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."

Missing at the occupation? Mutual Aid is neither theoretical device, literary talking point, eutopean desire nor photo-op

... but it may well be, the excluded middle, a space emergeable, we're trained not to see, always behind safety-orange fencing:

I is the first letter of the alphabet, the first word of the language, the first thought of the mind, the first object of affection. In grammar it is a pronoun of the first person and singular number. Its plural is said to be We, but how there can be more than one myself is doubtless clearer to the grammarians than it is to the author of this incomparable dictionary. Conception of two myselfs is difficult, but fine. The frank yet graceful use of "I" distinguishes a good writer from a bad; the latter carries it with the manner of a thief trying to cloak his loot.
ME, pro. The objectionable case of I. The personal pronoun in English has three cases, the dominative, the objectionable and the oppressive. Each is all three.

– Ambrose Beirce

The body, defined politically, is precisely organized by a perspective that is not one’s own and is, in that sense, already elsewhere, for another, and so in departure from oneself. On this account of the body in political space, how do we make sense of those who can never be part of that concerted action, who remain outside the plurality that acts? ...are the destitute outside of politics and power, or are they in fact living out a specific form of political destitution? ,,,if we claim that the destitute are outside of the sphere of politics – reduced to depoliticized forms of being – then we implicitly accept that the dominant ways of establishing the political are right....Such a view disregards and devalues those forms of political agency that emerge precisely in those domains deemed pre-political or extra-political. So one reason we cannot let the political body that produces such exclusions furnish the conception of politics itself, setting the parameters for what counts as political - is that within the purview established by the Polis those outside its defining plurality are considered as unreal or unrealized and, hence, outside the political as such.

– Judith Butler

"There’s also a clear picture of this nightmare-plain between the theorizing class and the theorized one. The rise of the tablet gives rise to a whole new kind of disfigurement, filth and procedure, a totally defaced face.

"These young women appear to be young women like many other young women. They wear their clothes like many other young women, like how I too have that gray tank top, how she, too, has that striped shirt, how my daughter, too, has that backpack. The fencing around them is the fencing used for snowdrifts. The young women are like weather; they are a kind of ubiquity; they are, on first appearance, a bland and not-very-particular thing. You can turn off the sound and see the young women like a drift behind the safety-orange fencing. They are the ordinary as it is merely obstructed, but not, beyond appearance, contained. There are cameras and cars and elaborately costumed figures of authority. There are people looking towards and people looking away. There are people walking past. If I suspend, for a second, my familiarity with plastic safety-orange fencing, I can think that maybe the safety-orange fencing used for holes in the ground and snow drifts in New York City is so powerful that no human can move past it. Perhaps, in New York City, the safety-orange plastic fencing has a unique power, some electric inviolability or steel-like strength, and that the young women who otherwise appear ordinary are, in fact, a hole through which the other citizens might plummet. This inviolability of New York City’s orange plastic fencing could be why no older woman rushes forward to be among the younger women and hold them like as I would hold my daughter (also a young woman like other young women) or like I, myself, would want at that moment to be held. It could be why no young man or no young woman their lovers would rush forward to shield these young women with their own lovers-bodies, or why no older men (like fathers or uncles) roar. There is fat, bald, middle-aged man like many other fat, bald, middle-aged men (dressed in an elaborate costume of authority), and he is staring at the young women as they fall. His face is turned toward them, but I do not think he is weeping. When he turns his face to the camera he is not weeping, but the young woman in the gray tank top (I have that tank top) is wailing; she is in pain and on her knees. No middle-aged man is crying. No middle-aged man rushes toward the other middle-aged men to stop them. Some man is yelling “police brutality” and “police brutality.” There are three people taking pictures, then four people taking pictures. There are the old and young people taking pictures. There are many cameras in many hands, but there are not hands on the young women to comfort them, and there are not hands on the men of the law."

– Anne Boyer, These Young Women

Unreasonably cheap energy is running out, climate conditions are changing radically, paradoxical economy of constant growth will bankrupt itself, governmental fascism will be declared, racial breeding is practiced to embryos, genetic manipulation will get out of hand, Coup d´état of racistic red necks will happen in the name of revolution, the language loses its meaning, virtual schizophrenia is getting pandemic among the Internet users, obsessed disciples of Tony Robins will get at each other´s throats in the search of lost childhood, fourth world war is waiting at the gates, psychedelic-communistic revolution will fly in the ring like a freshly whiten towel in a heavy weight boxing match while the master is beating the breath out of his competition, heavenly escalator is transporting Jesus down in between the supermarkets while aliens will return to planet earth to complete their work of creation, dystopies and utopies will shake hands, up and down will change the place, emerged birds will withdraw back to the shells. Shit is about to hit the fan, even though a good life needs just bearable conditions and a hand full of material mixed with a drop of good will. We are living strange times – are we? But why?

– baltic herring

The Facticity of Factions

By a faction, I understand a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or a minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adversed to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.

There are again two methods of removing the causes of faction: the one, by destroying the liberty which is essential to its existence; the other, by giving to every citizen the same opinions, the same passions, and the same interests.

...As long as the reason of man continues fallible, and he is at liberty to exercise it, different opinions will be formed. As long as the connection subsists between his reason and his self-love, his opinions and his passions will have a reciprocal influence on each other; and the former will be objects to which the latter will attach themselves. The diversity in the faculties of men, from which the rights of property originate, is not less an insuperable obstacle to a uniformity of interests. The protection of these faculties is the first object of government. From the protection of different and unequal faculties of acquiring property, the possession of different degrees and kinds of property immediately results; and from the influence of these on the sentiments and views of the respective proprietors, ensues a division of the society into different interests and parties.

...The latent causes of faction are thus sown in the nature of man; and we see them everywhere brought into different degrees of activity, according to the different circumstances of civil society. A zeal for different opinions concerning religion, concerning government, and many other points, as well of speculation as of practice; an attachment to different leaders ambitiously contending for pre-eminence and power; or to persons of other descriptions whose fortunes have been interesting to the human passions, have, in turn, divided mankind into parties, inflamed them with mutual animosity, and rendered them much more disposed to vex and oppress each other than to co-operate for their common good. So strong is this propensity of mankind to fall into mutual animosities, that where no substantial occasion presents itself, the most frivolous and fanciful distinctions have been sufficient to kindle their unfriendly passions and excite their most violent conflicts. But the most common and durable source of factions has been the various and unequal distribution of property. Those who hold and those who are without property have ever formed distinct interests in society. Those who are creditors, and those who are debtors, fall under a like discrimination. A landed interest, a manufacturing interest, a mercantile interest, a moneyed interest, with many lesser interests, grow up of necessity in civilized nations, and divide them into different classes, actuated by different sentiments and views. The regulation of these various and interfering interests forms the principal task of modern legislation, and involves the spirit of party and faction in the necessary and ordinary operations of the government.

– James Madison, 1787

:The challenge is an old one, oh "democratic" lords of the autocratic republic. We have been dreaming of freedom, we have talked of liberty, we have aspired to a better world, and you jailed us, you clubbed us, you deported us, you murdered us whenever you could. Now that the great war, waged to replenish your purses, and build a pedestal to your saints, is over, nothing better can you do to protect your stolen millions, and your usurped fame, than to direct all the power of the murderous institutions you created for your exclusive defense, against the working multitudes rising to a more human conception of life. The jails, the dungeons you reared to bury all protesting voices, are now replenished with languishing conscientious workers, and never satisfied, you increase their number ever day.

It is history of yesterday that your gunmen were shooting and murdering unarmed masses by the wholesale; it has been the history of every day in your regime; and now all prospects are even worse.

Do not expect us to sit down and pray and cry. We accept your challenges and mean to stick to our war duties. We know that all you do is for your defense as a class; we know also that the proletariat has the same right to protect itself, since their press has been suffocated, their mouths muzzled; we mean to speak for them the voice of dynamite, through the mouth of guns."

– History is a Weapon

In October 1918, Congress passed the Immigration Act of 1918, a law that expanded the list of activities that defined someone as an anarchist and justified deportation. In turn, Galleani and his followers distributed a flyer in February 1919 that said:

"Deportation will not stop the storm from reaching these shores. The storm is within and very soon will leap and crash and annihilate you in blood and fire....We will dynamite you!"

– wiki

Magic, Ignorance, General Strike

What is to be done to replace the departing religion? As the worker believes no longer in miracles, can he perhaps be induced to believe in lies? And so learned economists, academicians, merchants, and financiers have contrived to introduce into science the bold proposition that property and prosperity are always the reward of labour! It would be scarcely decent to discuss such an assertion. When they pretend that labour is the origin of fortune, economists know perfectly well that they are not speaking the truth. They know as well as the Socialists that wealth is not the product of personal labour, but of the labour of others: they are not ignorant that the runs of luck on the Exchange and the speculations which create great fortunes have no more connection with labour than the exploits of brigands in the forests; they dare not pretend that the individual who has five thousand pounds a day, just what is required to support one hundred thousand persons like himself, is distinguished from other men by an intelligence one hundred thousand times above the average. It would be scandalous to discuss this sham origin of social inequality. It would be to be a dupe, almost an accomplice, to waste time over such hypocritical reasoning. 

... If capital retains force on its side, we shall all be the slaves of its machinery, mere bands connecting iron cogs with steel and iron shafts. If new spoils, managed by partners only responsible to their cash books, are ceaselessly added to the savings already amassed in bankers' coffers, then it will be vain to cry for pity, no one will hear your complaints. The tiger may renounce his victim, but bankers' books pronounce judgments without appeal. (Reclus, 1895, Evolution and Revolution)

Since the revolutionary overthrow of religion by the enlightenment, truth has come to be known as that which is determined rather than that which is given. That which is determined is that which is calculated. The last casualty was the truism, "might makes right". It is now "right makes might", only now it is from the left side of things, in contradistinction to its position six months ago. We forget that determinism refers to a cause-effect relation (the former must precede the latter before the collision can occur which sinks the eight-ball) and as well the application of force, hence, "he turneth the screw with a much determined grimace". There was a circle, but we went no where but further in. Bound and determined, might and right still dance together, they've only exchanged leads.

Some will conclude there is, thus, no escape from religion, and Mab was only just another queen, but in her time, there was at least gifting all around, and a circle refered to a group with no sides, a coven (a 'coming together'). Time maybe to think of a 'circle of interest' as an elipse, where there be no center at all? Without a center, both might and right disappear like a flash in the pan at sunset, and no one is necessarily on the same page except the flat earth society.

The greatest weapon we hold is our ignorance – to ignore advice from perverse imps and go our own way brought an end for Queen Mab. According to legend, one little general strike and she up and disapeared. Perhaps it could bring her back in time? Not likely. At least not immediately, but to thwack the impossibilists blocking our paths, we may need to practice a bit more, our own kind of magic.

Above all it is important both for them and for ourselves to get rid of the language of despair.

There are many ways of entering upon death without the vulgar shedding of blood. Perhaps the most convenient is to cease to live in any real sense, to give up the use of the mind, to come to the conclusion that there is nothing more to be known, to drift like a straw on the flood, to take our opinions ready made and repeat them like a parrot, to look contemptuously on all independent efforts and speculation; and although a return to old-world superstition be impossible, for we cannot resurrect the past, these dead in life pretend to be still of the flock of the faithful ... and soon they reach the end they have sought, the annihilation in themselves of every noble human quality. That is the real death; let the cessation of breath be swift or slow to follow, it only causes to be laid in a coffin an object that was long ago a corpse.

But as decided not to see, not to hear, as may be pessimists and men of pleasure--the worst, of the pessimists--they see that a change is brooding over the near future: like passengers in a ship making its way across a stormy sea they feel the trembling of the timbers, the vibration of the vessel on which they are voyaging, and spite of themselves are awe-struck by the possibility of imminent disaster. To-morrow throws its troublesome shadow over to-day: the "social question," or to use their own language, "social questions" stand well out in the foreground of their outlook, and they know that obstacles and delays, however caused, are all in vain to prevent a speedy solution. The new era is at the door, and the great problem demands to be settled and bids all other questions take a back seat.

[...]

It is even said, and I could not venture to call it a libel, that the majority of our scholarly youth are contented with things as they are, and that their great ambition is to indoctrinate society with conservatism, and surprise their friends with what they call the "moderation" of their views; in this respect they modestly claim to be wiser than their parents, who cannot deny to have in their young days shared the prevailing enthusiasm. A strange phenomenon is the sight of young men who boast of feeling tired of life, as if the inability to admire, to enjoy, and to be happy were a merit rather than a misfortune!

But it is quite true that in this way die the idle rich. Beyond a doubt our modern university youth, although naturally proud of having passed through the mill of many examinations, would be unable notwithstanding their extravagant pretensions to teach the workmen much in the sphere of study and thought. No, their business is to be pupils, not to give instruction. In great popular movements--such as that of the Commune--the students were very sparely represented, while workmen supplied in plenty both sinews and brains. Not was the question merely one of work and wages; the interests at stake were those of the whole nation, indeed of all mankind. At the present hour, when a new dispensation is about to be ushered in, when the young knights of reform are preparing for their task, it is not in the avenues of the schools that the questions uppermost in men's minds are discussed most intelligently and with the keenest insight. The graduate is not necessarily the philosopher, nor does a well-stored memory invariably accompany an enlightened understanding. Often the dry-as-dust schoolman is poor in wisdom beside the shrewd man of the world who has gathered here and there the countless facts from which he evolves a wealth of general ideas. Your scientific man may shut himself up in his laboratory as in a prison, and misunderstand the great world without; but the people always form a consistent theory of the universe, be it true or false.

... It is the demoralization of the excellent which become the horrible. ... it seems to us in harmony with human nature that in the period of blossoming adolescence, well-developed strength, and love uncalculating, the young can most brilliantly show what stuff they are made of through acts of courage, sacrifice (I read "risk"), and devotion. If public opinion only encourage them no deed will appear too difficult for their daring... What might we not achieve with these prodigious fountains of strength, sustained by euthusiasm? When the young will no longer have the filthy lucre to corrupt at its very source their ambition, they will move freely towards their ideal, without the disgust of having to despise themselves and to despise their work, when general applause will encourage them to devotedness, what will be the bold enterprise from which they will shrink?

Such is the ideal that we propose to youth. In pointing out to it a future of solidarity and altruism we pledge them our word that in that future every trace of pessimism will have disappeared from their minds. "Give yourselves." But "in order to give yourselves, you must belong to yourselves."

– Elisée Reclus, The Ideal and Youth, 1895

note: An ideal is no fixed idea, worse, no abstraction, and worse yet, no destination. It is only an impression (idea) accompanying a direction ("L"). It can be an experimental turning point. It is a bend toward the future for the pleasings of the present.

The General (Anti-Authoritarian) Assembly

"Do not repay evil with evil" is a fine enough sentiment fueling the dictates of the nonviolent well-equipped with moral authority. But even if we are to retain a moral, ethical or conscientious conviction, we should be clear on what we intend when playing with words such as "evil", "violence" or "order". To abstain from self-defense is certainly a suicidal gesture, the ultimate end in fashionable self-sacrifice. Should one wish to submit to torture, tyranny or trauma, where is the justification for any occupation or insurrection? The promise of better beer?

The clearest hypocrisy is demonstrated by the moralist who spouts mutual aid with the slogan "fraternity, equality & liberty", or even merely "solidarity", yet lays down arm-splayed or retreats with hands on ass as soon as the gendarmes arrive with a memo from the mayor, leaving trauma to be experienced by his friends who may not have the fortune of fleet feet and quick thinking. Even x-tians would call this "selfish and cowardly abandonment", yet who would dispute the notion that "there is nothing offensive in self-defense" beyond the happenstance that one has been placed into that predicament in the first place?

Clearly, self-defense must be tolerated else one would refrain from running away, a violent act against one's comrades who are left behind rather than against the pigs who threaten them, as much as is surrender which only prolongs the power of one's opressors. We must, of course, grant that the mass mayhem of a "general" scattering is a preferable strategy when confronting superior odds. Performed correctly, it opens the playing field for each constituent, it evens the odds just as does the mass assembly or general gathering: no one is more prone to assault than any other. Unity is strength, it is true, but so is dispersal in every direction – that is an occupation of everything.

Today's linguistic usage of "general assembly" seems a bit contorted for my taste. It is politicised, which is an inside-out orientation. Outside-in is no suitable substitute. If the assembly is to be ammenable to one and all, there should be no sides in the first place. Think of an orgy, the preeminent assembly, where in and out are in no opposition whatsoever, but repeated as frequently as the passions permit.

Historically, the assembly was a provisional or ad hoc gathering called up for its diversity of talent and opinion, among other useable qualities such as more arms to swing hammers (or sickles). The "council of elders" variation does not represent a seated institution, but folks with more standing experience in matters at hand than a lone one in a quandary can handle. It is the quanderer who calls it forth. It is only a provisional or fleeting advisorial (not adversarial) association. It may even be the case that the lone one has advice for "them" – a crasher of podiums or toppler of pedestals. Either way, it is a "take it or leave it" afair – consensus only applies for those who concede (is that common sense or condescension?).

Today's general assembly, however managed, is a self-appointed body dictating outwardly to the totality of bystanders. The executive funktion among an indeterminate populace is a government no matter what you call it. A government is, of course, a man-made structure (usually very tall or very broad) which functions to oversee and administer others.  It may produce greater good, whether that feels good for you or not. But like any party or gathering, the greatest good is only as much as one can take away from it. Otherwise, where's the fun?

– see Luigi Galleani, The Principal of Organization in Light of Anarchism

The Sole & its Sylph, Der Einzige und sein Eigenthum

SYLPH, n. 
An immaterial but visible being that inhabited the air when the air was an element and before it was fatally polluted with factory smoke, sewer gas and similar products of civilization. Sylphs were allied to gnomes, nymphs and salamanders, which dwelt, respectively, in earth, water and fire, all now insalubrious. Sylphs, like fowls of the air, were male and female, to no purpose, apparently, for if they had progeny they must have nested in accessible places, none of the chicks having ever been seen.

– Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, 1906

SELF, n. 
1. one's own personality, especially as derogatorily or clinically perceived by others 
2. one's own individual interests and provisional well-being 
3. a complete and individual personality, especially one that somebody recognizes as his or her own and with which there is a sense of ease, save provarication by quibbling rivalries
4. the set of organs and tissues that the body recognizes as its own and does not attack without provocation
5. Science Fiction has definitively proven that no two clones are identical.
6. (soul)-mated; like an old married couple, republicistic as well as democratic – "for the kids' sake" – along a line of mutual inertia and hard to disentangle (see "A Fool & Its Money is no substitute for a Boy & Its Dog" by M. Harlan Stirner).

"The same, sole self is a self-same soul;
one of a kind – like a rock 'n a role."

– The Other Dictionary, 2006