Etta Place Eats Pie

I can’t hear myself read. I’m trying to read Gertrude Stein which is difficult at the best of times. She demands concentration. These guys are gabbing about this man’s house in Coral Gables with a 35 foot cruiser on the canal. He said that the guy pushed a button and all the draps opened. He said that his jaws dropped when that space opened up. Someone else is talking about going next week to bicycle in Uganda. Is it safe? Sure he exclaims. One guy speaks softly. He is no problem except that he keeps asking the guy with the booming voice questions about the house on the canal  down in Florida. Shut up already!  They are both estate agents or at least one of them is. The other I think is a contractor/real estate agent. God I wish they would all just shut up, can’t you see that I’m trying to read.

It’s a six hour boat drive to the keys, he continues on, but you can take a jet boat there in two hours. So guess what I’m going to do? Now he is taking about this guy he knows who has a 45 foot charter boat on Lake Erie. He charges $500 to take people out but he’ll take you and me for free. Where is Lake Erie asks the other guy? On the back of the newspaper is a weather map. Right here the guy doing all the talking says and points at the paper. It’s no where near the ocean. I don’t see how he gets the boat out into the Atlantic. Right here, the first guy points. That’s the Erie Canal. I give up on Stein. He is still talking, now it’s a story about meeting this guy in a bar, really nice guy he says. And do you know who he turned out to be? I have no idea. He was the first husband of Carolyn Kennedy, he is explaining. Really nice guy.

As a man I can neither clasp my arms together nor sully myself innocently. Quite the opposite: honor, courage, dignity, taciturnity, these are the attributes of male virginity – Witold Gombrowqicz – Bacacay, 2004 p110

Whoever rushes to aid

            Will not get this far

The torturer stands in front

            Of his victim

He smiles; he grins

He pounds; he kicks

            No assistance

            Is forthcoming

Dream, dream the blissful

            Dream

Reality has not

            Imagination

I am hand / And face / And feet / And things inside of me / That I can’t see; // What knows in me? Is it only Something inside / That I can’t see – Laura Riding – The Poems of, 1980  p17

Hello Water down there in Texas. You wrote that you read this. But you claim it didn’t happen that way, or at least that’s not how you remember it. This is for you, Walter, down in Texas – Fort Stockton or San Marcos, trying to get to Austin. And you had said that you had a dream. You invented something but you can’t remember what it was. I said, “I had a dream too. I woke up in the middle of the night and I said to myself,” I tell Walter, “make sure that you write all of this down in the morning. Now I don’t remember what it was that I was supposed to write down. I only know that I had a dream.” “Maybe that was the dream,” he says. “We can all be Martin Luther King.” “What?” “The dream was that you had a dream and was going to write it down. Mel Brooks was the director,” Walter continued, “This is my story.” “Go on,” I said as he started telling of another dream. “I imagined I was making a remake of the Butch Cassidy and Sundance Kid movie, this time staring John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd. Gilda Radner played Etta Place. I had only gotten three or four of the scenes filmed before I fell asleep.” “So you dreamed that you were asleep,” I asked. He wanted me to guess which actor had played the Sundance Kid. “And Mel Brooks was the director,” he went on. “But most of your actors are dead,” I told him. “It doesn’t matter,” he explained, “it was a dream. And who was it who had played Etta in the original”, he asked? The name was on the tip of my tongue. It was the same actress who had played Dustin Hoffman’s girl friend in the Graduate. Mrs. Robinson’s daughter. “And did you ever notice that Dustin Hoffman’s red Alfa-Romeo was going the wrong way on the Oakland Bay Bridge,” I asked? “Kathryn Ross, it was Kathryn Ross,” Walter says. “What ever happened to her?” “And whatever happened to that actress who was in Love Story,” I asked?

“So Walter, can you tell which is the original?” I held up the drawing I had just done and the illustration form Home and Garden magazine from which I torn and pasted pieces. “No”, he says, “I’m stumped!” “Where does that saying come from,” I asked? “What saying,” he asked? “’I’m stumped’” Then I remembered my dream from the night before. It was about Saabs. Broken down, worn out Saabs. I had owned three at one time all of them were constantly breaking down. At least one was always in the garage at any one time. But I didn’t tell him about the Saabs, neither the ones that I had once owned nor the ones in the dream. Dreams are totally without interest in their retelling.

For me to take a real interest in something it must be part of some context, it must be controlled by an idea. The experience itself I’d really prefer to have behind me, as a memory; the emotional effort it exerts strikes me as unpleasant and absurdly beside the point – Robert Musil – The Man Without Qualities, 1956 p976

When the sun hits you

            In the puss

Like a piece of pie

That’s tomorrow

That’s tomorrow

We get inside music completely or not at all – Thomas Bernhard – The Loser, 1991  p84

To be left-handed is to be different in a way that no one will acknowledge. This is fundamentally different than to be different in a way that no one will not acknowledge. Differences are things that one gets used to, adopts to, or otherwise overcomes. But if you are left-handed no one acknowledges your accomplishment.

I could actually say he was unhappy in his unhappinesss but he would have been even more unhappy had he lost his unhappiness overnight, had it been taken away from him from one moment to the next, which is again proof that basically he wasn’t unhappy at all but happy and by virtue of and with his unhappiness, I thought – Thomas Bernhard – The Loser, 1991 p104

A Type I Error of Cognition: believing something is real when it is not – to find a non-existent pattern. No harm done. But a Type II Error (believing something is not real when it is) an get you killed.  Anthropocentric climate change may be a Type I Error but its denial is probably a Type II Error. One results in added cost the other in economic collapse.

What is most thought-provoking, is something altogether out of the hands of those who practice the craft of thinking – Martin Heidegger – What is Called Thinking?, 1968 p25

He needs a home most who does not have one

Poetry bears in itself the message that it is the destiny of human beings to speak the meaning of being – Laura Riding – The Poems of, 1980 p9

Strawberry Fields

They don’t see the world as degraded. They view it as a world in progress. They see how much more access they have to the freeway out in the burbs than they had when they were kids a few years back. Their time slice is so tiny. Their historical framework is so restricted. They construe patterns from so few data points. They make a lot of false positive correlations. Things are more convenient now. The things they are used to doing are getting easier. The things that they wish to do are more affordable. It’s all good what is going on. They want to be part of it all. They are very proud of their contribution. It will be many years before nostalgia begins to set in. They are happy. They are enthauistic. They are willing to forsake the sparrow in hand for the kolibri in the bush.

Sound common sense is always trimmed to fit a certain conception of what is, and ought to be, and maybe – Martin Heidegger – What is Called Thinking?, 1968 p66

It is not the truth of a statement that matters so much as how well it is stated

I fine mute knowledge dangerous –  Elias Canetti

At the beginning of the twentieth century a large city – Chicago for example – might contain 80,000 large animals: horses, mules and cows. 600,000 tons of manure was produced annually and 20,000 dead carcasses had to be hauled away.

The notebook is the perfect literary form for the eternal Student, someone who has no subject, or rather, whose subject is “everything” – Susan Sontag – Under the Sign of Saturn, 1980 p190

I’m at the Café Trieste in North Beach. Power is out. They cannot make espresso. They have house coffee, kept hot on the grill. I have a house coffee and a buttered toasted sesame seed bagel. They do that with gas too. Many of their morning customers immediately leave when told that there is no espresso.  An old man is talking about the slots. It was in Tijuana, he said. “This old couple just went in together and … it happens sometimes. Yeah, I only saw it once. I was twenty three at the time and I’m sixty three now, so that was forty years ago. This woman has only three dollars which she puts in a single slot - bing, bing, bing - $2,800.  Right off the bat. I once saw this woman who was down $1,300 on the dollar slots and then she has to go out for more money. While she was away a man begins playing her machine -  bam, bam, bam – he gets three wins in quick succession. He rakes in $28,000. That woman was furious when she returned. That is my money she yelled. But it was to no avail.” “She should have had the management take the machine out of play,” the other man said…”You can’t expect a machine to be withdrawn from play for over an hour though. Boy was she ever mad”.

Perhaps we all lose our sense of reality to the precise degree to which we are engrossed in our own work – W G Sebald – The Rings of Saturn, 1998  p182

Across from me two young women were studying for a nursing exam. You could tell  they were nursing and not medical students. Prospective doctors would never study together. They would be fearful that it might give their study partner an edge. It is late enough to begin drinking. I go to the Brewery. Daniel is scribbling on a sheet of paper that he has torn from a spiral notepad. It is the beginnings of a short story. Josh is behind the bar. I start with a half pint of doppelweisen. I make a reservation for the theatre for tonight. Soon it is time to go. I need to leave by six. Just about then Daniel looks up. “Hey there, how’s it going”, he asks? He looks at what I had been writing. “I’ve been working on two sentences all day,” he said. Then I head out to dance, dance the night away. I won’t be home until after midnight. I like it when the day has rhythm and there is noise and clamor and the cacophony drowns out the bordom. It helps when there is a strong backbeat.  A Boom boom boom de boom-da

The real pain is to feel one’s thought shift within oneself – Antonin Artaud

For us anonymous ones there is no imaginary game – we are the outcasts not the curators

To be free of “the world”, one must break the moral (or social) law – Susan Sontag – Under the Sign of Saturn, 1980 p53

I was in pain. It was only others pain that I found funny. I was wondering: did she pluck her eyebrows? I had many such questions to ask of young girls about their erotic grooming procedures. Would she like a drink? I ask her, “Do you want a Coke?” “I’m OK,” she said. Now I’m at Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. Balloons of carton animals float overhead. Do they every getting nauseous up there looking done on us, say when a gust of wind is about the free them from their tethers held onto by burly men. Do those animals ever have the urge to through up? What would it feel like to have ejecta from a cartoon mouse rain down upon one? And there was something worse. What if it took a shit up there in the air. It would be funny if it rained down on someone else. But it could be dangerous. I hoped they got out of the way. It’s tail went up. It dropped down on it’s rear haunches. Watch out. They only let professional hold on to its tether. They might have to let go and run. That would be funny. A storm moves in. It gets dark. Lighting flashes. Thunder rumbles. It begins to rain. The wind picks up. Several balloons get lose. One is caught on the gargoyles of a building across from me. The fabric rips. It’s gas escapes. A yellow fabric flaps in the wind. Christo has wrapped our parade route. The Reichstag is on fire. It’s my fault. We are all doomed to repeat history. We should have paid attention in history class. A beacon in the distance blinked. A craft was trying to land. It was a Zeppelin. There was a Swastika on its tail. Someone next to me is loudly saying, “The airship is going to make an attempt at landing in the rain.” It’s Herbert Morrison. I recognize your voice after all these years. "And who are you," he asked? 

Without stopping to think he too turned, after a few steps, to follow the woman: it was a quite mechanical consequence of their eye contact. He could see her body beneath her dress like a big white fish just under the surface of the waters. He felt the male urge to harpoon the fish and watch it flap and struggle, and there was in this as much repugnance as desire – Robert Musil – The Man Without Qualities, 1956 p952

There is a piano hanging

            Over me

Yesterday, I said something

            Wrong?

I need a place

Nothing is real

Let me take you down

Nothing to get hung

            About

Not for one moment, Walt Whitman, comely old man, / have I ceased to envision your beard full of butterflies, / your chaste, Apollonian thights, / your voice like a pillar of ashes: / patriarch, come as mist – Fedrico Garcia Lorca –Poet in New York, 1955  p121

The Time of Hissing Cobras

Another woman has given up her crusade – has given up trying to make me her man. I’m not responding, yielding to her wiles. A woman on the hunt frightens me. They are single minded. Anyway I’m a rolling stone. Nothing to catch onto, grab hold of. It’s not worth all the effort. Cut your loses and run. She is making a speech, talking to Big Al about how she wants to find a man – not necessarily some one  who is rich or someone  who is good looking either she says, but at least someone who is happy, pleasant to be around – no more angry men, she proclaims. She started by asking Al if he knew of any places in town that were for rent, preferably with a fireplace. It would be ok she had said if it snowed, she could stay inside and read if only she had a fireplace. She makes sure that I overhear, but I let her ship sail out of port without any protest. It is  only a smudge of smoke on the horizon by now. I’m a one-eyed Jack. No exclusive relationship here: no possession, no jealousy, no scenes – if you exclude this one. The next morning she comes in and sits down at my table in the coffeeshop, “You’re my friend right?” “Yes,” I replied.

A person never finds himself a total coward, because if something frightens him he runs just far enough away to consider himself a hero again – Robert Musil – The Man Without Qualities, 1956 p1165

The is a one in three chances that the CEO of a corporation has a ‘friend’ on the compensation committee

Time for cobras to hiss on the upper most levels, / for the nettle to jostle the patios and roof-gardens, / for the jungle lianas that follow the rifles - / soon, soon enough, ever so soon. / Woe to you, Wall Street – Fedrico Garcia Lorca –Poet in New York, 1955 p35

Cassio said “Do you think that I am drunk, gentlemen. I am drunk. This is my right hand” he said as he held aloft his left, hand “and this is also my left hand” as he pointed to his left hand which he was still holding aloft.

Closing the gap between art and life destroys art and, at the same time, universalizes it – Fedrico Garcia Lorca –Poet in New York, 1955 p30

Dusty closets

            And bottomless drawers

They are purgatories

Objects find their way there

            Assigned a temporary

            Intermediary status

All but forgotten until the onset

            Of spring cleaning

The project of creating in a secular culture an institution that can manifest a dark hidden reality is a contradiction in terms – Susan Sontag – Under the Sign of Saturn, 1980 p51

Thirteen percent of Americans consider themselves part of the top 1%; 28% of Hispanics consider themselves a member of the 1%

The unconditional character of faith, and the problematic character of thinking are two spheres separated by an abyss – Martin Heidegger – What is Called Thinking?, 1968, p177

Virgin Galactic has sold almost 500 tickets for spaceflights

Americans seek escape from the insoluble by pretending that it is solved – H L Mencken – The Vintage Mencken, 1990 p37

The pink haired lady had her backside covered in tattoos or at least that portion that I could see. She was providing a detailed narrative of its geography to her companion – giving a layout of her topography. As I walk the beach”, she was saying, “I want….” – she launched into a surrealistic story that made some sense to her if not to anyone else. All I saw was a hodgepodge of designs without theme or coordination, but to her there was a mystical story behind it all.  Not even the colors of the inks matched. It didn’t make any sense to me. Everything has its history. Every blotch of ink had meaning to her. She ate and talked and he nodded and then they got up and left. Three empty plates and a bowl with three bits of chili in the bottom lay on the empty table. Not everything is worth the effort. Although her big feet gave her a limited charm for me. Now she is gone.

The poet does not explain reality but reacts to it – Ben Belitt – Introduction to “Poet in New York’ by Lorca

Five US colleges offer courses in unmanned-drone operation

Ours is the era of the ballot… We are living in an unphilosophical, dispirited age; it doesn’t have the courage to decide what is valuable and what isn’t, and democracy means, expressed most succinctly: Do Whatever is Happening! – Robert Musil – The Man Without Qualities, 1956 p905

There were almost 12,000 weapons confiscated last year from visitors to the Statue of Liberty

Evil is carried out with zest and imagination while good is distinguished by an unmistakable dreariness and dearth of feeling – Robert Musil – The Man Without Qualities, 1956 p893

There is a 75% chance that that bottle of  top-brand imported extra-virgin olive oil you bought is not actually extra-virgin

He can never, of course, deceive her [his wife] utterly, but if he is skillful he may at least deceive her enough to make her happy – H L Mencken – The Vintage Mencken, 1990 p70

One in three Americans young people (below the age of 23) have been arrested for something more serious than a traffic violation. In 1965 only one in five had been arrested. Five times as many Americans are now incarcerated than there was in the 1960s.

The course of history was always wasteful and dissipated as if it had been flung on the table by the fist of some low-life gambler –Robert Musil – The Man Without Qualities p898

A bureaucrat, any bureaucrat, no bureaucrat, is capable of managing an economic downturn.  They follow rules and procedures. That is what makes them bureaucrats. The rules and procedures that they follow are not long applicable. The rules and procedures are for a no longer existing reality. Yesterday’s solutions are today’s problems. They listen to experts. Experts repeat the lessons they have learned. They learned their lessons in an environment that no longer exist. Now they spout just more bad advice. In the end it is trial and error that finally works. The solution depends on someone who is willing to be wrong. We need one set of bureaucrats and experts for good times and another for bad times.

When one believes that one is living in a very important, very splendid, and very great period, one does not welcome the idea that anything especially important, splendid, and great has yet to happen in it – Robert Musil – The Man Without Qualities, 1956 p1088

In an environment of crude violence and terror – it is muscle power alone that has any value – anyone without a gun is a member of the lumbenproletariat. It’s his value as labor that matters, unless they have a craft - pound out shackles, build stockades.

He loved books – and books were not a barrier between him and life – Vasily Grossman – The Road, 2010 p84

When push comes to shove, pushing and shoving is all that counts

Everyone’s entitled to his opinion, but the only opinions that count are the ones that enable you to earn a living, because that means that other people appreciate your opinions too! – Robert Musil – The Man Without Qualities, 1956 p1095

In reality the daemons and the angels of our fantasies have ordinary faces. Plain, ordinary faces

Men live for the day, men live very fast – men live irresponsibly: precisely this is called ‘freedom’ – F Neitzsche – Thus Spoke Zarathustra

I Want To Be A Steinway

Addictive behavior makes time fly. Faster and faster it goes by. Change, change – keep changing all the time. It’s the inability to differentiate that makes the difference. Blast habits to smithereens. Divide time into smaller and smaller chunks. Smash all chronometers too.

I try to make a few changes. I try to change my coffee routine. But I like it here. And it’s so convient to come here. And I know people here – I don’t have to sit by myself. Well try staying out late. Don’t come home until the crows crow. Take a taxi home. Sleep until noon. But I’m a morning person. I get sleepy when the sun goes down. It’s so hard to sabotage a routine. It’s so hard to make a change. It’s easier to get someone do it for you instead. Get thrown out; told to never come back. You’re not welcome here any more. Don’t ever want to see your face again. Show up here again and I beat you to a pulp. Guess I’ll never go back there again.

One-track thinking takes its start [by] reducing everything to a univocity of concepts and specifications the precision of which not only corresponds to, but has the same essential origin as, the precision of technological process – Martin Heidegger – What is Called Thinking?, 1968  p25

Velocity and haste

            Do not exist

In  the place

            That the dead live

Remember

            Remember me

Or we shall cease

            To exist

The reminder of

            A shadow passed by

            In the gray mist

The moon went behind

            A cloud

And  the group on

            A bus stopped

            At this site

This place that no tourists

            Visit anymore

The tulips are too red in the first place they hurt me. / … Their redness talks to my wound, it corresponds – Sylvia Plath – Collected Poems, 1981  p161

There are an estimated 240 billion e-mails sent out each day of which 90% are spam

A hundred unkind hearts have more power than one kind heart – Vasily Grossman – The Road, 2010  p237

The way

                        More traveled

            With gravel

Rather than through

                        The mud

            And over the fallen

                        Logs

A squirrel too fat

            Or too indolent

            To flee

The well were the school

            Mule, Kate was laden

            With a supply of fresh

                        Water

One trail up the gully

            To the edge of the bluff

It had just rained

            And clay clumped on

                        The shoes

            And made the going

                        Slippery

The other along the creek

            Flat and well trod

I took that one

What does it mean for a man with no humility to suffer his most humble day? – Amy Goodman – Truthdig, 7/20/11

Conservatives need fathers. They practice filiopiety. Liberals are patricidal. They are the self-made men.

“Me, I feel able to win all the way. All the way.” That is how we all feel, immortal, right up to the moment when we feel nothing any more. And life goes on after our little drop of water has flowed back into the ocean – Victor Serge – Memoirs of a Revolutionary 1901-1941, 1963 p57

International companies have bought up 200 million hectares of land in emerging economics. The amount of land bought up is about equal to the size of the United Kingdom. Most of these purchases have been in the last three years. Only 27% of the land bought is intended for the production of food crops, mostly for export to developed economies; 40% of the land will be used to produce biofuels; another 27% will be used for mining, tourism, industry and forestry.

In the shrewdest of silences / go the cooks and the valets, and those who would cleanse with / their tongues / the millionaire’s wounds – Fedrico Garcia Lorca –Poet in New York, 1955 p23

Multitasking is possible, but at a cost. People can multitask but each task is performed by less brainpower and at a lower proficiency. Common sense does not monitor this. There is no meter to tell us when we are running low on brainpower.  “Brain Power running low – pay more attention to the road.” Just hearing someone else speaking a comprehendible tongue while a subject is driving lowers the amount of brain activity devoted to the driving task by 37%. The human is incapable of not processing the language of a speaker of his language. He is incapable of not devoting a portion of his brainpower to this task even if he is not consciously listening. Traditionally we have attributed driving inattention to answering the phone or trying to dial. Laws have been passed to encourage non-hand held devices. Most drivers are aware of the hazards of using a hand led phone – only 12% of drivers think that they can safely use and hand-held phone and drive, while 40% feel that they can talk on a hands-free phone and drive safely. But now we now that it is the device itself that is districting, or more exactly merely listening. Merely talking on a phone and driving increases the chance of an accident by four times. What about a conversation with another person in the car, isn’t that distracting? Yes, but they also act as an additional set of eyes and warn the driver of impending dangers – “hey, look out for that red car. It’s not stopping at the sign”. And if hearing (not even listening) distracts, what about talking. As to thinking, we already know that thinking and talking are rarely connected.

I want to be the Steinway, not the person playing the Steinway. I want to be the Steinway itself… He had the notion of being ‘between’ Bach and his Steinway as a mere musical middleman… My ideal would be, “I would be the Steinway, I wouldn’t be Glenn Gould,” he said, “I could by being the Steinway, make Glenn Gould totally  Superfluous     – Thomas Bernhard – The Loser, 1991  p82

Work, Work, Work - Until You Drop Dead

Bruce said the he had in mind the perfect second career for me, if I wanted one. He was not offering anything real, just his idea. Nothing on a platter was coming my way. He had just thought of something that I would be great at, he said. “And what would that be,” I asked out of curiosity, not that I had any desire to resume a career. “A political cartoonist,” he replied. “Yes,” I said, “just what the world needs – more cartoonists.” My current project is a pedestrian circumnavigation of the City of San Francisco (and coincidently the county). Today I shall start at Hunter’s Point and walk to Candlestick Park. I had just previously done Cargo Way to India Basin. Now the only part left will be the County line from the Bay to the Breakers. Afterwards I catch the #19 and get off at Height and walk up to the Magnolia at Ashbury. Tonight’s guest beer is Moonlight's  "Old Combine”. A political cartoonist ugh? I could do that. Indeed I could. Someone else was telling me that I would be great at designing fabrics.  I could make lots of money doing that.“I love your colors,” she said. But instead I have chosen to perambulate about. I am a flaneur! I am a flaneur! That is what I do (or don't do).

The moon is no door. It is a face in its own night, / white as a knuckle and terribly upset – Sylvia Plath – Collected Poems, 1981 p173

A  recent scientific study indicated that rats will demonstrate a preference for empathy over greed. Now let’s find out if they can by retrained to put greed first – act as supposedly homo economies does.

The Fascists miscalculated. They meant to unleash hatred, but what has been born is compassion… My optimism is triumphing. And I never had any illusions – I’ve always known that life is cruel – Vasily Grossman – The Road, 2010 p102

36 pounds of straw is equivalent to 1 tuss; 36 tusses equal 1 load

7 pounds of wool equals 1 clove; 2 cloves make 1 stone; 2 stones is 1 tod; 6.5 tods equals 1 wey; 2 weys equal 1 sack; 12 sacks equal 1 last

It is a country on a nursery plate. Spotted cows revolve their jaws and crop / Red clover – Sylvia Plath – Collected Poems, 1981  p112

Kettled and mulcted

Herded and milked

Decamped and disembarked

Thrown out, beat

            Up and booked

            Subject to stiff fines

Legal and medical

            Expenses mount

Stamped for exclusion

            No different than

            A nightclub

Denied – stranded and

            Tracked

Standard tactics

            Nothing new

            Or  unusual except

The Consertina wire

            Has yet to be

            Rolled out

Put lipstick on a pig

Paint legs on a snake

Wash the crows

Put a hat on a hen

            Everything is OK

            Okie dokie

Go about your business

            The stores are all open

            Till late
Tonight

In most fighting matches, if one fighter bleeds badly enough, the fight is called a technical knockout. Not so in literary and political squabbles – Deborah Martinson – Lillian Hellman: a life with foxes and scoundrels, 200 p356

The number of drug users worldwide has been estimated at 250 million. The UN is suggesting that governments need to find a better way of dealing with users other than criminalizing them. “We simply treat them [the users] as criminals.” They need to find ways of legalizing and regulating the usage of dangerous drugs that will deny profits to drug cartels. Worldwide usage since 1988 of opiates has increased by 34.5%, the usage of cocaine is up 27%, the usage of cannabis is up 8.5%.

It’s not the weather cock that is moving, it’s the wind – Victor Serge – Memoirs of a Revolutionary 1901-1941, 1963 p47

How do you do

What do you do

Do what you must

Go where you want

Doing fine

Doing it right

Doing it

Did it last night

Do it if you must

Do it up tight

Do it, just do it

It is done

It is gone

I’m alone

Go along

            All over

But the clean up

What a mess

Did you know

No I didn't know

In any man, the best and the worst live side by side, and sometimes mingle – and… what is worst comes through the corruption of what is best – Victor Serge – Memoirs of a Revolutionary 1901-1941, 1963 p44

In a capitalist society, you don’t have to proscribe, you merely have to declare it unprofitable

The product of the work system is work – Mark Kingwell – Harper’s, July 2011  p23

Earth's Entry Read - "Mostly Harmless"

This is the first accumulation of snow. There have been the occasional flakes but this is the first time that you could see your footprints. The sky is gray. The leaves are on the ground and mulching.  Clouds hover above the bares sticks that cover the bluffs. Smoke waffles off in a southeast direction.

Well, one wearies of the Public Gardens; one wants a vacation / Where trees and clouds and animals pay no notice; / Away from the labeled elms, the tame tea-roses – Sylvia Plath – Collected Poems, 1981  p144

Left-handed people tend to earn 10% less in annual salaries than do right-handed people

We cannot declare that we are “off the beaten path” if we aren’t, at first, on it – Lyand Lynn Haupt – Crow Planet, 2009 p103

Panic – I can’t find my keys. They aren’t where they belong. My keys are not in the front right pocket of my slacks. They are not on the table at which I sit. They are not on the floor under my chair. I am sure. I just checked. I go outside to look in my truck. I am in a rush and don’t stop to put on my coat. It is cold outside. I am in a panic. I am looking down at the sidewalk. Maybe they fell out of my pocket. But first I looked for my white Tacoma. It was still there. If the keys were still in the ignition at least no one had yet stolen it. They were, however, not in the ignition. At least I had not locked the vehicle. They were not on the driver's seat either. I am in a panic. How shall I manage to get home? It is cold. I’m in a tizzy. Where else can they be? I  consider telling the cashier to be on the lookout for a set of keys. It is cold. Take note. I was wearing my coat when I got out of the truck. They could be in the pocket of my coat. I went back into the coffee shop while carefully rechecking my route. I was making double sure they that I had not dropped them. At least I'm still thinking rationally or at least I think that I am. I go back inside. There they are in the pocket of my coat that I hung over the back of a chair. There is an obvious bulge in the coat pocket. I can feel their extra weight as I pick the coat up. I jam my hand into the pocket. There is a reassuring firmness of metal in there next to my right glove. Why all the fuss?

The delirious ravings occasioned by fever are an ugly, distorted reflection of what the patient thought and felt before he was ill. Thus the acts and thoughts of madmen are a distorted reflection of the acts and thoughts of a normal person – Vasily Grossman – The Road, 2010 p117

To be everywhere and somewhere is the paradox of political power

We can have a market economy without having a market society – Jamie Raskin – The Nation, 6/27/11  p14

Six of the past ten Presidents have been left handed. Left handers make up only 10% of the population.

Likeness to truth is not the same thing as truth –Peter L Bernstein – Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk, 1996 p16

The elite use technology to spy on its inferiors. It’s time to abandon this notion of privacy. It enables the elite and does nothing for the masses. Make all financial transactions public and accountable for their providence. We already have cameras everywhere. Today they are tracking you but you can’t track them. Let’s equalize the playing field. Mobil telephones collect data on locations and keystrokes. But the corporations promise that they won’t use this information. Bullshit! Today it’s all one way – their way. The answer – eliminate the bourgeoisie concept of ‘privacy’ all together - it's an enabler of inequity.

Loiter in the neighborhood of a problem. After a while a solution strolls by – Harold Rosenberg

The long legged blond fed her blond child some of her banana. She would take a bite and then hold it in front of his mouth to nibble at. He kept pounding his fist on top of the table, keeping in beat with the ambient music. Everyone thought that it was cute. She’s siting at a table across from her spouse. They both are dressed all in black. They stab at their tapas with forks and order more. She finishes her banana and neatly folds the peel and lays in on top of her table. She jogs. Her calfs are well developed. There is an expanse of taught white skin below the hem of her jacket. She rises and self consciously pulls her blouse down. He spouse has his left leg crossed over his right. He takes his arm from around her shoulders to animate a point in their conversation. He is a urologist. He brought his family from Minneapolis to see the city while he attends a conference. The next morning I become excited by all the big women that I encounter – not fat or even stout – well proportioned and sexually big. I have this thing for big women today. Yesterday it was Indian girls with long slender brown toes and nails all painted bright red. A fantasy a day keeps the shrink at bay. She was so prissy. I had an urge to know if she ironed her panties.

Behind every large human brain, there is a potentially very sweaty human body – Nina C Jablonski – Skin: a natural history, 2006 p49

“Immense potential for entrepreneurs” – online learning is expected to grow 43% by 2015, to become a $24.4 billion industry in a process of converting our schools into cash cows for Wall Street. Education is viewed as the next big “undercapitalized” sector of the economy, like healthcare was in the 1990s. Educational reform is synonymous with pushing policies that benefit private investors. Study after study indicate that the real problem is financing educations through property taxes – the well off get all the money and the poor districts show poor results. The entrepreneurs will do for education as they did for healthcare – turn it into a luxury commodity.

Vast ills have followed a belief in certainty – Kenneth Arrow