The other day was the annual day for Bovina, a tiny country village about twenty minutes away that has a teeny store and a library and about 300 people. I always go because they have a booksale and there are some readers in Bovina who give away readable books to the library and the resale price via the library is 50 cents per book.
This year along with paperback copies of Whitman and Aristophanes and Graham Greene and a book about John Dewey I grabbed a book called DISCOVER WHAT YOU'RE BEST AT, by Linda Gale. I love personality inventories! You take six tests. One is on business (they ask you hypotheticals about business quandaries), clerical (they test your accuracy in finding typos), logic (story problems), mechanical (figuring out shapes in space), numerical (simple math, but you have to hurry), and social (hypotheticals about dealing with troubled people, or how to think about people).
So far I've done Logic -- and got the Very Superior category (best), and Business at which I placed in the Well-Above Average category (two short of the top category) and I did Numerical in which I placed in High Average (three short of the top, but there are still five categories below that one). In Clerical, I also received VERY SUPERIOR (I was a Temp Sec for a decade, and was very good at it, and loved being accurate).
However, I started to do the Social category, but balked at MANY of the "correct" answers. It says in Question 18:
Most criminals....
a. have beady eyes
b. look like other people
c. have a very high I.Q.
d. have a good sense of humor
The "correct" answer is b. I object. Criminals do not look like other people. The correct answer is a. All criminals look odd. You can spot a criminal from a mile away. The social workers who made up this test think that all crime is economic, and therefore it's a question of need when people commit crimes. This however is not the case. Criminals are outsiders, who do not like other people, and their method of acting this out is crime. They are anti-social, which leads them to have beady eyes. You can always tell a criminal by their eyes. They don't look you in the eye, and when they do, it feels bad, because they don't like you or anybody else. Criminals have hard hearts. they also misbehave in other areas. If a man is cheating behind his wife's back for a decade, he's also a criminal in many other areas. Crime CAN BE economic, if a child steals an apple in a village in rural Cambodia, it might be economic, because the Buddhist system is letting them down (all the monks are eating pretty well, but the children are not necessarily eating at all).
But in America, all crime is undertaken by wicked people. This means people that don't like other people, and do the crime because they do not like other people, and want to hurt the polity that they feel has hurt them, and now owes them.
Rapists for instance are wicked. They did not bond properly with their families and so are committing an antisocial crime. It would take a complete monster to rape someone. Bank robbers are not just normal people who look like everybody else. They're sociopaths who take because they feel they weren't given enough love by their families. Killers like the Unabomber feel that people don't understand them, and they don't fit in, so they want to blow other people up. Have you seen the Unabombers' eyes?? Just look at the guy! Are you telling me he looks JUST like EVERYBODY else? All you have to do is LOOK at the people in the Wanted Ads. They NEVER look like other people, and the eyes are the windows of the soul. They look mad as HELL, lost, and vengeful. Come on! Let's get empirical. Doesn't anybody WATCH Forensic Files? You can ALWAYS tell if the criminal is guilty by looking at their eyes. If it's a murder, at least one eye looks mad as HELL!
Almost all criminals are orphans. Sociology will tell you that criminals are people who either hate their families, or never even knew their families. Charles Manson never knew his father, and his mother was an armed robber who beat her son whenever she wasn't in jail (very rarely). And talk about beady eyes! Manson's eyes are just plain rapier points. (I'm not saying that all orphans are criminals. Some orphans have had kind foster parents, or have had God or some pastor who loves them, and this will often suffice.)
Manson's whole "Family" consisted of cast-offs who didn't fit in their own families and didn't feel loved as children, and had no religious background. They were sick. Look at a picture of them. Each one has weirder eyes than the next.
Criminals DO NOT LOOK LIKE OTHER people, and they don't act like other people. They don't know how to fit in, and don't like other people enough to follow the rules needed to get along. They don't care if other people hate them, because they already hate everybody else! Crime is NOT economic! It's spiritual and emotional. The stereotype that criminals have beady eyes is a stereotype because IT'S TRUE! The polity IS observant. If you spot a person with beady eyes, pay attention to it. You're about to be ripped off.
While I liked most of the tests in the book, the Social part is shot through with inaccuracies based on what they believe to be true about the criminal and disturbed element, but also about every other area of society. Get this question:
17. Of the following, the single most important resource for learning and growth for a college professor will probably come from...
a. the students
b. other faculty members
c. professional literature
d. television news programs
The correct answer is a!?
Why on earth are professors learning more from their students? That is just completely wrong. I VERY seldom learn anything about my subject matter from a student. Students are there to learn the subject matter. If they already know more about it than I do, why am I even in this business? I could understand that this might be true if I had graduate students. But from freshmen and sophomores? It does happen, and enough to make it a possibility on any given day, but!
Professional literature is far and away the most significant, followed by other faculty members (I learn more at a single lunch with another faculty member or a dean than I do from an entire year of teaching), and then, television news programs (especially on the History channel and Book channels, generally). Students are very pleasant and I might find out about something completely irrelevant to my own topic like what some new hip phrase means, or something about where they're from, but it's not as if Shakespeare scholarship can be crowd-sourced, or that they can explain how the blocking should go in a given play, or even what a given word might mean better than I can. The one area where this is not true is if you teach literature that is set in an area in which a student grew up and where they know the geography better, which is why living in New York State I often choose books set in NYC, so I can possibly learn more about it via my students (almost half are from The city). Once for instance I did learn the term "bodega" from an Allen Ginsberg poem in which he writes about getting mugged. It's a Puerto Rican term for a neighborhood grocery store in NYC area, and a student who grew up on the Lower East side knew that and told me. It was a big help but such a thing is once in a class period if I'm LUCKY. And that poem, simple as it was, was not something all the students I've ever had (some thousands in a group) could understand better than I did. Now that some of those students have gotten older and continued to read up, they might NOW tell me something, but it's very very rare to have a student body that stacks up against the professional literature, or other profs, or even television news programs that are germane to my area. Most students don't even read poetry, and if they do, it's Tupac Shakur at best. (I know, GM, but it IS shelved in poetry sections in bookstores.)
The entire SOCIAL test has wrong answers. They give you answers based on how the world should be, rather than the way the world really is.
Still, I enjoy books like this. When you're done, you have to tally up your answers and then you build a profile for yourself, and see which jobs are most likely to fit your profile. I will do all the tests (a total of three hours), look through, and then possibly use the book with my students in a freshman comp class in which I ask them to inventory their skills and compare them to aptitudes and write about their experiences as workers and where they want to be in ten years.
Some of them already know but at least half of the students don't know anything at all about themselves or the careers they might actually be good at. Many of them have seen a TV show about CSI (being a good investigator is a LOT about having good clerical skills, it's not about the excitement!) or about a professional singer (they enjoyed thinking about all the sex partners), and use that for their career guidance.
105 comments:
I didn't say Deadpac Shakur's work wasn't poetry. Just that it wasn't good poetry.
Somehow that impression seems to come through in teh blogzorz but, really, not me.
Now I will say that "poetry" that owes its meaning to the page and not to the words is not poetry but a third form of literature (or a hybrid of literature and art).
Just came in from the movie theatre at the mall where I watched Public Enemies. Depp was great as Dillinger. Pervis, the FBI guy, shot him coming out of the movie theatre in the back of the head. Now that guy had beady eyes. Depp/Dillinger had just seen Manhattan Melodrama, a gangster flick with Clark Gable as the gangster/hero on his way to the electric chair, sent there by the warden, William Powell. Every generation of students has fresh eyes and a new take on the great literature of the past if and when they encounter it and that take determines the future. Professors should feel privileged to be the first witness to that new take on the tradition.
yeah them professors and their student
certainly "know" the streets
must be via their virtual realities, movies and novels!
mer exponentiation and opinions based on experiences 6 times removed from any phuching reality!
Ed: So what constitutes, pray tell, sir, a bona fide "person of the streets" in your weighty estimation?
How 'bout tattoos? After all, as the functionalist architect Adolphe Loos had it: "those who have tattoos and are not in custody are either degenerate aristocrats or latent criminals." Lets hear it for degenerate aristocrats, like my wife, Emmy!
Perhaps your man Obama you consider "of the streets." This half-witted asnd half-educated dude might indeed qualify--what d'you think, O Ed, O "street man"?
several months prior to the election a friend asked me what I thought of Obama:
I replied:
"I don't think about Obama
or the other candied-dates.
as far as I am concerned Obama is an Empty Suit!"
I neither voted Democratic or Republican.
as far as your other picayune reply/reaction, Jack, again you missed the point...
don't take things so personally as
noboddhi is responsible for anybody else's intelligence OR understanding.... so to sprechenzi rubbish... in a Surreal sort of way.
This blog reads like the unlikely brainchild of Samuel P. Huntington, Leon Kass and Rush Limbaugh. Great stuff. I love how, after being roundly and repeatedly refuted in the last few days, you still managed to work in the 'Buddhist system' reference.
I admit you had me going for a while. Grade A 'rural idiocy' impression.
Didn't someone say this about Jews as well?
"They are anti-social, which leads them to have beady eyes. You can always tell a criminal by their eyes." Or width of the skull...
Maybe if we can find the one trait to identify them we can implement your final solution?
Kirby you're one criminal act away from being a criminal. Does Madoff have beady eyes? Kenneth Lay? What if glasses merely make your eyes look beady, but without your glasses they are full orbs? George Bush? Dubya does have beady eyes, maybe you have a point after all.
--Tom
Tom that's silly. Everyone is always "one criminal act" away from being a criminal. Or "one breath away" from being dead.
Dumb.
The difference between Kirby and a criminal is that Kirby is not a criminal.
It's not silly GM as a criminal act is based upon arbitrary laws to a large extent. It's not a gene that causes physical traits. How do you know Kirby isn't a criminal? If you smoke marij. in a medical mar. establishment it's legal. If you smoke it on the street you're a criminal. I would assume one's eyes are lidded while one does both.
Is he not one breath from being dead?
GM = Palinesque intellect.
Mathmos: I know the jingoistic fervor of this blog is alarming. Most moderates to left-wingers have fled.
--Tom
well Tom
I could certainly and a-pathetically say
SOMETHING to this
however, I shall restrain (and spell-check myself and woids..
especuilly I don't want to be mis0CON-screwed especially by any one wearing a white weddig dress!
I didn't think that "it" was silly either...
ananymous Ed
Tom = dickhead. Woo! Insults are awesome!
Once you realize that people are different and that folks don't commit murder or rape or robbery because of circumstance but because there is something wrong with them, you'll get along better. Dickhead.
Tom 'O Bedlam:
I suspect that MaryJane is your, ahem, First Bitch; might I suggest dumping this slag in favour of, say, uh, "Yukon Jack"? Hey, Tom, made in Canada, 100 proof, the "black sheep of Canadian liqueurs," so you could still affect the "rebel without a brain." "Bum wine.com" and "Modern Drunkard Magazine Online" may also present thrifty alternatives to your waking syndromes about being chased by beady-eyed Bushes and such.
G M: Yukon Jack might at least give Tom a new set of pursuing demons for a change. What d'you think, G M? We know the First Empty Suit's not left enough for Tom, so whom could a Lambroso-imbued counter-cultural like Tom turn to in his hour of need?
Today Emmy and I are celebrating the life of Pope John X (914-29), who personally defeated the Saracens (translation for Tom: "kicked raghead butt") and converted the Slovenes (our erstwhile countrymen and women 'till me mum's illness brought us back to the land of Tom's Great Satan). But Tom'll be happy to know that we'll be decamping for Canada in a month and a half for a while, and then moving there next spring.
Tom . . . Tom, are you there? Hey man, I know they're closin' up the "cafes" in Amsterdam, but there's still reason to live and blog, ol' buddy. (Whispers) Try "Yukon Jack," man, and forget the "THEY won't let me . . ." bit, OK?
HEY TOM,
you live in Amsterdam?
I "lived" in The Hotel Hanson (for 5 weeks) 1967
The hotel was on and parden the spelling
was on Konensenwag next to a canal
right next door was a neat window lit up at night with a cute girl sitting in on a winged-back chair in her fancy "things"
she used to come into the hotel to the little restaOHrant there for coffee and chit-chat... she was a single mother with a 6 year old daughter "working" her way through college..
one after noon befor she had to "go to work" she took me over to Rembrantsplatz and then over to the Jewish Quarter & Anne Frank's house!
http://www.annefrank.org/content.asp?pid=20&lid=2
my next door neighbor here the one that is "muse/subject/object of NEIGHBORS is Barbara Frank Anne's cousin!
no shit!
I have noticed a couple of things which make people look a bit more "criminal" than others.
Its a bit of a hobby of mine, cruising sex-offender databases in the places where I've lived. Yes, I am a very very odd person, but I like finding out that the jerk who poured spaghetti-o's down my sweater in 6th grade is incarcerated for exposing himself to his underage cousin.
For sex-offenders I'd say the following:
1) Scraggly, thinning hair (even in a young man or woman.) Usually light-colored hair.
2) No chin--a trait I also associate with liberals. Show me a liberal on the street who has a strong manly chin (lantern-jaw John Kerry doesn't count), and I'll show you one very surprised conservative. I call these meek n mild child-molester types "Chinless Wonders"
3) Heavily sloped forehead, and a steeply graded back of the cranium.
4) A general look of "child-likeness"
5) The dirty feeling I get when looking at them.
6) This is all probably utter balderdash.
And if G.M. is Palinesque, I think that's rather a compliment. Rather talk like Palin who has some grounding in Reaganesque thought and policy than Obama who has his roots in the political sewers of Chicago.
Reagan over Alinski any day.
And one would have to be rather feeble-minded and without the capacity for true perception to take as read whatever the main-stream government-controlled media tells you. Show some independence, cluck!
Ed: Glad you've fond memories of Amsterdam; mine are not so halcyon. The city's always a bit dirty, but when I was there last, some of the canal pumps went out and the stench was overpowering. And don't get me started on the street vendors pushin' herrings--I'll take the sausage rolls in Halifax or Toronto any day. . . .
My people on me dead dad's side still live in Belgium. My spoken Flemish (or Dutch) still lags, though I can read it OK with a dictionary. Glad also that Bruges (or Brugge) hasn't yet been turned into a Sharia-law Casbah bazaar craphole like my Grandma Julia's Antwerp. Next year in Jerusalem!
But Tom was using it as an ad hominem -- which is like all gay and shit.
oh and JDL -- people don't seem to like you much on the interwebz. Jeez, sir.
Point is, Tom's generalizations are teh crap and a bunch of nuh uhs that pointlessly point us off topic. But that be tommy boi, right?
Tom O' Bedlam: BTW, O homo stultus, what's a "Palinesque intellect," pray tell? You mean she's not as sharp as John "Rock-jaw" Kerry (admittedly, his marryin' slag for money--twice--is pretty shrewd, though he finished below George Bush in the military IQ exams), or Al Gore (who proclaims his favourite book is "Le Rouge et le Noir" (maybe he fancies himself leaving Mme de Renal's bedroom, as did Julien Sorel, with "no more for which to wish"?) in spite of his astoundin' "C" in high-school French. Is a "Palinesque intellect" something else again, Tom?
Sorry Charlie wasn't able to come to Slovenia and introduce us to Zizek the recently born-again Marxist during our stay in Slovenia, 'cause then I might know better where you leftist loons are coming from.
But I'm confident that wherever it is, it's not from Wasilla, AK. O, Thomasus, quanti est sapere! ("O Tom, how great it is to be wise!").
So far, Tom, you've not presented any evidence whatever why I shouldn't continue to wear my treasured Sarah Palin button and vote my usual straight Republican ticket. So convince me otherwise, O pillar of reason, intellect, and wisdom!
Kirby, I think you misunderstood "the single most important resource for learning and growth for a college professor." This has to do with the professor's growth as a person and perhaps a teacher (communicator) not with his learning more subject matter. It might even have to do with knowing what to teach based on relevance to students lives. Learning from students means the professor hasn't stopped learning. Sadly, some have.
agai oh Jax
ewe lived in Slovinia?
know my friend (and poet" JP who lived many yeras in Slovinia..
he was with us at the LN 100 th in 2003
http://edbaker.maikosoft.com/niedecker_celebration/niedecker.html
meanwhile I got as far as Lindos, Helos sort of near Jerrusalem
that was and will be as far Mid East as I shall go
Lindos is where I met Chin Fay Ling 1968 and
fell into her deep well
to
never return
wrote some poems while in Greece one abot/involves Ratula who...
anyway
can't figure out how to "tip" it in here..
so
email me and I will poste haste send you entire pdf including this I into Lady Astor's Grave of RATULA
not great literature... but, what is
O' Jacques I think you should wear the Palin button proudly as she is truly a great American. The truth is that I cower in the face of her intellect. I think I play childish games attempting to compensate for the fact that she's so purdy and smart and I'm a chinless sex-offender. I think the only way I could compensate would be to wear a white suit to a Redbone concert, lest someone mistake me for a Cuban pimp. Wisdom and such startling fashion sense is a true rarity. If I could only pen irrelevant academic books to further my career then I would be redeemed.
GM thank you for taking the bait yet again and revealing yourself. It's amazing that you fall for it every time. Then again, those fine Floridean educational institutions sure pump out some intellectual giants: perhaps then I should defer to your great Palinesque intellect? I spent the 5th grade in FL; I either had to skip the grade or use the same math book I had the year before in CT. On Fridays, we played football all day rather than have class.
I actually don't smoke pot; thankfully the poet-warrior drifted into his hippie-hatred.
The best part of this is if one of the lefties called someone a "dickhead" everyone would be so hurt by that kind of language. How many rants have I seen Jacques write about this very issue. My generalizations were in response to Kirby's generalizations.
Ed: sadly I haven't been to Amsterdam. I had the choice at the end of a long trip but chose Berlin instead.
--Tom
Dear Dickhead,
You started the ad hominems, I just made them more fun. I mean come on, dickhead is so much more fun to read and say than "palinesque intellect" by which you intend to insult both Misriz Palin & myself.
"reveal my true self" -- someone who likes to call people dickheads. I'm a dickhead, you're a dickhead, he's a dickhead, she's a dickhead, wouldn't you like to be a dickhead, too?
oh and thanks for self-identifying as a troll, dickhead.
Tom..
you never been to Amsterdam? You didn't miss much!
as far as Berlin... I spent my tyme there drinking great beer
more dope and whores in Berlin than anywhere else in Europe I guess due to so many US Military "boys" with lost of money The center Weisbadden as where army and air force bases were...
They US soldiers stationed there (1968 or so) that I met called that area "The Ass-hole of Germany'
this post reminded me of the article i read about kaczinski in the atlantic monthly a few years ago
disturbing in its frankness and honesty
turns out ted was a pretty normal genius of a kid
http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2000/06/chase2.htm
the picture shows ted on a really bad hair day
before he went to court a good friend of mine in helena montana fixed up his hair and the report was he looked perfectly handsome
the article by alston chase contends that society's reactions to the unabomber made him out to be a sicko because to have to face up to the alternative - that he was a lot like everybody else - was a bit too much
my position
the folks in jail are just like the rest of us
they had some pretty bad days they were caught or framed doing something wrong
quiet desperation gets a little noisy sometimes
mercy mercy mercy
when i was in jail you visited me
read the article
pray for the sinner
me
Tom and Deadwood (last time you corrected me, though it was an inadvertent mistake committed 'bout a yr ago; this time it's a mock for your touchy-feely rubbish 'bout how college profs should teach):
I'll get back with the both of you later, but me n' Em are runnin' low on "Yukon Jack" and Slivowitz, so off to the local "drunk" store, as my Portuguese girlfriend used to call Walgreens drugs.
Ed: Yeah, me n' Em lived in Piran, Slovenia for a while ('till me mum needed our care for a heart ailment and sadly, we returned to the States (flattered to know that the U of Ljubljana adopted my second book as a text for their history of translation seminar--you're a doubter, Tom?--look it up, it's online). But we're all moving to St John's, Newfoundland in the spring; next month we're going back up to St John's to visit friends, with a stay in Montreal to meet other friends from Seattle). Ed, where's your next destination outside the States? Where'd you like to be right now?
" Ed, where's your next destination outside the States? Where'd you like to be right now? "
well
I get confused when two compound-complex questions
are simultaneously asked.
these are very difficult questions for me to answer.
would
being in Stone Girl's arms count as answer to both?
http://didiodatoc.blogspot.com/2009_07_01_archive.html
We went to JFK to take my wife's sister back to Finnair (and she vanished into Finnair!), and then we took in Coney Island, where I'd never been. Coney was apparently Dutch for a rabbit, but also became the word for someone easily tricked (con), and then?
The rides were good, and the kids had tremendous fun. The look on the three-year old's face as she went around on a tiny boat was priceless. I can't understand what I would do to have such perfect pure fun again, except to relive it through her eyes.
A perfect moment, but now my wife is Finn-less, and feels bereft.
You guys are arguing quite a bit. And yet Brett hasn't even weighed in.
Deadmule -- you may be right about the personal side to the question, but I would still think that the personal side of personal growth even for a professor would mostly come from her own family? We only see students a couple times a week, and only for a semester, and it's more professional than personal?
You see your own kids every day for like twenty years, for hours every day, and there's no escape, so I think one's own family would lead to more personal growth at least for me.
And then the other options were professional papers for instance. Of course that wouldn't lead to personal growth, but the question didn't directly state that personal growth was the deal.
What even is personal growth?
Is that what the Grinch did when his heart grew three sizes?
Sometimes I feel somewhat Grinchy by the end of a semester, depending on the students and how hard they worked, and whether we got somewhere in my estimation.
Usually we did, but there was that class full of construction students, hardhats until the end, and our job was to read Shakespeare. What a badly fated expedition that was.
Character probably isn't determined by the bumps on your head as they once thought (anyone who still thinks so probably deserves a bump on the head), but certainly the eyes tell a tale, as do the teeth, and certainly Emmy's detail of the chin does tell us a lot about character.
Even Lincoln said you finally get the face you deserve.
I mean, you CAN read a person's history in their face, can't you?
Deadmule AKA Helen Losse:
From your comments on edjikashun, ma'am, sounds like you've been through "ed" school and all that Rousseauish/Deweyish bs, as I had to endure before teachin' in public schools in Oregon for six years. My ed "profs" were, comme d'habitude, folks who couldn't do math or, like our half-witted prez, the Big O, learn languages (though he decrees WE must; well, dude, I did [guess that makes me five and a half ahead of you, right?], in spite of your third-world public schools--VOUCHERS NOW!--or just close all the public schools and start over by privatising all education).
Course I refused to join the NEA, which is the main culprit in the half-literacy that passes for learning here (US public schools rank below most everybody else's in the industrialized world. For example, our top 10% finishes below Hungary's, even though they can only afford to spend one-twelfth per pupil what we do. And their pupils learn at least three languages, including Latin (not baby or "toga" Latin, or baby Spahneesh, like totahly and fer sher, after five years of elementary school Spanish in the States, what do our high school freshman take?--why Spanish 101, naturallelment.)
Helen, believe me, all that ed school rubbish about--do you believe in teaching the subject or teaching the child? is such nonsense--actually, it's just a simple confusion between the direct and indirect objects of the sentence, for one TEACHES THE SUBJECT TO THE CHILD, Dummkopf! US teechurs are a bit short o' grammar, however, as my long-time Swiss friend, fellow translator, and community-college instructor, Esther well knows, for she had to conduct a grammar class for her fellow English teachers ("They didn't like it, they didn't like i'tat tall," says Esther).
Course me Maltese bro-in-law, coming from a poor family, nevertheless got Latin at eight and Greek at eleven, so by the time he entered the Lateran U in Rome at sixteen, he'd had eight years of Latin and five of Greek (in addition to real subjects like math, science, history, Italian, and French--sorry, Helen, no psych, sex and hygiene, sosh, driver's ed (who says teens should drive? or vote ('cept soldiers), for God's sake?), shop, home ec, etc. (Right, Deadmule, not everybody is cut out for real learning, but it's best for all to make the cut early, nicht wahr?--as the venerable Quintilian was wont to say, some are fit only for the fields; even the educational reformer Michel de Montaigne--from whom our Will Shakespeare learned so much--said that if you've tried everything and your obdurate pupil just won't learn--then it's best for all that you . . . strangle him, provided no one is looking).
No such luck for me, for we single parent (with a little juvenile hall stay jes' for fun when me mum couldn't keep us proper) issue weren't allowed to be schooled in the classics. God bless the Army, for I owe what small but real learning in Latin and Greek--with French and Italian as dressing I have to the GI Bill, though I was and am still behind our European, Japanese, and Korean peers. Thanks for that NEA, and also for that you should feel the heels of my shoes in your face.
In a grad seminar, some faineant "sensitive" student said to me that he could admire Renaissance education if it weren't for the floggings, which destroyed any value to it. "Well," I says, "I wish I'd had when young some Greek and Latin masters and mistresses to flog some good Greek and Latin into me."
Ed: I'd love to drink with you and tell stories of the rise of kings ("Ed's been everywhere, man . . .").
Yeah, as I said, I took my twenty-yr old bride of three yrs (six to-gaither now and better'n evah!) off to Slovenia (Piran), where we lived (with great side trips to Prague (Absinthe City--tho' Em brews a heady batch of "green fairy" every year we've been in Ann Arbor, with wormwood gathered [well, stolen] by our very hands from the U of Michigan's botanical gardens--at any rate, heard a Mozart opera in the very Konzertsaal where Mozart conducted his first performance of "Don Giovanni"--my favourite--"m'invitasti e son' venuto," menaces the Commendatore), Krakow (our favourite city, Budapest (stayed across from the "Goodbye Lenin!"--tears from Tom--hostel and ate marvelous wild boar steaks with berry sauce), Zagreb, Salzburg, etc.
Qui sait, Edouard? Someday, if y'r jes' passin' thru Newfoundland (Em's li'l joke, that is, for who "just passes thru" Newfoundland?). What do you drink, matey? I'm lately partial to "Yukon Jack," the self-professed "black sheep of Canadian liqueurs," (bought our first bottle in Vermont some time ago, and I do intersperse it with Jameson, Drambuie, Galliano, and a variety of middle-shelf single malts--then time to sober up with beer or wine--at any rate, can't buy "Yukon Jack" in Canada, it seems; perhaps it's for export only). We'll be in what's to be our new home in Newfoundland and to visit our friend Liz (Em's old astronomy classmate), St Johns's meteorologist and pub entertainer in September/October. Or perhaps when we move up there in spring. Sounds like you've had a lon and interesting life, and I'd like to turn a few pages . . . I'll even set my ferocious right-wing politics aside . . . 'Till then, bottoms up, camarado!
Kirby, Kirby: Me mum counters that arsonists invariably have melon-shaped heads and derive sexual pleasure from watching fires . . . to the tune of Muse's "Super-Massive Black Hole," don't you know . . . ca se voit!
Kirby: Surely you've read Shakespeare's contemporary (and degenerate tearaway) Robert Greene's books on "coney-catching"? Country mice, beware!
Tom: You're off the hook tonight--the effing computer ate my response to you--even my Em couldn't call it back--you're lucky, mon vieux, but then, tomorrow is another day--a bientot, sleep tight and don't let th' bedbugs bite. From thee Coo-bann pimp--don't you weesh yu had one? Whatever, sh-t for brains, see you tomorrow. But let me say first that I'm proud of you for fighting back rather than slinkin' off, as you threatened to do a couple of yrs ago--I thought, Tom you effing wimp, y'r not worth killin'; but now you are, like Peter Lorre in "The Maltese Falcon," who's got to be slapped (by Bogie) and like it." Eff, man, take it like a soldier for once, not like an effing pansie eunuch! Bottoms up, effer, and sleep well:
Nunc vino pellite curas,
Cras ingens iterabimus aequor
(Work out the translation yourself; you can get a Wheelock and a DICTION,ry, can't you? Aww, you don't have Latin? Even school-deprived girls like the sublime Jane Austen knew some Latin. What's your 'scuse, numbnuts?
Sarah, I sacrifice to you this mortal, ahem, "dickhead," as the eloquent writer and poet G M has it; Tom, sorry we haven't 'nuff leftists to y'r taste, dickhead--phew don' like it, take a hike (it)--no, don't, y'r such wondrous fresh lib-left meat for the takin' . . . Yum! 'Till tomorrow, bozo!
"oh and thanks for self-identifying as a troll, dickhead."
Says he on the blog of an all-but-self-declared troll now defending physiognomy based on his gut-level, culturally inflected correlation between eye size and social skills.
As I said, great stuff.
Wie geht es Gates, das heisst, mein Herr Prasident Obama (aber das geht Sie nichts an, Dummkopf?!) ? Scheisse, couldn't happen to a smugger guy, Gates, an empty affirmative action vessel if there ever was one, though I haven't lived in Cambridge the Lesser for years. . . .
Kirby: Got to go, mon vieux, yet I'm hoping the conservatives are right in calling the Big O's "health care" scheme his "Waterloo":
"Waterloo, Waterloo,
Where were you, dear Waterloo?
Ev'ry puppy has a tail,
Ev'rybody has to fail,
Ev'rybody has to meet their Waterloo."
When n' if I get my left hand back again, I'll be able to fret my geetar agin--then look out, libs!
I was vacationing at Cape Cod some weeks ago, and I witnessed a spat over what from a distance I gathered to be one guy accusing the other of making advances to his girl. The other guy was apparently trying to calm things down and was ostensibly indicating his own girlfriend not far from there (she eventually came and corroborated his story, which signaled the end of the hostilities). I was struck by how the outlines of the thing perfectly mirrored the discussion dynamics between conservatives and other people online : The constant need for conservatives to displace the conversation from one topic to the next, then to the next, up until the whole thing involves so many unrelated aspects that it can’t but die down to scattered bouts of unresolved I-say-you-say (the other guy bringing his girlfriend in to save the day, leaving open the question of his alleged advances to the first guy’s girl).
To remedy the situation and save Tom’s argument from conservative deconstruction, my retelling will feature reference to Palin’s dress code, sure to keep conservatives focused :
As anybody following the news knows, the Palin family’s involvement with Alaskan Independence groups hasn’t for the least hampered their acceptance among the ultra-patriotic christianist branch of the Republican party. And rightly so, since advocating for the separation of your state from the Union shouldn’t damage your credibility when you later present your candidacy for vice-president of the same Union. I think we can all agree on that.
Had the Palin crew been advocating a similar partitioning in China or Saudi Arabia, however, I think the local authorities would have followed a much more “Jail First, Enshrine Principles of Free Speech”.
Question here for conflicted conservatives : would Sarah Palin’s hypothetical incarceration in a Saudi prison affect the shape and beadyness of her eyes, in comparison to her real-world incoherent self, and how would that ocular alteration, coupled with her obligatory wearing of the burqa on Saudi territory, affect her image-driven persona.
(The burqa thing was the dress code money shot, by the way.)
On another note, I noticed that, even though they’re not thick on the ground in Cape Cod, you can usually recognize conservatives on the beach by their deep-set eyes, mismatched toenail colors and scoliotic posture (from the long stretches of time they spend arguing online on whether Obama’s birth certificate was faked before or after his having been chosen as a vessel for the antichrist by Darth Soros, etc.).
I'm hoping the conservatives are right in calling the Big O's "health care" scheme his "Waterloo"
Undoubtedly it will be. The issue not addressed is whether Mr. Obama will be playing the role of Napoleon, Blücher, or Wellington. I'm expecting Wellington, but time will tell.
Ah -- here is the problem. Kirby wasn't talking about "criminals" as "folks who might get thrown in prison" -- as we certainly know, political prisoners are a favorite of totalitarian regimes.
Kirby was talking about "crime" as acts outside of civilization -- robbery, rape, murder. Probably for Kirby also drug use & manufacture (certainly drug addicts each take on their own stereotypical aspects), though I think the criminalization of such behavior is pointless.
Tom and JH have asserted that people "have bad days" and this makes them criminals.
Bullshit.
I've had "bad days," I'm sure we all have. Long before it was common practice, I was the child of an unwed mother who moved constantly. She smoked pot and my father was an alcoholic. Most of my friends in school smoked pot -- many of them shoplifted.
Yet I never did. Why? Because it was wrong, because I wanted to be a productive member of society, not a troglodyte.
Billions of people daily make the choice to be productive members of their own societies. We've no reason to insult them by saying that criminals are "just like them."
Now I mentioned on Stu's blog that we are all capable of great good and great evil -- but the vast majority of us decide on a daily basis not to commit great evil -- those who do are inherently different -- because they choose evil.
Oh, and they all look like pointy-headed devils with beady eyes and greasy hair. And Tom is a dickhead.
Now I mentioned on Stu's blog that we are all capable of great good and great evil -- but the vast majority of us decide on a daily basis not to commit great evil -- those who do are inherently different -- because they choose evil.
Good point. But it's also the case that the vast majority of us decide on a daily basis not to commit a great good either. This seems especially apropos:
(Revelation 3:14-17) “And to the angel of the church in Laodicea write: The words of the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the origin of God’s creation:
“I know your works; you are neither cold nor hot. I wish that you were either cold or hot. So, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I am about to spit you out of my mouth. For you say, ‘I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing.’ You do not realize that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked.
the grocery store up the street from me
hired plains-clothes "police' to protect their groceries from being stole by "them damn thieves"
well
in the last 10 days they've caught 5 poeeps stealing "stuff"
my friend, the meat dept lady told me
"They arrested 3 little old gray haired ladies for shop-lifting steaks."
I think, at this point in this process the damn thieves just taken int the managers office and scared...
now, how you gonna scare a 75 year old grand-mah who has gray beady eyes and a Glock in her purse?
Well, we try to keep things fair and balanced around here so I hope we don't chase Tom out of the comments boxes. I like his thoughts, and sometimes learn new stuff from him like when he had me read the Robert Kaplan piece on the Indian Ocean in Foreign Affairs.
I got Jacques' health report today in the mail, but haven't opened it yet.
Tons to do. Will open with a blog post to kind of welcome in the Buddhists, who I hope will stay.
And yes, I have read Robert Greene's Coney-Catching pamphlet but it's been at least twenty five years, Jacques.
emmy: most all of Hollywood is strong-jawed, and most all of Hollywood is liberal.
Not saying conservatives can't have strong-jaws too, just that this here looker with a 90-degree-angled strong-jaw is mostly liberal, and that making a generalization in the other direction is wrong.
You guys sure are sayin' a lot o' words to each other...
Wow poet warrior thank god you spared me your psycho-babble response which will be 50% foreign tongues and 0% content as usual. Funny, I remember a time when some of the lefties, sniff-sniff, used bad language toward you and the big bad V-Vet and "boxing champion" got all teary-eyed and bothered. I pitied you and relented.
For the record, I request that you call me "The Lizard King" for now on. I ask this because I can do anything. It's true I do not know Latin. My literary interests are mainly modernism and postmoderism. Latin is not really part of the curriculum anymore, sorry I'm not 65 years old. Is this some badge of honor for you? Do you think you could run a computer network for a 15 million dollar a year company? No, no that would involve some use value and you my friend are a useless effete intellectual drunk with power; I imagine you to be a big fish in a small intellectual pond teaching in East Bumfuck nowhere thinking you are hot shit. The true joy I take in this blog now, besides marveling at the inept tracts of reason, is baiting you and GM to show your true colors. Deep down inside, many conservatives are ugly people. You know how you can tell? They're generally ugly on the outside as well. Sad castrated dorks that could not compete in the social world and now hide from it. People that say, dress in white suits and refer to themselves as "poet warriors." I don't generally waste my time with GM though, it's similar to hunting a large heaving turkey that can't really get out of the way. In all of the faults I find in you, at least you're not ill-educated as another of your friends here, GM. Kirby has intellectual curiosity regarding the present climes in literature and politics; moreover, he is not an elitist. You are defensive and ideological, admitting nothing from the left as viable: nothing! I hope one day you are dependent on Medicare and the liberal state to survive.
You can blast away, I don't really care.
By the way Emmy, Karl Rove has no chin.
Ever yours,
The Lizard King (I can do anything...whooosh)
Liberal fascist, that is a very astute critique of the right. I agree that they are always shifting the parameters of the discussion ever so slightly when they are short on facts.
--The Lizard King
???
Dear Lot Lizard,
Why are you so full of anger? Why do you get joy from poking people until they lash out at you?
Follow Jesus, turn away from being a dickhead and try to love people and God.
With love,
GMP
Lizard King :
I was going for a kind of "Olson against Olson" approach, using the same kind of rhetorical tricks he and his cohort use to suggest argumentative weight without actually having any:
a) The obligatory (in my case, totally fictitious) anecdote with forced-in political over-interpretation, and just the hint of feminizing the other side.
b) The condescending projections and massive, unjustified generalizations.
c) Accuse the other side of something you find in any of moderate-to-considerable size.
d) Make shit up. (Mismatched toenails, square chin, beady eyes? what the hell are we talking about again?)
I don't pretend to be able to turn a phrase like he does, of course, but I can recognize intellectual junk food when I see it.
Glad you liked the critique. But moving the goalpost is the least of their failings.
Karl Rove has no chin because he has a baby-face and babies have no chins so that they can breastfeed more effectively--duh!
People with deeply recessed chins tend to be liberals. They also tend to be weak and mousey looking. Anaemia brought on by years of veganism also lends a certain je ne sais quoi to their pallor.
About every third person looks like that in Ann Arbor.
If they were chickens, their nestmates would have pecked them to death.
On one final note, Dittos to GM:
"Follow Jesus, turn away from being a dickhead and try to love people and God."
No that there's anything wrong with an anatomical dickhead. In fact, I think they're rather good things, actually, but point definitely taken!
Wow LibFac writes:
a) The obligatory (in my case, totally fictitious) anecdote with forced-in political over-interpretation, and just the hint of feminizing the other side.
Emmy then writes:
People with deeply recessed chins tend to be liberals. They also tend to be weak and mousey looking.
The Lizard King wonders, is she merely being ironic?
Gm- I was following Jesus and telling the truth; I think he is smiling at me right now. I feel all warm and tingly as I sit here. Maybe he is trying to tell me something? Ohhh I love Jesus!
--The Lizard King...whoooosh
"The Lizard King wonders, is she merely being ironic?"
I'm wondering that myself about the whole damn blog.
LibFac, I actually had Kirby as a prof and I really dont think it is an ironic joke.
--LK
Lizard King : Good times :)
Having gotten through higher education still ensconced in his prejudices, I'd say he's probably unreachable by now. He'll likely flail against the cosmic forces of marxism for few years on here and at Shaviro's, then move on to (I hope) more fulfilling ventures.
karl rove has no conscience
he's a well paid conservative criminal
devious as they come
i suppose a case could be made that he believes in something
his vision of the true america
but he has no dick either
little known fact
he's really a woman ex-con from louisiana transexual geek
it's true
j
gm
i said
quite a few bad days
some i suppose it was one really bad day
the criminals are us
Lib-Fascist:
You're a primo example of the snobbish "dirigisme" Jonah Goldberg excoriated in his excellent book. Not to mention an effing liar 'bout sweet, smart Sarah Palin, you butthole.
First, your "moral" tale proves nothing, it only asserts. Style? Aesop, Phaedrus, and La Fontaine should have taught you the basics of how to tell a moral tale; it must have WIT, man, not half-of-a-half of it. "Punch" entirely wanting, it just trails off into insignificant diminuendo. . . .
Second, and much more damning: GUILT BY INSINUATION AND ASSOCIATION (isn't that what you accuse real patriots like Sen McCarthy of doin'?) TODD Palin was a member of a separatist group, never SARAH Palin (unless perhaps you've been channeling Cronkite's shade through the medium of a senile babbler like Dan Rather who still drools out false calumnies against former president Bush II and last I heard, threatens to sue God). But you say, chicken-brain, that:
"As anybody following the news knows, the Palin family’s involvement with Alaskan Independence groups hasn’t for the least hampered their acceptance among the ultra-patriotic christianist branch of the Republican party. And rightly so, since advocating for the separation of your state from the Union shouldn’t damage your credibility when you later present your candidacy for vice-president of the same Union. I think we can all agree on that."
Agree? Look eff-head, SARAH never joined any such group, right? So why do you say she did? I'd sue you ass off if I were she (I'll contact her website later about it, just, henh, henh, for fun, OK?).
Cape Cod, huh? Say eff-head, perhaps YOU'RE Cronkite's shade, or maybe John "marry-the-money" Kerry (Theresa Heinz Kerry as Shelley Winters in "Lolita," or was it "Low-titta?"--'member how much liquor James Mason had to swallow to get carnal with THAT?), or perhaps the ol' vice figure hisself, the hero of Chappaquiddick, Teddy "I-don't- need-no-stinkin'-glass!" Kennedy, last of the mick-mafia capos of Cape Cod (author of the disastrous 60s immy bill that the crack classicist J Enoch Powell warned us about in his "rivers of blood" speech--now we've got MS-13 ensconced in third-world US urban crapholes thanks to Teddy and lib mayors).
Third, black hole of the intellect, you're not the first to phantasize about Sarah Palin in a Saudi jail (like rape sites, do you, "prevert"? children? animals? playing babies?--what?--furries too?--do tell your stories before hard-core paresis sets in and leaves you nothing but quiverin' flesh an' bone chips). Isn't it time, butt-boy, to change panties on your life-size Sarah Palin doll?
Just to be clear, Brett; are you calling yourself a looker?
Really?
It has been my experience that men who have to tout their physicality don't really have a lot to *ahem* offer.
Kinda like JH's Karl Rove, right?
jh: What've you got against Karl Rove, anyway? Name his crime, bro.
Ah, but before you do admit that the following rogues' gallery deserves the ol' "Cool Hand Luke" treatment, replete with a "night in the box" (by comparison I'd give Karl Rove minimum security with an 18-hole golf course):
Chris "Sweetheart-deal" Dodd
Barney "Banking Queen" Frank
William "cold-cash" Jefferson
Franklin "Cook the Books" Raines
Tim "Tax-cheat" Geithner
Jamie "Out-law" Gorelick
Charlie "Tax-cheat" Rangel
Bernie "Deep-Pocket Democrat" Madoff
Dick "Of even littler dickie" Durbin
Nancy "Death's Head" Pelosi
Kwami "Gots to gets mines" Kilpatrick
Marion "Coke-dealer" Berry
Houston "Barnyard Animal" Baker, Junior
William "Hugo's Bootlicker" Ayres
Jane "Tokyo Rose" Fonda
Bernadine "Radical slag" Dohrn
Maxine "Senile Marxist" Waters
Henry "Mister Greenjeans" Waxman
Rod "Mouthketeer" Blagojevich
. . . for a start.
And jh, as a Christian, know that I've no hatred in my heart for them and have no desire whatever to pursue these and other enemies BEYOND THE GRAVE. Remember the just words of Thomas S Szasz, emeritus Professor of Psychiatry at the Upstate Medical Center in Buffalo (and learned author of some thirty books by last count): "When those who disobey the law are not punished, those who obey the law are CHEATED."
Dear Reptile AKA Tom "the Bomb":
Read your prissy-missy-sissy letter with growing disgust. Effete anti-snob snobs aren't worthy of a boxing contest, but rather only a couple of minatory bitch-slaps. You've no languages, whethere Latin, Greek, Italian, German, Dutch--perhaps a little "merci, beaucoup" French like our arrogant and utterly incompetent prez. But if you want smug ignorance, take that Prof Gates idiot as cynosure (yeah, look it up, moron, and don't say I never taught you a few phrases) in his fake affirmative-action discipline (ethnic and gender "studies" rank somewhere below phrenology and astrology in academic legitimacy). And then that ignoramus of a prez pronounces the police stupid. Two dopes for the price of one. Last saw the idiot Gates on with that hee-hawin' bootlickin' moron Charlie Rose ("Nee-yow, hyare's th' ailegant perfesser Hanry Loois Gayts, gud evnin' Perfesser Gayts . . .").
Truth is, reptile, "modernism" and "post-mod" (better: "post-human") aren't literary specialties, they're just current topics. You simply can't call yourself humanities-educated in any meaningful sense without languages and the ability to translate them. You're like Tolstoi's Russians in "War and Peace," who know nothing and want to know nothing. You've made so many misattributions and committed so many grammatical and logical errors that you show no signs of even reading English prose, let alone poetry.
Sorry to hear of Cronkite's death, though he did his best to undercut our effort in Vietnam by lying, e. g., about the 1968 Tet Offensive. His career is a disgrace tout court.
"Teary-eyed"?, reptile? Prove it! The only thing that provokes tears (of laughter, mind) is your wretched kakozeliac prose.
Now and then I've made a point to agree with you, but it's hopeless. Have a nice life and have an appropriate day; abi in malam rem, homo stultissimus!
PS, Reptile:
BTW, which one of us represents a small coterie of smug anti-American radicals as against patriotic mainstream conservative Americans. Who's the elitist now, Reptile?
That miserable sh-t-for- brains "Liberal Fascist" hallucinates that mere labelling (like the syphlitic morons Dave Leatherhead, and Jay (the Pimp) Leno ("leno, lenonis" = Lat. pimp, procurer, O Latin illiterate!), Jon Stewart AKA Liebowitz, the Gorgon booster of Palestinian terrorists, Helen Thomas, and all but a VERY few current news reporters, news writers, and their junkies, yeah, like you, Reptile) "ultra," "far," and "extreme," blah, blah, blah. . . . can suffice to counter the effects of the newly-regenerated conservative movement.
Now nhe Big Zero's headin' for his Waterloo as his numbers tank, and he's the farthest-left of all prezes by far. Raked up from the filthy cloaca (that's "sewer," Reptile) of filthy Chicago politics.
Vive Sarah, our political Jeanne d'Arc!
Dear Reptile:
Since the computer ate my riposte to you again, you'll have to wait 'till tomorrow for your due. Sleep well, hopeless ignoramus!
Jacques :
By Jove,
Kid, I invite you to, you know, actually read a convo before barging in.
Earlier today I wrote :
"I was going for a kind of "Olson against Olson" approach, using the same kind of rhetorical tricks he and his cohort use to suggest argumentative weight without actually having any:..."
Look it up. I wasn't actually saying any of these things. It was satire. I myself listed the fallacies in the post. Sigh.
The Palin thing is especially rich, since it was intended to mirror the usual olsonist conflation of vast swathes of the political spectrum under a few colorful rubrics (the all-encompassing marxism, islamism, etc.). Of course, Sarah Palin wasn't involved with secessionists. I hope you'll sleep better, kid.
(By the way, I haven't identified my own political leanings in this thread. For all you know, I could be Liz Cheney writing from daddy's own waterboard sanctum. So pipe down.)
By the way,
I haven't let you in on any of my religious beliefs in this post
Yours,
Satanic Neo-Confucian.
Seriously Jacques, that's all ya got? "You're an idiot and you spell words incorrectly sometimes. You're dumb just like Al Franken mew mew mew." Did you box like a girl too? I wonder if Thomas Pynchon is fluent in 6 languages, including Latin? The next time Vollmann reads here in SF I will ask him as well. As far as I can tell, you're a forgettable intellect; Vollmann is far more likely to live on in the human consciousness than "Bert the poet warrior" and his translation drivel. Kirby are you fluent in Latin?
This is a conversational tone I write in, jackass; I dash these replies off in about 3 minutes. Often times I'm at work doing other things and take a break to check out the Kirbster.
Sadly, the things you agreed upon were really me mocking you Jacques. When I would write about academics that write ridiculous crap that the world can live without, I was making fun of you. When I wrote of academics that want to understand politics through all means but reading the paper, I was talking about you! How could you not see that?
My favorite part of your pathetic response was that I wasn't worthy of one as I don't speak a lot of languages. Apparently you cannot even operate an f'ing computer you idiot. Computers don't "eat your response." Idiots simply cannot operate one. As of late, your posts sound almost "intoxicated," if you follow.
I can hardly wait for you to call Thomas Pynchon trash! You're so predictable! Go on just do it!
I can't quite go yet. This makes no sense:
Truth is, reptile, "modernism" and "post-mod" (better: "post-human") aren't literary specialties, they're just current topics.
James Joyce is just a current topic? Faulkner a passing whim? Broch, some special topic that small-minded peeps like me read, is a passing fancy? Your self-aggrandizing delusions are truly disgusting. Who are you to dismiss Modernism? Maybe if I attended some academic backwater university in New Brunswick, I be learned real good by a genius like you?
--Tom da bomb
jacques against karl rove
i just want to know what he's doing right now
i think we need to bug his phone
he should be followed
a big stakes political soft whisperer
a sycophant from the word go
didn't finish college
wanted to shake up the political world
a megalokewpie doll in a suit
talkin out his ass
powerplay opportunist
will stop at nothing to win
selfrighteous asshole
fascist with a star and a stripe
he chose sarah palin
good move karl
that's twice where he really helped john mccain
the first time was in carolina in 2000
whisper whisper
she's poised to be president now
just what we need
a barbie doll with a gun
karl can be sec of state
in a daycare center for real life kewpie dolls and barbie dolls
i wouldn't go so far as to say he's a phuqqing asshole
but he's close
on my political screen
he's damn close
like david harowitz with a gun for a mind
other than that
i suppose he's alright
The thing I find interesting about Jacques is that he condemns everyone else for not being well-read in the way that he is...
Yet from all of his reading, it seems little actual wisdom has settled in - his principles are flimsy and self-centered, based merely on a few identity-groups and his own sense of 'victory.'
I find it pretty lame that he's read so much, yet all that reading has really just been so that he can puff up his chest, pump himself up, and make unnecessary allusions in lame-o arguments about things that no one's actually talking about.
And he lacks the self-deprecation that makes Kirby's sometimes-ventures into the ridiculous and assumptive bearable.
And Emmy - yes, I have a strong jaw-line, and I'm good-looking, at least in the classic, popular movie-star sense. Somewhere between Leonardo Dicaprio, Matt Damon, Ashton Kutcher, and a young Billy-Bob-Thornton is where you'll find me...
It's one of those facts about myself I have learned to accept - like the fact that I'm relatively bad at spatial relations, I can run fast, I'm smarter than most people, and I'm 5'11.
I was only bringing all this up because your hubby seems rather insecure about his physical appearance, and so I like to put a little twist of the knife in there.
Also just generally taking the line that liberals are better-looking.
Just look at Kirby! He's a frumper, but he's got a more liberal wife who's way out of his league...
Also, because it's ridiculous to bring it up, just like everything else everyone is saying (for the most part). And it's as relevant as how many languages Jacques can speak to any specific argument, yet he brings about that hullabaloo and similar unrelated ooh-look-at-me-ness all the time.
I remember this one time, when this one dude asked me how many times a week I had sex (as an unmarried man, 0 thank you very much) and when this chick implied that I don't have much to *ahem* offer, and then they both pretended to take the high ground as oh-so-educated and intellectual and argumentatively sound types.
tee hee.
Um,
Actually Joyce and Faulkner have already passed and Pynchon might as well not exist.
The only places these folks are remembered is in college English departments.
Um,
GM, shhhhh.
--Reptile
Boy, that's a hell of a refutation.
Or do you just want me to be quiet because the reality of your uselessness is just too hard to bear?
Uhh..G.M...who are the folks you admire? And where are they remembered?
wanka wanka
Tom da Bomb:
'Course I've read Broch, stupid; Now tell us a little 'bout "The Sleepwalkers" if you can remember (hint: how 'bout the changing styles in the three main parts reflecting the settings?), but more importantly, the dream-vision in "The Death of Virgil" (d'y think Broch read Vergil, in the original as I did, y' know, that goes (per cuore) "Arma virumque cano, Troiae qui primus ab oris/Italiam, fato profugus, Laviniaque venit/litora . . ." or Joyce Homer's invocation to the Muse at the Odyssey's beginning: "Andra mi ennepe, Mousa, polutropon, hos mala polla plagchthe, epi Tries ieron ptolliethron epersen"? Of course, and it would enhance your rerading of them, for almost every major figure of modernism was classically trained--Mann, Kafka, Juenger, Proust, Mann, Joyce, Yeats, Kafka, T S Eliot, Pound, Broch, V Woolf (privileged to be home-tutored), Gide, Valery, Mallarme, Musil, D'Annunzio, Italo Svevo, Cafavy, von Rezzori, Cioran, Nabokov, Biely, Ahkmatova, Pasternak, Hamsun, Kundera, Havel, Pirandello, Saramago, Faulkner, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Cela, Galdos, Lorca, Eco, Walser, Ungaretti, Montale, Pavese, N. Ginsberg, Gadda, Giraudoux, Colette, Mandelstam, Brodsky, Ford Madox Ford, Hasek, A Desai, Mahfouz, Mishima, Ionesco, Beckett, Genet, Wyndham Lewis, Sartre, Camus, Larkin, Conrad, V S Naipaul, Borges (mostly home-tutored--care to add to the list?)--or at least competent to read and translate other languages (BTW, Remeber that Kirby's co-translated a book from the French). But the point is, modernism derives much of its point from its juxtapositioning with classicism or romanticism--without the latter, appreciation suffers. Look, man, I'll cut the abuse for some straight talk de temps en temps--I've tutored people and students in French, Italian, Latin, and Greek without a dime's compensation because of their desire to learn (which is human and natural, as the mighty Aristotle has it at the beginning of the "Metaphysics." And I do read modern stuff when I can (though there are a few that can wait for another life to pick up again, like most of the US "beats," Toni Morrison, Doris Lessing, Hunter S Thompson (though I'm reading a biography of the loon--don't ask me why), Maya Angelou, Galsworthy, C P Snow, Walt Whitman, et alii. Admittedly, I haven't read Pynchon.
"Look, man, I'll cut the abuse for some straight talk de temps en temps"
Dieu merci.
Maintenant, passe à l'étape suivante, et engage les interlocuteurs un à un, plutôt que de les regrouper en entités imaginaires comme un paranoiaque.
Ça vaut aussi pour Olson.
Brett--
Do you mean authors?
Homer's pretty cool.
And well, the Pearl Poet and Chaucer are generally unread outside of the classroom -- though Tolkien's translation did quite well for a while.
Then there's Dante -- and every educated American knows at least Inferno -- and every Italian knows his work from grade school on up.
Oh yeah, and all those folks that Stu doesn't like who misread the Revelation get most of their Hell imagery from Dante
or Milton, another favorite. Course before Milton you've got Shakespeare -- and um, like folks know him and shit.
Tennyson -- kind of forgotten now (thanks in no small part to the modernists), but he & Shakespeare & Milton & Johnson are responsible for most of English.
Then Tolkien -- people, they like him.
Pound and Eliot -- they're confined generally to educated folk, but are certainly more well-read than Joyce or Pinching -- possibly even Faulkner, too.
Fitzgerald. Hemingway. Heller. Vonnegut.
Note -- they all know how to tell a good story beautifully (even if Heller and Vonnegut like to play with sequence).
Plath -- again, well liked (and the greatest master of the sounds of the English language -- too bad she offed herself).
Orson Scott Card (a little in need of an editor sometimes for repeated words -- but a damn fine story teller).
I was Carol Anne Duffy when Carol wasn't cool. . .
Shel Silverstein. Plenty of contemporary poets but poetry is in such a hobbled state right now they aren't even read in literature departments.
But had I gotten my PhD it would have been in Medieval through Restoration literature -- you know, foundations of the English language and what not.
and http://phoebekate.com/2009/07/23/by-your-pupils-youll-be-taught/
What I wonder is why you are perpetually involved in an adolescent pissing contest with anyone that is of the liberal persuasion? If you were serious about dismissing people due to gaps in intelligence and reading habits, you would slam GM right now for admitting Orson Scott Card as a serious literary figure. You won't. Why is this? What is it that allows immunity for GM, a lesser intellect to say the least, and forces you into attacking others? I think it's the key to untangling the compensatory knot that is the ressentiment of Jacques. Your incessant chest puffing and challenges are undoubtedly rooted in insecurity. The question is why are you insecure? What are you compensating for in your constant need to be the big guy: to be the poet-warrior, a ludicrously adolescent notion most of us had at 14 singing The End and imagining ourselves to be Jim Morrison? I think you have this conception of yourself as guarding the western tradition from the barbarian-liberal hordes. Why would you think this? You clearly divide people into 2 camps, refined (follows the path approved by Jacques) and barbarian (those that question tradition). You see conservatives as the defenders of tradition, as they are frequently portrayed in this manner. You view the liberals as demonstrating utter disdain for tradition, positioning people into one of two camps. Since there is only one way, the duality is always in favor of yourself as the ultimate authority: you have the way.
I think it is your return from Vietnam and the greeting you received from America upon your arrival that precipitates this duality: baby-killer, murderer, imperial stooge etc... You associate these people’s view with an attack on tradition, the tradition that you defend. You need to position your world-view over theirs and are constantly engaged in this battle/pissing contest. All subsequent liberals are therefore viewed as a threat to you, or a source of negativity. It’s not content you are interested in, it’s form: forms of life involving one path, all others are dismissed in your world view. This is exhibited by your unrelenting spleen blasted at various forms of students and colleagues that you view as left. Is there one left-winger in the world with any value Jacques?
Another thing you need to understand is there is a finite amount of time people have to work with. I chose to NOT attend grad-school as grad students are unbearable. I do not care for the industry of literary studies at all, sycophantic critics desperate for a new lexicon to explain the same concepts of their predecessor. I had the grades, was steeped in critical theory, and probably had some rather good letters of rec. Consequently, I joined the work world; yet, I continue reading serious books and spend time writing fiction as well. In the 1-2 hours I may have at the end of a day, I do not wish to learn Latin. I think 99% of the population would be sympathetic to this and view my activities in a favorable light. Moreover, Latin is no longer offered in most American public schools. One is not guided that way as an undergrad. I wonder how many significant contemporary authors, not from 1915, are really fluent in Latin? I’m thinking the number is not high. I take your point about the interaction between previous traditions/time periods and Modernism. I don’t think this interaction occurs at a significantly deep level at all times. When I was doing my senior thesis on Ulysses with Popov, he in fact stated that the relationship between Joyce and Homer was not so significant to understanding the book. Broch, obviously was steeped in Virgil, hence “The Death of Virgil.” Listing Modernist authors that everyone knows doesn't do much for me. I can list many significant authors currently pushing the boundaries of fiction that haven't heard of. What would that accomplish, another pissing contest? I have to go take a piss now.
--Tom
Man, I love it when Tom gets all straw-man on us.
Brett asked which authors I admire.
Orson Scott Card is the (or one of the) finest story-tellers we have working today. He's no Scott Fitzgerald (or even Scott Bradfield) and so were I to, say, teach writing on the level of crafting a sentence, I would leave him off the curriculum.
However, if I were teaching writing as constructing a story and telling it in a compelling fashion, Card would be on the list for sure.
Of course, here we are back at Aristotle and Plato again -- one likes to look at the big picture and one likes to look at minutiae.
Perhaps another author I admire (Pirsig) can help us on this -- we should look at the elephant, not a part of it.
I don't know. I can't control anyone here, Tom. I think that liberals and conservatives are at one another's throat on every blog in America at this point.
It's a free fire zone.
I wish people wouldn't call one another words like stupid, or wish death on one another's family, etc.
I don't see the point of it, and it does seem to have reached a new low.
On the other hand, the comments numbers are way up!
I'm partially at fault because I did tease a little bit -- the big fatso Buddha image was a bit much I guess. I thought I made up for it by quoting Aung Kyi on the buddha, but by then maybe the pepper had already got into people's eyes.
Everyone has their own brain and their own sense, and we just have to slow down and try to get a sense of one another. This is not a speedy blog. It's meant to be a slower blog.
But with all the new people, many of whom I have no sense of, and some of whom just got done with their Marxist reeducations, we have quite a little static electricity going.
I don't know what to do right now about it, except to say that Buddhism is really genuinely atrocious, and those people who call themselves Buddhists should be ashamed for it, and for the countries in which it's dominant.
OH YEAH. Let us hear it for them fucking Chinese Lutheran MORE-ONS..
the ones who sell Tibetan pandas to the D.C. ZOO!
Ed -- how else are the pandas going to survive?
unless we find out they're really tasty -- that works very well for cows, pigs, chickens, deer, bison, and alligators.
Kirby,
It's time to own up to your blog. Why would I post the long segments on Jacques? It's really explained by the nature of your blog. I used to come to the table with facts and arguments about political matters. There is no use as I am immediately dismissed as a dumb liberal, never mind facts. Usually this dismissal is embedded in a long rant against "people like me." Often times these tracts are accompanied with unsavory language. When I use unsavory language or stoop to their level, it's a problem. You've never criticized JA or GM for their indulgences. Are you afraid of them? It's completely hypocritical and a bit cowardly. Step up to bat and manage your blog!
--Tom
PS by the way I have never represented myself as anyone else. Well, Lizard King yes but that was simply to mock Jacques.
my sense is that most all harvard grads are temperamentally just like kaczinski
except they're all working in finance
they've found constructive ways to be psychotic corrupt and self destructive
economix
there's the place for the harvard grads
let 'em run the money
learn a lesson or two from ole ted
who lived in a shed
and thought about blowing a town up
when he came to his senses
he ran for the fences
and gave up his freedom instead
i think the age after the greatest performance art piece of the 21st century has been one of ubiquitous suspicion...everyone is being watched of course not everyone is seen widespread profound fear
i'm willing to give cheney that
i suspect he was changing his underwear rather frequently in the days after the attack after the jets after the flames after the smoke after the debris after the collapse after the panic after the tv monitor after the mayhem after the regrouping after the battle lines after it all
he probably shit his pants
but he looks like a criminal to me
sneering devious indignant above the constraints of the law renegade hack job criminal
plays the subversion game
plays clandestine
plays high tech info game
plays to kill plays for keeps sort of criminal
he probably thinks he is the force of ultimate good against the force of ultimate evil
there are a few things ole dick did not learn in the sandbox days
bush looks too stupid to be a criminal he looks like one of those guys who could be pulled into a scheme and not realize it till much later and shake his head in disbelief
but knows he's implicated deeply all the same
bush always had the look that i associate with cocky seniors in high school i never detected a mannerism in him ever that went beyond this level and usually when he had to defend himself he sounded like a freshman trying to use some occasional street spanish
isn't it strange to think that with perhaps just one different turn in the road ted kaczinski could have been president
i mean in some ways he sounds a lot like al gore
from a certain mathematical logic it makes sense to blow shit up in order to preserve and protect the resources and peoples of the world i mean i don't condone that sort of thing at all but if you're goin to blow shit up in order to manage and control it then the equating function would suggest that to a greater or lesser degree one should blow shit up in order to preserve it
a bit binary i admit
but one deals with mathematical logic on it's own terms
generally
i guess ted could have made it as a musician
he never got around to playing jazz
that was his problem
he never had a constructive outlet in art - then he might have been a genius junkie with some social credibility
i was so amazed as a child to learn that one of our neighbors an MD a really great guy was deeply addicted to a wide variety of morphine products
the guy was an amazing character but something grabbed his soul one day and he was a junkie till he died...still he did quite a bit of good for people
everyone thought he was a good doc
the world is warped with so many weaving odd things woof woof
too many guy criminals
we need more girl criminals
j
Tom, I do think that Jacques has been unfair to you, and have stood up for you. I did say that I hoped you wouldn't leave the blog, and I did say on another thread that I think calling people stupid isn't collegial or productive. I also praised one specific thing you brought in which was the Robert Kaplan essay on the Indian Ocean.
I also have stood up to and had arguments with GM in the past over Christian pacificism, Abraham Lincoln, Wal-Mart as a site of slavery just as bad as Jefferson Davis' plantation, and many other things.
I'm a bit pained that Jacques treats you and Stu so badly. Some people are genuinely intractable pinheads. You and Stu are not.
I didn't like it much when he went after me last week, either. He doesn't seem to have a sense of limitations when he gets going, but either do some of the people to your left (many of whom write under the term anonymous, so it's hard to have any sense of who they are or what they want).
Boards like this are freeforalls, I suppose, but I would prefer that we not join Mad Max in a fight for the jugulars, as it's not conducive to genuine learning.
But people have different temperaments, and to some extent this comes with the territory. Some people really enjoy fighting and showing their muscle.
Some people are just trying to establish the outlines of a sensible way of thinking about things.
I can't change anyone's temperament.
I suggest that you ignore Jacques in the way that I ignore the Mad Max types. Anyone who won't grant you any humanity won't grant you a good hearing.
As for Ed, he doesn't grant any of us status as anything but morons, and yet he wants a hearing.
I largely ignore his writing. It's not civil in that it doesn't recognize any discourse but his own as valid.
I'm hoping that a kind of Darwinian decency will come to the fore here where the anonymous blood spatterers will slowly come to be ignored, as their tactics become less and less honored, while the attempt to reach forward and embrace another's thought with humor and respect, but also a certain rigor, come to the top.
I think that IS what happens in human societies, unless they happen to be Buddhist or Marxist, or God forbid, Marxist Buddhist societies, in which the likes of Aung Kyi are imprisoned, while nameless psychopaths take innocents as sex slaves.
I think in a more decent world such as that of America, some kind of relative good will prosper, in spite of the likes of Skip Gates.
I suppose that in general there is a certain triumphalism to believing that one's side is right. It's to be avoided, and yet is unavoidable. People are blowhards, and nitwits. I'm one of the worst, and love it more than most! And I'm almost never right!
jh, just a note en passant on Harvard grads and their parents: my colleague in physics/astronomy told me a good one a few years ago: on commencement day there was a poll of Harvard grads and their parents as to why it was cold in winter in the Northern Hemisphere, and 75% of this lot said it was because during that season THE SUN WAS FURTHER FROM THE EARTH! What a hoot! Hee, hee!
Personal story on Harvard and its sites:
Spent months as a "special borrower" at Harvard (for which a verified PhD and 400 bucks up front is de rigueur), and the daily round included several libraries (Rare Books, Theology, but mostly the grand Widener, the most august (sniff) research library in the Western Hemisphere). One needed two passes to gain the stacks, thus preventing rubbernecks from wandering aimlessly through its vast corridors and into its niches. To get into the maw of this vast, byzantine (Borges-like) repository of nearly all learning worth knowing one daily had to elbow one's way through a gauntlet of mostly Japanese tourists trying vainly to pass by the guards to get in to supplement their snapshots of the ouside pillars, steps, doors, and bricks with some inside shots, say, a few close-up flashes of scholars fighting to hold on to a tenuous but brilliant thought in deep concentrated reading. It's there, at the Widener, I read, copied, and wrote, and then stumbled back to my digs off Mass Ave several miles away, though within reach, only a few blocks past the Haitian settlement and their pert, well-kept cottages with front-yard gardens of squashes and brightly coloured flowers, the liquor store that usually had (for tax-crazy Massachusetts, at least) bottom-shelf prices on middle-shelf scotch to go with my greasy Greek pizza and obligatory salad, and later some beer and wine to sober up for the next day's round to follow. Thus went the summer-fall of 2000, my Harvard.
(Fast-forward one year, book contract fulfilled with hard-driving Gypo-Brit publisher, back to small college where languishing amid dreams of bolting again to Flanders Fields, first royalties spent on top-shelf scotch and roses for Mme H-----.)
Chez Mme H-----. After obligatories, we watched a silly American movie (in colour; Euro-cool black-and-whites are "films"), but since Mme H------achieved her PhD in classics at Hahvahd and I'd been a guest there well-treated with "an air of mild regret" (Waugh, "Brideshead"), and the movie was shot on its campus, "Legally Blond" we were reminiscing on its sites shown in the movie when there was a scene that, after copious shots of tequila, seemed funny.
The star, Reese Witherspoon (Valley Girl as Hahvahd law student) has a jerk of a boyfriend, though there's, by contrast, a nerdie who's a great guy, and in the scene we were watching, is trying vainly to get a date with one of two coeds, one of whom tells him to his face: "You're not good-looking enough to go out with us." Upon over hearing this, Reese turns round, walks up to him and . . . simply does the most flattering thing a woman can do for a man in public, for she . . . (no, it's not what some of you think!) slaps him on the face and says: "You gave me the greatest night of pleasure in my life, and you haven't even rung me up since," and then stomps off in a fake huff, whereupon the two coeds start inching forward, and one says, "Um, well, uh . . . what time can you pick us up?"
More obligatories. Now on to different obligatories, M stu.
Cheers,
JA
"with 400 bucks" (agreement)
Tom:
I think your assumption is that anyone with brains, learning, and any pretensions to academic achievement MUST BE FAR LEFT (just like me, and, huff, huff (like the frustrated--though elegantly perfumed--Peter Lorre in "The Maltese Falcon," as the oily, fastidious, cosmopolitan faggot (he premiered in Kurt Weil's "Three-Penny Opera" in Vienna in 1927, before the Nazis drove this Jewish acting genius away to do monster flicks in America), loathe all those hateful Republicans and conservatives--well, wake up and smell the coffee, lad!). This groundless delusion you must jettison if your obviously tender sensibilities are not perpetually to be wounded on this blog as long as I'm or Emmy's (Kirby still calls her "Emma," perhaps--I'd like to think--in honour of Jane Austen's protagonist; an uncharitable view would be Luth Patriarch Kirby condescending to address an tiny intellectual appendage of myself--yup, Kirb, if "Emma" doesn't write good by me, like Willy's Colette, she'll be "beaten, locked up, and flung about the room" [Virginia Woolf, "Room of One's Own"]).
And stu, your instruction to Emmy on the languages of the Bible, not to put too fine a point on it, may be a tad superfluous to someone who's lived with a history of translation student for six years (though your explanation is flawed even there, and I'll tell you why tomorrow as I amass the evidence for my "causa" (case) in the "in utrimque partem" ("on both sides") debate, for as one of Huet's interlocutors says,
" . . .mihi plane credibile fit non tam repugnandi studio, contrariam causam egisse te, quam pervestigandae veritatis gratia, quae ex utraque parte contentione facta facilius elucet"
(" . . . it is becoming quite plausible to me that you have taken up the contrary argument not so much because of a zeal for contradicting than for the sake of seeking out the truth, which always shines forth more easily when a vigorous effort has been made on both sides").
Hegelian, that, and in some measure what I've been up to recently. And if you read my last posts to the singular Ed Baker recently, you'll see me warm a bit to the eccentric story-monger and his serial reminiscing--and tell of the rise of kings. . . . Perhaps that's my fate on this blog, for no one really reads my blogs anyway. . . . et ca ne fait rien du tout . . .
stu, a demain,
JA
Jacques,
what is this crap now? Strange that Robert Kaplan and Donald Kagan are two of the political science writers I most enjoy these days. Your stereotypes are so frequently off-base. You have such little knowledge of the world we presently live in. I would suggest reading either of them if you would like gain some understandings from you own team's perspective. It's sorely needed and makes you a very unworthy opponent when we discuss politics. Yes, when it comes to obscure translation issues, you are quite the warrior. I have very little to offer in that realm so I keep my trap shut. Sometimes it's ok to keep you trap shut rather than prattle on about things you really don't know about.
Thanks for the kind words Kirby. I'm tired of the passive-aggressive routine from Jacques so I'm purely aggressive in my response and will continue to be so in light of his buffoonish behavior. I'm truly shocked he sent documentation of his war record. How dare you slightly question Jacques! Little did I know he is on the dole. If you ask me, Jacques has been the point of conflict in this blog, pretends to someone apologize, then starts in again with his claims that anyone left is an idiot while his cohorts leave, ahem, something to be desired; he doesn't say anyone left, he merely names them. I feel like a broken record talking about this so I will let it go.
--Tom
gm
getting back to your original observaton about shakur
is it your claim then that the oral tradition is the primary locus of poetic presentation
and that then the consequence of the written word on the page is but a form of decay hybrid into geekiness and impertinance
just checkin in
j
Well, Tom, (acting presidential) I think we've all overreacted to some degree, and should sit down together and have a non-alcoholic beverage at some point, and perhaps some chips.
I can't say where.
I think we're located all over America. What's the exact middle of America?
Ladora, Iowa, you say?
We really should have a Lutheran surrealist conference featuring non-alcoholic beverages, and so on.
The president can get the public to pay for his blunders, and invite people by plane and such to the White House, but we have to pay our own travel expenses and beverage costs, so I'll propose a Wild Cherry Diet Pepsi summit in Ladora, Iowa, at some unspecified point in the future, as the LS summit talks, so that we can ratchet all this down.
But just for the record: I NEVER QUESTIONED Jacques' war record. He misinterpreted my referral to his war record, and continues to insist that I was challenging his service-related injury.
I wasn't!
I was trying to establish his credentials as a soldier!
I've never even fired a gun! I held one once at Wal-Mart and nearly fainted.
The man behind the counter took it away from me, and asked gently if I needed to sit down.
The shotgun I was holding felt so bizarrely powerful. It had a camouflage pattern painted on it, and I was imagining that it might help me protect my family.
That's the only time I've ever held a rifle.
I think it's amazing that some people have actually fired them in wars and killed the bad people.
Thank goodness that soldiers and police officers exist!
Translation issues ARE quite important. It's a serious aspect of multiculturalism that most of our monoglot multiculturalists haven't grokked.
It represents a true open-ness to other cultures.
According to Thomas Friedman in the NY times, "arabs at the Crossroads," the entire Arabic world publishes about 300 books in translation per year, which is about one-fifth of what Greece alone does in the west.
NYT, July 3, 2002, p. A19.
Cited in Jean Bethke Elsthain's Just War, p. 143.
Tom (offers hand):
Congratulations, Tom! (Takes deep breath) You mean THE Donald Kagan, Sterling Professor of Classics and History at Yale, and along with his other conservative classicist confreres like Victor Davis Hanson (of Stanford and "National Review,") John Heath (prof in classics at Cal State-Fresno and co-author, with Hanson, of the militantly traditionalist "Who Killed Homer?" and "Bonfire of the Humanities"--with the classics/comp lit prof at Santa Clara U [that also offered a chair in commu'cashuns--and, dommage!--even a job to that affected brayin' cloth-cap, p-p-preposterous, far-left jackass, Marc Bousquet] with right-wing essayist Bruce Thornton), Mary Lefkowitz (of Wellesley and former head of The Association of Literary Scholars and Critics--whose online blog was preempted by a coterie of snide leftists led by John Holbo, Bill Benzon--not even a member--and a recently-anointed PhD, Dr Scott Eric Kaufman of "Edge of the American West" infamy and who seems already to have repudiated his own dissertation, as he tells it, and whose hyper-pretentious website in name stands well for the whole lot of "The Valve" crew: "Acephalos" (Gr "akephalos," or "headless," and by easy inference from the addition of the short prefix "en," literally a gang of "no-brainers"--AKA "shite for brains" [yup, that's they, henh, henh]--and who of course also banned me from my once-own organizational blogsite, ‘till I got a few heavyweight academic acquaintances of mine to put a bit of stick about on the backs of this pack of snarling far-left Bush-n' Palin-hatin' curs and issue a lame apology for censoring me--oderint dum metuant--"let them hate, so long as they fear")--as well as the destroyer of the Afrocentric "Black Athena" mythology 'bout Greeks stealing all their good ideas from black Nubians (what a hoot!) in "Not Out of Africa," and whose husband, Sir Hugh Lloyd-Jones, once Regius Professor of Greek at Oxford, also writes for the fine culturally conservative arts journal (specialising in modernism--so wake up, Tom!), "The New Criterion" (eds. Hilton Kramer and the right-wing cultural warrior Roger Kimball of "Roger's Rules" website fame) are on OUR side (brett, they're all old duffs, comme moi, so nothing for you here, my superannuated lad!) Quite a dangerous cultural crowd you be runnin' with, Tom--again, Congrats! (another deep breath)
Now, Tom, since you read French, "[j]e te frapperai sans colere/Et sans haine . . ." (Baudelaire; "I shall strike you without hate/And without hate . . ."), for you said I’m “on the dole.” Qu’est ce-que tu dis, mon frère? You mean taking my early US Social Security (into which I’ve paid for years for me mum’s generation, and now it’s you who can shell out to me for a while, for which you have my gracious hand-shaking thanks—AND a promised postcard from our next home in Newfoundland—ol’ workin’ chap! [and know that your money is well-distributed among my weekly allotments for books, baroque opera CDs, fags, charity, sex toys, and liquor]). To you too, Kirby, and all the other proles, my thanks, though know that I do still dabble here and there in the editing vassalage (les corvees, pour “laborare est orare,” and I try to be a faithful son of the Church) to our chief editor, Emmy, my dear wife and goddess, who as we speak is caressing and whispering sweet nothings to her two stuffed unicorns—really!). So to call me “on the dole” is a bit, well . . .in old Brit club lingo, not “white,” don’t you know, old chap? So I’ll jes’ count to ten and you can take it back, sans chatiment, OK? (“One . . . two . . .”).
And then, too, there’s the bit where you slipped in the epithets “baby-killer, murderer, and imperial stooge” as what “they” say, that is “liberals”—now, Tom the Good, is that what YOU say? Come on man, spit it out—yes or no? If yes, well, then , Pancho, that puts us on a “new basis,” (like George Peppard vs Eli Wallach in “How the West Was Won”). What then, M. Tom? (at this point I must break and call time). A bientot, mon frère,
JA
jh -- that's a pretty good way of putting it.
Jacques this was a lot more effective and less full-bore. I liked it a lot, even though I doubt if Tom did.
Tom, just because he was injured doesn't necessarily mean he's on the dole. Jacques works!
He functions!
Geez.
Just because one hand is causing him a lot of pain and suffering doesn't mean he's going to turn into a disability kind of guy. Oh, no!
He has kept working.
Ty Cobb was apparently stabbed in the back before he beat the crap out of the guy who did this to him, and then went on to hit two home runs.
That's the way real Americans roll.
Do you still have people like that in San Francisco? Or is one papercut enough to make them run to the nearest office?
I think you are putting the hand problem together with general SF behavior, and drawing a conclusion.
Sorry, but this time I'm on Jacques' side.
At any rate, have you read Victor Davis Hanson on Gates-Gate?
It's pretty good, and is here:
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ZTRlNDM5YTIxMGUzMjdiM2I5MWFjZDAzZTM3Nzg5N2U=&w=MA==
Victor Hanson Davis, I meant!
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ZTRlNDM5YTIxMGUzMjdiM2I5MWFjZDAzZTM3Nzg5N2U=&w=MA==
Is that the right name?
I read his book on Great Battles, which was a great, albeit triumphalist book, about the western tradition's military excellence from some military battle against the Persians up through Midway.
The Midway chapter was even better than the movie, but it was a touch triumphalist, and not exactly Christian.
The whole book is not exactly Christian, but it's still fun to read. He's a pagan who likes the Hoplites.
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ZTRlNDM5YTIxMGUzMjdiM2I5MWFjZDAzZTM3Nzg5N2U=&w=MA==
Oops, I meant Robert Kagan... I've actually never read the Donald variety. I believe Robert Kagan was actually a neo-con for a spell. I don't think Donald Kagan writes much about contemporary issues.
Actually, my SF tendencies aside, I'm not very judgmental toward soldiers and did not personally call you any of those name. I understand that those insults made their rounds in your day? I was attempting to understand why you radically defend conservatives and tradition in the clear face of ignorance. Many of the people you defend, Palin for one, demonstrate the lack of education that drives you crazy. Why then do you defend them? Why the clear double standard?
I'm actually empathetic to the soldier's plight and would not judge them. I wouldn't be surprised if American soldiers shot innocents, sometimes on purpose. After you are run down for days, constantly shot at from the civilian population and don't know who is shooting at you, 100% correct moral behavior is absurd to expect.
--Tom
It's probably absurd to expect it, Tom. But I hope we do still expect it! Moral behavior is the key to winning hearts and minds. Once we lose that, we lose everything.
Ok, JH is right. I just wanted to reach 100 comments in two contiguous postings that had nothing at all to do with one another. Now that that's accomplished, I can get on with the Just War posting, which I'm sure will draw next to no hits.
First, to finish off Tom's insinuation that I'm "on the dole" because I'm applying for an army disability pension after forty years of trouble with my sinister hand. I've told you why I didn't apply earlier, Tom, but as usual (and as I'll show below) you really don't read very well, do you? I didn't take a pension earlier because 1) I thought more severely injured comrades deserved pensions more (after all, I was only hospitalized for six weeks and two major surgeries) and 2) I received a month-early release for grad school. Injuries received in military service by contract are compensated for and treated at VA hospitals. Only the worsening condition of my hand (I'm currently unable to open it fully)--after I could have been collecting disability payments for these forty years--and BTW, it'll be months and months before I receive my first payment) and providing someday for Emmy's welfare has changed my mind (and, as I said, two Vietnam-era fellows on half-disability I met while being treated at the VA, who weren't even in Vietnam or combat, are receiving their pensions for . . . "anxiety," for which there is of course no pathology to this condition. I do have one in the nerve damage to my hand.
As usual, Tom indulges his nasty, viperous nature with such offhand slights about a disability incurred--and not of my own making, though his dissociation from the accusations he mentioned earlier is much-appreciated.
Yet there is no better example of Tom's indifference than here:
"Oops, I meant Robert Kagan... I've actually never read the Donald variety. I believe Robert Kagan was actually a neo-con for a spell. I don't think Donald Kagan writes much about contemporary issues."
While admitting he hasn't at all read DONALD Kagan (actually father to ROBERT), he presumes to think that the father doesn't much writes about contemorary issues, which would certainly surprise Professor Kagan, whose articles on contemporary affaiurs may easily be located in journals such as "Commentary," "National Review," "Academic Questions," "The New Criterion," etc. and seems to have gravitated to conservatism after opposing the radically-coerced establishment of the bogus discipline of "Black Studies" (precisely Dr Gates's bogus sway-dough field) during his tenure at Cornell.
What causes you to arrogate your own education over Palin's? You rarely speak of anything but politics, politics, politics (your "fatal Cleopatra," if you will) and show little sign of having cultivating any other major interest. Perhaps that is why you seem to loathe the idea of a true liberal arts and sciences education.
Then you back away again from your professed "sympathy" for us soldiers with his pseudo-subtle implication that a significant number of us were murderers. Well Tommie-boy, noscitur a socios ("one is known by the company he keeps"), and considering your anti-American buddies over at the militant left "Daily Kos," "Huff Post," and "The Nation," it's not surprising what happens to bursts of righteous indiganation when they issue from the mouth of a sewer. . . . Cheers,
JA
PS: And since the Big O has never published a single scholarly article or book in his supposed specialty of "Race and Law," he's a "Big Zero" in scholarship.
Sorry, that's "Tom's indifference to fact" (inadvertent omission)
Sorry for the above typos, for they sometimes detract from the intended "punch."
Jacques,
I'm just giving you shit about the dole, relax and learn how to laugh it off. I know about VA hospitals, my grandfather died in one.
I'm not that familiar with Donald Kagan, is this a crime? I remember seeing a history book he wrote, maybe about the Peloponnesian War? Trust me I can name quite a few writers that you are not familiar with.
Try as hard as you may, I'm not the cookie cutter left winger SF type that you portray me as. I don't read The Nation, hemmed and hawed about voting for obama, and actually support mandatory civil/military service.
I write about politics because it is what interests me on this blog. Some recent titles I've read are: "Israel Potter, "Bouvard and Pecuchet," Sister Carrie, and "The Kindly Ones." My knowledge of scripture, and interest, is uninteresting and uninformed; consequently, I keep my mouth shut. Unlike you, I don't spout off when I have no idea what I'm talking about. I'm also writing a novel and a short story and doing research for my novel.
There is no implication that "most of you are murderers." You're a paranoid maniac.
--Tom
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