even senators have class

mr. heinz ketchup and failed presidential candidate john kerry has sent me a personal appeal for funds in the name of somethig called the democratic senatorial campaign committee...so has patty murray, senator form w. virginia and relic of the clinton era (she is a class III senator, which has nothing to do with personal deportment [imagine a rating system that quantified senatorial behavior...pay-offs, kickbacks, trysting in the swamps around whoretown, late-night meetings with bagmen, greasy paper bags of hundred dollar bills...you'd have to bring royko back from the dead to manage it...only someone steeped in chicago politics could grasp the subtlties] but rather the distance in time until a senator's next election...class I being the closest in time to re-election and class III the farthest ) they are both really worried that the republicans need only four senate seats to upset democratic control of the upper bagnio and they want me to send them some cash to help out ( i am assuming they would prefer unmarked hundred dollar bills ) clearly they are delusional on a number of fronts that bear examination...first, just because visclosky gave them my email address as payback for all those unsolicited emails i sent him asking about donations from bp/ammoco and their relationship to his resistance to any legislation that inhibits the profiteering of oil companies or holds them accountable for the bonehead things they do to cut costs, doesn't mean i give a rat's ass about who owns congress...obviously it is not an institution designed with the represenation of the "voters'" interests and its arcane proceedings are of no value in the real economy in which the bulk of the citizenry live and try to survive...second, the idea that i would want to send any disposable income i might have laying around to these slimeball freaks would be laughable if they weren't so gosh awfully earnest in thinking it is a good idea...what the fuck? are they so removed from reality that they think the bulk of americans are flush with cash? or are they just that arrogant? lots of folks are struggling to pay the bills and feed, clothe, and house themselves and they want us to support them? i can think of a multitude of organizations more worthy of donations...mostly those in direct oppositon to the policy these bozos create to leaglize their behaviors...the graphic with the blue seats is really neat but i'm not feeling that gillible today...such a tranparent manipulation based on fear ( "the dscc HAS TO raise $275,670 by may 31st"...an imperative? really? the fate of reasonable politics in america turns on a measly quatrer of a million or so? and who, i wonder, is doing the matching? who is going to give the dscc a buck for every dollar i give them? the committee would be better served to tap that source of lucre...i have a differnt agenda....then there's the businessa about a "republican extremist agenda"...political cant is so predictable...of course the republicans are extremist....they have never been shy about pushing the interests of wealth down the throats of the "voters"...it's why they are so patently loathesome...they need new writers...perhaps they could find some alumni from the simpsons or something)...a little critical thought would lead any reasonably intelligent individual to conclude that it is of no importance at all who holds the white house or controls congress...democrat, republican? trivial distinctions in a plutocracy...wealth is free to call itself whatever it wants and to masquerade as champions of "the people" if it wishes, but in the end it controls governemnt to see that its interests are not subverted by anyone who is foolish enough to think that that "we the people" crap applies to everyone...as we head into a long holiday weekend replete with cookouts and enless playoff games i'll kick off the celebrations by saying fuck these people.

5:48 pm
senator dick durbin ( class two democrat from illinois ) has now chimed in wih an email addressed to me personally under the terrifying header of "nightmare scenario"...in the six days since mr. heinz ketchup contacted me the imperative ammount needed to save the senate form the evil and rapacious republicans with their "extremist agenda" has fallen precipitously to $ 119,806 needed by the may 31st deadline...that these elections will not be contested until november of 2012 does not seem to be a factor in the need to raise cash as soon as possible...that the american public seems to have the political memory of a gnat would seem to call for a somewhat later start date to the heavy work of campaigning...however there may be advance work and important junkets to assess the mood on the street by the committee's staffers ( burdened with the important work of "the people's business" dick, patty, and john will, of course, be far too busy to press the flesh anywhere except, possibly, in their home states [ on further review this seems unlikely as none of the chief inopportuners is a class one senator...their seats are safe until at least 2014...coupling that with the aforementioned gnat memory may be making them complacent about taking part in this low-life ponzi scheme...they feel there will be no negative sanction whene their terms expire...and that makes me wonder if mr. heinz keychup sent any of these bogus howlers to massachusetts where his constituents could see and remember them...what would a mass forwarding of this email to say boston do?] they have to keep the greasy paper bags in motion to feed the big dogs at goldman-sachs) whatever the case i wouldn't make myself liable for more than the six bucks...even then mr. heinz ketchup would need to show up at my house on payday...if he was that desperate i might cut loose some cash just so i could call that marker in one day..."hey john...remember that six bucks? well...cheney's digging up my backyard for a bunker extention citing some arcane imminent domain statute...what can you do about this?"

political platform, faith, consumerism, teleology...

"the very idea of universal fulfilment presupposes that human beings as such seek the same essential goals, identical for all, at all times, everywhere. for unless this is so, utopia cannot be utopia, for then the perfect society will not perfectly satisfy everyone."

"what is common to all these worlds, whether they are conceived of as an earthly paradise or something beyond the grave, is that they display a staic perfection in which human nature is finally fully realized, and all is still and immutable and eternal."

"heraclitus was right, things cannot stand still."

"no more rigorous moralist than emmanuel kant ever lived, but even he said, in a moment of illumination, 'out of the crooked timber of humanity no straight thing was ever made.' to force people into the neat uniforms demanded by dogmatically believed-in schemes is almost always the road to inhumanity."

isaiah berlin from "the crooked timber of humanity"

being human is a messy business...we all have universal material needs and a few universal desires as well...we also have a multitude of differences and conflicts, many of them driven by those "dogmatically believed-in schemes." lenin, hitler, pol pot, stalin, ante pavlic, slobo, mao, abortion clinic bombers, the weatherman faction... all leap to mind...they all had the answer and they all were secure in the knowledge that they could do whatever it took to achieve those "final ends"...all fundamentalist in their beliefs...all sure of their ground...convinced of the rigtheousness of their cause and of their singular fitness to lead the masses to those utopias whether they liked it or not...this has a lot to do with my unrelenting loathing of clerics, politiicans, and insufferable know-it-alls who have the answers i'm looking for if i'd just shut up and do what they want me to...no-one has all the answers and most of us have very few if any...teleologies may hold comfort and reassurance...but they are so useful in manipulating people into working towards an unseen agenda that they're dangerous...especially if you happen to be the "other"....the outsider inhibiting the attainment of the final end...or just someone open to heterodox beliefs or sensitive to those common needs and desires that make us all part of the same species...i know i don't have all the answers...in fact i have mostly questions...and it's why i will question anyone who has "the answer." the dialectic grinds on...that precludes utopia.

still here

i don't mean to be pedantic about this, but i am still here...and while i was supposed to still be here, there were supposed to be manifestations of the divinity's extreme displeasure with my human frailty...and yet, no earthquakes jarring me out of bed and i don't smell sulfur burning..i am at a bit of a loss to undestand...admittedly no-one i know is a likely candidate for being rapured up to jesus and the faithful equate me to satan...but you'd think divine revelation would be a bit less obscure than arcane biblical mathmatics...i mean free will is so prone to error...i will wait patiently for developments today and will update as i find ( or do not find) evidence that i am beginning my five months of torment at the hands of the divinity ( could officer dibble be an agent of divine retribution...perhaps the indiana supreme court is on to something)...stay tuned in case things get interesting

12:53 pm 5-21-2011

with about five hours to go local time until the rapture begins the air here in northwest indiana is thick with tension...so much so that people are resorting to an habitual auto-pilot to continue functioning...imagine crowding into supermarkets and visiting the corner bar when jesus is due to raise the chosen up to god's right hand and cast the rest of us poor heathens into the pit ( but only after he fucks with us for five months [ha! as if life on this sodding planet with plalin, gingrich, huckabee,the degenerate paul duo, obamaland, and goddamned israel isn't enough crap to wade through..."you're on earth, there's no cure for that" as beckett says] that puts the end of the world right about my birthday...fitting) but they're out there acting as if there's a tomorrow...fools! repent you heathen bastards!


6:23 pm 5-21-2011
well...twenty-three minutes into the rapture here in central time ( even god seemingly has to obey the strictures of time zones...placing limits on god...what next? the end of the world?) and i am still here...the most evil things that have happened have been my son's flat tire ( a sure sign of apocalypse) and (even worse) someone's insistence on watching elvira's movie macabre...beyond that things are pretty close to what passes for normal around here...apparently old harry camping was a bit off in his math (again)...so...mom's tomorrow and a trip to the campus garden...work monday...sos...it would be humorous if degenerate fucks like this didn't prey on people who are already unstable...harry's ministry is a non-profit but it's worth quite a few millions...wonder what kind of salary harry draws...what kind of expense account?

3:27 am 5-22-2011

nothing much to report...apparently my siblings made it to their birthday ( unless one or more was raptured...THAT seems unlikely) no fire, famine, earthquake, flood ( that wasn't already on the move ) to report...only the coincidental eruption of an icelandic volcano...harry camping is rationalizing away to explain his continued presence on the planet and i am confirmed in my skepticism about ANYONE having a clue over what life is really about and the value of market mechanisms and economists...religion as we know it is about behavioral control not spirituality...theologians are part of the sataus quo and are deceitful fucks...they have an agenda and a set of beliefs to go with it...don't let your local cleric confuse you with that brotherly love they spout...it is part of the propaganda they produce to hook you in... you will have to find spirituality on your own...it is an interior landscape...they only have influence there if you allow it...in the end their religion is about nothing but preserving your ego in optimum circumstances for eternity....think about some of the people you know and tell me if that seems like a good idea...the thought of an eternal harold camping or billy graham makes my gorge rise.

4:44 am 5-22-2011

i just read a quote from a california cleric in the n y times who said mocking harold's acolytes is like kicking puppies...you can do it, but why? that's sophistry...a ruse intended to divert attention form the deceit harold is pulling off in the name of religion and an attempt to disguise the fact that theology is an elaborate rationalization ( and another way to make a living...the material aspect of shepherding a flock is one that doesn't get a lot of airtime in everyday religion but there seems to be a substantial ammount of cash flow even among presbyterians )...substantiation of myth...well...we all seem to need explanations but some of them do way more harm than good...harold is undermining the cleric racket by being so over the top...bet the nazi pope is pissed too...amateurs screwing around with prophecy...( oh for the days of illiterate peasants and a liturgy in latin that only the cleric could interpret...goddamn that luther and his populist vision of god )...people like harold abuse their belivers in a far more damaging way than those pointing out the fallacy of his rants do...harold is the one kicking puppies

the end?

will the earth end? someday...the sun will become a red giant and subsume th earth. blowing the atmosphere off into space and making this an irradiated rock with little chance of generating life again...tomorrow? not bloody likely...another pea brain example of religon at work...i have not asked to be raputuired up by son'o god now or at any future point...prayer, like hope, may be something of a necessity to the human condition, but both are ineffective...deferrals of responsibility mostly...for those interested i will be issuing bulletins about my condition on this posting throughout the weekend.

geheime staatpolizei is what the moron supreme court of indiana justice steven david ( bedfellow of nazi mitch daniels) wants to make officer dibble here in the hoosier state...fuck you steve and mitch and officer dibble too...fourth amendment...bill of rights? constitution? not worth the parchment it was scribbled on...well...alex probably wouldn't argue much...but i will...hopefully wiser heads at police departments around the state will hold off until the feds rip steve's nuts off over this one ( can those low-life jurists be recalled? why not?)...i don't think it's wise to let a police officer adjudge what's proper in the heat of the moment steve...goebbles loves you...do we really want a fascist for our next president?..i may have to register as a republican just so i can vote against the slimy litte fuck...better palin than daniels.

happy birthday bert!

"the romntic movement in art, literature, and in politics is bound up with...judging men not as members of a community, but as aesthetically delightful objects of contemplation. tigers are more beautiful than sheep, but we prefer them behind bars. the typical romantic removes the bars and enjoys the magnificent leaps with which the tiger annihilates the sheep. he exhorts men to imagine themselves as tigers and when he succeeds the results are not wholly pleasant."

"the result, in thought as in literature, was a continually deepening subjectivism, operating at first as a wholesome liberation form spiritual slavery, but advancing steadily towards a personal isolation inimical to social sanity."
bertrand russell from " a history of western philosophy"

it's bertie's 139th birthday and evolutionary biologists as well as physisits say philosophy is irrelevant because it hasn't kept up with scientific advances that are pidgeon-holing us all with socio-biology...we may be hard-wired to be much of what we are...all that guanine and thymine and adenine and cytosine telling us we have to love the color red or loathe broccoli...but i can still admire a trenchant critique of nietzsche because, "...the men whom he most admires are conquerors, whose glory is cleverness in causing men to die."....hitler was a romantic and so are all the other members of social elites who find the purpose of "common" folk to serve unquestioningly...lots of that going on in the late empire as the doyens and doges manipulate us with bread, circuses ( what else could you call the crypto-fascist fox network or congress?), and fear into seeing their interests as ours...it's an old template...church and state as uneasy bedfellows thrown together from fear of the mob and puzzling out new permutations of the same old story...situational ethics ( taken to dizzying heights by john dewey's pragmatic naturalism..woody wilson loved his ass) and subjectivist thinking constantly leading the powers that be down dead ends that have to be explained by treachery or acts of god...and people just keep taking the bait...bertie and i were contemporaries in time for a bit, and he is one of a number of people who tried to demonstrate to me that there are rational alternatives to the institutional structures we live within...odd how unpopular they were and are with elites...but the epicuruses and siegfried sassoons and g e moores and salman rushdies and george orwells and yevgeny zamyatins and issac babels and w s sebalds and bertrand russells are still out there being read...politicians and theologians hate free will.

the deconstructionist post-structuralism party

old jacques derrida is dead and martin heidigger was a nazi ( he said he only tried it out to see if it fit but riefenstahl and goebbles knew better...they had his number back when hitler was ernst rohm's lap dog and gregor strasser actually belived in the "socialist" part of national socialism) and post-modernism is a philosphical joke anywhere you'd care to look these days...except in the foul death spiral that augers in to the 2012 presidential election...what the fuck? am i supposed to take this low-life crap seriously? it certainly seems post-modern in the strict, pedantic, utterly pointless form...rand paul is flying test blimps...mitt romney is defending an archaic health care system that even anthem finds larcenous...mike huckabee's staff has no idea what their man will say about 2012 ( but that doesn't count does it? does anyone really know what huckabee is thinking?)...obamaland is using skagging ossama as a selling-point for a re-election bid...laura bush is calling mitch daniel's wife trying desperately to persuade her to stick with the degenerate ( and this doesn't take into account the possibility of a first lady named cheri...the ramifications are manifold and a pornographer's dream...or would a french pronounciation make it better? remember freedom fries? or freedom toast...which,oddly enough was named german toast originally and changed to french toast during the first world war...is a french association a political liability? and would anyone pronounce it as sherree anyway?) slimeball for the good of the party and "the nation" (read wealth)...and then there's the palin's ranting about "decency" ( take that you sub-human rappers and wordsmiths of popular culture...the quitter ex-governor of alaska thinks you stink...be proud...wear it like a fucking badge...) and trump's approximation of hair...jesus...i thought it was a zoo before but the muse of satire has pulled out all the stops on this one...was this really what old alex had in mind in 1789? i begin to wonder...he might have been okay with lyndon larouche, alf landon, or even william jennings bryan but this crop is just pathetic...tough economic times have driven the vermin blinking into the political spotlight...this is truly the death of the real...a hoax perpetrated on a host of political phonies...a sort of symmetry...a plotline of an absurdist play...get the going-out-of-business signs ready and hire the auctioneers to liquidate the empire...someone will snap up thse thermonuclear devices...squeeze what you can out before the power company cuts off the lights.

even slums have their apologists

"cities are changing everything."

"dense concentrations of light dominate continents and cluster on coastlines, revealing their own patterns. the united states and europe are completely alight. a thick band of light extends all the way from europe to the middle east, across siberia to northern asia. the lights then spread down the brightly profiled landmasses of japan and south korea, spill along the eastern half of china to indonesia, and collect in a pool that illumintes the entire indian subcontinent. the southern and northern coasts of africa are ringed with light, and the glow in the eastern regions of south america extends around the southern and western coastlines....these vast areas of light are evidence of a new ecological order- of the urban biome we are creating."
jeb brugman. welcome to the urban revolution: how cities are changing the world.


"the squatters have no electricity- or, if they are lucky, they loop wires through the trees and pirate service from far away poles. but would you have electricity if your local utility hadn't run cables near your home? there are 1 billion squatters in the world today, almost one in six people on the planet. if current trends continue there will be 2 billion by 2030 and 3 billion (more than one-third of humanity) by the mid-point of the twenty-first century."

from world changing" a user's guide for the 21st century.

"the majority of the world's poor no longer live in inner cities. since 1970 the largest share of world urban population growth has been absorbed by the slum communities on the periphery of third world cities. the 'horizontalization' of cities is often as astonishing as their population growth: khartoum in 1988 for example was 48 times larger than in 1955. indeed the suburban zones of many poor cities atre now so vast as to suggest the need to think peripherallly."

"but the principal function of the third world urban edge is as a human dump. in some cases urban waste and unwanted immigrants end up together, as in such infamous "garbage slums" as the aptly named quarantina outside beirut. hoilar kusha outside khartoum, santa cruz meyechualco in mexico city, the former smoky mountain in manilla, or the huge dhapa dump and slum on the fringe of kolkata."
mike davis. planet of slums.

i tried to read brugman's book...honest...but i've thrown it across the room so many times the binding is split and the pages are falling out...they're numbered but i dont have the will to put them back in order...which is alright...it was gibberish even when it was functional...jeb must have something of a differen photo of earth at night than i do ...can't argue about western europe...but the light begins to thin out when you get to poland...it gets a bit sparse west of the mississippi too...siberia? where'd he come up with that? japan is lit up but they seem to have encountered something of a problem there snd may be a bit dimmer these days...a few people live in the interior of australia but they have a culture that seriously predates electricity and are probably not overly concerned... have a look at the amazon basin or central africa...millions, if not billions of folks there...but not much light...jeb argues ( among other things) that cities are an efficient way to distribute resources...and he could be right about that...but they're energy sinks too...electrical balck holes...some are better than others...new york is surprisingly efficient...but that may be because they learned to turn off the lights when they leave the room so the average new yorker uses only 4696 killowatt hours of electricity a year...san fanciscans use 6753...our neighbors in chicago use 8143...when you go towards the south and west west of the mississippi it gets truly ugly....pheonix 13344, houston 14542...and dallas tops out at 16116 ( yearbook statistical energy review 2010) lots of air conditioners out there... while cities may be an efficient way to allocate resources...in an ideal world....they are energy pigs...(and one has to wonder how much of that energy goes to the poor)...to sustain themselves they need lots of high quality energy and if we are not on the cusp of running out of that particular commodity, we are on the cusp of a radical change in how it is produced and how much it will cost...so jeb, not everyone in dallas will be able to keep the house at 65 degrees in august anymore and the likelyhood of the urban poor in lima or lagos ever seeing a fair and equitable share of that energy is as remote as reality is for you...oil is under $100 a barrel for the first time in weeks ($99.95 last time i looked) but it won't stay there for any great length of time...energy inertia due to sunk costs and human reliance on habit to obviate thought will change the way things pan out in the urban landscape...none of this will be as easy as the free marketeers want us to believe...they are selling a bill of goods to preserve themselves for as long as possible...the dialectic grinds on and no-one ( not even me) is sure of what's next...what, i wonder, happens when opec decides to price oil in euros or yuan instead of dollars? i wonder.