On The Immorality of Cannibalism

The intervention by chance is a random distribution so respects no hierarchic arrangement; nor does it obey laws, being itself the motivator (or kindred to a mother) of probability. It is called forth or cast out with uncertainty, and navigated with aesthhetic rudders, which is to say, taste.

Coined by the dysphasic serial killer, Columbus, confusing local Indians with the descendants of those under the "subjugation" of Ghengis Kahn (thinking Columbus' own floating caravan had docked in Asia), and calling forth supporting evidence that their own term for "human", which is to say "themselves" sounded like "Karenina" (– > "Caribban"), not to mention a rhyme with Hannibal, "Cannibal" has stuck as the common word for man-eaters, joining up with tigers and women in the imperial British, patriarchal jargon by the 19th and early 20th centuries, always on analogy with Caliban and Prospero in proper Hegellian Shakespeares. Interesting that once he had found his bearings, and on further discovery that the natives weren't even human, he invited them to a barbeque to feed his hungry troops (some of whom may well have been Hungarian Huns or their descendants).

There is still some confusion whether -bal refers to the distribution or consumption of food, raw or cooked and in or out of a bowl or cauldron, so is a suitable synonym for phagous which also describes eating or sharing with gusto – even haggis. The ban is antimetabole, against turning abouts, carnivals, change-overs or merely loose change applied to meals, generalised dysphagia being fundamental to the growth of modern economies.

Less confusion is encountered on entering the kingdoms of plants, where both wild and domestic inhabitants are both anthropophagic (hence the abundance of lilies in cemeteries) and homophagic, consuming their own withered body parts, particularly their hand-like leaves quickly cooked in acidic soils, direct from the dirty floor beneath them. Were it not for the nurturing taste experienced by one and all, we might be tempted, getting at the root of things, to suggest auto-exploitation of the top by the bottom (or head by stern) and cry out "Cut out their hearts and eat them alive!", but we now know that they have none ... just over-rigid rudders & tight-assed tiller-men, inviting nothing, except perhaps tempestuous seas.

IMAGE OF A SNEEZE
boogers, scabs, toe-nails and budless neoplastic duds
are best excised with blunt blades or promontory thuds.
'f not swallowed outright,
the maximal obtuse angle's a flat-line
(like a squished nasal polyp billowing dandelion)
seeds everywhere clear, and clean out of sight:

“Sanity is the lot of those who are most obtuse [blunt, or with one internal angle greater than 90º or 75-99%], for lucidity destroys one's equilibrium: it is unhealthy to honestly endure the labors of the mind which incessantly contradict what they have just established.”

– Georges Bataille

Neoplasm is ambiguous

Unlike the oath, promise, swear or duty, the curse acknowleges that sometimes the magic doesn't work, whereon it's rendered 'wishfull thinking' – a proposition which cannot be made legally binding but is, never-the-less, only a contract with possibility. Sometimes the magic needs a little push or self-fulfilling prophecy.

A kindred curse for christians is "May you find truth in all your beliefs", should one wish to void heaven or set the globe on fire and grind stone before descending.

Anaplexy is an ascending twist like a slinky spring well before coming down the stairs, a figure skater leaping from a spin, the reverse image of the cataplexic fall or a wriggling miscarriage – a rigid slunk in the winter. A relaxed spring moves no pinballs toward their confusing, cataleptic destination in ticking points for the win.

The root, also glossed "plastic", used to refer to a maleable material – hence "pliable" – suitable for twisting or braiding, such as steamed wood or raw vine or strips of hemp-stem. Spun wool would also suffice, but not 1.) exceptionally well, which is too 2.) to say "rotten" for basketry or rattan furniture. The new twist or neoplasm rendered of plastic, while still organic due to its carbon base, is considered fakery in the arts, a rare (or quickly cooked) oil derivitive made to resemble something naturally growing and readily collectable. All displays are now cancerous, being digitised in the microwave bandage.

Plainspeak (like rare meat or quickly cooked books) is the democratisation of language, imposed by neglect or favoured flavour for fashion (spartanly paid but never tartanly plaid), and chief anti-cancer drug. Plainspeak is a syringe like the ring of power to cure all lines of thinking from meandering off the mainline and into the blank space between the inkspots on the page, the territory of questionable associations and neoplastic growths away from the compliant followers of lines marching across the page like fascist blackshirts in an italian parade or their brown-shirted cousins to the north hypoventilating at a regemented rally. Too many words have the same destructive effect on mainstream acu(r)ity as a single neo-logism or lexical carcinogen. "Acalculia" is a medical condition where-in every stone is left unturned and differences are polished smooth to bring the appearance of a sterile background, after-which every spell-check identifies "aculeate" with "acolyte" ... No question about it, the short answer suffices for nothing but an abbreviated R.I.P. in the brainpan.

On the other hand and taken literally, thought is merely the past tense of think, a verb (in spite of the similarity to lisping sots sinking boats), putting thoughts in the same bag as recollection, hear-say and other ambiguous artifacts – inappropriate evidence in any court of law or review by your peers. Association with a difference, especially a provisional one, is way out-of-line behavior. No bearing on originality, there are no facts in art to be dug up to impend your off-line case: live art is only a performance, the provision is what you eat. Depending stops clocks when the swinging pendulum is held tight or bearings roughed up.

The talk & the walk: outlaw, anarchist, punishment

The question has been posed such and so that it now nearly saturates the space-time continuum: "What is the factor or set of conditions most responsible for the persistently marching, generational reproduction of the political economy – its enduring invariance?" Beyond the renewing fetish for those famous last words, political & economy, jammed together or standing alone in the common lexicon, there seems a common practice seen throughout time regarding civilisation, at least the modern variety, and that is the delivery of punishment. It is well enough practiced as to appear biologically instinctive (in fact, most will argue to the point of blows that it is!)

I am not attempting a reductive argument as much as presenting a case for consideration. The addendum, "more-or-less" always seems to apply to our attempts at clear and precise calculations of responsibility. Odds-makers depend on it (the fudge factor of chance or the fuzzy logic of uncertainty) before any wager is placed. Chances are the world is too complex for any other sort of argumentative joke, even if infinite or accelerating complexity is thought the direction of chaos or just an order run amock and in need of some imposed simplification and slowdown, if not a kick in the ass so it will fly straight. It is the complexity of every situation which leads many to advise a lazy fair of doing nothing, as our agency has more-or-less run out of steam (or currency, or oil, not even to speak of breathable air). Well, a fair sounds like an enticing proposition, if it's free and not too borig.

And by punishment, I am not referring to violence per se, which is prevalent enough and quite appropriate on any ground as an altruistic as well as egoistic defense mechanism (should we choose to eliminate sacrifice from the equation – autonomous (unmotivated) violence, "just for the heck of it", appears to only rarely occur despite all the fashion-setting advertisements promoting it), but 'just' or juridical punishment required to maintain any prohibitive or proscriptive law. The common theory is that if not punished, more folks will 'do it' more often. This is not cutting-edge logic but the extension of a superstitious belief in innate untrustworthiness (which, oddly enough, never applies to one's self), and then we are advised: "Control yourself!", an impossible contradiction which would render all police to an extinct breed and end civilisation right there and then. Hence, everyday spectacle must be new and improved so we are all potentially caught unawares, equal under the law.

So justice is not possible without a tit-for-tat sanction, its threat or a moral plea to the prudent public which may apply the evil eye until you've paid your dues and walk the talk. Like any wage, the reward is just the threat of punishment, a "withholding": "Do your chores or there'll be no supper!" Economists measure situations and provide the exchange rate; political justice declares the sentence and applies the ankle weight. All governments endorse checks and balances or weights and measures and then say "It's only fair!" By any sophistry, the pronouncement is a foregone conclusion: that is the protection delivered by law (a legislator's carreer depends on it).

While consequences are to be found at each turn or stoppage in any life, their selection and imposition by the select is totally artificial. There are just too many variables to predict, and poignant moments may arouse one's various feelings in any fashion, but most particularly when unexpected. In other words, all circumstances are mitigating, so rather than the recapitulation of an invariable law of nature, every delivered punishment reflects an act of faith, most commonly directed at 'ignorance' (the "young & uneducated") and error (poor work performance justifying a meritocracy of fashionable techno-fascists). Justice is an economic religion, and organised along the same lines, not even excluding black robes and writ rites adorned by the priesthood. What child would exclaim "It's just not fair!" if s/he didn't already suspect some crookery was the case?

Fairness is not generalised from environmental contingencies until one has experienced the emotionally scalding scold, the swat and unremitting surveillance on a daily basis (the unrelenting, random punishment is even more effective). Otherwise, "fair" is an aesthetic description ranging from favourable mediocrity to smoothly excellent: "The pun was fair but not so as the lady's hair". In the same way, a fair is a favourable feast roughly covering the same range, but interspersed with surprises. "Just" is mediocrity without aesthetic.

If there are any "engrams", they are engrained at the earliest moments, well before any speech is more than experimental babble. For a small child, the opened safety-pin or withheld teat is mightier than the writ opinion & its penciled points. This reverses as one ages. From where else is a trust to emerge? The pun, on the other hand should be something to laugh over, not to instill the pain of perpetual guilt or prolong a reactionary tantrum.

The broader question for outlaws and anarchists should be, "Can a young being in the process of becoming older survive without punishment and its singular or mass distributivity?" But who considers children anyway? Do any architects have any children in mind when they design our living spaces ripe with steak-knives and power sockets? It is a fact, if anything is, that the modern environment is brutal and dangerous for growing people, requiring increased attention (ostensibly a matter of tending or nurture and protection) should their survival be deemed a "good" thing. We may hear "I trust my kid but not the environment" and sense an enlightened consideration. Easier by far to acquire a plastic pen and a firm hand or screeching declaration with sharp edges for the times they escape it, a bed with bars and a padded cell for retirement in preparation for (or completion of) a life of institutionalisation (prison prior to transgression makes, on release, just about any shit look shiny) than pick up our own mess and flush it, which is to say, "make it accesable & safe rather than confined & constrained". Doing little to prevent its rehabilitation and parole, it may not be enough to merely set fire to the schoolhouse.

Bucket-Mouth: The epistemology of Generals & Saints

1

Not always necessary, playful (and occasionally, painful) improvisation is the mother of invention, perhaps thereafter, mothering necessity in a viscous cycle. Mimicry is the mother of diffusion and error of modification. The boot (or boat or butter or bucket) is the mother of distributivity (slickum, suave, salve & save), hence the common senses implied by "bucket-mouth", "shit-talk" and "slippery tongue".

2

Generalities cannot be defined (hence the logic of unquestionable chains of command), lest they become specified and generally cease to exist. We would then have to say "There are no generalities", a proper generalisation and a bit of arrogance, so proving ourselves liars or numbskulls, yet another box of abstractions. Safer to suggest "There are no specifics" than generalise from species to genera. Dissection is of course, the reverse of this process, a return trip to the same sticky bog we affectionately call "home on the range" (while incessantly trying to escape). I have heard a mule recently came into the family way. That we've long observed a coyote breed succesfully with Saint Bernard upsets the calm of specification like a wind-storm at sea when rowing a wobbly bucket. Intransigence at this point produces racism. For the greater good of the species, Benard must defeat the Trickster to save the lost mountaineer with a flask of brandy just as George, patron of Bohemians, did it to the dragon after gimpy Patrick had chased all the snakes from Ireland with his cane and women were no longer charming.

3

From an infant's view, the paleolithic diet eliminates the necessity of bottles and buckets without insult to invention and distribution, but only as long as post-weaners are still encouraged to play and mimicry is recognised as a round of mutual entertainment (or intertwinement). The big break at puberty is no negation of childhood but the extension of adventure into more foreign fortune. Prodigality is only applicable when news is returned from strange lands with such interest that all else is forgotten, when tears of loss magically turn to joy. Such was the superstition of the dark ages and grounds for yokes, stocks and flammable annihilation while at their posts, and spectators and torchbearers shouted the war cry: "Jesus saves from all infantile disorder!" and sin took on an entirely new meaning, for which Louis Pasteur invented the cure and today, micro-waves kill enzymes for improved distribution at the expense of metabolism. After all, the rapid delivery of news is money in the bank, while digestion is just the destruction of commodities and injurious to the general economy.

4

If superstition is the pessimistic belief that humans require alien or supernatural intervention (higher power in both senses) for any judgment of accomplishment (or value), how is political economy any progressive superssession of the old by the new? Let me then suggest that prior to state and theocratic intervention, society was without superstition, except in its etymological sense of climbing a hill to get a bigger picture or merely to see what's on the other side.

Shit & Shinola II

The idea, the particular state of existence conceived as stationary, corresponds to any one of the various places in which the moving body is conceived to stand successively; but just as the moving body never stands in any of these places, so man, or any other progressive being, never is in any of the states represented by our ideas – he is only passing through them.

But the image is a gesture, a stoppage (or potential for such when it is a landmark) and not an idea or its representation. An idea is something we like to say "flows" (at least when we refer to thinking). Sometimes it meanders, yet we call that fantasy – figmentary imagination (or mental diarrhea – see fig syrup, figure 1.) when we prefer static "thoughts" (like theories – but think how increasingly often bubbles and light-bulbs burst) to their posited or questionable associations. Interesting that at one time, for the early (or purist) empirical scientist, the quest was the first order of business prior to any theoretical narrative. Now the quest is out of the question: we know ahead of time what we are looking for, so we're sure to find it, one way or another. Fudge is recommended over any fig syrup.

The motion picture is a story (a series of gestures) in which images replace words. A moving landscape is considered more "life-like" than a stationary back-drop. If representation (in or out of the democratic sense) is considered a synonym for life-like, then it is a matter of moving mimicry and not creative (original) at all. Progress beyond silent was considered a "talky" where the image accompanies the spoken word, but unlike stage-theatre, silent films also contained words: written ones, for the eyes rather than ears. These more efficient "silent-screen" actors no longer needed to attend speech therapy, considered the first order of business on the stage. Like the stage, gestures had been caricatured to accentuate the word with visual nuance. Progress sent this modern efficiency to the unemployment lines and actors again needed to learn to talk. Consider the difference between a relaxed and a tense open-mouth stare displayed by a hamadryas baboon. If you're not well-versed in baboon, it might be best all around to back off. Provisional algorythms are cheaper than ideas when the probability of correctness is uncertain.

Consider the "evil eye", raised eye-brow, raised bible, the middle finger, the threatening stance or bared teeth prior to pouncing. These are a pause in motion, signs possibly broadcasting an intention or emotion, but the idea is found not in their construction (a negation of doing) but their interpretation by onlookers. The idea is, like any theory or thought, only a guess; the gesture is poetry. This is why thinking-about-thinking so often utilises navigational metaphors when proceeding to talking-about-thinking.

Everything is genuine and original, whilst on the other hand (and simultaneously), everything is contrived and derived. This is neither contradiction nor enigma where, in a language, there is a word for dada.

– Polyglot Institute: 3rd course on self-mismanaged systems

Shit & Shinola: another offensive spin-off, another repeat:

And what was the theme of yesterday's show beyond a repeat of mindful but inarticulate gibberish? It is always the same theme, or variant tangential to it: Those who would be diagnosed and committed for obsessive-compulsive disorder (once called a "hobby") are not calling for a second opinion – we are in full agreement, being compelled by some unknown quirk of our disposition we like to call "our own, sole, soul pleasure" (which is why we would share it in the first place, being alive and of reproductive age – by one aesthetic or another – genes aren't everything!) to obsessively dis the current order of things, or at least disregard the opinion & belief that the meddlesome arranging for an orderly (regimented) display, which is detrimental to our harmony, is desirable. We actually like a surprise now and then, if only to stay awake. If civilisation is an obsessive compulsion in the pursuit of predictable order, particularly the law-&-order variety (either "natural" or imposed), then civilisation is a narcoleptic murder by definition and not just for eating (unless it is considered top-down ritual cannibalism, the unique perspective of class consciousness).

If civil order (and if we are greek descendants, we would be correct to call it "politics") progresses by murder and mayhem (either literally or symbolically, inward- or outwardly) applied to the different (or easily targeted), then all those, even so-called anarchists bent on its improvement when they are not trying to wind their new digital watches, those who call for its sustainable upgrade are complicit, accomplice or merely compliant. The proper insult is either "Monkey see, monkey do" or a gifted present of the on-screen image portraying three monkeys seeing, hearing and speaking no evil ... or both. It may be considered a mirror or a telescope, that is for you to decide. If you don't like the show, leave the theatre.

Another common insult is "hypocrite", but that is a misapplied attribute as there may be no intention to deceive. There may, in fact, be no intention at all: "we just want to be loved". In any event, such motherless orphans are usually paid for their service (or at least avoid more punishment). When confronted, we hear "It's necessary work for the greater good, and if only everyone engaged in the performance, we could spend less over-all time doing it". "Doing it!" Well, I say that sounds like aphroditicly scrubbing on a stranger's toilet after (or prior to) a bad bout of dysentery or projectile vomiting. When something is so well rehearsed, it is highly unlikely that any withering will be observed in the audience. If it is an offensive display, where will you get volunteers except from like-minded fetishists? More successful applicants for the part always adds up to more misery (expressed in man-hours) and not less. But of course, it's just theatre and you can go home after the show! Or can you?

Visceral reality, Hot Milk & the Spark of Life

All Bleeding Eventually Stops

– Dave Brown

The prospect of motion was one thing the translator of Stirner's classic, old Steven Byington aptly got through to me, albeit to help the book-seller and pacifier of anarchists, Benjamin ('P.R.') Tucker build up a damaging case of madness, and ironically, in his moral deference to interest charged on borrowed time, or money. But then, he was only trying to invoke a Bergsonism to bring Max Stirner into the loving embrace of the worshipers of property (their own) and cast out more intelligent interpretations (or at least cover them up in a mental ward or with the application of several plagues in Mexico during its insurrection – see James L. Walker & the Self-management of Medicine, ISBN: 42). We can catch a glipmse of the hypocracy of democracy when Shakespeare demands "Physician, heal thyself!" ... and he did, so they gave him another dose.

Foremost in mind, however, may have been to negate the possible fruition of the prophesy by the Manchester, England school teacher, Miss Dora Marsden, which fortells thus: "When one becomes filled with thoughts, there will be no room left for thinking...'It is the kind of thing that overpowers our mental digestion'." Of course, the Spoonerist, 'P.R.' somewhat redeems himself when he says "To say that a rebel is bound in honour to take the consequences is to declare the victim the tyrant's debtor, and is superstition pure and simple! A rebel against the State is contemptible if he complains of the consequences of his rebellion, but certainly he is entitled to avoid them if he can, and, in doing so, he shows not lack of fibre, but possession of wit" (possibly referring to his own behaviour and advice following Most's flammable insurance scams and the haymarket executions).

The diffuse confusion not only in placing Tucker but successfully marketing "liberty" while still escaping the purges with bank-account in tact, is the persistence that the fixed idea of government can be dissected off from the "economic organism", but its "useful and non-invasive (functions) would be taken over by voluntary associations of workers" (Understandably, a certain Italian in 1924 favourably confused this with "fascism" – not yet a bad word in main-stream Amerika till the '40's – so much for clear and distinct language!). To this is conflated "voluntary co-operation" with adherence to a "contract fixing the limits of such co-operation, as a possibility of the future", a clear misreading of Stirner, but not, perhaps, Proudhon. The difference between a contract and agreement is the expected strength of their binding surviving (in tact) any degree of digestion. But enough of this talk of anarchic duty; back to the reverend, good doctor Byington:

I cannot but welcome [Henri] Bergson into the field against me: for if he is an opponent he is one of the most obliging ones I ever met. Being on the topic of Greek philosophy, he takes up the well-known Greek arguments to prove the impossibility of motion* [see note], and identifies this defiance of common sense with their disposition to worship ideas. The idea [image], the particular state of existence conceived as stationary, corresponds to any one of the various places in which the moving body is conceived to stand successively; but just as the moving body never stands in any of these places, so man, or any other progressive being, never is in any of the states represented by our ideas – he is only passing through them. So Bergson; let us accept the analogy, and instead of considering merely the metaphysical question of the possibility of motion let us consider its application to practical life. Suppose the moving body to be a man; and suppose that he intends to make his motion more or less satisfactory to himself. He has nothing more urgent to consider than these places to which or through which he is to pass. Ordinarily his only rational purpose is to pass to or through these places; the choosing of his route so that the process of movement itself shall be satisfactory is of some consequence indeed, yet of minor consequence. Even if he is not aiming at any place – if he is walking through unknown country for pleasure or exploration – he must still from time to time have an eye to places that he does not wish to pass through, or he will come to grief. Does Bergson's analogy hold in all these respects? Decidedly it does. In the conduct of human life, intelligent planning is possible only by having an eye to these states represented by the "ideas" which form the landmarks of our course, choosing which of them we wish to reach, and, as a very urgent matter, noting the ones to be avoided. Whether we stop at the ideas or not, we must steer by aiming at them if we are to live sensibly. That is what the page of Bergson comes to.

Steven T. Byington, 1913

But then, that would make ideas mere provisional reference points or navigational aids and not suitable fodder for stone tablets or grave markers in a field of well-fed lillies, which, as we understand, toil not – on both counts. Otherwise, there is the reverse invisibility cloak surrounding the center of the universe (a narcissistic solipsism or house of mirrors) which renders the blindness of a blank slate on any subject position, like an empty gut in an abandoned macdonalds burger joint smelling of moldy reefer. Bergson used more, the word "image" than "idea". Feats of imagination are rarely, these days, taken as absolutes, and thinking truths does not make them so. Duh! But throwing bricks through mirrors (or seeing them where they are not – a bit of reflection or identification with the world outside) may make fiction the more revealing process than the generally-preferred doxa and dogma.

The one gnostic idea survives, however, despite eons of dissection and quibbling elaboration, that life is generated not in organic motion itself (the question of Lamarck, with or without ulterior motive), but in the application of a spark to a potential (or former, as regards Mary Shelley's muses) corpse, as the lit fuse is to a cannonball in flight. It may be that literary fusion will never supply a sustainable energy source like an enzyme is to digestion and bowel movements. To wit:

The spark of life for a block of cheese is the stomach's inert content (rennet sans milk) of a dead, baby sheep, who's gender is irrelevant and any extraneous milk will do in the amalgamation, as long as it's from a mother and not a thistle or prickly lettuce. However, thistle milk (which is really a white, acidic blood of the plant's circulatory system) is a suitable substitute for dead babies when added to hot milk, aiding in separation but the cheese will be mushy before it crumbles. (Mold sold separately). Should your taste move more in the direction of live music, the same baby (or its mother's) intestines make an excellent addition to the string section: Livelier than steel (though not as loud), it will not cause sparks (but may inspire your own). The sappy blood from a pine tree or its needles may prevent babies altogether, in which case musicians will need rely on their own steel, whose production also requires much heat, rubbing and stretching. A nice hot cup of milk might help you sleep after any such moving ordeal, but does not affect the conscience – that calls for a strong dose of religion or its alternate: reductive caballic materialist philosophy (RCMP). For any other liver toxicity, try a bowl of milk thistle and eggs (hen not included). More adventurous souls bleed poppies like leeches to sooth excessive animation – then they drop off. A not unsuitable substitute for petroleum distilates, vast pine forests were cleared, as at the time, they were considered a sustainable solution (which always means "a temporary fix") to the accelerating need to plant growing soldiers' corpses.

– google add

– The Discovery Channel

– A. Runnion Polisson

After the first big war (falsely accused, advertised as "the last"), Dora Marsden gave us her own impressions of the relation between "selfs" and "souls", the separation of which would most certainly bring death (or at least bad tasting music – a priori), just like lopping off the government from the presumed "economic organism" (the French Public Safety Committee saw on two occasions how well that had worked! It was exhumed and elect-trickly revived), but her manuscripts were destroyed and she confined to an institution for the insane for the last three-or-so decades of her life, fulfilling Tucker's initial prophecy: "a person who pursues that ideal [repelled by Proudhon's solutions in accordance with Rousseau's 'social contract'] will find his proper environment within the confines of a madhouse. Until such is forthcoming, the discussion cannot proceed." But such is the sentiment of the civil-tongued, where there are no prisoners but political prisoners, all heretics to the ideas of democracy (or mutual constraint) and binding contracts. Is that not the state already? Well, of matrimony anyway!

[*note – it was not so much motion which Xeno disproved, but getting from here to there in accordance with the calculation of pre-scribed steps along a consensual criterion, the sophists' [or Mel Brookes' "Stand-up Philosophers"] notion of 'fixed idea' to which they generally ran opposition like every child's "why?" and "yeah but!" after-which they must run for their very lives. Not to be confused with ritual, which is merely a repeat performance and typically entertaining. In the same fashion that Bergson questioned "stages" as corpuscles which images are thought to "represent" (minutes and snap-shots), Buckminster-Fuller did not disprove continuity when he discredited a "continuum" along "lines in space". These beings were less progressive than multidimensional, and that means "life-like".]

PMS and the Laxative of Choice

No longer merely a "woman's curse", a steady course of PMS (Post-Structural Materialist Syndrome) indiscriminantly inflicts hemorrhoids on all: few would deny that excessive piles are caused by the imposition of too much digging, inadequate nutrition and setting your fat ass too long on a wet saddle.

A bad stretch of pun, admittedly. Less of a stretch is the entanglement of politics and economics or government and commerce or war and kleptomania. First off, they are not entangled at all, and radicals – those who look at the roots of things, even under insults and tomatos tossed by those content with given, superficial images or fairy stories – understand this. The metaphor currently in vogue is rhyzome. More appropriate would be a single tap-root. Synonymy. Here is the logic: "Winners" is just a variant spelling of "owners". Still not convinced? How 'bout this: the commander-in-chief, setting atop the executive branch of office, is in appearance indistinguishable from the chief executive officer delivering blow-jobs (a lot of hot air) to corporate cronies and a pain in the ass to everyone else.

Picture, if you will, the warted, village thug standing, behind mean men with pointed sticks, on a soap box in front of the barley-house, and tell me government and banking ever represent different interests than bloody hemorrhoid relief for fat cats. The choice between a political and an economic remedy is no choice at all! The pitchfork was expressly designed for shovelling shit. If it gets too deep and gooey, put on your waders and head for high ground, as the pig pen is about to flush.

The self-fulfilling prophecy and the theory of Hoodoo Magic

The curse, of course, is either an out-right, straight-up application of psychic poison, or a trick to make a lethal dose of bad luck appear sweet and nutritious. The overall best curse is "May you get all you desire". Should you wish for everything, you will be innundated and come to a hopeless stand-still.

We're taught that voodoo is the implimentation of an idea of an outcome (either health or personal destruction) whose belief by the recipient causes the effect to occur, hence the accusation of magical thinking. This is a naive and dangerous interpretation at wost and unbelieveable at best, when the data finally comes in for analysis. The evidence is clear that misfortune and so-called "miracle-cures" occur about as frequently as the phenomenon of rain occurs somewhere on the planet on a daily basis with or without any insemination and consequent belief in festering ideas. Belief in ideas only "makes" unforseen or prophesized world events concerning the 'subject' happen more easily or readily. If you're looking for rain, you'll probably find it, in one form or another, so why be gloomy? Nutritious or toxic effects are more easily witnessed if one is mindful of them. Hence the common sentiment, "there's someone in the cosmos out to do you in", and there you have it! How often we ourselves are found the culprit, particularly when we continue the sorts of risks which end us every time, in the klink. Magicians invoke Kharma; enlightened scientists call on the laws of inertia and probability. Is there a difference?

Every long-term successful criminal is aware that each positive reinforcement (a successful get-away) carries with it a danger of arrogance – those positive strokes can be deadly. The self-assured sometimes fall faster than any equivalently weighted material. Hoodo witch-doctors are often masters of manipulating contingencies of reinforcement to affect turning points open to the victim or patient. Expectation is part of the proceedure, but not necessarily so.

Conan-Doyle explained how the process worked concerning 19th and early 20th century western medicine: placebo (then embraced by practitioners) was a measure of the doctor's skill in bed-side manners – the "real" cure. About the same time, veterinarians discovered that sickness behaviour was a signal (intentional or not, that is beside the point) for help. A predator will catch the signal and put an end to suffering, or a kindly mare will stand guard while the otherwise helpless body heals itself (or awakes from a nap). This is why we came to see nurturing the sick (or young or uneducated, still erroneously viewed as "sicknesses") as a motherly sort of thing.

It may have been the invention of female nurses which gave us the manly modern doctor who simply sticks it to you and signs the receipt after a two hour wait in a sterile looking room. The intention, of course, is to sterilize your attention. What you don't see can't hurt you, right? Ok, so you might not be old enough to remember before woman's liberation. By old-time standards, today we are surrounded by manly girls and girly men and probably are correct to ask "what's the friggin' difference?" Don't warriors of all varieties loudly express mutual aid when they protect the folks back home? Well, certainly not the modern variety in or out of uniform, unless they are fully deluded. Have I strayed again beyond the expected topic? I wouldn't be the first to suggest that cops create criminals in the interest of job security.

Even today's pharmaceuticals are measured against the incredibly effective results of placebos. The positive comparisons (sometimes up to 3% favourable, which, when you think about it, is a pretty low number) are achieved in double-blind experiments where neither the experimenter nor subject know which drug was delivered. The witch-doctor might advise them that preconceived knowlege entirely misses the point: nutritient, inert ingredient (like a "dead metaphor", considered "meaningless") and toxin are not always easily distinguishable on a purely intellectual basis.

Medieval scientists understood this when they discovered that honey makes the bitter go down better. It's a matter of taste, yes, but also of spectacle, where the speculum is no longer necessary. Besides, who says that the inert caking ingredient has no adverse effects? Did the pharmaceutical researcher try snorting it up their own nose? A medical student-volunteer will never assume the kindly (or is that ignorant?) experimenters are out to get them or are incapable of reviving them should unexpected misfortune befall. An interesting experiment would compare this approach with the certainly unkind, nazi method of forced experimentation on prison inmates, who know damn well their own well-being is not up front in the researcher's mind. If the well-meaning doctors would look into their own history, they would see that their forebearers were members of the amalgamated assassin-chemist guild (AACHG!) and not the beneficent order of sanitation engineers (BORES!).

The point is, the double-blind experiment is not always suitable to negate belief in silly (or not) ideas from playing its tricks. The subjective (phenomenal) distinction between nutrient and toxin by organic life-forms is still a mystery, even at the molecular level vigilantly surveiled by medical machinists oblivious to synergetic (some say "magical") effects of the big picture. We can only assume an affinity for kindred wave-forms and dis-affinity with strangers, but then what about the adoption of orphans?. Unique particle receptors is a metaphoric analogy to jig-saw puzzles – if it fits, wear it.

There is nevertheless an aesthetic awareness resting beneath induction and intuition, but one never knows for sure where a gravitudinal embrace will take us, or what it will bring. Sometimes shit happens; sometimes it's slung.

– Forest Gump's mother

A Review of Desert* by O'brien

This text far supersedes Nihilist Communism as a source of not only disillusionment, but despondancy for literate radicals. Not that there aren't some good scatterings to be found, however...

The most nutritious scattering in the text is this:

Turning the pain we feel into resistance is better than turning it on each other, our own class and our own bodies. It is environmentally healthier (to use a degraded term) to defend wild freedoms than let all of earth become civilisation’s territory.

But this sentiment pretty much already saturates anarchist literature.

Written in the same fashion and published by members of the same team which brought back "impossibilism" into our ideological lexicon, Desert is addressed to anarchists of all stripes, and those leftists currently migrating in that direction. While Nihilist Communism – written initially for revolutionary organisationalists of Marxist' as well as platform/syndicalist-anarchist' persuasion – was appreciated for exposing just more-of-the-same blueprint-derived social engineering repoducing the state along 'new-and-improved' lines, Desert informs us that it doesn't really matter: we're all fucked. Oh, not right away, but probably twenty to fifty years down the road. O'brien's advice? Not "Do Nothing" like the Duponts sugest, but "Do whatever, it won't matter". Well, there's also "Be Afraid". Civilisation's in good hands, no matter the hits it takes, at least until the real coming armegedon with planetary suicide. We'll most of us be long dead. What a great story to encourage our children, and it's backed by real science!

Assumptions and evidence?

The author(s) of Desert – who I like to call O'brien, after that despicable character in Orwell's 1984 – relies heavily on Lovelock, who early on gave us incredibly prophetic analysis of global ecology but ended his carreer advising increased reliance on the nuclear power industry, as in the long run, it's mostly harmless. Wow! Good advise for some: stocks for General Electric skyrocketted, in typical self-prophetic fashion. But back to the Desert, which most twenty-somethings will soon witness (not us old folks, what relief!), O'brien is not so optimistic as Lovelock, primarily after researching academic scientists sycophantic to the press like those turds responsible for those absurd BBC "Science Headlines" which almost always make it into colloquial wisdom. But as well, we are inundated with news from top police and military sources: those dudes are invincible thanks to modern technology.

The first set of unquestioned assumptions begins to clarify. Of course, there's the oldy but goody direct from the cops: "We always get our man" and the stand-by: "Crime doesn't pay". Obviously they've never heard of John Locke and empiricism which simply states "look around before coming up with your grand truths!" Of course, revealed wisdom has gotten a bad rap since the religious types started counting angels dancing on heads of pins, but I'm not so sure today's brightest minds are doing much different. Where are we to locate the victories of the economists and clinical psychologists? Shouldn't we all be happy and rich by now?

My first clue to this critical stand toward this text came with the repition of old wives tales concerning the origins and progress of civilisation, particularly in medical technology, and there's also the "fact" that capitalism has attained a complete "mastery of the world". If this were the case, we should all be "no worries" – "It's under control!". Then they tell us to forget about historical contexts and romantic futures. Sorry, but such is the way folks become eager slaves, when they are assured "It's the only game in town". Lip-service is paid to anthropological research, merely suggesting that base has been covered. Evidence? Because of modern medicine, rich folks live ten years longer than everybody else. Has anyone since the 1890's veterinarians considered the effect environmental stress (including but not limited to malnutrition) has on health? Travelling medicine-show proprieters and voodoo witch-doctors have long depended on the connection between psychology and physiologic function. And I wonder: Do healthy folks really take more medicine than the sick? I guess privilege has its privilege, at least from the stresses mitigated by financial security.

The thing is, the college of medicine doesn't even teach science, so medical science is a bit of an oxymoron. Doctors are technicians following blueprints laid down by the pharmaceutical and insurance companies (who actually do practice empirical science: the science of extracting money from their clientele and from those who aren't). What I'm suggesting is that a sheep herder could set a broken bone with comparable facility, and personally, I wouldn't want a doctor anywhere near the delivery room. Oh, technology has its advantages, I guess. One of the new "hypersonic" military jets zoomed over this morning doing about warp 5 and the house actually bounced twice on its foundation (or was that an earth-quake influenced by fracking up southern british columbian sands?) We're told repeatedly of the capability of today's techno-hacking youth and what they can do with a laptop. How come no one is making those automated oxygen burners take a wrong turn and slam into a mountain? Given, the recouperative powers of capitalist civilisation, still, I don't think they could re-boot after that sort of crash.

Toward the end, O'brien further distinguishes himself from the Duponts:

That’s not to say that all resistance is futile (if meaningful, achievable objectives are kept in mind, and tactics not transformed into aims), nor that we should desist from growing communities in which to live and love

then goes on to endorse protecting your little patch but forget the planet, whilst at the same time, offering us the "big picture". Seems to me big picture thinking would go beyond one's own little patch. When O'brien does it, it's educational; when we do it, it's delusional idealism or magical thinking. The difference is a matter of facts and who owns them.

You still want plain speak? Who anymore even knows what those three ten-dollar words, "community", "live" and "love", mean? Security culture? hunker down? and sacrifice for the greater good? The hopeful tactics laid out in the penultimate chapter contradict the hopeless global surveilance and capitalist might described in the previous eight. And that sense of doom is well-prefigured by the time we read the encouraging final remarks. I come away not feeling encouraged, but instead feel as if I was just told "do your best to clean your plate, but there will be no cake afterward".

So what's my alternative? Don't give me that shit ... and I won't give you mine! But since you asked, I try to accept no answers and still question everything. Medicine or no, Thoreau said only a handfull of white folks have ever even died in this country ... you have to live first, and that often means taking chances. You want to be immortal? That would take a bit more self-initiative than, I think, we're any of us prepared for. Better to be a democrat, I guess. That makes just about everything somebody else's problem.

It is probably true that millenarian hope solves nothing, but without the expectation of our own future, what possibility is there for transgressive direct action (meaning of course, "I hope taking these risks won't backfire") Fearless Leader once explained, "I never promised change, only hope for it!" Is the appropriate response to give up hope altogether? Might as well slit yer own throat.

– The "real" Atka Mip

* from here

Just Law: Laxative & the Purge of Laxity

Fit the 1

Don't laugh. There was a time "just" and "law" were two ways of saying the same thing, or nearly so: Just is generally more generic than Lex, a ligature which is a more mere law (not to be confused with Rex, an employment agency for most hangmen). For the lax or loosely lawless, justice amounted to a yoke juxtaposed in the region of the jugular. The first law was "No standing around on the job", from that earliest chapter in the first book of legal text forebearing all loosed nooses (and running noses in Scotland) but forbearing no loose hands or idle pleasures on a dung heap. The seeming contradiction is only a contextual error or misplaced space: freed movement was the original transgression once justice had been delivered to the territories and sullied their air. Some gift from the mountain! (should you prefer a rolling avalanche to a flowing river): the etymology is fairly clear on this affair.
 

Feat the 2

Note the difference between tomato and tomàto:

a- when not an article of ambiguity, a prefix of absense, ambivalence or anymosity.
1. < OE an – > on, as in 'atop' is 'on top';
2. < Latin "without", as in an-ceil, 'no ceiling' [upper limit: a level above which something such as an ancillary rent, wage, bread or servant is not allowed to rise].

Only an anarchist would protest the distinction, often seen riding atop rule-ers with much kicking and biting. But such is how modern speakers mistranslated the practice of patience and tolerance for the old folks and their ways with forebearance, a sacrificial offering to the dead, a performance renowned by the Latin aristocracy in propitiating gods and by stock brokers waging all-or-nothing on a throw of the die. The former, when practiced by the not-so civilised, is called "ancestor worship", "magical thinking", "superstition". The latter, seen among the wealthy, is called a sound (practical) investment.

But such also is how anarchy (the divestment of authority) is confused with the anti-authoritarian (against authorities), a mere pose setting up a permanent and intractable, if not-too-violent contestation. The former may share the motivation of the latter, but has sufficient inertia to carry it through. The difference is a matter of relish. If considered another word for aesthetics, that could make all the difference in the world.

  Part the Last
A righteous job? Fie! Such fuss!
ergo ergot esta rye dust
henceforth's the stoppage of tripping a must.

For conscripting – bar (none) for a fee,
or to excrete, expel, the loose & free,
we must mustard the muster tree!

– see Death to Plain-speak Brigade

Sycophant, n. *

As the lean leech, its victim found, is pleased
To fix itself upon a part diseased
Till, its black hide distended with bad blood,
It drops to die of surfeit in the mud,
So the base sycophant with joy descries
His neighbor's weak spot and his mouth applies,
Gorges and prospers like the leech, although,
Unlike that reptile, he will not let go.

Gelasma, if it paid you to devote
Your talent to the service of a goat,
Showing by forceful logic that its beard
Is more than Aaron's fit to be revered;
If to the task of honoring its smell
Profit had prompted you, and love as well,
The world would benefit at last by you
And wealthy malefactors weep anew –

Your favor for a moment's space denied
And to the nobler object turned aside.

Is't not enough that thrifty millionaires
Who loot in freight and spoliate in fares,
Or, cursed with consciences that bid them fly
To safer villainies of darker dye,
Forswearing robbery and fain, instead,
To steal (they call it "cornering") our bread
May see you groveling their boots to lick
And begging for the favor of a kick?

Still must you follow to the bitter end
Your sycophantic disposition's trend,
And in your eagerness to please the rich
Hunt hungry sinners to their final ditch?
In Morgan's praise you smite the sounding wire,
And sing hosannas to great Havemeyher!
What's Satan done that him you should eschew?
He too is reeking rich – deducting you.

* "One who approaches Greatness on his belly so that he may not be commanded to turn and be kicked. He is sometimes an editor." – A.B.
  Thus, the inversion is also common: Greatness will often suck whatever is offered, if it assists in cornering you.   But then, Greatness never crawls, except toward the even-greater; it's smarmy that way.

Wealth

PROPERTY, n. Any material thing, having no particular value, that may be held by A against the cupidity of B. Whatever gratifies the passion for possession in one and disappoints it in all others. The object of man's brief rapacity and long indifference. -- A.B.

[CUPIDITY, n. Greed, especially for money or possessions (formal). Named after an imp colloquially blamed for the inspiration of rape]

The big fallacy is that wealth is produced by workers. Not so; it produces workers. Wealth is a rilchiam produced by the linguistic juxtaposition (just suppositioning) of the ideas around "health" (your 'own'), "heath" ('unplowed land') and "world" (added or aggregate environment). Like The Word, it belongs to totalising empires (a redundancy).  Work as wage or any other slavitude, is only work: an action without intention or action despite one's contrary intention to pause. If one could eat labour, we would have to call it a squirming meal of toxins.

For example, what used to be labeled "graft," construction for the sake of construction for the sake of accelerating wealth (euphemistically called "money") has no interest and no longer any connection in the production of commodities (other than the machinery which facilitates the work). Since the first truck-farm, there has always been this tendency to destroy produce for the renewal of production. Bataille used the example of warfare, just another rapacious (if par excellent) mining venture in the interest of spermicidal expenditure or whatever gets you off. Construction work has become a perpetual project, at least until the last mountain is leveled to the ground or the last hole piled up. The structure is absolutely superfluous to the enterprise. To wit: there are today as many new, vacant structures as people lacking them. And they're growing on both counts. Post-structuralism for the materialists!

If objective "things" are made, they are made only as a means for acquiring survival: a functional duration suitable only for further work. Property is not necessarily a noun when it expresses one's authority to thieve (or exclude) – hence the phonetic similtude between thieve and thrive. It is a right of things to move (as a willing slave toward a master – ie., a sycophant), and folks to stand still, gaping. Wealth is State Polity: what is taken by owners by virtue of property, and that means, whatever they desire. Their booty or "just" desert.

Justice is a misnomer (hurling toward the rilchy fith). To equalise wealth would be, a priori, to annihilate it. Unless we refer back to "health" and "world", wealth is meaningless, a metaphor un-dead, without reflection. Such reference notwithstanding, there is no wealth without property. Health is always the case of the person, whether self or airy sylph. It is produced by one's provisional suggestions, contingent relations or 'free' associations with the world. A case of illness is a diseased society: cupidity with indifference, desire without aesthetic. Anesthesia is definitely contraindicated.

Unless you can produce an appearance of infinity by your disorder, you will have disorder only without magnificence.

– Edmund Burke

Wealth is the articulation or slicing of the world breaking up others' relations & associations, immune to any and all contrary suggestions. One's wealth produces sickness for the other, but as an incurably accelerating addiction – on (or nearly so) both counts. The wealthy are vampires, a word which has taken a life of its own after being cut off from "empires". The behaviour is tell-tale: a personified condition (being immortal) wherein actually mortal parasites raze villages (in the appearance of a dragon or dragoon, it makes no difference) and suck blood or life-essence: the par excellent circulating and renewing fluid characterising healthy bodies partaking of nutritious provisions.

The annihilation of wealth, what some ironically (or mindlessly) call justice has only one demand: the destruction of property in both its nominal and adverbial case. In the name of 'justice', to suggest that workers need more and better work is the height of linguistic absurdity or unhealthy condition.

"embryonic movement" vs. "black bloc"

"This tactic (smashy-smash) is old and tired and fully compromised. It is not anarchist. It is time to put it to rest."

First off, the movement is not "embryonic", dating back to the time when the first thug took the village grain and proceeded to divvy it out in return for favours^[1]. The first anarchist said "fuck this shit...I've no interest in wiping your fat ass" and proceeded to burn down the granary.

Because of its near universality, some have said that "fuck-shit-up" is not a disorder but part of our nature, in-the-genes, so to speak. Others have said it is only a natural reaction to an unnatural environment. This dilemma is thought the source of the dialectical argument giving birth to politics. On the contrary, argument is only a means of doing nothing rather than something, and wise propagandists have well-utilised its languishing or mesmerising inducements on participants, to protect any status quo.

"Because a 'tactic' has never produced peace on earth and good will toward men", is a pretty silly excuse to persuade others to refrain from taking a principled stance (or action). Transgression is the liberation of possibilities: any future, in fact, time itself depends on it. Transgression is the only means of breaking out of a flow and going your own way -- this is the very function of sails: transgressing prevailing currents. Hawai'i is the big clue that most anything is possible. Before folks got there, it was called "More Water". Obviously, crime has its advantages^[2].

Don't forget, it was also anarchists who coined the phrases: "Do your own thing!" and "If it feels good, do it!" The fat cats also adhere to these sentiments. So what? The only approved alternative is sacrifice, and we all know where that movement goes -- the sewer is the final resting place of all sacrificial pipe-dreams.

 

[1] There is a direct relationship between the happiness of money (evident when it flows -- as in "rivers don't trickle!") and the misery of folks (evident when they stand still -- as in "linger" and "languish").

[2] A pig (out west, archaically called "critter" or "varmint") is a predatory subspecies of hominoid ape, whose career stands and falls on the flow and happiness of money, very often in this day and age, merely by fighting crime or otherwise probing your anus. Miserable itself, it hunts you down to 1) enslave you (prison labour), 2) return the other slaves from their distraction, 3) make money happy (by taking yours), 4) enjoy fucking over others to make its own misery feel somehow less and/or 5) all or some of the above. The pig is the most immediate obstacle to one's liberty. This fake power (faux pas) is why so many folks emulate them in their everyday life. It's a matter of mutual mimicry or delusional theatrics. Should one wish to break free, offing pigs (on the "critter" analogy) is just good common sense. When folks observe this logic together, it is called consensus.

L

LAND, n. A part of the earth's surface, considered as property. The theory that land is property subject to private ownership and control is the foundation of modern society, and is eminently worthy of the superstructure. Carried to its logical conclusion, it means that some have the right to prevent others from living; for the right to own implies the right exclusively to occupy; and in fact laws of trespass are enacted wherever property in land is recognized. It follows that if the whole area of terra firma is owned by A, B and C, there will be no place for D, E, F and G to be born, or, born as trespassers, to exist.

– A. Bierce

LIFE is an order and a state of things in the parts of every body possessing [displaying, expressing, bending or thrusting, demonstrating] it, which permits or renders possible in it the execution of organic movement, and which, so long as it exists, is effectively opposed to death. Derange this order and this state of things to the point of preventing the execution of organic movement, or the possibility of its reëstablishment, then you cause death... these movements, which constitute active [appetitive] life, result from the action of a stimulation which excites them.

– J. Lamarck

LIE: It may be true that the poison of theatre, when injected in the body of society, destroys it, as St. Augustine asserted, but it does so as a plague, a revenging scourge, a redeeming epidemic when credulous ages were convinced they saw God's hand in it, while it was nothing more than a natural law applied, where all gestures were offset by another gesture, every action by a reaction...This theatre releases conflicts, disengages powers, liberates possibilities, and if these possibilities and these powers are dark, it is the fault not of the plague nor of the theatre, but of life...this theatre invites the mind to share a delirium which exalts its energies; and we can see, to conclude, that from the human point of view, the action of theatre, like that of the plague, is beneficial, for, impelling men to see themselves as they are, it causes the mask to fall, reveals the lie, the slackness, baseness, and hypocrisy of our world.

– A. Artaud

LANGUE: Today's incantations: "It was only the previous intransigence of the 8-ball to sink into the void which helped the next opposing schtick thwack true." "It was truly a magic opportunity...they had missed!" "It doesn't require a trick shot." "We aimed. We struck. It died."