Thoughts and Invective -- Maudlin Edition

THE ABSURD TIMES

 

FUCK IT

Bobby McGee

A while ago, Kris Kristopherson wrote the line "Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose."  Nice.  That line, along with a Janis Joplin recording of the song, left him with enough money never to have to work again in his life.

Some have even written about it at great length, analyzing its meaning, and so on.  That's not our purpose here.

Thomas Mann's last masterpiece, Dr. Faustus, has a similar line, sort of.  Now I've only read translations of the book.  While I am comfortable reading Goethe, Schiller, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, (Heine and Hesse for sure), and so on in the German, Thomas Mann is a bit of a different case.  Now I can enjoy reading Milton's prose, even though some of his sentences run on for 50 or so words.  Somehow, he uses semi-colons and the like so that the meaning is clear. I can even agree with most of his points once I allow for his first premise that there is a god.  Dut I draw the line at a couple of pages, especially in German where they usually save the verb for the end.  No, I'll read a translation thank you.

But by a little tweaking, mainly elimination one adjective, Thomas Mann wrote "Freedom's just another word for subjectivity."  You can actually sing it to the same tune, and it makes more sense.  

Israel

The face of Nitwit Yahoo is quite ugly.  It also reminds one of the worst things Israel has done.  Unfortunately, it also leads to reinforcement of the anti-Jewish sentiments around the world.  No wonder the Hassidic sect carry signs saying ZIONISM IN NOT JUDAISM.  Perhaps in the days of Daniel Deronda there was something in it, back in the days of Queen Victoria, but today the movement is simply repugnant. 

Sexism

After women use the bath room, is it too much to ask that they put the seat back up?  It seems like such a little thing to do.  In other words, the whole thing is getting too tiresome.

Racism

One thing I noticed most about that 73 year old fart that drew his gun instead of his taser is that he looks like Dick Cheney.   It is a haunting resemblance, especially with his glasses on.

I heard a black comedian say "You lost your right to discuss race during the O.J. trial."  I wondered about that as I was on the defense side all the time and I think I'm "white".  I guess several factors entered into this.  Marsha Clark revealed herself as a real bitch, worse than the Lilith of the old Frasier and Cheers series.   Barry Sheck was great fun to watch.  You had to be pulling for the guy when he tried to ask a simple question, objection, sustained, then tried again.  Five times and finally the answer was allowed.  Imagine the effect on a juror.  What horrible information was being suppressed?   And even with this team of Prima Donna attorneys, OJ maintained control of the defense as a football coach would his team.  That's why Scheck was elevated to second chair, despite being the lowest paid one there.   Clark objected to the term "hysterical" as "sexist" as Freud had used it as a "wandering uterus."  Sheck's team found that she was the first person to use the herm in the trial, months ago.

One of the best things about it for me happened a year or so later when Clark came out with her account of the trial.  She called Sheck "easily the most obnoxious person at the trial."

FUBAR MEDIA

[Fucked up beyond all repair=FUBAR]

A pretty mild-mannered 60+ year old post office employee has been crusading against money in government.  Anyone here know that corporations can give as much as they want to buy off congress and that they do.  So, this guy decides on an act of "civil disobedience," sends a video and makes several phone calls to a newspaper in advance, then flies to what amounts to a mo-ped with a rotor blade on top like a helicopter (called a gyrocopter), and land on the Capitol Lawn with a letter for each congressman and senator.  He thought it would bring attention to campaign reform.

The media turns it into a madhouse of the need for more counter-terrorism measures.  Now why would that be?  There is more money in it, that's why.  This is what our democratic system has come to. 

Lest any other country thing we are racist here in the U.S.A, remember we elected a Black President.  Things are so much better now.

IRAQ

They say they have killed al-Duhry.  He was the second in command to Saddam and there was a 10 million dollar bounty on him.  Of course, for over a decade, they have claimed he was dead.  Of this much you can be certain: he was not with Daesh.  Perhaps he advised them, but his goal was to re-establish the Ba'ath party.

Libya

Hundreds are fleeing to reach Italy.  In the past, these people found gainful, peaceful employment when Gaddafi, but we took care of that to make the world a better place.  Sort of how we improved life for Iraq, made things so much better for Palestinians, and are trying to do in Syria.  It didn't quite go our way in Syria, so we created a "model" in Yemen.

Government

Perhaps competence is over-rated.

Education

Teachers and administrators are being locked up for helping their students "cheat".  The problem is that G.W.'s plan to leave no child behind consists in nothing but standardized tests.

Now, I liked standardized tests.  I never scored lower that the 97% percentile on any of them and on one I got a perfect score once I explained why one of the questions in logic was incorrect.  They worked in my favor because they were completely anonymous and the machine scoring them did not know how misanthropic and anti-social I was.  In short, there was no room for teacher bias.

However, these tests do not measure the ability to think but rather the ability to memorize [unless, of course, you study them and the psychology of the test designers as I did].  School in this country is designed to indoctrinate, not to encourage critical thinking.  Why if you have people going around able to think for themselves, who would vote for the idiots and greedy bastards that are running?  Who would sign up and get slaughtered in our many, many wars of imperialistic aggression?  No, best to make them learn how to do long division and remember dates.

SUMMARY

I am really a nice guy, loved by people all around the world.  All of the above may offend some people, but then they are simply morons, or idiots, or rich.  So, have a nice time!

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