visiting alone. Nor would I, he replied, it’s a little too leather and bear for me he says. And they are playing the Eagles’ Hotel California and there is a discussion about photography on the patio. Photography is such a remote and distant art requiring much more patience than I have. You wait to see what it was that you thought you had seen only to find out that it wasn’t. Haven’t you shifted to digital yet? All that used to be true but not now. Image production is a ubiquitous process. Images are always destructive of reality.

Not each one
       All of them
Not one at a time
       For all time
       Every time
All of them
       Whether this one
       Or that one
       Even me

Was this a woman’s destiny? Did husband, friends, lovers who once passed through your life, never leave? - Alicia Gimenez-Bartlett – Death Rites, 1996 p94

Between 1929 and 1933 the average value of the American home decreased by 26%. Since 2006 the average value has decreased by 25%.

Much was believed, but little was understood. / And to be dull was constu’d to be good – Alexander Pope – An Essay on Criticism

If you’re allowed to do what you want it’s because what you do is not deemed to be relevant or of any importance

They have been inclined to mistake the mere sharing of a controversial set of premises within their own circle for assurance that those premises have withstood a challenge – Frederick Crews – Follies of the wise, 2006 p73

Joe DiMaggio’s 1950 salary exceeded the mean US family income by a factor of 26. Today Derek Jeter’s salary exceeds the average US family income by 288 times.

The question of whether humanity has a predilection toward the good is preceded by the question whether there exists an event that can be explained in no other way than by that of moral disposition – Friedrich Neitzsche

The US government spent $500,000 last year to simulate an attack by pot growers on the Hoover Dam

In the social… the tendency is to make everything public and thus open to government surveillance and control, and in the economic to make everything private and subject to property rights – Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri – Multitude: war and democracy in the age of empire, 2004 p203

If airline travel in the United States were only as safe as space travel, we would be having 272 planes crashing and 20,000 fatalities each and every day.

That’s why people really die, the shock of asking themselves one day if their lifelong position has been worth it or not - Alicia Gimenez-Bartlett – Death Rites, 1996 p112

One Does Not Love the Same Woman Twice Except If She is a Succabus

Umh! – apple pie – a big slice – can you heat it up – sure, she said. Want whipped cream on that? No – it just seemed too much. I’ll bring it out. Getting my refill I looked around. It just looked too good to pass up. Now for hunger pangs – a hot slice of freshly baked pie is on the way. Outside it is 4 degrees.

The Progressive institutionalized meritocracy as a means of social control, to insure that those with the ‘correct’ characteristics got the highest position in the society and that those who were not as suitable believed in the objectivity and fairness of the decision which put them in their places… The definition of democracy had changed from rule by the people to rule by the intelligent – Martin Carnoy – Education as Cultural Imperialism, 1974 p253

Sunday afternoon. The Bears are whooping the Seahawks. I am at Hoopers drinking a Boulevard Single Wide. I am reading Guy Davenport’s Tatlin! – I am looking at a drypoint etching of Lenin on page 15. It ias 24 degrees. I yearn for the sun. To sit in the sun in shorts. Instead I am wearing my longjohns and watching TV. I miss my natural light sunlamp.

The increase of useless wealth of individuals in the form of gadgets sold by advertising, may not add to human virtue, but then, it adds to folly which is equally human – Paul & Percival Goodman - Communitas, 1960 p188

There is a wind out of the south or is it coming from the north? The dried clump of pampas grass is tossed about and springs back. It is hard to tell which is the bend and which the rebound. First it moves one way than the other way then back again. The flag flying on the pole that is in front of the Presbyterian church seems to be flapping to the south, but it is a block away and I may be wrong. It was 36 degrees when I left home. It is probably colder now that the wind has picked up. I need to get a tank of gas. This is a holiday. The library is closed. Three blonds sit and giggle. They all have tan scarfs around their necks and wear knee high leather boots. They have smoothies, well what used to be smoothies – they have mostly consumed them while gabbing. Whatever it was, it was green. Sucked up through straws.

Merit shifted the responsibility for an individual’s productive capacity to the individual himself and away from the structure and organization of the economy – Martin Carnoy – Education as Cultural Imperialism, 1974 p253

One morning I work up. I was suddenly aware that I was the sole survivor now. And I knew that my memory was no longer as reliable. There was no longer anyone to correct what I said. I rambled on and forgot the point of what I was trying to say. Even though I hadn’t seen her in 35 years she had now been dead for seven months. The onus burden of her physical existence was beginning to lift. The fog was dispersing. A faint glow began to appear in the sky. I was now alone. I could no longer long for a reconciliatiobn. What would I do if she tried to make contact with me. That was impossible now (it had always be highly improbable). For a while I thought that she might be trying – someone from Landham MD has signed onto my blogg. Now I knew that it was not her. She was dead. What I don’t say know will never be said. No one but I knew anything about it and I too would die.

In general when the consumption of a product is removed from its production, by the geographic distance between the factory and home, by the economic distance of sale and resale, by the temporal distance between its making and its use, the product is encased in a series of packages – Paul & Percival Goodman - Communitas, 1960 p181

I don’t know (can’t) how
        To stop
I rush on into the dark
I hurl myself over a
        Cliff


Then I wake up
Sore and bruised
        (Black and blue)


A succubus perhaps
But that's just a guess

One does not love the same woman twice – Machado De Assis – Epitaph of a Small Winner, 1952 p96

The Replishment of Nature

Magnolia Pub and Dr John - that New Orleans piano honky tonk with a Stout of Circumstances - I had wanted the Big Cypress but the barmaid said, sorry we are out of brown. Hey, hey hey and some more honky tonk piano. Tuesday is all day happy hour at the Magnolia - Grateful Dead photos on the wall, Jerry Garcia walking away in a mural and on the sound system, his Casey Jones album - harmonics with a country twang. “Casey Jones out of cocaine”

We came to really know the work of the demons who dwell only in our minds. Nature does not reveal itself. It is only perceived through the imagination when the heart is truly felt as if it were the mind. We dance our death on a stage of reality as if…

She kept trying surreptitiously to steal a peek of what I was sketching. I saw it out of the corner of my eye but pretended to not see her. I would wait until I could catch her in the act and then pounce on her. I finished the drawing and wrote furiously in the notebook. She couldn’t resist. Her curiosity got the best of her. Melissa is her name. She had taught first grade in Boston. It was here first year of teaching. We talked for twenty minutes or so. Then I had to leave. A birthday party at home was waiting. Well, I have to be going now, I announced. Bye, she replied. Adieu, Sweet Bird. Two Boston school teachers in as many nights.

Walter says that I have a future with Harlequin Romances, Yes, I shall turn my Boston school teachers into vessels of yearning and desire. Linda thinks it has promise. Walter thinks that it might need some sex and that I have to offer is my experience with aliens (he’s recalling the dream I had told him about). I think that I am going to have to do some more research. No, not about sex, but about elementary school teachers and their desires.

The secret manual purported to contains the resolution to many vital problems. It offered salvation. That was the rumor. Carl has just discovered a copy. The text had supposedly been lost ages ago in the Great Chaos. Carl, discovered it in late June late at night (there was a new moon and it was very dark except for the starlight which was visible now as there were no longer and any streetlighing or probing searchlights, not the headlights of any cars), but he was unable to read it due his dyslexia. Teachers had been eliminated two generations back. Carl knew that what he had discovered was important, but kept it hidden, fearing its existence would attract thieves. Then he met Melissa…

Sounds too much like “The Canticle of Liebowitz” said Walter. That will never do for a Harlequin. Well it did need some work, I admitted. But I had already lost any interest in the project.

That which was disseminated was no longer a style but a task, not genuine custom but mannerism, not national costume but the fashion – Oswald Spangler – The Decline of the West, 1965 p253


In the postmodern world – reason has been replaced by happiness. The happiness of excellence. Yes, that shall be our motto – Happiness Through Excellence.

Half of the world’s population live in countries where the water tables are falling due to over pumping. The Middle East has become the first geographic region to show shrinking agricultural production due to depleted fossil aquifers. In the United States irrigratred crop productions is shrinking in both California and Texas. There is also accumulating evidence to indicated that the ‘green revolution’ has already run its course.

Measure and equilibrium does not exist in nature at all – Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri – Multitude: war and democracy in the age of empire, 2004 p154

Time could ran backwards
The eye would soon adjust


We’d know everything
About tomorrow and nothing
         About yesterday


Then we should conclude
That yesterday was the same
        As today


And everything would
       Appear normal.
       With profits diminishing
Our consumption decreasing
Demanding programs
       Assuring degrowth


Proceeding towards a
        Micro-organism
        Everything on track
Risk diminishing, nature
       Replenishing


Looking back at tomorrow's
        Catastrophes


The stress on responding to external reward was precisely translated into the response to material gain, the quality most needed to succeed in the competitive capitalist society – Martin Carnoy – Education as Cultural Imperialism, 1974 p241

For every 5 cars, an acre of pavement is needed to accommodate them.

Abandoning the grab-it all gospel preached by the Republican Party since the Reagan years [Glen] Beck chastised Americans for becoming a people who have forgotten that ‘capitalism isn’t about money, it’s about freedom.’ - Mark Lilla – New York Review of Books, Dec 9, 2010

For every 1 degree C of temperature rise during the growing season, grain yields drop by 10%.

It is difficult to separate most contemporary projects of population control from a kind of racial panic – Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri – Multitude: war and democracy in the age of empire, 2004 p166

I tend to like authors, who authors I like, like

We Are All Excellent in Our Own Exceptional Excellent Way

Someone drew a smiley face in the condensation inside the plate glass window – sunlight and fluffy snowflakes outside the glass – big band music is heard coming from hidden speakers here inside. I take off my glasses. I rub my eyes. My coffee is only lukewarm by now.  I now hear organ music. It is a sort of a rumba. He counted himself lucky for having a snowblower. I have a shovel.  The playlist continues while everything else remains the same. “Bill Baily won’t you come home?” A trumpet picks up the line. Then a piano. I am dreaming California – yes, this is strange weather, they all agree. “Bill Baily won’t you come home?” Due to El Nino I hear. And sunspots this years are expected to reach their cyclical high. Everything is coming home to roost.

Once the last wrapper is broken, the commodity is destroyed, it is unsalable … Someone wants the thing enough to touch it rather than sell it. Economically, then this is a sacramental moment – Paul & Percival Goodman - Communitas, 1960 p180

If we could predict the future it would only be incrementally different form the present – a present shifted in the direction of ‘progress’. It is the modernist fantasy. And to the extent that we can prevent the ‘unexpected’ this becomes our reality. The anticipation of the possible is called ‘risk’. It is the function of ‘experts’ to assess risk. It is the responsibility of administrations to manage risk based on performance measurements. Then comes global warming and Islamic revolutions and the depletion of resources to upset this applecart. Things not on the actuary tables can and do happen. It is called 'becoming' and is always other than the anticipated.

Habits are not really formed or performed individually – Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri – Multitude: war and democracy in the age of empire, 2004 p98

Son of an African prince
Daughter of the a noble man
        And a washerwoman
        And left on the churchsteps
A blue birthmark demonstrates
        Their royal births
Thus the American exceptionalism
         Has been propagated
From Russia came the Khan’s
         Bastards
From China came the son of
        The Emperor’s concubine
America’s huddled masses
Are really all aristocrats

[Queer politics] is not really an affirmation of homosexual identities but a subversion of the logics of identity in general – Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri – Multitude: war and democracy in the age of empire, 2004p200

The intellectual invariably is a didactic, if the expert and his claim to legitimacy is excluded form the category of an intellectual – and it should be – as the expert does not create, he only proclaims and administrates. 

Mathematics, whether or not it employs visible images and representations as working conveniences, concerns itself with systems that are entirely emancipated form life, time and distance – Oswald Spangler – The Decline of the West, 1965 p92

To consume to to be apolitical, or so it is presumed

Who can aloof remain / That shares youth’s ardor, uncooled by the snow / wisdom or sordid gain? – Herman Melville – Battle-pieces and Aspect of the War, 2001

Excellence is a unit of value internal to a process that lacks an internal unit of value – after all there must be some measure by which a consumer can make an informed judgement of value and compare options.

Concepts cannot represent the inconceivable, and thus at the most a significant feeling may be evoked by the sound of words – Oswald Spangler – The Decline of the West, 1965 p94

Cost of sending a sports team to a Bowl (Alabama – 2010 – actual cost $4.3m):

Travel                       28%
    Team and staff       15
    Band and cheerleaders 9
    Official party        4
Meals and Lodging            25%
    Team and staff       17
    Band and cheerleaders 4
    Official party        4
Bonuses                      28%
Gifts                         4%
Tickets                       8%
Other                         7%

We don’t do kulturpessimismus. We do divine providence, five-point plans, miraculous touchdowns, as the clock runs out, and the whole town is coming together to save the bank because gosh darn it, it’s a wonderful life – Mark Lilla – New York Review of Books, Dec 9, 2010 p16

Deep travel is not spatial or temporal travel but an experienced journey – the act of being jolted out of normalcy and complacency – becoming aware of what one has learned not to notice.

There is no Natural science without a precedent Religion – Oswald Spangler – The Decline of the West, 1965

All new technology has the tendency to increase society’s reliance on the process of education (as well as increase the consumption of energy).

The ‘self-interested individual’ is today the pervasive subject of post-secondary schooling – Stanley Aronowitz – The Knowledge Factory, 2000 p142

We are no longer primarily citizens. Politics is no longer a possibility. We are consumers. We act in order to consume. We consume in order to act.

The purpose of myth is to provide a logical model capable of overcoming a contradiction (an impossible achievement if, as it happens, the contradiction is real) – Claude Levi-Strauss – Structural Anthropology