Green with Blackface Envy

I’m glad they caught up with me several months ago and not now when this artic vortex is at my doorstep knocking. Knock, knock – it's Rita the meter maid. Our records show that no one is living here, she says. Well obviously they’re wrong. You’ll have to take that up with gas company, she replies, or else we’ll cut you off on Wednesday. I was given a number or a green tag that she was about to hang on my door.  What the fuck, I said (to myself – It’s not Rita’s fault afterall, and it’s not my fault either - there never is anyone around to take you anger out on anymore. Good thing the dog was not under my foot just then. He usually races out the door whenever I open it). I looked up my records. She was right I hadn’t paid since May when I was had paid for having them turn the gas on. (stupid, stupid - but I'm not going to rant, I promised myself I wouldn't). I called the number on the green tag.  I get it straightened out. They even told me how to apply for assistance if the bill for the past six months was too much for me to pay. I did get them to admit that it wasn’t my fault. Then the bill finally arrived. It was hardly anything. I guess they did fuck up. At least they didn’t just make up a number. It could’t have been much, only the range, everything else is electric. It’s different now that the furnance is on half the time. They say that El Nino is kicking into effect and we won’t have any more Arctic Vortexs but what do they know with the climate in chaos. The ice from North Dakota is passing by on the river. Best wishes "Water Protectors" (you'll need it with our 45th). I'm picking sides (It wasn't a very difficult decision - I'm with Soule)

Money’s queer. It goes where it’s wanted – Agatha Christie – Endless Night, 1967

If criminal justice were a business it would long ago have gone bankrupt for lack of any financial data

When not persecuted, intellectuals tend to become part of the cultural and political apparatuses as technicians of knowledge… Despite their “love” of the people, intellectuals are congenitally distrustful of the masses. – Stanley Arnowitz – Taking it Big, 2012 p213

The best way to attract the attention of a government’s armed representative is to ignore that that government exists

The sharks I dodged / The tigers I slew / What ate me up / Was the bedbugs - – Bertolt Brecht – Poems p399

Creativity may be spurred on more by idle time and boredom than a desire for wealth

For at least five thousand years, popular movements have centered on struggles over debt… Debt is the most efficient means ever created to take relations that are fundamentally based on violence and violence inequality and to make them seem right and moral to everyone concerned. When the trick no longer works, everything explodes – David Graeber – Revolutions in Reverse, 2011 p38

Violence is a form of stupidity for which there is no intelligent response

When one is asked to be ‘realistic’ then, the reality one is normally being asked to recognize is not one of natural, material facts; neither is it really some supposed ugly truth about human nature. Normally it’s a recognition of the effect of the systematic threat of violence – David Graeber – Revolutions in Reverse, 2011 p45

Half the guns in America are owned by 3% of the population. Typical gun owners fit their stereotype: white, male, rural and politically conservative.

Nature is not that inventive when it comes to successful solutions. Once it works it tries it again and again – Antonio Damasio – Looking for Spinoza, 2003

The US is now proudly pioneering “first use” battlefield nuclear weapons

The postmodern epoch, however, renders obsolete the ideologies of the modern age—the orthodoxies of socialism and liberalism, both of which are predicated on the free individual. – Stanley Arnowitz – Taking it Big, 2012 p226

Roughly half of all people killed by law enforcement suffer from at least one mental disorder

So what makes cultural exchange different from cultural appropriation? As with most points of cultural contention, the difference is power. In particular, the power of the privileged to borrow and normalize a cultural element of another group, while the appropriated group is often demonized and excluded because of that very cultural element. - Kovie Biakolo

Healthy – (as used on a food label according to the FDA, I know, I Googled it) – means that the nutrient content of the food contributes to creating a healthy diet and that the label includes nutrition information. I think this means that any food with nutritional informaion on the label can be labled as ‘healthy’. This begs the questions as to whether having ‘healthy’ printed on the lable is itself ‘nutritional information’. And we already now that putting sugar, salt and fat into processed foods makes them taste better, thus contributing to your eating something (anything) in the list of ingredients that is actually ‘healthy’ thus contributing to creating a healthy diet. In other words unhealthy foods can be labled as healty according to the FDA so long as there is at least one ‘healthy’ ingredient listed on the label. Yes, I see. It all makes sense.

Would it not be easier / In that case for the government / To dissolve the people / And elect another? – Bertolt Brecht – Poems of 1913-1956, 1997 p440

The US government counts student loans as 30% of its net worth

Participation in the consumer culture requires wage work, time, and effort, often given without enthusiasm or interest. But this tradeoff seems natural today, an inevitable compromise between freedom and necessity – Gary S Cross – An All-Consuming Century, 2000 p5

Most Americans rarely or never discuss global warming with family or friends. The end of civilization has become boring. Or is it the we have accepted that we are not actually going to do anything about it anyway and have all become apathetic (just waiting around to die).

True, bureaucratic procedure operates as if it were a form of stupidity, in that it invariably means ignoring all the subtleties of real human existence and reducing everything to simple pre-established mechanical or statistical formulae – David Graeber – Revolutions in Reverse, 2011 p51

In ten states for every dollar of tax collected there is at least 5 cents collected in fines and forfeitures with Louisiana at almost 20 cents having the highest fines-to-tax ratio. Decreasing budgets have forced some police departments and local court systems to find creative ways for self-funding. Hence Ferguson.

Symbols focus experience; meanings organize knowledge – C Wright Mills – “The Cultural Apparatus”

The US national debt now exceeds the gross domestic product. It looks like the trend lines crossed in 2013 when the total amount of debt was $16.7 trillion but the GDP came in at $16.6 trillion. 

Can’t we just drone this guy [Julian Assange]?- Hillary Clinton

For-profit colleges and universities (FPCUs) spend on average only 17 percent of their budgets on instruction and 42 percent on marketing to new students and paying out existing investors.

“Possessive individualism,” that seventeenth-century “vice” of personal acquisition, was a substitute for the more disruptive passions of vengeance, glory, and domination – Gary S Cross – An All Consuming Century, 2000 p9

We must not assume that our public officials are as incompetent as they have lead us to believe – what appears as failure may have been intentional. What we see as failure, may be seen by the elite as a success.

Neither the hard-nosed economist nor the pandering politician nor the cynical intellectual may ultimately have grasped the complexity of popular will and desire. Americans still want more than mere shopping and more stuff. – Gary S Cross – An All Consuming Century, 2000 p12

Roughly 20 to 25 percent of our waking time is spent thinking thoughts that involve using language directed at ourselves. If one did not talk to one’s self how else would one be conscious of what one was thinking?

So Mr. Spoffard says his mother has to have him take care of her quite a lot. Because Mr. Spoffards mothers brains have never really been so strong. Because it seems his mother came from such a very fine old family that even when she was quite a small size child she had to be sent to a school that was a special school for people of very fine old familys who had to have things very easy on their brain. So she still has to have things very easy on her brain, so she has a girl who is called her companion who goes with her everywhere who is called Miss Chapman. Because Mr. Spoffard says that there is always something new going on in the world which they did not get a chance to tell her about at the school. So now Miss Chapman keeps telling her instead. Because how would she know what to think about such a new thing as a radio, for instance, if she did not have Miss Chapman to tell her what it was, for instance. So Dorothy spoke up and Dorothy said, “What a responsibility that girl has got on her shoulders. For instance, what if Miss Chapman told her a radio was something to build a fire in, and she would get cold some day and stuff it full of papers and light it.” But Mr. Spoffard told Dorothy that Miss Chapman would never make such a mistake. Because he said that Miss Chapman came from a very very fine old family herself and she really had a fine brain. So Dorothy said, “If she really has got such a fine brain I bet her fine old family once had an ice man who could not be trusted.” So Mr. Spoffard and I did not pay any more attention to Dorothy because Dorothy really does not know how to hold a conversation. – Anita Loos – Gentlemen Prefer Blonds, 1925

More like Leopold and Loeb than Lincoln and Douglas*

He says, he gets anxious with the approach of time. Well, time is always approaching, yet he is not

always anxious. Although, some times it seems like it. He’s always anxious when he contemplates being late, he says. Not anxious about actually being late, just thinking about being late. Try sometime actually being late, I suggest to him. You’ll find that most of the time there is no repercussion for  being late. I’ve tried that, he says. It doesn’t work. This morning he is anxious about his 8:30 appointment for physical therapy. They won’t even know you are late and besides you still have twenty-five minutes to get there and its only a five minute drive. He is asking if I will drive him there. He can walk back, he says. It won’t take any more time for me to drop you off at home and for you to take your own car, I tell him. Finally he relents. I would have to have driven right by the house anyway to have driven him to his PT. I dropped him at his house. I can’t help it he said, it’s the way my brain works. It drives his girlfriend crazy.

If the indispensible man dies / The world looks around for another mother with milk for her child / If the indispensible man were to come back there wouldn’t be a job for him as a hall-porter – Bertolt Brecht – Poems p399

Flotus

Scotus

Potus

Coitus*

*Man of the US (Motus) might have worked but not First Man -
        Too bad Bill. We could have just called you Mr Coitus
         Certainly My Tweek needs a better hash tag than just 
         Potus

We do not want to be sansculottes, nor simple citizens, nor venal presidents; we want to found a democracy of gods, equal in majesty, in sanctity, and in bliss. You demand simple dress, austere morals, and unspiced pleasures, but we demand nectar, ambrosia, crimson robes, costly perfumes, luxury and splendor, the dancing of laughing nymphs,music and comedies. – Heinrich Heine

The Democrats have proven to be better at making the rich richer than have the Republicans

Intellectual activity that does not have relevance to established money is not likely to be highly valued – C Wright Mills – White Collar p156

75% of US military enlistees claim that educational benefits were a major reason for their decision to enlist. Would providing free (or low cost) higher education hinder the military’s ability to recruit?

Emotions play out in the theater of the body. Feelings play out in the theater of the mind – Antonio Damasio – Looking for Spinoza, 2003 p26

The average credit-card debt owed by an American indebted household is $8,500. The total credit-card debt in the US is expected to surpass $1 trillion by the end of this year

In a society based so largely on illusions and appearances, the ultimate illusions, art and religion, have no future - Christopher Lasch – The Culture of Narcissism, 1979 p96

Real estate busts nearly always begin in the hottest markets

Commercialization [of sports] has turned has turned play into work, subordinated the athlete’s pleasure to the spectators’ and reduced the spectator himself to a state of vegetative passivity – the very antithesis of the health and vigor sports ideally promotes - Christopher Lasch – The Culture of Narcissism, 1979 p103

According to a recent Gallup poll only 23% of US employees agree that they can apply their organization’s values to their work every day. Only 27% agree that they ‘believe in’ their organization’s values

Women must defend themselves, and the lie, it becomes a good weapon. But there are three people, to whom a woman should speak the truth. To her Father Confessor, to her hairdresser and to her private detective – Agatha Christie – The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding, 1960

45% of Americans claim to have used prescription psychotherapeutic drugs last year. More that 7% of the population self-reported misuse of those drugs. Over half of the drug abusers say they obtained their medications from family or friends.

The New York Times committed the most egregious of the media mistakes. It chided [Gary] Johnson for being wrong, then got it wrong itself. It started by describing Aleppo as the “de facto capital of ISIS.” (That would be Raqqa) - Sophia A. McClennen  (Salon)

People are increasingly pulling out their phone and recording emergency situations rather than providing assistance. Fortunately as of yet they are not recording selfies of themselves next to suffering people as they have done with suffering animals. The Bystander Effect: people are more likely to intervene if there are few or no other witnesses.

Being a muckracking political writer often makes me feel like a custodian in a horse barn, constantly shoveling manure. It’s a messy, stinky job — but on the bright side, the stuff is plentiful, so the work is steady – Jim Hightower

The average family healthcare premium for Americans who receive their healthcare insurance through their employer is $18,412. 83% of US workers have a deductible with an out-of-pocket expense of at least $1,500

Sin’s such a wretched, mean, ignoble little thing. It’s terribly necessary to make it seem grand and important – Agatha Christie – The Pale Horse, 1961

I got into my car

And I drove that car

And now I’m only a speck

            On the horizon

I leave it all behind

Good-bye to all of it

I’m dropping off

            The edge of the earth

I’m packing no baggage

Just put it on my plastic

What I need I can buy

            At Wal-Mart

Headed for the land

            Of milk and honey

Some say you have to die first

But it’s not true

So long as you have

            A hight credit score

Check all three

           

Bureaucracy, however much it serves as the immediate organizer of situations of power and structural blindness, does not create them. Mainly it simply evolves to manage them – David Graeber – Revolutions in Reverse, 2011 p63

The world’s three largest corporate entities have a combined value larger than the entire Chinese economy

Behind every great fortune there lies a crime. – C Wright Mills

The weather continues to be “strange.”

People in these parts have a heaven. They have come to the conclusion that God / Requiring a heaven and hell didn’t need to / Plan two establishments but / Just the one, heaven. It/ serves the unprosperous, unsuccessful / As hell – Bertolt Brecht – Poems p300

When aridity becomes normal it sould no longer be called a drought. Deserts are arid. They are not suffering from a drought.

I must pray you to inculcate upon the overseers that it is not their [the female slave’s] labor, but their increase which is first consideration with us. – Thomas Jefferson, 1819

Having an annual physical exam helps to diagnose new diseases but it don’t correlate with having a better health outcome. That’s because some diseases are analogous to song birds that have flown their cages. It’s already too late to get them back into their cage once they’ve flown. Other disease are like turtles, they are not going anywhere fast. Getting an annual check-up is like treating all disease as if they were rabbits (which can be caught and put back into the hutch). But all diseases are not rabbits. The Society of General Internal Medicine recommends that you go to your doctor only when you have a specific health need, so long as you don’t neglect establishing the doctor/patient relationship itself . Americans currently spend about $10b a year on annual checkups.

I sit by the roadside / The driver changes the wheel / I do not like the place I have come from / I do not like the place I’m going to / Why with impatience do I / Watch him changing the wheel? – Bertolt Brecht – Poems of 1913-1956, 1997 p439

Brain tissue uses 22 times more energy than does muscle tissue – think rather than work your way to weight loss.

Those on the bottom spend a great deal of time imagining the perspective of, and actually caring about, those on the top, but it almost never happens the other way around – David Graeber – Revolutions in Reverse, 2011 p51

Clowns are universally disliked by children. They don’t understand them (that’s OK sonny, I don’t understand em either, maybe it their perpetual smile? Which reminds me of models and spokespersons who always show lots of white teeth – constant smiling and showing lots of white teeth are sure signs of insincerity). They find them creepy. Ronald McDonald ranks 2,109 our of 2,800 celebrities

* Title refers to 2nd Presidential Debate and is from - Bill Moyers and Michael Winship (Sept 19, 2016)

You’re welcome Colin Kaepernick

It rained last night. I had run the Circus Spinner windsock up the flag pole. In a gust, the Spinner

twirls and the colors blur [in a Roy G Biv swirl]. Strong winds last night looped it over the top of the pole. It comes down with the pole in the center of the windsock’s hoop. I had to cut it apart and sew it together again to get it off the pole. Even if I had had a tall ladder, I’m too old to clammer up there on a shaky ladder. If I had been a kid I would have shinnied up. Here’s hoping it will stay togeter in the next big wind. I replace it with one of my two patrotic windsocks (I do this to placate the neighbors). The previous owner always flew the Star and Stripes. I’ve never understood our obsession with the flag. The only other comparison is Nazi Germany. “You’re welcome Colin Kaepernick.”

The ruling ideas of every period are the ideas of the ruling class – Karl Marx

You get better and better at doing less and less until eventually you become ‘excellent’ at doing nothing.

The “middle class” is located at the apex of the American imagination – Stanley Arnowitz – Taking it Big, 2012 p125

Sports don’t see itself (the franchise infrastucture) as just a business – it’s a cultural industry. It’s the same for the fans. A sports team can let you down and it has nothing to do with its performance

As the work sphere declines in meaning and gives no inner direction and rhythm to life, so have community and kinship circles declined as ways of “fixing man into society.” – C Wright Mills – White Collar

Only 5% of students in American higher education today graduated from high school and enrolled in college within a year to attend a four year institution and live on campus?

Modernity knows of no other life but ‘made’; the life of modern men and women is a task, not a given, and a task as yet uncompleted and relentlessly calling for more care and new effort – Zygmet Bauman – Liquid Modernity, 2000 p134

Humans produce 3,000 times more heat energy on average than all the world’s volcanoes

Evil was, perhaps, necessarily always more impressive than good. It had to make a show! It had to startle and challenge! It was instability attacking stability. And in the end stability will win – Agatha Christis – The Pale Horse, 1961

Those with the jobs are the failures of socialization. A new study reports that 20% of CEOs are psychopaths.

Success in our society has to be ratified by publicity - Christopher Lasch – The Culture of Narcissism, 1979 p60

In military terms – a failure is when defense costs more than offense (as when a Patriot missile shoots down an unguided rocket – i.e. a more expensive weapon is used to counter a less expensive one).

Much of what is euphemistically known as the middle class, merely because it dresses up to go to work, is now reduced to proletarian conditions of existence - Christopher Lasch – The Culture of Narcissism, 1979 p68

Real life is not like in the media – there is no rationality to it, its quotidian and so very un-cinematic. Celebrities are newsworthy because they are not real.

Every society reproduces its culture – its norms, its underlying assumptions, its mode of organizing experiences – in the individual, in the form of personality - Michael A Arbib - The Construction of Reality, 1986 p34

Confirmation bias: we look for and accept evidence that supports our existing views and reject any that contradicts them.

Psychosis is the final outcome of all that is wrong with a culture – Jules Henry

Motivated reasoning: we interpret new information in ways that are most sympathetic to our world-view

The political experience of the individual citizen is always mediated by the propaganda machine. In the first place, neither liberalism nor its main alternative, Marxism, takes account of mass media as the provider of a pseudoenvironment filled with stereotypes to fill the gap between the public and the corridors of power… both assert that once people become aware of their interests, they will act rationally – Stanley Arnowitz – Taking it Big, 2012 p136

Backfire effect: when confronted by an opinion, backed up by facts, which contradicts our own, we have a tendency to double down and retreat even more strongly into an entrenched belief.

Emotions provide a natural means for the brain and mind to evaluate the environment within and around the organism, and respond accordingly and adaptively Antonio Damasio – Looking for Spinoza, 2003 p54

On safari near Kenya’s Lake Naivasha, Mark Zukerberg in pursuit of his philosophy of “sustainable living” is killing his own meat rather than buying it in the supermarket. Hurrah for the superrich, the rest of us will have to eat cockroaches and mice to maintain a “sustainable livestyle”

It’s only because they are all so stupid / That a few are needed who are so clever … Could it be that / Governing is so difficult only / Because swindling and exploitation take some learning? – Bertrold Brecht – Poems

American children average only 8 minutes a day in outdoor activity while spending 7 to 8 hours a day sitting in front of some kind of screen. Almost 90% of British fist graders demonstrate some degree of “movement difficulty for their age”. 30% of British children starting school exhibit symptoms typically associated with ailments  (dyslexia, dyspaxia and ADHD) which can be improved with correct levels of physical activity.

In a society in which the dream of success has been drained of any meaning beyond itself, men have noting against which to measure their achievement except the achievement of others - Christopher Lasch – The Culture of Narcissism, 1979 p59

Running and gunning: a police catch phrase for chasing down armed criminal suspects

Much of what is euphemistically known as the middle class, merely because it dresses up to go to work, is now reduced to proletarian conditions of existence - Christopher Lasch – The Culture of Narcissism, 1979 p68

A third of all individuals killed by a stranger are killed by law enforcement.  Three fourths of all homicide victims were murdered by someone they knew

The pursuit of self-interest, formerly identified with the rational pursuit of gain and the accumulation of wealth, has become a search for pleasure and psychic survival - Christopher Lasch – The Culture of Narcissism, 1979 p69

Mountain House, which used to make food almost exclusively for the outdoors market, now does about 50 percent of its business in emergency supplies. The first thing you notice about emergency-storage food is that it’s the only kind you ever find – with the exception of bodybuilder drinks – that actually boasts about how many calories it has.

The more man objectifies himself in his work, the more reality takes on the appearance of illusion - Christopher Lasch – The Culture of Narcissism, 1979 p90

The American Heart Association claims that a healthy person will save $500 a year in medical expenses by walking 30 minutes a day. That comes out to about $2.60 an hour. If you have a heart disease you could save $2,500 making the payback for walking about $13.00/hour.

It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so. – Mark Twain (attributed)

In a celebrity culture normality is whatever the famous say it is

While celebrity culture confers authority in a society utterly devoted to consumerism, it also represents less a mode of false identification than a manufactured spectacle that cheapens serious and thoughtful discourse and put into play a focus on the commercial world of fashion, style, and appearances – Henry A Giroux – America at War with Itself, 2016

Bite-sized information crap-dumplings

I fell down – old men fall down – stepped down on my front steps and my right leg gave out. I fell

forward, doubling back on my knee. My good knee. Oh the pain. Only after two days am I able to drive again. It is difficult to put on my shoes.  I'm using the long handled shoe horn they gave my in the hospital (but it's still hard, the back of the sandle wants to fold under my heel). I don't wear socks, at least not in the summer. So they are no problem. I was also given a device for putting on socks, but I seem to have lost it). There is no swelling or bruising, that’s good. I am using a cane (the one they gave be in rehab) to get around (at least I don't have to use the walker. I'll save that for this winter when there is ice). I don’t trust the right knee – it’s subject to giving out. It's given out twice more. I grit my teeth just thinking about falling (help I've fallen and can't get up - I don't laugh anymore). That’s my good knee, not the one that I had replaced last year (I guess I should say the replacement is the good one now).

Ask the wind, the wave, the star, the bird, the clock, everything that sighs, everything that speaks, ask them what time it is, and the wind, the waves, the star, the bird, the clock will reply; “It’s time to get drunk. So as not, to be one of the martyred slaves of Time, get yourself drunk; get yourself drunk always! On wine, on poetry, on virtue; whatever you like – Charles Baudelaire – Paris Spleen

The US military’s global empire includes more than 539,000 facilities at 5,000 sites covering more than 28 million acres

That’s the thing about final straws—you’re left to assume everything that came before was tolerable - Elizabeth Preza

Only 61% of the murders committed in the US are ever solved. 

It may seem paradoxical that with our increasing understanding of the mutability of scientific theory goes an increased confidence in the predictions we make on the basis of scientific theory – Michael Arbib – The Constitution of Reality, 1986 p6

Only 5% of students in American higher education today graduated from high school and enrolled in college within a year to attend a four year institution and live on campus?

For the Uncreated is that whose beginning does not exist; and Nothing we say, is that whose beginning does not pre-exist. Nothing contains all things – Otto Von Guerricke

Gold is the ultimate ‘pet rock’

Travel is a vanishing act, a solitary trip down a pinched line of geography to oblivion. But a travel book is the opposite. Yet the convention… [is] to start – as so many novels do – in the middle of things, to beach the reader in the a bizarre place without having first guided him there – Paul Theroux – The Old Patagonian Express, 1979 p4

Only about 10% of New York City’s crosswalk buttons actually function. Only about 10% of office thermostats are functional. Some thermostats actually initiate a white noise hum to simulate a fan. We need to have a sense of control even if we don’t actually have control.

19% of US high school graduates cannot read

You can always tell a fugitive by his vagrant expression of smugness – Paul Theroux – The Old Patagonian Express, 1979 p1

A Moscow subway car travels on average 346 miles a day

Anything soft, segmented and bilaterally symmetrical might be called a worm – Stephen Jay Gould – Wonderful Life, 1989 p137

The average middle-class, two-parent family spends about US$3,900 a year on child care for a two-year-old (for those who have a two-year old i.e).

Vulgarity… means no more than a yielding to natural impulses in the face of conventional inhibitions – H L Mencken – The American Language, 1919 p27

The object is to return (from where ever it is that you went) and not say a word. To oblivion and back

When two sides collaborate at the same prophesy, the odds of self-fulfillment goes up geometrically – Todd Gitlin – The Sixties, 1987 p316

The conceptual cannot not push it’s lead horse

Intellectual transformations often remain under the surface. They ooze and diffuse into … consciousness, and people may slowly move from one pole to another, having never heard the call to arms – Stephen Jay Gould – Wonderful Life p79

Americans spend on average 30 minutes a day cooking and 1 hour 14 minutes eating. They spend 28 minutes shopping.

Where my tank passes / Is a street / What my gun says / Is my opinion / And of the whole lot / I’ll spare only my brother / By just kicking him in the teeth – Berthold Brecht – Poems 

We have the country that the 1% want but don’t want to live in

Rarity has one happy aspect – given enough time, it gets converted to fair frequency – Stephen Jay Gould – Wonderful Life p62

I’ve become the old man with the perpetually blinking turn light

I strongly reject any conceptual scheme that places our options on a line, and hold that the only alternative to a pair of extreme positions lies somewhere between them. More fruitful perspectives often require that we step off the line to a site outside the dichotomy – Stephen Jay Gould – Wonderful Life, 1989 p51

Humans produce 3,000 times more heat energy on average than all the world’s volcanoes    

If a book is not a blow to the head, why read it – Philip Roth

Economics is war by other means

Once it had been discovered that labour was the source of wealth, it was the task of reason to mine, drain and exploit that source more efficiently than ever before – Zygmet Bauman –  Liquid Modernity, 2000 p142

The military said Erdogan’s power consolidation justifies the attempted coup; Erdogan said the coup justifies further consolidation of power

The slow miniaturization of our terrestrial habitat’s proportions, through the constant acceleration of all paths, is an insidious form of the desertification of the world – Paul Virillio – City of Panic, 2005 p113

Authenticity is incompatible with capitalism

There is something more important than getting it right: not knowing exactly what getting it right is – James P Carse – Breakfast at the Victory, 2004 p185

The more one relies on individual solutions the more structural problems that get created. The individual is both concrete and abstract and we confuse these two concepts of the individual

The number of non-military federal officers with arrest and firearm authority (200,000+) now exceeds the number of U.S. Marines (182,000). Spending on guns, ammo and military-style equipment at 67 federal agencies – including 53 regulatory, administrative agencies amounted to $1.48 billion between 2006-2014. … In 1996, the Bureau of Justice Statistics officially counted 74,500 federal officers who had arrest and firearm authority. - Adam Andrzejewski

Her name is Tango. Him? Oh, his name is Trail Dog. She likes to fuss over him (the dog, my dog). What a cute little dog (I’m envious). I think she’s cute too. But I’m not going there. I’m not going to say anything. It always gets me into trouble. I notice that her long auburn hair swishs back and forth as she walks. I notice other things too. But I’m not going there. I’m not going to say another word. Trail dog and I go one way. She and Tango go the other.

There is nothing to lose in a Trump presidency that we will not lose sooner or later voting for New Democrats – they are two sides of the same problem - Peter Gaffney

Someone stronger than I am. You have no choice. And here I had thought that you had lost your mind. One night only and gone – manshow. Losing friends is a bitch. But it in not a rage. There is nothing to be done. Who cares. We have to have an ending. The poor old guy, he’s got to die.

Americans don’t feel the same way about money as we do about it. They are not embarrassable on the subject. Money is its own vindication; money is its own just cause – Martin Amis – The Moronic Inferno, 1986

And then he died and I had all these notes. This was my response. He had gotten at something very beautiful. Out of the ballpark you might say. Oh, to work on only one thing. But that is not my carefree option. The imagination seems to just disappear. It gets completely lost. When shall the curtain be lifted. Life is not good enough.

The ideology of personal growth, superficially optimistic, radiates a profound despair, and resignation. It is the faith of those without hope - Christopher Lasch – The Culture of Narcissism, 1979 p51