Monday, July 19, 2021

I am so humble

Your compliments on my last edition were so warm and generous, that I don't know how to respond with the appropriate humility. I finally found someone who could:


There is an ad first, but you can skip it as it's not as perfect as I am.

Of course, this is the link: The Absurd Times: Adventures in Surrealism https://absurdtimes.blogspot.com/2021/07/adventures-is-surrealism.html
Bless you all!
Your most humble servant

Sunday, July 18, 2021

Adventures in Surrealism



THE ABSURD TIMES























This was on Facebook.




Lots of things going on.


Adolf

Some general around our last leader explained Germany to him while they were there, and the ex-pres said he heard good things about Hitler. So, his full name, I can now disclose it, is Adolpf Schikelgrǚber Trump (hereafter AST, or Adolphus as in Shaw's MAJOR BARBARA). I'm sure we will return to AST below.


Cuba

Adolphus decided to be a tough guy and imposed sanctions, more of them, and Joe left them there. (Something about congress, who knows, really?) So, now the people are hungry, I mean are facing food insecurity as we now put it, and funny guys in mustaches are saying, it's not food, it's liberty. Right. Eat that. It is true that Cuba had it's own border protection against imported goods, and that was to prevent creepy capitalism from encroaching – people with mustaches would buy the food in bulk and then charge outrages prices for it. That was that deal. Since then, Cuba dropped that, but is still facing people with food insecurity [known as lack of liberty].


Texas

So how do you reason with a Texan? Leave the damn state, that's how. Go to D.C. and swear at Joe Manchin. Nobody will stop you. Funny, they seem to agree on everything – which is a bad sign. We will see.


Covid

Seems the states that are experiencing the largest surges of death from covid are the states that support Trump. Can this be the sign from God that we have all been waiting for? They are all afraid that people are going to come to your houses and first stick a needle in your arm and then take your BIBLE. Honest – I heard it sevveral times. I say let them die. Why not? It's a free country. I know they are not coming for MY bible. Mine was done by Martin Luther himself and still is one of the best translations available – if you can read 15th century German. Of course, the Bible itself has its own very strange philological problems – the original Hebrew versions were written in a sort of Hebrew and non of the vowels were included, but most people think of the New Testament which is in Greek and then translated into Latin. Take my word for it, Luther comes across as a master for his effort.


IS YOU WOKE?

Anybody figure what part of speech that is? Verb? Adjective? Not a noun, surely, nor an article. Can anybody use it in a properly written sentence in English? I'd like to see it. It is a lot like the militant feminism of the late 70s or into the 80s. Don't use he or she – the correct term is sie. Actually, that's German for something, depending on context. What about Herstory? We don't need any more history. Why not Siestory? I'm trying to be woke here, so help out!


THE OLYMPICS

Well, the fastest woman runner in the world, an American, is banned from the olympics because she used pot. Now the damn rule is supposed to stop people from using steroids and uppers, performance enhancing drugs, right? Pot is NOT A PERFORMANCE ENHANCING DRUG, at least in athletics. Back when I used to pick up cash for college by playing semi-pro baseball, I used to have a pretty wild fastball and kept an angry look on my face as I was pitching. Now, I imagine smoking a joine, being tossed the baseball and, assuming I caught it, see myself looking at it: "Wow, man, dig the sewing on this thing. Where do they get the red thread? And dig the squashed bug there, opps, no, what the hell is that thing?" No, it would not enhance my pitching one bit. I'm tired of typing right now, you dig? So I'm not going to talk about all the other stupid crap about being classified as an amateur. Just stay away from Jim Jordan and girls, stay away from the team doctors. Larry Nasser had wandering figers, I suppose.


QANON

Ever wonder where that space laser pointed by Jews at Southern California came from? Well, in the late 80s, Ronnie Ray gun, who took the book of revelations literally and believed it, decided to build star wars defense system. I saw a graph comparing Government funding for DHHS and NSF over his few years of that project. DHHS (Who needs Health and Human Services, yuck!) went down on a straight line, about 60 degrees while NSF (rockets, satellites, lasers, all the good stuff) went up at the same rate. It was meant for the Soviet Union, but they just siad "Forget it, we're no playing" but China thought it was aimeed at them and said so at the UN. So, QANON got it from China. I'll bet it was Wuhan.


Inside sources, close to Q, confirmed that Bill Gates did indeed put tiny microscopic magnetic particles in the vaccines. The only one not magnetized is the J&J single dose – and you will notice that it is not available in the midwest. Also free of the magnetic forces is the Astrazenica and that is not available anywhere in the entire country. Just remember, you found it out here first.


IT WILL BE LEGAL

Weed is going to be removed from schedule A eventually. At one time, forces, especially from the alcohol lobby kept it away, but as more people have tried it, it has gained approval. I'd call that cause and effect.


MUSIC

At one time, Oscar Levant was one of the top 3 concert pianists in the U.S. He was rehearsing with the New York Orch with Toscanni. Now Toscanni was notorious for his temper and anger, swearing and banging his baton. The prop manager bought cheap batons just for rehearsals because he noticed that as soon as he broke one, he settled down. Every musician was terrified of him. Enter Oscar. During one of Toscannini's very wild tamtrums, Oscar took a deep puff of his Pall Malls and said "If you don't behave yourself, I'll follow your beat." Most reports say that was the only time he ever Laughed.



ANTIFA

So, I stopped by Antifa headquarters to find out what was really going on, but first I had to get past the demonstrators. I looked at them:



I did wonder why they were dressed for cold weather, and got a variety of responses. The main idea was that they did not want to get attacked by these vicious troublemakers. I told them I was going in and, if I didn't come out in fifteen minutes, they had better run because these people have been known to store nuclear devices and might be tempted to set one off.


They looked at me nervously, but agreed and let me pass.


Once inside, I asked about the people in the crowd and they were all pretty much laughing, and they pointed out that often they will see some who were better spellers.


I kept looking out the window and waiving, and each time the crowd moved further back. I didn't have much else to do that day, so asked if I could spend the night, and they said they had a couch in the main office in back and I went in there and spent the night.


The folks at Antifa were amused as I came out in the morning and said "It was the strangest thing. Fifteen minutes after you went into the back room, the entire crowd ran away and we haven't seen them since. One saice "Just wait until Augus when Trump is restored to his throne. The you guys will be in for it!"


They looked at me as I smiled and asked "What was that about?" I simply shrugged my shoulders.


BRITTANY SPEARS.

She doesn't look so crazy to me. I'd be more inclined to have a conservatorship, or whatever it's called, for the folks at QANON than her, but then they don't make as much money.


CONCLUSION

This is the conclusion.


Wednesday, July 14, 2021

uesday, March 29, 2016 Palestine and Ferguson: Critical Theory and Angela Davis

 

Tuesday, March 29, 2016

Palestine and Ferguson: Critical Theory and Angela Davis


THE ABSURD TIMES





ILLUSTRATION:  This was worth reprinting as the information is so often suppressed.





Palestine and Ferguson: Critical Theory and Angela Davis
By
Karl Entenmann

We have below and excerpt of an interview with Angela Davis.  Before presenting that, however, the popular image of her needs a bit of attention.  She was actually in Paris when the infamous incident with four black girls in the United States happened and it affected her greatly as in France she had somewhat escaped the bigotry of the United States south. 

She did, however, continue her studies in Germany under the influence of Critical Theory or the "Frankfurt School," which is described below.  Max Horkheimer was the most important director the school ever had and his The Eclipse of Reason  is one of the most important books of this century.  It talks about how reason is replaced by instrumental logic which in turn is used as a tool of oppression.  Contrary to widely held beliefs, the philosopher who influenced Horkheimer was not Nietzsche, but Schopenhauer which may help explain his own perceptive pessimism. 

Ms. Davis began her graduate study onder the direct influence of Herbert Marcuse, author of One Dimensional man.  He once raised his own uproar when he talked about audio recordings replacing the experience of the concert hall.  He in no way meant to attack the recordings themselves.

After Marcuse, Ms. Davis completed her dissertation with the supervision of Habermas. 

If one is pressed to summarize Critical Theory, it is the joining of the political left with the cultural right.  To paraphrase the narrator in Mann's Dr. Faustus, the liberation of the masses lies not in the churches but in the literary world, the world of humanism.  It should also be pointed outt hat this does not mean Universities where the "Humanity" is taken out of the Humanities, but rather than in individual art.

This, at any rate, is the tradition out of which Ms Davis arises, and the entire prixis of hers involving the Black Panthers, feminism, and cultural studies owes its foundation to the Frankfurt school.  This is a brief summary:     

Although sometimes only loosely affiliated, Frankfurt School theorists spoke with a common paradigm in mind; they shared the Marxist Hegelian premises and were preoccupied with similar questions.[2] To fill in the perceived omissions of classical Marxism, they sought to draw answers from other schools of thought, hence using the insights of antipositivist sociology, psychoanalysis, existential philosophy, and other disciplines.[3] The school's main figures sought to learn from and synthesize the works of such varied thinkers as Kant, Hegel, Marx, Freud, Weber, and Lukács.[4]
Following Marx, they were concerned with the conditions that allow for social changeand the establishment of rational institutions.[5] Their emphasis on the "critical" component of theory was derived significantly from their attempt to overcome the limits of positivism, materialism, and determinism by returning to Kant's critical philosophy and its successors in German idealism, principally Hegel's philosophy, with its emphasis ondialectic and contradiction as inherent properties of human reality.
Since the 1960s, Frankfurt School critical theory has increasingly been guided byJürgen Habermas's work on communicative reason, linguistic intersubjectivity and what Habermas calls "the philosophical discourse of modernity".[6] Critical theorists such as Raymond Geuss and Nikolas Kompridis have voiced opposition to Habermas, claiming that he has undermined the aspirations for social change that originally gave purpose to critical theory's various projects—for example the problem of what reason should mean, the analysis and enlargement of "conditions of possibility" for social emancipation, and the critique of modern capitalism.[7]
More on this school can be found here in this link to many of their writings:


Tuesday, July 06, 2021

Thursday, July 01, 2021

IT'S ALL HEADLINES



THE ABSURD TIMES



Carlos seems to have hit on a topic of general consideration – not simply the Zionist entity. Still, the new Boss of Israel bombed Gaza because of balloons.  (Don't ask me.)


Starting Off

Now, one of the last things I want to think about, and I have this in common with Donald, is the nature of the Republican Base, no pun intended. They are for the most part the sort of people who believe that Professional Wrestling, the WWE, is for real, not programmed. This is the level of their reasoning ability or intellectual acuity.


Now, of course there are some that are able to see above that, so the attributes ofr a cult are imposed on it as well. Wearing a mask during an epidemic is akin to Hester Prynne's Scarlet letter – if anyone dares to utter the blasphemy of reason, they will be shunned by those around them. This explains why people such as Lamar Alexander, who will retire, will not mention things such as the contradiction of insisting that the leader be credited with inventing the vaccine and at the same time maintain there is no real danger. Upon return to home, they would be shuned by neighbors.



Wire Tap


The latest qtoid attributes the Jan 6, 2021 insurrection to the FBI. Is it possible that the FBI could be involved? Well, it has been last century.


Few even thought it was possible. After all, J. Edgar Hoover put Al Capone in jail and even fewer ever knew that Capone played the banjo. So, strange things can happen.


It was the 60s, JFK had been eliminated and LBJ began to practice escaladio on the Vietnamese. Young people on the whole found this most convenient and were very much against it. In fact, organizations such as the Students for a Democratic Society were formed. Hoover, whose habit of chasing around his male secretary while he wore his mother's underthing was known to organized crime alone, so he had to find other targets. "Subversive" groups were targeted. He began to have their phones tapped.


Most people thought this was a paranoid fantasy on the part of the resistance, but it did exist across the nation. A friend of mine was the local leader of the SDS and I told him that his phone was being tapped. He thought I was making it up, so I told him to meet me at the "Union", a common lunch spot, and we would talk.


I told him my plan which was, in fact, workable. In this town, DeKalb Illinois, there were only two routes from north to south, and the only viable one was at the main intersection. The other was at a viaduct and only smaller vehicles could get through. Now, at midnight on Thursday mornings a lang, slow train stopped and waited for up to a few hours at that passageway. The fire department was of the north side and the rest of the town, the high school, the lodges, etc, were on the south. I told him about what would happen in case of an explosion and told him to call me that evening and we would lay out this insane idea and then test to see if the FBI was indeed listening to his or my phone. The bet was $15.


He made the phone call and I could not help embellishing the plan to include the names of others involved, specific targets, explosives, and so on. We were to meet at my flat at 11;30 to signal the others to begin, involving the high school, some lodge buildings, and someone scouting for vulnerable domestic housing spots, with the violent explosives. We acted as if nobody else was aware of the entire plan.


Well, at midnight we drove past the viaduct after having plotted mass explosions on the south side. There, wearing plainclothes, wearing fedoras, suits and ties, sunglasses, all dressed like Eliot Ness in the Untouchables (even I was surprised at that) were two guys waiting and watching. My friend Gary, took out $15, laid it on the seat next to me, and off we went.

That proved my point and led him to apply for PO status at his draft board. They said "You mean CO?" and he said 'No, PO. I will join their army.' They gave him a psychiatric 4-f.

Well, Hoover is no longer there. LBJ was once asked why he didn't fire him and the answer was "Ah'd rather have him inside the tent pissing out, than outside pissing in."

Still, it took until this year or last to show that the murder of Fred Hampton of the Black Panthers was indeed carried out at the order of Hoover. Since RFK insisted the he report directly to him and not the President (as is correct) RFK's death can be explained the same way as JFK had fired him exactly one year before his own Assassination. But enough nostalgia.


THE PRESENT DANGER

Online theft by trusted sources.


The WEB: more like a web with multiple spiders. Every so often, I had been lucky buying things online, but Spotify taught me better. Now, I buy nothing online.

From time to time, they offer a 3 month trial membership for only $!/month. Quit if not satisfied. That sounds like a good deal, but what they really want is the ability to withdraw cash from your account. Before the trial begins, you give them all the information needed to withdraw money from your account.

Well, during the first month and into the second, I became certain that I did not want to continue, and I tried to withdraw from the charges. I worked at it earnestly for another month or so, but they continued to withdraw from the account every month. I finally became so frustrated that I called my bank and tried to withdraw or block those charges.

I had tried first to get our federal and state agencies to act, but the company is BASED IN DAMN AMSTERDAM! No jurisdiction.

So, it seems the bank was not programmed to block an incoming account, even if I mentioned a specific, exact amount. What I finally had to do was close the account, open another one, in another bank, and go through the entire process.

Spotify has yet to answer my complaints, inquires, or make a statement. That was 3 years ago, at least.

So, no, don't ask me to answer a survey and to ask for contributions, don't offer me any free trials, and so on. The chances are that the real proce is access to my banking information, and you ain't getting it.

Scattered Observations.


While the retarded RBASE was overjoyed to pack the supreme court with conservative judges (and it is not really a good thing), that base is becoming confused by some of the recent decisions, even outraged, flabbergasted. Their problem is that they have not drawn the necessary distinction between Judicial conservatism and ideological conservatism.


Something else: Bill Barr now says that Donald's claim that the election was stolen was "bullshit," total bullshit and he knew it all along. This raises even more questions than it could answer – ever. They pile up over time. We remember his many statements defending the idea of a stolen election and there are too many to list. I just can't type that much. They also extend now to his role during his last tenure as Attorney General involving the so-called Iran-Contra activity. If he can lie so boldly now, why not back then? After all, Danile Ortega took his case to the international court and it ruled in favor of his party, the Saninistas. Since we did not join that system, it didn't change anything, but it does explain much of what we did in the "Northern Triangle". It still haunts us today. As history, we can always wonder why the name of Dan Quayle has not come up yet.


Other things persist. We went to Afghanistan to capture Bin Laden. We killed him over decades ago. We went to Iraq to punish Saddam for conspiring with Bin Laden, even though they despised one another. Our own congress was idiotic enough to join in. Yet we are still bombing parts of Iraq. Wasn't the twin towers attack in 2001? Do we need Bill Barr to let us know that there is no objective or justification left?

To be complete, Trump left one favor to Barr by calling him one of the "swamp" whom he has hated since 2020. (That could have been New Year's Eve," however.) Soon, Trump will be involved with New York, but not in the very near future. Soon.







Tuesday, June 29, 2021

Friday, June 04, 2021