meanwhile back at the times

while the times is providing me with the correct perspective on the choice of kamala harris as a vice presidential candidate it is worth reflecting that they are also...

helping ( or trying to help ) sotheby's international realty fob off $72,962,500 in real estate with an average price of $9,120,312.50...although those two pricey ones in the hub of the tech industry rather skew the average...and that pittsfield massachusetts "price upon request" would likely skew it even more...still none of these are your minimum wage three jobs to make ends meet running like a hamster in a wheel dwelling...there is no affordable housing on minimum wage ( or just above it )...a brutal fact of life that drives homelessness ( shall we talk about califonia? assuming the homeless have been driven out of woodside and palo alto to some less gentrified califronia municipality...an important california contributor to this blog informs me that in the recent looting the homeless were hanging back and not engaging in looting "vital consumer goods", but rather waiting until the looters had left and taking the plywood that had been ripped off facades by looters to improve their living spaces...yes kamala hails from the land of milk and honey and she will show us the fucking way...might i suggest a close reading of mike davis's "planet of slums" and/or bill kaplan's "an empire wilderness" or both better yet)...the times says it is not an elitist newspaper but that is pure bullshit..so is the fiction that american politicians represent anything but the prerogatives of wealth...this will be an ugly autumn and it will not end in sweetness and light...buckle up...wealth feels threatened and the yahoos feel empowered...people will believe almost anything and the unscrupulous are more than willing to turn that belief to their own miserable ends...whether it's qanon's or the times ownership's...one would hope that profound skepticism is due for a comeback...time to dust off the democritus.

how much?

the puking buddah and i have been perusing the friday new york times...because we have a day off and some time to kill and the times is always instructive in the contradictory ways of the elite...or, at least, the daily confirmation that we can only perceive a slice of reality at a time because the totality is too complex for limited human cognition and so are completely vulnerable to contradicting ourselves without realizing it until it is far too late...for example...

this is the lede for an article that is to appear in print in the sunday magazine but is all over the website today...for me personally the lancets suggestion that zero alcohol is the safe level of ingestion would be eminently true...i am not everyone nor are they me and that may not hold exactly true for a lot of people...the times may sense this empirically and so feel completely at ease running advertisements like this...

"today and tonight only" you can have a glass of wine or get shitfaced while aiding the reconstruction of a remnant of a medieval institution based on a bronze age cult doing business in the present world...numb yourself to the exigencies and angst of these trumpist times while aiding the splendor that is france...i wonder...would this worthy endeavor make the wine sacramental?

and just so we don't lose sight of the rtime's elitist leanings here is the southeby's international real estate ad ( "your best life begins with a home that inspires you" ) for today's paper with this lising provising $39,500,00 worth of inspiration...the cheapest? $1,750,000...let me hasten to add that there is one "price upon request" listing for a home in harbour island, bahamas that would likely dwarf the cost of the "spectacular terraces overlooking park avenue"...i am, however, disinclined to inquire...it is enough to know such places exist and that there is a class of basically unwarranted wealth out there that inhabits them...frankly we have lost our way as a species...or, conversely, our path as a species has always tended to lead us to self-destructive behaviors and beliefs...either way.

all the news that's fit to print

the title of this post has been on the masthead of every new york times front page since who knows when and it could just as easily read " all the news that fits we print"...i am critical of the times a lot...mostly because it is "the paper of record" that has a lot of influence in "the media"...it is not alone in its foibles...no medium that provides "news" is unbiased or objective despite some of their claims ( one presumes fox does not claim objectivity...too laughable...probably even tot those who share their world view )...they are corporate entities seeking profit...of and for the status quo...they may disagree with specific policies editorially but they are not remotely in favor of any substantive revision of hierarchies...the n y times does indeed loathe don trump ( funny but when i type the name that way auto correct does not cue me to capitalize it ) but only because they see his actions as detrimental to their own economic interests ( and, one presumes, those of their advertisers...i don't see bloomingdale's or citibank or tiffany or ford or amazon yanking ads over the times editorializing about "riling up the crazies" or the gop's attempts to "block the ballot box" )...but they are not editorializing about "the system"...only about an administration that is so upfront and arrogantly blatant about what "the system" is, which is oligarchical and extractive ( what, exactly, do you do that caries no cost to you? dwell on that for a time )...and the disconnect between the lite and the rest of us that the trumpists are highlighting continues to grow as mcconnell says it isn't tax cuts for wealth that are the problem but rather "entitlements" like medicare and social security...well...they are not "entitlements"...programs like social security are ones i have paid into all my working life...what trump and his cronies are doing is spotlighting the extortionist proclivities of hegemonic culture and it is making the times nervous..."the crazies", if pushed far enough economically, might come tot he realization that migrant caravans are not the issue, "the system" is...this worries the times because actual substantive change could curtail their prerogatives and put a crimp in the n y time's store sales...so all media are mouthpieces for for various competing factions of the hegemonic culture and a conciliatory voice offering no real alternative, just a plea to "fix" the system of which they are an integral part...( elites do not have to be cabalistic to be more united than the divided mass of the citizenry with its petty and violent squabbles which distract their attention from the actual perpetrators of their disaffections...all they have to do is act in their own self-interest and they are advancing class interest, however, since their class interest is based on taking everything they possibly can, they are also in competition and they will, occasionally, cut one another's throats...still...greed unites...abortion and gun control divide )...all of this promotes a political system ( logically enough ) that systematically redistribute wealth upward and mythologizes they system's unbiased fairness for public consumption ( we all have an equal chance to be as greedy as congress )..so the disconnect between the governed and the government is more clearly visible than it has been in say fifty years...so...what do we do? all the alternatives seem to entail some continuation of elitism under new management..."business as usual"with a different ceo and a shuffling of congressional membership...don't count on a "blue wave" and if it should materialize don't count on a change in much of anything beyond the tone of rhetoric...two points...1) they are politicians and so liars and, 2) representatives from other districts and states don't give a rat's ass what i think..incumbents generally win...the system isn't exactly set in stone...but the inertia of the institutions is skewed heavily towards the status quo...the framers wanted it that way.

you're telling me?

“war is a way of shattering to pieces, or pouring into the stratosphere, or sinking into the depths of the sea, materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable, and hence, in the long run, too intelligent.” george orwell. 1984_______________________________today's new york times book review section reviews three books under the banner headline" barely afloat in america"...that rubric covers, "give people money: how a universal basic income would end poverty, revolutionize work, and remake the world", "squeezed: why our families can't afford america", and "the war on normal people: the truth about america's disappearing jobs and why universal basic income is our future"...this seems to be a nest of utopians in these trumpist times..i cannot deny that there is a concerted effort to drive the general population into debt penury...there is a war on, if not in exactly orwellian terms then one with the same end...to deny the polity of any comfort...to keep them on edge...worried..harried..unable to think clearly about the political mechanism used to control them because of the stress of every existence...worrying about a sitter...or a new water pump...or the price of a gallon of milk/gasoline...or the looming "back to school" income drain...or health care costs...or "what if" there is some catastrophic expense..if you are thinking about all that you don't have time to educate yourself about what the political slime is up to much less formulate plans to somehow resist..that "too intelligent stuff orwell is on about...i cant help but think that Ms. quart( squeezed ) ms. lowrey ( give people money ) and mr. yang ( the war on normal people) must have written these as primers for those members of the elite that have any concern over the mass of us...everyone who works for an hourly wage already knows what's going on ...they don't need to be tutored about the concerted actions of the elite to debase their lives or the need for money to access goods and services...they have a wealth of empirical knowledge...enough even to satisfy david hume that they know of what the speak..they need a breathing space to think about what they can do in response...a space a guaranteed universal income might provide...which is why it doesn't stand a snowball's chance in hell of being enacted...it would be labeled "debilitating charity" by the faux calivinist fucks that run things and be subject to "shattering to pieces" with every smear tactic that politicians ( read bought whores ) can muster and, given the tenor of these trumpist times those would be many and foul...antonio gramsci's "prison notebooks" and the assessment of the intricacies of hegemonic culture and how it invades, pervades, and controls our daily life...the depths of its indoctrination...might serve as a better start to resistance than pipe dreams from the liberal left.

one more nail

unlike the behemoths from christmases past ( i.e. "retail season)...

that were a strain on the paper carrier...

today's pre holiday paper weighs in literally pounds lighter...admittedly this is a christmas eve paper and the others were from october and november..however this dearth of heft is and index of what the papers have been like all autumn...light..on content ( sorry ) and advertising...even the high end advertisers seem to have wandered off howling into the wilderness...

the only special "pull out" in today's paper is the history channel's 2018 broadcast schedule...

even the sunday magazine, usually the haunt of high end real-estate and heirloom jewelry ads had been reduced to running ads for "avocado mattresses" and something called chateau gaby...the engineered desires that capitalism brings have not vanished...however this is a sure sign the vector for the orgasmic moment of purchase has changed and amazon doesn't need to advertise...just wait for us all to come to it...and it does eliminate some shadow work...i am not commuting to stores and hauling purchased around...they just land on my deck...true it's not greener but it is easier...another trap...and this may explain the overly familiar letters i have been getting from the contributors tot he times, tucked away in the sunday paper, thanking me for bring a subscriber and supporting the good work they do ( while the editor sends me an email telling me how much more my subscription will cost in 2018 )...it's a fucked up world and no mistake...from a to z.

elitist tussle

it's clear that the n y times loathes donald trump...today's op-ed section has some interesting titles to the pieces..."can this presidency be saved?" and "how we overcame tyranny before" among them...the n y times is keen to remind me that it is "not an elitist newspaper"...this is, of course, bullshit...the owners and shareholders of the n y times are every bit the elitist freaks the president ( pro tem ) is...a quick gander at the real estate advertising for "luxury condominiums" that "start" at approximately 118 times the base price i paid for m midwestern suburban home tells me that they are not aiming to sell much of anything to me ( unless you count the "new york times store" which has trinkets and gewgaws like jigsaw puzzles and page reprints that might fall into the range of my means...not the photographs or sports memorabilia though...those are priced for status or collectors )..so? the elite is at war with itself because they aren't monolithic and, while an acquisitional frame of reference gives them common ground there's no accounting for how individuals interact with one another even if they have common ground...this is good news for the rest of us...the elite work hard to keep us divided along many social fissures and brands ( are you chevy or ford? coke or pepsi? the divisiveness is in everyday life, not just the hot issues...so enculturated we don't even notice ) it is refreshing to see that , while they don't think so, they are actually human and not as overwhelmingly bright as they might suppose...there is hope here...cold comfort in these unhinged times...but comfort none the less...and i see the times has joined whole hog in data mining...i don't watch much but silent german expressionist films and some eisenstein and maybe dziga vertov...the only thing they might divine from that is "art house pretensions" and i don't go out much...trust no one.