You read it here first: I predict that the Pentagon’s graceless germanic noun-phrase message-force multiplier, meaning an influential but unacknowledged mouthpiece or propagandist for one’s interests, as revealed by today’s gratifying, comprehensive, drought-ending, faith-redeeming investigative piece by the NYT into the Bush administration’s use of such multipliers, will become one of the chief catch phrases of the next few years, pervading at least the progressive blogosphere, especially in its inevitable abbreviated form MFM, which echoes way-too-awesomely the already indispensable MSM and which no doubt has already been cermoniously inscribed in our alphabet-mad military’s official register of arcane bureaucratic initialisms (AKA our AMM’s ORABI), thereby taking its place among such other popular ABIs as MRE, IED, DNI, DO, GWOT, and even FEMA, for whose current widespread usage we have mainly the scandals and disasters of the Bush administration to thank. (One new to me until a couple of days ago, FATA, may be just now coming into its own.)

  ·  politext

* * *

That 61% of professional historians judge the Bush presidency the worst of all American presidencies should come as a surprise to few literate persons blessed with at least some access to news over the past seven years, some knowledge of history, and an understanding of the noun phrases “professional historians,” “Bush presidency,” and “American presidencies.” Granted, this result derives from an unscientific survey conducted by the History News Network. Granted also the History News Network boasts a truly awful, not to say cringeworthy, not to say flagitious, motto, “Because the Past is the Present, and the Future too” — which, of course, could mean either that the Past is also the Future, that the Future is also the Present, or that the Present is also the Future (which is [a] a slightly different idea from the one preceding and [b] just an instance of kicking the idea that the Past is the Present further down the road a bit) — a grammatical confusion which may well have been intended proudly, but which sounds very 9th grade to me or, at best, like a flatulent attempt to condense into prose the opening lines of Burnt Norton. Nevertheless, it should be worth noting that out of 109 “professional historians” (and, no i don’t know if anyone actually examined their historians licenses) responding, “98.2 percent assessed the presidency of Mr. Bush to be a failure while 1.8 percent classified it as a success.” That would be, uh, 107 and 2, respectively?

Anyway, i thought it should bear repeating, everywhere, including here.

Click here for the original article.

  ·  politext

* * *

Thinking about the Obama passport scandal today, after reading my love Glenn Greenwald on it.

It is not only in the interest of those holding political power to associate their political opponents with actual enemies of the commonweal, it is, I would claim, practically inevitable psychologically. After all, from the perspective of a career partisan (Bush or Cheney, for instance), the phrase “They would destroy all we stand for” fits political opponents (Democrats) as snugly as it does actual enemies (terrorists).

It is for this reason that those in power have such difficulty, apparently, resisting the urge to employ against their political opponents those organs of the state designed for keeping its enemies at bay (police, military, spy agencies).

And it is for this reason that it is crucial that the people hold the line in maintaining a powerful (“robust” is the cringeworthy word juridical writers seem to use often here) fourth amendment.

  ·  politext

* * *

In this blog I’ve consistently referred to the person for whom Greta left me, oh, so long ago—whom, remember, she’s now engaged to marry—as Godfrey. Greta long accused me of insulting him by using that name, doubtless cuz (a) his name’s not “Godfrey,” (b) among some Americans the name “Godfrey” has a stilted, foreign, mildly ridiculous quality, (c) my invoking the name “Godfrey” would often be accompanied by some more-or-less openly disparaging remarks.

I am just now possessed by the desire to comment on the forthcoming wedding of Greta and Godfrey. I hope to do so in the next few days. In continuing to use the blogonym “Godfrey” while doing so here, therefore, I want to affirm with no equivocation that I do NOT use that name intending to give offense. I’m starting to appreciate the value of web pseudonymity, and I simply want everyone in mikarrhea to continue utterly unknown to all but those who know them. ;^)

Personally, as someone who wishes to continue her web presence as it has existed for many years while also now actively seeking out new employment, i am newly grateful that the (unfortunately) legal name under which i seek a job is different from the name under which i’ve posted so much that some employers might consider incompatible with employment.

  ·  greta-garble

* * *

I don’t really know what happened to me. It’s probably still happening. I lost the desire to write; we all know that. Any idiot can see.

And, of course, to live. I’ve regained neither.

Any idiot can see.

But tonight I remembered both —after living for more than two years in a disturbingly sociable deathlike state, suffocating beneath my burgeoning, geometrically compounding, 21st-century midden (a midden of mind as much as of domestic management): I actually phoned someone important and devastating from my past, from 25 years ago, from my san francisco days, someone vital to my conception of myself and my history, of whom i am right now, as it feels, in need. Someone utterly lost to me, swallowed by time and distance, on whom i’ve never stopped utterly, debasingly, crushing out. My barby—i call her barby—she’s my barby, to me, though i think she probably despises that name now (maybe always?) and no one else in her surroundings uses it or ever has. i imagine she still introduces herself as “Barbara,” not without reason, or maybe “Barb,” with, well, some slight reason—the savaging thorn. I’d been trying to web-stalk her to no avail for many, many, many years , almost since little Timmee B-L invented the Web, i guess. Cuz my barby apparently has no web presence under any names by which I knew her or can imagine her now existing.

A couple of hours ago now, I left her—orally, aurally, drunkenly—some silly, idiotic web traces in a PHONE message.

More than anything, NOW I really want to know what SHE’S doing! She can’t NOT have a web presence, can she? I really want, Derridaliciously, to know what that absent presence is! Surely, under some name, she does something recognized on the web? Please, Barby???? Ugh. Longing, frustration. Adoration. Denial.

  ·  anecdotage

* * *

via the BBC

Internet message boards have been buzzing with comment about the case of Robert Stewart, 51, from Ayr.

He was reported by cleaners at a hostel who unlocked his door and found him engaged in a sex act with his bike.

Stewart was put on the Sex Offenders’ Register, which some posters said was an over-reaction by the sheriff.

Stewart admitted a sexually aggravated breach of the peace by conducting himself in a disorderly manner and simulating sex. As well as being put on register for three years, he was put on probation for the same length of time.

More than a million people have read the story on the BBC news website and it has been hotly debated on forums elsewhere.

. . . .

This is not the first legal case involving someone simulating sex with an inanimate object.

• In 1997 Robert Watt, 38, was fined £100 for trying to have sex with a shoe in an Edinburgh street
• In 2002 the same man was arrested for simulating sex with a traffic cone in front of a crowd of people
• Earlier this month, sentence was deferred on teenager Steven Marshall, from Galashiels, who admitted simulating sex on a pavement while drunk.

Human rights lawyer John Scott told the BBC Scotland news website that the case raised important privacy issues.

He said: “It certainly prompts questions about what people can and can’t do behind closed doors with inanimate objects.

“However, the difficulty is that the man involved in this case pleaded guilty to a breach of the peace so these issues of privacy weren’t considered by the court.”

He added: “The sheriff had to act on the guilty plea and make a decision about whether or not there was a sexual nature to the offence. Clearly there was and that’s why the man has ended up on the register.”

However, Mr Scott said it should not be seen as a test case or one that would set a precedent in the future.

“This case should not prevent people who want to engage in this sort of activity doing so.

“What I would say to a client of mine that wanted to do this kind of thing is as long as it’s behind a bolted door, with an inanimate object, then each to their own.”

  ·  sexgender-system-files

* * *

From an article in the Times about swarming behavior among insects (mostly):

[I]n the deserts of Utah, Dr. Couzin and his colleagues discovered that giant swarms may actually be made up of a lot of selfish individuals.

Mormon crickets will sometimes gather by the millions and crawl in bands stretching more than five miles long. Dr. Couzin and his colleagues ran experiments to find out what caused them to form bands. They found that . . . [w]hen Mormon crickets cannot find enough salt and protein, they become cannibals.

“Each cricket itself is a perfectly balanced source of nutrition,” Dr. Couzin said. “So the crickets, every 17 seconds or so, try to attack other individuals. If you don’t move, you’re likely to be eaten.”

This collective movement causes the crickets to form vast swarms. “All these crickets are on a forced march,” Dr. Couzin said. “They’re trying to attack the crickets who are ahead, and they’re trying to avoid being eaten from behind.”

now-this  ·  politext

* * *

I’m certainly not the first — or even the one-hundred-and-forty-millionth — to exclaim how it twists the brain that Top and Bottom make such similar, inseparable fellows, such peas in a pod. Exploring their interdependent resemblance, just now, for me, offers, however, some profit, psychologically.

The Bottom defines herself typically via the pain she can unflinchingly absorb . . . but so does the Top! Bottom says, “Please spank me! Whip me!” or whatever more personalized distractions she prefers. She tingles at both her own suffering and the arousal of the person producing it. In essence, her plea boils down to “Use me as you please!”

The Top says, “I’m tough enough to withstand any pain that comes my way, be it emotional or physical, and to show no expression.” What she hopes most is to furnish incapacitating pleasure skillfully to the Bottom, maintaining her own composure (we’re talking here about the stereotypical butch dyke top, not some random sadist). Her demeanor projects a message something like “Let me know what arouses you; and regardless how much it puts me to the test, I will rise to the challenge and bring you off spectacularly without displaying the effort it costs me.” The Top’s plea, in short, boils down to “Use me as you please!”

  ·  sexgender-system-files

* * *

I’m breaking my silence and, in fact, delaying going out to get my son’s birthday cake to repost the following Yahoo news item, which simply couldn’t be more delicious:

BANGKOK, Thailand – Women in several countries have begun sending their panties to Myanmar embassies in a culturally insulting gesture of protest against the recent brutal crackdown there, a campaign supporter said Friday.

“It’s an extremely strong message in Burmese and in all Southeast Asian culture,” said Liz Hilton, who supports an activist group that launched the “Panties for Peace” drive earlier this week.

The group, Lanna Action for Burma, says the country’s superstitious generals, especially junta leader Gen. Than Shwe, also believe that contact with women’s underwear saps them of power.

To widespread international condemnation, the military in Myanmar, also known as Burma, crushed mass anti-regime demonstrations recently and continues to hunt down and imprison those who took part.

Hilton said women in Thailand, Australia, Singapore, England and other European countries have started sending or delivering their underwear to Myanmar missions following informal coordination among activist organizations and individuals.

“You can post, deliver or fling your panties at the closest Burmese Embassy any day from today. Send early, send often!” the Lanna Action for Burma Web site urges.

“So far we have had no response from Burmese officials,” Hilton said.

A nice excuse to purge my overstuffed panty-drawer. Only to binge again, of course.

now-this  ·  sexgender-system-files

* * *

AP – Wed Aug 22, 7:19 AM ET
Visitors test Playstation consoles in a toilet ambiance at Japan’s Sony booth at the Games Convention, the fair for interactive entertainment in Leipzig, eastern Germany, Wednesday, Aug. 22, 2007. (AP Photo/Eckehard Schulz)

Via Dave “Toiletologist” Barry

  ·  random-neuron-firing

* * *

I haven’t done a survey, so my asserting that Texas is the most reviled state in the nation, and justifiably so, is only my opinion. I do have the general sense that even Alabama, Mississippi, and Arkansas (3 states commonly vying with Texas, in my experience, for the “most abominated” designation) lose out to TX when the question at hand is a state’s eagerness to hustle to death a criminal defendant. Indeed, in my (surely limited, skewed) experience, Texas is ever eager to leap above and beyond the call of duty when it comes to convicting, sentencing, and executing.

I truly can’t imagine how it might come to pass, even theoretically, that I’d form the desire to MOVE to Texas. I deliver this judgment despite having several non-retarded friends claiming happy Texas childhoods (oh, but where are they living now?), along with a handful who’ve cheerfully, and bizarrely, relocated there from Massachusetts. So why can’t I absorb anything useful from them about the delights of being a Texas citizen?

BECAUSE EVERYONE WITHOUT EXCEPTION I’VE EVER ENCOUNTERED WHO WANTS TO MAKE A CASE FOR THE CHARMS OF TEXAS IS ALWAYS FOCUSING ON AUSTIN!!!!!

OK, I’m willing to stipulate that Austin may be the rare Texas town reasonably akin to any moderately hip run-of-the-mill Massachusetts, California, Vermont, or Oregon town. Indeed, everyone I know who’s been there proclaims, in the face of my utter incredulity and ridicule concerns, that I’d love Austin. Few neglect to point out that life there’s cheap—which in old movies used to be a reason NOT to move somehwere—but whatever.

There was a time in my life when I was scrunched into a pattern of traveling for hair removal to Dallas three or four times a year, and frankly, much as I respected those I spent time with, I could never pass time there without suffering a great deal of agony simply from the general public discourse (e.g., on most days, nine hours via AM radio, not to mention such other massmarket textcasting as billboards, TV, and newspapers, to which I might be exposed), a discourse that was uniformly out-of-control hysterical, demogogic, and far, far more right wing than anything available in New England.

From the airport, to get to any destination in downtown Dallas, you pretty much have to take the recently completed so-called “President George Bush” freeway, which undoubtedly put me in a sour mood right off the bat.

I chastise myself, therefore, a little, for the moral inconsistency of being pleased that the gentle Mr. Mangum, described and quoted at the top, is actually facing the loathsome Texas legal system. But to me they seem made for each other.

ijustgoberSERK  ·  sexgender-system-files

* * *

Secuestran la revista “El Jueves” por una caricatura “denigrante” de los Príncipes de España

Click for larger size

MADRID (AFP) – A Spanish satirical magazine that was ordered removed from newsstands because its cover featured a cartoon depicting the heir to Spain’s throne having sex with his wife was for sale Saturday on eBay.

Nearly 90 copies of the weekly magazine El Jueves, which has a cover price of 2.50 euros, were on offer on the Spanish website of the online auctioneer for up to 100 euros (138 US dollars) per copy.

High court judge Juan del Olmo ruled Friday that the cartoon “struck at the honour and the dignity of the people represented” and ordered police to seize copies at newsstands.

The magazine, which does not hide its republican sympathies, used the caricature to mock a recent government announcement that families would receive 2,500 euros for each new child in a bid to raise the birth rate.

In the cartoon, a smiling Prince Felipe tells his wife Princess Letizia, who is kneeling on the bed in front of him: “Do you realize that if you get pregnant it will be the closest that I come to working in my life!”

Under Spanish law those found guilty of insulting the royal family can face up to two years in prison or be slapped with heavy fines.

I was just pissed that the picture was hard for me to find. So I thought I’d put it up, so others wouldn’t have to work so hard. Plus I hate censorship, as one-time readers of mikarrhea know.

  ·  politext

* * *

Not to toot my own horn, but i thought i’d toot my own horn [yes, I’m leaving this really humiliating stuff in for the sake of . . . duh, HUMILIATION]. The Pew Research Center just came out with a piece, How Serious Is Polling’s Cell-Only Problem? The Landline-less Are Different and Their Numbers Are Growing Fast, exploring how increased ownership of and reliance solely on cell phones may effect the future of opinion research:

Twenty years ago the survey research profession—having grown comfortable with telephone interviewing as an alternative to personal interviewing for conducting surveys—worried mostly about the roughly 7% of U.S. households that could not be interviewed because they had no telephone. Today our concern is somewhat different, and potentially more serious. According to government statistics released last month, nearly 13% of U.S. households (12.8%) cannot now be reached by the typical telephone survey because they have only a cell phone and no landline telephone.1

If people who can only be reached by cell phone were just like those with landlines, their absence from surveys would not create a problem for polling. But cell-only adults are very different. The National Health Interview Survey found them to be much younger, more likely to be African American or Hispanic, less likely to be married, and less likely to be a homeowner than adults with landline telephones. These demographic characteristics are correlated with a wide range of social and political behaviors.

politext  ·  now-this

* * *

This entry, I know, constitutues a really pathetic re-entry into the blogosphere, after so many months of silence. May my ceramic tiles exfoliate unmercifully.

To tell the truth, I meant to blog about much in the past few months. Most recently, I’d been shoving together with increasing violence in my head sweatier and more anxious trains — threads, strings — of thought in the expectation of at long last provoking the longed-for refreshment of a new mikarrhea entry — trains, threads, strings twisted and balled into writhing medusa-heads, pondering the lurid anaerobic torpor of profound depression, the rich cultural (as well as personal) value of xtube, the viciousness of various Republican stances (all mutually contradictory) in the current national immigration debate, why the Founding Fathers (based on a rigorous reading of Federalist #10) would not merely support but cheer for modern hate-crimes legislation, the slimy feeling we all are left instinctively with when confronting the vile, embarrassing, and often uproarious Christopher Hitchens, the protracted demise of the tragic Dresden Dolls (Amanda’s heartbreaking ego-volatility eating at the duo like acid), and, more than anything else, the unbearably gruesome, disgraceful, repugnant, contemptible, and enraging so-called “honor” murder by relatives of 16-year-old Kurd Dua Khalil Aswad.

But, no, here I am complaining that galumphing Ankit Fadia, the utterly incomprehensible author of (don’t laugh) The Unofficial Guide to Ethical Hacking, now unbelievably in its blissfully unimproved second edition!, can’t write his way out of a paper bag, let alone off the end of a paper page. This guy is so bad at explaining things that if his book didn’t cost $50, I’d recommend buying it just to laugh at how inarticulate he is.

More fucking fool me.

And I’m inarticulate in my own pathetic way. Which, thankfully, doesn’t approach the professional cozenage of the brain-strangled Ankit Fadia.

If I ever post again, I may take you through a page or two of his dismaying prose — more than I can stand to consider just now in one sitting — to show you how pedagogically maladroit he is. It’s not a language problem; it’s a failure to know how to structure an explanation for the benefit of someone who doesn’t already possess an understanding of the subject.

He’s a wealthy IT consultant who obviously harbors a world of knowledge about network security and doubtless earns his consultancy fees many times over, saving corporate networks the world around. And couldn’t explain to his best friend how to open the front door, step outside, and greet the day with a smile.

  ·  blognet

* * *

[from Yahoo]

Northern Ireland is “the hate capital of the West,” according to new university research, with an astonishing 44 percent of its citizens proving disturbingly homophobic.

The research from the University of Ulster, to be published in the economics journal Kyklos, said that Northern Ireland leads Western nations in its animosity toward gays and immigrants, while the United States is almost exactly in the middle, bigotry-wise, of 23 nations studied.

Vani Borooah, professor of applied economics at Ulster and John Mangan, professor of economics at the University of Queensland, collaborated in the study, which surveyed 32,000 people across 19 European counties, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the United States.

The Human Rights and Values survey asked respondents what they thought of minority groups—and how they would feel about having members of certain groups as their neighbors.

The five groups included members of another races, immigrants or foreign workers, Muslims, Jews and homosexuals.

An astonishing 44 percent of the 1,000 respondents in Northern Ireland said they didn’t want members of even one of the five groups as their neighbors.

The bigotry proportion of Northern Ireland was followed closely by Greece with 43 percent.

The lowest proportion occurred in Sweden, with 13 percent.

Homophobia was by far the main source of bigotry in most western countries: More than 80 percent of bigoted people in Northern Ireland and Canada, and 75 percent of bigots in Austria, the United States, Great Britain, Ireland and Italy wouldn’t want gays or lesbians as neighbors.

In Scandinavian countries the main target of hostility turned toward Muslims.

Seventy-four percent of bigoted Danes, 68 percent of bigoted Swedes and 63 percent of bigoted Icelanders did not want Muslims as neighbors.

The study also came up with the following conclusions:

Women are less likely to be bigoted than men.

There is evidence that financial dissatisfaction might also be a source of bigotry.

Students were less likely to be bigots than nonstudents.

Read the full report.

  ·  now-this

* * *

This is priceless:

One of the most dangerous ways homosexuality invades family life is through popular music. Parents should keep careful watch over their children’s listening habits, especially in this Internet Age of MP3 piracy.

Bands to watch out for

* The Spores (endorse suicide) * Scissor Sisters * Rufus Wainwright * Merzbau * Ravi Shankar * Wilco * Bjork (mb) * Tech N9ne * Ghostface Killah * Bobby Conn * Morton Subotnik * Cole Porter * The String Cheese Incident * Eagles of Death Metal * Polyphonic Spree * The Faint * Interpol * Tegan and Sara * Erasure * The Grateful Dead (AIDS) * Le Tigre * Marilyn Manson (dark gay) * The Gossip * The Magnetic Fields * The Doors * Phish * Queen * The Strokes * Sufjan Stevens * Morrissey(?questionable?) * The Pet Shop Boys * Metallica * Judas Priest * The Village People * The Secret Handshake * The Rolling Stones * David Bowie * Frankie Goes to Hollywood * Man or Astroman * Richard Cheese * Jay-Z * Depeche Mode * Kansas * Ani DiFranco * Fischerspooner * John Mayer * George Michael (texan) * Angel Eyes * The Indigo Girls * Velvet Underground * Madonna * Elton John * Barry Manilow * Indigo Girls * Melissa Etheridge * Eminmen * Nirvana * Boy George* * The Killers * Lou Reed * Lil’ Wayne * Motorhead * Jill Sobule * Wilson Phillips * DMX * Lisa Loeb * Ted Nugent (loincloth) * Dogstar * Thirty Seconds to Mars * Lil’ Kim * kd lang * Frank Sinatra * Hinder * Nickleback * Justus Kohncke * Bob Mould * Clay Aiken * Arcade Fire * Bright Eyes * Corinne Bailey Rae * Audioslave * Red Hot Chili Peppers * Panic at the Disco * Elton John(really gay)

In Our effort to keep this list up to date we’d appreciate your help. If you know of a band that is Gay or propogating a Gay message please email us so we can update. Donnie is handling this his email is: donniedavies@gmail.com

The response is overwhelming. You guys know of a lot more Gay Bands than I do. I can’t keep up. Hopefully soon we’ll have it so you can add them by yourself.

blogarhythms  ·  ijustgoberSERK

* * *

In the words of Amanda, “God it’s been a lovely day! Everything’s been going my way. I took out the trash today, and I’m on fire!”

Why so lovely? Well, first of all, I did take out the trash today. That’s always a cause for celebration.

Second, tomorrow I return for more partial hospitalization in the latest institution at which I’ve matriculated, and possibly the one contributing ultimately the most to my success and happiness in life, McLean Hospital, “America’s Premier Mental Hospital,” the subject of the book Gracefully Insane, and the refuge of lots of smart crazy people (Plath, Sexton, Lowell, Ginsburg, Wurzel, Kaysen, and Greta).

Third, I haven’t imbibed any alcohol — aside from 3.5 oz. of wine with dinner on Saturday — since last Tuesday.

Fourth, today someone routinely described as “easily one of the most talented, energetic, and charismatic drummers in the business” or alternatively “one of the best drummers around today,” agreed enthusiastically to give lessons to my 15-year-old, Banana! At an incredibly reasonable price! I love him!

Fifth, today someone sent me this email:

Mika.

I listened to the [sic] Emotional Piano Lunar Strings out on a website. It was used as background music for an Anti-Piracy Public Service Annoucement that our College Student Organization put together. This is not something we are earning money for; it is part of a Anti-Piracy Campaign to bring awareness to the issues surrounding the impact of piracy. Our organization teaches Ethics. Your Emotional Piano Lunar Strings just made it more impactful of a message. We wish to credit the Emotional Piano Lunar Strings, but how do you wish that we list the information?

Kevin

If I were a composer for whose music people were clamoring, I could afford to be picky about who may use it. When I wrote that piece, I imagined its being used in a soundtrack to enhance just the very feeling of loss this misguided psa wants to communicate. It makes me really happy that someone listened to it and thought adding it to their video just made it more impactful of a message.

[(7/31/2007 2:19) Yes, the last sentence was meant to ring sarcastic. I would not use the word “impactful” under torture. OK, well, maybe I’d, like, yodel it or something, to register irony the torturers couldn’t detect. I don’t know a lot of torturers, but my sense is they’re terrible at detecting irony.]

Sixth, I just this evening discovered (could it be . . . Google?) that last November I was the object of some extraordinarily flattering attention, as these posts to the Newton Blog can attest:

# GDM Says:
November 15th, 2006 at 12:32 pm

In this weeks Tab we see a letter to the editor congratulating Moveon.org for the Democratic victory. Moveon.org is an extreme left wing group that hates what America stands for. Its typical for some Newtonites to endorse this group as these are probably the same people who spit in returning war soldiers faces. Moveon.org has no place in Newton as it preaches hate towards anyone who disagrees with them. In addition, Mika Cooper once again added her hate/censor anyone she disagrees with comments to the editor. People like Mika Cooper offer nothing to Newton or the United States, she should ship herself to northern Canada where she can hate all who she disagrees with up there.

1. Kurt Says:
   November 15th, 2006 at 12:51 pm

   An open letter to Mika Cooper:

   Mika, please feel free to leave to Newton. Maybe San Francisco would be a better place for you. Just because you disagree with someone does not mean that their speech should be censored. I know you like to have everyone to think like you, but thankfully most people have had real lives and life expierences in which they think totally different from you. Mika, do us all a favor here Newton, JUST LEAVE!!!
   

Funny, I’ve been saying exactly that about San Francisco and me ever since I moved here from there in 1982. Google led me to discover also my similar position of honor on this site, which posted the letter I wrote to the Newton Tab last fall, introduced by these words:

[Note this “woman” has written letters to the Tab before. He was originally Michael Cooper, and has claimed to have children in the Newton schools. Check him/her out at:
http://www.mikarrhea.com/ and
http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=342635 ]

What a great day!

  ·  anecdotage

* * *

Video glasses keep porn private in public

Now you can actually watch porn in public — right there in front of everyone — on planes or trains, in waiting rooms or libraries, while relaxing on a park bench or sipping a latte at Starbucks — without anyone knowing! Hey, wonder what the squirmy Martian dude with the tentpole in his pants is looking at?

Imagine that image multiplied by a dozen or two at every airport terminal gate in the future. I love technology.

random-neuron-firing  ·  sexgender-system-files

* * *

One of those Prozacean (fluoxetinian?) nights, where I took the pills too late and am still up at dawn spinning — pleasantly, to my mind semi-productively, but spinning nonetheless.

What kept me going for quite awhile was my second-order observation of the equanimity with which I could hold for consideration in my mind the first-order observation that I was at that particular moment, as so often, utterly incpacitated, utterly unable to will what I wished for myself — in this case getting up out of bed and doing something, anything, but at other times just as likely wishing myself not doing other things, e.g.,

• masturbating
• sortieing to buy alcohol
• having another drink at a bar
• checking my email, myspace, myyahoo, the ususal web-round

But what finally got me up in bed was thinking about formal logic. I’ve often thought, haphazardly, that formal logic, however practical & instrumental, is ultimately phony and reduces to linguistic grammar — or at any rate to Chomskyan generative grammar. Don’t press me on this claim right now. I don’t wanna dredge it all up at this second. It pretty much reduces to knowingly pointing Chomsky-, Nietsche-, and Dewey-ward and saying, “What they said,” as if I actually knew what it was they said.

But what got my goat, not to mention me to sit up and grab my laptop, was the head-pop of the phrase “A is A.” Anyone who’s had experience with the appalling philosophy religion of Ayn Rand knows how totemic, not to say shibbolethenian, that phrase is. And of course anyone familiar with Aristotelian logic.

What made my heart beat angrily is the thought of how irreducible ignorant people who sling around this slogan think it is.

But it doesn’t in any way mean what they think it does.

It means Taking into account human purposes and unconcsious modes of conceptualizing the world, it’s useful to say “A is A,” even when, prima facie, it’s just not. Ever. And couldn’t possibly be.

CUZ IF IT WERE YOU WOULD JUST FUCKING SAY “A.”

THE FACT THAT YOU SAY “A IS A” INSTEAD OF JUST “A” IMPLIES THAT THEY’RE NOT IDENTICAL — INDEED REQUIRES THAT THEY BE NON-IDENTICAL — BUT ONLY SIMILAR IN SOME WAY THAT THOSE SPEAKING ABOUT “A” ARE GOING TO TAKE FUCKING FOR GRANTED.

ok, so maybe quine also pointed this out in talking about synthetic a priori judgments.

i’m not a philosopher. i’m a lame philosopher.

but it still makes me soooooooooooooo hopping — ok, well, propping-myself-up-a-bit — mad to hear people in my head saying “A is A” and thinking they’re saying something a priori in a this-is-one-of-the-laws-of-the-universe sort of way, rather than in a pulling-the-defininition-of-a-camel-out-from-behind-a-bush sort of way.

  ·  lame-philosophy

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Thank you, as always, ridiculous praiser of folly. Given your nom de Web, I do regard myself a fitting object of your encomia, however inspissated they may be by misjudgments and exaggerations. Did you ever, btw, read Walter J. Kaiser’s ancient book? I honestly have nothing but the greatest love and respect for him; he’s been by and large phenomenally generous to me. But I’m no Renaissance, much less Erasmian, scholar, to be sure.

I squeezed his penis in a friendly way the first night I accepted dinner at his house, which I was told was considered a faux pas. Much later, when I thought he’d been as asshole to me, I wrote him a cute anonymous quinque-lingual limerick sequence about his sexual propensities, whose authorship I was told he identified instantly. That Harvard philological education in the first half of the last century was killer sharp. I never really could get a leg up on him, so to speak. But I did teach In Praise of Folly for his lecture course, one semester. And I’d still give him a blow job. Especially, if he’d recite Alcaeus to me in the meanwhile.

Hiromi looks smart and fascinating. Much more, she’s sober. I’m not sure I can go that far, though.

As I wrote privately to the other generous commenter on my post:

sorry to wax pathetic. the worst feature of these rounds of depression is the evaginating vicious cycle i fall into. remaining motionless (except for occasional . . . ok, frequent . . . bouts of self-stimulation) in bed, and drinking all day, i fatten like a fucking veal on bovine supersteroids. funny thing, though — i cease taking all medications. . . . i lose any vestiges of that hourglass figure i could once imagine myself, maybe, one day, aspiring to hope to have, eventually, through liposuction, hard work, and some yet-unapproved advance in medical science, and i feel as alluring, delicate, feminine, and sensuous to the touch as a contractor’s weatherworn storage chest on his dodge ram in minnesota on a winter’s night.

so i don’t go out. or rather i elaborately plan to go out but rarely make it. the unavoidable specular ordeal of wrinkles and face and clothes and fat revolts the sense.

well, anyway, happy new year!

§;^*

rechurn-o-ze-depressed  ·  anecdotage

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ok, so i’m deeply suicidal again and have been for many weeks. i’m soooooooooooooooo conflicted about writing this, because it’s hard for the reader not to interpret it as a plea for attention, when it’s not — intentionally, at least. the last thing i want is the condescension of attention. for what that’s worth. really, from my drunken perspective at least, it’s just my feeling hilariously guilty for not posting for so long.

of course, if that really were all, then i could easily post something untroubling like “hey, i’ve been involved with lots of fulfilling activities over the past few weeks!”

which i haven’t.

sorry to be a complainer.

to be truthful, i’m not exactly totally suicidal. my son, max, whom according to his wish i refer to here often by the blogonym morpheus (he likes the matrix flix), has now twice made me promise not to kill myself, on the ground that it would be too painful for him and anneliese and too selfish of me. so i’ve pretty much convinced myself that as long as life is humanly sufferable i won’t kill myself. but i do feel, day after day, as though i’m waiting to die. somebody, kill me please and make it not my fault.

waiting to die, waiting to die, waiting to die. . . . waiting to die for the seventeenth time.

the very, very first time i got stoned, in seventh grade, i listened to that record, while on a bed at nina lichterman’s house, making out sloppily with leigh tracy scott, born in a pan. whom i still adore and would love to hear from, google god.

ok. that’s it for now.

i’m sure i’ll be alive and drooling many years from now, so please don’t make any comments about how i need to get hold of myself. that’s the last thing i need to do.

  ·  anecdotage

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For instance, in this case. And, of course, with Rick Santorum’s loss!!!!!!!!!!! Whooooooooooooopeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!

politext  ·  sexgender-system-files

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As the lovely David Frum says :

“Instead of regarding hypocrisy as the ultimate sin, could it not be regarded as a kind of virtue . . ?”

“If a religious leader has a personal inclination toward homosexuality – and nonetheless can look past his own inclination to defend the institution of marriage and to affirm its benefits for the raising of children – why should he likewise not be honored for his intellectual firmness and moral integrity?”

politext  ·  ijustgoberSERK

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I just keep playing this one-minute short over and over.

  ·  sexgender-system-files

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Masturbate to internet porn or read Emerson’s “Spiritual Laws”? Oops, false dichotomy! Forgot “just pass out instantly from the 125 mg of diphenhydramine you took an hour ago.”

Door number three.

  ·  anecdotage

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