The Most Photographed Barn in America

He could have been at home in a pair of faded blue bib overalls, but this wasn’t the farm. It was town, although a small town, a burg – maybe three hundred if you counted the dogs. No that’s not what a burg is, I just looked it up (its more like a castle or fortress). Strike ‘burg’ like it Pittsburgh. He said he was sick (the guy who in not hearing overalls (pronounced ‘overhauls’)). He was wearing his last year’s Sunday best, although he did have the a red banana hanging half out of his right rear pocket. That’s the way they used to do – your newest threads was your Sunday best, the next least faded became your going to town clothes. Then there were your work clothes  which your physical labor and perspiration  had moulded to your body and they had taken on  your character, and  where and their threadbare spots,  mother (that’s your wife and not your progenitor – you call her ‘mother’ because she the mother of your kids) sewed on a bright pink patches.

Being or things emerge from processes of copying, doubling, imaging and simulation. Each unique work of art or each human individual is a simulation: genes copy and repeat, with deviation, while art works become singular not by ‘being’ the world but by transforming it – Clair Colebrook – Gilles Deleuze, 2002 p99

Fish account for more that half the species of all living vertebrates and ants make up over half of all the animal biomass.

The storms – they just keep on moving through – one after another. This is the strongest wind that have  I experienced yet. Another one is coming. It has gotten cold. And it’s starting to get dark. The lady had said – Oh, we don’t get tornadoes here. Why not, I ask? They get them over in Ohio. This felt like tornado weather and I knew for I was from Kansas.

I want to share with you

Something about these

The thing that I don’t want

            You to do...

It must be tweaked a bit

Reinvent it, change it, yeah

            I appreciate that

I think you for that

This is learned

            Catch the speaker’s

Scripted scenarios

            Avoid anything personal

Think on your feet

But it needs to be personalized

            What I mean is...

It’a a full dress rehearsal

It should be very insightful

            Then I realized...

I didn’t want to it to hurt

            That is one reason

You invited me over

To help your share your vision

            The DNA of our purpose ia…

This all looks very good

            Stay with the script

It makes it appear spontaneous

            That is something that I picked up on ...

Stay with a script that works

            This is a good script

True and tried

Red, white and blue

            The process proceeds

Without anyone getting pissed

            They are true and tried

Let me put it that way...

If we could just know the answers

The answers to the questions

The questions that they will ask us

Make a deal, make a big deal

A multimillion-dollar deal

            Develop, grow, enhance, expand

Have you noticed any of this

Since you have been with us

Oh yes, keep your hands plainly in sight

Firmly on the desk, clasped

Look me in the eye

Confidently nod as I speak

There are rules

I’ve got enough on my plate

That’s what his e-mail had said

                        He’s not being a team member

That’s what I had said

There is not a present world and than a representing language. The world or cosmos is an immanent plane of signification or ‘symbiosis’ ; there are signs and codes throughout life, not just in the separate mind of man or language – Clair Colebrook – Gilles Deleuze, 2002 p107

A 1% increase in the incidence of birth defects correlates to a 238% increase in autism. Is autism our canary?

We do not have an ontological tool any longer to distinguish a simulation and a non-simulation. The critical tool which we have to use is concretivity as opposed to abstractness – Vielem Fussel

The Vatican has the world’s highest per capita consumption of wine – 74 liters per year. This is twice as high as such traditional wine drinking countries as Italy and France.

On the day you are married, at about sixteen if you are a girl, at about twenty if your are a man, a key is turned, with a sound not easily audible, and you are locked between the stale earth and the sky; the key turns in the lock behind you, and your full life of work begins, and there is nothing conceivable for which it can afford to stop short of your death – James Agee – Now Let Us Praise Famous Men, 1939 p323

What factory farming has done is to take the neat solution of the waste and product cycle of traditional farming and divide it into two problems – the need for artificial fertilizers and the pollution of the feedlot (for which no remedy is normally even applied).

I Carry a Torch

Keep in touch

Don’t lose sleep

            Exchange platitudes

Concentrate, feel the pain

You just arrived         

As I was leaving

            Stay in touch

That’s all I can say

Drive on over

Walk by if you must

            I’ll Leave the light

On on the porch

Stand by

For a ringtone

            Count on it

High  touch

The woman is the servant of the day, and of immediate life; the man is the servant of the year, and of the basis and boundaries of life, and is their ruler; and the children are the servant of their parents and the center of all their existence, the central work, that by which they have their land, their shelter, their living – James Agee – Let Us Praise Famous Men, 1939 p325

Dieting enhances ones sense of taste – now I understand what Nouveau Cuisine was all about. Given that you only get a little you have to make the most of it – savor it. Quality is important when quantity is sufficient.

The fundamental principles that defines class in America seems to be aspiration not income, according to the White House Middle Class Task Force. Surveys indicate that those who consider themselves Middle Class have fallen from 54% six years ago to 44% today. Only 39% of Americans believe that their children will have a better standard of living than they do. This is down from 66% in 2008. Aspirations are meeting reality head on

Love of money [is] a somewhat disgusting morbidity, one of those semi-criminal, semi-pathological propensities which one hands over with a shudder to the specialists in mental disorders – John Maynard Keynes

It is impossible to conceive of the impossible. 

How can I tell what I thing until I see what I say – E M Forster

There are two sides to any solution  - the problems that it solves and the problems it creates. If the problems it creates can be solved by the same process that created them, then that is the ideal solution. That is how industries thieve, by internalizing a problem and its supposed solution. Food systems are such solutions. Not a better solution for society. Not a better solution for the farmer. A better solutions for the food processor. Who cares so long as somebody makes money on it.

That’s better. The first cup still had the dredges of last night’s wine. It gave it a funny taste like a mouse had died in it. I dump it out and start out fresh. The only problem is that it’s yesterday coffee so this cup is not all it could be either but at least it doesn’t taste like something had died in it, anymore.

“Why aren’t you more affectionate?” “I am”

“Why don’t you care more?” “I do” – Lloyd Schwartz – These People, 1973

In 2000 the UN estimated that for the first time the number of people worldwide suffering from over nutrition – a  billion – had officially surpassed the number suffering from malnutrition – 800 million

When a society consists largely of imbeciles, half wits, blockheads and oafs, there is no point in anyone calling anyone else names – Javier Marias – Fever and Spear, 2007 p374

So we are sitting here in the bar enjoying a beer. I always order a flight (or several depending on their number, but since they are innumerable) Its hard to gauge how many flights to get – it would seem that one flight for each half dozen Little People would be sufficient but each time you count them the total comes out different.  Well then why not count the unused glasses after everyone has finished drinking – will some of the share a glass and some of them use more that one. As has been often repeated, sometimes there are more and sometimes there are less but there is never just one. So I just make a wild guess and divide by six. And anyway all I’m concerned with is that we get a lot of little glasses because I also get a pitcher for the refills and as I said sometimes they share and sometimes they use more than one. Accuracy is not that important. I always get the cheapest beer – usually PBR. The Little People have no preference. They like the little beers that come in the flight but more due to the variety than their quality. That one little beer can get them looped. After that they don’t care what they drink. I get a pint of bitter for myself. I myself like a good hand-crafted ale – either a Porter of an IPA depending on the time of year. And you would think that all those little glasses and all those little people sitting there in the booth would be distracting to the other patrons, but  it’s not. Chrissy brings me my pint, a pitcher of PBR and three flights of their finest hand-crafted beers and doesn’t bat an eyelash. It like the bar was always packed with Little People and I know that not true. I occasionally wonder why no one takes notice of them, then I forget about it and we get to what we met here to talk about.

You see, Tuppence, I can’t help feeling that we are more or less amateurs at this business amateurs in one sense we cannot help being, but it would do no harm to acquire the techniques, so to speak. These books are detective stories by the leading masters of the art. I intend to try different styles, and compare results – Agatha Christie – Partners in Crime, 1929

They Are Pronounced ‘Overhauls’

They keep predicting a big storm, but noting yet but a few sprinkles. I don’t mind. The guy painting in the dark corner at Peyton’s (#1 fish in southern Illinois) said you gotta quite getting your weather from those channels with the political clowns. If you want weather watch the weather channel. An old man goes out the door. That’s my father he said. He’s ninety seven. He said his father had told him that he’d take care of him when he got old. He (the guy painting) had broke his hip and had just gotten off his walker yesterday. That’s what he said. These country folks, once you get them started talking you can’t ever get them stopped. I had the same trouble with the host at the campground. I learned all about the administration of the state park system. Now that one near Dixon City has a prison work camp next to it. You can never trust a prisoner, he said. He knew he had spent his life working corrections (sounds like a newspaper editor – the grammar police). He recommended anyone still in to get out of it (the correctional system i.e.). It will save your life, he said. Can’t they told him, no other job will pay this much. That happens when you ‘enhance’ your life style and go into debt doing it. Can’t afford anything else. Too bad. How can you see back there in the dark, I asked the guy painting. It don’t make any difference, he said, I do this every couple of years to make it look clean. I put the extra chairs back here anyway. There’s another old guy a hundred and three. That’s his picture on the news clipping on the wall (he’ caught a big fish). He broke his hip recently and is on a walker too. He’s making progress and will be off it soon. He still serves on the hospital board. He was seventy-two, the guy back there in the dark corner, and has just managed to get back up off the floor after painting around the bottom edge. He has one of those canes that stand up on their own. They are supported on a tripod.  His dad might be right. The old-man just came back in. He looks like someone out of the forties with his pork-pie hat and big brass buckle and unshaven whiskers. He’s a city slicker. The population here is all of three-hundred. If he were a farmer he’d be wearin overalls (or Overhauls as the pronounce them). He ambles on back towards the kitchen. They aren’t a gonna make him cook are they?

The fastest growing religion in the United States is a group collectively labeled ‘nones’ who spurn organized religion

And [the] inevitably supine gesture of dressing and undressing, which, as is less true of any other garment, are those of harnessing and of unharnessing the shoulders of a tired and hard-used animal - James Agee – Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, 1939 p266

Federal subsidies make up about half of the earnings of a typical American corn farmer

Drawn–on and  bibbed on the whole belly and chest, naked ‘from the kidneys up behind’, save for broad crossed straps, and slung by these straps from the shoulders; the slanted pockets on each thigh, the deep square pockets on each buttock; the complex and slanted structure on the chest of the pocket shaped for pencils, rulers and watches. Coldness of sweat when they are young, and their stiffness; their sweetness to the skin and pleasure of sweating when they are old; the thin metal buttons on the fly … They are pronounced ‘overhauls’. – James Agee – Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, 1939 p265

Economists have a tendency to refine away their own ontologies

If the goal of a simulation is accurate prediction then the model assumptions may need to be quite complicated but if the goal is understanding of a fundamental process then simplicity of assumptions is required

Crime committed for money or revenge without sex is much less commercial [it doesn’t sell books], so I look for the sex angle, for murders [with] adjudicated killers, and increasingly for multiple bodies. The manner of death has to be very violent, very visceral – Paul Dines, 1993

The poor working class conservative – hates the liberal – he hates him more than he hates those that exploit him. After all he envies his exploiter. He wants to be among his number. And he hates anyone that says he can’t. He has no class. But he claims title to a middle class. There is no middle class (what the French called the petti bourgeoisie) in America. They were the shop-keepers. We only have Wal-Marts and Dollar Stores now. There are no mom and pop shops among us, maybe the 7-11 but it don’t count, it’s more like a little box.  Don’t remind him that he lives from pay check to pay check (if not on an actual welfare check as if yet). They (the shop keepers) are gone and will never come back so long has you shop at  the big box. He drives his automobile on a four lane road out to the edge of town as the core goes to hell and wonder what’s happened to America. He believes in the American dream in spite of the fact that his chance getting ahead is the lowest in the development world. Don’t remind him that he’s poor and getting poorer. He don’t want to hear it. It makes him mean when he should be getting angry. He a fool for his accoutrements of class. He buys them all at a big box they just built out at the cross-roads.

A new suit of overalls has among its beauties those of a blueprint; and they are a map of a working man – James Agee – Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, 1939  p266

Is it beer time again? Yes, it is getting warm again. Soon it will be summer. It will be hot again. The winter was long and it was nasty. We’ll probably skip directly from winter to summer without a transition.  A cold beer will be nice. Beer time is near. Even if its only a near beer? Hell, no! I want one of them hardy malty mashes. But you’re on a diet. You’ve promised yourself that you’d lose thirty pounds and you can’t do that on beer. I could cut out the solid stuff. Shut up and drink your lunch. Something to fill you up and not out. If only they made a lite beer that had some taste. That’s what I’m going to miss the most. I can take all this rabbit food but, god do I want a good beer. The domestics were already tasteless before they started messing with them. Making them lite only makes them worse. At least they’re cold and when its hot, that is at least something.

There is greatly among negroes, and considerably too among working-class whites, an apparent reverence for the nature and symbolic dignities of the head (which is generally lost in the softer classes of whites);  so that, perhaps even more than the rest of the body, it is dressed according to symbolic and imitative enhancements – James Agee – Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, 1939 p272

What I eventually discovered was that the Little People could pass on almost ‘word for word’ (see explanation below regarding transposing plurals for the singular), what went on in the minds of nearby people. Sometimes they could even do it for dogs but not for other animals like cats or horses. How far away could they pick up on what other people thought? Was there a diminution of accuracy with distance like there is for sounds that we hear (the fainter a distant voice the more we guess at what is being said).

They couldn’t exactly read people’s minds. It was a form of telepathy but not exactly. When someone was mulling something over in their head they could pick up on that. And of course when they spoke even if only talking to themselves, they could pick up on that. But they did not repeat it word for word. They tried to make sense of it first. They translated it into their own thoughts sort of like a translator will do when they translate word for word and miss out on the sense of what the original meant. For instance they had no concept of number and hence everything came out plural (because and has been said before – there may be more and there may be less but there is never just one).

Interpretosis: a Western disease that traces all becomings back to some origin. “Every experienced affect is ‘read’ as the signifier ‘of’ some original sense”. Clair Colebrook – Gilles Deleuze, 2002 p134