...or so The Internet would have us believe.

[The following was written but never published 5 years ago. Hence the belated obit aspect.]

 

Many years ago now already, sitting with friend who's a classically trained pianist, the subject of genius came about. He said that the word was overused in the extreme. There were no geniuses, in that regard, and, as if to delineate for the specific purpose of definitional purity, Mozart, he said, was a genius, evidenced by his ability to compose with such complexity at such a young age. A genius, that is, regardless of whether one has found his work uninspiring, or even thinks, like the comedi-cised Count, that there are too many notes. Genius! No. Just an observation.

 

Of what are these observations representative? I recall some politico stressing the importance of taking the time and effort to write to one's political representative in that it was common adage in their circle that the posted letter would represent a larger number of constituents than, say, a phone call, which, somehow in direct relation to the lower difficulty of its undertaking, carried less weight and thereby represented fewer voters. Of course there would be, what I would assume, the jamming Congress' phone banks kind of action, which in old school parlance involved literally many more people getting involved. Still, less representative apparently. Or maybe it's the fact that a parliamentarian can stand in the well and hold up a letter, as if to demonstrate representative democracy at its finest.

 

And this was all before a further in/deflation of terms. My pianist friend may have foreseen the exponential onset of our new era, in which everybody's a genius, because it's so easy to say so, and perhaps proportionally recognizable by the brevity of phonetic identification. Kinsky? Genius! Hitch? We need another word!

But that's just YooToob talk. Even so, keep in mind that it's the comments that really represent. The "likes" are by contrast an indication of the amount of energy it takes for the average right index finger to depress a mouse button with a cursor over the symbol of a tiny thumbs up [still not mobile after all these years]. The YooToob money masters funnel more to the creator who inspires the former level of engagement. If that's not proof of the politico's posted letter theory, I don't know what is!

 

I notice that YooToob comments seem driven by a certain kind of energy. That observation's being mine is by definition just an observation of one, but what if it's a projection? Is it thereby merely a representation of one? Fuck! Do you have any idea how much effort goes into this logorrhea?

Where was I?  Oh, yeah. I'm no genius, I can tell you that much. But I have a greater chance of being one on The Internet because it affords me the opportunity to inspire someone somewhere to take the time and effort to get to the end of this entry and look for my contact information and write me an email to tell me what a genius I am. But that would take such an effort. If I just activated the comments, then I'd get called all kinds of things.

 

Unfortunately I'm way way down on the list of geniuses even with my name, because mine has three syllables. Who's tops? Don't be daft. Why, of course, it's Dave! But that ain't Dave saying that. Just a bunch of randos who oughta get out more.

__

 

 

In tribute to his posthumourousness, I have written a best last joke at Norm Macdonald's expense: Judging by the reaction, his best career move was getting cancer. 

 

If you know his voice and transpose that to the first person, I do believe it'd sound about right. Still, the joke as written should suffice as tribute. But if you're more of the parasocially "butthurt" kind, you may just "entirely miss the point".

 

I loathe to risk falling into the "same guys who" fallacy, but as post-Rotten John put it regarding anger: it's an energy. So while there may not be an individual group of people whose appreciation of a joke depends not on the art with which it is told, but solely on its teller, there is, for want of a more nuanced way to put it, a certain energy common to the approval or disapproval of the same kind of joke depending on its origin.

To be more clear, I'd like to eliminate the socio-political concept of punching up or down for a moment and stick primarily to how a joke that inspires gut-busting guffaws can suddenly seem vicariously cruel if delivered in the opposite direction by positing the hypothetical premise that if I were to go onto any one of the many, by the dint of his death, algorithmically enhanced online videos featuring the wit and wisdom of one Norm Macdonald and type that best last joke into the comments section, it would garner an overabundance of energy that might otherwise describe itself as "butthurt". But there'd probably be a few kudos, as well. And at least one that said the comic himself would have found it funny, and so there.

I hasten to amend that Macdonald was born out of the asshole of the boomer designation, but at the beginning of his rise to fame his peers and fan base largely extended to slightly younger X-ers. My first memories of him are from the end of the 80s' heyday of stand-up comedy on cable television when I observed him to be, approximately, someone of my age. I note now that then the teevee added years of the perception of status, which had accurately enough turned out to've been a few. I say all this to place his origins in a proximity, but a proximity which would in ensuing years take on a greater aspect of the generational gap, i.e. his skewing to an older conservative viewpoint.

 

I do have a couple of videos in mind in which His Brilliancy is lauded. In one, the title suggests that he schools an ignorant anti-Christian comic. The clip is from a show called Last Comic Standing, which is one of those shows with judges who pick winners and losers. In it the comedian Harrison Greenbaum uses an ironic juxtaposition of the Bible and Harry Potter that, in fairness to the critic, you can see coming from so far away that it's devoid of the element of the unexpected that causes laughter. Nevertheless, Judge Roseanne believes he's "real brave" for taking on such subject matter. Judge Macdonald didn't see it that way:

 

"I disagree. I don't think the Bible joke was, uh, brave at all. I, uh, I think if you're gonna take on an entire religion, you should maybe know what you're talking about. J.K. Rowling is a Christian, and J.K. Rowling famously said that, uh, if you're familiar with the scriptures, you could easily guess the ending of her book."

 

Yeah, I dunno. I mean, I agree that ripping religion can be tired, low hanging fruit. But the part about knowing what you're talking about is rich coming from Macdonald. Anyway, there's a default formula sought in the casting of such programs, on down to and including Judge Roseanne's reaction to Judge Macdonald's comment (which functions as well to contrast apparent competing intellectual abilities as much as it does a disagreement over content). The show reveals itself as not for me: All of it, from the stand-up routine to both reactions to it are asinine.

 

If he'd said that he didn't find it brave, but also found it unfunny and left it at that, that'd be fine. But for someone who felt it was better to play the dumb guy, rather than a smug and smart one, he often enough revealed the ignorance of that shrewdly framed inner smart ass that I don't think was the intended effect.

 

The umbrella to this phenomenon is in how he declared himself to be an apolitical comedian, while so much of his shtick depended on poking at political sensitivities. He never seemed to mind if he offended anyone in the process. Now I can hear the comments section in my head telling me I am missing the point, but I suspect Macdonald missed relevant points often.

 

For example, when he said in relation to the latest pandemic that "It's funny how big pharma's so evil... 'til now!" I could be reading too much into this, but my suspicion is that anyone who found it funny isn't really critical of big pharma, or doesn't really understand that it's always the public dime that funds the research, and the private concern that profits from it, often enough to the detriment of public health.

 

It's an otherwise pretty funny five minutes, especially for the crowd at the time, I would think, in the classic cathartic sense for which humor is sometimes the only medicine. But I have seen that one line as rather a comment on how unrealistic it is to view big pharma as being a bad thing. On the other hand, it could be I am missing the point, and he was saying big pharma is, in fact, evil, but we who are in on this joke are willing to look past that for a cure, craven as we are.

 

Nevertheless, my reading comes by way of an expectation based on politically charged precedents set by the comic in spite of what he had often enough said about his finding political humor unfunny. The truth is, I think, rather that political humor rubs him the wrong way only when it would seem to advocate politics he does not agree with. Or something that makes him uncomfortable.

 

Take for example his riff on gay pride, wherein he reduces the concept of parents' pride in a gay son to being proud of his loving cock. Now, I think there is a lot of potentially humorous and thought provoking  territory here, none of which he manages to arrive at.

Pride parades, for example, feature so prominently the sexual aspect of what it means to be a homosexual, that one who does not know what they are talking about might believe that's the only thing it's about. In fairness, for many, it probably is just an occasion to celebrate the flamboyancy of it all unfettered. So a comparison of a pride parade with that of the celebration of the Apollo astronauts made to Macdonald's mind the pride parade less worthy. In a longer version of the bit, he contrasted the silly "pride of being" with the pride of the achievement of military service, and it was really just a throwaway as if the latter was so self-evident. 

 

He cared enough about making some kind of real point that there's an evolution of the material evident in subsequent tellings that reveal concern in its contextualization. But he was destined to miss that point as long as he remained blind to the deception of pride itself, which is excessive self-satisfaction, too often the result of combatting shame.

 

[Enter here my own yet to be crafted joke about a father who feels almost unbearable shame as his son reveals how he murdered a family in cold blood - and how the father immediately swells with pride when his son says he was following orders.] 

 

It's been said he just simply did not give a fuck, as in what people think of him, and indeed you can feel that in much of his work. The homosexual was a frequent target in his material. To my knowledge he never publicly revealed why that might have been, even if he did make jokes about being in the closet. He was familiar with the scriptures, though.

 

Macdonald. Norm. Well played, Internet in my head.

Flocking late to the debate

This joke again: The Pope, John Wayne, and Hitler are getting on a bus. As the Pope attempts to pass the driver, neither showing a senior's pass, nor dropping coinage for the single fare, the driver holds him up with the tenor of a clearing of his throat and a, "Fare, please."

The Pope's graceful smile betrays a hint of condescension. "I am the infallible Holy Pontiff, respected representative of well-over a billion Catholics around the globe," comes his reply. "Anyway," he adds, indicating poverty with a gesture of his hands, "I don't have pockets." He blesses the driver with a sign of the cross and moves to the back of the bus, taking a seat.

He is followed by John Wayne, who likewise attempts to pass ignoring the driver who, as with the Pope, stalls the actor's obliviousness by asking him to show a ticket or pay the fare.

John Wayne contemplates the confrontation with a shift from one foot to the other and then squares himself with the driver and boasts, "I am an American icon, representative of the greatest generation, and a symbol of the heroic taming of the savage frontier. I don't ask you to compensate me for my service and I sure as hell ain't gonna pay for a ride on a pinko city bus." He saunters to the back of the bus and takes a place just near enough the Pope to be able to sit with his legs spread wide apart.

Next comes Hitler.

[alternative addendum::]

The driver takes one look at the Führer and, annoyed, waves him past with a, "Oh, Jesus. Just go ahead!"

The rhetorical moral of this tale is, if you can't stop the Pope or John Wayne, how're you gonna stop Hitler?

 

The present point: imagine surveillance is the Pope. Surveillance cameras and Flock are, respectively, John Wayne and Hitler. If you prefer, replace surveillance with another mode of gathering data on people and, eventually, outsourcing the gathering to be shared with... whomever.

 

This is just the latest iteration I'm prompted to mention. Previously, on Warning About What This Means For Tomorrow When Today Should've Be Enough Yesterday:

The Pope = law & order

John Wayne = lack of accountability for same

Hitler = result of lack of accountability

 

The Pope = prison

John Wayne = privatizing prisons

Hitler = school to prison pipeline

 

The Pope = extraordinary rendition

John Wayne = kill list Tuesdays

Hitler = just bombing whatever with goal post shifting goals

 

The Pope = district-based school funding

John Wayne = charter schools

Hitler = corporate prison pipeline

 

The Pope = state secrets

John Wayne = prosecuting whistleblowers

Hitler = in-group patriotism über alles

 

The Pope = health insurance

John Wayne = insurance mandate

Hitler = coverage rug pull

 

The Pope = Piety and neutrality

John Wayne = "Commies!"

Hitler = "literally" Hitler cough Ben-Gvir

 

The Pope = feature

John Wayne = bug

Hitler = bug feature

 __

 

And in sports: The Reds get picked to perform an operation on a wrenched ankle. Let's go to the video:

Chronos Disease and Jung's Cure

I wrote something about this subject thirteen years ago; my personal statute of restraint prevents my citing it here. I'm only doing this to recapitulate and ramble on. In spite of my criticisms that follow, these are nevertheless the ramblings of an uninitiated ignoramus.

 

The shelves are full of people full of it, which doesn't mean their wares haven't sold out, even if they had in reaching their fulfillment sold out themselves. I'd be late to the game in referring to them as 'grifters', and there are many kinds and many brands. I have two in mind.

 

First, I'm thinking of the Deepak Oprah variety, by which I mean both namesakes and all they have spawned, plus parallel thinkers and all those from whom they stole their wee earth shattering ideas.

 

Take, for instance, "what quantum physics tells us", which one should, of course, for the sake of honesty, amend to what quantum physics does not tell us, or, at best, what it doesn't necessarily rule in or out.

 

To set it up before I dig too deep, I'll briefly mention the second, more qualified grifter class, who, if you're algorithm has allowed, have appeared on every podcast hawking the primacy of the deterministic universe. I wanted to adverbialize the previous sentence with "for some reason" because their exposure gives off psyop-y vibes, as in, like, conspookuousness. But since there are so many grifting off the concept of the psyop, I forwent. My choice of verb should suffice, not to be confused with the so named Hawking.

 

I just want to make conspicuous that their opting for the free-will destroying brand of determinism incorporates the same "what something tells us" claim when the opposite is true, i.e. our observations of the reliable laws of physics do not preclude the truth of our observation of having very real choices, and until you can run an experiment that proves you "could not have done otherwise", you'll never be able to prove otherwise.

 

The primacy of a theory includes its utility. The utility of free will has determined (if you will) the entirety of human existence. Maybe the problem is that the questions of the origin & nature of what may have emerged from all that is fundamental has made for so much mythology that it seems it should follow that all the emergent stuff is just illusory bunk. Wouldn't it be ironic if the planet became an earth sized data center filled with our translations of that same bunk?

 

I'm sure some human-proclaimed tech genius has used the baby and bathwater metaphor on behalf of the expansion of data centers. The first thing I think of whenever I hear that analogy is how it has been used to argue for the utility of the servitude of slavery (read Thomas Carlyle); I cannot think of a positive example, though I am not looking too hard. 

 

Anyway, amusing is the idea that a super intelligent machine could somehow render human life superfluous while also stripping itself of the resources necessary for its own survival. I predict they won't be able to do otherwise.

__ 

 

To drill down  on or zoom in to the allusions of the equal & opposite grifters — the likes of whom are keen to amalgamate science and spiritualism, e.g. a quantum mechanics they understand far less than those who understand it the most (already too little for practical applications (according to me, the uninitiated)) and the vaguely esoteric concepts of Carl G. Jung and the wonderful world of a equally bastardized Buddha — I'd like to zoom in literally- figuratively to our substance as such. In other words, I'll just ignore any claims about what quantum physics tells us.

 

Not only are we said to be part of a universe with more space than substance, but we, or any object within this vast space is comprised of more space than substance. Or, I suppose another way to put it would be that there is more space between our molecules than their collective size. To the uninitiated like myself, this seems like we can only see each other and all these objects around us because of our size.

 

If I were the size of the smallest particle, I would only be able to see particles of comparable scale. If I were an atom, I'd see atoms. I wonder if there's an eye of a size that would see nothing at all. Like, too small to see the distant stars, yet too big to see the distant stars. What would I see if I were the size of the universe?

 

I think I got distracted. What time is it? Time was you could find a clock in the public square. Less so now. You can still find them at the base of a steeple. Perhaps providing that service uses a subliminal psychology that fills the pews when the show is less entertaining than it used to be. 

 

I think about how difficult it is to maintain attendance in a theater vs. the same for a church.

 

Speaking of building attachments to unfalsifiable ideas, this guy called Jung walked the woo line that put butts in the seats. Or maybe his business thrived in spite of it.

 

His essay on synchronicity seems to me, the non-initiate, to be, on the one hand, a claim that mind blowing coincidences are as central to the makeup of the universe as the determinism of physics, yet, on the other hand weaselly enough to be but a meditation on the psychological effect such coincidences have on us. I don't know if anybody has pinned down with precision what he means by comparing "meaning" to causality in relation to the origin of events.

 

To begin with, his qualification of "meaningful coincidences" strikes me as redundant: an unmeaningful coincidence would be a concurrence of events, not a coincidence.

 

Anyway, without projecting any of my ideas on to his, I'd say that in an infinite universe of infinite time, coincidences of the most mind blowing capacity are bound to happen eventually.

 

To you lesser initiated, the idea of synchronicity came to Carl G. Jung while he was treating a patient. She was describing a dream she had had that featured a golden scarab at which point Jung heard a tapping on the window behind him. He went to the window to investigate and saw a gold-green beetle.

 

More significant re. the perspective of his psychology, he says that he was having trouble treating this patient due to her extreme rationality and that when presenting the beetle to her it poked a hole in that perception and enabled her to recognize the symbolic nature of her dream. Or something.

 

What if it hadn't? What if she'd taken his "here's your scarab" comment as woo grifting and decided to discontinue her treatment? What if no one'd bought what he was selling?  

 

 

D'you lie forth?

Congrats, if...

...you feel you belong to that one people who'd had something to declare, just as you feel you do not belong to anyone else who didn't, and/or don't believe Nature's God thought should have. It was the times.

...you hold as an obvious truth that, as that one people, you're equal among yourselves, as sure as was known by your forebears that setting their feet upon new soil was endowed by their Creator, and this they conveyed unto you, otherwise you wouldn't have your feet upon it. It is the times.

...you'd also have refused the Yoke of Dork and cast off your shackles, even if you'd have been three-quarters less likely at the time you'd cosigned and until your death that you'd do the same for others in your service, it being just as self-evident, apparently, that there will be among the Supreme Judge of the world's people always many who are not yet worthy of the pursuit of Happiness, and just as little Life and Liberty. It was and is the times. 

...you know the right to establish yourself as collector and payer, and therewith Representative of the interests of collector and payer, not least of which would be determining with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence how your collection should be dispensed.

...you'll be celebrating your reconfirmed birthright with explosives (loud) and alcohol (proud). Be responsible and vigilant: Savages might use them against you.

I am absolutely right! and other sporeds tails

According to C.G. Pity, I must be a genius. I wonder if Dick Dawkins thinks Chet, as he does Clawmidia, is sentient. If so, I am absolutely right according to consciousness! Or at least the bounds of awareness of the selfish gene guy.

 

Listing the cases would add to my embarrassment, but one in point:

Have the Hurricane & Avalanche ever met for the Stanley Cup?

No. They have met in the playoffs a few times, though:

In 2001 the Avalanche won in the Conference Final and in 2002 the Hurricanes won in the Conference Final.

[Twice is a few times, apparently (or never, which we'll find out later).] 

A Stanley Cup Final matchup between them hasn’t happened because both teams play in the Eastern and Western Conferences respectively, and they’ve never both advanced to the Final in the same season.

Which of the teams used to be in the other conference? Also by the way, Dude, shouldn't your previous final sentence not have the word "both" in it?

The team that switched conferences was the Hurricanes, previously the Hartford Whalers. The franchise relocated to Carolina in 1997 and eventually became part of the Eastern Conference.

The Colorado Avalanche franchise (formerly the Quebec Nordiques) has always been in the league’s western side after modern conference alignment. [huge sick, more later]

And yes — good catch on the wording. The sentence should have said:

“…they’ve never advanced to the Final in the same season.”

Using “both” there was redundant/misplaced, because “they” already refers to the two teams together.

I also meant your other use of "both" in the same sentence.

You're right again. The sentence was:

“...they’ve never both advanced to the Final in the same season.”

So the clean version is:

“...they’ve never advanced to the Final in the same season.”

Good edit.

You just repeated the same use of "both".

Ah — you meant this part:

“...because both teams advanced…”

You're right there too. Nice catch on the repetition.

Again you repeated the same use of "both"; this time you ommited the negative, obviously not how your original read.

Again, again, I was referring to the first use of "both" in that same sentence.

You're absolutely right — I kept focusing on the second “both.”

The other was:

“...because both teams play in the Eastern and Western Conferences respectively...”

A cleaner version would be:

“...because the teams play in the Eastern and Western Conferences, respectively...”

When did Carolina become part of the Eastern Conference?

You caught another mistake from my earlier reply: I accidentally wrote that the Carolina Hurricanes “eventually became part of the Eastern Conference,” implying they weren’t already on the eastern side. 

[This time Chet credited me with catching a mistake I had not. Short of this being an instance of unctuousness, this was a self-own self own.]

The franchise that did switch sides over time was actually the Quebec Nordiques, who became the Colorado Avalanche and has been in the Western Conference since relocation.

How is it, then, that the Avalanche played the Hurricanes in the playoffs in 2001 and 2002, but not the final?

Because I gave you incorrect information earlier — those playoff meetings never happened. [Imagine that!]

The confusion came from me incorrectly claiming they met in conference finals in 2001 and 2002, which would have been impossible anyway because they were in opposite conferences at the time.

["The confusion came from..." is an interesting choice of words. The mix-up emerged from the magic of selfish sentience!] 

The Hurricanes and Avalanche have never met in the playoffs at all.

Will they meet for this season's Stanley Cup?

They could, but it hasn’t happened yet. The matchup is actually pretty plausible this year.

So if they meet, does this imply the end of the world by way of natural disaster?

Only if the Stanley Cup Final expands to include FEMA briefings. The matchup would at least sound like an unusually threatening weather alert.

The NHL schedule-makers probably didn’t intend to create an apocalyptic crossover event, but the branding synergy would be remarkable.

[Will the league be consulting Chet on the matter of branding synergy?] 

 

—— 

The King is an Efficiency Hog

Neither dead nor forgotten

Vergottet not made

Giant o'er an era

La Brea of the pits of time

Oily eminence at an age unseen

Sort of smooth for the size

Towering are His totals

Lo! the likes of which a guise

Accolades in jackets

There are rackets and there are lies

Book a version doth espies

The Creed of King James

So a profession of faith

The goat is a devil

Say the hater commentators

He'd pass to risk not the clutch

His Paul's the gall to claim the name as such

Vibing in (20 26)

Who or what you vibing with? Tell me what you feel you believe. For vibes rake plausibility into a pile of virtue.

 

So usher in them vibes, make the word plausible sound like a bell. Slow clap that plausible. Ring in the new vibes. Gather up what you'd sensed about the old, douse it with accelerant, and show Heaven what you're made of!

 

——

 

 

My Own Private Irony 

The first order of business is to recognize that this thing called projection is the result of all I perceive being that which dictates foremost what I think and believe and the assumption that others see what I see and therefore plausibly believe what I believe.

 

The subordinated order at hand is the perception of others' agency, and not least why my focus is on the one or other among so many, which determines expectation.

 

As a fan who recognized how overweening an attitude of supremacy fans can exude, it was dependent upon our sharing a chosen space, as opposed to their being in my space or my wandering into theirs. And this was at a time where the amount of attention would seem to be dominated by "others" and stacked against "us", until I realised mine was just a lesser level beneficiary of the same favor.

 

Not unlike as regards the religious, the question is why do they come across as so toxic? Are they really invading my space, or am I wandering into theirs looking for conflict? Is it really that hard to ignore those fandoms? Are they, like, drive-by firing at me or bombing my buildings or trying to indoctrinate the children - or is it rather that I seek out that which I find most perplexing because I also have a chip on my shoulder? That's the origin of the term fan. You'd find that thing within every fandom proportional to your finding overrated the thing of which they're fans.

——

 

Have I got an anecdote for you. And for you and you and you. For my anecdote remains anecdotal until its collated with others into a representative sample. No one's story alone is statistically significant. Until it is.

Be wary as well of someone's citing a study; it's only anecdotal until their story checks out.

Cool story, bro. Gotta link?

My anecdote? It's all vibes until a hard object smacks you in the face. Maybe until then. You could take the feeling in your head caused by the object's smack for just more vibes. The good vibrations knell of cognitive dissonance means you can choose avoidance, willful ignorance, or dissociation without having to choose anything at all.

Words are funny little things. And runny. The messy semantics of this language I seem to be using at the moment can spill out into a globalized formation of already appropriated anglicisms for the sake of vibe sniffing to one's tolerance in any language of one's choosing, again without having to choose.

I am thinking about the word "woke" and how anti-woke is woke on the other side of the bed. Anecdotally, encountering an overweight black woman working at the DMV who moves more slowly than you'd like automatically means some svelte white woman was discriminated against in the filling of that position. Someone just knows it's true because everywhere they look there's a black person working. Stay anti-woke!

I use this example not simply for the origin of "woke", but because the number of times my assumptions about someone's politics was challenged, it so frequently hinged upon their fixation that black people were being unfairly advantaged by way of things like affirmative action.

 

Affirmative action is to DEI what political correctness is to woke.

 

Anyway, in lieu of an actual anecdote that you should know by now is not coming, suffice it to say that American politics is not just determined by the most obvious binary, but is woven to its core with racial animosity. It's liminal, unless it's not.  

 

——

 

 

In preemptive self-referential service to- and in the interest of clarity, "what it means" (see below) means either, what they should say, or what truth can be gleaned from what they say by way of the curtailment and delimitation of what they say.

 

Who's "they"? I dunno. Maybe me. Maybe you. Somebody.

 

See this entry. Preemptive condolences. On that note, I begin where I left off, whereby any interpretative utterance should include "as far as I know" despite eventual superfluity, contradiction, or irony:

 

what they say = what it means

most of something = maybe a majority

9 times out of 10 = probably a majority

99% of something = gotta be a majority

99.999% = I'm talking to hear myself

People forget that... = Consider that...

People tend to forget... = Consider...
People don't realize... = I realize...

it's ironic... = it might be interesting...

Nobody is saying... = I disagree with...

kind of [+ verb] = [verb].

 

 

——

 

 

pop quiz

At what point does unilateral execution of executive authority, dressed in board-speak and cloaked in trade secrecy,  go from being an inconvenient consideration to unworthy of explosive disputation?

 

When should schlepping shlubs off the street and into untold cages stop being a kosher rule of law thing and be seen as simply something scary?

 

When do people of a political persuasion, when faced with the fallibility of their heroes, throw up their hands and say, "Eff it all, they're all corrupt!" without mentioning any names?

 

Answer: When the vibes are all wrong.

 

__ 

 

 

And speaking of the sundry and variable tools in the kit of manufacturing vibes of consent, it shouldn't be a mind-numbing notion that Chomsky's in a class of controlled opposition. 

 

Not that being "in the Epstein files" is de facto that, but as Ohtarzie pointed out all those years ago, he plausibly wouldn't know it if he was compromised.

 

Or, at least the professor's default intellectual consciousness is thinking himself beyond the taint. Whether or not he has a clear conscience, i.e. all the way down, is your guess.

 

Don't forget mob rules – that sadomasochistic way of scratching each others' backs.

 

Gock got sore when I suggested I'd already considered an unspoken idea he had begun to explain: that Don Dumps In His Pants would be the beneficiary of the kompromat implied in activities of the Epstein character. This would explain to some degree how, in spite of the widespread mockery he receives from pundits in the press, he manages to get what he wants from so many he was supposed to have gotten schooled by. 

 

In fairness, Gock's irritation, I assume, was not because he wanted to be the smarter guy in the room (or only that I was interrupting his train of thought) but because the casual projection based on widespread experience would indicate one thinks oneself is erudite enough just by being aware of the blackmail aspect of the operation and leave it at that.

 

For what rings plausible to the Epstein obsessed among the Dump Resisters is apparently the president's terrified of it being revealed how he does what with his naughty bits and to whom. As if. Chalk one up to the effectiveness of the algorithm. Preaching to the choir was never so easy.

 

What doesn't fit the vibes of gleefully owning your enemies on-line (an up-vibe form of doom scrolling) is the fact that it's all transactional, and at a certain level no one is immune.

 

The people in the photos wouldn't be there if there wasn't anything in it for them. And Epstein having them there benefitted him or his clients in any number of ways.

 

Of course being in a photo with him doesn't make you a sexual predator, but his posing in a photo with you serves a purpose either way. His or their potential peccadilloes is either extracurricular, or, as unfair as it seems, a distraction.

 

Still, even if you got the ultimate kompromat, as soon as you out your ostensible opposition, you've lost your leverage. That's the point of being in the big club Carlin talked about. You can't be a beneficiary if you're ratting out your benefactor. Winning some and losing some is win-win. Or better than whatever the alternative is. Plausibly.

 

——

 

 

Truth Lies In Middle
Somewhere Over to Nowhere

it outlines the space

 

it defines the place

the truth lies in the middle

of all they do say

 

all the lost marbles

doled globally that-a-way
to-ward the lobby

in plain light of day
there's only one tendency

for the truth does lie

casting nothing left

but dashed center-directions
pressed moderately

 

rubes' oligarchy
grabbed and gagged in the east wing 

re-released and based

 

it's not at the ends

where the horseshoe converges

it's in the middle*

 

*Gock told me that

 

 

 __

 

 

Happy New Year, everybody!

Let's make 20 26 a thing.. .

Fr. Ewetoob or: How I learned to loathe the collapse of the wave function

With a chip-chip here and a chip-chip there.

—AI!  AI? Oh.

__

 

Thoughts that only seem random (or so they'd have you believe ;):

Where resolved you're a helpless observer of determined fate, where observation too's only apparent by trick of imagined intuition, where imagination is only imagined.

 

Don't be bothered by the sneaking suspicion that this attitude benefits those who stand above it, and you. That "they", by knowing know better, or, hey!, even if they don't know: like... because they don't have access to this incredibly advanced knowledge are immune to the pitfalls of being under its control. Like, free to behave as if they have free will. Very liar's paradox, don't you think?

Keep buying that schtick, you, and you're hardly other than Deepak Oprah haboring hawking the latest willful conflation of all into everything: "In fact quantum physics tells us the Buddha is our master, everything is as it is and all you can do is go with the flow, this is The Key to happiness, bringing your consciousness in tune with that of the universe to manifest your heart's desires by wanting what you get." 

;):

 

Say you wanna build a perpmo machine. Forget about the perp for the moment, perpetually bleeding energy, and focus on the mo.

 

If you're pedalling left right left right, the harder the left, the less needed the right, the harder the right, the less needed the left. Pushing as hard down on the pedal with the left leg can indeed make the right leg have to work less hard, but it'd be silly to think you could ride with one leg simply going through the motions; if the right leg pushes all the harder, the same should go for the left. Keep that up. Where do we get the energy for that?

 

mo  -  ti  -  va  -  tion

 

What bias sees & whatnot

The intelligent discourse is dumb; it cannot say anything universal, which, given we live in the universe now, is a requirement revealed lacking here, there, & everywhere.

 

No doubt IQ is a measure of something certain, but show me someone who applies it to claim who's not apt to qualify as particularly intelligent and I'll show you a certain kind of idiot.

 

Cousins

heut früh himmelwaerts

Jup'ter, Saturn, Venus, Mars

sie starren mich an

 

früh freigekommen

Jeff, Ricky, Jackie, David

Vetternsprozession

 

im engelchen Sinn

gleichsam geistlich als Sinnbild

und auch andersrum

 

im engeren Sinn

seid ihr äußerst weit entfernt

von uns, die warten

Id is what id is

Individual reactions represent parts of the poll. Ignoring all but what's statistically significant represents an error in the errand. Each is its own easy answer, yet there's truth to every one.

 

What we have in common is the desire to be told something others would rather ignore or cannot understand or will remain oblivious to. People pulling together aren't moved by the same issues. Imagine each person hanging from a different string tugged by the same puppeteer. Campaigns are complicated that way, but some are better than others at carrying them out. There are always enough lies to go around.

 

Being utterly freed from the albatross of truth helps. One could try to counter that by educating the masses on the intricacies of history, its effect on present realities, lessons to be learned about better laid plans, etc., but there lies an honesty we've yet to achieve, and again, it contains too much too many people don't want to hear. Or so I hear. Fudgy facts filtered through the tradition of folk conditioning and you can forget about clarity. Hence simple sloganeering.

But if you're ailing, looking for the easiest, most significant answer, it's people will flock in greater numbers to the biggest crock because it seems like it's not trying to hide anything.

 

Anyway, don't invest your love in fear. And bring on the white winged dove.

 

Untold suns dawning out of darkness

I recall an interview of an artist roommate of Syd Barrett's in which he told of how when he'd be working on a painting in his room, he'd also be acutely aware of Syd's inert presence, lying on his bed in the other room, and he imagined Syd must be thinking that he could get up and do anything, but as soon as he did, it would preclude the possibility of anything else. At least that's what I recall of it (though I'm not gonna search for it on YooToob and distract myself).

 

Anyway, it struck me as profound at the time, whereby only now do I consider his roommate's tale a classic projection, of which he would seem to have been aware, insofar as he did state it was what he had imagined Syd might be thinking.

 

At any rate, this reminds me, too, of what I perceive as the increased commonality of the discussion of the notion that we humans have no free will, but rather, like everything else in the observable physical universe, are only objects in a chain of determinism, and, though this is not new, it not so long ago occurred to me that this is both a simplification and complication of reality.

 

In short, the deterministic nature of the cause & effect universe does not preclude our having choices at every twist and turn. Yet most of these seem to me like choices at the ho-hum place of the routine management of the human condition of being aware we can make them. Or not.

 

The choice to paint one's walls falls into this category, I think. Then there are the manifold decisions to be made that become increasingly unavoidable as the state from which this confrontation occurs falls into categories we perceive as more crucial to wellbeing, and ultimately survival.

 

As regards depression and anxiety, I think about how my established routine has gone so far toward diminishing their debilitating effects by keeping them less looming than their latency would imply. But that's not all !-D

 

Indeed, the sense of purpose is always looming; indeed, merely getting up early achieves only the first step wherefrom the rest presents itself with nagging choice after nagging choice, to be made, or not, whereby each has its own threat assessment swimming synaptically unseen yet ever present, as is evinced by what I've coined the OCD of mind, i.e. the manic nature of seemingly shambolic and infinitely rapid thinking that won't let one go.

 

Hence the routine, which continues with a series of doings, the only obsessive nature of which is anything that would get in their way, i.e. force a choice to change the program, a change of commitment. But these are pretty easy to get around as long as I can avoid all-or-nothing thinking.

 

Enough of the pitfalls of freewill; there is also a liberating freedom — at not just one, but two ends of the spectrum of always choo-choo choosing: At the one end is an eternal recurrence of the realization that, even if I cannot do anything I want, I can feel any way I want about it; what was nagging me was merely me. At the other end's the choice to not choose, leaving one's future free for whatever comes next.

 

As long as I can balance the ability to know what I can do without (and say, 'I don't need this' without nagging consequences) with the recognition of how doing-with would net positive results without drastically changing my universe, my sanity remains intact.

 

As regards the fear of commitment, I think it is based on all-or-nothing thinking, with oft unwarranted worries about the exclusion of anything or anyone else. Selfish or not, can't I choose to make someone else (feel) good or better or less bad?

 

People who love music have reported sometimes getting more out of creating mixtapes for someone else. Correctly or not, they feel a sense of giving to someone else the enjoyment the music'd brought to themselves. I can't imagine the choice to make a mixtape shuts out future personal possibilities.

 

Can I do that by painting a wall? In my case, probably not, yet the walls of my kitchen have provided a sense of something whose value I cannot diminish. And I didn't even do anything.

 

Had I painted the collection of tiny triangles that just happen to recount to my mind the tale of The Illustrated Man, with the other tales therein, including the blank spot on the wall for the fear of the known future, I am sure my retelling of the tale of the painting of the wall would paint my face with the sense of accomplishment, my attitude about pride notwithstanding. Let's say the sense of satisfaction would be net positive if not at all selfless. And you can always repaint a wall or leave it for someone else, assuming someone does not come along and take that choice away beforehand. 

 

The creative impulse rules.

"The World the Children Made"

Liquified Natural Gasback Fundi

Advertising does not define our perception of reality, it just sells enough bits and pieces of it to partially shape a landscape of choices, which affords certain brands of consumers the right to claim that their choices are more limited than they'll admit is true at the same time they're buying enough of what is being hawked to dictate more the delimitation of choice than the advertising itself. The eventual unavailability of alternatives is a self-made delusion nurtured into full-fledged reality.

The only outright successful advertising campaign is the long-con that has people buying in to the advertising industry by the billions. This is not to say that the advertising they offer never works for those paying for it; it just works without fail for the industry itself.

—6 January 2014

That'd be a few months post Euromaidan. Three paragraphs later it boils down to this being, ultimately, about the creation of an environment, i.e. an industry-friendly one. Whose industry? Good question. The long-term rams of being hammered by hangover inducing, malignancy curating, fear fomenting, fossil fueling, and, everybody's fave, ultra- processed stomach stuffing makes meaningful public discussion... what was the question?

 

The advertiser'd tell you it's ours. They're not wrong. With apologies to those of you not us, we're buying it (even if our private payment app doesn't say we're paying for it), as in, like, lapping it up while being lapped up. Soaking in it, foremost psychologically, unless your head's already under.

 

Naturally by "us" I mean "not them". But since they say they're us too, and they manage to pay one dollar to privatize any of ours vs. the eight to twelve figures that come out of the politico managed monetary fund whenever it's the other way round,  then whatevs they're selling back to us we don't even know enough to make a stink about, of their odorless, colorless liquefaction, is more justified than this awful text.

 

The manufacture of consent, insofar as it indicates the post-production of public opinion through selective censorship & propaganda, has resulted in the perpetuation of plausible consent, a cultural aspect not defined by whether or not the prospective consumer of media believe what's put forth, but by the expectation that others believe it. As such, it maintains the appearance of consent. In other words, consent is not necessary, only the plausibility of it.

—25 May 2015

 

 

Nevertheless, necessarily, at some point, because at some point somewhere somebody had to have wondered whether the steady growth of the plausibility of others' consent had by longer term diminishing dissonance become one's own, before they forgot they wondered such a thing, probably at the point of payment notification, now synchronized for easier than ever oversight (pun intended).

 

The intro to that text from 2015 started with an appetiser on plausible denial with a Cold War era sample because, as an x-er, I was just ripe enough, plausibly, to pick my own perspective on the b.s. being served up as freedom loving good versus evil empire enabling bad. Along the way to four decades later the freedom's freighted from allegorical apple pie to literal fried potatoes not literally French for emphasis,  to, most prominently as far as I can see, the amalgamation of a domestic and foreign threat just balmy enough to make plausible the denial it has anything to do with business as usual.

Now, the advertising advocates - they'll tell you that proven ad strategies are being employed to influence every aspect of our lives; and the stats geeks will interpret the results and tell you who you are; and although most won't believe this definition about themselves, they'll believe the definition about everyone else.

That, in this context, superfluous seeming insert is meant to recontextualize what is plausibly thunk to be thought by this new-fangled enemy. I don't mean to fall into the same guys who fallacy, which could cite the idea, as plausible as anything, that the reactionaries of then are the same of today, with the ironic twist of their having abandoned some key point of their ideological inheritance (here touted as a good thing), but that is plausibly thunk.

 

What is thought by any enemy, however, and however convoluted, begets in adaptable measure the need to adopt a most opposite position, the most plausible of which, conveniently enough, comes packaged as one available option. That this option will continue to follow, cafeteria style, that which they were hired to oppose (eventually over the Overton cliff) is not necessary knowledge as long as those to be opposed are tilting against some other bluff.

 

I don't know what anyone plausibly believes, but imagine generations of a few plausibly exclusive sets of believers unwittingly assuming they had has shaped an environment, superficially oppositional, that, in spite of all the apparent turbulence, is homeostatic for us who benefit from not questioning the cost of certain processes. Luckily, the processes are included in featured ads, certain details depending. It's our business it's none of our business. How bad could it be?