If the Truth Be Told

Hot Springs is full of Golden Agers (The Golden Age – Pericles) -  couples -  couples on Gold Wings. He is wearing combat boots and camouflage fatigues – desert sand. Big huge hogs (varoom varoom) with a big ass mama on the bitch seats behind him. She’s wearing black leathers with red & white stripes (US of A, US of A, of course of course). Dentists and accountants pretending to be bad boys, oh my! Christian motels and Christian ministries. Attend Cowboy church (Friday and Saturday nights as well as Sunday morning – ticket window). “Oh look,” says a lady at the spring, “this is the ivy that they sell at Wal-Mart”. She sticks her fingers in, “it feels just like dishwater”. The widows have all come to shop. Tour the Fordyce, the restored bath-house. Hell no. There’s a Hobby-Lobby at the mall just past the horse track. It’s Spring Madness – there are four games on – Wakeforset and Duke, South Carolina and Kentucky, Kentucky and Michigan, and Texas A&M vs. Texas. It’s a bit too much basketball. But what is the alternative – it is not chasing these blue rinses. Not that. God I hop not. No wonder men like sports – its their quality time. One minute on the clock – time out – South Carolina with a three point lead – 61 to 58. Carolina scores two. 12.2 seconds and another timeout – score is 64 to 61. A foul at 10.0. Carolina one...0.2 seconds – 65 to 61 – Carolina to the SEC championship game tomorrow. With two minutes and forty-five second remaining Iowa is ahead of MSU, 42 to 38. With three minutes and fifty-nine second to go Wakeforest is getting trounced by Duke. The second game of the SEC semifinals will be Florida and LSU. Tomorrow there’ll be a quarter horse racing at 1:30. Women want someone who will listen to them. They try to talk in the midst of the critical play. Did you hear what I said? Sure, sure. Thay’s why sports bars usually have the volumes turned off. So you can practice following the game without the commentary so as you can learn to listen (or to pretend ) to her while watching the simultaneously catching the real action. Life’s a game with a lot of practice and then you die. Too bad that you got redshirted.

The more accurately that something can be measured the more obscure its meaning becomes.

Reading the Bible

I love that passage

God gives a gift

I love that passage

Picking out a passage

Giving anecdotal stories

To what each of the verses

Means personally

‘Bear no fruit...’

A great color line

Just packed with truth

There is something All American

            Here

What He – with a capital ‘H’

Is saying is that He trusts us

With a little ‘U’

Now break it down

Piece by piece

Shop around

Gather thy daily bread

Break it down

Passage by passage

            Pick it apart

Word by word

Break it down

Bit by Bit

            It’s got God’s words

Right there in black and white

            And red if it’s Jesus speaking

God speaks in a plane language

So that we can all understand

It is all here

God’s plan for the common man

For anyone to understand

You only need to have faith

And God’s word will be revealed

So I am being told

           

“Everyone says I talk too much. If I talk too much let me know.” “No, no,” I tell her, “you’re fine. No problem.” “If my talking interferes with your wine tasting let me know.” “No, no,” I assure her, “my taste buds and by ears are not connected. I can do both. I can multitask. I can listen to you and taste at the same time. She thought this very witty. “I’ll have to remember that and use it myself sometime,” she said. Her name was Sou Sou or Fru Fru or something like that. It might have been Mou Mou. She bought two bottle of the red with a strawberry/watermelon overtone and a bottle of port, all produced here in Arkansas. “I thought you didn’t like the red?” “Oh I don’t. They’re for my son.” It’s seven already. Time for accordion and tuba. Smiley had said, “they’re our best friends in town.” She had talked about the guy sounding like Tom Waitts. It happened something like this – we were talking about polka at the art gallery (I don’t recall why we were talking about polka) and I was reminded of a band called Polkacide whose saxophone player sometimes played in the nude. He was the lover (she always used the word lover, never boyfriend) of a coworker. Tom Waitts had once tried to pick her (the coworker whose lover played saxophone in the nude) up in a park in Santa Monica, I was telling her. And that led to her mentioning this band, the one playing tonight, her best friends, the accordion and tuba. He sounds a lot like Tom Waitts, she said.

385 individuals own assets greater than the combine annual incomes of countries containing 45% of the world’s population

“Excuse me but is your name Martin?” and I shake my head. I was daydreaming (fantasying) about the young lady with the fuzzy white tam and the fuzzy white sweater and the little pug nose sitting across the room. I have to bring myself out of my trance - umpha umda umpf. “Martin?” No, I shake my head.  “What?” - umpha umda umpf. I can’t ever remember where I am. Sometime back I was at the Brewery. I remember that. “Are you Martin?” I remember the rep from the Sacramento Brewery coming in and changing out the kegs. Switching the SacBew from Red Horse to the IPA. He gave me a complimentary pint. “No, I’m not Martin,” I reply. But he hadn’t been talking to me. He was asking the guy two stools down. And it fact, the guy did happened to be Martin. Hunter S Thompson said he would be insane if it were not for writing. Come again? And Bukowski? Bukowski would drink until he passed out and then wake up and sneak out and go write all night because he said, you can’t sleep life away and you’ve got to do a poem a day or life is just shit. I feel something like that. It’s only 8:23 and it’s still light but I’ve had all I can drink. I go home and tomorrow morning I’ll write this all down at my coffee shop.

It’s an unfortunate fact about the flowers of geography that they don’t bother to work as hard on their appearances as places less favored by nature, like the muddy ford where London got its start, or the salt swamp from which Venice triumphantly arose – Jonathan Raban – Driving Home, 2010 p291

You can’t comprehend without appreciating the milieu out of which one of the possibilities manifests itself. History is much more that a parade of great men.

“Warning warning” (shades of Dr Who – Darleks – no that was “Exterminate, Exterminate; “warning, warning” was from Lost in Space). It’s the Giant Voice again. “This is a restricted area. Unauthorized entry is prohibited. Use of force has been authorized” The military unlike children are to be heard but not seen. They like to make big noises. Boom! Kings Bay – Trident submarines lurking - SLBMs – Kill kill – shades of robots on wheels (yet the submarines are in the silent service, right? – run quiet run deep – so what’s all this about noise? – it’s the army that bomarded Noriega with rock music). Where are those ruby slippers when you need them? Now hear this. Now hear this. Wa-u-wa Wa-u-wa. The sound of claxons. Alert, alert. All hand to battle stations. Kaboom – the Arizona splits in half. One down the smokestack. The General with his pointer poked at the image with a lone vehicle crossing the Euphrates and immediately after he across the bridge goes Kaboom and the General jokes – the was the luckiest man in Baghdad. Such fun and games. Support the Troops! Freedom and Democracy are just other words for nothing left to lose.

The more asymmetrical the conflict the more the weaker side will resort to irregular tactics

Modern war is not about two roughly equal nations-states clashing…It is about fundamentally weak forces – whether part of a nation sate or not – learning how to fight the strong – John Ralston Saul – The Collapse of Globalism, 2005 p259

Philip Marlow, Detective

Philip Marlow smokes a pipe, generally

Mr. Marlow plays classic chess games out of a book

Marlow turns down cases that he don’t think are suitable

He won’t take divorce cases at all – bread and butter

He doesn’t have to take cases that he don’t like

He may not like your looks – he likes the looks

Of that Madison in his hip pocket

Sometimes he takes a case just for costs

Philip Marlow isn’t a fish like Nick & Nora

Mr. Marlow doesn’t inhale Luckys like Mike Hammer

Marlow doesn’t ware a trench coat like the dirty cops

He has a gimlet in memorial to an old friend

One after another the connections are made

And he finds himself deeper and deeper into a case he didn’t ask for

Deep into the web of things where people can be nasty

Especially if they have money

It is not good to be conscious

When you’re trapped in a spider web

‘Ever kill a man, Marlow’?

‘Yes’

‘Nasty feeling, isn’t it’?

‘Some people like it’ 

I Fell In With Some Alligators

Out My Back Door Yesterday Morning

A tale told by an idiot (or savant or perhaps just a drunkard) in an unfamiliar tongue that sounds a lot like English. And all the while that he is speechifying, I am drinking and sometimes be becomes so sing song that I nod off. Suddenly my head gives a jerk, bobbles. I become alert and look about. Did anyone notice? They never do. And I strained to make sense what he was saying. He was still talking. A monotonous sing song. It’s not necessary to catch every work, just one or two here and there, but you can’t make sense of it when you miss five or ten minutes of it. Sometimes you came back from taking a piss and he is still talking and it’s like you’d never left. But none of what he was saying made any sense not even before the nod off. A rant is not like a speech; there is no going back. No copies have been prepared for the press . And besides who cares? What is missed is gone, gone forever. Good riddance. There is a fire blazing in the brazier. It is hot and the air is laden with combustion. I begin to nod off again. I jerk.  Its an automatic reflex. I’m trying to stay awake. I really am. It has become quiet except for the wind howling outside. Last call is announced. I stumble outside. There is no moon but the stars are cheery. I should not be driving. God, do I have to take a piss.

A woman / you’d want to kiss / or just hold – a woman whose hairbrush / you’d know the details of – Anthony Caleshu – The Siege of the Body and a Brief Respite, 2004 p5

Wonderful wonderful

            The professor’s Plung

            Bath for the Active Tourist (*ATPB)

So green – only one gallon

            Water required

            And every drop

                        Recyclable

But as the Sub-Warden

                        Observed

“A little bruised, perhaps?”

            The Active Tourist

            Upon extraction

The Professor admitted

                        This

But what was important, he said

            Was that the Active Tourist

Had gotten his plunge bath

                        Afterall

Yesterday solutions are today’s problems

Corvair College – a three day workshop on turning a Corvair engine into an aircraft power plant. They were originally designed, he claimed, to power helicopters. I didn’t know that. I only remember Ralph Nader. Seventy participants are showing up, all with their Corvair engines. He’s down here from the rustbelt in his pickup with his wife and two miniature dachshunds. Trail Dog gets some Milk Bone doggies snacks. He’s a happy camper. Come by today, he says. You might get a ride in a biplane with a Corvair engine. Sounds like a P51. After the first day he sounded a little discouraged. The instructor had gone trough all his engine parts telling which ones were usable and which one had to be custom made. Which was only natural, he said, since that what his business was. So how much would it cost if you had him make all the parts he claimed were un-usable, I asked? About ten-thousand dollars. But I think I can do it for lot less. A new Lycoming would cost about fifty-thousand.

The believers believe, but the world moves on – John Ralston Saul – The Collapse of Globalism, 2005 p14

Ain’t no hurry

Done been

Where we’re

            Goin’

The self-employment rate (including consultants and contract workers) in the U.S. has fallen from 18.5% in 1948 to 6.9% today (from 12% to 6.9% if you exclude farmers). The U.S. has the second lowest rate of self-employment among developed countries.

If it’s a truism, it’s probably not true

General Petraeus does his own mic check. Can we have a mic check here? He leaves nothing to chance, the reporter was saying as if this was an indication of the General’s leadership. It is not. It is a sign of micro-management; the exact opposite of what leadership is. It is as effort to minimize risk and a sign of distrust of one’s subordinates. Neither of these are indicators of leadership. Exactly the opposite. And his PhD? Well I’d called that a credential for membership in the technocracy. And that is no indicator of leadership either.

Chicago school

            Laissez-faire

                        Straight up

                                    No chaser

Free markets

            More choice

                        Corporations

                                    Are people

                                   

7-9m gal/day from the spring but the lake is almost dry. It’s not the farmers, she says. They irrigate, but there's no irrigating as this time of year. It happened overnight. Might be a sinkhole. There is limestone down there. How far down? About four hundred feet, he says.  But I wonder about that, there’s is a sinkhole next to the trail.  And over there, so the sign says, was the world’s largest prison at the time – the Confederate prison camp, Fort Lawton, built to relieve the overcrowding at Andersonville. It was only open four months before General Sherman came through on his “March to the Sea”. He burnt the railroad depot in town. All the prisoners had been removed to Savannah. It never held more than 10,300 Union prisoners (Andersonville had over 30,000). I think they meant the size of the enclosed space, which was three times that of Andersonville. Temperature for November: average high of 69⁰ and average low of 41⁰. The mean temperature being 55⁰. 

In 1830 opium was probably the largest single commodity business in the world.

When people no longer believe in the Immaculate Conception, they will believe in turning tables – Gustave Flaubert

Feudalism turned labor into land (slaves); Capitalism turns labor into capital (machines). Just different campaigns in the war against the common man

It is reasonable to conclude that the time has come for the American people to accept a hard truth, which is that ‘both’ of our political parties are now run by people who view us not as sovereign citizens who command them but as nude and sometimes rude animals who must be fed, clothed, employed, entertained, exercised, disciplined, and once every four years, herded by beaters into a voting booth – Barry C Lynn – Cornered: the new monopoly capitalism and the economics of destruction, 2010 p147

80% of the profits from tobacco and alcohol comes from addicts. Addiction is the business model for the industries regulated by the ATF.

The lobbyist and the networker are the modernized versions of the courtier

Only four countries (Namibia, Zimbabwe, Denmark and Switzerland) have a greater degree of wealth inequity than does the United States

It’s About Time

Behind the times

Behind the lines

            The Golden Hind       

            Hind quarters

A quarter till

A quarter after

            A quart low

            A dollar short

Up and aloft

To the top gallant

            Furl the sails

            Look alert

The Monitor and Merrimac

The Black Warrior

            The Crimean War

            So  civil

What Homer didn’t see

What the Trojans dreaded

            What Slieglemann found

            What Montainage wrote

What economics is for the conservative; politics is for the liberal

In a true democracy nothing should be done ‘for’ the people – Calvin Trilling – The Liberal Imagination, 1950 p101

Holy American Empire

            Exclaimed the Boy Wonder

Yee gads!, Batman

            Their wearing bed sheets

            On their heads

No Robin, those are turbans

But be careful, he said, it’s not PC

            To disparage someone

            Because of their religion

Golly right Batman. But if they

            Have turbines on their heads

Why do they have to hijack

            Airplanes?

Worldwide $900 billion is spent on sanctioned gambling (excluding financial speculation). In Britain more than three and a half times the combined amounts from capital gains and inheritance is earned by the government from gambling.

The use of the word ‘obvious’ indicates the absence of the logical argument – an attempt to convince the reader by asserting the truth of a statement just by saying it a little louder – Errol Morris – Believing is Seeing, 2011 p8

The nations, which have most actively championed Globalism, have the highest rates of growth in inequalities

Refugees from New Orleans (Katrina) – “Where you from?” “Right here, if being here for six months makes me from here.” “Sure, why not!”  “He’s from Texarkana,” she’s pointing at her husband.  “He is related to the bartender at that Italian restaurant on the lake, the one that President Clinton likes. That’s my favorite too,” she says with a drawl. She is working towards a degree in performing arts. Right now they are building traps for Leprechauns. He had looked them up on the Internet. “Are there a lot Leprechauns here?” “No, they are for a dance recital. Six year olds dressed in green and kicking up their heels.” She needs to entrap Leprechauns on stage. She says, “Today’s my birthday.” She has a friend. She is an artist too. She gives me her card. Her name is Smilie. Her partner she says is a blacksmith. He does knives. Smile tells me that on Saturday nights they have a jazz duo – accordion and tuba. She’s from Biloxi. Another refugee. You gotta visit Biloxi, she says. I assure her that I will. March Madness is under way. Syracuse is playing Georgetown. “I’m a DC man. Who you pulling for?” the guy on my left asks.

With the advent of photography, images were torn from the world, snatched from the fabric of reality, and enshrined as separate entities. They became more like dreams – Errol Morris – Believing is Seeing, 2011 p92

I had to walk four blocks. I waddled like a duck. When I got there, there was already someone at the urinal. I pushed in as soon as he had flushed. Hurry, man hurry, I was saying to myself, I really gotta go. And when he finished I apologized for pushing. “If you wait a moment I’ll get out of your way” he said. But I didn’t have a moment but that was not his concern. He felt put upon by the guy behind him dancing around holding his pecker. This was no time to get pissed. I mostly made it to the urinal. This is women’s night. I have a big wet spot. I sit on a stool at the bar. Three of the four monitors are tuned to “The Seventies Show”. One is on basketball. Now I don’t give a damn, but this is a sports bar. I refuse to sit here and watch a sit-com. The bartender has three margaritas and a grapefruit juice but can’t find the party to whom they go. Someone at the other end of the bar is celebrating his thirtieth birthday. What a kid. They have eggrolls. Free appetizers. A party?  Maybe birthday boy. I sneak over and grab one. Dave, the bartender said I could. I sneak because the front of my pants is still damp. Dave had tapped me on the shoulder and said, “I think it is open,” indicating the eggrolls at the end of the bar. “I already have helped myself” I say. “Thanks and I think I shall have another beer, Dave.”

Rubber Duckies

The campground host came by after dark. Knock, knock, knock - he rapped on the side of my trailer. The dog was up and yapping. I went outside without any shoes. I turned on the light. He wanted to know how I was doing. He seemed too want to chat but I knew that was not his real purpose. I saw the bible that he carried under his arm. He the thin bony man typical (except those who are obese) of the South who only knows (if he knows of any) the “good” book. I knew it was not a novel. I let him chatter. I politely replied to his questions. He chattered on until he was satisfied that he could get to the purpose of his visit. Now will come the part that I had been expecting, “May I ask you something personal,” he said? “Go ahead,” I replied. “May I pray with you?” “No,” I say, “I would rather not.” He is taken aback but only for a second and he responds, “I understand, I understand.” I say, “Will thanks for stopping by.” And he says, “God bless you now.” I say, “And you to.” And off he goes into the darkness unto the next campsite making his rounds.

It’s raining. It started last night at dusk. From a gentle rain a thunderstorm can grow. It rumbles. It roars. The rain comes down: plick-plick, plick-plick. It had started as an evening shower. It’s now after dark. I can hear the rain outside. Coffee is reheated. Aw, that was a close one – light flashes. Three second later the boom. Near misses are deceptive. The rain continues – bling, bling bling

 Rubber Duckies with My Number On’e m

I’m at the Laundromat

            In Swansboro NC

The washerwoman wants

            To know what it is

                        That I’m reading

I had stood there with my hands

            Akimbo upon my hips

And she stood there imitating me

            Laughing

It’s a novel that takes place

            Around here

I didn’t know then

            How right I was

The washerwoman in the

            Novel (also in Swansboro

                        This particular Swansboro)

            Weights two-hundred and twenty

This one was tall and skinny

Her daughter and her friend

            Were standing outside

            Sucking on the straws off

                        Supersized cokes

Schoolgirls, real whores

Camp Lejuene was next door

            At the end of the month

            The boys got paid

And the Rev. Goodlin Plenty

            Got half his head blown

            Off by a jealous husband

                         With a Ruger Redhawk

Which had a seven-and-one-half inch

                        Scoped barrel

Then Lula and that two-hundred and

            Twenty pound washerwoman

            Got down on their bellies

And snaked out of the Revival tent

Thump thump thump – fifty calibers

            Zip over their metal helmets

            As they laugh

Young southern killers drink

            J. W. Dant according to Gifford

While driving Dusters with NASCAR

            Numbers on the doors

Dreaming of bashing someone’s

            Head in with the back

                        Of a shovel

I finished drying my load

She was talking to someone

            And laughing

So many rubber duckies

            Rotating around the ocean

But none of’em with my number

Post-Liberalism: the left without access to the State

“Sort of” a God

The beavers were splashing and the coyotes were howling last night. The lake is low, marked by a rim of bare shore. The beaver lodges are out of the water. I didn’t get much sunshine yesterday. It was too dark to even read. I am anxious to get out and stretch my legs

It is light. The rumbling is getting further off. There is now only a steady drizzle. Now the sun has come out. The clouds are moving to the north. The picnic tables are beginning to dry. There is still big puddle of water in front of the  stove. I haven’t made coffee yet. I go for a walk. I notice a sign. I read it: Bear country – dogs aggravate bears, keep them on a leash. The bathhouse is locked. Let my day commence. I am ready for whatever comes my way. Nothing does.

Governmentalization (Foucault): the remaking of the state on the model of the firm and the remaking of the complex moral subject (the individual) into “speekers” of human capital” who self-invest to appreciate their value”

All the while singing

We wondered when we would stop

We knew at sometime we would stop singing

We knew we would then stop wandering

And still we are singing

And still we are wondering

Every rule is a rule until it is no longer a rule

The US federal government spends $100 million a years on abstinence-only sex education

The young are naturally overcome by lust, but the middle-aged who show an undue interest in it are more likely to be accused of idle lechery. The sins of middle are melancholy, envy, gluttony and anger – Simon Blackburn – Lust, 2004

Demand pulls supply

We who are liberal and progressive know that the poor are our equals in every sense except that of being equal to us – Lionel Trilling

I mix with the masses. We’re all just Me’s here. That Me over there. And that one there. That couple – him and her - the male me and the female me. We’re all me. It’s all me. I was shattered. It was Krystaknacht. But the clock is running in reverse. It’s spinning counterclockwise. All our animosities are getting erased. But I’m discovering new ones that I didn’t know about before. It’s impossible to erase them all. Caesar hates the Gauls and they hate him. Latin killed Caesar and now it’s killing me. But that’s ok, ‘cause it’s just me.

Out on the open sea with a breaking swell and the wind a notch too high for comfort, you are the loneliest fool in the world – Jonathan Raban – Driving Home, 2010 p188

There are lots of things

That I did not notice then

If I had seen them

Then I would have known them then

Don’t you see?

Sometime or another everything is seen for the first time

And everything can always be seen for the first time sometime

But one cannot see everything every time for the first time

Can’t you see?

And what remains unseen

Remains unnoticed

And anything not seen is not known

Neither this time nor any other time

And yet they may be seen

See!

Not everyone can see everything all the time

No one sees everything every time

Everyone sees every time

At least once one sees

Why can’t you see?

It’s the conscious mind that recalls a dream

As night approaches the last color to disappear is blue. If the moon is full on a cloudless night the blue hangs on. There is a tinge of yellow but it doesn’t mix with the blue to form green.  They each shade off into black. I go into town and have a Young’s Double Chocolate. The only person other than the chef’s wife and kid is a good-looking blond drinking wine.. She’s wearing as pink tube top. Here shoulders and neck are alabaster. I had a shower and I’ve shaved. I’ve done my laundry. I turn to her and …

What can I perform to come near her? / How hope to bear up, when she gives me / The fear-killing moves of her body? – James Dickey – The Whole Motion, 1992 p66

We need philosophers

            With their boots

            On the ground

All our information comes

            From paid informants

With eyes and ears

            On infomercials

Someone needs to be waterboarding

            The ontology

Someone must pilot the

            Epistemology

We need philosophers

            Who can kick ass

Thoughts come much faster when you can put them on paper  – William Cobbett

Tax: a return which is neither rent, wage, interest nor insurance

The obvious alternative to production overseen by technocrats was rule by “power-hungry party apparatchiks or avaricious financiers”. We have convinced ourselves that since the financiers won this debate that the better option since they have since so convincingly trained us “to celebrate avarice.”

Economics got turned on its head with globalization – from the enhancement of one group’s wealth at the expense of another group to a panacea for the enhancement of mankind – from specific wealth creation to abstract wealth creation. Will not exactly – as it turned out the group creating wealth at another group’s expense has shifted from a geographic distinction (national wealth) to class definition (a plutocracy).

Efficiency is usually achieved at the expense of resilience

The power to become habituated to his surroundings is a marked characteristic of mankind…We assume some of the most peculiar and temporary of our late advantages as natural, permanent and to be depended on, and we lay our plans accordingly – John Maynard Keynes – The Economic Consequences of the Peace, 1919