Thanksgiving Is Ruined |
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May 31, 2023
“We people
today are so much smarter than people were back in the olden days! “For
example, did you ever see an old ‘silent’ movie? “When
you watch those old movies, when people in them try to talk, you can see their mouths
move. But no actual words come out! You can’t hear a damned thing. Like, they forgot to make the sounds! “This
shows that people back then must have been really, really stupid. Unlike us. “Those
olden days folks were too dumb to realize that, when you talk, you should, you
know, make actual noises? “Today,
we are savvy enough to know that talking is a lot more, like, effective when
you move your mouth – but also make actual sounds too! You know, so that other people can in fact hear
them? “You’d
think that would be pretty obvious to everybody, huh? Nope, not for those idiots in the past! “Boy,
they were dumb back then! And gullible. They
had no understanding of really basic stuff, of how things worked. Not like us. “This
goes to show why our times are totally unlike theirs in basically every way. A lot of our circumstances may seem similar, or
even as if some of the historical parallels are really scary. But we know that we are too smart to make the
kinds of mistakes that they did back then.
“How do we
know? Because we do not act dumb! We are much smarter. “How do
we know? You can tell that we are smarter because – we make noises! Lots and lots of noises!” April 30, 2023
Hedging against a non-existent but metaphysically imaginable risk: an evolution When must we act? 1) A threat may be imaginable in theory, but it also must be substantiated as having a meaningful existence or a measurable, non trivial impact on practical reality:
2) A threat may exist in practical reality, but its likely impact is shown to be minimal or even negligible. Nevertheless, if we can vividly imagine any possible way that the threat could somehow prove totally catastrophic, then we should consider that outcome to be a near-certainty and throw ever resource at preventing that threat, even if we disregard all the others:
3) If a threat is even minimally imaginable but vividly so, as told by our most creative storytellers, yet we can find no concretely substantiated evidence of it having any likely practical impact whatsoever, then we must conclude that the evidence is being cleverly hidden by someone nefarious. The lack of evidence shall be considered proof of the threat. Therefore we must consider the threat to be certain, existential and imminent.
March 31, 2023
Can TiR help you? “’Help’? What's that supposed to mean? Do you think that we need need your pity? Your charity? Your handouts? What an insult. Get lost.” "Just who do you think you are, asking me that? You know nothing about me, my needs or my situation. What do you think qualifies you to help me? To presume to diagnose if I need help or not? I don't need your intervention. I don't need anybody to judge my life, least of all the likes of whom you appear to be." "What exactly motivates you to ask that question? Guilt? Condescension? What a back-handed putdown. Though you're too smug and self-satisfied to see it, aren't you?" "So that you can play the savior-hero? Inevitably at my expense? Forget it." “Nice try. What’s your ‘real’ agenda?” "'Help,' yeah right. I know humans all too well. What masquerades with them as so-called altruism is just a disguised form of self-interest, and greed in camouflage. What's in it for you?"
“What’s the hidden price tag? You’ll assure me beforehand that your help is offered ‘for free.’ Then afterward I bet you’ll send me a billing invoice to demand payment. I can see those tricks coming a mile away.” "TiR will help, then turn around and say, 'Now you owe me! After all TiR did you for you!" We'd never be rid of you. So take a hike." “So that afterwards you can lord it over me and gloat about how I could not have done it without you? Stay the heck away.” "I've pushed this boulder 99% of the way up the mountain - alone. Now you want to swoop in and 'help' me push it up the last few inches? Then you'll try to take all the credit. And the rewards. Like the whole accomplishment was in fact entirely yours. You must think I'm a sucker." “Not when you ask it like that you can’t. In fact, if you genuinely wanted to help me, you wouldn’t even have to ask. You would simply have done it. The whole question-asking pose is a dead giveaway that you're simply being performative, and signaling. What a hypocrite!” "No one ever asks to help me. That's just how people are. So I am very suspicious of why someone would ask to help me now. In effect you are asking me to drop my guard. I am wary of everyone. “Thanks but no thanks. You probably would help wrongly and screw things up for me even worse than they are.” "Thanks but no thanks. You might help me successfully. But if you did, with no strings attached and it was a positive experience, then this would only raise hope in me. The hope would be the possibility that kind, generous, real, reliable, non-manipulative allies exist. Inevitably that hope would be dashed, as it always is in this cruel and stupid world. I would be left even more hurt, miserable and bereft than I already am." "Let's please not go down that road. If you helped me, then I'd feel indebted to return the favor, or to thank you by helping you with something in return. Or you might ask nothing for yourself but suggest that I go give help to some other, third, needier party. Then I would end up forcing that person to feel indebted to me and to reciprocate. Then I'd in turn feel compelled to respond, and we'd all get further bound up in each others' lives, et cetera, et cetera. The etiquette of it all would become dizzying. Something eventually would have to break, I can tell. Where would it end?" "No. I would rather that each of us continue to carry our burdens separately, in isolation, overwhelm and terror. Let's stick with the Devil we know." “Now? After all this time? Could you not see that I needed help earlier? My needs are so obvious that only an idiot could not see them. Only a liar could claim not to see them by asking a lame question like 'Can TiR help you?' There is no possible, good faith reason imaginable to me to explain why it took you so long to ask. Therefore to accept your help now would be like to pretend that you get a free pass on previously being so clueless and oblivious. What lesson would you learn if I accepted your help? None. So don’t bother.” “OK OK. Yes. TiR can help me. But I am not going to say how, when, where, or why I need help, or if I even need help at all on anything. I might not even know myself. But If TiR really cared to help, TiR would know what to do regardless. So maybe this is a test. If you try to help me and fail to get it right, it will show me how wrong, dishonest and dangerous you were in the first place. I will never forget it or forgive you. I might add you to my list of enemies. I might devote myself to making every moment of your life as miserable as possible. You might worry that I will make you my repository of catharsis for all the betrayals and letdowns that I have suffered in the past. In a way, you can even see how on some level this would be justified." "Still interested in 'helping' me?” . . . in an age of contagious
mistrust and rampant collective paranoia? February 28, 2023
the cure may become the disease Why has TiR read too many books? Perhaps there is a book somewhere out there that TiR can read that can explain why. Why doesn't TiR ever know when and how it is best to shut up? Perhaps TiR can learn why by talking / blogging through it. January 31, 2023
The ruminator's doom loop TiR hereby briefly posts to apologize for the excessive number of occasions on which TiR previously has posted briefly to apologize for things. These "things" include the brief apologies already posted for TiR's excessive number of previous apologies. Unless TiR's apologies have been too brief, simplistic, and few. In which case TiR hereby apologizes for their insufficient length, complexity, and number. Sorry either way, TiR December 31, 2022
2022: a year in crappy links TiR clicked on some or all of the following in 2022. In alphabetical order: Abdelhalim Hafez’s music, the Nasserist
backstory "Africa suits [Graham] Greene because it is unformed,
suggestive of risk and danger and disease; something like a war zone without
the shooting. Such is Africa’s power to bewitch the credulous." Paul Theroux, here found via here
("Don’t romanticise the global south") "After all, seven centuries elapsed between Magna Carta
and the bipartisan cooperation of British Conservatives and Laborites."
(from the obit of Vera Micheles Dean, here) "All those who are curious about this topic should have
it on their bookshelves." (on
Eric Williams)
an appreciation: Radio Biafra (here
and here)
"And of course they couldn't imagine the resistant and
creative life-forms that might then emerge in this desert." (Bernadette
Corporation)
from Kenneth Burke's "Waste
- the Future of Prosperity," The New Republic 63:815, pg.228 (July 16,
1930)
Appiah on a certain "ubiquitous predigested text"
(here)
"Artists’ boring sides are sometimes their most
characteristic and indispensable." (RH on JLC -
+ HM) "a subtle distillation from that word, stands, in point
of relative intensity to it, as attar of roses does to rosewater" (from Melville’s “The ‘Gees” (1856)
mentioned herein) birdsong as an orchestra of combined but strategically
competitive frequencies - a discussion
and a book
- which aren't quite about this
both bohemian and cricket fanatic: one
man was able to achieve this
"British officers . . . walked around with revolvers but presented
themselves as being in mortal danger from village women carrying leaves."
(here) "But the bird? Its most delectable song is merely an
arabesque on which we compose our own interior symphony . . . This music is
buried in the unsayable. The most surprising accounts of beavers, ants, and
bees show us the limit of cultures that have at their agency only paws,
antennae, and mandibles." from Henri Focillon's "In
Praise of Hands" (“L’éloge
de la main”) (1934)
copyright as straight-up colonialist f*ckery (Prof.
Larisa Mann) Creolization as our only damned hope (here)
(bouncing off Maydieu, here and here)
do even angels need government? (here) "Du Bois does not analyze US history teleologically but
rather by scrutinizing the forces on the battlefield." (here) falling off the edge of a map called "critique"
(Felski, here) "Familiarize yourself with every crime. Take them in
rotation. . . . Commit two or three crimes every day." Mark Twain on "the first time
I stole a watermelon" a story
mentioned in a footnote to Freud's Civ
& Its Discontents Foucault as CIA Man, f__ckin' A Man (here) Goodbye Westphalia, Hello Raiders
(no not these Raiders) "Half ignorant and the other half misinformed, the poor
girl sits waiting, or capers freely within decorous limits, to attract possible
attention, and silently starves under the impression that it isn't polite to be
hungry." from Charlotte Perkins Gilman's
"The
Duty of Surplus Women," Independent and Weekly Review (1905)
- almost Martian in weirdness but also all too familiar How London changed Walter
Rodney
"I must confess that I started from a tremendous
naivety, I had no idea what I was getting into. The bibliography quickly began
to pile up." (here)
is Bruce Nauman's art interesting? the investigation
Jascha Heifetz & Milton Kaye record Arthur Benjamin's
"Jamaican Rumba" date: October 16, 1944 World Broadcasting Decca Studios,
New York City American bombing of Salzburg
destroys the dome of the city's cathedral and most of a Mozart family home date: October 16, 1944 (Monday)
Joseph de Maistre: on the way to wider Anglo name
recognition? tho perhaps with an iffy set (here) Josephine Baker vs. the "Mississippi of the West"
(here) Joseph Tonda and a decolonial step beyond Debord (here) “Lacan the Charlatan” author Mathews’ method like that of the film "Citizen
Kane" but pushed even further - to conjure up a portrait by
talking to all of a person's worst enemies - to look at how all their opinions average or
cancel each other out - - then to depict the results (here)
Leeds as having been “slapped in the face with grey poison”
(Punk Scholars Network, here)
"Marc Chagall left so quickly that he was unable to
lock his studio, leaving a stack of paintings inside which he never saw
again." (here) Mohamed Mbougar Sarr's book recommendations (here) "‘Most of the civil war was fought over the territories
of the minorities" - no, not the U.S. civil war (here)
"now venerable selfie icons" (on the built Berlin,
here)
on reading words, as "an over-learned skill" which
humans can no longer "will the process 'off'" (Pinker)
on the “new” new Hegel
craze on the romanticization of "non-Western" legal
processes
"People used to think I was crazy . . . Now they
say I’m not crazy, but there’s nothing can be done about it." (on the
post-’68, here)
"Puccini's sense of humor was often of the schoolboy
variety." (here)
A: Y Q: what's today's reason? A: railroad monopoly (here) "“Sunday morning only became the most segregated time
of the week after the Civil War." (here) "That vulgar Maxim, worn smooth in fools’ mouths . .
. is a switch cut from that great tree of Arrogance" (the maxim is here)
the Crusades as the birth of imperialism (here)
Lotringer on the "Foreign
Agents" book series & what it wrought (here)
what was it? The answer is unexpected (here)
"The problem is precisely to explain the impressive
degree of class collaboration and social unity in the face of so many internal
strains." (here)
"The train that was to become McCarthyism had left the
station." From which station did it depart and when? Maybe
from this one, at this time (here)
this is what Tocqueville foresaw to be US democracy's
fundamental dilemma: own property or GTFO (here)
Werbley Finster - "Here Comes Werbley" (1969) (here)
why boredom? could it be - always because a mere monologue
of some type is happening? (here)
woah is all of what we call "value" really nothing
more than "a meme" bruh? (here)
Zouglou ivoirien: the history in a nutshell (here)
Ah, 2022! At the beginning of the year, we knew . . . . . . so
little! In contrast, at the end of the year, we knew . . . . . . . so
much less! As always, the crappiness ultimately was revealed not to be in
the links (many of them were excellent), but in TiRselves. November 24, 2022
Truth visits the Pope The Pope was at his wits end. One late November night in Rome, he finally could take it no more. He broke down in tears of rage, confusion and despair. Shaking his fist at the empty heavens, he screamed. "Enough! I quit! It's all been a farce! Now I see!" "Prayer, ritual, feast days? All worthless strategies for denial, fictions piled atop hypocrisy and fraud!" "Art, literature, science, culture, and every product of the human species? Falsehoods!" "Ethics, good works, and social justice? Illusions! Cruel jokes that have only made the misery worse!" "The whole of human history? All useless lies!" "Religion and faith itself? Nil, nil! The most destructive deceptions ever wrought by a heartless universe! Everything is delusion! Lies!" He howled into the void of the basilica's dome. "God, Allah, Hashem, The Buddha, Bhagavan, Universe, Eternal Life Force - anyone, anything up there, anywhere! Show me something that's true! Anything! Some rock on which to rebuild my will to go on for another day, another hour! Not even a rock -- a pebble! Even a grain of sand! Just one proposition that cannot be denied! Merely one! Any one!" He paused. The echoes faded. Silence. "Just one true statement! Anything! I beg you!" Silence. The Pope seized his Bible. "Even this book! The so-called veritas! More lies! The biggest lies of all! I defy you: Show me one thing in it that is true! That cannot be refuted, in this entire book! On the contrary, I refute it - thus!" With both hands, the Bishop of Rome threw the tome skyward, high into the dome of basilica. The book's covers flew open. Its pages fluttered like the feathers of a bird in panic. With unbelievable swiftness, the Pope whipped out a shotgun from behind the Chair of Saint Peter. Like an expert skeet shooter, through his tears, the Pope drew a bead on the holy book. "Just one true statement!" At that instant, a random page faced downward over the Pope. The familiar lines of Psalm 136 hovered above him for an immeasurably brief hiatus.
At that instant, the trigger pulled back. Like a clay pigeon, the holy book exploded into fragments of leather binding and a thousand bits of paper. Psalm 136 was blasted into smithereens. Most of its letters instantly were vaporized or incinerated, struck through by the unerring editorial hand of purest chance.
Scraps of paper, like confetti, rained and drifted down over the broken pontiff. He sank to his knees, then doubled over onto all fours, feebly pounding the marble floor with his fist. He wept. "Just one true statement! Just one true statement!" Onto the floor of the apse, in front of the Pope, in perfectly ordered rows, fluttered down and settled the surviving, non-deleted fragments and letters of the sacred song. The letters were arrayed as follows:
3 O give thanks to the Lord of lords: for his mercy endureth for ever. . . . 17 To him which smote great kings: for his mercy endureth for ever:
18 And slew famous kings: for his mercy endureth for ever: |
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