=jr5d14a Journal from 14 Dec '05 Previous journal: =jr5d09f.txt ================================================================== "I would have wished ... no one would have went to jail." (Patrick Fitzgerald, quoted by Wm. Safire, IHG 12 Dec '05) ------------------------------------------------------------------ Spielberg's Munich should be a total flop. The premise is so astoundingly naive that only a Hollywood zillionaire could have carried it past the first pick_up line at a wine_and_cheese party: that the threat to his own people's survival is merely a personal vendetta. The peronalization of history. One should have been warned by that miserable WWII movie. D_Day reduced to Tom Hanks shooting a a tank. I saw it on Rodos with wraparound sound. Two hours of hi_fi metal treads on rock. Is that culture or is that culture, vulture. Nigel Hamilton, a Faggot -- not our Mr. Hamilton, I hope -- wrote a biography of Montgommery -- maybe the most brilliant and crucial general in history - and could scarcely see farther than "his nobby knees". The image he gives us is of the General teaching a few royal nephews how to use a piss_pot standing up. Put that in your pith helmet and 'grin and bear it'. I've not bought the book of course, but I read a review of it from a scrap of newspaper on the beach on Rodos. Just the thing before watching the sunset and rolling into one's rug for the evening. PVK remarks in passing: Montgomery was great because he involved his lower_level officers in his decisons. ---------------------------------------------------------------- What a typical and astonishingly insular gang of simple_minded anti_intellectual reactionaries are again ruling the USA. Political but not strategic isolationist imperialists. They listen to no_one and take all they can get -- of foreign lands and domestic wealth. They have no shame, and so will not be stopped by exposure. Cheney just tossed Libby overboard to feed that sharks for a little while longer, while he keeps raiding the public till. Bushie is only their front_man, but what a vicious little boy he is. The media are finally acknowleging that it's Cheney who runs the government. ------------------------------------------------------------------ Re: IHT 13 Dec '05 -- Jessica Siegel writing on Christian symbolism in Narnia, et al. The problem with symbolic analysis -- Freudian, or reading Christian mythology into C.S. Lewis, or -- preposterously -- reading Freudian symbolism into 'The Wizard of Oz ' -- is that it presupposes an ontologic hierarchy -- as if the symbolic meaning were in some sense the 'real' meaning, and the literary story just epiphenomal. But one might as well, in some cases better, say that the symbolic meaning is the eopiphenomon, and the literay stor the essence. Or one might say, taking a note from, if not following, PVK -- that it's just a matter of focus. If you are focused on the symbolic level, that is is your ontologic priority, if you are focussed on the literary story, that is your ontologic priority. But I want to say -- Freudian symbology may be epiphenomenal, but Jungian symbology is fundamental. Well, of course that is what a partisan would say. I want to say -- the appeal of Swan Lake, or Firebird, and that they really do enact symbolic truths. I want to say -- Jung delineates the Archetypal level, and as Plato said, that really is a 'higher' or 'deeper' (R. Shlomo Carlebach always said that he was trying to teach "the deepest depths" -- or 'more real' ontologic level. It is surely experienced as such. No doubt merely because that is drawn on larger scale, utilizing a larger portion of our mind, even if the design is quite simple -- I mean, it's like drawing a six_pointed star on a large sheet of paper, or a small one. the larger the drawing, the morea real it seems, even though it's no more complex than the smaller one. and I want to say -- this is because our archetypal perception of the world -- and our Freudian cahtexes, too, and also our formative traumatic experiences gad, I'm coming through as an aud_dicat or whatever they call a self_educated dude who's never studied a thing, but picked up scrips and scraps from everywhere and slap_dash pasted them togethr into a picture that he's trying to flog -- occurs in infancy . I want to add -- in infancy the brain is crudely developed, so we need the whole surface of it to draw just a simple picture -- bad daddy jumped on nice mommy so kill daddy and go back to bed with mommy -- (and PVK says, of analyzing the subconcious, if you pull a fish up from the deep sea and put it onto deck, in the light (of your consciousness) it ain't gonna look its best there -- that is, what you see consciously is quite different from what you perceived subconsciously -- and that is why a good analyst lets the -- patient, really -- work it out for himself in his childhood frame of mind, with all its terrors -- for it is on that level that the catharsis of the cathexis must be enacted. Nigel Hamilton once remarked to me, in passing, when in was just about flipping out, and subsequently did -- oh yes, you see PVK as a father_figure; many men too, though for some reason , few women do so. Well, "thanks a lot" as PVK once said of someone who had disrupted his mid_day "siesta" because she wanted to attract his -- attention - though one assumes that PVK noticed everyone in his class -- every soul, that is. I mean, this is precisely what a pyschotherapist should not do -- it anborts the psychotherpeutic project. So I want to say -- the ontology of it all depends on "where your head is at" . I want to say, the different symbolic levels do not have an essential ontologic place, only an ontologic place within the Weltanschauung of each individual. In 'Love's Body', Normal Old Brown (ok, Norman O. Brown) does write as if the Freudian level were the most real. But maybe that's just because he was a dirty old man. Certainly Riskin seems to assume so. I want to say, if you really were traumatized by walking into your parents bedroom at the wrong time -- maybe daddy slapped you hard , and reduced you to a terror that you never quite escaped, and for which you never forgave him -- then maybe for you, unless you clean up your mind and get on to higher things, the Freudian reality really is the deepest ontologic level. But already I'm denying that, I really do want to say that the Jungian level is more real than the Freudian. And presumably I should want to say that the religious level is more real than the Jungian. But is that just that each takes up larger and larger areas of the mind, and of the soul. I seem to be going around in circles, might's well go back to reading the Op_Ed page of the IHT. Maybe I'll bump into something else to get mad about. What else to I have "but lust and rage to spur me into song." (Yeats). Cha_cha Cha. -------------------------------------------------------------- Re: IHT 13 Dec '05 A dude named Clive D.L. Wynne , who gigs as a Psych Prof at Florida Uni, writes: "In the mid_1920's, the culture wars [ KulturKampf , a uniquely European, and hence Israeli, concept ] were dominated -- as they are today with 'intelligent design' -- by the debate beween creationsims and evolutionary thinking.2 Now that is very helpful. I've been getting the sense that all those attacks in the IHT -- -- which is now the Establishment newspapeer -- no_one wants to admit it, but it has taken over that role from the New York Times, and from all those Brits trying to pose as intellectuals in the Guardian or wherever they are -- -- on 'intelligent design' are not intelleecutal debate -- -- they offer neither scientific nor philoosophic (ie, methodologic, conceputal_analyis) criticism, but merely a pose of well_bred disdain -- but merely a KulturKampf, a joust of intellecutal lifestyles. For we have 'political correctness' and 'social correctness' but also -- -- not really 'intellectual correctness', except during the worst of Stalinist Leninism -- I'd hate to blame Marx for what came of his writings, his was just a good Jewish humanist with hemmeroids -- he even wrote, somewhere, 'the world will suffer for my piles' -- -- a sort of 'ideologic correctness' The Dude goes on to add: "In 1925, John T” Scopes had een found guilty of teaching that manking arose from something oahter than divine creation. but the United Sttes was not the only country passionate about the issue. The young Soviet Union, in its effort to stamp out religion, was determined to prove that men were descended from apes." Amd there you have it. That sort of ideologic hostility to religion seems to survive nowadays only in Israel -- formed by so many progressive refugees from Czarist Russia. And indeed, Israel has always tolerated the Communist Party. It still exists as a faction of about 2 MK's, and is no more than about have Arab. There is still a nominally communist kibbutz, Yad Chanah. Sneh, if I recall, was a highly_respected leader of the Israel Communist party, and I thimk served as a Cabinet Minister for a while. In 1976, I used to lead Debbie by the hand up the stairs to my bedroom, past a poster that said, 'There is only one King Kong.' And there you have it. The way to power in the USA is not to surpass -- Mailer is wrong here ("if you can show that you are less queer than him, and less stupid than him" -- and i think Mailer adds one more parameter -- then, if he is an honest sort, he will think you ought to run for President" ) -- another man's sexuality, but to -- I suuppose the Freudian pun is apt here -- "put it down". Look what they did to Clinton, not that he wasn't a Burger_eating Sleazoid -- I mean, for what he did to that nice Jewish girl, we should -- well, anyhow -- And now we have Bushie, who's so near to a eunuch that he had twins, so he wouldn't have to do it twice. And before that Regan, the Teflon President, made of plastic. And before that Ike, the last of the monogamists (although in fact he wasn't -- -- "Screwdirver?" "Might as well General, I can't get this jeep fixed.") [ I did hear that joke, and it is set in WWII, but I don't know whether or not it was told then. ] Only in the USA are politics subject to sexual hypocricy; in Israel, as someone once pointed out, in one of the English journals, nobody gives a dman. Nor in Europe either, as far as I know. Though Massachusetts seems to elect a succession of homos to the House of (Ill_reputed) Representatives -- brilliant liberals with very high ethics -- Gary Studds, Barney Frank -- Cha_cha Cha. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Spencer P. Boyer, IHT 13 Dec '05, notes tht there is not colour prejudice per se in France, but that the prejudice is cultural, not racial. Indeed, he seems to have encountered negative racial prejudice -- to have been given special status as a black American. And as he notes, that has been the case in Paris since the 1920's. I would note that in Israel, I have found nearly no racial prejudice -- there is a bit against the darker_skinned Moroccans, but practically none that I've noticed against the Yemenites, and none that I've seen against the Ethiopians. Again, there is some negative racial prejudice in Israel -- Israelis, living in a geogrpahically and culurally confined environment, relish anything exotic, including persons of different skin_colour, if such persons show an underlying affection for the land culture and people of Israel. He writes, "I was 'ethnic', but I wan't an imigrant with a culture and cusotms that were so differnt to be feared." He adds: -"freance doesn't have a race problem. Itt has a problem embracing the culture and customs of its immigrants and their children Affirmative action might help, as it has in [ the [forcibly] United States of]American. But ecuas ethe issue is culture, not color, the real solution for France and other European coutnreis is much more challenging. Europeans must leanr to understand and appreciate -- and ultimately, emhrace, -- the cultural riches of their immigrants ... Andin doing so, they may een discoer that some of those rihes are as juch European as they are Fafrican or Arab. Cultural prejudice can be fueld by differnte types of ear. In Europe it's largely a fear of chang; in the United States, of terrorsim." Well, I haven't been back to USA in almost 20 years. So I don't know if there really is a popular fear of terrorism, or whether this was just an excuse by the Cheney_Bush administration to enact repressive policies. I certainly would not say that the USA is 'at war with terrorism'. The USA suffered one -- admittedly horrendous -- terrorist attack. There have been no terrorist 'incidents' since then. Israel is subject to a strategic campaign of terrorism. This is a very low_tech tactic, all it takes is a manipulatieable idiot with a few kilo of old nuts_and_bolts, anything small that will explode, and a radio detonator, preferably remote_controlled just in case the mule experiences a last_minute revelation. If the USA was being attacked by terrorist, it probably would have noticed that by now. And one could only add that the problem of cultural prejudice in France is amplified, and most likely precipated the recent riots, by that peculiar French ideology, apparently the last leftover from their ghastly Revolution, of cultural homogenity. The ban on schoolgirls wearing headscarves was a blatant and preposterous manifestation of that, and most likely was a major causal factor of those eriots, even though the French Muslim establishment never made an issue of it. I suppose they had somehow been bought off. And indeed, the riots, which must be seen as a political protest, not as mere anarchy, came from the street, not from the Establishment. (In contrast, in Israel, the Palestinian Establishment essentially controls "the street" (even if it did not do so at the outset of the intifada), the lumpenproletariat who are the cannon fodder of the intifada. ------------------------------------------------------------------ Life is like a trip on a train that sits in the station. You think you're moving but you ain't gone nowhere. (Campra, 14 Dec '05 ) ----------------------------------------------------------------- Jodi Wilgoren wrote an exceptional article in the IHT 13 Dec '05 on a typical, decent, poor black family displaced from New Orleans by Huricane Katrina. Actually the first good article I recall reading in the IHT. She let her subjects speak for themselves, without honkifying neither their ideas nor their diction. So the essential goodness as well as some of the weaknesses of those people came through, and the rather banal devestation of their lives. This is a sketch of poor southern people in the USA that invites comparison with 'Let us now praise famous men' (which I no longer have at hand, and actually never read -- just looked through some of the pictures. Agee, it was. ) ----------------------------------------------------------------- Opening lines we never quite got past: IHT 13 Dec '05 (Moerk): "Tommy Lee Jones started thinkt aoubt directin what would become his first featue on a deer hunt deep in the unforgiving landscape of West Texas." Unforgiving to the deer. ------------------------------------------------------------------ It is a simplistic bathetic sentimentality that seems to be the defining characteristic of the Bushie tyranny. ------------------------------------------------------------------ Now if I were remaking King Kong, I would have a scene of him climbing to the top of the World Trade Center. A plane approaches -- he reaches out and grabs it in his leftt hand. And then holds it aloft, not knowing what to do. Then another plane approaches. He reaches out and grabs it in his right hand. Then, wih difficulty and a few bold jumps, he manages to descend, still clutching the planes. Surrounded by an army of military vehicles, he walks over to the Hudson River and puts them down, very gently, just offshore -- and rips off a pier or two and pushes it out to the plane as a walkway. The passengers emerge. Then the terrorists emerge, but are immediately pointed out -- maybe by a small boy -- and taken into custody by naval commandos in hi tech boats, etc. King Kong walks back, makes his way to the Empire State Building, and climbs it, where he meets Faye Wray. Then the plot resumes. ------------------------------------------------------------------ They make much of the Lion in Narnia being a -- Christ_figure, not a Jesus figure -- for as Wittgenstein prophecied, "If a lion would talk, we could not understand him" -- (PI, with a bit of spin). But really -- this is almost like that Oberlin undergraduatae paradoy about Grape Christ, the Great Ape brother of Jesus -- who is crucified with a sign, 'Wine from this Grape" -- I mean, the whole crucifixtion/resurrection/deification bit is so preposterous that it really can't take any more -- a lion on the cross -- with a special sedula for his tail -- I mean, for this you gave up mythologic polytheism -- ---------------------------------------------------------------- A few degrees below zero Centigrade, wind gusting to maybe 45 MPH -- no day to walk down to Olivone. I bareely go out the door to piss. 20 below Centigrade is also 20 below Fahrenheit. ------------------------------------------------------------------- I see that Spiegelberg's Munich opens on Christmas Day. Perfect. The quintessence of interfaith tastelessness. He sets aside loyalty to his own people, but then, instead of at least being a proper turncoat, he pisses on the Christians too. Correction: It opens 26 December. Boxing Day; the Feast of St. Stephen. What a present. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Ostensibly, imprisonment is merely the sequestering of dangerous persons until they are no longer a danger to others. In fact, imprisonment , for most healthy adults, is an extraordianrily cruel and subtle form of punishment. The Jewish biblical punishment of whipping, encoded and circumscribed in the Talmud Tractate 'stripes' -- and also circumscribed in the Chumash -- it is specified that the maxiumum numbeer of lashes that can be given is 49 "lest your brother become loathsome in your sight" -- that is, that whipping must stop short of permenant injury. George Bernard Shaw wrote a booklet, "The crime of imprisonment." The more humane prison systems -- not including the USA, in its hygienic hypocricy (as Henry Miller notes) -- allow conjugal visits. It is a principle of Israeli penology that every man has the right to procreate. So, an interview in Matin quotes some clown named Rocancourt, released after serving a 5 year prison sentence, as armarking that "Je n'ai pas retrouvee le sommeil. en taule, on ne dort pas vraiment ..." And yet, one would have supposed that sleep is a fundamental human right. He also notes that the paramount rule among prisoners is mutual respect. A desperate and gallant attempt to re_assert human dignity within a system designed to destroy it. En arrivant a Honfluer, la ville de botre enfance, vou vous Etes rendu dans une Eglise. Dieu est-il impoprtant pour vous?" "C'est mon ami. Il ma crEE. C'est le seul quie ne ne trompe pas --------------------------------------------------------------- In the concluding 1_page 'Essay' in TIME Dec 12 '05, Arthur Sullivan, opposing what is popular regarded as the Vatican's ban on gay priests, writes: "What the new Pope has doen is conflate a sin with an identity." This is similar to Wittgenstein's point, recounted by Malcolm in his 'Wittgenstein: a Memoir' -- Malcolm had remarked to Wittgesntein to Wittgenstein, 'The English character would not stand for that' and Wittgenstein responded, 'Haven't I taught you anything.' That is, Wittgenstein would have regarded the noton of 'character', at least when used a a collective -- 'the British character' or, here 'the homosexual [ character } ' as a false re_infication. That is expressed in Wittgenstein's -- aphorism, really -- in PI: "An 'inner' state stands [ logically ] in need of outward criteria." For W., the notion of an 'inner' state -- and he puts the term 'inner' in 'scare_quotes' -- is meaningless; predication is made on the basis of the applicability of criteria, not by deduction for an assumed 'inner' state. And of course that is a point made in the history of U.S. philosophy by pragmatism, and derivatively, in P.W. Bridgman's 'operationalism' [ expressed in his book, 'The Way Things Are.'] So Sullivan writes: "In that past, all that mattered for a priest, as fara as sexual orientation was concerned, was celibacy. If a priest kept he voews, it didn't eally matter if he were refusing to have sex sith a man or with a woman. All that mattered was that he kept his voews and had sex with no one." Now Pope Ratzinger came to power as a politician, and this flap about homo priests -- the term 'gay' should be restored to hiis original meaning, and predicated only of children at a Maypole picnic before the ice- cream runs out -- was in response to the recent pedastry scandals. But Ratzinger, unlike his predecessor -- who I hope will be discovered to have sired a child in Poland -- which in my view would make him more not less qualified for canonization -- touches only awakwardly upon the real world. Homos are not more likely that heteros to bugger the altar boy. The attraction is not that he is boy, much less that he is some sort of underdized premature man -- but that he is available. As Shrager said [ well fantasized saying] , when asked of his 'sexual preference': "Women for childbearing, a small boy for convenience, and a goat for sheer delight." Well, so much for religion today. ------------------------------------------------------------------ I've read Spielberg's apologia for his film 'Munich' in TIME 12_Dec_'05 . It's disappointingly trivial and banal. Gevalt, it is the cover story of TIME 12 Dec '05 -- 'Speilberg's Secret Masterpiece '' -- mazaltov, screen it on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel -- -- and TIME runs his earnest face as its ccover story, with the lead_in "So sensitive ..." -- referring not (though that's the implication) to Spielberg, but to the politics of the movie, not that anybody gives a damn -- the JP notes it only in passing, with an article by Calev ben David, slightly camp as usual, to his buddy Steven saying, you seem to have forgotten that there really are bad guys in the world -- And We must break this cycle of vengeance, and stop hating each other, and sit down and talk to each other, and then maybe there will be peace. As if terrorists were merely acting_out personal frustrations, and the whole Israel__Arab conflict were not a minimal_intensity proxy_war directed by various Arab secret_services , but merely a sort of playground fight between overgown kids. --------------------------------------------------------------- TIME seems now almost trivail, much less than Newswek. Shell Oil has an advertising supplement in which they have slected 12 finalists to compete for a prize for a project "demonwtating innovation, economic sustainability, envrionmental relevance, and, importantly, community benefit." The prize, whic will be selected by a vote of those who respond to Shell's advertisments, is $20,000. Shell likely spent ten times that on this advertising supplement. One finalist, a project to protect poisonous snakes in India, encourages tribesmen to milk them for the venom, which can be used as an antidote for snakebite. The snakes are then released enharmed. Up to 20,000 Indians a year die from snakebite. But now, thanks to this project, they may do so in an ecologically correct context. ------------------------------------------------------------------ As for Israel and the 'Peace Process' , I think this is a WYSIWYG situation -- "What you see is what you get ". I think we will not have much more nor less peace than we have now and have had, except for the wars, since the first returning Jews were attacked by the bandits of Abu Ghosh. Just continual, intermittent low_grade terrorist harassment from those jealous of what we have built, who claim to right, in the name of nationalistic self_determination, to take it without working. ----------------------------------------------------------------- I live by a bare lot. Not many plants growing there now. Might's well weed around them. :The Poet sends out Christmas cards ------------------------------------------------------------------ Newsweek 12 Dec '05 (Jimmy Langman) has an article about Evo Morales, a candidate for President (Dec. 18 election) of Boliva, who seems too good to be true, although the hostility of the Bushies to him gives one hope. I had read nothing of him in the IHT. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Newsweek 12 Dec '05 -- Tara Pepper on Schizophrenia So now they are saying it is not an inevitable genetic disease, and not an unavoidable consequence of a neuro_chemical imbalance, but rather, the reaction to childhood trauma, especially childhood sexual and/or physical abuse. And so the anti_schizophrenic drugs are not sufficient treatment. (I do not know if they have yet concluded that those drugs may not be necessary.) The writer notes: "While schizophrenia is hte product of a complex interplay between a host of environmental and genetic factors, it seems that 'genes do not cause the outcome, but identify those who might be succeptible to the envronmental risks' says Dr. Mary Clarke, a pyschiatric researcher at Ireland's Royal College of Surgeoons." Well, that is a more sophisiticated notion of casuality than the usual linear model. But it's still simplistic. First of all I want to say: Whenver you see unreasonable, abberant, illogial action, look for 'the cause behind the cause' (Sufi dictum, often invoked if not quoted -- I forget if the used that exact phrase -- by PVK) -- look for the reason, the logic, the funnction of it. Now then: Behind the variety of abnoraml psychological behavior that is loosely termed 'schizophrenia', we have a schema -- a'constellation', if you must use that metaphoric term -- of factors, each studied in a diferent methodology -- genetic makeup which will produce, or have a greater probablility of producing, under cerain conditions of physicial, physiological, situational, and or emotional stress, certain chemical -- abnormal compositions, if not necessrily precisely 'imbalances' capabilities -- these will be largely a function of education, social upbringing, etc. they are also a matter of wealth, socio_economic position, personal environment (presence or lack of friends, lovers, spouse, dependents; and the question of how well or badly those are functioning -- whether they produce or reduce stress, whether they create non_overwhelming challenges for growth= strength/weakness of character some will rise to challenges, some need challenges to grow, some will be weakened, sometimes to the point of incapacitation (catanonia, at its most extreme) by challenges the logical structure of the situation personally, I most often break down in a 'double_bind' -- the Buridan's ass situation, where one must choose between two alternatives, both unacceptable -- the donkey is placed between two equidistant bales of hay, and starves to death -- this is also the theme of that ghastly story and movie, 'Sophie's choice', where a mother must choose between being killed or makinga decision that will cause her child to be killed -- one can certainly not here term it a 'sacrifice', there's nothing sacred about it -- for sanctification can only be done freely -- present stressful situations everyone knows that a breakdown is ofen precipitated by a stressful event in the present past traumatic events -- taht is the childhood sexual and physical abuse spoken of in this article incidientally, it is because the genetic factor is causal but not causal in a linear way, that there is both the temptation to, and opposition to, genetic screening as a criterion for deciding who to hire -- and the same would apply to neuro_physiologic testing -- and this is why all those psychiatric pills -- not including the zombie pills, which are merely behavior_repressants, and the happy_pills -- the old_time (1970's) amti_depressants. which are merely mood_overrides -- though a mood_override tends to create the context for more_nearly socially acceptable, if not better, behavior -- The New Yorker might run a serious of cartoons -- famous painters if they had taken Elovil -- or musicians, or writers -- Well, maybe this is enough of a sketch for now. At the cost of coming out elitist, I would like to note that the criteria for treating exceptional people -- though the exceptionality may be merelyy a function, not of inherent ability, but of education, opprtunity to have become an artist (literary or real), socio_econoic position, etc. -- should be different than the criteria for treating proles -- the interchangeable throway cannon_fodder who run our widgit_factories and the Bushie Administration. etc. -- the folks who make globalism great -- -------------------------------------------------------------- globalism is a matter of undermining and destroying the working class -- the lower_middle__class , the blue_collar__class -- of one's own nation, to empower the lower class of foreign nations -- though the plutocrats skim and skam off most of the profits -- JFK used to say, "a rising tide lifts all boats" to which I add, but not those stuck in the mud and I would say -- a tsusammi lifts all boats, too or better -- it swamps the boats in your harbour, and lifts those in somebody else's -- So of course the labour unions are opposed to globalism. as noted, the benefits are however felt by lower and middle class consumers in one's own country. They can now afford to buy lots of good_looking made_in_China ripoffs at WalMart, with their unemployment check. In the good old days, the 1950's, we used to call that 'Jap_Crap' Before the Japanese rebuilt their economy and went hi_tech ---------------------------------------------------------------- Well, Cookie or Tookie or whatever his name was is just another piece of mouldering meat now, who a few days ago was still a man, and maybe more aware and alive than most -- and Schwarznegger, that mononstrostiy faggot who will never be a man, goes on , much good it will do him on his road to Sheol -- The Governor read off the gory details of his crime -- as if to kill a man brutally were a greater crime than that quick antiseptic injection -- which adds mockery to murder, for one can udnerstand being killed by rage or hate, but not by dispassionate technocracy -- and that was an aspect of the evil of Nazi_ism, though their sadism over_rode it. ------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------- An awesomely inept article by Jerry Adler on Darwin, in NewsWeek 12 Dec '05 -- Regrettably, it is difficult critically to discuss the theory of eveolution without eventually having to think and write -- for me it "boils down" to the same thing, though the writing comes first -- about, pardon the expression, sex -- sso I'll dump this scction down at the end of the CAVEAT TABBYCAT botdoc -- There it goes, along with poor old Lucifer, who only wanted a somewhat less yucky Intelligent Design -- [this article continued, with this lead_in, below ] [ oops, there is no CAVEAT TABBYCAT Appendix to this =jr05d14*. -- that was the previous =jr . This is botdoc. Oh well. Some weeks it's just all dirty, more or less. In Israel they object, the Russians only take showeres once a week, and don't put on clean clothes every day. Mazaltov, in Israel you can dry clothes in less than an hour, most days, except winter in Jerusalem. I don't know how it is in Russia, but here, if I wash clothes and hang them up in winter, they'll stay frozen for 2 months. And something similar if I take a shower. And you don't precisely wear silk pyjamas to walk out the door and piss in the middle of the night. Not barefoot anyhow. The rabbis say, live in no place where a dog does not bark. (Some say, live in no house that does not have a cat.) I say, live in no place where you cannot step outside your front door to piss. But what has that to do with evolution. Darwin "sailed [ on the Beagle, sent to chart the oast of South American ] "straight into the 21 Century" -- heck, for most of the past 50_plus years it was by no means a a sure bet that there would be one -- and now this dude seys we jumped right over the 20th_Century, Limited as it may have been, but quaint -- and that Drawin is just a prologue to the KulturKampf against 'creationsim' and 'intelligent design' -- and then he adds, "Sigmund Freud and Karl Marx are in eclipse today" -- to which Shakespeare would say, and which phlegmatic earth or blazing sun now does block their light, and when and on whom will it again shine -- We learn too that "Darwin has replaced that other bearded Victonrian icon, Charles Dickens, on the 10_pound note" Now if that ain't intellectual history, what is -- Great Beards of the 19th Century -- I'm hitching through Kansas, wearing my grey_flannel suit to blend in, in 90_degree heat , just after the end of my freshman year at Oberlin College, and this State Trooper stops me, and being a Man of the People says, What's this Beard Bit , and I answer 'Oh -- School Play'. Me and Abe Lincoln. I mean that was not precisely the time_and_place in which to discuss the Beat Movement, nor even trditional Jewish customs -- this is summer 1959 -- I Like Ike -- I am not clear why in this Battle of the Loaf and Fishes -- all the intellectual sophisitical of -- -- buffons jousting with blunt bludgeons, in the detail of of a painting by Hiereonymous Bosch if memory serves, but I thnk more prominently in NBreughel -- -- Man, they invented Hypertext just for SSteve, and now I don't have an Internet connection to us eit, because the Martinet packed up the Camp Laptop to sit 6 months in temperature cold enough to make silicone ice_cream -- just to be sure I wouldn't break it or sell it to the Gypsies before the Staff and Customers came back to use it next year, if there is a next year -- for them, for me, for anyone -- -- nobody says, though everyone knows -- wwe even say it in modern orthodoxy, and I think the ultra_orthodox do too -- -- the Divine Plan, the Tao, works itself out through natural science -- albeit maybe with a bit of the old Hidden Hand pushing it into the right channels at crucial junctures -- -- that's redundant, all junctures are cruucial, cruxes, crossroads, by definition -- though everyone knows who ever even wrote a BASIC program, some junctures is more crucial, bigger Cruxes, higher_level branch_offs, than others -- -- or to put the metaphor in front, as telleology, purpose, rather than behnd, as 'cause' -- and that really is the shift in focus from 'creationsim' to 'intelligent design' -- creatism is pushing from behind, intelligent design is inducing from in front -- the difference betweem a guru, who makes you do things for your own good, and a Pir, who offers you an example but leaves you free to reject it -- though that's a bit too glib and simplisitc too -- Well, it seems to be gusting up to about 50 MPH, and with the temperature below freezing, that's a bit risky to walk in for a few hours -- maybe I won't mail my Christmas Cards and post my latest PVK files today -- not to mention the complexities of finding a bus back uphill that isn't packed with all those chemical_additive hyperactive schoolkids in flu season -- there being no more flu immunization shots to be had, even for us elders -- for whom Switzerland is now Bogarting tthem I'm not quite sure - - the Swiss, I assume -- I mean, anyone whho has a Family Physician can discreetly ask for one, at least when all the furor has died down, no pun intended -- but no Walk_Ins please -- This Turkey goes on to say -- oh PerOration -- "the lineages of lving things change, diverge and go extinct over time, rather than papear suddenly in immutable form, as Genesis would have it" A Yahoo looks at the Bible. A 'lineage' is somthing in the past, it is a fixed fact of history, so one can not say that it can 'diverge' or 'go extinct'. (Except in the USSR, which invented the UnPerson.) But why be picky. The point is, the Chumash , the first few chapters of Bereshit in particular, was not written by Tenured Professors, so they used a bit of old_fashioned metaphoric shorthand. And also, they had no microscopes next to their cunniform clay tablets and papyrus. So the account of evolution given in the Bible applies to the Age of Man, and to Middle_Range. And for that it's accurate enough. There has been no noticeable evolution in man that can see, nor in the animals he eats and exploits. And the Dinosaurs do not do a walk_on in Genesis. The cockroach hath we always with us. But who knows what he did before he came to dinner. Or cares. be real. The Bible is for living man. Now. Although those soi_disant lovers of science, and they can't even look at the Bible in its historical_cultural context. I mean, all this anti_creationist KulturKamp is little more than a setting up and knocking down of strawmen. They don't even have the grace to cite and quote their opponents, except maybe a few of the true Hayseeds. briefly interviewed on their way of the Saloon en route to to the nearest fencepost. ------- 07:30, light enough for Shaharit -- light enough "to tell a dog from a wolf" -- the Rabbinute most likely set Shaharit 15 minutes earlier, but they daven indoors under electric light -- them that ain't been eaten by wolves, of course -- I mean, the first bartender who said "last call" was a wolf at daybeak -- Blowing fairly steady at more or less 30 MPH -- about 6 degrees below zero Centigrade -- have a half_shot of Bombay Gin ( Saphire, but what can one do), fry up a few of the frozen fish-sticks on the porch for breakfast -- ran out of last week's packs of airbread, so no toast with butteer_and_honey today -- and wait 'till next week to go to town -- --------------- "So nigh that glory is, and man so close to one another, When duty whispers low 'thou must' the Youth replies, 'Ya mudda'." (That was a a poem they taught us in English Class of 8th Grade at Belmont Junior HIgh School in 1954-55 , and that was my variant at the time. ------------------------------------ I mean, even in MudPuppy Arkansaw they don't say that Creation happened with a 40_hour week (they're Union_busters down there, so it ain't a 35_hour week) LIke, ain't no reason a good Bible Boy can't say, each of them_then days was what we nowadays calls a Era -- the Pleistocene, or Pisstocene, or whatever you call it -- And ain't no way one can't can't say, when the good lord created man 'HE' -- or might just as well or better say, 'She' -- unless some old shut_out invented paternalistic monothesism just to get back at the chicks -- did so via Evolution -- I mean, we ain't precisely talking PlayDough Modelling here, even if they sort of make it sound that way -- and the Indians do too, but with more grace and humbleness -- more natural -- And anyone who laugs at my jokes don't know what I'm talking about. Agnieska never did. But she does have a fine mind. Still blowing strong. "There's whiskey in the jar." (Kilgarry mountain, Irish folksong) We learn that Darwin enjoyed hunting 'common armadillo's" Gvalt. A sport second only to Stalking the Giant Marshmellow. Well, 'survival of the fittest' is a truism, but it don't go far, unless you bend it to fit whatever happened to have occured. I mean, how did man ever last so long with his balls out there for anyone to kick. And even put conveniently at the perfect height for an easy shot with maximum trajectory. I mean, if the theory of evolution entails maximum combinations over infinite time -- and if it don't, then some further explanatory mechamism is necessary to expalin the limitation of options -- then there must have been an offshoot branch of man that wore its balls behind its ear, and by rights they should have kicked the heck out of homo sapiens and be us today, if the birds didn't get them first of course. Oy, and this was supposed to be the clean part of my journal -- I'll have to dump it back onto the bottom, wishing I had a freundin to whom I could do the same. And while we're on the subject of survival of the fittest wouldn't a truly intelligent design have made the chicks a bit hornier. And kept them from getting fat and floppy for as long as they could soon make babies -- after that let them go ugly, might be best for all concerned . And now I see I'm conflating rather than counterposing 'suvival of the fittest'' and 'theory of intelligent design'. Well, duh now; I mean would we call it an intelligent design if the end result was Survival of the Shleppers. (Well, as one used to sometimes say in bed, 'Don't answer that.') Ok, I've come to the end of that article. It is followed by an illustrated full_page feature of a puppy in a cashmere sweater, upon which I think I do not need to comment even though I just did. Tell Russell to take his Theory of Types and put it back up on the shelf. The next page makes passing reference to cashmere being woven from "high quaslity goad short hairs", which does give new depth to the old expression, "got it by the short hairs". Gvalt, two pages of this high_production_cost__mega_circulation mag given over to cashmere. Cool it about global warming. ---------------------------------------------------------------- And finally a "Last Word" by Shimon Peres, we should live so long. Peres conludes with a rather apt quote: " Optimiest and pessimists die the same way. They just live differnetly. I prefer to live as an optimist." ================================================================ Notes on storeis in Terry Carr, The Best Science Fiction of the Year #7 , Ballentine Books, New York, 1978 The year in question is 1977. The editor, in his introduction, distinguishes amongst, "stories with detailed explications of the scientific extrapoltion behind them ...fast_acdtion adventure stories set on other words problems , or allegories of The Huan Condition revealed in readcially different future worlds ... " I'd comment: [ yup, I typo'd 'commend' for 'comment' -- an easy phonetic error, but neither an easy keyboard nor an easy conceptual error to make -- just one more indication that when I tyype my thougts, I go thorugh a silente but quaisi_auditory vocalization -- I suppose that's what they mean by 'sub_vocal speech' -- tho that has a physiologic correlate, not merely a psychologic meaning ] that metholdolic explanations of the explications of them extropolations would be welcome, though that would have to be done in footnotes as for all them allegories -- I guess that's at least like what Wittgenstein was sketching when he imagined 'very different facts of our natural history' -- He also notes, 'warnings of ecological disaster' (his word was doom, but diaster's better -- de_astera, that which was not what was supposed ot have happened -- in the Divine Plan, as a matter of fact, unfashionable as that theologic notion may be in a soi_pensant democracy though he does not mention warnings of military 'Mutual Assured Destruction' -- -- the writers always suppose some sort off misereable post_Holocaust world, though it would seem that, although there would be survivors of a nuclear war, their infrastructure would have been reduced below the threshhold of sustainability, so soon the world will all be Cockroach City once again -- the cockraoch, sir, is your true survivvor -- and then adds "I do my best to aovid preprponderances of 'downbeat' storeis, tales of romantic love or the ennui of immortals, storesis based biology, psychology, physics, or Zen Buddhism. Well, that's quite a lot of preponderances to avoid Actually one of the best sci-fi stories I've read involved a guy with the 10 Oxherding pictures of Zen tattoo'd on his "fanny" -- the premise was that helium, not hydrogen had become the dominant element in our system, so transportation was by dirrigible -- and there was a very eleaborate construct of traveling back the exponential curve of the Big Bang to make that arrangement -- within a commerical context of course -- amd fine shifts of perspectives within perspectives, I sort of 20th_century multi_dimension of what REb Nachman does -- Nowadays, it seems that much of sci-fi is horror stories of sort or another. I do try to avoid those, as PVK says, who needs to muck up one's inner systems with all that guck (tho PVK does not use that phraseology, Molly G.) Mostly all I can get here are books from the used bookstore, about 25 years old. Didn't find much or Israel, neither. So I'm not getting all the new computer fables and visions they must be writing. did once read one, involving rescuing a counter_cultural prisoner -- Deirdre, if I recall, a sort of Queen oof Graffitti -- from a prison_capsule on what seems like Riker's Island, New York -- with the help of a Boy Ayatolla -- it involved suborning Ducky Linkletter, host of the popular payoff show, "Bucks Boy, Bucks" OK, so let's see what we got us here -- 'Lollipop and the Tar Baby', by John Varley -- involving a very duplicitous black hole -- deceptions within deceptions, a rather ingenious if unpleasant interweaving of illusion and reality -- I don't know how to digest it and would rather not try -- Stardance, by Spider and Jean Robinson, is a very beautiful fable, worked out in some detail, of dance as a medium for communication with alien intelligence -- it would seem that Jean Robinson, a dancer and choreographer, is the one who formed this story, and that Spider Robinson just wrote it -- so one would want to read more by Jean Robinson, not that he's not, no doubt, a nice guy -- 'The House of Compassionate Sharers' by Michael Bishop I did not read -- -- it's about a resynthesized man who thinnks of himself as a machine, as so has difficulty regaining a phsysical attraction to his wife -- as an intermediate step, he was trying to learn to love a robot, or some such, when I dropped this story as a metaphor for homos -- I'm a homophobe and proud of it. I'm also a flu_phobe . They're both contagious. Like I always say, 'Humani sum et in mihi nihil humanorum alienum puta' Everyone knows, us empathics gotta be careful who we go near. The Screwfly Soluton, by racoona Sheldon, who is James Triptree, Jr. -- a leading writer -- but also I didn't finish this one, it posits that aliens who want to take over the earth as soon as they can exterminate humanity, do so by causing men to go mad and sadistically kill women -- of which I do in detail need to read, so I didn't -- even if it's cute to suppose that you could do so just by finding and modifying a crucial gente -- nowadays they'd say, it was all done with genetically modified granola -- ---------- Aztecs, by Vonda N. McIntire -- an ex_geneticist chick -- it's very good, both as a psychologic tale -- she somehow depicts sex, rather in passing, from a woman's perspective, realisitcally and without prurience -- it's essentially an exploration, in detail, of the psychologic implications of living with an artificial heart -- or rather, without a heart, doing it alll by subconscious and conscious bio_feedback -- and what the implications are of essentially the elimination of human bio_rhythms -- -------------- Tropic of Eden, by Lee Killough is preposerously bad -- A muddled moralistic fable of Lezzie love -- or rather, possessive infaturation -- with the protagoniste implausibly cast as a man -- ok ok, you can keep your job with a PTA, but the details of the attraction are all Lez, not hetero -- the narrator walks into a room, notices a beautiful young woman , a clone of the one 'he' is infaturated with, doing her gymnatics nude, with incredible grace, and takes no further notice of all that, as it goes on in the background. Then the plot turns on a Teutonic mad doctor with a secret Swiss clinic where he does -- gasp -- brain translplants. Pass me a bananna. ---------------- The Family Monkey, by Lisa Tuttle Lisa Tuttle writes masterfully and with the self_assurance to disregard conventional styling. Her sketch of the tyrannical old Texas father is very good. And the concluding sentence is as good as that in Trufautt's 'Jules et Jim'. But I was discomfitted by the scene in which the protagoniste gives her cherry to the E.T.. I found that quite preoposterous, especially the implication that extra_terrestrials are somehow better at it than you and I -- or anyhow, than you. ** All modern literary style is a footnote to Monty Python. ** [ After Whitehead(?): All phillosophy is a footnote to Plato. ] -------------------- A Rite of Spring, but Fritz Lieber -- A very sweet romance about an innocent young man who falls in love with a Pythagorean number, who comes to him as a rich intelligent and highly literary young woman. They make love, escape in the nick of time, and live happily ever after in one of Plato's eternities, The End. ---------------------------- In an afterward, 'The Year in Science Fiction', by Charles N. Brown, , Anne McCaffrey gets a passing reference -- though I would say, unchic as heroic fables may be, that she is one of the few writers worth reading by anyone who is striving to become a better person. 1977 was the year of Star Wars, of which I remember only the JAPs industrial_strength hair_dryer, which she ordered the hero to have carried across the desert -- no, that must have been a parody, not the original: one finds it so hard nowadays to remember the distinctions, at least with that movie, nowadays. All those latex aliens in a nightclub. Tolkien's 'The Stillmarillion', is described as 'a Middle_Earth Bible'. I suppose I'd have to read it to find out what was meant by that. The first printing ran up to a million copies in response to demand. 37,000 copies is considerd quite a good publication. Hardovers were running around 9 dollars that year, and paperbacks about 2 dollars, with "the average paperback is selling about 50,000 copies". Well, I guess royalities dont run much over 6 percent. So I might use those figures in my argument that there's no money to be made by Bogarting the (improperly_claimed, in my opinion) copryrights to works of R. Shlomo Carlebach. As I say, I'd need to know the number of copies sold of 'Shlomo's stories', the cover price, and the percentage of cover price paid in royalties. Becuse my guess it that that book is one of the bst sellers in English Judaica, not counting the standard reference texts. And since it appeared under exceptionally favorable circumstances -- a great cover photo, exceptional layout, and the fact that R. Shlomo had just died -- I doubt that any other book, particular of R. Shlomo teachings, would do nearly as well. So I would like to argue, and have repeatedly suggested, that there ain't enough fish in that mud_puddle to go to Court about. OK, that wraps up this Review. What I miss though is all those whimsical tales of alternative universes. I mean, one hardly ever finds humour and whimsy in sci_fi anymore. Just a lot of yuck. ================================================================ Re: TIME 12 Dec '05 (Christine Gorman) There is a bit of bullshit in this face transplant flap. I mean, why precisely are we supposed to care. First of all, if the old broad tried to kill herself, let her live with it. Or else, turn her loose for any medical experiment you want. I mean, what is this, no_fault__suicide. As for psychological risks -- heck, one runs a psychologic risk whenever one picks up the telephone (which is why I don't have one -- letters and Email allow you a time_delaay in both pickup and response. Some letters I don't open without a shot or two of gin -- one beforehand for insulation, and a ssecond one on the desk for contingencies. The great advantage of Email is that one can re_spin the received message to take out, or rather, ignore, any unwanted implications. So what I respond to is really my rewrite of what I was sent. Of course one can't get away with that if one quotes the original in one's response. Though I don't see why one shouldn't instead doctor it up a bit, and quote the rewrite. But I digress. The chick who wrote this bit opens by saying, "So much of how we see ourselves- -- and how other people see us -- is bound up in our faces, that the idea of transplanting one' person's visage onto another seems not just improbably but bizaree." I dunno -- seems to me that most of us -- or most of you, anyhow - - modify your faces daily, even more oftenn that your erstwhile private parts. "She wakes up -- she makes up" Or shaving every day. Even coming one's hair, which I hear some folks still do. "My face I don't mind it, because I'm behind it; it's the people in front that I jar." (I was taught that in my childhood.) In any new dwelling, I first take down the mirrors. PVK says: A mirror is the crudest of feedback devices. He also says, Most people do not like you to -- impose your gaze upon their face, I think was the sense of what he said. Us Sufis is taught to offset the glance, so you don't focus on the physical face -- except in rare moments of genuine intimacy, emotional or spiritual -- but rather, see it only as a blur, and so are more receptive to perception of the 'eternal countenance'. The writer adds, "the woman might have sustained her injries during a suicide attmept in which the dog apparently bit her in an effort to wake her up" Bullshit. An animal might paw, lick, or maybe even nip an unresponsive master in order to try to rouse him, but scarcely chew up his/her face. Some other idiot said that this is understandable, for a dog is a carnivore , and confronted with an inert body, might mistake it for supper. So I suppose sound sleepers should keep only goldfish for pets. But that's bullshit. Most carnivores do not eat carrion. Someone else speculated that the woman might have stepped on the dog in her drugged stupor, and then the animal reacted by biting her. But that's bullshit too -- a cat will yowl, and a dog will snap if you step on it, but both only momentarily, to drive you away. Neither will engage is susained chewing. They have not said if he damned beast was a pitbull or some similar attack dog. Those any animals, they're organic insanities. They do chew people up for no reason. It was once reported that she got the animal from a pound, to which it was appparently consigned , or where it at least had the reputation, of being bad_tempered. Well, never buy a used dog. Especially not a badly_used dog. What people do to their pets, they would never have let Simon Legree do to a --- etc.ù ---------------------------------------------------------------- I prefer my ideology a la carte. But as for religion -- that's not so simple. One needs to make a commitment, inorder to have a place to come home to when one needs it. Even though all religions say more or less the sane thing, albeit with different -- focuses, different -- attunements. --------------------------------------------------------------- In Judaism, a woman has thae right to sex from her husband.(1) And who is her husband. In Jewish law, one who is contracted to her, gives her a gift, or lies with her.(1a) Therefore we learn: in Judaism, all women have a right to sex. And 'with reasonable freqqency'.(1a) A seafaring husband need not change tack, but he should put into port once a month.(1b) And has she a right to sexual satisfaction. This was not said, out of pity for the men. (1) Chumuash and Talmud (1a) Talmud (1b) Talmud with a bit of rewrite ------------------------------------------------------------------ TIME Supplement 12 Dec '05 (Bill Saporito) remarks, in passing, "poverty and terrorism seem to be inexhaustible". So much for Bushie's 'War on Terrorism'. Terroism is not a movement, nor an enemy per se, it is a tactic. Darth Vader does 'Think small'. ------------------------------------------------------------------ In TIME 12 Dec '04 there is a very good picture by 'Anais Martine for TIME' of 'Li' , dba 'Muzi Mei'. The former may or may not exist, but the composit is certainly the sex_symbol of the year there. She is very well dressed in red grey and gree with purple stockings, beutiful straight blonde hair hiding her face except for trim lips, without makeup, and a discreetly sexy pose. she wears a cut by chaste black top against a blue chair. The comosition is very good, classical, though the backdrop might have been improved. --------------------------------------------------------------- TIME 12 Dec '05 notes that Cardinal Ruini, apparently the emminence rouge of the Vatican, endorses "'intelligent design'. In which case one may hope for some substantive critique of the 'ideologic Darwinism' now 'politically correct' (or rather, socially__pop_intellecutally chic ( think Bellow, as they would say, if they read the reviews)) correct in the USA. The writer (Jeff Israely, and/or his editor) describes 'intellligent design' as , "the controversial theory popular with some U.S. conservatives that says evolution alone cannot explain the existence of the natural world". Well, as I've noted, it ain't a theory, its more nearly a 'working hypothesis', a schema suggesting lines of philosophic analysis, methodologic criticism and critique, and maybe theoretic model_sketching. 'Intelligent design' is a much more methodologically sopohisticated successor to 'creationism', rather in the way Wittgenstein's conceptual_realism succeeded the naive_realism of Moore. 'Intelligent design' simply affirms the methodologic truism that no scientific theory nor philosophic explanatory schema, in this case the so_called 'theory of evolution', can be taken to be neither the last word nor a comprehensive description of the subject. One would expect to find that a theory that evolution proceeds by random variation culminating in 'survival of the fittest' to be adequate for some fields -- eg the evolution of viruses confronted with immunizing agents -- and insufficient for other areas -- eg the evolution of man. It is a bit of triumphalism and hubris (the Greek word for chutzpah, tho I suppose they said it first) for man to assume that his survival is an instance -- indeed, the epitome -- of 'survival of the fittest'. Even if Genesis did say it first. One might alternatively, following -- who was that dude who wrote 'The Hitchiker's Gudide to the Galaxy' -- it's not precisely that I've forgotten his name, but that I find a psychologic block against recalling it, which I'll have to wait to decay away -- which can take up to a few days -- -- "Senility is what you make of it," sayss I -- say: from an ecologic standpoint, the ascendancy of man is just a disasterous accident, hopefully short_term -- which does invite some interesting sci-fi stories -- eg, an earth with cats as the dominant species, and mankind kept as pets, to feed them -- You see, sci-fi -- a development of what Wittgenstein very briefly sketched as the methodologic gambit of supposing that 'certain very general facts of our natural history' were otherwise -- in order to highlight, but contrast, the logical outlines of our 'forms of life' that are determined as accommodation to those 'certain very general facts of our natural history' -- That was a point that I tried to sketch in my M.A. Thesis at UNM in '67 -- this is a somewhat more davelopoed articulation of it -- ----------------------------------------------------------------- Somewhere on the Seven Seas a great sailing ship of bygone years lies broached. The waves lap gently against her gunwales. The rising sun casts across the deck a long shadow from her yardarm. And this done that I may have a bit of Bombay Gin before breakfast, as_it_is_said, "Don't drink until the sun is over the yardarm." ---------------------------------------------------------------- I'm continuing to read Garrison Keillor, W.L.T.--A Radio Romance - - it ain't that bad after all the smary jookes in the first hundred pages -- the first 50 or so are nice quaint Americana -- one never quite believed that they had discovered sex in our parents generation -- but after that it's a bit late stale farts. The book could have done with a good edit, and a few good chunks of rewrite. It's a hodge_podge of reminiscence, autobiography, and sketches for a novel, and those 3 agendas tend to bump into each other. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Now I know why women do most of the world's office work. (In the USA anyhow; and that's world enough for us.) It's not sexism, but vocational qualification. I just ain't got the ass for it, anymore anyhow. Might's well go back to living on the street. It's easier that or buy a softer chair. The former seems easier, what with the bus not running again until June. --------------------------------------------------------------- "And we'll All feel Gay when Johnny comes marching home." (USA World War I song ) Who is Gay? ----------------------------------------------------------------- Newspapers should not break the page of a story in mid_paragraph. By thae time one gets to the continuation page, one has forgotten what the continued paragraph as about. Also, newspapers should follow TIME's practice of putting in CAPS the first occurrence of the name of anyone who is cited. Otherewise, when you read further remarks by the Dude, you forget whether he was a scientist or the janitor. And if you skim back up the article, it takes too long to dig his name amongst all the other fine print, so you quit and go back to the articule, now inssuficiently understood to reasonably draw any conclusion from it. And newspapers exist, not to inform people, but to lead them to the politically desired conclusions. Ah, democracy. Like I say, the USA is no more than a quaisi_democracy. =============================================================== OK, out of space, cut and print. Continue as =jr5d16*.* =================================================================