What Everybody Thinks; What No One Knows

My two little friends are studing for their exams. “Why are you taking an exam for,” I  asked?

They were not students or at least they are not enrolled in any school or at least I thought that that was highly unlikly. They were not studying to become citizens either. The little people have no official status. How could they have? No, you wouldn’t want them to as fellow citizens. They would not make good Americans. They wouldn’t even make good Coratians.  No, our legal system doesn’t apply to them. They had their own, well not really a legal system, but they do have certain notions, some might even say customs. It was not to qualify for jobs. Certainly not. You never want to pay them except perhaps to leave you alone. They were incapable of taking orders for one thing.  Oh they might pull you a pint when the bartender wasn’t looking,  but you’d never want one working behind the bar. They were too full of mischief and cause such shit.  No self discipline, you see. Don’t even know what a clock is. Well they know what it is but they refuse to let it rule them. They have difficulty understanding metaphors. They take everything I say literaly.

“Oh, you’d never understand,”  Psmith said.  He was probaly right, there was an awful lot that I didn’t understand about them.

“Well then, can you give me an example of the types of questions that are on this exam,” I asked.

“That’s your first misconception,” Jones replied. “You see there are no questions on this exam.”

“Then how can you call it an exam?” I asked.

“Well, you see, we ask the questions and they have to answer them.”

“So it is sort of like that TV show Jeporady?” I said.

“There is a very vague simulalrity,” said Psmith. “But it has more to do with the name Jeporady than to the way it is played. This is no game.”

“And by the way,” I asked for I had learned never to make any assumptions when it came to little people, “who is this ‘they’ who is gong to answer your questions?”

“It’s not really a ’they’”, Psmith said, “It’s a him.”

“The Madhi,” Jones replied excitedly. “The Madhi, himself.” 

“Then you guys are Muslims?” I enquire.

“Oh no, we’re not religious. Not in the sense by which you mean the term,” Jones said.

“And,” piped up Psmith, “that would make ua jinns and we’re not that either.”

“Not to change the subject,” I said, “but do you guys have first names?”

“But that is changing the subject,”  Jones said, “and we need to get back to our studies.”

The ‘Mahdi’, the messenger who comes at the end of time, needs his helpers, who are in some ways his guides, even if they are, in truth, only the personifications of the qualities or ‘stations’ of his wisdom… Thanks to his helpers, the ‘Madhi’ can understand the language of animals and can extend his justice over both men and jinn. – Giorgio Agamden – Profanations, 2007

Happiness like stupidity is only a thing we can recognize in ourselves in hindsight. Whosoever realizes that he is happy (or stupid) ceases to be so. I use to be happy and am no longer. However with stupidity, one who says I used to be stupid and now am not may well be wrong.

Whatever we can achieve through merit and effort, cannot make us truly happy. Only magic can do that – Giorgio Agamden – Profanations, 2007 p19

It takes as much corn to fill one automobile tank with ethanol as it would take to feed one human being for an entire year

Throughout our lives, the measure of oblivion and ruin, the ontological waste that we carry in ourselves, far exceeds the small mercy of our memories and our consciousness. – Giorgio Agamden – Profanations, 2007

Forlorn

             Abandoned

                        Chinese

Sleeve dog

Out in the snow

            Shivering

Pick him up

Pick him up

            And cradle him

            In your arms

Drift like a dog

Along the corridors

            Of the strong

            All alone

And shiver

No one will

            Pick you up

Pick your self

                        Up

            Get in harness

            And mush

There is a draft that we must drink or not be fully human. I knew that one must know the truth…or walk forever queer and small like a dwarf – Rebbecca West – The Return of the Soldier, 1919

The largest carbon footprint in the distribution chain of food may well be from the store to the place of its consumption. One gallon of fuel will transport a ton 800 miles by ship or 200 miles by rail or 60 miles by truck, but only 20 miles by automobile. A ton is a lot of groceries. If you buy like most do, it’s probably a lot less than 20 miles. If you make a special trip to get milk it may be more like 1,000 feet per ton (but I’m only guessing – to be on the safe side lets say grocery shopping nets 10 miles per ton – that’s still way more fuels than it took to skip it clear across the ocean).

More than ever, economic rationality is at odds with social rationality. Economic science is not part of the solution to the crisis: it  is the source of the problem – Franco Berardi – After the Future, 2011 p110

Ersatz science

Ersatz science
The object is to obfuscate

After all no one is all that sure

Ersatz politics

Ersatz politics

Confuse and confound

Make them believe

That you are your own opponent

Pseudo debate

Pseudo debate

Watch my lips move

            Elect me President

Around and around she goes

See the little pea, here it is now.

            See it. See it.

Watch it closely

Everybody can be a winner

The last known person employed as a fool in England died in 1746. “Gone are the halcyon days of the jesters” (John Owen, 1654). But alas we till know fools.

You can’t understand a history where you don’t know what is at stake, but you can understand the people which is what gives you an illusion of your understanding their times.

So much nonsense must make sense – Chester Himes – Cotton Comes to Harlem, 1960

Economics is to science what psychoanalysis is to psychology. The bonobo is to man what the fox is to a dog.

The ‘bourgeois’ doctrine of equality always has the suppressed premise that some are more equal than others – Christopher Hill – The World Turned Upside Down p343

Wherever there is liquidity there is a market

Historic towns

            Downtown

Business grosses

            Millions

Spic and span

            Mean dreams

Tourist attractions

Ahistorical activity

Packaged commercial

            Properties

A soldier requires two pounds of rations a day, a horse requires 25 pounds. A pre-modern army could not forage beyond four days march otherwise it would use more provisions than it could bring back to camp. This was one of Napoleon’s basic tenets.

An angry man is always a stupid man – Chinua Achebe – Anthills of the Savannah, 1988

One doesn’t live life as a narrative, but one does cause a lot of trouble trying to make it behave as if life was a narrative. Why is the narrative such a powerful trope? Gods have narratives which men invent for them. Celebrities have narratives which their publicists invent. Politicians have narratives which they themselves invent (or at least their speechwriters do). But none of them actually live such a narrative. Well no one does (did) except for Michael Jackson .

A Fool’s Paradise does not a Golden Age make

It is difficult not to feel that the unconscious aim in the most typical modern pleasure resorts is a return to the womb. For there, too, one was never alone, one never saw daylight, the temperature was always regulated, one did not have to worry about work or food, and one’s thoughts, if any, were drowned by a continuous rhythmic throbbing – George Orwell – “Pleasure Spots”

We do not experience dreams; we remember dreams