Cetaceus

And this is all I’m really going to say here on the healthcare issue. Bush stole the first election and started two goddamn wars; he is still directly responsible for the deaths of thousands of Americans somewhere in the dust in Iraq for no reason at all. People protested, absolutely–I did, I was in New York in March 2003 with thousands of others, and us with millions of others around the world trying to just get our opinions out about the invasion of Iraq. People also said crazy shit about him, yes it’s true, I have, we all have and still do. Hell, they protested when motorcade came into DC after the Supreme Court decision in early ‘01. But never, and I mean never, did any Democrat or anyone on the left brandish a gun, let alone multiple assault rifles, while making very clear threats to the man’s life, within site of him over these much, much more serious disagreements. You really going to shoot a guy who makes to make it so poor kids can go to the doctor? And you love the man who’s responsible for the US’s reputation going completely into the shitter while taking how many lives with it?

When asked about the people against the war, I recall Rumsfeld saying something to the effect of, “Well, too bad for them, we’re the majority, we win.” And I have to be honest, I wish Obama was taking that kind of dickheaded tone right now with these morons protesting. When we protested, we brought fucking puppets and drums, when these people do it, they bring guns, racism (yes, real racism, don’t think that isn’t a part of this for a second) and vitriol. Oh and Lies, lots and lots of them.

The question becomes, what kind of victory do we want? Can we remain more civilized than these people while still getting for this country the things it needs? I hope so, because either loss is going to be felt for a long time.

Talking about himself and his work he says the following, and I can’t help but feel an affinity:

After all, the fact that the character of the work I have presented to you has been at the same time fragmentary, repetitive and discontinuous could well be a reflection of something one might describe as a febrile indolence — a typical affliction of those enamored of libraries, documents, reference works, dusty tomes, texts that are never read, books that are no sooner printed than they are consigned to the shelves of libraries where they thereafter lie dormant to be taken up only some centuries later. It would accord all too well with the busy intertia of those who profess an idle knowledge, a species of luxuriant sagacity, the rich hoard of the parvenus whose only outward signs are displayed in the footnotes at the bottom of the page. It would accord well with all those who feel themselves to be associates of one of the more ancient or more typical secret societies of the West, those oddly indestructible societies unknown it would seem to Antiquity, which came into being with Christianity, most likely at the time of the first monasteries, at the periphery of the invasions, the fires and the forests: I mean to speak of the great warm and tender Freemasonry of useless erudition.

(Reprinted in Power/Knowledge, 79)

I love this guy.

propaedeutic |ˌprōpiˈd(y)oōtik|
adjective formal
(of an area of study) serving as a preliminary instruction or as an introduction to further study.
DERIVATIVES
propaedeutical |ˈproʊpiˈd(j)udəkəl| adjective
ORIGIN late 18th cent.: from pro- 2 [before] + Greek paideutikos ‘of or for teaching,’ suggested by Greek propaideuein ‘teach beforehand.’

amphibology |ˌamfəˈbäləjē|
noun ( pl. -gies)
a phrase or sentence that is grammatically ambiguous, such as she sees more of her children than her husband.
DERIVATIVES
amphibolous |amˈfibələs| adjective
ORIGIN late Middle English : from Old French amphibologie, from late Latin amphibologia, from Latin amphibolia, from Greek amphibolos ‘ambiguous’ (see amphibole ).

I don’t have any real thoughts, conclusions or even an intellectual trajectory for this question yet, but it’s something that struck me a while ago and which I want to seriously ask myself at some point:

Is there some benefit, something positive and affirming, something at all good, or even good for us, about arrogance? More simply: does being arrogant have or play (or potentially have or play) some constructive role? Is it or can it be something more than just pathology?

Today is the 64th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima, if you’re counting. There is an excellent article on Common Dreams by the great Daniel Ellsberg, very much worth reading and reflecting on. As is the general rule with anything subtle on the internet, don’t bother reading the comments. Also, there are some photos on my Flickr from my trip there 2 years ago and change.

There were two strange omens today, which I can’t really make any sense of, and as such the only real conclusion to be reached is that they weren’t omens at all but just things that happened. Despite that and in the face of it, I’d rather call them omens.

First I had a nightmare this morning, a regular cauchemar, but interestingly over the course of the hour I spent fading in and out of consciousness while pressing the snooze button. It was a bit personal so I won’t go into detail, but it involved me first slapping and then repeatedly punching my former upstairs neighbor in Philly, who in reality is a really great guy, married, has a cool dog and gave one of it’s puppies to my cousin, and who in reality I can say nothing bad about. In the dream I was punching him repeatedly, even though there is no way on earth I would ever actually do that, nor would he ever do the stuff I was punching him for in the dream.

Second, I was just on the metro and got a call from a quasi-irate French woman, who I couldn’t respond to because of the noise of the train and my poor ability at speaking French, who then asked in perfect, though accented, English if I spoke English. She then told me that she’d gotten three calls today from my number and wanted to know who I was and what I wanted. Since my phone has been off all day and in my backpack (I’ve been at class for six hours), I was a bit shocked by this and said, “Um, I’m Daniel…And, I haven’t called anyone today.” After a bit more of this, she said that it was ok (which, I don’t really see how it could not be ok, since I really didn’t call her or anyone, let alone three times with a turned-off phone while learning French), and finally hung up.

What these things might mean, together or separate (although, putting them together increases the mythological import, right?), is anyone’s guess, but probably not mine.

You find cognates in the strangest places:

crepuscule |kriˈpəsˌkyoōl|
noun
the period of partial darkness at the beginning or end of the day; twilight.

You know, I wrote this post yesterday, but it was kind of off and a bit dumb, so I decided to just delete it and leave the question I posed (mostly to myself but to you too if you want) at the end. This isn’t to say that the content of the post was dumb, it’s pretty important to me actually, but that it just came across as dumb. The important thing is that I consider on the following all the time:

One wonders if, after realizing the wrong decision has been made, the chance to make it again will ever arise.