cheese it, the cops!

Embrace your inner Beaver, Republicans!

 

 

On Tom Petty's "Buried Treasure" XM Radio show, he told the story of standing with his tour manager outside a venue in Texas, where there was a creek behind the place, with shade trees and a den of beavers playing in the water. Seemed pretty arcadian, really, until one of the beavers saw the humans and charged up the hill at them. Petty asked the manager if he had his gun, the manager said yeah, (Petty's comment was something to the effect that "It was in Texas..." )and then Petty said, "Don't Beaver's have flat tails..." They were being blitzed by a big, angry rat...and Petty took the gun and shot the thing.

Well, I've tried to figure out what the hell Trump's evolving hair style really looks like, and it kind of makes him look like a blonde beaver with it's tail rolled up over his head. I realize that some of my jejune minded readers will immediately think about all the varieties of beaver, and I think that if you are a Republican, that's awful to think that way. Me, I'm a radical-liberal life-time Democrat except when Crispin actually convenes the Anarchist Party convention and we nominate Bill the Cat, so I'm at least open to consider alternatives.

So, I recommend that the Republican Party bow down and welcome it's new Beaverish Rodent-style Overlord, al la the great Kent Brockman...

As described by the Washington Post's Alexandra Petri: (Alexandra Petri February 24 at 11:53 AM) with a neat graph!

"There are three GOP candidates left in the race who are not Trump — oh wait, no, apparently Ben Carson is still running? — and this chart pretends that there are only two non-Trumps remaining, but I think it’s still a handy illustration of the problem.

"If Candidate A and Candidate B are really in it to win it: congratulations, Nominee Donald!" 

I will let Mr. Petty explain it for the some what slower amongst us...

 

  

 

are you perfectible?

"I have no faith in human perfectibility. I think that human exertion will have no appreciable effect on humanity."

edgar allan poe

ps. eat me, emerson!

well, i share poe's pessimism on this, but the flat formulation is too strong. human exertion has had and will have many appreciable effects on humanity; think about longevity since poe's time, for example, though of course things can regress too. but what emerson and poe are talking about is human moral perfectibility. here i do not think that we have seen any significant improvement since we clawed like swamp thing up from the primordial ooze; nor do i expect to.

perhaps you are now thinking to yourself: well, perhaps we could work on the genome, or hit singularity, and be much much better than we are right now. what i might note is that the people futzing with the genes or the medications or the information technology will be us. these projects, to whatever extent they are pursued or pursuable, will be pursued by people who themselves are vain and venal, self-deluded, self-seeking, megalomaniacal, obsessive, thick as bricks, and hosts for the imp of the perverse.

say they come to believe that they know what morality consists in and impose it through genomics or software. (1) they'll turn out to have been wrong about the content of morality; (2) the actual implementation of this, as any human system, will benefit some and harm others, and perhaps exponentially increase human hierarchy. i myself regard that hierarchy as central to our evil; (3) implementation will be chaotic, flawed, back-and-forth, cowardly; for god's sake you'll have politicians involved and shit; (4) the unintended consequences will swamp the intended effects, leaving us extinct or at least profoundly puzzled and irritated.

mencken (1926):

On Cynicism

One of the most curious human delusions lies in the theory that cynics are unhappy men - that cynicism makes for general biliousness and malaise. It is a false deduction, I believe, from the obvious fact that cynics make other men unhappy. But they are themselves the most comfortable and serene of mammals; perhaps only bishops, pet dogs and actors are happier. For what a cynic believes, though it may be too dreadful to put into formal words, at least usually has the merit of being true - and truth is ever a rock, hard and harsh, but solid under the feet. A cynic is chronically in the position of a wedding guest who has known the bride for nine years, and has had her confidence. He is a great deal less happy, theoretically, than the bridegroom. The bridegroom, beautifully barbered and arrayed, is about to launch into the honeymoon. But the cynic looks ahead two weeks, two months, two years. Such, to borrow a phrase from the late Dr. Eliot, are the durable satisfactions of life.

 

here's a quote from the wonderful legal theorist patricia williams (from the alchemy of race and rights, 1991), on buckley v. valeo, a previous political speech case. now obviously the identification of money with speech - which is at the heart of today's supreme court decision - is liable to give some folks the heebeejeebees. williams does a good job of beginning to say why.

When the Supreme Court held not only that it is undesirable to constrain the expenditure of money in political elections, but that such expenditure is speech, what does that mean? The court seems to have gone one step beyond holding that money is related to access to expensve media; it seems to imply that if one could speak freely (without pecuniary cost, that is) but could not spend money, then one would still be 'censored.' But if expresion is commodified in this fashion, then can it not be bought and sold? Is money itself communicative and of what? Is the introduction of money as a concept of expression something like introducing usury into our love lives? Can speech usurious? Is money a form of language, in the way we think of speech as language? What does this imply for oaths, rituals, the swearing of attachments?

"I am a slave by my vices and free by my remorse."
Rousseau, Emile

don't try to work out where we went wrong. we are but the offspring of a great disorder in the universe.
--ismail kadare

i'm obnoxious, motherfucker,
can't you tell?
runnin' through little havana
yellin "viva fidel!"
jerking off in the sheets of your local hotel,
drinking bacardi at an aa meeting,
smokin an el.
--immortal technique

We have your motherfuckin record company surrounded. Put down the candy and let the little boy go.
--Dr. Dre

Study philosophy until you see in generals nothing but donkey drivers.
--Crates the Cynic (365? - 285? B.C.)

a deeply affirming sentiment

Anybody who has listened to certain kinds of music, or read certain kinds of poetry, or heard certain kinds of performances on the concertina, will admit that even suicide has its brighter aspects.

Stephen Leacock, 1912