Wednesday, October 5, 2011

"Whiskey-Gnomics" Christendom as a Tribe and Nation


It is a well regarded fact that the word "whiskey" derives from the Old Gaelic "uisce" (water) and "bethu" (life). Anyone with even a cursory knowledge of Ancient Greek will recognize the ancient Goidelic word for "water" as being literally similar and functionally equivalent to the Greek word for "essence." Anyone who took the time to actually get their hands dirty poring over the extant transcripts of the Council of Nicaea will remember that a grand old "Schism" erupted there between the Apostolics and the Gnostics over the usage of two words in particular, "essence" and "substance." The following brief essay is cited entirely from Bart Ehrman's phenomenal introduction to the literature of the Pauline Christian Tradition: "The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings published by Oxford University Press in 2008. It is offered in the sincere hope of offering a personal lens on some of that centuries-old confusion. The Nicene Creed was the great legacy of that body and their contentions, and any decently abused Catholic child should be able to recite it right off for you if you can just offer them either a dollar or a significant sum of candy;-). The citations used were selected for ease of internet users checking over my shoulder.


Word and Essence: A Discussion of Logos and Rligious Identity Among Early Christians (second re-edit; originally composed 2 February 2010, Candlemas)

Although the diversity of early Christian beliefs and practices create significant obstacles to both academics and votaries of Jesus the Nazarene, the unitive elements present in these disparate sects nevertheless constituted a new and distinct way of "doing" religion in the ancient world. For this reason alone, the unique and divergent literary tradition of Christendom merits the inclusion of heterodox positions (non-normative dialogues) in any serious discussion of early Christian thought and its development during the second and third centuries of the Constantinian (Common) Era. For the purposes of this essay, it is sensible to focus primarily on three groups of early Christians whose beliefs differed from what would eventually become the Universal (Catholic-Apostolic-Pauline) Church. This is firstly to illustrate that early Christians were in fact quite diverse as well as examine where and how they intersect, as well as what significance that might hold for scholars and people of faith. Taking our hands as initiators in this strange terrain are the Ebionites, Marcionites, and Gnostics; all nominally Christian, all beholden to received tests that purport to authoritatively document the life and philosophy of Christ, none in agreement on what would seem to be essential tenets of the faith. These include the number of Gods recognized or worshipped, the status of Jesus as a human or divine entity, and the specific texts appealed to for establishing a cohesive creed to which all members of a given sect may ascribe.

One prominent community of early Christians which took root in Palestine were the Ebionites, or so-called "adoptionists." These believers were distinguished from others in that they maintained that Jesus, although born a human man and one uniquely "innocent" within the context of Mosaic Legalism, was not himself the perfect Godhead worshiped by Abraham, Issac, Jacob, or even "a" God as understood in the Classical sense of a being/entity/substance that is perfectly unitive, self-aware, and self-mobile [Ehrman, p. 3]. It would not be inappropriate to refer to the Ebionites as "full-covenant Christians," because they preserved the traditional mitzvoth of the Old Testament while recognizing Jesus as the savior of the world and the architect of a second Covenant (contractual mutual-ism between Godhead and an elect Kindred of persons, "Israel." This is demonstrated by the fact that the singular aspect of Mosaic Law not observed by the Ebionites was blood sacrifice in propitiation of the Divine. The justification for this is that Jesus himself, to hearken back to the old Nicene formulation, was considered: 'a full and perfect offering, oblation, and sacrifice for the redemption of the faithful and the remission of sinfulness.' [Ehrman, p. 3]. To structure their Christology, this sect appealed to a text very much akin to the Book of Matthew as we know it, without the first two chapters. For modern Christians who only read English, that essentially means that they only accepted what we now refer to as the Gospel of Mark as "authoritative." It is worth noting on the side that Mark is the oldest and sparsest of the Gospels. You won't find much in the way of mythologizing there, not even a birth narrative. Of all the "big Four," Mark is most like an actual biography and least like a Caesar-Mithra story. These Christians, the Ebionites, were known to be staunchly averse to the particular teachings of Paul. This is obviously to be expected, given that prodigal Apostle's emphasis on the Trinity and on the obsolescence of the old Law. Because Peter and Paul seem to have been in personal accord, however, it is highly likely that the concept of a Holy Trinity was in fact the "meat n bones" of Jesus' "secret teachings" shared only with the living Apostles and it was this conceptual similarity in their streams of thought that allowed Paul "access," or rather the 'decoder ring' among the extant Apostles as they were still out and about after the Crucifixion and following Scandal.

The writings of Paul received an infinitely warmer reception among followers of Marcion. this second-century evangelist cast Paul as a monumental spiritual authority, one to whom the true revelation of Jesus was imparted personally after his resurrection/assumption [Ehrman, p.5]. Not unlike their Gnostic brethren, the Marcionites believed that the God of the Old Testament was of a different, vengeful, malevolent character than the God evidenced in the Gospels. {I would here like to point out that the concept of Sheol as resembling Gehenna rather than Hades is a Jesus-ism. That's your guy, such a nice little prophet-magician, right? LOL...Jesus invented Hell, and "upped the ante" for EVERYONE;-)}

Marcionites also advanced the notion that Jesus' human form was merely an illusion, and that Jesus was as much an autonomous and unitary Deity as the God of Judaism. (Ehrman, p. 5). If this is superficially confusing, a Muslim friend can help you get over that if your willing to sit for a spell and here a cool story about grave robbing. The contrast between these Marcionites and their Jewish counterparts originates in the texts which each group claims as offering the true teachings and biography of Jesus. For Marcion, an authoritative canon would include a version of Luke's Gospel (which definitely emphasizes the Divinity of Jesus and justifies the breaking of mitzvoth) as well as shorter variations of Paul's letters, expecting Timothy and Titus [Ehrman, p. 5].

Most "exotic" among early Christians were the Gnostics, a label which describes many individual sects and schools, all of which insisted that the imparted gnosis of certain secret teachings of Jesus was necessary and sufficient to salvation. These believers alternatively recognized several systems of Divine Hierarchy, ranging in population from three, thirty, or hundreds of divinities (remember your Medieval Ceremonialists, now, kiddies). The works of the late Valentinus were immensely influential among the Gnostics and to this day are just a fucking pill to read, but lay out the basic "idea" as painlessly as is probably possible in this day and time. Despite superficial differences in their schematics, the Gnostics were united in their rejection of Old Testaments' "YHVH" and the Mosaic Law, considering both in dualistic opposition to Jesus. (Ehrman, p. 6). Many Gnostics were particularly enamored of John's Gospel, but also honored others not considered ligitimate by other Christians, including the "Gospels" of Mary of Magdala, Phillip, Thomas, and Judas Iscariot.

Despite the differences of iteration among its earliest adherents, certain common elements emerged from the crucible of the Crucifixion and Scandal that became essential to the identity of the Jesus movement in the first three centuries of the Common Era through Nicaea. most notably, the early Jesus People were set apart from Jews and Pagans alike in that they placed supreme spiritual authority withing the *person of Christ*, the inspired writings of his travelling companions, and the personal interaction of the believer with both. These three elements seperated early Christians from Jews and Pagans alike, and eventually gave a concise meaning to the name "Christian." The crime, under Roman Law, which led to the Crucifixion of Jesus according to the Gospels was that he was understood by his own tribal community to have declared himself a higher authority than either the State or (and this was the real death sentence, the Law of Moses). To place yourself in the center of that society without effectively "clicking up" with either warring party was essentially putting a bounty on your own head. Too fucking bad Judas never got to see the "punchline..." excuse me, I mean "Resurrection and Assumption into heaven or whatever. He actually committed suicide on his own authority, without a single witness, because he believed that by following instructions to a "t", he had forever forsaken the love of his friends or the safety of his tribal community AND, and the same time, he was always an opponent of the Roman Occupation or frankly, he wouldn't have clicked up with the Disciples in the first place...

Sunday, September 4, 2011

Closer to the Heart of All-Troubled Personages the went and made Big Trouble under CHAOS all-Apocalyptocizing/Arrational Eschato-logism/Mythologized

"I gave you people clear cut proofs and if any one want to be saves just accept Islam other wise you will be burning in hell ."-person I could most sincerely hope was just a troll but couldn't help but not suspect a bit of some different kind of skull-dugged bullshittery of





I see, simply accept that most totalitarian of spiritual slaveries (religio, to bind, religion, bound, bonds-people, slaves), or simply commit one's whole capacity to act, the entirety of their reason, and the whole passion of their volition unto an eternally burning infernal sovereignty populated by all manner of diabolical persons hellishly bent of the capture, ravaging, rape, assassination, and annihilation of all egos.

It's not as though some of us haven't already had a hard choosing and gone down crooked roadways and made commitments of loyalty towards certain endings.

Luckily, not all of us have made our way in life in such manner as places certainty above wisdom, peacefulness over vitality, faith over and against all contradicting inspiration.

I dislike many labels that have been attached to my person over the years, usually because I quarrel with the definitions of certain titles. I have a question, though, to anyone with an answer...what womanish person of this world is so much like a "witchly" shade of otherwordly song and legend that she finds herself so self-possessed of so much a fiery and vengeful spirituality that she must either burn against a tree until she screaming dies or must instead throw fire and vengeance against the civilization that she was originally most alienated from?

How many so woman-ish, self-possessed persons do you think live in this world, in your own country, amongst your own neighbors? It wouldn't take many, and never has, to cause quite a bit of ungodly ghastly troubles for others. I would hope that we all strive to some form of euthanasia, whether our dying be in peace or I deaths be violent or the purposes of our actions valorous.

It's rarely a diversion to have to make one's own decisions, but almost never are our choices actually "black vs. white, Satan vs. the Divinities, goodness vs. suffering/sufferance".

I can't deny a bit of admiration for practical Muslims and Muslimahs (those that are most practiced, more perfected) into the disciplines of their own choosing. I could also have some sense of appreciation for the austerity of their specific type of extreme-fidelity-unto-imagined-Ideal-towards-higher-works-of-greater-godliness. In fact, amongst all the types of Mono-theisms there is definitely one that always come across to me as much more the "temptress" and least the "adversary" among alien and hated banners, at least for me. That is most embodied in some of what I find the very peculiar pieties and iconic religiosity of Islam. Of the peculiar pieties, head-covering and embodied prayerfulness (all that kneeling and standing among many of the masses) and occassionally esctatic whirling type of dance-like, tranced though artful type of performance best embodied by the "Dervish" who are at least in some part devoted unto the study and deeper understandings of certain scriptural texts and peculiar spiritual ideations outside the Q'uran itself.
At other times, I marveled both at the concept of a Supreme Unitive Godhead so utterly authoritative that it passed a ban on every possible conceivable type of idolatry or 'devotion unto earthly images of carnal bestial forms nor of heavenly ghostings and ghastly spirits'... and most DEFINITELY not rivalling imagined Deities that presumed to be a similar type but after a different mannerism as "ALLAH"

That has been a curse upon those kingdoms that have come under thrall of that peculiar idea of supreme and singular unity of the concepts of "law" and "divinity" which could only look so much like a "God-the-Father-of-all-Fuckups-unto-all-Fatality" as say, "Bible-God."
And then there's the Q'uran, of course, the received mouthings of some particular personage that has found the authority to by some means declare the words that escepe their mouths "THE very true most specified words of THAT deity which is ALL Divinity"...that's where some boundaries must absolutely be drawn and others brutally transgressed. Some reasonable boundaries are obviously apparent by virtue of their good reasoning, inherent integrity, honorable activity, greater wisdom and/or wiser ways of connecting with the world around us and strangest of very self-ish core that I would best prefer to describe as the instinctual "heart" of the natural human species. We are undeniably the species on Earth most inclined to the greatest capacities of intellection and imagination that the planet has, according to all knowledge available to us ever produced.

And one thing that I simply cannot help but wonder, as I can't begin to understand how anyone could not, if they have come to an understanding of the historicity behind the text and the histories attached to it, this one thing.
Why is it remotely important if the God is a "real type of the only possible type of real deity"?

Isn't it infinitely more interesting, terrible, fruitful, yielding deeper comtempletive understandings and greater heights mindfulness to begin asking more reasonable questions about the texts with quite possibly very fascinating answers? How the fuck was it actually "received..." It is important, quite important to remember that it is very efficacious in just about all aspects for just this type of prophet to be a smart-allecky illiterate. All "Prophets" are pretty much punks and smart-allecks that have made very specific sorts of annunciation under only impossible to believe endlessly impassible unto Reason types of circumstances and they have a hidden counterpart that is very 'shadowy' in personage but makes, for all intents and purpose, every god-damned difference that could ever matter. What is the strange relationship of the hidden scribe to invocatory or divinely intoxicated person? The prophet-type is most usually illiterate, socially transgressive, possessed of some inaccessible stream of weird and babbling words as could only be dazzling to have heard performanced and enticing to enshrine somehow, the words of the prophet after death. Do notice some striking similarties, in the epics attributed to gods of wisdom and the biographical epics of certain prophets. They tend to get assassinated or made eternally captive unto death before "everyone realizes" they were "the rightest all the time"...

The scribing-typistry and dextrous artistries of Script that belong to the scribes of gods and their epics make literally ALL the difference, here. Though held in high regard among the faithful, perhaps for the sake of it, is a person who bears almost no criticism, and is afforded the assumption of saintly mantles after death, quite often. Now that's an inter-textuality of almost sexual intimacy and most tantalizing intimation. One worth the pain of getting to the bottom of the obscure pathway that most connects the visible insanity of the "annunciations" to the heartfelt mournful strains of the "worshipful." Just what the fuck is going on about that?
I can't answer questions like those with any ease, certainly, or with reliance on merely rationality and historicity. Some otherly machinations seem to connect those worshipful mourning, the most obscure scribes of all-occulted raving, and very strange and later dubbed (much later than scribes often begin the scribbling) are indentified as "Perfections of Virtue," "Redeemers unto Greatest Wisdom", or, more mystically speaking, "Perfect Hearts." So oft-despised in their lifetime and so late-unto-their-own-greatness, it is easy to imagine that these people are somehow "doing the timing thing differently" of have some special access to some "it" of which the rest of us are simply incapable of bringing into our own awareness. Reasons are plentiful not to try to do anything like that at all, ever...in fact they are bountiful...and yet enough people find it so hard to either stay away from one thing and must always bow and bend towards another thing and yet neither of things present in anywise a middling way between their polarized extremes. So-called "sacred literature" appears to present the qualities and properties of that "Heart-ness" of those mysterious "Hearts" who perfected the vitality in them that it became the Magnum Opus of some Fellows and a Great Work/Great Apology and Righteous Sufferance unto their familial and soulful Hierarchies, the Cults. Let us consider a "Cultus" an organized body of those particular souls that have made Contract unto some Covenant. Souls of faithful persons too weak to have found a path through their own hearts without somehow making bargain and exchanges for the "SOUL" that was within their hearted-ness. Maybe that's how they did it the whole time. They never sold anything in the first place in expectation toward stupid ends, but held unto something that eventually burst forth unto endless streams of tearfullness and endless wells of bloodiness.

Saturday, September 3, 2011

Ex-Chantings Toward the Greater Liberatrix "The Gram-Noire/Grand Nox""

That Essence of Verity with Insight into Self
Which "ist" is Thou and whose "Is-ms"
Arteth all Perfections unto Mindfulness...

That Resistance in the Fleshly/Creative cores of Iron
A Counter against all Dis-eases and Most Faithfully Miss-Trusful of all Eu-stresses...


That Causes all the Goodliness in the All-of-Verses in the Soul of this Terrain

Most Down-Trodded...

"No!"

Gives no avail but births in every Tragic frailty

So "Other" yet so "Worlded"

as might-could-be and must-best-forumulate untowards/in words



*********
An Otherworldly Utterance


That so "Othered" yet so "Wyrdish"

Utter Worldlines Matter/Idealizing

Transgressions of most focused Volatility

Those Confessions with Lugosity so Lovely

Their Speech could not but be

That Being

Sovereign

The queerest amongst all kindred that must become

They most Fey-like Presence of Cunt-ry so Fated

A Sidhe<.>mallian Fleshing of such Cunning Serpent's most carnal vocations

The Greatest Possible Redemption Unto No Savior

******

The Aeon of All-Hell-Breaks-Loose

Age of the Auto-Maatic Mostly Magestical of all Mantics

The RagnoRocks Rolling in under Moons of all May-ness

That Kingdom Under Paradise

And By the Embryonic Dynamo Erotica

A Hallowcaust is Visioned

******

Satan

Hyper-Rational Contradictatorship of All Worlds

Shade of LUX

A Be-deviled Blackness

So Self-Possessed of such Soulful Wisdom

Whose Watchtower is Sovereignty

Queerest Witchly Queenling

Whose Kingship under Paradise is most like unto

a HEL.



Friday, September 2, 2011

It doesn't matter if it's really all that true...

Because some ideas are so inherently offensive to such immaterial things that their contemplation for too long could only but eventually break down into it's fundamental essential components of absurdity and annihilation.

Chihuahuas as "The New Pit Bulls" is, to my complete satisfaction, definitely one of those un-slayable un-dead too-funny to be entirely "true" but it can't help but get certain things done.

http://www.cnn.com/2011/CRIME/09/02/california.nude.extortion/index.html?eref=mrss_igoogle_cnn

Thursday, September 1, 2011

The Babalonian Imperative

Several eddies of discourse here on S.I.N. have led me to post this-an exploration of something I call the Babalonian Imperative. It is a pervasive attitude within Satanism and sister philosophies that can be defined in at least three ways: }As an aesthetic dominating the portrayal and conception of the feminine, women, and female sexuality }As a complex set of expectations (not entirely derivative of LaVey or his writings) fixated upon the disposition, behavior, roles, and associated symbolism assigned to women who align themselves with the Demonic or with the Left Hand Path. This also, as do all three attempted definitions, applies to goddesses frequently or historically associated with the Underworld, chaos, death, or who were directly adversarial to mankind. This is so because these goddesses are literary wells into which have percolated the collective dreams, terrors, and striving that a given culture has attached to certain feminine objects. These goddesses are shaped by and in turn exerted their influence over the women and civilizations that worshiped and did battle with them. }As a transparent conceit about the (supposed) Nature of being female and the consequential ritualism and illusive artistry that is "femininity." The Babalonian Imperative insists that Satanic women, to a lesser degree Thelemite and to an even lesser extent Neopagan women embody, to the best of their ability, the iconic Scarlet Woman conjured by Aleister Crowley in a fragmented blur of ancient mythology and repressed Victorian angst. She is advised to appear not only sexy but a "whore," and observe post-1960s sexual and gender protocol as if it was carved into the fucking pyramids. She is expected to need sex, as though it were water or the written word, to want it often, and to be good at it. Almost never does this movement celebrate the superb evolutionary chisel that is a woman's power to deny access to her sexuality as much as yield herself to the procreative instinct. Female humans were some of the first primates ever to develop the capacity for resisting an instinct-in this case the urge to have sex while ovulating. The beneficial inheritance of this adaptation to our species is incalculable. For the first time, a male had to truly convince a female to mate with him, not merely defeat his competitors in battle or have a sufficiently attractive and eye-catching member or plume. You might be surprised how many artists keep at it every day in hopes of finally landing some pussy again tonight. There are other distorted assumptions that accompany the Babalonian Imperative. One is that every "Scarlet Woman" or "slut" one encounters is acting in the spirit of pleasure, self-fulfillment, Satanic liberation-or liberation at all. There is no correlation between skin on display and a deep feeling of inner self worth, of confidence in one's inherent beauty and power. The reverse of this distortion states that women who do not "present" in the stereotypical way are not properly Satanic, are not "liberated," or must obviously suffer from sexual hang-ups, fears, deficiencies, or dysfunction. Because clearly, if you really wanted to teach cattle of humanity a lessen about female independence, just flash some titties-that oughta cover it. These assumptions and distortions cannot properly be addressed without accepting a simple fact: that a woman's sexuality simply does not empower her in the way that class and cash have consistently functioned as the supposed "male equivalent." He has the money, she has the sex, they make an exchange, so what's the big scheme? Here's the big scheme, ladies. Sexual attractiveness is different than other types of capital. It doesn't tend to appreciate value with time, as monetary and institutional investments have a tendency of doing. By the time you both are 60, he's probably sitting on a hell of a lot more cash than he married you with, but are you just as sexy? This isn't meant to hurt anyone's feelings, just to illuminate the "exchange fallacy," as I'll call it here. And another thing-the more women a man wines, dines, assists, etc. the higher the collective opinion of women in his community is likely to be of him. Does this hold true if a woman sleeps with as many men as she can? Does it work for her like holding every woman's door works for a man? This small disclaimer will be necessary, I feel, but I won't dwell on the point. I'm not anti-sex or even anti-slut. The Thelemite and other literature concerning Babalon is a worthy element of that tradition, which preceded modern Satanism in many respects. I called this meme an "imperative" largely for polemic reasons, because there is no such imperative as presented to a truly Satanic woman. Its distortive quality remains, however, and deserves treatment.

Neither an Atheist Nor a Theist Until I Can Think of Something More Foolish Sounding To Call Myself

So God is dead, but what can be done with his garments and bones? I am continually asked to identify myself according to the binary poles of "theist" and "atheist" as though these are the only two legitimate dialogues through which divinity may be approached. I am, for all practical purposes, an atheist, but I suspect that most atheists turn a worrisome eye on my decor, for instance. Let us suppose that a third option exists, what might it look like? Option 1 [Theism]: Divinity, understood as God or Gods, is independent of and superior to the human imagination. Option 2 [Atheism]: The genesis of God or Gods in the human imagination is always the consequence of either fraud or folly. Option 3: As artifacts of the human imagination, these characters take on their most interesting and relevant forms when treated as just that. I will leave this short post with a question: How many of us, on close examination, actually fall into one of the first two categories? Not that there's anything wrong with that....;-)

[5] Things Satanists Could Use From the Non-Clerical Episco/Papacy of Discordia

*"We Discordians should stick apart!": On a scale of Wicca to drama-free, the votaries of Eris have us beat-hands down. Why could this be? The more closely-knit a community, the more that peer and mentor relationships tend to moderate and maintain homogeneity among its adherents. Both Satanism and its dotty great-aunt Discordianism benefit from the opposite tactic. It is this sound advice that gives rise to the tradition that all Discordian popes undertake as their first papal action the excommunication of all other Discordian popes and momes.

*Although it is very good and wise to hold serious reservations about the existence of Deity, it is equally good and wise to entertain the possibility, especially when faced with the problems of theodicy, that god is a crazy woman. *Both religion and humor are attempts to negotiate the mind-rending alienation and misery of the human condition and are excellent antidotes to the most horrible of life's pains-boredom. Religion and comedy are both born in pain, one seeks to escape or ameliorate that pain through its own means, but comedy approaches what is painful with an intimate smirk.

*The care and keeping of mythology is our responsibility. In the good ole' days, stone idols were dressed and made up continuously, as the ancients understood that devotion literally fed their gods, who would wither and die without it. The story of the Great Snub need not compete with the Illiad.

*Anarchy and advanced bureaucracy are phases of one renewing cycle, and the natural forces of entropy are sufficient to topple any tyrant.

No/But---->Bombshell/Busts

NO GODS, NO MASTERS- these are words that once belonged only to a woman named Emma Goldman...they had a meaning to that woman and have made such sense to such an otherly woman herself that they may one day come to have meant something very much like:


No Redemption to Soulfullness through Piety, No Redeemers to Soulfullness through the Monkly Muckedly Monkeyish practices of earthly so-called "Masters of the Living Game"


No Priests but Shamans, No Priestesses but Oracles


No Pious Women but Authentic Witches, No Pious Men but Authentic Magicians


No Marriage Between Virgins, No Virgins Below their own most appropriate Age of Reason


No Tao But That Greatest Austerity of Greatest Possible Satanity


That Essence Which Must Always Be Unspeakable


Those were words that must always belong to a woman now named whose whole name could only mean something so much like that it must sound at least a little like "That House of Godliness Whose Middle Name is Grace and is Descended from a Long Line of Ferrous Little Men"

Wednesday, August 31, 2011

People Just Don't Take/Make Jokes Like They Used To...

This fucking story....fuck-wow.

http://www.google.com/search?rlz=1C1DVCL_enUS441US441&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=cnn


In a more humane society, it would be better understood that the only person with a right to "endanger" their own child is its parents, and parents would be wiser about the dangers they willfully expose their children to, those they tolerate, and those that they abhor. Some parenting advice if your not afraid of the idea of your kids turning out too much "like me:"

*Make them sneak out if they want to drink and intoxicate themselves underage, if you can't learn to hide certain things from people that will always love you more and will always be more lovingly curious and less hatefully suspicious (your parents)...how could you hopefully suspect that you can effectively hide from the Law?

*Expose them to dangerous ideas while they are young, before the world and the public school system has had the chance to shut up their minds into a given box.

*Protect them from dangers that you *know* are too great for them to bear, but NEVER protect them so much that they fail to become "dangerous enough" unto themselves.

*Never permit your child to "mouth off" without "good reasons." They will have to learn someday that they have (only as much and no further) the right to offend people's sensibilities as they have the power to do so artfully.

*Make them attain certain competencies, you're a fucking parent, not a baby-watcher.

Sunday, August 28, 2011

Respect the Classics

Despite much difference in our thinking that seems, at least at this point, pretty non-transcendable, I can't say that my mother never offered good advice. Never solicited but hey-if people knew exactly what kind of advice they needed all the time and had the strength of will to follow it all the time then they wouldn't be people-they would be Gods. One of the few things my mother tried very hard to instill in me that I never fought the least bit, but merely assimilated for what I took to be its imminent merit, was this..."Respect the Classics! Your teachers wouldn't encourage you to read them because they are content to keep you as stupid as possible without playing too fast and loose with their funding, their bullet-point curricula, or their absurd "everyone's already essentially good enough" values." Surely the best of maternal intentions are visible here, but I've only recently found an answer for myself to the "why..." of the "respect" that doesn't simply boil down to "My mother's advice is usually good [a faulty premise to be as charitable as possible]" or "Because I just love them so much [a vapid appeal to sentiment when I know that I could somehow 'do better'].

I can't tell you why I despise the thought of a life lived in complete ignorance of "The Classics" without giving some notion of what I think makes a "Classic," because that's gotta be something pretty gnarly if I'm to justify my use of the big "C." To my mind, a classic is a classic not because it is well-regarded by "all the right people" but because it has a certain inherent 'unstop-ability' to it. This is why Freddie Mercury embodies the essence of 'classic' rock and roll to me, everything about his presentation, performance, and composition is un-fucking-stoppable. A book deserving of being called a "Classic" could therefore only be so [to me, anyway] because it has the same quality of requiring absolutely no external promotion and only the smallest modicum of popularity at the time of publishing in order to be a "must-read." And why "must we read them?" You don't have to answer that fully to begin to see where I will be going with this. A small 'c' classic is somebody's ideal example of a given 'class,' and the 'class' that is embodied in a near-perfect form by the "big-C-classics" could easily be labeled: 'That class of artistic and intellectual achievements for which it is possible to suppose that human civilization will never be fully done digesting." By way of an example, I simply must give a link to a number from one of my very favorite musicals, if only to demonstrate that human civilization is no where NEAR "done" with even such a very old "Classic" as Plato's Republic.

Sunday, March 6, 2011

There is a purported Chinese curse which goes: "May you live in interesting times!"

But in all seriousness, how lucky are we! If you read or watched V for Vendetta a few years ago and you've been following news of the Anonymous Phenomenon recently, it's difficult not to appreciate the widespread V/Guy Fawkes imagery that seems to have attached itself to the AnonOps image. I post this now because most of the excitement surrounding them seems to have died down. Rather than trying to judge this amorphous body of persons for their collective actions, I'd rather think of them as a sophisticated new breed of trolls we all must learn to deal with. Compare AnonOps to young conservative activist James O'Keefe, who disguised himself and confederates as a pimp and, presumably, a couple of 'ho's. For another conservative example, take Sarah Palin's marvelously absurd invention of "death panels" during fateful eleventh-hour debates on the health care Omnibus bill. I'm not the first to suggest that the Westboro Baptist Church is comprised of "professional" trolls. I offer examples from America's right wing to demonstrate that anyone can employ the meager art of the troll, although its mastery is an outgrowth of 'net and youth culture. The tactics themselves may be as underhanded as you goddamn like, but observe the examples I gave-they work!

Given that it's a helluva lot easier and media-savvy than civil debate, does this mean we can expect the emergence of only greater and more sophisticated trolling operations?

Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Movies Not To Watch With Your Economist Friend...

This post is dedicated to my father, an industry analyst with the International Trade Commission. In addition to being a career economist, Dad also consumes a painful amount of literature by economic historians, making him vastly more likely to ruin a perfectly good piece of cinema with so many "fascinating factoids" barely relevant to characters or storyline. It should be observed that the average economist is probably so thrilled to be invited anywhere as to prevent this type of behavior. By the way, nothing in quotation marks should be directly attributed to anyone, least of all my father. He uses more words on average to say...anything. That said, on with the list:

1. Amistad: "Hey, did you know that Irish and Cockney textile laborers largely opposed the slave trade because it contributed to unbeatable prices on cotton fabrics?"
(here, "Irish and Cockney" may just as well be rendered as a single word: Irish-and-Cockney)

2. Mary Poppins: "You know sweetheart, that kind of panic is likely to ensue in any bank where enough people attempt to withdraw their entire accounts at once, because banks usually only keep a fraction of what's been invested in them on hand in cash."
"A more realistic portrayal of chimney sweeps in Edwardian England would depict a hopeless alcoholic who hates his life, his job, and the very sight of sunlight."

3. Pirates of the Caribbean: "Pay attention kids, you're actually learning a lot about the politics of mercantilism."

4. The Wizard of Oz: "This entire story is a fascinating allegory for the conflict between advocates of the gold standard and early monetarists."
(if the previous statement includes factual inaccuracies, it's because I was actually paying attention to the movie).

5. Blood Diamond: "Africa is a giant clusterfuck. I had fun there, though. Everyone was really cool when I was explaining the structural complexities of the sub-prime mortgage crisis. Less so if I said that I was voting for McCain."

6. Avatar: I've never sat down and watched this with my father or any other economist, but I just can't help but suspect that they would ruin it.

I'm sure there are more, including just about anything to do with pirates, the Cold War, or knock-on-wood if The Fountainhead ever comes to the big screen.