Geez, thank god christmas is over...

I had the most low key x-mas ever. I did not really go out. It was just me and my immediate fam for christmas lunch and the gifts were so perfectly honed that they constitute pure awesomeness. I enjoyed them all. I got a few sweet kitchen knives, some money (which bought me a backup harddrive and a digital camera), two bottles of Hendricks's gin, one pint of Jameson, one pint of Chivas Regal, a back scruber for the shower, a chia herb garden, a 1943 edition of the Joy of Cooking, some gift cards and the coup de' gras: Two original 1986 Watchmen lithographs signed by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons. It was tres cool. I also bought myself Ryan Adam's new book Infinity Blues (which because I preordered came signed by the author).
But how do you come back from this? Simplicity. Quiet. Presents. No work. How do you get back into the grove of normalcy which plagues my very existence!? Who knows...
I have also been doing some thinking and that never gets me anywhere but in trouble.

A Quick Ode...

Oh Budweiser American Ale... How I love thee. How I drink enough of you so that I need to pee. How I love your price... so cheap ($5.50 a sixer) and so so nice! God bless you and how little god has to do with it like a gorilla's tit... I give up on rhyming...

Love is Hell on the hi-fi...

So I am having a cooking night. I am currently working on two projects: braised ox tail in a crockpot and braised duck part deux in the oven. The duck was a failed a project from the other night. I braised it stove-top (which isnt braising) and made stock with the bits. The duck got tasty but not tender and so I have put the other half of it in a deep cast iron skillet with a lid with the remainder of the stock. The original braising business was made with almost a whole jar of grey poupon country style stone ground mustard, malbec, mushroom, roasted carrots/parsnips/celery, and some spices. Thus, adding the extra stock and cooking it in the oven will hopefully a) loosen the connective tissue and achieve and actual braise and mix the stock juices and up the awesome factor. The ox tail was browned in the put in a crock pot. I used the juices in the browning pan to cook rudely chopped onion, garlic, shallot, and portabello mushrooms. Once this was sauted to my satifaction it was added to crockpot. The remainder of that pan was deglaced with sherry. This was then added to the crock pot. The pan then had some water boiled in it to loosen up whatever was left. This was added to the crock pot.
Now we wait.
I am prone to dedicated my cooking and this is no exception. This was a hard thing to decide. I decided to dedicate the duck to C because of the nature of the process. The ox goes out to K (and I am not even sure if he reads this blog but that is beside the point, I send the thought into the void regardless).
I am tired these days. My jobs drags me down something terrible. I got no bonus because I am the new guy and there was no way in hell I could get friday off (which it turns out is a work day) nor could I get the day before and after new years off because I am the new guy. This brings me back to a point from a previous post: "the fetishization of the mental health" by philosophers. I admit that psychological jargon does lend itself well to some fascinating philosophy but at the end of the day the use of a lot pyschological terms really does rob the actuality of the situation of some of its reality. It domesticatees it. It glosses it over. Theory has always done well at this and excellent for the creation of catchphrases. I dare not mention specifics because this thought is more of an impulse than a blanket statement against everyone and everything I have ever read. I also know that making this a blanket statement will raise the ire of some folks very near and dear to my heart.
I picked up a copy of the DSM-IV today from work. I did not due this because I find it fascinating but merely so I can grope my way through the dark anals of actualy psychological description. I have reports and treament plans that use DSM jargon and usually when I am forced to look up a term I am not faced with some fascinating new similie to use in my thesis but horror. I am one who believes that a great deal of philosophy (good and bad) is an interesting study in the uses, abuses, malappropriations, and misunderstanding of metaphors. It is a puzzle of language. We look to push language, create shortcuts through it or tie it up neatly but sometimes this denies the reality of what language attempts to describe. Enuresis is one I am confronted with a lot these days. It is not fun. I also think the philosophical fascination with psychology is similar to slowing down to look at wreck. The paramedics find little to be exctied about but we love it and we love the chill of the spine that comes with it. I think that is why psychology attempts to frame itself in terms of a science (though every psychologist I have ever spoken believes their is something scientific about it that it is decidely NOT a science). Attempting the scientific view point is an attempt at distance. And why some might view this distance as a cold thing I am forced to more and more believe that it is a defense mechanism against the misery that the human being can perpetrate against itself. But what the hell do I know. I am going back to my cooking and my beer.

"Man, why can't we look the other way?"

It is becoming painfully clear to me...

That people who are not willing to concede the existence of anything (Nor dignify people's desire to believe in) things of any kind of metaphysical quality have a hard time getting on in this world. Most people commit themselves to some kind of (quasi)-(para)-(psuedo)-metaphyical-(esque)-(ish) things and/or qualities and/or categories in the world they see. I do no such thing. It is odd because the way many people see the world they are beset on all sides by godless heathens seeking destroy their faith. I guess what truly is a battle of people with different conceptions of degree:

"My metaphysical commitments are (more/less) satisfactory to explain the world (and/or) the way things and as such your views are (more/less) fervent than my own and as such not as satisfactory to satisfy my odd sense of epsitimic efficacy. All hail (Buddha, Allah, Yaweh, Elvis, The Mind, spirit, the One, L. Ron Hubbard, the Ego, Id, Geist, Spinozistic notions of the concommitant aspects of mental/physical, Sein (Being), epsitme, the happy land of forms, etc, etc, etc. )."

They stand on the other and very heavily populated side of the ocean from the few of us who seem to live quite contendly by ourselves without our gods, fate, ice-goblins, myths, folklores, minds, Fruedian conceptions of the unconscious, Jesuses, causes, eschatologies, teleologies, etc. I think the world is mostly populated by the the later and not the former (i.e., me). This is actually sometimes lonely and frustrating. Oh well...
Thy drugs are quick... Another beer garson!

Sometimes I like to rock....

And when I do I want to rock hard...

I totally dig this song. I can't explain why. I feel like I should be riding into a demon horde and destroying them while I rock out to this tune. The video is awful but that dude does throw a sword at Jesus. We all have our guilty pleasures: mine is Fear Factory.

Another post where I go on and on about myself...

Because this is what makes me authentic. I have heard that Lionel Trilling has a book called Sincerity and Authenticity. It talks about our ideas of a moral self have moved from one where we strove for sincerity to one where we strove for authenticity. I am not sure (as i have not read it yet) but I would hope that Trilling deems this to be a bad thing. I have put this book in my Christmas reading list. Hopefully Santa will get it for me.
I love Batman. I think he is awesome but another hero is slowly making his way into my hard cold heart. The Daredevil: Many Without Fear. Why would I let this "super"hero (and a marvel one at that!) do this to me? Well I suppose because he is so similar to Batman in many ways: He lives in a fictional NYC (Yes, gotham is the city), he is a bit of a playboy, he was orphaned by bad men out for ill-gain. But he is also different: is self made, he lives on the Upper East Side (but fights crime in Hell's Kitchen but occasionally can be found in nasty bars in Brooklyn getting some good info), and he is blind. This last part is the great part. I mean, a blind superhero? That is great!
Of course he has all of those powers that make his being blind a moot point but damn, dude is blind! He is also a handsome devil. I would recommend the Frank Miller Daredevil (as FM's stuff is always tres awesome!).
So the kids have all gone home for the holidays and I still have to work and I am hungover. Yuck.

Damn...

I mean damn in all senses of the word. Good and bad. Eternal and ephemeral. Things are just crazy these days. I did not have to go to work the other day because of ice. That was great. I am continually drawn to teaching because of the hours. You want to pay me in the summers? I have two paid weeks of vacation in the winter? Holy cow batman! Awesome...
I have used that time and time since to get some reading done. I finished a comicbook by a local gay named Nate Powell. He is great. I completed about another 1/4th of The Deathly Hallows. I also read the thesis proposal which electrified my brain grapes and got me back into a groove of philosophical thought. I have not finished my letters but I did finish the first issue of my my first comic book. I am trying to find someone to pencil it but I am thinking this will take a while. We will see what happens as time goes on. Oh well...
There is something that I find in certain veins of philosophical thought: seeing psychology as a fetish. It is a bit odd to me that I find myself in the middle of the world of mental health and DSM-IV diagnoses. I am going to have to think about this more.

A Winter Weather Advisory is in Effect for the Vicinity of Your Heart...

So here in the durty south even a whisper of winter weather sends us into a tizzy. My office was closed at 3.30 and word went out to those of us in the field to get the hell home. I of course have decided to take my time and run as quickly as possible to the beer store in preparation for the impending icy doom. I have already decided that I will be reading and letter writing this evening. I have already put a few beers down and I am going to run go snag some more blood warming potables and then settle in with a letter that needs responding to, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Nathan Powell's most recent independent comic, someone's thesis proposal which I have yet to give due consideration too and some other stuff. Did I mention that I will be drinking? Cuz I am going to be doing just that. Here is an artist representation of my plans...
The internet is awesome. Tata for now.

So I didn't make it out of town this weekend...

Which makes me sad but there is a recession on and there was Christmas shopping that needed doing. And someone threw their shoes at the president. My list of excuses goes on and on and on. That being said: I wish I had weaseled my way out of being a productive member of society but alas. I suppose my main reason for not going was that I could not find someone to go with. I have to say that this provisio is solely for my own personal safety. I do not doubt my own skills as an outdoorsman but I do doubt the nature of nature. And since my intention was to go some place where no one could hear me scream I decided that I would have import someone with me. But other people find themselves more shackled than myself. So I didn't go. This was not intended to be some Therou-esque gallavanting but serious quiet time. Therou was a bitch of a bitch and that business in Walden was, what my grandfather would have called, a "Load of hooey." I admit I see the paradox of needing alone time and someone to around to drive me to the hospital shoudl I be attacked by a rabid squirrel. But oh well...
My roommate just showed me the video of the President being attacked with shoes. I love freedom of the press...
I admit I am growing resentful of the requests people put on my time. I don't get to write letters, do laundry, go camping, update this blog, or write in general, read more than I do mostly because someone always needs something from me. It is not one person (though my parents being old feeble and needing something moved every 15 minutes does no help) who does this but an aggregate of many requests and some poor management. I had to fire my social sercretary due to cut backs in the face of the declining economy. Oh well...
On a bright note though I have borrowed the most office 1980's boombox from a friend of mine so that I can try and make mix tapes. This does not seem to be working but I do want to video tape the system while I play some songs through it. If I can do this you will see why it is some awesome.
Back to work!

My Unhealthy Obsession with Richard Milhouse Nixon.

So I have slowly coming to terms with the fact that I am fascinated with Nixon. And there are several reasons for this. First because it can be said that the presidency (and possibly the country) as we know it today is based on actions of our 37th president. And second because this country elected an ugly, paranoid sociopath to the highest office in the land even in the age of television. I admit that the second fascinates me more...
If you want to look for the seeds of Bush administration look back to Nixon. Smear tactics, secrecy, paranoia, misleading the public, homophobia. All hallmarks of Nixon. Not to say that Nixon invented these things but he, more so than other presidents, built them into the actual bureaucracy of the executive. Sweeping executive powers. Manipulating public perception. And of course Rehnquist on the bench. Wow, its all there. I went to go see Nixon's last White House Counsel (a fancy phrase for the president's lawyer) speak a few months back and he spoke about what men who are absolutely assured of their own rightness (not to mention righteousness) will do when given an unfathomable degree of power. This is the lesson to be learned from Nixon and it is a lesson we have learned too little of too late.
Now, all of that being said, this is not what attracts me to Dick. I am not sure I can truly place my finger upon what it is. I am fascinated by him, Sir Thomas Moore, Ryan Adams, L. Wittgenstein, and William Faulkner. From that list I can discern no pattern unless we count chromosome composition so that is that. As I said up above though: we elected an ugly sociopath. He ran the country. The extent to which he spied and manipulated and investigated is only on par with J. Edgar Hooever himself. And we gave him power. But his ability to manipulate the gears, levers, and buttons of government were beyond reproach. He was also magnificently deft in his foreign policy. The ramifications and consequences of everything can be debated but Nixon was a political animal and a damn good one. This is why I find Nixon to be so much more of a terrifying figure than the current Chief Executive. The combination of political savvy, machismo, and insanity would put Bush II and Cheney to shame. It would be like putting Cheney in office if Cheney could win an election (and he couldn't, not for president). It should be noted that Nixon won his second term by carrying 49 states and 60% of the popular vote. But Nixon could win and he did. His career was rocky to begin with. House, senate, Eisenhower's VP. Kennedy stomped him in 1960. He was beat for governor of California in '62. But who comes back from that? Who? Nixon did. Fueled by whatever it was that flowed through that mans veins. He also got us off the godl standard and was a bitching piano plater. This guy fascinates me. Oh well...
I can't get enough of this guy. I fear for my mind.

For Some Folks

More On This Later...

Netflix: An Addiction.

So I signed up for netflix last week as part of a christmas agreement and I admit that it is far more AWESOME than I ever imagined. Here is my que thus far (I already have the first three):
1.The Life and Work of Hunter S. Thompson
2.Willow
3.Rick Burn's New York (1st disc)
4.Democracy and Disappointment (That is the Critchley/Badiou DVD)
5.There Will Be Blood
6.Batman: The Animated Series: Vol I, Disc I
7.Dead Man
8-10. Spaced (Simon Pegg's Sci-Fi comedy series on BBC)
11.I'm Not There
12.North By Northwest (Classic Hitchcock)
13.Breathless
14.Croupier
15.A History of Britain (Disc 1)
16.Tokyo Drifter (Not the car movie)
17.The Machinist
18.Come Early Morning
19.Control
20.24 Hour Party People
I like this.

So this is what I gotta do...

I have decided the pace of city life and dealing with other people has become too much for me and I have the holidays coming up so it is time to get out and leave all of that business behind. As such I am going to go solo camping next weekend I think. I have always loved being outside and by myself. A small fire, a bottle of red perhaps and if I am feeling very fancy I can always borrow my dad's windup shortwave radio so I can listen to my local NPR station. I might even take a book. We will see...

Kinda Like This!

See more Jack Black videos at Funny or Die

I am sure you have seen this but I am old and behind the times.

Things I Don't Understand...

So one of the perks of working amongst peoples of different age is that they introduce you to knew things. Today one of my kids taught me about the "Stanky Leg" courtesy of Them G Spot Boyz. As I know all of my loyal readers like to learn knew things I bring this spectacular find to you. Enjoy!


Though it is important that you not confuse the "Stanky Leg" with the "Dirty Booty" by T-Real

Stuff...

My Favourite Filosofer.

The mind is a hand, even moreso the heart. They do not passively receive the world like some kind of empty rather. Rather, our souls our prehensile. They reach into the world and grasp it, holding it's hand in all the modes that hands are held: lovingly, fearfully, respectfully. To be bored is not to have a hand on anything. To be bored is to stubbornly place the hands in the pocket an refuse to touch, to reach, to grab, to be seized.There are things that seize beyond our will. We cannot help but be interested. But inter-est is primarily an activity, a cultivation, a choice, the will to love. -AJax

The Raw and the Cooked or Adventures in food (and lessons hard learned) or That was just gross...

So as anyone who knows me even a little is aware I love weird food, especially organ meats. This stems mostly from a love of serious french cuisine and a serious lack of shame about what I put in my body. I dream of working with Escoffier, the Frenchman I most admire, (seen right) some day and cooking foie gras, eel, the gonads of untold species, coque au vin, and make veal stock with that man. So it was with little trepidation that I set out to go sweetbread hunting with my dad. The place to go looking for this kind of product is in little Mexico of my humble town. I found the market I had heard about (and their meat counter which is a foodies dream) and we set about the hunt. Amongt the tubs of tongue, tripe, quail, liver, pigs feet, chicken feet, gizzards, freshmade chorizo, kidneys, hearts, whole goats, and cow heads we found our quarry. My father picked out three of what he deemed to be the freshest pieces and then encouraged me to get something. I chose fresh calves liver and a whole beef kidney. I thought I could handle this with grace and ease. I threw some fresh peppers and rip avocados (when do you find those in the store?) and a bottle of hotsauce I had never tried in the basket and we were off.
My dad came back to prepare the sweetbreads (as they require a lot of work in order to be edible and my mother was NOT going to allow it in her house) and I set about what I assumed would be the easy task of cleaning the kidney. I do not have a picture of my kidney but it looked very much like this:
Now what you cannot see in this picture is the underside of the organ. If you turned it over there would be this thick mixture of fatty membrane and tubes. But that is decidely not the first thing that you notice when you lay hands upon a fresh and tender beef kidney. Not is the smell. Imagine the smell of strong urine and rust. I admit I was a little daunted by this pungent smell but my father assured me that I was on the right track and that I should get to it. So I began with a small paring knife to deconstruct this disgusting bit of beef. Deveining, de-mebraning, detubing, etc this little bastard took forever. I eventually got about half of it done and decided to try and cook half of it to see if continuing was going to be worth continuing. (doing half of it took almost 45 minutes). So I once again deferred to my father and he said pat the bits you have done dry, shake in a flour and ground pepper, and then saute them lightly in butter. Butter! How could I possibly go wrong with butter! So I set about this per my father's instructions. It was just as I was throwing them on that my father commented that he himself had never prepared kidney. My heart skipped a bet and all of the sudden the smell of rusty-nail piss became over powering. I reached for the new bottle of hotsauce I had just purchased and tried it. It was spicy as shit and good. I set this beside the plate covered in papetowels I prepped to put the kideny on. The sauce was going to be necessary. My father by now had finished blanching his sweetbreads and was standing around looking amused at the whole scene (and smell I suppose) around him. I shooke the kidney in the browning butter one last time and fished them out and put them on the plate. I looked at my dad and we had the "You go first. No you go first" moment before he gave in and tried it. He chewed and chewed and chewed and eventually shrugged his shoulders and declared them "strong but alright." Now, I think that we can all agree that "strong" is NOT an adjective we want to describe our meat. Whiskey drinks or Hulk Hogan are strong, not animal tissue we plan on eating. So I saunter up to the plate and pick up what looks like the crispiest bit.
My reaction was instaneous and unfortunate. I spit it out. It was the most awful thing I have ever tasted. I can't explain other than to say that the tast of them cooked was much like the smell of them raw: like piss and rust. My father (who actually will eat anything) accused my reaction of pyschosomatic. That I knew what I was eating and that was just tainting my thinking on the subject. I tend to ALWAYS know what I am eating and this was still awful.
My dad then read the Joy of Cooking entry on kidney and proceeded to tell me that (inspite of doing everything he suggested) I had gone about the enterprise all wrong and that I should have soaked the kidney in milk for at least two hours before cooking it. This did not make me feel anybetter. It took me two hours to wash the smell off of my hands. I found that using bleach did the trick and that is the end of my kidney cooking days. But my next project is duck I bought as well. Updates to follow on that.
I would like to dedicate this experience and resulting blog post to 3 people and 1 restaurant and the night they all came together. I want to dedicate this post in memory of the night that K, Ch, R, and I went around the corner to that carribean place in Bushwick and supped on blood sausage, pigs ear and all other manner of tasty things. I miss you guys.

Things purchased today at a local bookstore and other stuff...

So I went to my favourite big box book store because I had a coupon today and I bought a few things.
1st)

My previous copy of this book was left in good hands in NYC. But another less marked copy was necessary. Buying this was like purchasing a new bible. King James Version.
2nd)














This one I attempted to contact a colleague about after leaving a voicemail I bought. I read the preface and introduction in the car in the parking lot. A choice purchase.
3rd)














Shut up...

Well here I am writing a blog while my dressing mixture cools. I have been slaving in a hot kitchen soothing my frayed nerves with cold beer and the sweet sounds of the Joy Division. I think my stuffing will be the best thing I have ever made. I have a dynamite white cornbread recipe, some great local sausage and fresh tarragon. My grandmother is sick and my parents kitchen is under renovation so a great deal of the cooking has fallen to me as I have the only functional kitchen and can be trusted with heat sources. I have mixed feelings about this because it is yet another sign of the loss of youth. Cooking large meals was always an adults respsonsibility and now here I am making homemade mac and cheese, fresh greenbeans, dressing (not stuffing mind you), and the gravy. All homeade with no aids from betty crock-o-shit. Yeah, that gray will be roux based! What of it? The turkey, pie, and rolls are left to someone else. But probably about 75% of tomorrow meals will have my sweat, dollars, and spillt beer in it. I do not bemoan the work or cost but simply note the transience of time and notions of "being old enough." I think we are supposed to think that stages in life are atomistic and discrete events but this seems to not be the case. Some things are ceded early than others. I suppose W. James was right about this.
Tomorrow I am thinking of having some of my older cousins over for drinks. That is where we will make the decisions about what to do next. This will be the last F family christmas with the family in this configuration and that is sad. But back to cooking for the time being.

Happy Turkey Day (Almost)!!!!!!!

(Observe the man in the background.)
Sarah Palin: harbinger of turkey doom!

Updates and What Not...

Well fall is here in the durty south and that means PBR, network television, peppered bacon, and reading all kinds of shit. I have been busy (as my lack of pointless blogging shows) and as such have not had time to devote myself completely to anything. This is an uneasy situation but I am soldiering through. I have enjoyed keeping up with the cabinet appointments and as usual there is more Clinton bashing to witness. It is unknown to most people but we here in the Natural State tire of the endless hating the Clintons. It is simply pathological in some people and just down right disturbing in most. How could you hate someone that bad? I know people who honestly believe that anyone who died in Arkansas between 1978-1993 was ordered to be summarily shot by Bill. I know I guy who claims to have done coke with Bill. And I believe him! But the point is that for us here in that state of greatness this is old hat. You may not like these people but there is nothing mysterious about them anymore. Hell I have an autographed still shot from Bills 1987 colonoscopy. That is right, I have seen the inside of this mans ass. So enough of it already people. Sheesh.
I have been cooking a lot as well. I continue to dedicate my meals to friends near and far. My housemate and I are contemplating cooking liver this friday and I know which Bro this shall be dedicated to. But my egg in a basket, cornbread, and greenbeans have all been success and as soon as I get a camera I will put some pictures up so that you may salivate.
My thesis drags a little. I had a huge burts two weeks ago. I called in sick and went to work like nobodies business. But that was then and this is now. I am trying to get some work done studing for the LSAT. But my biggest stumbling block is my greatest pleasure which is that feeling that I should not have to be doing philosophy. That I am not in school and if I want to go to work, come home and make dinner and than read a biography of Richard Nixon or watch the Daily Show and go to sleep without the guilt of not having finished my Philosophies of Dialogue reading than by god I will! And it feels good. And now for some thanksgiving shopping!

Classic.

My New Postion...

So, my employer reassigned me last week. I moved out of the deaf school and into the alternative school of my home district. From this school my clients are culled. If you have never been in an alternative school (visiting or pupil or otherwise) you should. These truly are the forgotten of our world. Turfed around until they finally land in a place that heralds optimism but where hopes are few. Few of these kids teachers expect for them to graduate and that seems to create a cycle. I am not that the teachers can truly be blamed too much. They work hard but restraints from everywhere and seeing their good work undone at home defeat them at every turn. This is not the school of Foucault and far from the democratic hopes Dewey envisioned for modern America yet this school is all too American.
I like the kids. The are earnest and for themost part tolerate little bull shit. From anyone. In any form. There are even a few with gravitas. We will see how it goes.

My feelings about the whole things are still mixed but I concede that I am caught up in the excitement...

Happy Sunday My Good Readers...

Well I am here today cooking. I am trying to prepare a grilled salmon salad with a fat-free creole mustard vinaigrette dressing. I am also working on something that will be on the side: boiled new potatoes with a spicy arkansas black apple/onion/carraway seed "relish." This will be served cold and if I can hunt down some goats cheese that will go on as well.
I have this bottle of wine and I am drinking soda water to cleanse my palate so I can tell if it is good or it it is vinegar. God I love bottom of the barrel scraping!
Other than that it has been a good weekend. I will try to take pictures of dinner.
PS-Everyone should eat eggie in a basket at least once in their life. And that has nothing to do with sex.
PPS- You should also listen to The Replacements.

Update-I have just burned my tongue and so will drink wine regardless.

But I'm still fond of you...

So, several years ago I quit listening to The Smiths. It is a long story. Actually is stupidly short but I will spare you regardless.
So, I have been listening to them in my head. You know those moments when you decide to listen to some song you have stored up in the synaptic gaps? The whisky soaked, cobweb cloaked, smokey, hidden synaptic gaps in this case. Well I am back baby. I am fucking pleased about it. Bring me a black shirt and the hair gel! Oh you handsome devil you still make my bits quiver.
Just thought you should know...

"Dasein does not eat."

So I played hookey form work today so I could stay at home and write and figure out my student loans. I also have a TA app I want to work on. There is also some laundry to boot. I was transferred from one division of my company to another abruptly on monday evening and needless to say I am not pleased about it. It doesn't say much about how much company cares about me or the continuity of care for my clients. So, I said fuck-it. Took some time off coming to me and decided to job hunt inbetween the previously mentioned. So here I am on a cold rainy day.
My thesis topic is going to be on Foucault and Dewey and conceptions of the body within their conceptions of the function we loosely call "the subject." I think it is going to work. I like the idea. I like that it came from a dream and that Cornell West is involved. Now I must got open the back door and let the damp in.

I had a dream about Cornell West and now everything is different.

I am not one to put much stock in dreams as having any real meaning but I do find that they inspire some good thinking.
I have had what now is a series of dreams about my mom calling me to discuss my eduction. When she does I am doing something else. Usually something antithetical to my receiving of a good education. This particular night I had actually gone to see Cornell West speak. But just minutes into the talk I began having stomach troubles. I ran home and began having even more serious problems. I will not elaborate. My mom called me in the midst of all of this to talk about how I need to get my shit together. There was more to the dream. I think Dr. West died. I was in a car heading west on I-40 on a cold gray day. I can't remember the thread or theme of the dream after that. And then I woke up. So there I was, on my back, in the dark, awake thinking about Cornell West and the new (and much cooler) thesis topic came to me...

Enough of that for now. Here is a present.

A Natural Ghost from Wilson Wolf on Vimeo.

Some reflections and Some Promises...

So thanks to the world of blogging we can barf our thoughts on anything out into the open air of the interwenbsnet. And of course most of thoughts now drift to that hazy business we call "the future." But, as I am a weary sonnabitch, I have a few reflections on the past for those of us still hungover from our election night antics:
1) What if the economy had been much better? What if it had waited 6 more months to shit?
2)What if McCain had picked a better VP. Someone who could have galvanized the right more strongly?
3) What if McCain had run a more efficient campaign, more on par with Obama's?
4) Watching McCain's consession speech I saw the real McCain. The McCain that I though wasn't such a bad guy 8 years ago. What would have been scariest would have been seeing that man run against Obama. It would have been a more meaningful and issues driven campaign but it also would have made an Obama victory that much harder.
Things are always tenuous and open to temptation and change. Things could have been different and we should reflect on the steps that brought us here and try and learn from them.

Now some thoughts on the future. I am a long term thinking kinda guy so even though the economy, the two wars, the ever present threat of Al Queda (as I am told) my first thoughts about what our new president will be up to settled square on the gorgeous monolitgh of a building on 1st street in Washington D.C.. That's right. You guessed it: The Supreme Court of the United State of America. It is an institution that shapes our very lives yet we know so little about it and pay it even less atttention. This attitude is dangerous and helpful to say the least about the most.
President Bush had the honor of placing two justices on the bench during his two term tenure and in so doing shifted the court much farther to the right then it had been. Until Roberts and Alito the court stuck the middle and followed public opinion (whether it liked or intended to or not). And chances are that at least 3 justices will retire. At least two of these were Democratic appointees and appointees have been known to wait until a president comes into office who will appoint someone of the same ilk as themselves. I am going to say right now that I think John Paul Stevens (who is older than Jebus) will be the first to step down. Who will replace him? I can't say. But I promise that this blog will be a go to place for keeping track of how it goes down. I would say that we can expect at least one justice to retire before the mid-terms. So get ready.

The Round-Up from Arkansas or I am REALLY FUCKING SORRY!

So last night we here in the Natural State lost our fucking minds and totally fucked up. This is How I break it down is this way:
1st: We voted for McCain by a healthy margin. We fucked up. I apologize.
2nd: We voted to bar non-married, cohabiting couples (i.e. homosexuals) from being able to be foster parents. We fucked up. I apologize. But shame on you California!
3rd. We voted to start a lottery. We fucked up. I apologize.
4th: We voted to allow our state legislature to meet every year (if you were from Arkansas you would realize how bad this is). We fucked up. I apologize.

On a positive note: The nominally Democrat senator won by a 80% to 20%. The thing is though that the 20% was not for a Republican but for a Green Party candidate. I voted in that 20% block.

Once again. We fucked up. I apologize.

Thoughts Before My First Drink of the Evening...

Yes it is late to be pouring one's first drink. But here I sit again. In the quiet of my entire house. There is laundry on. The trash and recycling is out. My roommate is out riding in that ambulance that he gets to call his office. And here I sit, as I said. I found a bottle of scotch I had previously believed consumed. But no such luck. An Islay single malt. Cheap, but it will find its mark no doubt. I have developed a little ritual for my consumption of cheap Whisky. I poured it over a tall glass of ice. This lets it chill a little before I had the mixer. In this case Canada Dry Ginger Ale. A personal favourite of mine but I do prefer the little bottles of Schweppes when it can be had. Here in a few I will add the mixer. And what do I add to this mix? Of course! Ryan Adam's new record. One song that gets to me on repeat. Thus I am ready...
"Beyond a shadow of a doubt." What an intellectually dishonest phrase. Can one truly hold anything in such stature? I am not talking about the hyperbole of Cartesian doubt. Pierce was right when he said that such an undertaking was totally unfeasible and even any attempt is untenable. But we can try I suppose. No, I talk not of this overwhelming, earth shattering doubt. These moments are a crisis of faith. No, I speak of just that a "shadow." One of my undergraduate professor's was teaching us about modern metaphysics and in particular ontological commitments. "What status does a shadow have in any ontology? It is not so much a thing as not a thing. But we talk about it like it is a thing. We play with it even," He chuckled to himself. This is not so much some sophomoric attempt to discuss ontology or things being there and not there. That is a rabbit hole I have peered into. Not much there. We are constantly beset but quivers and sensations and whispers that say, "Not quite my friend. Wrong way. Are you sure?" *Adds Mixer*
I thought about this because I found a page from a letter. It must have slipped out. And so I mailed the letter without the offending page. But I read the page and chuckled to myself. I wrote the letter a little over two weeks ago and even now the lines seemed alien to me and my "project." I had a shadow of a doubt about whether or not those words were there yet. If it was the right way. If I was sure. And truth be told I was not. We can see the shadow in the words. But I have come to realize that there are two ways to handle this sensation. One can either step back and get lost in being in a state of doubt. We can do this. This is easy. We can resign ourselves to mull and try and pull the string until it comes together. We can get lost in where to start now. What to do next. But this is not very fruitful or honest.
I have come to embrace doubt. Since we always will be "plagued" by doubt why not use it is a tool. Why not take it on as the gadfly that pushes thought forward. Descartes would have been right if he had just narrowed his thoughts of doubt to see that we do not have the ground fall from under us. It cracks. Here and there. Slowly and deliberately. I think the key is no longer to patch it up and maintain the safety of things. To evade the doubt to maintain what we hope for. I would prefer to jump up and down and fall and see what lies beneath this edifice. It is just more fun that way. I started thinking about this idea because of philosophy. But I think it has more to do with things greater than that small patch of my existence. It does seem pragmatic. To punch holes. To trim. To go on and continue to test. But it is on some other level a natural impulse that I am beginning to grapple with as time goes on. We just learn to guard against it. But then again that is also pragmatic, to relearn over and over. My mind loses its train of thought here.
But I guess there is no such thing as beyond the shadow. We just live it and we play with it.

I got a new bookshelf today. It is tall and natural wood looking (it is not real wood in any sense of the word that a tree would use). It lets me readjust my books and such. I get to triage. I put the one smaller bookshelf in the office. All of my philosophy books "under active consideration" go there: Dewey, James, Brandom, Wittgenstein, Blake, Kaufmann on Nietzsche, McDowell, Critchley, Foucault, et al are there. Plus some german and french dictionaries. The middle book shelf get's my non-active duty philosophy books: Heidegger, especially Heidegger, Plato, the rest of Nietzsche, Hegel, Gadamer, Schoepenhauer, and Derrida (when he comes out of storage) and any more Heidegger. I am also putting all of my DVDs and what few CD's I have up there as well. The new bookshelf gets the rest of the things. This is my proof nerdom (or my section on Ethics depending on how you look at it). My graphic novels, my Harry Potter books, my books on Woodcraft, biographies of Wittgenstein, Openheimer, Russell, my collection of scottish detective novels, and my Sedaris and Copeland. I am not sure why I decided to share this. I guess I just like to share.
That is the point of blogs I guess.

I want to end this blog on a positive note of sorts. As people who read we often attempt to score bonus points by dropping names. Shit. Just look at what I dropped in this post (especially the Harry Potter). It gives us gravitas and gains us something amongst our peers, though what I never quite understood. So I was reading something by a more recent thinker and I thought I would share it as it breaks it down to brass tacks:

"Look. Think what you will. It's not my job to tell you what to think. Only to present this buffet in front of you. You have to choose what you eat, and then be honest with yourself if it gives you indigestion, makes you vomit, is bland, or if it tastes good. The purpose of this talk was simply to get you to think about evil. To be bothered by evil. Continually. To be bothered by the homeless person on the train, to not look away. To pick up the newspaper and say, 'Hey. What the fuck! The world doesn't have to be this way.' However that may fit in with your particular beliefs about God, fine. But there a lot of religion that gets us to explain away evil, to simply dismiss it as the phenomenon of some corrupt individual. No, modern evil, be it banal or radical, is complex, diffuse, pervasive. Many of the classical models of evil (which are religious models) serve only to perpetuate and make us blind to that thousands of small social evils that accumulate and lead to things like Auschwitz or 9/11. Yes. Be bothered by evil. Evil matters."

Good stuff in my opinion. Well my first drink is done. Time for another.

Double, Double Toil and Trouble OR How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Act Like An Adult at Halloween.

Ah, Halloween... I have always had an odd relationship with this holiday (and yes, it is a holiday). I have always enjoyed mischief, pumpkins, and the color combination of orange and black but I have never really had the inclination to get dressed up. I also have marveled at the relationship between Halloween in our Christian America and its Pagan past. It was not co-opted into some other Christian holiday like Christmas or Easter. The pagan and the Christian totally get along. They seem to be thumbing their nose at each other in a way. Like I said, I love mischief (and any other excuse to drink too much and make a fool of myself).
But that being said what is my Halloween going to look like? Totally mundane and I can dig that aspect. Now that I have moved out a much more cracker part of my hometown I have decided to go with the flow this just once. So I purchased a punkkin', carved it, bought some candy, and I am about to go and light the candle in my front-porch gourd and wait cold drink in hand to bestow bad teeth and premature diabetes and weight gain on the wee ones. I think it will be nice. I do miss the idea of seeing a large sack of Trader Joe's groceries running around drunk though.
Here is a treat for my loyal readers! Have one I insist!










Which brings us to the week in review.



Well, so this week has been a stunner. Bright flashes of elucidation. The second guessing. The kinds of broad and sweeping statements that make a good politician but not the clearest thinker. In particular there was a comment made on this blog a few post's ago which stated x things. First, I need people to bounce my ideas of off. The The City had interlocutors to the point of ad nauseum but they were at least working in the same mileau as myself. This is not imply to any local readers that I do not think you are clever or smart or worthy talking too. Hell not, not the case at all! But when I my brain is on fire about something it is simply easier when I say "Let's talk about Dewey's pragmatic conception of the subject as outlined in his "The Need for a Recovery in Philosophy" as opposed to Heidegger's in Division I of Being and Time" and have you know what I am talking about. I am also not very good at explaining myself sometimes. So not having to have the prerequisit of explaining what god forsaken mumbo-jumbo I am babbling on about allows me to let my thought go full circle and burn itself, usually without anything even closely resembling a heroic last flare of brilliance before it dies. Hardly. The poster of that comment also pointed out that possibly the lack of having someone to "bounce my ideas of off" leads to a turning inward and thus perversion of those wholesome thoughts. To this I reply: yes and no. I have been doing that but I do not necessarily need to talk to my learned colleagues from the NSSR. Though, it is awfully nice, seriously. I have failed to take into account that explaining myself to those who are not graduate students will lead me to clarify my notions and cut out the crap (and what is more pragmatic than that!). I spend my time with philosophy majors, lawyers, ambulance drivers, the occasional Harvard graduated film-studies major, and a great many other worldly people who can understand what I am talking about if I just have the paitence to take five minutes and work it out. When I am not doing this I concede I was rotting my brain and twisting and bending looking to where ideas "break." So it is time to start talking it other people and not a drunken me. I think this is best for all.
So how is the "research" going? How is my "work"? I do not know. I have an outline. I have my sources (so far): Hook, Dewey, Rorty, West, (some) James, Pierce (maybe), Menand, (Richard) Hotstadter, and god knows what else. I concise and well thought outh bunch as you can see. But then something happended: I have been goaded by both reading Cornell West and recent online discussion with an old colleague that maybe Foucault can fit in here as well. I like that odd Kantian bet that Whiz Kid from Poitiers. And of all the writers that I got over in the past 18 months Foucault is the only I still find compelling in any fashion (Heidegger can still eat a dick). But oh well...
To another topic. I have decided that on somethings I want to write "memos." Quick and concise pieces about topics that are as much for myself in clarifying and thinking as they are for conveying my thinking. My first Memo is in the works. The first one is a defense of something I am sure I am going to do: vote third party in this upcoming Presidential election. The reasons for this are as much empirically based on statistics and geography as they are "ethical." The spurring to this position was started by a note from a friend (I am going to ask for permission to reprint in its entirety here soon I hope) and, of course, reading John Dewey. Here is a taste of the ethical position I am aiming at.

"It has been shown in the last few years that democratic institutions are no guarantee for the existence of democratic individuals. The alternative is that individuals who prize their own liberties and who prize the liberties of other individuals who are democratic in thought and action, are the sole final final warrant for the the existence and endurance of democratic institutions..."

Happy Halloween!!!

A Note to my Faithful Readers...

I suppose the last two posts (well more like 3) were a bit much. I was, um, how you say? Ah, yes! Intoxicated. I thought about taking them down just now but yfnl comment's about weirdness (though I doubt he means the good kind) did allow me to steal a smile. Though most of all he is right about what circumstances lead one's brain into the frenzy of incoherence (especially if alcohol is mixed). I think I was on to something though somewhere in there. We shall see.
Moi, all I have to say to you is, "Bring it." I will be waiting.
England Prevails.

Questions:

1) what is the author-function? Is it different than the bank-teller function? Is it different than the trashman-function? As my Scottish family are known to declare when drunk: Bollocks.
2) Can you show me the transcendent or the immanent on the map? We all wish we could be Spinozist but I also wish I could fly?
3) Can truth actually be written in ink? Is it not more a task for the "pencil-function"?
4) Other? Or is that a function as well?



x-function; x-function; x-function; x-function; x-function; x-function; x-function; x-function; x-function; x-function; x-function; x-function; x-function; x-function; x-function; x-function; x-function; x-function; x-function; x-function; x-function; x-function; x-function; x-function; x-function; x-function; xxx-function; x-function; x-function; x-function; x-function; x-function; x-function; x-function; x-function; x-function; x-function; x-function; x-function; x-function; x-function; x-function; x-function; x-function; x-function; x-function; x-function; x-function;
"Here class! I hold the kitten-function! The highest achievement of discursive practices!"

A Chilly Night.

Well here I sit. A stiff drink to one side and a stiff dose of Hillary Putnam in the other. My mind is a fire. I have not been so able to concentrate on the work of philosophy since who knows when. I find signs of progress. A quip of West's that indicates that he could see a sliver of light but not the big picture. I have the audacity to accuse Rorty of a misstep. I can respectfully spit in the face of my heroes. Even John Dewey fails me at points. But I can pick up and move on. There is work to be done just less than we all assumed.
Today I worked through various accounts that attempt to explain Dewey's account of experience. The notion of epistimic factors that allow us full access to the real world. Epistimic factors that limit our access. All tosh. We merely construct these problems as we villify them. But when have philosophers not been prone to scream at the voice of god when it is merely the wind. Look to experience Dewey says:

"Experience is primarly a process of undergoing: a process of standing something; of suffering and passion, of affection, in the literal sense of these words. The organism has to endure, to undergo, the consequences of its own actions.... Nothing can eliminate all risk, all adventure."

Empiricism is not necessarily out but it must accept that true and available pulchritude of the human condition.
This is not the silliness of Dasein, the sufferings of being amongst some amorphous "other." This is pains of existence. Our essence might not be predetermined by the hand of god but it is more truly forged by the pains of inflicted by others than the by choices that we ourselves inflict upon our very own person. I admit that my stiff drink might have eroded my since of composure but I find myself more charged now than ever to make my statement and be down with the whole silly affair. I do believe there to be few problems facing the philosopher but that what pitence of inconveince remains is the only task worthy of our attention.
And don't we all love some adventure in our lives?
McCain will lose. This is almost a foregone conclusion.
My vehicle was stolen a few nights ago. I am only now allowing myself to be insulted by such a violation of my person. It is not so much that it was a thing but that it was mine. And a hard won "mine" at that. But then again this is part of the adventure of it all.
Some of you should be expecting mail.

mildly drunken update...

The cult of responsibility. As dangerous as it is promising.
So my mind is a ablaze with thoughts about my thesis: one of you, oh semi-regular readers, is getting a long shit-filled letter concerning possible contents about my thesis. Enjoy the smell it is rich with detritus and what would be termed as insanity and incoherence by most people. But I sent it to you amongst all will understand. Beer suits me as a beverage...
I was struck by a thought today. What separates us, any of us, from greatness? What is it that Batman, James Bond, or Helen Keller lacks that we ourselves are not blessed with? Discipline. That is all.
We should all build kites...
England Prevails,
End of transmission.

Considerations...

Death: Did you hear about the McCain campaign spending more on Palin's wardrobe than her policy advisors?
Dream: Yes.
Death: Stupid right?
Dream: ..................................

"He's a stupid bum."

I just befuddles me where this kind of anger and misunderstanding stems from. It reminds me of some the hateful energy that the Clinton's generated and having grown up in that families home state I can tell you how awful and irrational it can get. I am not sure how the communism and Muslim gets into the mix. The notion that somehow a)socialism and America are incommensurate and b)that Obama is a Muslim even though he clearly isn't one just leaves me speechless. Spreading around the wealth? Centralized government intervention? Sounds like the Bush backed 700 billion dollar bailout that just went though to me. And advocating torture and war don't sound very Christiany "turn the other cheek to me." But oh well, let our children weep.

A Quote for E.

To me faith means not worrying.

-John Dewey

I want to thank all of you...

There's just so many of you to thank. Moi, YFNL, Shaun, Haddix etc. I could not have become the blogger I am today if it wasnt for all 4 of you who read this pithy little blog about how wretched, shallow, bubba, and convoluted my life is! Thank you for your comments which tell me you are bored and need distraction. Thank you all so much. Next stop: The White House.
God Bless You! God Bless America!

(This message is not endorsed by Sarah Pallin or her boobage.)

Thesis Update! I have a thesis!

Ok, so I will not go into the specifics yet because there are none. I am even terrified that I have come this far. The idea is the hardest part of research in my mind. That all being said: I have a thesis topic!
Now, I have of late gone back to hand writing things. In pencil. Everything hand written in pencil. Those of you who are getting letters from me (now or in the near future) will have noticed this aspect for yourselves. So when I was struck today I did what has come natural to me. I reached for a pencil and a sheaf of lined paper. The next thing I did was get a Manilla folder and label it "Thesis (Started 10/23/08)." This label I wrote in pen because it might rub off and I can't have that. My next step is a filing cabinet. I can't wait.
Things are looking good. Progress notes will come soon.

Updates on my day!

This is a list of things done so far. I will continue to edit it as the do goes on!
1) Drank whole pot of coffee
2) Ran dishwasher
3) Ran one load of laundry
4) Called old friend I caught contributing to NPR who voted for Bush last time
5) Sent of application to John Dewey Society
6) Eating Amy's Organic Burrito for a late brunch
-Still no booze consumed. Yet.

Updates!
Well, much has happened sorta since my last post so much so that an all together new post will be started very soon....
7)Went and picked up ordered copies of Richard Hofstadter's Anti-Intellectualism in American Life and a Richard M. Nixon biography by Elizabeth Drew.
8)Went by comic book store and picked up some choice stuff. But I will not go into that here.
9)Went and had lunch with roommate. Hole in the wall Mexican place. Excellent if not a bit scary.
10) Watched an episode of Little Britain. Brilliant.
11) Ran another load of laundry.
12)Had coffee with very good friend. Was approached by roving news team to comment on brutal and apparently senseless beating of cute local news anchor (you might have heard of it even in NYC). Since I was playing hooky this was not a good idea. Can't be caught by boss on evening news when I am supposed to laid up. Had green tea. it was just ok.
13) Returned home and read comic books. Awesome. Batman should fight vampires more often.
14) Started reading some Rorty. Listened to The Meeting Places & Bjork ("Post" was a great record). And then it struck me... My thesis topic! Tentative titles include, "Overcoming Rorty's Overcoming of Dewey," "Two Dewey's: The Inadequacy of Rorty's Response," or "How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Accept Experimental and Naturalistic Metaphysics." Well, the last one is obviously not an actual candidate but the rest of them are not that great. Oh well...

So I did something (anything) naughty today...

I woke up this morning and didn't have it in me. I did not have the will to work. So, I called in sick. Aside from not being able to touch my toes there is nothing wrong with me. I thought about rolling over and going back to bed. I really did. But as I lay there in the cool gray of the overcast morning my lack of desire was slowly being replaced by something else all together. A desire for mischief. The day was too young and fresh to miss out on. So I am sitting here with my cup of coffee and my mason jar of ice water doing this blog post for my first act of mischief. Since I am not at work where I should be anything I do today other than go into work will be mischief. The most mundane and banal things turned into acts of defiance and am smirk. What heinous crime should I perpetrate? Lunch with my grand mother? Write a letter? Read some Richard Rorty? Go to the comic book store? Go to church? All things will now have the zest of added mischief! I think first I will read the N.Y.T. According to some people this is a crime no matter when you do it. Perhaps I will drink some wine while I do it.
I will be updating you through out the day.

God Bless America...

Let our children weep.

Aftermath...

So last night my roommate and I had a housewarming party. It was truly a delight. I talked to two young faculty members at my undergraduate school. They were charming. We talked about deafness and philosophy of language. Marxism almost came up. I avoided that noise.
My house is now a wreck. I am hungover and the kitchen floor is sticky. But it is a beautiful day and all will be well..
This was the only housewarming present I specifically received. A robot. It is the coolest thing I will ever be gifted.

What I am up too...

So I am in love with Neko Case. If you are not you are deficient in some aspect that most typical/normal/well adjusted folks are not.

It is kinda like if Tammy Wynette fronted Calexico. Which means it must be good... Right C, my bro.

Ok, so famous people are great. Well, most of them. I realized that I would like to hangout with more celebrities. And I do not mean Paris Hilton, Arriane Huffington or Dov Charney (just to name a few). I mean, I would like to be at a party and go "Hey Phillip [Roth]!" or "Hey Ryan [Adams]" or "Hey Morrissey [Morrissey]." So here is the problem. I do not on any normal day interact with these people. So I got to wondering to myself, "How do I hangout with famous people?" These leads to the question, "What kind of people do famous people hangout with?" Which all boils down to the simple answer: other famous people. So the answer to my original question is as equally simple: I must become famous. Now, there are lots of ways to get famous and not all of them are equal (or will make your parents still want to have you by for Christmas dinner). So I am going to try a few of them. I am going to go back to trying to write some music (stop laughing) and have beefed up my equipment with this goal in mind (pictures to follow).
I just want to be friends with famous people. What's wrong with that? Nothing, except free drugs and even that is a matter of opinion I will debate you on.

The mental health field. Do not work here. Lets leave it at that.

I found this clip of last night's presidential debate while coasting the web today...

And I must admit that it truly highlights the most ever present qualities of both of the candidates... Though what Joe Biden is doing in that get up escapes me.

Corrections...

Number of fights: 1
Pairs of boots purchased: 3

More Bubba Shit (Hopefully K is reading so he can scoff)

"As he was speaking, the drone of a low-flying airplane was heard and then seen passing overhead. As festivalgoers watched a live turkey being thrown out of the plane, children started running to catch it."

You know I just had to say something about this. I love my home state but then they go and do something like this and it just hard to explain to people what is so great about it. It must be like dating a drunk. When they are sober they are great but anytime your friends are around he gets really wasted and does something terrible. All you can do is go, "He is really sweet when nobody is looking." Christ I need to get some more sleep. Read more about throwing live poultry outta planes here.

The end of days (maybe literally)

Statistics and Reflections

Since 0730 friday:
Number of Hangovers: technically 3
Sandwiches Eaten: 3
Number of Christmas Presents purchased: 1
Drinks consumed: untold
Pitchers of Bloody Marys: 3
Fights: 0
Close Fights: 4
Times thrown up: 2 (both in the same 12hr period)
Guys who asked me "How's the weather up there?": 1
Cab rides: 1
Trips to Springdale: 1
Road Sodas consumed on trip to Springdale: 5
Cowboy hats worn: 2 (one white, one black)
Places stayed: 2
Nights stayed where I had planned on staying: 0
Ryan Adams records listened to: untold
Times I fell in love with Neko Case: 1 (so far)
BBQ's slept through: 1
4 hour naps which made me sleep through BBQ's: 1
Hours spent insane and drunk: As many is it took I suppose.

I am hungover as I write this. I am not at home I am far away from home. I am in the northwest corner of my state in the hills. I am less than well. I came on this trip to think and luckily my shenanigans and drinking have afforded me just the right amount of time for that. I also came to see old friends(old in all senses that it can used here). I had forgot how much younger I am than some of them. They talked about things they were doing in 1997. They were almost 20 and I was just getting first dusting of what would eventually turn out to be a pretty unruly beard. That being said, I hope I am have as vibrant and lusting for life when I get to their age as they are. My hands are shaking... My brain hurts...
This town is beautiful. I can only liken it to what it would be like if they built a college town in central park. If central park was very hilly (which it sorta isnt, especially when compared to this town). I like it here. I sat in on two classes on friday: Classical Ethical Theory and 19th Century Continental Philosophy. Aristotle is an alright guy. I forgot how much I hate Hegel. Muddled, overwrought, ontologically deranged Spinozism. I find more and more beauty in Spinoza the older I get and the more I learn to think. It is the simplicity of it that I like. I mean this drive for desolation also brings about problems but I see the need, the desire for an ontology like a desert. I can dig it. Simplicity is being able to look at what other decry as a problem and you being able to say, "No, take two steps to your left. See? It is not a problem you were just standing in the wrong place." I am hungover as hell...
My friend C's blog has become all about graffitti in the NYC you should read it, here you go.
My friend E's blog has a much more sensible discussion on it this morning you should it, here you go.
IN fact you should probably stop reading thsi blog all together and just read their's. Though I wish ol' C would update his more often. I need more water. I need to go back to bed.

I promised I would work harder on this blog but no such luck. Things have been stupid busy between work and being outta town and all of that jazz.
I went to St. Louis this past weekend to go see Ryan Adams play. I love this guy. I was really close to selling my guitar until I saw him perform. I admire him a lot. He is gifted and reads comic books. What is not to like. He also has an odd streak about his art that I find peculiar to him. He makes his set list out before hand. He does not do requests. You can yell and yell and yell all you want at him and you will be coyly told off. He does what he wants to. You can tell from his ridiculous blog that he likes his fans but at the end of the day he does not seek their approval only their help to allow him to keep doing what he loves to do. This is not seen very much these days.
Here is the set list from the show:
Set 1:
1. Cobwebs (everyone is standing)
2. Everybody Knows
3. Come Pick Me Up
4. Wonderwall
5. Fix It
6. La Cienega Just Smiled
7. Goodnight Rose
8. The Sun Also Sets
9. Oh My God Whatever Etc
10. Rescue Blues
11. Magick
12. Desire
13. Let it Ride
14. Peaceful Valley
Set 2:
15. Crossed Out Name
16. Afraid Not Scared
17. Bartering Lines
18. Love Is Hell
19. Shakedown
20. Natural Ghost
21. Two
22. Sinking Ship
23. How Do You Keep Love Alive
24. The End
25. Off Broadway
26. Cold Roses
27. I See Monsters

This brings me to another thing. So, while I was in St. Louis my good friend E had a piece published in the New York Times. This piece was then much derided on the site gawker (such a source of self-satisfied buffoonery can only be rivaled by the site Pitchforkmedia.com). I agree with E’s point. The vast quantities of information that our fingertips is no longer that amazing to people but the consequences of being able to access that information while standing on a street corner in Manhattan from a machine more advanced than the commincators from the original Star Trek series has yet to be fully understood. The irony of all of this is that I was reading all of this on my iPod touch over a Bloody Mary in the Del Mar Loop are of St. Louis right after looking up directions to get on the interstate. Oh well….

I suppose I should try and take on the interview I mentioned earlier. Zizek is clearly insane and not in the good way I suppose. The part I find most fascinating about this interview is the part where he admits to something I think that a great many philosophers concede in their darkest of moments. It is similar to the atheist who makes up in the night and secretly dispels his nightmares because he knows that he is disingenuous in his beliefs.

Interviewer: What or who is the love of your life?
Zizek: Philosophy. I secretly think reality exists so we can speculate about it.

Is this not something we all deep down know? But the fact is that it must be secret we hide from our learned friends for fear of ridicule or being subjected to diatribes and syllogisms. I will point towards one more comment that Zizek makes.

Interviewer: What is the most important lesson life has taught you?
Zizek: That life is a stupid, meaningless thing that has nothing to teach you.

I am not one to usually dismiss things out of hand. I like to consider the weight of a proposition. To hypothesize the statement and test it. But this is a statement that can be thrown out. It is ridiculous and I suppose in some measure the dear Mr. Zizek could be attempting to be, as we say, ironic. But deep down I think that this impulse and the impulse commented upon above coexist in the brains (I hate the word “mind” but it does sound so much less crass than simply saying “brain.”) of many intellectuals. I am just not always sure how one’s “will to believe” can become so eschewed. I guess I continually return to my burned out, used up mantra: there is something about the intellectual climate that I simply do not understand. I also get the feeling that there are others who when confronted by the absurdity of so much that is said can only go along and go home to wonder what the hell is going on. Sometimes the jester stops them and says, “What does that mean?” But that question can make you few friends…

Politics in America:
More of the same from McCain. I am comforted by the numbers (for the first time in almost 10 years but not by McCain’s response to them. To listen to the crowds respond to his speech’s can only remind me of the hate mongering used during the 30’s. Listen to the speeches and the cries of “Coward” and “Traitor” and “Terrorist” that come from the crowds. Watch as McCain quiets the crowds with the call “My friends” and gives them a sly wink. I am done with smugness and winks. I hate to name call but he lies and the worst part is that lies sell. This nothing nobody who reads this blog does not already know. But I think it leaves us still bewildered. I think I am honing in on an answer to all of this but it is not comforting or a pretty picture of the American public…

Questions of the week:
1) If a democracy works correctly is there any real need for civil disobedience?
2) What is your favorite city in the world?

Think about those. I am out of town starting tomorrow early in the AM. I am relying on drive time to think. Nothing is better for the mind than a long autumn drive. Clears the mind and brings contrasts in sharper focus. Maybe I will know what I want to be when I grow up when I get back.

HA!

I have the pretrip jitters I always have before I go somewhere. Luckily I have something to steady my hand and steel my mind.

Geez I gotta do better with this blogging business...

Well, I am on my way to St. Louis in just a few minutes. I am heading out to see Ryan Adams. I purchased a cardigan for just an occasion.
That all being said. I great many things are going on in the world. I was distressed that Palin wasn't awful. This was I (and a sizable portion of the world) had not expected to see. I suppose if you lower everyone's expectations to where they scrape bottom simply showing up with a pulse is considered a KO.
It is time to decide what I want to be when I grow up.
My friend E of dominguez posted something a few weeks ago. It is an interview with Zizek. I have been bulling this over. I think I have something to say about it, I just don't know what it is other than to say, "I don't like it."
The American Experiment. I always liked that turn of phrase.
Here is something to think about over the weekend during my absence (which seems no different from my presence).

Considerations...

Death: Did you hear about republicans hate poor people?
Dream: Yeah... What of it?
Death: No. That is it. Crazy right?
Dream: ...

Bunch of thoughts about things...

1) So the kids I look after are still in the process of gaining a very rudimentary education. The other day it was time to talk about verbs. The teacher had written a passage and the kids had to go through and identify the verbs and what they meant. They easily identified the action verbs but then it came time to discuss different kinds of verbs. It came to the verb of verbs for philosophers: to be. Watching this conversation between the teacher and kids demonstrated the ridiculous nature of discussions about what it means "to be." The kids seemed totally non-confused when the teacher talked about how this verb was different from say kicking or running. The kids get it. Why don't eye?
2) Going to Fayetteville next month. Have some people to talk to and some things to think about. I shall report back when I get back.
3) Letters. Writing letters is hard when you have a job. This is more of an explanation than a comment.
4) So, the economics post never got finished but mind you it will. I have to admit I am a little glad to see the congress pushing back against this Bush plan. The fact that the "market" went nuts (down almost 400 points) when congress looked like it was not going to rubber-stamp Paulson's plan just shows that the market does not work for everyone's best interests. The idea that trying to help people stay in their houses is bad economics (in the eyes of the market) just goes to show how absurd the situation has become.
5) Have started going back to the gym. I hurt but it is the good hurt that I have missed so much.
6) Fall started yesterday. I am stoked.

Sometimes...

When go to a place to brings back memories from your youth the world comes into focus a little sharper. You have to look at the narrative of your life over the past x number of years. Where was I? What have I done in the mean time? What am I now? You have to rember that there was a time when a much younger you wanted the current you to be something.
Have a failed my much younger self?
I don't know. I know that much about me has changed that I thought years ago would never change. I assumed then that much of me had solidified into a static being. I just had to shore up and set the edges.
But one has to remember that things change and certain choices will always close doors. This seems to just be the nature of things. But there are moments driving familiar roads on misty cool mornings listening to songs you know by heart where you wonder if this is the way that things have to be.

The End of Republican Economics...

I have found myself more and more curious about the actual components of the financial crisis (crises depending on who you ask). It is complicated and you begin to wonder how much of this money is real and how much if it is well, not. The federal reserve bank has offered almost $200 billion in relief. The federal government now owns 70% of the mortgages in the country and has taken control of the world's largest insurance company A.I.G. I will leave behind the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac discussion and talk about A.I.G. for a moment. What is A.I.G. you ask? A.I.G. is an insurance company but not just ANY insurance company. They insure all kinds of things but the aspect of their business which makes them so important to the functioning of the world markets (and thus not something we can let go away) is that they insure investments against failure. Many of those sub-prime mortgages that were given to people who could not pay them and then bundled and sold off as tradeable securities which were then bought up by investment firms to trade were investments that AIG had insured against failure. Now as the sub-prime mortgages failed, houses were foreclosed on, and the worth of the securities they represented all failed AIG got into trouble. Now, AIG has also insured good investments so the failing of AIG would have a negative impact on more legitimate, healthy, and necessary aspects of the market. This would only make a terrible situation something similar to the 6th level of hell. The cost of this bail out in the form of a loan which the government gave in exchange for control of the company? $85 billion. And you know what they say: a billion here, a billion there and that starts to add up to real money. The question is, "Why was their no regulation to prevent this kind of bull shit!?" I will tell you why. Republicans. Now, that might seem like the kind of thing that comes off as partisan but it is true. For the most part Republicans are responsible for lessening, blocking, or completely doing away with regulations of industries. (I would like to take this moment to point out that Clinton was a major force of the telecommunications deregulation of the 90's and you can thank him and congressional Republicans for the Clear Channel monopoly of today). So let us talk about the Republican ideas concerning economic theory.
As best I can tell there are three main aspects Republican economic theory: no or little government regulation, no government bailouts, low taxes, and the nefarious "trickle down" theory of wealth distribution. We will take the first two together as they mostly deal with idea of how much business the government has messing around with business. (The second two also seem bound closely together.)
Conservative thinkers (as I see it) seem to think that the political and the economic do and should exist as two seperate spheres (to go back to the Greeks, political is the government of the Polis, or city and economics is derived from the Greek word Oikos for home, governing the home). Or you can look at all of this as a recasting of the public/private debate but I will skip all fo this for the time being. Basically the idea here is that government has no business either regulating or helping the business or the market (as the market is some kind of self-regulating entity). Cleary this has not worked. A lack of regulation has led to this kind of collapse ans thusly forced the hand of some pretty vehement free-market thinkers (remembering that Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson came from Goldman-Sachs). So Paulson (because Bush upheld the first sacred law of conservative economics) has had to violate the second sacred law. It is clear that the lack of regulation that was supposed to help business that has led to the collapse of business is not good for business. I am sure there is a syllogism in their somewhere. It will also have an impact on how much tax we will have to pay. Considering that the deficit and debt are really high and that we will have to continue to pay for this bailout and a two fronted war I see little room for other budget cuts now that people will want to do to pay for all of this mess. So go figure that out.
It is dinner time so I will return to this a little later...

Thoughts on things...

Philosophical questions: I was thinking not so much about philosophy today as the questions that philosophy attempts to tackle. I was reading some Searle today and he was attempting to address the question, "Do computers think?" This is of course a silly question. Totally silly. Not so much as to whether one could or would answer a question about machines but because of what the implications would be for thinkers. Of course machines do not think in the way that we do! To imply as much is total nonsense. But the problem is what if we think like machines? What if our mental events are equivalent to the sparks of electrons along silicon pathways? That would be depressing right? I say bollocks. I say bollocks to all that. Why is this problem? What does this steal from us? What light of mysterty goes out of this peculiar experience we call be human? Unless you have nothing it should not. But I am rambling. My point being this: a great many questions that philosophers ask are actually nothing but the echo of self-doubt. And this moot points, wastes of time, obuscations of the issue, and at the lowest level screams in to the darkness that is not actually the unkown but hubris...