“Of course, it’s a fungible commodity and they don’t flag, you know, the molecules, where it’s going and where it’s not. But in the sense of the Congress today, they know that there are very, very hungry domestic markets that need that oil first. So, I believe that what Congress is going to do, also, is not to allow the export bans to such a degree that it’s Americans who get stuck holding the bag without the energy source that is produced here, pumped here. It’s got to flow into our domestic markets first.”
"Who has sent this new serpent into our ruinous garden, already too fouled, too crowded to qualify as any locus of innocence -- unless innocence be our age's neutral, our silent passing into the machineries of indifference -- something that Kekulé's Serpent had come to -- not to destroy, but to define to us the loss of . . . we had been given certain molecules, certain combinations and not others . . . we used what we found in Nature, unquestioning, shamefully perhaps -- but the Serpent whispered, 'They can be changed, and new molecules assembled from the debris of the given. . . . ' Can anyone tell me what else he whispered to us? Come -- who knows?"
"As Putin rears his head and comes into the airspace of the United States of America, where do they go? It's Alaska. It's just right over the border."
"Kekulé dreams the Great Serpent holding its own tail in its mouth, the dreaming Serpent which surrounds the World. But the meanness, the cynicism with which this dream is to be used. The Serpent that announces, 'The World is a closed thing, cyclical, resonant, eternally-returning,' is to be delivered into a system whose only aim is to violate the Cycle."
"I think God's will has to be done in unifying people and companies to get that gas line built, so pray for that."
"M-maybe there is a Machine to take us away, take us completely, suck us through the electrodes out of the skull 'n' into the Machine and live there forever with all the other souls it's got stored there. It could decide who it would suck out, a-and when. Dope never gave you immoratality. You hadda come back, every time, into a dying hunk of smelly meat! But We can live forever, in a clean, honest, purified, Electroworld"
GIBSON: What if Israel decided it felt threatened and needed to take out the Iranian nuclear facilities?
PALIN: Well, first, we are friends with Israel and I don't think that we should second guess the measures that Israel has to take to defend themselves and for their security.
GIBSON: So if we wouldn't second guess it and they decided they needed to do it because Iran was an existential threat, we would cooperative or agree with that.
PALIN: I don't think we can second guess what Israel has to do to secure its nation.
GIBSON: So if it felt necessary, if it felt the need to defend itself by taking out Iranian nuclear facilities, that would be all right.
PALIN: We cannot second guess the steps that Israel has to take to defend itself.
Proverbs for Paranoids:
1. You may never get to touch the Master, but you can tickle his creatures.
2. The innocence of the creatures is in inverse proportion to the immorality of the Master.
3. If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about answers.
4. You hide, they seek.
5. Paranoids are not paranoid because they're paranoid, but because they keep putting themselves, fucking idiots, deliberately into paranoid situations.
"But what Abraham Lincoln had said, and that's a repeat in my comments, was let us not pray that God is on our side in a war or any other time, but let us pray that we are on God's side.
That's what that comment was all about, Charlie. And I do believe, though, that this war against extreme Islamic terrorists is the right thing. It's an unfortunate thing, because war is hell and I hate war, and, Charlie, today is the day that I send my first born, my son, my teenage son overseas with his Stryker brigade, 4,000 other wonderful American men and women, to fight for our country, for democracy, for our freedoms."
"Facts are but the Play-things of lawyers, -- Tops and Hoops, forever a-spin.... Alas, the Historian may indulge no such idle Rotating. History is not Chronology, for that is left to lawyers, -- nor is Remembrance, for Remembrance belongs to the People. History can as little pretend to the Veracity of the one, as claim the Power of the other, -- her Practitioners, to survive, must soon learn the arts of the quidnunc, spy and Taproom Wit, -- that there may ever continue more than one life-line back into a Past we risk, each day, losing our forbears in forever, -- not a Chain of single Links, for one broken Link could lose us All, -- rather, a great disorderly Tangle of Lines, long and short, weak and strong, vanishing into the Mnemonick Deep, with only their Destination in common."
"where it is the taxpayers looking to bail out. But ultimately, what the bailout does is help those who are concerned about the healthcare reform that is needed to help shore up our economy. Um, helping, oh -- it's got to be all about job creation too. Shoring up our economy, and putting it back on the right track. So healthcare reform and reducing taxes and reining in spending has got to accompany tax reductions, and tax relief for Americans, and trade, we've got to see trade as opportunity, not as a competitive, um, scary thing,"
"Who claims Truth, Truth abandons. History is hir'd, or coerc'd, only in Interests that must ever prove base. She is too innocent, to be left within the reach of anyone in Power, -- who need but touch her, and all her Credit is in the instant vanish'd, as if it had never been. She needs rather to be tended lovingly and honorably by fabulists and counterfeiters, Ballad-Mongers and Cranks of ev'ry Radius, Masters of Disguise to provide her the Costume, Toilette, and Bearing, and Speech nimble enough to keep her beyond the Desires, or even the Curiosity, of Government."
Dé Sathairn, Meán Fómhair 27, 2008
Dé Luain, Meán Fómhair 22, 2008
So the Subject of "Star Trek" Came Up Yesterday.
There are of course many logical absurdities in the Star Trek universe. (e.g. Every intelligent species except for humans has always lived under a single culture and language.) and though I'm sure that many others have covered this before I can't help but be intrigued by his carousing. Am I the only one who wonders how it can be that all alien species are divided into "male" and "female" in ways that human beings can easily recognize? What are the odds that a single alien species would evolve something approximating a vagina well enough to accommodate the human penis, let alone all of them? Why does the "Enterprise" never run into intelligent beings who reproduce asexually? Or exchange genetic information in ways wholly different from sex as we know it?
"Star Trek's" paper thin metaphors calling for racial harmony may be admirable, but I'm afraid I simply can't stand behind such egregious anthropocentricism. They have simply paved the way for a "new" order in which, instead of the European man raping the world, mankind comes together in locker-room brotherhood to rape the universe. Tragic folly indeed.
"Star Trek's" paper thin metaphors calling for racial harmony may be admirable, but I'm afraid I simply can't stand behind such egregious anthropocentricism. They have simply paved the way for a "new" order in which, instead of the European man raping the world, mankind comes together in locker-room brotherhood to rape the universe. Tragic folly indeed.
Dé Máirt, Meán Fómhair 02, 2008
The U.S. Constitution is a gaseous self-Imploding star (Part 1. Red State Pagan.)
It is well known that only a handful of blinkered fools believe that "conservative" and "liberal" are objective terms. The standards for what is conservative and what is liberal changes as one moves from age to age and place to place. The most famous example of this would be the meaning of the word "pagan." In Roman days the word was roughly equivalent to our "rube" or "redneck". Those who adhered to the old gods were considered too unsophisticated to groove with the new monotheistic cryptoerotic death cult. So we see that the ancient meaning of "pagan" was completely different from the modern definition, i.e. "lesbian book store owner."
When one looks at the whole of recorded history, the terms "conservative" and "liberal" become wholly inadequate. A somewhat better general division would be between traditionalists who view their native society as a father or a god, something to obey and submit to, and reformists or innovationalists who view their native society as an enterprise that they are entitled to influence. This is, admittedly, still grossly simplistic, but it's the best I can do for now. If I were getting paid to write this than perhaps I would take the time to think up more developed classifications.
If one again looks at the whole of recorded history, it becomes obvious that the countryside of any civilization is always more "conservative", while the cities are always more "liberal." It is as predictable as the despised minority group and lamely justified male dominion. The reasons for this are not, I think, really that abstract or obtuse; nothing that a person of average intelligence couldn't get a basic grasp on if they took the time to think about it. But I've been tumbling my own ideas for how and why for the past few hours now. At any rate this is my blog. This is the age for the narcissist to gorge himself and I shall have my fill.
The countryside is, of course, closer to nature, and the tyrannical dictates thereof, in ways that are both important and superficial. The human tendency to equate the harvest cycle with our own life and reproduction cycles is universal. The rural mind is less inclined to be bothered by the notion that it exists chiefly to spawn somebody else than the city mind is. The old gender roles don't appear to be anywhere near as baffling or insane as they do to the modern urbanite. Now that I think about it, there have been many people, myself included, who have unfairly supposed that the adherence to these roles is born out of a desperate and cowardly attempt to impose predetermined meaning on a life that appears to be empty and chaotic. It would be more accurate to say that the rustic mind is simply trying to interpret the meaning that seems self-apparent to him.
But than there are darker reasons for traditionalism in the country. One is economic force. If we go back to traditional gender roles, we see that they tend to hold in areas where physical labor, and thus brute physical strength, is still of central importance to the local economy. (Indeed, traditional manliness is held in higher value in medium-sized industrial cities like Akron or Toledo than in some smaller college towns.) The fact that I am bigger than the lass sitting across from me, than, is not just a cute evolutionary accident, (There are reasons why country-dwellers are loathe to believe that there is any such thing.) but my means to provide for myself, gain resources, and attract a mate, and it simply must be a purpose ordained to me by a higher power, because that's the only way that spending fourteen hours dragging a plow through a shit-inseminated barley field would be more appealing than suicide.
Beyond this are the psychological effects of living in the country. Life in a small community of people discourages personal distinction, sharpening of individual thought. To be in a human settlement dwarfed by the surrounding countryside creates a sense of intangibility, a heightened awareness of mortality. The desire to reproduce becomes intense, and it won't do to merely pass on the length of your nose or the color of your eyes. My son must inherit my personality, otherwise I never rose from this earth at all. To truly reproduce myself I must destroy time. To destroy time I must make all other ways of life deviant, I must make every figure of authority a father, and I must make every tradition sacred and unchangeable. Than let me smoke and gorge and drink and work until my spine is twisted like the windbreaks that have been dead for fifty years, yet still stand because they too understand the rules of the land. Than let me have an early rest and let my son become me.
When one looks at the whole of recorded history, the terms "conservative" and "liberal" become wholly inadequate. A somewhat better general division would be between traditionalists who view their native society as a father or a god, something to obey and submit to, and reformists or innovationalists who view their native society as an enterprise that they are entitled to influence. This is, admittedly, still grossly simplistic, but it's the best I can do for now. If I were getting paid to write this than perhaps I would take the time to think up more developed classifications.
If one again looks at the whole of recorded history, it becomes obvious that the countryside of any civilization is always more "conservative", while the cities are always more "liberal." It is as predictable as the despised minority group and lamely justified male dominion. The reasons for this are not, I think, really that abstract or obtuse; nothing that a person of average intelligence couldn't get a basic grasp on if they took the time to think about it. But I've been tumbling my own ideas for how and why for the past few hours now. At any rate this is my blog. This is the age for the narcissist to gorge himself and I shall have my fill.
The countryside is, of course, closer to nature, and the tyrannical dictates thereof, in ways that are both important and superficial. The human tendency to equate the harvest cycle with our own life and reproduction cycles is universal. The rural mind is less inclined to be bothered by the notion that it exists chiefly to spawn somebody else than the city mind is. The old gender roles don't appear to be anywhere near as baffling or insane as they do to the modern urbanite. Now that I think about it, there have been many people, myself included, who have unfairly supposed that the adherence to these roles is born out of a desperate and cowardly attempt to impose predetermined meaning on a life that appears to be empty and chaotic. It would be more accurate to say that the rustic mind is simply trying to interpret the meaning that seems self-apparent to him.
But than there are darker reasons for traditionalism in the country. One is economic force. If we go back to traditional gender roles, we see that they tend to hold in areas where physical labor, and thus brute physical strength, is still of central importance to the local economy. (Indeed, traditional manliness is held in higher value in medium-sized industrial cities like Akron or Toledo than in some smaller college towns.) The fact that I am bigger than the lass sitting across from me, than, is not just a cute evolutionary accident, (There are reasons why country-dwellers are loathe to believe that there is any such thing.) but my means to provide for myself, gain resources, and attract a mate, and it simply must be a purpose ordained to me by a higher power, because that's the only way that spending fourteen hours dragging a plow through a shit-inseminated barley field would be more appealing than suicide.
Beyond this are the psychological effects of living in the country. Life in a small community of people discourages personal distinction, sharpening of individual thought. To be in a human settlement dwarfed by the surrounding countryside creates a sense of intangibility, a heightened awareness of mortality. The desire to reproduce becomes intense, and it won't do to merely pass on the length of your nose or the color of your eyes. My son must inherit my personality, otherwise I never rose from this earth at all. To truly reproduce myself I must destroy time. To destroy time I must make all other ways of life deviant, I must make every figure of authority a father, and I must make every tradition sacred and unchangeable. Than let me smoke and gorge and drink and work until my spine is twisted like the windbreaks that have been dead for fifty years, yet still stand because they too understand the rules of the land. Than let me have an early rest and let my son become me.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
