larvatus prodeo
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Below are the 30 most recent journal entries recorded in the "Michael Zeleny" journal:[<< Previous 30 entries]
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12:10 pm
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HIC LOCUS EST UBI MORS GAUDET SUCCURRERE VITAE
Welcome to the online journal of larvatus. Stable texts are open to the general public. Squibs and sallies, schemes and stratagems, jaunts and taunts, are restricted to friends. Please note that locked texts subject to third party copyright are provided to my friends under the doctrine of fair use, subject to implied consent by all their readers to abstain from redistribution. Reciprocal friendship shall be extended to all sane, sound, and disinterested personae. Comments and critique are always welcome. Marriage proposals and death threats shall be entertained in the order received.
The House Rules are few and lax. All anonymous comments are initially screened. They shall be revealed or answered at your host’s discretion. All signed comments are initially presumed welcome, until and unless they cause an affront to your host. Thereupon their author shall become banned from further contributions to this journal. Otherwise, anything goes. SAY WHAT?
ÇA ?
Tristan Corbière
A treatise? You don’t say! I haven’t treated squat!
A study? Slothful wretch, my culture fetid rot.
A volume? Random heap, sheets stacked in disarray.
Good copy? Not with me enmired in the fray.
A poem? Not today, my lyre is being cleaned.
A book? Of fusty tomes far better to be weaned.
A song? Would that it were, my ear is made of tin.
Fun pastime? Sordid den, dire boredom dwells within.
A cadence? Rhythmic flow is broken by dull grind.
A product? I divide what others multiplied.
A story? Handicapped, my lame and laggard Muse.
Clear proof? My mind is fraught by grief and lit by booze.
High fashion? Wealth and style inform nowhere my dress.
Grandstanding or grand mal? My spasms fail to impress.
Evicted from the hall, I lurk behind the stage,
In transit, poised to choose: a joy house or a cage.
Too old? But to retire, my tenure won’t suffice.
Too young? My hectic life will rid me of this vice.
A sage, a slob, an ace, a master, and a clown,
A stud without a flock, a king without a crown.
THIS is without pretense, and yet a blatant pose.
It’s life and nothing but, confessed in deathless prose.
A masterpiece? Could be, I never made one yet!
A farce? A waste? A bomb? Decide and place your bet!
I bet… and I shall sign herewith my humble name;
My child shall overcome each tainted libel claim.
Through chance it will prevail, its fate a stroke of luck…
Art knows me not at all — and I don’t give a fuck.
— traduced by MZ, 6 September 2005
Tags: doggerel, vanity, webex
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10:00 am
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for the anonymous troll
Over sixteen twenty years online, I have received a broad spectrum of threats and pitches, and entertained a commensurate range of slurs and plaudits. This experience has crystallized two iron laws of online communications.
The first law is a corollary of Occam’s razor. No matter what you are promised or threatened on the Internet, the most you will get out of it is oral ministrations. In other words, there is no downside in moving virtual bluster to realspace. Yonder puffed-out sock puppet is as unlikely to escalate its verbiage to physical damage, as the heiress of an African potentate, to bestow her commission upon Americans paying their facilitation fees. By contrast, that virtual fellatrix yearning to reward your eloquence with expert suction may well come through as promised, especially if you overlook minor discrepancies ranging from mien to gender.
The second law of Internet intercourse is a corollary of the first. Only a clueless newbie responds personally to an anonymous troll. To illustrate its application, whenever one of the latter kind feels the urge to share its thoughts about anything but one of the former, it should take them instead to someone who can relate to its bogus persona. It makes no difference whether a figment of this sort touts itself as a public intellectual in mufti, or poses as a skank that services barnyard livestock for spare change. In the immortal words of Jack Nicholson, sell crazy someplace else, we’re all stocked up here.
A final notice to the insistent incognito. When you surpass words in punishing my excesses, make sure that your hostile deeds leave me unfit to retaliate. My reckoning will define the remainder of your life. It’s happened to your betters before. Don’t let it happen to you.
Tags: bullshit, stupidity, violence
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04:07 pm
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мои авторитеты
В 1989 году на кампусе Калифорнийского университета в Лос-Анджелесе меня окликнул хасид.
—Молодой человек, вы еврей?
—Предположим, что да.
—Не хотите ли исполнить мицву, наложив тфилин?
—Спасибо, я это уже пробовал. Ничего из этого не вышло.
—Как это так? Исполнение мицвот является Вашей обязанностью.
—Наши мнения расходятся. Я так не считаю.
—А что же Вы считаете? Скажите, кто по-Вашему самый мудрый человек в мире?
Разговор явно шёл по направлению к Менахем-Мендлу Шнеерсону, предполагаемому Божьим помазанником. Я решил резко изменить курс.
—Я считаю, что самым мудрым человеком в мире на настоящий день является Алонзо Чёрч.
Хасид взволновался.
—Как так? Кто это такой?
—Это мой учитель логики. Он преподаёт в нашем университете. Если хотите, я могу Вас познакомить.
—Нет, спасибо… не надо.
На этом разговор и закончился.
Чёрч научил меня, что ничьё мнение никогда не является, и не может быть решающим. К сожалению, его больше нет в живых. В качестве нынешнего авторитета, я назову Карло Гинзбурга.
Tags: alonzo church, authority, carlo ginzburg, jews, logic, religion, russian
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07:37 pm
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korth revolver action
Korth 4" Profi Sport
Tags: guns, korth
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07:26 pm
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s&w and mr73 action comparison
S&W 8¾" Registered Magnum
Manurhin MR73 4" Gendarmerie, last action variant
Manurhin MR73 5¼" Sport, first action variant
Click on the photos for higher resolution. Note the differences in the hand tensioning and the rebound mechanism.
Tags: guns, manurhin, mr73, s&w
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07:20 pm
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fowler on pedantry and purism
Henry Watson Fowler
10 March 1858 – 26 December 1933
Pedantic Humour. No essential distinction is intended between this & Polysyllabic Humour; one or the other name is more appropriate to particular specimens, & the two headings are therefore useful for reference; but they are manifestations of the same impulse, & the few remarks needed may be made here for both. A warning is necessary, because we have all of us, except the abnormally stupid, been pedantic humourists in our time. We spend much of our childhood picking up a vocabulary; we like to air our latest finds; we discover that our elders are tickled when we come out with a new name that they thought beyond us; we devote some pains to tickle them further, & there we are, pedants & polysyllabists all. The impulse is healthy for children, & nearly universal—which is just why warning is necessary; for among so many there will always be some who fail to realize that the clever habit applauded at home will make them insufferable abroad. Most of those who are capable of writing well enough to find readers do learn sooner or later that playful use of long or learned words is a one-sided game boring the reader more than it pleases the writer, that the impulse to it is a danger-signal—for there must be something wrong with what they are saying if it needs recommending by such puerilities—, & that yielding to the impulse is a confession of failure. But now & then even an able writer will go on believing that the incongruity between simple things to be said & out-of-the-way words to say them in has a perennial charm. Perhaps it has for the reader who never outgrows hobbledehoyhood; but for the rest of us it is dreary indeed. It is possible that acquaintance with such labels as pedantic & polysyllabic humour may help to shorten the time it takes to cure a weakness incident to youth.
An elementary example or two should be given. The words homoeopathic (small or minute), sartorial (of clothes), interregnum (gap), or familiar ones:—To introduce ‘Lords of Parliament’ in such a homoeopathic doses as to leave a preponderating power in the hands of those who enjoy a merely hereditary title./While we were motoring out to the station I took stock of his sartorial aspect, which had change somewhat since we parted./In his vehement action his breeches fall down & his waistcoat runs up, so that there is a great interregnum.
These words are like most that are much used in humour of either kind, both pedantic & polysyllabic. A few specimens that cannot be described as polysyllabic are added here, & for the large class of long words, the article Polysyllabic Humour should be consulted:—ablution; aforesaid; beverage; bivalve (the succulent); caloric; cuticle; digit; domestics; eke (adv.); ergo; erstwhile; felicide; nasal organ; neighbourhood (in the n. of, = about); nether garments; optic (eye); parlous; vulpicide.
Pedantry may be defined, for the purpose of this book, as the saying of things in language so learned or so demonstratively accurate as to imply a slur upon the generality, who are not capable or desirous of such displays. The term, then, is obviously a relative one; my pedantry is your scholarship, his reasonable accuracy, her irreducible minimum of education, & someone else’s ignorance. It is therefore not very profitable to dogmatize here on the subject; an essay would establish not what pedantry is, but only the place in the scale occupied by the author; & that, so far as it is worth inquiring into, can better be ascertained from the treatment of details […].
Polysyllabic Humour. See Pedantic Humour for a slight account of the impulse that suggests long or abstruse words as a means of entertaining the hearer. Of the long as distinguished from the abstruse, terminological exactitude for lie or falsehood is a favourable example, but much less amusing ad the hundredth than at the first time of hearing. Oblivious to their pristine nudity (forgetting they were stark naked) is a less familiar specimen. Nothing need here be added to hat was said in the other article beyond a short specimen list of long words or phrases that sensible people avoid. Batavian, Caledonian, Celestial, Hibernian & Milesian for Dutch, Scotch, Chinese, Irish. Solution of continuity, femoral habiliments, refrain from lacteal addition, & olfactory organ for gap, breeches, take no milk, & nose. Osculatory, pachydermatous, matutinal, diminutive, fuliginous, fugacious, esurient, culinary, & minacious, for kissing, thick-skinned, morning, tiny, sooty, timid, hungry, kitchen, & threatening. Frontispiece, individual, equitation, intermediary, cachinnation, & epidermis, for face, person, riding, means, laughter, & skin. Negotiate & peregrinate for tackle & travel.
Purism. Now & then a person may be heard to ‘confess’, in the pride that apes humility, to being ‘a bit of a purist’; but purist & purism are for the most part missile words, which we all of us fling at anyone who insults us by finding not good enough for him some manner of speech that is good enough for us. It is in that disparaging sense that the words are used in this book; by purism is to be understood a needless & irritating insistence on purity or correctness of speech. Pure English, however, even apart from the great number of elements (vocabulary, grammar, idiom, pronunciation, & so forth) that go to make it up, is so relative a term that almost every man is potentially a purist & a sloven at once to persons looking at him from a lower & a higher position in the scale than his own. The words have therefore not been very freely used; that they should be renounced altogether would be too much to expect considering the subject of the book. But readers who find a usage stigmatized as purism have a right to know the stigmatizer's place in the purist scale, if his stigma is not to be valueless. […]
—Henry Watson Fowler, A Dictionary of Modern English Usage: The Classic First Edition, Oxford University Press, 2009 (1926), pp. 426-427, 444, 474-475Tags: citationalism, english, humor, language, persiflage
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05:17 pm
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thorstein veblen on the business of nations
Thorstein Veblen Farmstead: National Historic Landmark
16538 Goodhue Avenue, Nerstrand, Minnesota
In the last analysis the nation remains a predatory organism, in practical effect an association of persons moved by a community interest in getting something for nothing by force and fraud. There is, doubtless, also much else of a more genial nature to be said for the nation as an institutional factor in recent times. The voluminous literature of patriotic encomium and apology has already said all that is needed on that head. But the irreducible core of national life, what remains when the non-essentials are deducted, still is of this nature; it continues to be self-determination in war and politics. Such is the institutional pedigree of the nation. It is a residual derivative of the predatory dynastic State, and as such it still continues to be, in the last resort, an establishment for the mobilization of force and fraud against the outside, and for a penalised subservience of its underlying population at home.
In recent times, owing to the latterday state of the industrial arts, this national pursuit of warlike and political ends has come to be a fairly single-minded chase after unearned income to be procured by intimidation and intrigue. It has been called Imperialism; it might also, in a colloquial phrasing, be called national graft. By and large, it takes the two typical forms of graft: official salaries (The White Man’s Burden), as in the British crown colonies and the American dependencies; and of special concessions and advantageous bargains in the way of trade, credits and investments, as, eg, the British interests in Africa and Mesopotamia or the American transactions in Nicaragua and Haiti. The official salaries which are levied by this means on the underlying population in foreign parts inure directly to the nation’s kept classes, in their role of official personnel, being in the nature of perquisites of gentility and of political suction. The special benefits in the way of profitable trade and investment under national tutelage in foreign parts inure to those special Interests which are in close touch with the nation’s official personnel and do business in foreign parts with their advice and consent.
All the while, of course, all this trading on the national integrity is carried on as inconspicuously as may be, quite legally and morally under democratic forms, by night and cloud, and is covered over with such decently voluble prevarication as the case may require, prevarication of a decently statesmanlike sort; such a volume and texture of prevarication as may serve to keep the national left hand from knowing what the right hand is doing, the left hand in these premises being the community at large, as contrasted with the Interests and the official personnel. In all such work of administrative prevarication and democratic camouflage the statesmen are greatly helped out by the newspapers and the approved agencies that gather and purvey such news as is fit to print for the purpose in hand. The pulpit, too, has its expedient uses as a publicity agency in furtherance of this gainful pursuit of national enterprise in foreign parts.
However, the present argument is not concerned with the main facts and material outcome of this imperial statecraft considered as a “gainful pursuit,” but only with the ulterior and residual consequences of the traffic in the way of a heightened sense of national integrity and a closer coalescence of this national integrity with the gainful pursuits of all these dominant business Interests that engage the sympathies of the official personnel. By this means the national integrity becomes ever more closely identified, in the popular apprehension, with the security and continued enlargement of the capitalised overhead charges of those concerns which do business in foreign parts; whereby the principles of business and absentee ownership come in for an added sanction; so that the official personnel which has these matters in charge is enabled to give a more undivided attention and a more headlong support to any manoeuvres of strategic sabotage on industrial production which the exigencies of gainful business may dictate, whether at home or abroad.
Statecraft as a gainful pursuit has always been a furtive enterprise. And in due proportion as the nation’s statecraft is increasingly devoted to the gainful pursuit of international intrigue it will necessarily take on a more furtive character, and will conduct a larger proportion of its ordinary work by night and cloud. Which leads to a substitution of coercion in the place of consultation in the dealings of the official personnel with their underlying population, whether in domestic or foreign policy; and such coercion is increasingly accepted in a complaisant, if not a grateful, spirit by the underlying population, on a growing conviction that the national integrity is best provided for by night and cloud. So therefore it also follows that any overt expression of doubt as to the national expediency of any obscure transaction or line of transactions entered into by the official personnel in the course of this clandestine traffic in gainful politics, whether at home or abroad, will presumptively be seditious; and unseasonable inquiry into the furtive movements of the official personnel is by way of becoming an actionable offense; since it is to be presumed that, for the good of the nation, no one outside of the official personnel and the business Interests in collusion can bear any intelligent part in the management of these delicate negotiations, and any premature intimation of what is going on is likely to be “information which may be useful to the enemy.” Any pronounced degree of skepticism touching the expediency of any of the accomplished facts of political intrigue or administrative control is due to be penalised as obnoxious to the common good. In the upshot of it all, the paramount rights, powers, aims, and immunities of ownership, or at least those of absentee ownership, come in for a closer identification with the foundations of the national establishment and are hedged about with a double conviction of well-doing.
In that strategy of businesslike curtailment of output, debilitation of industry, and capitalisation of overhead charges, which is entailed by the established system of ownership and bargaining, the constituted authorities in all the democratic nations may, therefore, be counted on to lend their unwavering support to all manoeuvres of business-as-usual, and to disallow any transgression of or departure from business principles. Nor should there seem any probability that the effectual run of popular sentiment touching these matters will undergo any appreciable change in the calculable future. The drift of workday discipline, as well as of deliberate instruction, sets in the conservative direction. For the immediate future the prospect appears to offer a fuller confirmation in the faith that business principles answer all things. The outlook should accordingly be that the businesslike control of the industrial system in detail should presently reach, if it has not already reached, and should speedily pass beyond that critical point of chronic derangement in the aggregate beyond which a continued pursuit of the same strategy on the same businesslike principles will result in a progressively widening margin of deficiency in the aggregate material output and a progressive shrinkage of the available means of life.— Thorstein Veblen, Absentee Ownership and Business Enterprise in Recent Times: the Case of America,
New York, N.Y.: B.W. Huebsch, 1923, pp. 442-445
Tags: america, economics, exceptionalism, politics, veblen
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12:57 am
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no one leaves this world uneaten
To claim an interest, I have been in social media for over 21 years, and signed up on Facebook long before it opened beyond Harvard students and alumni. From this perespective, I am reminded of an anecdote told by Jerry Weintraub:Samuel and Rose Weintraub came west to visit their older son, the one who would not go into the gem trade, to see what kind of life he had made for himself. “Now I have a big mansion in Beverly Hills, a Rolls, a chauffeur, fresh flowers, butlers, swimming pools—everything,” Jerry told me. “My mom and dad arrive, and I pick them up with my driver, and my mom is beaming. We get to my house and we’re serving caviar, Havana cigars for my father, and champagne—the whole deal. After a couple of days of this, my dad says, ‘I want to talk to you. Let’s take a walk.’ We get outside and he says, ‘I want to ask you a question and I want you to tell me the truth and I don’t want any bullshit from you. Are you in the Mafia? How did you get all this? You were never that smart.’”
I’m creative. I did it.
Where’s your inventory? How can you have this much money and not have an inventory? It doesn’t make sense to me.
“The next day I made arrangements. My mother’s favorite was Cary Grant. And horses. We drove to Hollywood Park [racetrack] and Cary Grant was waiting for us. He opened the door and looked at my mother and said, ‘Rose, I’m your date for lunch.’
“They had lunch and he made her bets for her and sat with her. I don’t think my father liked it so much. That evening I made a dinner party with all the stars. And Cary came. I remember going to the bar, and my mom was having a glass of champagne. And Sinatra came up and said, ‘Hey, Rose, I heard you had a great date for lunch today.’ And she said, ‘Yeah, but I like my Sammy better.’”— Rich Cohen, “ Jerry Weintraub Presents!”, Vanity Fair, March 2008In the instant conversation, I am struck by the preponderance of cutting edge XXIst century cinematographers channeling an itinerant Jewish jeweler from a century ago. Lighten up. Everyone serves as inventory to all sorts of entities, from governments to maggots. No one leaves this world uneaten. My favorite strategy is enjoying the set and its setting whilst pacing my consumption, as an agent and patient alike. Tags: computers, facebook, internet, jews, reduser, usenet
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06:00 pm
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open house on sand hill road
My summer digs are at 1766 Sand Hill Rd # 207 in Palo Alto, CA 94304. I can be reached at 650-485-2752 (land) or 323-363-1860 (mobile). My home will be open, and liquid cheer will be provided to all virtual and realspace friends and neighbors from noon till midnight on Sunday, May 20.
I welcome contest entries pursuant to the following rules, to be submitted until the closing of festivities. I will award the winner’s choice between a crisp likeness of Benjamin Franklin published by the U.S. Mint, or dinner with me at a Bay Area restaurant of my choice, to the entrant able to identify the greatest number of performance art props displayed in this photo:
In the event of a tie, preference will be given to the entrant able to answer the following questions:- How old was Erin Zhu when her father Min Zhu first raped her?
- When did Min Zhu resign from WebEx and flee the United States as a result of being outed as an incestuous paedophile?
- How long thereafter did it take Scott Sandell of New Enterprise Associates to fund the next venture of his publicly disgraced protégé?
All answers to these questions are available online.
Tags: crime, degenerates, sex, webex
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01:43 pm
[Link] | Thus spake the Deep Throat of Queer Studies:This point may not be popular. It may not win me friends. But I must make it. Harpo, like most men, has a symbolic vagina, somewhere on his person. Harpo, a starry man, has many vaginas. One is his wig. Another is his silence. Then again, yonder nerdy man of words may just be hankering for Harpo’s touch on his butt crack.
Wayne Koestenbaum
Tags: asshat, persiflage, sex, sodomy
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12:58 pm
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the tools of travel
Tags: guns, korth, semmerling, swiss, travel, vanity, webex
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10:42 pm
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hoist that rag
Fraudulent fucking is now a tort in Idaho.
So much for all being fair in love and war.
The prudent among us would henceforth discourage an understanding of fidelity on the part of their lovers.
DSK has it down pat. Not so Sarko.
Tags: law, lies, love, music, sex, tom waits, war
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10:21 pm
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our 4:20
…certainly beats the Old World version. Then again, we have inherited a bit of that latter in our New World. Founded by Josef Bischof in 1978, the Old World German Restaurant has long hosted periodic celebrations of Hitler’s birthday and conferences of Holocaust revisionists. In 1997 Josef exercised his inalienable rights under the First Amendment thusly: “Aust these no good [Santa Barbara County] supervisors. They deprived me of my property rights! They deserve the Auschwitz treatments.” Here is his daughter putting a spin on it:He probably would have been better off saying, “The Santa Barbara County Supervisors should be sent to Siberia”—maybe then he wouldn’t have been such a “Bad Guy”. If you know your history, Stalin was just as evil as Hitler, and during WWII, people were deathly afraid of being sent to Siberia. However, the remark about Russia would not have pushed the buttons of so many, nor will Stalin ever be as memorable to the American public because of the significant amount of Jews in this country.—Cyndie Bischof of Huntington Beach, 20 January 2000, OCWeekly
For my heritage of a GULag survivor, the best part is the mass noun amount used in lieu of numbering Jews.
Unheimlichen Geburtstag, Herr Schicklgruber! I’m taking Bragmardo and my Swiss friends on a stroll in the Old World.
Tags: birthday, drugs, germans, history, jews, nazi
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10:36 pm
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bragmardo
RED SCARLET-X #00021, “Bragmardo”
« Et plus n’en dict le deposant. Valete et plaudite. »
Tags: photography, red, video, webex
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09:09 pm
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fundamentals of negotiation
Tags: business, death, violence, webex
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12:47 am
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dichtung und wahrheit
Does the fact that Philip Larkin lost his virginity in 1945 enrich our understanding of his assertion that sexual intercourse began in nineteen sixty-three? or does it make his poetry less intimately connected with his life? And if Larkin found his immortality in the fear of death, does its deathless expression leave any doubt that he would have preferred to find it in not dying?
Tags: death, humor, larkin, poetry, sex
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02:16 pm
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where the extremes meet
The German optimist believes that God created the actual world as the best of all possible worlds. The German pessimist is certain that the actual world is the best of all possible worlds.
The Russian pessimist believes that the world is so bad that it couldn’t get any worse. The Russian optimist is certain that everything can — and will — get worse.
The American optimist invests in the world-wide march of democracy. The American pessimist arms against democracy poised to trample his inalienable rights. They are both right.
Tags: america, democracy, exceptionalism, justice
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09:42 am
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syllogistic soteriology
No good deed goes unpunished.
Thus each good man who dies happy proves the existence of Hell.
Tags: death, ethics, god, hell, luck, music, persiflage, the eels
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03:46 pm
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man’s got to know his limitations
As Harry Callahan has taught us, man’s got to know his limitations.
Shills for asexuality are foredoomed to reenact Hitler’s favorite joke:
Hitler: My dog’s got no nose!
Soldier: How does he smell?
Hitler: Awful!
It has been settled over two millennia, that “there are some eunuchs, who were so born from their mother’s womb: and there are some eunuchs, who were made eunuchs of men: and there are eunuchs, who have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven’s sake.” But any kind of eunuch who won’t stop complaining about our inauthentic celebration of sex, wields no more authority than the blind grousing about our gaudy garb or the deaf clamoring against our cacophonous conversation.
Tags: journalism, politics, sex
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04:22 am
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reductio ad brassicam
“The Constitution as interpreted by the Court these past decades allows the federal government to put your taxes up and use the proceeds to send you a weekly box of broccoli.” This putatively commonsensical observation by Clive Crook is meant to support a transparent non sequitur: “If Washington instructed you to choose your own basket of fruit and vegetables or else pay a penalty, that would be a smaller infringement of your freedom than the Constitution already allows.” The logically warranted conclusion from the premiss at hand is that if a federal government’s individual mandate instructed me to choose my own basket of fruit and vegetables or else pay a penalty, that would be a smaller infringement of my freedom than recent Constitutional interpretation has tended to allow. The Constitution is an enduring factual body of principle that underlies the vagaries and wambles of its judicial interpretation. Let the trends change as long as the fundamental facts endure.
Yes, Mr Crook, our Constitution is a quasi-religious document, whose constancy is an inviolable national myth. But the constancy of our Constitution is also thoroughly attested, in extent and limitation, by its amendments. When changing it falls to the Court and is done by stealth, it becomes and remains liable to equally stealthy judicial reversals. That is what the Roberts Supreme Court seems to be poised to inflict upon Obamacare. Back in the realm of horticulture, American farmers have long received lavish subsidies from the government, enabling them to grow lots of things I don’t want to eat. So I am always already being forced to “buy” broccoli via the power of taxation. Likewise, the federal government could — and bloody well should — use its power of taxation to pay for government-administered universal health insurance. What it cannot and shouldn’t do is create a boondoggle for its favorite industries by compelling its citizens to transact with private vendors, be it for health insurance or fresh vegetables.
Your fellow countryman John Lanchester patiently explains this for you in the latest issue of the London Review of Books:If there were ever going to be a serious and sustained theoretical challenge to the hegemony of capitalism inside economics — a serious and sustained challenge subsequent to the one provided by what used to be called ‘actually existing socialisms’ — you’d have thought one would have come along since the near terminal meltdown of the global economic system in 2008. But all we’ve seen are suggestions for ameliorative tweaking of the existing system to make it a little less risky. We have at the moment this monstrous hybrid, state capitalism — a term which used to be a favourite of the Socialist Workers Party in describing the Soviet Union, and which only a few weeks ago was on the cover of the Economist to describe the current economic condition of most of the world. This is a parody of economic order, in which the general public bears all the risks and the financial sector takes all the rewards — an extraordinarily pure form of what used to be called ‘socialism for the rich’. But ‘socialism for the rich’ was supposed to be a joke. The truth is that it is now genuinely the way the global economy is working. Obamacare is socialism for insurance companies. If and when our society agrees that health care is a public good, let us socialize its administration. Empowering our government to bring the health insurance industry 32 million new customers is crony capitalism at its sleaziest. And it stinks.
Tags: america, exceptionalism, law, lawyers
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04:03 am
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pedicabo ego vos et irrumabo
First they came for Gilbert Gottfried
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a shrill comedian
Then they came for Catullus
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Latin poet
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me
Tags: comedy, exceptionalism, latin, law, laws, nazi
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11:39 pm
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good dog kills bad people
Song Kang-ho does his tough dick thing while the most charismatic bad guy in Asian movies walks on all fours, dealing revenge to evil bipeds, stopping only to lead out of a burning house one smart and tough chick cop, whose sexist oppression by uncouth colleagues fails to deter her from hobbling henchmen with hot lead pursuant to absurd Korean police deadly force protocol. Justice triumphs, alas.
Tags: death, dog, korean, movies
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10:33 pm
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ни трагедия, ни фарс
Человек стремится всю жизнь не быть посредственностью (חוצפה, если не ὕβρις), или хотя бы не осознавать себя оною (tragische Konflikt, не ἁμαρτία, а ἀμαθία). Кончает посредственным скандалистом—не в силу лени, и не за неимением таланта, а из-за провинциальной ограниченности.
В Париже или Берлине пожалуй вышел бы Доминик Стросс-Кан или Даниэль Кон-Бендит; в Лос Ангелесе или Нью Йорке—Майкл Милкен или Эл Франкен. В Питере знаменательно произошёл Виктор Леонидович Топоров.
Tags: exceptionalism, jews, literature, persiflage, russian, russians
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01:29 pm
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the bird’s the word
 “Debating creationists on the topic of evolution is rather like trying to play chess with a pigeon — it knocks the pieces over, craps on the board, and flies back to its flock to claim victory.”This principle generalizes to all theologies, or ways of relating man to his innermost values and motives, agglomerating rational thought and dogmatic mythology. All men argue like pigeons play chess when their core concerns are at stake.
Tags: animals, persiflage, rhetoric
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10:33 pm
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r.i.p.
“Better to be king for a night than schmuck for a lifetime” quoth Rupert Pupkin thirty years ago. Hibernian Hebrew Andrew Breitbart assclowned summa cum laude for seventeen years. May all nincompoops celebrating his untimely passing bend over for The New York Times in infernal perpetuity.
Tags: america, assclowns, death, exceptionalism, internet, irish, jews
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05:39 pm
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minitrue
War is Peace.
Freedom is Slavery.
Ignorance is Strength.
Whistleblowing is Espionage.
Tags: america, exceptionalism, law, lawyers, politics
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12:38 pm
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good news
Father came to wish me a happy birthday. I told him that Chien-Ling found news of an FDA-approved drug that reversed the effects of Alzheimer’s, so Mother would soon get well. He was glad to hear it. Then I woke up.
Tags: birthday, death, dreams, father, memory, mother
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07:31 pm
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pockets full of brass
The place:
The tools:
The performance:
Tags: anarchism, business, guns, webex
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12:01 am
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старый добрый ёзель
СТАРЫЙ ДОБРЫЙ ЙОСИФ
1. Ах, Йосиф, Йосиф, старый добрый Йосиф, —
Какие есть на свете имена.
Состриг ли ты свою больную мо́золь,
Иль до сих пор она тебе нужна?
Ах, Йосиф, Йосиф, славный, добрый Йосиф,
Состриг ли ты любимую мозо́ль?
Зачем чтоб наступали все,
Лучше, чтоб упали все.
Выставить лишь ножку ты изволь.Припев:
С добрым утром, тётя Хая, ой-ёй-ёй.
Вам посылка из Шанхая, ой-ёй-ёй,
А в посылке три китайца, ой-ёй-ёй,
Три китайца красят яйца, ой-ёй-ёй.
2. Я как-то встретил Йосифа на рынке,
Он жидкость от мозо́лей покупал,
В зубах держал сметану Йосиф в крынке,
Ну, а руками мо́золь обнимал.
Хотел я поздороваться с ним чинно,
Улыбку сотворил и шляпу снял,
Но Йосиф вдруг заметил тётю Хаю,
Нырнул кормой и мимо прошагал.Припев. 3. Так вот она какая, тётя Хая,
Йосиф, видно, с нею не в ладах.
Ей кто-то шлет посылки из Шанхая,
А Йосиф умирает в мозоля́х.
Но Йосиф сострижет больную мо́золь
И кой-кому намнёт еще бока,
И вспомнит он тогда про тётю Хаю
И ей подставит ножку, а пока…Припев. 2-й и 3-й куплеты исполняются на мелодию первой части 1-го куплета.
За основу мелодии песни взят фокстрот “Джозеф” (музыкальная обработка А. Цфасмана, не позднее 1941 года). Слова и мелодия записаны с голоса Г. Димонда не позднее 1980 года.
Шел трамвай десятый номер… Городские песни. Для голоса в сопровождении фортепиано (гитары). / Сост. А. П. Павлинов и Т. П. Орлова. СПб., “Композитор – Санкт-Петербург“, 2005. Переделка песни 1920-х гг. “Тетя Хая” на мелодию фокстрота 1920-х гг. “Joseph“. Написана в начале 1970-х годов в Ленинграде Рудольфом Фуксом для Аркадия Северного.
Из книги Игоря Ефимова и Дмитрия Петрова “Аркадий Северный, Советский Союз!” (2007): Ну, и наконец, Фукс даёт “путёвку в жизнь” ещё одной тёте, в пару к тёте Бесе, – тёте Хае!!! На мотив джазовой мелодии 20-х годов “Joseph” ещё с нэповских времён были известны весёлые куплеты с припевом про трёх китайцев. Рудольф знает же только припев, и дописывает к нему куплеты опять-таки сам. И, что особенно примечательно, на основе “личных впечатлений“, привезённых им всё из того же Бердичева:
Ах, Ёзель, Ёзель, старый, добрый Ёзель,
Какие есть на свете имена!
Состриг ли ты свою больную мoзоль,
Иль до сих пор она в тебе видна?
“…Именно Ёзель, а не Йозеф, как стали потом петь. Так звали дядю моей жены. И мозоль у него была, и все об неё спотыкались. Вот я про это и сочинил песню” – так рассказывал об этом Рудольф Фукс. История, действительно, куда как содержательна… Что не помешало, однако, стать этой песне очень популярной. “Как раз в это время кто-то нам принёс кассету с записями Аркадия Северного. Голос Аркаши всем очень понравился, но песни на кассете были не очень интересные, кроме одной – про тётю Хаю. А точнее – про дядю всем известного Рудика Фукса, про которого Рудик эту песню и написал, и которого звали Йозеф. Мы её выучили, и первый раз сыграли на дне рождения нашего официанта, которого тоже звали Юзя. Песня настолько понравилась народу, что мы её стали играть каждый день раз по десять на заказ” – так вспоминал потом о своих впечатлениях от этого поэтического шедевра будущий “Брат Жемчужный” Евгений Драпкин. ВАРИАНТ
Йозеф
Ах, Йозеф, Йозеф, старый добрый Йозеф, —
Какие есть на свете имена!
Состриг ли ты свою больную мо́золь,
Иль до сих пор она в тебе жива?
Ах, Йозеф, Йозеф, старый добрый Йозеф,
Состриг ли ты любимую мозо́ль?
Лучше чтоб не знали все,
Лучше чтоб упали все, …
Выставить лишь ножку ты изволь!
С добрым утром, тётя Хая, ай-ай-ай!
Вам посылка из Шанхая, ай-ай-ай!
А в посылке три китайца, ой-ой-ой!
Три китайца красят яйца, ой-ой-ой!
Я как-то встретил Йозефа на рынке, —
Он жидкость от мозо́лей покупал.
В зубах держал сметны Йозеф крынку,
Ну а руками — руками мо́золь обнимал.
Хотел я поздороваться с ним чинно,
Улыбку сотворил и шляпу снял, —
Но Йозеф вдруг заметил тётю Хаю, —
Вильнул кормой — и мимо прошагал!
С добрым утром, тётя Хая, ай-ай-ай!
Вам посылка из Шанхая, ай-ай-ай!
А в посылке три китайца, ой-ой-ой!
Три китайца красят яйца, ой-ой-ой!
Так вот она, какая тётя Хая, —
И Йозеф с нею, видно, не в ладах, —
Ей кто-то шлёт посылки из Шанхая,
А Йозеф умирает в мозоля́х!
Но Йозеф сострижёт больную мо́золь
И кой-кому, ой, кой-кому намнёт бока!
И встретит он тогда и тётю Хаю,
И ей подставит ножку, а пока…
С добрым утром, тётя Хая, ай-ай-ай!
Вам посылка из Шанхая, ай-ай-ай!
А в посылке три китайца, ой-ой-ой!
Три китайца красят яйца, ой-ой-ой!
Тексты песен из репертуара Аркадия Северного, Тихорецкий концерт (1979 г.).
JOSEPH! JOSEPH!
(Sammy Cahn / Nellie Casman / Saul Chaplin / Samuel Steinberg)
The Andrews Sisters - 1938
A certain maid I know, is so afraid her boy
Will never ask her, will she name the day
He calls on her each night, and when she dims the light
It’s ten to one that you would hear her say
Oh Joseph, Joseph, won’t you make your mind up
It’s time I knew just how I stand with you
My heart’s no clock that I can stop and wind up
Each time we make up after being through
So listen Joseph, Joseph time is fleeting
And here and there my hair is turning grey
My mother has a fear, wedding bells I’ll never hear
Joseph, Joseph, won’t you name the day
Oh Joseph, won’t you name the day
Oh Joseph, won’t you name the day
Oh Joseph, won’t you name the day
Name the day, name the day
Oh Joseph, make your mind up
It’s time I knew just how I stand with you
My heart’s no clock that I can wind up
Oh Joseph, each time we make up after being through
Oh Joseph, Joseph, Joseph, time is fleeting
And here and there my hair is turning grey
My mama has a fear, wedding bells I’ll never hear
Oh Joseph, Joseph, Joseph, won’t you name the day
Oh Joseph, won’t you name the day
Oh Joseph, won’t you name the day
Oh Joseph, won’t you name the day
Name the day, name the day
Also recorded by: Stanley Black; Ruby Braff; Café Accordion Orch.; London Festival Orch.; Glenn Miller; Russ Morgan & His Orch.; Gus Viseur.
Tags: china, chinese, citationalism, jews, multiculturalism, music, russian
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08:41 pm
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international conversation
Let me spell it out for you. We are a nation of laws. We are also a charitable nation. If you want our goods and our words within the scope of our foreign aid, ask for it. But as a foreign national, you have no say in our laws. If you are lucky, you have a say over your own goods and words, under your own laws, in your own country, in your own language. Then make and share your own goods and words, under your own laws, or change them to suit. In the meantime, if you break our laws, in our jurisdiction, we will prosecute you to their fullest extent.
Got it?
Tags: america, copyright, exceptionalism, law, laws, lawyers
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