degringolade

In The Weird Tale I maintained that weird fiction is an inherently philosophical mode in that it forces the reader to confront directly such issues as the nature of the universe and mankind’s place in it; in effect, writers of weird fiction are attempting to convince us of their view of the world. I am inclined to suspect that this notion might in fact be extended to literature generally; but even in its more limited context it raises certain issues concerning the nature of language and its relation to the external world. In addition, the precise application of the formula to the work of Lovecraft needs to be explored.

Taken From

H.P. Lovecraft: The Decline of the West

By: S.T. Joshi

Published by Wildside Press LLC.

www.wildsidepress.com

I have been reading about Lovecraft lately, not because he is such a great writer, but because of the issues brought up by JMG in the Haliverse series and how I am attempting to do the same thing in the proto-book that I have been writing and some folks have been encouraging.

I think that I am overthinking things right now. SInce I am admittedly writing a trashy novel without any real meaning in the big world, I am thinking that what I am doing is trying to insert meaning into a literary form/endeavor that might not be suited to that insertion. Reading Joshi’s book and then thinking about the actual real world of academic study of horror fiction makes me wonder just what the heck is going on.

I really didn’t realize that people made a big deal and actually studied such pleasant juvenile pastimes as H.P. Lovecraft writings until I started seeing the dribs and drabs of wokester pearl-clutching about the idea that Lovecraft was a racist. Of course he was a racist, just about everyone in the world was some kind of racist back in the early 1900’s. I would argue that the same is true now.

I think that the new racism that I would like to address and I am struggling to come to grips with is the racism of the mind. The current existential struggle of the West isn’t all that dissimilar from the conflict between the Radiance and the worshippers of the old ones in the Haliverse. The trouble is that in my view the woke crowd is taking the part of the Radiance.

Both sides are to a lesser and greater extent trying to force a way of viewing the world down someone else’s throats. When I say “sides” I mean the folks on either side of any issue extant here in the USA (Maga/Woke) that claims intellectual and moral supremacy. I figure that folks in this extended group constitute 70+ percent of the American population.

The rest of us are just trying to do the best we can.

Back to tempeh. This is the project for the day:

Pressure cook black beans for six(6) minutes with a glop of white vinegar and a natural release of pressure.
Set up “incubator” with layers of towels to diffuse heat.
Use different rack to give more space for airflow under the bag
Cool beans in colander for 20 minutes.
Dry beans on paper towels for 20 minutes
Into a bag with half a tablespoon of starter.
Punch bag thoroughly with toothpick to open air holes. Top and bottom, remember to do this on top of a flat cutting board to make sliding the bag into the “incubator” easier.
Gently mash down the bag so that it is flat, not too much so there is room for the fungus to grow in the interstitial spaces
Temperature logger set and placed an hour before the bag hits the rack

Northern Renaissance / Pieter Bruegel the Elder/ The Gloomy Day

Sauerkraut went off well, It is on the counter and doing it’s fermentation thing. Managed to get a batch of beer bottled and krausening. Ran the still and started the process of preparing to refill the aging bottle from the last time I prepped a product.

First Time Sauerkraut

I suppose that doing all this stuff is just a way to assure myself that if things start going shithouse on us, I might be able to at least have a chance of eating and drinking well as I watch the shithouse go down

Screed

Well, I've been pondering even more about the two approaches to the labyrinth. I kinda think that this boils down to the Leibnitzian idea of the nature of free will and the nature of the continuum. I am also thinking that the nature/nurture debate is a subregion of this overall debate.

The whole of human nature is still a mystery after all these years. It isn’t like people haven’t been trying for millenia and failing. Folks sit down and ponder (and it is a subject worthy of pondering) but there still isn’t a definitive positive answer to the problem that passes the smell test.

I’m coming to the conclusion that all we can do is try. Simply put, coming to grips with the problem is the best we can do. Granted, being who we are we will want to have a single cause leading to a singular understanding that explains everything.

But this is a problem that doesn’t appear to be amenable to our desires for simplicity. It appears to me that the world and all the individuals in it struggle to find there way to the center of the labyrinth by using either one or the other paths.

Maybe, just maybe we can’t get to the center.

Current Location: happy lamp and coffee

Naïve Art (Primitivism) / Grandma Moses/ The Burning of Troy in 1862

Put down the picture above when I got home last night. Had a cold mojo pork sandwich, some hummus, and a glass (OK a glass and a half) of red wine and I felt much better.

So, this morning I am sipping my coffee and pondering the world. Don’t know why, but I am thinking that we are on the verge of something pretty substantial right now. I have no idea what direction the change is going to come from. I think that we are in the middle of a gust front, you know, that part of a storm coming in where the winds are swirling around and unless you are out looking at the clouds and watching the critters, you can’t really tell which direction things are coming from.

Analogies are slippery things. But the gust front analogy I just used might be unwittingly better than I think. I think that you can tell which way things are going if you are out in the thick of it, but if you are in a shelter all you can do is look out the window (which really aren’t all that well located) and try to figure out what is going on.

I am thinking that the situation that we are in, safe in our homes and living the lives we have created are limiting our ability to get an idea of which way the storm is coming in from. But that is not a bug, that is a feature. We have created our worldview and located our windows to keep the true nature of the world at arms length and a safe and warm place to sip our cocoa and read our Yeats.

My little apartment is buried into the side of a hill, my two little windows face west and look out into a courtyard. I can see the ridgeline across the Willamette and watch sunsets. But the view of incoming storms is limited to a 40° swath of the sky, let’s call it west to west by southwest.

I am wondering what is coming from the rest of the 320° of horizon?

Romanticism / Pavel Svinyin/ Steamboat Travel on the Hudson River

Went to sleep early last night (imagine that), when I woke up late this AM, I was still a’ pondering a piece I read yesterday. (https://read.lukeburgis.com/p/25-anti-mimetic-ideas).

Not a bad piece at all. The ideas are sound across the board. But this morning I woke up to the not-necessarily-uncomfortable thought that when someone like Luke writes about being anti-mimetic, he is using mimetic techniques to sell the ideas.

I tend to look at things differently, and I am thinking that while I seem to agree with Luke as to the specific goals he propounds in the post, I am immediately suspicious of his desire to sell me a subscription ($80.00/Year). I can’t see this as any different than a preacher passing a plate, or to be more or less charitable, depending on your view, a college charging tuition.

I am suspicious of gurus. What seems to be a good idea might just be a way of luring me into a church of some sort or another. But on the other hand, his ideas may well stand up to a serious think.

Right now I am thinking about thinking. I am also thinking about how my conscious thinking is affected by external circumstances and unwitting desires that I don’t appear to have any control over. I am gonna ponder the twenty-five suggestions that Luke and use them as chumming for my own posts. Hell, who knows, he might be right across the board.

I still ain’t gonna pay him $80.00.

New Culture Movement (1915-1926) / Fu Baoshi/ Oh, Changbai Mountain!

Old friend checked into detox. I think that this is both a marvellous event and a warning. I have been seriously cutting back on my consumption of drugs and alcohol lately. The past three months have been zero marijuana and no more than two (2) beers a day. Most nights I am dry completely.

But what I have been seeing is that folks who retire tend to up their consumption rather than decrease. Sometimes this becomes a problem. I am as susceptible to this problem as any and will need to keep a weather eye on the issue.

Impressionism / Adam Baltatu/ Fantastic Landscape

One of the things that happen when you try to go out of your way to read from sources you don’t agree with is that you can kinda keep a weather eye on how the “truth” is being perceived by the opposing sides of issues. Needless to say, the ebb and flow of the “truth” is as malleable and transient as can be.

Michael sent me a couple of pieces yesterday that talked about science in an odd way. Not that he was talking about science as much as what I would refer to as “cargo cult science”. Which isn’t really science.

Science is an odd thing. Lots of folks want to wear the priest's robes, but most of the folks have never really gone through and done “science”. This is especially evident in the mass media and in the crowded hallways of the internet.

Consider for a moment this quote:

Eddington publicized Einstein’s achievement in a 1918 paper for the Physical Society called ‘Gravitation and the Principle of Relativity’. But it was of the essence of Einstein’s methodology that he insisted his equations must be verified by empirical observation and he himself devised three specific tests for this purpose. The key one was that a ray of light just grazing the surface of the sun must be bent by 1.745 seconds of arc–twice the amount of gravitational deflection provided for by classical Newtonian theory.

Not much of that kind of rigor going around of late. What is passed off as science are papers, funded by corporations, with cherry-picked statistics and the bottom line clearly in sight at all times. Almost everyone appears to be in on the game.

I am of the sincere opinion that things are going to get worse before they get better. There aren’t enough uncontaminated scientists out there to give us a decent look at the verification data. The verification data is being referee-ed by folks who might as well be employed by the folks who benefit. And worse of all, prestige, reputation, and power are in play which taints the entire scene.

Nope, right now I think that folks should spend some time reading and thinking about how science is perceived and used in a nominally demographic system where the educational system seems to de-emphasize the true nature of science with its inherent skepticism and refutations.

Surrealism / Sidney Nolan/ Desert Storm

Tell you the truth, dragging my ass out of bed is getting harder. Less than seven months to go, but I think that I got this. I am certain that the coffee will take hold soon and I will get the necessary “up and at ‘em” but right now that seems elusive.

Just received my last copy of Foreign Affairs. Praise be. It has been harder and harder to read this nonsense over the last while. The decline began at the fall of the Soviet Union and has been a steady decline, lubricated by hubris, the entire time.

The cover shows yet another view of a dystopian hellscape of running children and smoking craters. The headline is simply “Who Won the War on Terror?”

Assholes.

Well buckaroos, if a war on a tactic (which this wasn’t) or even if it was yet another crusade trying to insert an “Outre-Mer” into the heart of Islam, or even if it was a thought out attempt to execute on McKinder’s rabid fantasies, the answer is:

“Certainly Not the USA”

I have yet to understand as an old soldier why we think of ourselves as a nation of warriors. We just aren’t. We want things but our heritage as a nation of shopkeepers is all too willing to go to war and not really willing to fight one. Victories here in the USA are thought to be purchased. What is happening now is that people are squeaking about the money wasted in making the foolish attempt, not the foolish attempt itself. We appear to be mostly angry about the lost money. We could give a fuck less about the war itself.

I still am a fan of isolation. Treaties with Canada and Mexico. Navy reduced to a Coast Guard. Air Force can keep their missiles and the tactical aircraft, Army reduced to 24 brigades. Marines going back to seagoing bellhops.

Spend our time climbing out of the hole we have dug ourselves.

Mind our own business.

Contemporary Realism / Neil Welliver/ Illusory Flowage

That is what I am trying for today. I am just going to do the job and then get home and relax. Truthfully, exiting the limelight is harder than one would think. People keep trying to drag you back, not for your convenience, but for theirs. Looks to me like there is nothing sweeter than getting credit for someone else’s work. When this little soupçon is taken away from folks, they seem to think that their consteetooshunal rights have been abridged.

So I am sitting back in my cubby hole, just chopping wood and carrying water and doing things that need to get done and trying not to let anyone see what I do.

I am thinking that I will need to spend some time reading about the technical means of retirement. I need to remember that I do work for the federal guv’mint and they complicate the bejesus out of everything. I think that I have quite a deal of mindless bureaucratic check boxes to fill up in the next sixteen months.

Those of you who were paying attention might have noticed that the month count went up slightly. No harm there, just that the tax and money told me that greater benefit would accrue by waiting until December. The new target date is 12/03/22. So I will be retired before my sixty-ninth birthday.

Symbolism / Nicholas Roerich/ Mongolia (Campaign of Genghis Khan)

Working through the process of changing how I write everyday. The latest attempt is to use Google Docs and then cut and paste into Dreamwidth. Seems to hold the formatting well and is marginally easier than using Thunderbird and e-mail.

So, I think that I have been offensive to people lately. I am blaming the election, but truthfully it might be more than that. Case in point, I was over at one of my very regular reads is Cassandra’s Legacy. In the past, I have referred to Ugo as one of my two “man crushes” (along with JMG). Always good stuff, and his new Holobiont side blog is easily as entertaining and informative. So I am writing this because I did want to follow up on a post and response for my self-perceived boorishness.

The subject was Ugo’s cross post of a piece by Richard Heinberg. This one is a toughie. Heinberg is of course spot on in his analysis. He has an uncomfortable habit of being just that way the great majority of the time. But, what I am hearing in his piece is the usual end-game of being a correct Cassandra in things that are well out of your control. You spend all your time saying “I told you so” with your lip curled in a sneer. Seems to me that Heinberg does this better than most.

But I think that it is difficult for folks who have been right all along not to participate in this little bit of self-approval. But truthfully, it is really the least helpful part of the process. The trouble with the simple gift of prophecy is that like Cassandra, when you are proven right, no one is appreciative of either your truth telling or your accuracy. But Richard can most certainly take comfort in not having been raped by Ajax, given away as a concubine to Agememmnon, nor will he be murdered by Clytemnestra.

I can’t really blame Richard for getting ahead of the game now that the dance has started. But when he started out with this line, he really got into the “we deserved it” mentality. I can’t think of anything less useful.

The United States of America was problematic from the start. It was founded on genocide and slavery, and, while frequently congratulating itself on the rights and freedoms it granted its citizens, never managed to confront the demons in its past. The question would arise repeatedly, generation after generation: rights and freedoms for whom?

Look, we did better than most. Yes, as Richard so succinctly states, we started out with a flawed vessel and we were bound to go down anyway, but we had a damn good run and there is a lot to be proud of. Everyone uses the analogy of the Titanic in this little merry go-round of prophecy subsector or the internet. Well, I think that Richard and the rest of us might want to spend a little more time thinking about the whole process of how the Titanic went down.

From everything I can see, there was hubris available from the start of the construction process. Mastery of Newtonian physics and coal-power gave people an invincible feeling and no one had thought of cold-brittleness, metal characteristics, or the vagaries of who was responsible for watching out for icebergs. Now that we know it, the Titanic kinda looks like stupidity. But the truth of the matter is they tried to do something great and failed because they were human.

I think that I forgave Richard completely on the simple basis of his next piece within the same newsletter. Where the verbiage of the “Obituary” was filled with contempt and blame. The next piece of Chickens and Solar Cookers was a perfect atonement and counterpoint.

I fail at not being fully humble when I am right. I tend to downplay it when I am wrong. I hedge my predictions as much as possible. I try to give people the benefit of the doubt and ascribe things to being mistakes rather than acts of malevolence.

People like Richard and Ugo and to a much lesser myself have to remember that most of the issues that we bemoan are the end product of a chain of interrelated predicate events that were a mixed bag of good and bad put together by imperfect people working in an imperfect system. That is the simple recipe of how we got here and how we will work our way out of it.

I think that it is important for Richard and all of us to focus on the bold type in his second point concerning Chickens and Solar Cookers.

Some things didn’t work.

Grok that.

Current Location: In front of the happy lamp
Current Music: Toad the Wet Sprocket: Something to Say

Gonna Make Some Cookies. That's it.

Current Location: Kitchen Table
Current Music: Joe Jackson: Is She Really Going Out With Him

Expressionism / Wassily Kandinsky/ Mountain landscape with church

My political mantra (at least since 2016) has always been: "I am not worried about Trump, I am worried about what comes next". I have witnesses.

I still stand by that.

Fuckwad really has never been the disease, fuckwad has always been the symptom. The rot in our society is deep, fuckwad just lets it shine forth for the world to see.

2nd Witch:
By the pricking of my thumbs,
Something wicked this way comes. [Knocking]
Open locks,
Whoever knocks!
[Enter Macbeth]

Macbeth:
How now, you secret, black, and midnight hags!
What is't you do?

Macbeth Act 4, scene 1, 44–49

It really doesn't matter which card-carrying member of the gerontology wins in three weeks, the die is cast. Rubicon isn't just a model of Jeep.

Current Location: happy lamp and coffee
Current Music: Elephant Revival: Sing to the Mountain

Neoclassicism / Joseph Wright/ Vesuvius from Posillipo

Cooking dinner rice and just put in the picture above. Just getting set for a long weekend and some alternate psychologies and thinking. Life seems pretty good.

Trying to get low on the food chain this week. Rice and onions and cheap turkey and eggs and cheese all in a mishmash. Filling and tasty and probably not bad for me. I have been pretty good about my eating lately. Not great, just less bad than I was. Which is where it plays this time of year.

I“Learned people have handled the specialization of thought with an incredible lack of precaution. It is almost universally assumed that the growth of a specialization leaves unaffected the presuppositions as to the perspective of the environment which were sufficient for the initial stages. It cannot be too clearly understood that the expansion of any special topic changes its whole meaning from top to bottom. As the subject matter of a science expands, its relevance to the universe contracts. For it presupposes a more strictly defined environment. The definition of the environment is exactly what is omitted from special abstraction.”

Realism / Giovanni Fattori/ Bauer mit Ochsenkarren

I am trying not to take shit that seriously today. For some reason, this simple task has been hard for me to pull off of late. Jesus, its's not like I am going to get out of here alive!. Or for that matter, it isn't like the world around me isn't going to change whether I like it or not. So today, just do what I do and don't take it like the beginning and the end is the goal.

Thinking about heading into see the new Star Wars on Saturday morning. The true believers are haranguing me about not having seen the middle flavor of the new trilogy. Gasp, that means I might miss the plotline. Gimme a fucking break. The plot on Star Wars is pretty much non-existent. You go to Star Wars to look at special effects and watch explosions. Lots of them. If you are going to Stars Wars because you enjoy the plot, you are probably one of those folks who worry about whether Kim Kardasian is getting too big a butt.

Nope: It's the explosions. Lots of them.

Screed

https://keithhuddleston.blogspot.com/2019/12/artisanal-texts.html

Current Location: In front of the happy lamp
Current Music: Smash Mouth: All Star

Realism / Jose Ferraz de Almeida Junior/ Girl with a Book

Doing the Sunday morning thing, tea and reading and thinking. Laundry is in the washer, ti will be out of the dryer around 08:45. Made the first test batches of cookies yesterday. Since everyone and their dog is all the sudden gluten intolerant, I figure that at least making an effort won't take that much. The hard part is making things fit expectations of cookies.

Look, we have developed an entire cuisine around wheat flour. Our expectations of baked goodies and bread are built around those expectations. With this new trend of all the sudden fashionable gluten intolerance trying to make something baked and pleasing become quite difficult when measuring against the standards laid down by the taste and texture of wheat flour.

Yesterday was fennel seed shortbread. Shortbread is a good place to start in the learning process for working with gluten-free. Stuff is deadly simple. Cut butter into flour, add some fennel seeds, knead in sugar, let it rest, and bake. Now granted, cutting the butter in into the flour is a pain, but overall this simplest "cookie" gives one an idea how the Alt-Flours work.

The answer is, not exceedingly well. Taste is OK, not great, texture is off. I am going to get my ass kicked in the cookie contest unless I figure this out. Been talking trash. Gotta keep my mouth shut.

Current Location: Happy Lamp and Tea
Current Music: Neal Young: My My, Hey Hey (out of the blue)

Impressionism / Arthur Verona/ In the Forest

Ahhhhhh home for the next five days.

Today is heading over to the red side of the river to hang with the famdamily and prep for Thanksgiving. Got a general idea of the menu, just have to spend a while talking with the folks to work out the details and then go a shopping.

Can't really say as I have that much planned for this hiatus. Food and drink and football. Maybe meet with friends if any are willing.

Not certain as I am up to producing any screed today. Might just spend the next couple of days relaxing.

Current Location: Happy Lamp and Coffee
Current Music: Summertime: Al Jarreau

Romanticism / Charles M. Russell/ The Challenge, #2

The place is clean and aired out. Vacuuming and wiping and changing bedding and all the little homely housekeeping chores are in the bag. I went in and got ahead at work on the chill out and work slow and easy level of effort. If I come in on my day off because the powers can't figure out how to be actual managers, I most certainly am not going to bust my ass. I figure time and a half for fifty percent effort is what you get out of me when you are asking me to do other people's work for them.

Heading over to the Vantucky for the family thing. Might go over and hang out early, might not, reply hazy, try again later. Gotta struggle through two days at work this week, then I will be on family OD for five days, hard to say.

Screed:

Been pondering the clown show going on in Washington. Can't say that I am more or less worried about the fate of the Republic watching this charade. Accusations fly, spittle-flecked tirades and tweets abound.

All sound and fury signifying nothing. A poorly acted distraction, keeping attention way from the real problems. Ashes, Ashes, all fall down.

I think that is only appropriate that Ukraine is the focus. I think that the irony of this is astounding. Halford John Mackinder's heartland theory is as old and broken down a stragegic theory as one could ever hope for. But it appears that the PoliSci majors who appear to have wrested control from the adults only have time for the theories that their tenured instructors had during their salad years could handle considering those instructors limited ability or sobriety.

So I see a bunch of folks up there in the DC environs who have wangled themselves some plum jobs, and have created for themselves comfortable sinecures expounding the virtues of McKinder's timeworn roadmap for the policies important to Europe. But Mckinder has never been all that important to the USA. The two world wars that we participated in come around to the simple adage of "sticking our nose in other peoples business". Being out there in the Outer or Insular crescent (see above) Europe means fuck-all to us.

Then in comes the orange-haired fuckwad. In the timeworn example of even a blind pig finding the acorn, he used his ability to read the bottom line and come up with the simple concept "we can't afford that anymore". So he starts making the attempt to back up out of the problem.

So what we are seeing is the purveyors of a failed policy defending their jobs and paychecks. The have enlisted the aid of a failing and failed political party and gave us the slightly nauseating spectacle of two branches of government arguing over who is really in charge of foreign policy. Now, this is kinda interesting in a sense because it sure as shooting isn't an established fact that foreign policy is the sole bailiwick of the executive

Current Location: Laundry and Coffee
Current Music: Betty Carter: I Should Care

OK: Back to the salt mines today: Was a nice respite, but part of me is glad to get back into the mundane. Taking the time off did allow me to recharge, but as of right now, I don't feel any particular need to make it permanent.

Hung out with the elder yesterday, a good day. Got to watch a great deal of a football game undisturbed, baked some zucchini bread. Now I have to figure out how to bring a lunch every day and stop feeding the overpriced and not that great food services at either of the hospitals.

I am getting the feeling that something big is getting ready to happen.

Screed

I am thinking that Rosenberg is not quite comfortable with the idea that there are people out there who disagree with him on what should be the purpose and goals of a nation. I will even go so far as to say Nation-State, because somehow those two definitions have been hyphenated into a kludge that no one is really satisfied with.

I think that the first thing that needs to be addressed is the role and function of the state. Since Rosenberg provided such an excellent bibliography, I will quote from Giovanni Gentile "The Philosophic Basis of Fascism" published in Foreign Affairs on New Years Day, 1928.

To be sure the Right cannot be accused of too great scruple in respecting the liberties guaranteed by our Constitution; but the real truth was that the Right conceived liberty in a sense directly opposite to the notions of the Left. The Left moved from the individual to the State: the Right moved from the State to the individual. The men of the Left thought of "the people" as merely the agglomerate of the citizens composing it. They therefore made the individual the center and the point of departure of all the rights and prerogatives which a régime of freedom was bound to respect
.
The men of the Right, on the contrary, were firmly set in the notion that no freedom can be conceived except within the State, that freedom can have no important content apart from a solid régime of law indisputably sovereign over the activities and the interests of individuals. For the Right there could be no individual freedom not reconcilable with the authority of the State. In their eyes the general interest was always paramount over private interests. The law, therefore, should have absolute efficacy and embrace the whole life of the people.

These are the poles that our country is trying to bridge. Now, the real problem is that the two poles necessary to the creation and existence of a Nation-State must be a dynamic equilibrium between these two poles.

It is my opinion that the current political climate hold ascendant the views of the men of the left. Even the right wing in this country pay at least a modicum of homage to the views of the left. The real problem right now is the left scorns, ridicules, and savagely attacks any effort of the State to control (except of course when such control enhances ones personal interest at the expense of another).

Our history here in the US has a couple of glaring examples of this dynamic. One could argue that our 1776 revolution was a direct attack by the left against the right. Lincoln was not a leftist, but fought a civil war to enforce the power of the state over individuals. Roosevelt wasn't of the left, but of the right and brought the rights of the individual to heel.

I am wondering where this all will go. The left (as described by Gentile) has held sway in the politics of this country for almost a century now (Roosevelt was elected in 1932). I am thinking that we are looking at a change a coming.

A hard rains gonna fall.

Current Location: Happy Lamp and Coffee

Working overtime of late. Co-workers are old and tired and on their last legs. Can't bring themselves to retire. Can't deliver the goods. They have been there too long and have run out of options and energy. It truly is sad.

Today's Screed:

Been thinking about the idea "working toward a positive outcome".

Can't say that I believe in such a thing in the environment that we H. Sapiens have created for ourselves. Oh granted, some of us geezers will slide through with our accoutrements and our toys and not see the whirlwind. Truth be told, I am hoping for that fate myself. Granted, I have reduced my load of symbols and fripperies well below the cultural norm here in the good old USA, but they still exist and I am attached to my remainder.

But the idea of working toward a "positive" outcome is ingrained in our current psyche. One has to be positive. That is the sum total of our pop-culture psychology. But what happens if the outcome has to tear down what everyone sees as positive?

The system that we have gave us the fuckwad at 1600. The system worked exactly as the system was designed. The urban elites on the coasts were not able to force their views on a less than positive country. The idea of the electoral college was put in place to provide just such an outcome.

Truth be told, it appears that the bulk of the country is not moving in a "positive" direction and they know it. The parts of the country sucking on the sweet life and want things to continue state that their entitlements and their privileges are positive and that the losers who are ground down to provide those are negative.

Trump will go down as possibly the worst President in American history. No doubt. But the negative vibe he presents is reflective of those who are constantly being told to be positive while they are being shit on.

Current Location: Kitchen
Current Music: America: To Each His Own

Feeling better this AM. I am beginning to think that it was just something that I ate and this has now passed. Spent some good time with the young men yesterday. They both seem to be going the way that they should be going. I am not all that concerned. Family life is what it is, dysfunctional isn't necessarily all that bad. Truth be told, I am not certain that the Norman Rockwellesque idea of American family life was ever anything but a Madison Avenue sales pitch to buy the right kind of shit.

Today's Screed

Now, being of a contrary bent, and actually making an attempt to understand the world, I have bought some very enlightening books over at Verso Books. I have gotten some fine stuff over there, Max Weber's book on the Agrarian Sociology of Ancient Civilizations is a must-read. But when I received a 40% off offer on this book, I had to work hard at not busting my gut laughing (BTW: In my case, this is not merely a figure of speech, being post-umbilical hernia repair, this is a real thing).

In Fully Automated Luxury Communism, Aaron Bastani conjures a vision of extraordinary hope, showing how we move to energy abundance, feed a world of 9 billion, overcome work, transcend the limits of biology, and establish meaningful freedom for everyone. Rather than a final destination, such a society merely heralds the real beginning of history.

Holy fucking shitballs, what a retard. Gets me back to the days of when everyone thought Obama was the golden boy, bringing in a new wave of goodness. HOPE. Man that shit sure do sell.

Sometimes folks just don't realize that they can't have it all. They can't let go of the fact that the folks who have everything that this guy sees as the future of mankind can only be kept by the few, not the all. Luxuries are now seen as the birthright of all rather than the outcome of a systematic strip-mining of an oblivious populace.

But, in a society defined by the whores of advertising and the relentless demands on one's individuality pushed by mass marketing, it should come as no surprise that some smart-guy should completely mis-read Marx.

Current Mood: 前台
Current Location: Looking out at grey skies
Current Music: Delbert McClinton, Self Made Men, Gone to Mexico

Today's Project:

Keep Eyes Open
Keep Mouth Shut

The lay of the land is changing.

Current Mood: 響應
Current Location: Kitchen Table
Current Music: Grateful Dead: Deal

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Degringolade

June 2025

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Style: Cinnamon Cream for Crossroads by branchandroot
Resources: Vintage Christmas 6

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A Sorta Public Diary and Comment

Entries tagged with hexagram 02

Weird Tales

Sauerkraut

Screed

Mojo

Digestion

Temperance?

Deflections

B,,,Not Us

Planning

Kubler-Rossing the past

cookies

Ruby

Barnacles

Blowed Up

Rust Never Sleeps

Homish and Aroundish

Nerf Herder

Warnings Unnoticed

Cornwall Blank

Words Fail

Response