Saturday, March 31, 2012

El Pasoans are assholes

As if it weren't enough, that some idiot was revving his motorcycle, and another of his ilk was loudly revving his truck, generating black smoke....

Now another member of the brood has decided to play loud music...
BOOM....BOOM....BOOM....BOOM.

I'm inside.  The widows and doors are shut, and I hear it, and I feel it.....

El Paso:   City of assholes.

El Pasoans are assholes

assholes and idiots:
One of my neighbors is entertaining his kids by revving the engine on his pickup truck, generating large clouds of black smoke, and making loud noise....
not just once......

He seems to find this very entertaining.  As he exited his truck, he had a large grin, and he cast a quick gaze around---as if he expected meet admiring glances returning his inquiry......

Contributing to climate change?  The hottest spring on record?  Well, I understand that as there is miserable public transport locally, a person must drive in order to get to work, or buy groceries or just to visit a friend.  But this kind of use of the personal automobile----as a sort of toy----cannot be excused......

And a little man in the corner is shaking his head saying, "typical, typical......."

gmooh

El Pasoans are assholes, #4,321

Open your window to get fresh air?  And what do you hear?
The neighbor's dog barking, barking, barking.......

in passing

Junk e-mail:  MAKE MONEY BY SIMPLY DRIVING YOUR CAR


my thought:  BUT I SIMPLY   hate   DRIVING CARS----MY OWN OR ANYONE ELSE'S.....

Friday, March 30, 2012

the tender mercies of the in-home health care nurse

Why is it that 90% of them sound phony and insincere?---Nay, often condescending!

Because they hate their job?

Because they think all old people are senile?  Maybe, they've known too many senile people.

Well, I don't know why, but  I do know what I  often hear.  An insincere sort of friendliness,
one of the ugly things typical of the land of the free........

gmooh

an uncivilized country

This is my impressions of the native-born citizens of the USA:
For the most part,
if you meet them in a situation where they want your money,
they will pretend to be your friend.

but if you meet them elsewhere---in your neighborhood, or on the freeway--
they are ruthless and impolite.

E.g. when they leave their dogs outside all night, and the dog barks all night---non-stop.

They seem to take the approach: F-You.  It's my dog and my yard, and I can do what I want.

As if sound did not travel.

Something very similar---a very similar aggressive lack of consideration---applies to the idea
that I can play "my" music as loud as I want.

This has its roots in capitalism---the disrespect people face in the workplace, as well as
a kind of primitive notion that property rights are sacred.  If I'm disrespected at work,
when I come home I want to experience some degree of autonomy----even if it
is mis-directed......If I own a dog or a stereo, it's  my property, so I can do
what I want with it. ---Or, so they seem to think.  And if it damages or disturbs someone
else, well, "that's not my problem"....

A very uncivilized nation.

GMOOH!

Thursday, March 29, 2012

weather report

get me out of here!

Imperial Hubris at the Individual level

The man in the market place hides a knife in his cloak. "Ah," he says, "I have power.  With this knife
I can kill anyone I like,"

Plato wasn't much impressed by that style of thinking. Nor should we be. But we are, much to the sorrow of many.

I have no doubt that the police who recently murdered an older black man and the vigilante who murdered a young black man both had fantasies of power.  "Illusions" would be a better word.

Because this is a society full of such fantasies:  total domination of the world, protection of one's family from imagined intruders, and macho fantasies of proving one's manhood.

Police have the weapons of soldiers and they want to use them.  Soldiers learn to torture and kill wantonly in Iraq or Afghanistan, and then return to the USA, eager to use what they've learned---and many become policemen.

Among the police or soldiers in Afghanistan or Iraq, often the policy is:  shoot first, ask questions later.

Needless murders which bring no good results. Murderers and accomplices who engage in cover ups, lies, compounding the disease.

What kind of country is this?  Not a civilized one.

GMOOH

Thank You Richard D. Wolff

Thank you for speaking the truth:


"doctors are businessmen...."

yes, yes, yes


Tuesday, March 27, 2012

El Paso, Texas is a cruel, crude, ugly place.

You can't buy fresh mushrooms here.  They dont' exist.  You can buy crap that is wrapped in plastic that locks in moisture and encourages decay.  You can buy brown mushrooms that aren't any longer fresh.  And the stores sell this crap as if it were fresh.

What a miserable place.

Monday, March 26, 2012

Shameless Self-Promotion

I have noticed that, from time to time, this blog attracts readers from Europe.  I just want to mention, for their benefit, that I did, once upon a time, happen to write a short novel set in Central Europe.  In fact, I was mostly in Europe at the time of writing.

Here's the scenario:  An American Philosophy teacher (untenured Assistant Prof.) is invited to Bratislava to attend the wedding of a former student.  Once there he is amazed and confused by the cultural differences, not to mention the quality of the beer and the mesmerizing beauty of the women.  Without intending to, he gets involved with a mafia boss, a porn star, and other people who he would have never met in the USA.

Anyway, the book is available on Amazon, as an electronic book for "Kindle" in Germany, France, and the UK.

In case you are interested......

The book's title?
A Neurotic in an Exotic Land

Sunday, March 25, 2012

eptx weather report

The sun is burning hot, merciless.
The heat is unpleasant.
There is wind, as always---no not strong enough to be a national news story, but there is always wind here.

Some people say this is "good" weather.
I really don't know why.
Unless they mean it's good for driving enormous trucks with the windows rolled up and the "AC" on.....
Good for helping you contribute to climate criminality....

No, I don't think this is good weather.....not at all....

El Paso, Texas: weather report

from the archives, originally composed a week or two ago...


composed? ha ha ha, yes it's a rough draft.  Sorry.  You have been warned....

wind
wind
wind
dust
dust
dust
ycccch
ycccchhhh!
ycccccchhhhhh!!!!**!!

Earlier, despite the fact that the windows and doors of this house are all shut, I had the sensation that I was  breathing in dust....

Oh well, par for the course here!

And then, there is the question: Are people in El Paso, Texas rude?

I don't know.  There was a rude guy speaking Spanish in Wal Mart today: Ondele!  He said as the checker rang up the groceries I was buying for my parents.

The man seemed to be mainly buying Kool Aide and other assorted poisons.

He also stared extensively at my individual purchases and made other (rude, offensive)  comments.  I know he was rude,
but I put this out of my mind, using my extremely weird and non-native version of Spanish:
Hombre!  Los richos---como tu---tienen todos----como mi padre se dice.....Nosotros tenemos solamente trabajo a guerra........KAPITALISTICKE SVINSTVO!

insane

In my more sane, reflective, and sober moments, what I really think is that the way people live in this country is, quite simply, insane.


Consider, for example, the excessive attention one must spend in caring for one's home.  Painting, cleaning, sprucing up, competing with the neighbor, buying garden gnomes.  All of that sounds like WORK---the expenditure of effort with no benefit (except for the capitalist).

But people have been so brain-washed as to believe that all that crap is "beautiful", as in "my beautiful home".

You want beauty?  Read a book---poetry or a novel.  Go to the theater....(Oh, sorry.  I forgot how inaccessible that is for most people in this country.......people like me.....)  No, I actually don't think these neatly arranged plotches or grass or rocks in front of little houses is somehow "beautiful", more like horrifying (at least David Lynch got one thing right)....Not beautiful at all, but frighteningly sterile, even anal retentive and Puritan, not luxurious in sensuality, but disciplined and ordered like the fantasies of a military mind......

I am sorry.  I cannot analyze this disease further.  I need to go away somewhere before I empty the contents of my stomach.

austerity is a club used by the capitalist class to beat the rest of us

"Locking public policy onto austerity cannot be explained merely as an intellectual error or even as a product of neoliberal ideology. It is an assertion of class power.....  The costs of an economic catastrophe that shows no signs of ending will be paid by working people and the poor."---Alex Callinicos


http://www.isj.org.uk/index.php4?id=773&issue=133

Saturday, March 24, 2012

kapitalisticke svinstvo!

I had to drive 13 miles to the library, the library at the local university.
The for-profit, neo-liberal mentality is everywhere.
In the center of the university there is .....(not a statue commemorating a local hero)...but a bank!
(an ATM, a cash machine)...

On the campus there is a private business, a hotel.....obviously for distinguished visitors.

The streets are grotesquely wide----obviously designed for the enormous tanks that people drive locally.

And the buildings----monuments to their own magnificence----are enormous structures that intensify the heat of the sun's rays.

I had to walk twenty minutes in the blazing sun from one side of campus to the other----from "public parking", for-pay parking (kapitalisticke svinstvo!), even though the place was empty.

Then in the basement of the parking structure was a waiting area for the local public buses.....with vending machines selling crap food-by-product (kapitalisticke svinstvo)........and a banner proclaiming that this bus service was the best public transport in the nation!  ---A bare-faced lie.  What utter nonsense.  Or, if it's true, I can only say: what a miserable country!  (kapitalisticke svinstvo!)

Yes, the librarian was helpful.  I almost got what I needed.  Oh yes, why can't I access it from my home?  Isn't this a public library?  Why must I make a trip (twenty-six miles round trip, contributing to global warming, and then forty minutes round-trip by foot in the blazing merciless sun!)----because the capitalist pigs that own the publishing houses want to restrict access..

You see if I were part of the money-making-chain---- the chain which creates more profits for the already profit-gorged ruling class, if I were a worker (student or faculty member) I would be contributing to the profits of the corporation (the so-called "University"), but since I am not
a worker, but merely a citizen, merely a member of the community, I am at a disadvantage.

However, I paid for my sins by paying to park, thereby contributing something real (cash) to the corporation, oh I mean "university"......

The logic is clear.   A citizen is not a first-class human being in the eyes of the company called "UTEP"....  Well, no, that's not  quite right.  The companies in question are the ones that publish articles written by people who are employed by entities such as UTEP, and they have decided that I should have restricted access.....  but do I think that UTEP is any less a corporation, a sort of tyrannical machine which is designed to generate profits?  Well, there must be a few people resistant to the trend, but I haven't met any lately. Nor did I see them on the blazingly hot, wide empty thoroughfares of the educational corporation.......When the sun is so bright, you cannot really see anything......What a horrible place!

kapitalisticke svinstvo.....


the greatest compliment I ever received

Recently a friend wrote something along the following lines:  I know that your situation is desperate, and you are complaining, but when you describe it in that way, it's just ridiculous.


Friday, March 23, 2012

bombing Serbia

When the USA (NATO) was bombing Serbia, I happened to be teaching at the University of Toledo.  As I recall, it was even known then that the bombing included civilian targets.  Bombing hospitals or radio stations is a war crime.

At the time, I happened to have a book with a picture of a Belgrade street.  It looked to me like many other European cities.  And, I could not imagine bombs falling in such a city.  Yes, I know that during World War Two, bombs fell in European cities.  But the image was one which my imagination resisted, and could picture only with protest.

I photocopied one of the pictures of a city street in Belgrade and put it on my office door.  I may have written something vaguely "anti-war"; I don't remember.  I probably wrote something because otherwise the picture wouldn't have had much meaning.

Now, I was teaching philosophy, as it so happens, and I had an office in the basement of the building where the philosophy department was located.    (My teaching position was very precarious, and I had it only because  I once held a better position and my former colleagues had intended to help me.)

Philosophy is a subject which, one would have thought, is supposed to take one away from provincialism and nationalism.  However, it seems that in reality this is not the case.

After my photocopied picture of a Belgrade street went up, someone scrawled a nationalistic and imperialistic remark on it.  (I don't recall exactly what it said; you can imagine.)  The remark expressed anger or outrage and probably was vengeful, but plainly defending the use of violence, and supporting the bombing of Serbia with great enthusiasm.

In all probability that remark was scrawled by  a philosophy student, possibly by someone in the Philosophy MA program....

Anyway, I say all this because I've just heard a nice discussion of the bombing of Serbia and recent attempts to destroy the country through privatization:

http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2012/sreckovic190312.html

Saturday, March 17, 2012

Re-publishing/re-posting

I am re-posting an essay I wrote several years ago. 


Bloodless Brutality and Perversion;


Life at an American-Run International School;


Last week I met the new boss. Strictly speaking, “boss” is an appellation which is too colloquial or perhaps too lower class for an international school. Therefore, let us refer to my new boss as the new school Director.


During the first two days of the week we were required to participate in a variety of group activities. What I remember most vividly right now are two instances where two different individuals were visibly uncomfortable with this requirement. A young woman who introduced herself with the confession “I am painfully shy” looked as though she wanted to die when, later, during a group activity, she stood before the assembled faculty as part of a bit of theater. Secondly, one of the Slovak workmen engaged in remodeling our school, was recruited to sing a children’s song in English, a language which I suspect he’s not studied, with a chorus saying “you are special”/”I am special”, etc. One’s being special, apparently, doesn’t absolve one from the requirement to behave like everyone else when the Director demands it.


My axiom is that the individual is the ultimate minority. If we disrespect individuals, then we show contempt for all of humanity.


How did I come to be in this situation? How can a civilized society come to behave so barbarously?


More than one Slovak colleague freely offered a comparison with the techniques of indoctrination used during the recent past by communists. Indeed, that comparison is not inappropriate, and it shows how far Americans have come from an understanding of the principles of democracy. The great icon of America’s war for independence, Thomas Paine, complained that aristocracy was a system which placed inferior and untalented individuals at the top of the heap. During Communism there were ideological tests placed upon individuals who wished to make progress in their careers. At the school where I work, it is noteworthy that two individuals on the management team are singularly inexperienced. Our Director of Instruction finds it difficult to speak a coherent sentence. He embarrassed both himself and the assembled audience when, at a graduation ceremony, he was unable to pronounce a multi-syllable word without stumbling. At a recent gathering of teachers he was heard to say words along the following lines: “If everyone has a different opinion. . . that would be diversity…and we don’t want that…” He was explaining why the school had to have rules that everyone agreed to follow. It is cruel that his bosses have put him in a position where public speaking is required.


Moreover, his spouse was recently put in charge of the “International Baccalaureate
Program”, replacing a much more experienced and more qualified woman, an M.D., who is the head of a department at a local hospital. According to local gossip, what both these characters have in common is that they satisfy an ideological test: they are Christians of the right sort. And, that behooves the Head Manager of the chain of schools that my school belongs to. Indeed, whether there is a hidden religious agenda or not, it is significant that employees are forced to posit such a hidden agenda to explain why the people filling key management positions are inexperienced and/or incompetent.


The new Director has a fondness for shouting. Her loud vocalizing might be either an expression of joy or an expression of displeasure, as I learned one day when I asked what was, at that time, “the wrong question”.


During one of our group meetings the Director told us something along the following lines: I have been told that you need a dress code. More accurately, she said something like this, “One of the first things I heard was ‘Oh you’ve got to do something about the way that students dress…’”


Now, who told her this? I happen to know that it came from the mouths of one or both of the Director of Instruction and his wife, the individuals I described above. They are both Americans from the Midwest, also the place of origin of our new Director. I know this because I spoke with them about this last year. In fact, I wrote a long email in which I pointed out that what they found objectionable was not immorality but the simple fact that young people imitate other young people and certain pop icons whose style of dressing is not our own. And, I suggested that there was nothing immoral or disruptive in that. Rather, it’s probably a sort of natural law. And, I also suggested that when young people enter the workplace they are smart enough to understand what’s appropriate by way of dress there.


My lengthy letter was answered by a short email, “Thank you for your contribution. Have a nice day!”. Or words to that effect.


Today I would further add the following. Young women in Slovakia dress in ways that the average American might find provocative. This may produce misunderstandings when foreigners come here. Despite the fact that Slovak girls dress sexier than the average American girl, the country tends toward conservatism. Something like more traditional gender roles are largely taken for granted. Of course, there are thoughtful feminists in Slovakia, but I am speaking about a broad pattern.


Nonetheless, as the new Director was taking advice from other members of the “management team”, my sage words were ignored. We began one session with the question: what sort of dress code do we want? No question about whether there should be a dress code.
And we were given as a model the Dress Code from the school where the Director was in charge last year. An interminable discussion ensued. My new colleagues threw themselves into the discussion with great energy. We must get it right, they said; otherwise, you know how students are. They can find a way around every rule. I found myself muttering that the insights of philosophers, linguists, and others were surely lost on this bunch. Since when has it been recognized that no rule can be so water-tight as to exist without interpretation? Might it be that the reverent attitude which Americans sometimes take toward the country’s founding documents was inspiring them? If our country’s founders could get it right, then so can we? But even the very existence of the US Supreme Court shows the need for interpretation.
In any case, my new colleagues (not all Americans) applied themselves industriously to finding the Perfect Dress Code.


I regard it as especially significant that our set of rules began with an awkwardly worded sentence saying how we respected the individuality of our students. That’s why we don’t have uniforms.


But the Director did give us clear guiding principles. Under no circumstances would hats be allowed. (I felt great relief, speaking personally, when I heard that…otherwise we might be living in the New Babylon…)


I also confess that the enthusiasm with which my new American colleagues threw themselves into this debate about fitting angels on the head of a pin increased my sympathy for the old Slovak suspicion of authority—based upon the quite reasonable but unspoken grounds that it’s very likely to be illegitimate.


Finally, a set of rules was agreed to. Democracy triumphed. It was another case of the time-tested American method of rule from above, with periodic endorsement from below. The parameters of discussion had been set without discussion, and that really took a load off my mind.


At least it did, until, unfortunately, I began to think about all this. Consider, my alter-ego said, the rather breasty, long-legged young lady, whose tops often serve to emphasize her natural endowments, a woman who does not hesitate to wear short skirts. And, consider the most sex-obsessed teenage boy in the class. When she dresses in that fashion, what does it do to him? He must be distracted by it, musn’t he? Yet, she’s one of many such young people. Every summer, the streets of Bratislava are filled with attractive, slim, young women, who dress freely.
I believe that experts call this the problem of base rates. When young Fero—to give him a Slovak name—sees young Eva dressed in what Americans call a “provocative” way, he thinks, “just another very pretty girl”. My American colleagues probably think, “my goodness! She is dressed like a prostitute!”


Base rates: Locally, young women tend to dress that way. It’s not unusual. That’s like: don’t say college professors are forgetful until you’ve compared how forgetful they are to other professions/the general population. (Something I learned from the late Z. Kunda’s psychology textbook.).


As common sense says: Young Eva just dresses the way that many other girls her age do.
And, I reply to my colleagues, “No, she doesn’t look at all like a prostitute. Three nights a week, a prostitute is standing on my front doorstep Prostitutes look tired and bored, and sometimes they look unhealthy.”


(And I am not joking; there is a woman standing in front of or just around the corner from my door several nights a week.)


My naughty question, which provoked an incident of shouting, as well as a later apology, was about research allegedly establishing that dress codes improve student performance. On the day when we were allowed to debate how many inches a young lady’s skirt needed to be, we were told that dress codes improve student performance. And the remark was made with a prefatory tag suggesting we’d better not argue: “Research shows…” On Friday, a full three days after the original discussion, I dared to ask, “Where was the research done?”
I was told that we were not allowed to discuss this matter any further—as if we’d ever discussed whether there needed to be a dress code! As if our Director had shown extreme tolerance in allowing us to exercise our free speech by debating the skirt-length issue, and I was self-indulgently ignoring her previous generosity. But, after recovering from the shock of being yelled at, I did manage to tease out the answer that while the research had not been done in Central Europe, it had been done “all over the world”.


Later my Director apologized for screaming at me. Indeed, no one in my life has ever screamed at me in the way that she had, and the memory of that will always be stronger than the apology which came afterwards. But the absence of logic which became transparent at that point leaves an even more burning and powerful trace in my memory.


This little incident shows that we who teach at this school, having come to a foreign country, allegedly with the noble goal of improving the young people we encounter there, we who call ourselves “educators” are simply ignorant about the local culture. Or, perhaps, we are (rather dangerously) assuming that a law of nature has been discovered, even though no one has tried out the experiment locally In other words, we are behaving as if there were no such thing as a local culture. The research may have been done everywhere but here, but if it hasn’t been done here, you just don’t know about here. And, if we don’t need to do it here—and the Director’s behavior suggests that we don’t—then that must be because there’s nothing special about the local environment. QED: There is no local culture. Logically, the result is elegant and water-tight: you don’t need to know about it, since it doesn’t exist.


Side-by-side with the picture I have painted, please set another one. Imagine me earlier in the week sitting in the office of another boss-figure. I visited another new Director--not of the school this time, but of the International Baccalaureate Program, known among the cognoscenti as “IB”. She wanted to know how we could improve student test scores, specifically by increasing “higher level thinking”.


My response was immediate: the culture goes against that. I.e., the culture does not encourage higher level thinking. How could you reasonably ask me to teach something to the students when the surrounding environment is hostile to it?


I suspect that the IB Director’s take on my words was: “Slovak culture does not encourage higher level thinking.” She is an American, and I have often heard my fellow Americans lament this deficiency in the Slovak soul.


Of course, the IB Director misunderstood me. But, I think what I said-- or, what I meant--is true. I meant culture-in-general, both American and Slovak, and our general capitalistic power-from-the-top-down style of living. (Lest we forget: In no country of Europe—“old” or “new”—did a majority of the population support the idea of sending troops to Iraq; yet Slovakia, among others, has sent troops there.)


My little story about the lack of free speech at a school run by citizens of the world’s reigning superpower illustrates the general absence genuine discussion and genuine consideration of alternatives in our democratic countries.


And, let’s return briefly to the case of young Fero as he gazes upon the very feminine and visible form of young Eva. Eva is pretty. He likes to look at her. He thinks, “Pretty.” And he assumes that she’s just a normal pretty Slovak girl. My American colleagues say things like, “That way of dressing is not appropriate.” Their word “appropriate” itself needs unpacking. Where did that word come from?


It might have been appropriated from discussions of taboo language in sociolinguistics. Cursing, the invocation of the gods or naughty body parts is universally frowned upon during somber occasions of high state business and in churches. Linguists report that while such language is thought to be out of place on high occasions, it is obligatory on “lower” ones: you can’t be a proper macho jock without “bad” words..


But, I suspect that the use of the term “appropriate” that I’m hearing has little in common with such a neutral level of description. Would my colleagues really concede that while sexy clothes are out in school, they are positively required at the local Disco? Strictly speaking, their language seems to leave open that possibility. However, I am not convinced that they are so broad-minded as their language might suggest.
What would a more honest description of their attitude be? Might they not actually believe that sexy dress is outright wrong? Well, why would someone think it’s wrong? Maybe, because Fero just might get a little bit of immoral pleasure from the way that Eva dresses. And, even worse, maybe Eva knows it. Maybe Eva even likes the idea that Fero gets turned on. Of course, this was never said. Perhaps I am spinning a fairy tale. But, someone who held such views might well hesitate to express them openly. And, if my speculation has any basis, then we are talking about the barefaced assertion of American Puritanism. And, in that case, we are not only ignoring the local culture, but asserting a foreign one. Just as if we’d learned nothing from the errors of the old Soviet Union or the British Empire.
Oh, and by the way, if Eva turns Fero on, and she knows it, maybe Fero knows that Eva knows that he’s turned on… and, in her heart, Eva knows all that too. So, maybe they are actually, tacitly, engaged in a sort of cooperative activity. And, even if they’d never talk about it, I suspect that this is the truly horrible and unthinkable thought which frightens and shocks my American colleagues. And as if that were not enough, given what I said about base rates, they’re all doing it! Which means that Eva’s choice of unthinkably and unspeakably immoral attire is also upsetting because it reminds our American Puritan of the immorality of the local culture. They’re all shameless here! But, perhaps my American colleagues don’t want to know that. And, since we can’t change the surrounding society, we can at least change the school. An island of virtue in a sea of sinfulness.


I once read an essay on sexual perversion by the well-known American philosopher, Thomas Nagel. If my memory serves me well, he identified the sort of mutual awareness I described above as the basis for healthy sex. It’s lacking in cases of perversion and cases of true sexual immorality. The basis of a healthy sexual life is willingly giving and receiving . . . (close your ears if you are Puritan) . . . . pleasure. And, if that’s right, my school’s Puritan dress code is perverse.




Note:
Of course, Eva might also unwittingly turn on another Slovak boy—let’s call him “Brano”. I was imagining that Eva likes Fero. Brano is a different problem. In that case, Eva must use what they call “encounter regulation”. Oddly enough, every actual Slovak Eva I’ve ever met seems to have acquired a large repertoire of skills which enables her to regulate her encounters with undesirable admirers. Anyway, I suspect it’s the case of Fero which really drives Puritans crazy. Another moral: By denying students the freedom to dress as they like, the school is actually preventing them from acquiring the skill of regulating encounters.--A problem only if you assume that the school’s primary goal is to develop the talents of the student, as opposed to spreading an ideology or assuring that profits are skewed toward individuals currently at the richer end of our inegalitarian world.


An AFTERTHOUGHT:
Defending the right to enjoy one’s physicality in public is not the same thing as endorsing conservative sexual roles. I mentioned above that Slovak society seems “conservative”. The sort of thing I have in mind is depicted in all of its misery by Elfriede Jelinek in her novel “Lovers”. (Die Liebhaberinnen) Insofar as sexy dressing belongs to the world Jelinek describes, it is no part of happiness. But Jelinek’s criticisms seem to me to be very different from the Puritan reaction of my American colleagues.








God Bless America!

This country is, increasingly, nothing but a total farce.


The PTA and the Physical Therapist have finished their home visits to my father.
They convinced themselves that he was stronger.  And so they smugly smiled and said goodbye.


After all, their system of accounting told them that all was well---one, might hasten to add:  in this best of all possible health systems.

Unfortunately, my father has more difficulty than ever before when it comes to simply:  getting out of bed or getting up from his chair!  He is at risk every time he gets up.  Where did all of his strength and progress go?


Beats me.  But I'll tell you this:  for some reason I think of the system of accounting that made possible the  present economical crisis, and the fact that the USA educational system has a screwed up system of evaluating students.  There seems to be a general pattern here.  Lots of " proof" that we are making progress, and, at the same time we are going backwards......

And they call this living?



We start off young and confused,
and end up broken, confused, and old.

In between,
you get kicked and slapped,
punched and spit on,
but if you're lucky
you've managed to make a few friends,
and found something to laugh at,
in between the blows.

And you're luckier still
if you managed not to join the mob who gave you a thrashing.

Friday, March 16, 2012

work?

The word "work" is one of those words that is disgusting.  That is to say, as people use it....

E.g., who works?  Who really contributes?

My eighty-five year old mother is "retired".  Ha ha ah.  What a joke?  She takes care of my father.

But according to the US gov't and the economics profession, she is not "gainfully employed".

what a joke.  A reductio ad absurdum of the claim that either the US gov't or the economics profession deserve any respect....

When they can so arrogantly ignore reality.

Oh yes, my mother is not unique.  So much the worse for economics and gov't.......

Thursday, March 15, 2012

excerpt from a letter to a friend....



Did I mention that recently someone --well, it is hard to describe--- accosted me because my shoelaces were untied?

I'd just gotten out of a ballet class, had quickly changed, and apparently had not tied the laces or tied them loosely,
and was traveling the enormous distance of six steps from the door of the school to my father's car.....

And from the window of a car passing by, someone shouted, aggressively, angrily, "Tie your shoelaces!".

I was amazed.  Ever since then, I hesitate whenever the question comes up.  Really, if I'm traveling a few steps
to my father's car, and I'm then going to drive straight home, is it really such an issue?  I mean I usually do
tie my shoelaces.  Anyway, I bought my sneakers in Wal Mart and the laces are not overly long, even if 
I fail to tie them....
 But, isn't it insane that I am currently engaged in talking about this?

Anyway, I just thought I'd mention that, in case I hadn't.  You may know more about this than I do.  But I know
that there is a trend to put policemen in schools, and I read that in Chicago students who leave their shoelaces untied
can get a five dollar ticket....

When they are sending so many men and women off to war, when they are killing from the convenience of air-conditioned rooms
 at the console of computers--killing women and children in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, and elsewhere, when their financial wizards are monkeying with food prices and causing starvation---they seem to think that a genuine moral issue to get upset about is......
whether or not someone's shoes are tied?

Wednesday, March 14, 2012

starbucks again

I've been trying to explain to friends (sympathetic friends outside of the USA) how upsetting it has been for me......how upsetting it was to be disciplined for a joke by a manager at Starbucks....

The lesson I draw from this is the following:  I cannot go into a public place in this country and simply make a spontaneous joke.

Instead, I must engage in self-censorship and ask myself whether someone might be offended.


In other words, there is no freedom of expression in this country.  And I shall now be forced to present one persona in public, another in private.

In other words the atmosphere (created by citizens---citizens following/interpreting the orders of their corporate masters but still citizens, not soldiers or police) is totalitarian.  Reminiscent of "communism".  (For which, see, e.g., Milan Kundera's classic novel "The Joke"......)

A good reason to leave.....forever......

my bad luck


Toward the end of the "Unbearable Lightness" Tomas no longer has the skilled hands of a surgeon.  It is a sad moment when Tereza realizes this.

Like Tomas I have lost the skills I once possessed.

Tomas, being a fictional creation, had the good grace to die soon afterwards, in a romantic and poetic scene.

As an all-too-actual creation, I have had no such luck.

Friday, March 9, 2012

"The English language used to be a vehicle for philosophy and poetry; now it's a bloody tool in the hands of the managerial class."--a saying popular with myself in a previous incarnation.

People in the USA are just plain weird!

It's not just managers at Starbucks who want to supress and censor my sense of humor. It is also people I don't know driving by in their cars shouting at me--a uniquely North American and very unleasant experience.

The other day, it so happens, I took a dance class.  That requires a special form of dress, and special shoes.  Ergo, upon finishing my exertions I had to change back into street dress.  As the studio was very crowded, and I just wanted to get out of there, I neglected to carefully tie the laces of my sneakers.

Not a big problem, I would have thought, as I wasn't about to walk home, but was about to spend the next thirty minutes sitting on my behind driving.

And the trip from the studio to the car is six feet at most.

In any case, as I was about to climb down into the vehicle, a car drove by and someone screamed
at me out of the window.

When I say they "screamed", I mean it.  The person shouted loudly, and with great exertion.  You would have thought I was murdering someone given the vehemence of their voice.

The person was bothered, personally offended---as if I had insulted their religion or favorite sports team.

But all they had to say was "Tie your shoelaces!".

Hello?  What's going on here? Is it a crime to leave your shoe-laces untied?
Does this threaten the morality of the young or is it going to cause an economic collapse?

Obviously, it does not.  (There is ZERO evidence for the so-called broken windows theory (sic) of crime prevention. ---zero, by the way means 0, or 0.000, or none, not any, zilch, nada, nic, kein, pas de, nul,  and so on...)

What kind of country is it where a citizen has nothing better to do than aggressively and loudly comment upon a fellow human being's manner of dress?

Shades of the Scarlet Letter.  This seems to be a new form of paranoia and fascism.

I know very well that adult citizens of the USA harbor all kinds of irrational fears about their children, but really my shoe laces are none of their business.

I expect someday to read that students at the local high school can be arrested (by a policeman) if they leave their shoelaces untied.

That is how sick and bizarre this country really is....

It appears that the citizens are imitating the oppressiveness of the government.
gmooh

Thursday, March 8, 2012

boycotting the local Starbucks

As regular readers of this blog know, I have decided to boycott my local Starbucks.  The manager there recently warned me when I made a joke about "Viagra" being included in an order for coffee.....If I can't make jokes or sarcastic comments without being threatened, then I cannot possibly relax in a place.  It is stifling and oppressive. File this under:  "the tyranny of the corporation"......

There is, of course, a broader context here--the coldness of anglo-saxon culture, and the puritanism of the USA.  The broader phenomenon has been noted by psychologists (Dacher Kellner) and students of emotion (e.g., Aneta Pavlienko).

The overall result:  repression, stifling of the basic ingredients of life.

How can anyone stand to live here?

Oh yes, the manager said  it had something to do with "sexual harassment".  I don't want to go into that now, but let's just say that she did not accuse me of harassing anyone.  My crime was possibly being misunderstood as engaged in s.h.  Well, I've said it before, but I'll say it again:  I don't believe her.  She just wanted to stay in control. She wanted me to know who was boss. And, it's got nothing to do with protecting women from harassment.

Moreover, I am inclined to doubt, on general principles (the purposes for which capitalist firms exist) whether Starbucks actual policy isn't more about branding and company image than about protecting rights.

Why?  Because I endorse a metaphysical principle that derives from Ancient Greek Philosophy. It goes something like this.  If  you care about justice only in one part of your coffee shop, and not in others, then you don't really care about justice.  And, no Capitalist firm cares about justice when it comes to distributing the social surplus which is produced every day.  In other words, so long as the so-called "baristas' (obnoxiously pretentious word that!) do not own and run the coffee shops, then you ain't got justice for them; and if you ain't got justice, then huffing and puffing about protecting women is not enough.

Objection:   Might not an employee benefit from the policy, even with all its flaws?  Maybe, but when you consider the broader picture of the exercise of arbitrary power by my local manager, and the arbitrary power of the corporation itself, when you consider that the case (or cases) of benefit are part of that hydra-headed monster, then it looks very different.  It is not obvious to me that what we have here is (say) unqualified good, as opposed to a mix of very nasty things with a little bit of benefit.....
(If a might heroic corporation delivers me from an evil monster today, but then devours me tomorrow, should I really be grateful?)

Wednesday, March 7, 2012

El Paso, Texas: weather report

wind
wind
wind
dust
dust
dust
ycch
ycccchhhh!
yccccchhhhhh!!!!

(is this day number three of this crap?)

Tuesday, March 6, 2012

ugly.eptx

Q: How would you describe El Paso?
A:  Uncompromising ugly.

The wind is blowing again

Garbage or goddamn knows what.

Dust is in the air.

Beep-Beep-Beep-Beep.

Get Me Out of Here!

Q:  And what about the fact that your parents live here?

A:  Did they really have any choice?  Of course not!  Capitalism doesn't work that way!

Monday, March 5, 2012

freedom

Recently Noam Chomsky gave a lecture at the University of Arizona, and it is now to be found on "Youtube".   During the question time C. remarked that the USA is freer than it's been in the past.  As I recall his evidence was the ethnic diversity on college campuses, informal dress signifying informal relationships, and the willingness of students at his own institution to consider social questions and be politically active.
Very little of that has had a beneficial impact upon my own life--at least, as far as I can see just now.  The silly incident at a coffee shop which I have recently described and analyzed at such length is only one of many examples in my life where I have experienced repression.  (On re-reading, maybe "repression" is too strong.  However, there is a psychological process whereby one becomes hyper-sensitized to unpleasant experiences, and it does often seem to characterize my own life........on account of living with my elderly parents, etc.)

In my own case, these experiences started when I was a young man, living in a family, but they have continued.  (When I was a teenager, my father reacted to my expression of independent thought by physical aggression....) A university environment offers less repression than, say, the average workplace, but for all his wisdom and knowledge, I sometimes wonder whether Professor Chomsky has not quite got the real measure of the harsh repressiveness found in the USA.  Then, again, my view is influenced by time spent living outside of the USA; I wonder if that could be the difference....

Sunday, March 4, 2012

weekends

Some day, perhaps, I shall try to write about the loss of weekends.  Currently, and for the past two and a half years, I have been living with my elderly parents, helping them insofar as I am able.

Consequently, I listen to them every morning and every night.  Why do I say "listen"?  They are very noisy.  When they converse, they shout.  My father is growing deaf.

Moreover, the phone rings frequently.  And, when a family member calls, my mother puts on the "speaker phone" and broadcasts over the entire house.   (It isn't a very large house and the rooms are connected by a system of vents which communicate sounds.)

To make matters worse, I am, by nature, a reader and writer.  Those activities require time free from interruptions.  I can work in a busy coffee shop--the sounds cancel out and become white noise.  It is harder to work in a space where only two people are talking.

Since July 2009, I have been much less free---less free than at any other time in my life.  When I worked, no matter how awful the job, I could say to myself:  Just wait until the weekend.  And, then, on a Saturday  morning, I could stay home and read a book or write something.  And on Sunday, I could continue what I had started on Sunday. I cannot do that now.  There is no regularity, no predictability and interruptions are constant.  There is no weekend to look forward to.  And, again, with the worst job, there was  always some sort of vacation.  Since July of 2009, I have had only one vacation.  During that vacation, I remember sitting on the bed of my room and sighing, feeling relieved at the thought that no one was talking, no one was phoning, there was no noise from the "news" destroying my concentration.  There was, merely, blessed silence and peace.  I could think freely.  That was May of 2011.  Since then I have had no peace and no freedom.........And, on top of all that, yesterday I found out that I was not welcome at the one place where I thought I could escape from the nervousness and anxiety that I feel living with my elderly parents.

Censorship U.S. style


CENSORSHIP U.S. STYLE; Or, Yet Another Example of the Unbridled Power of U.S.Corporations.....

A casual remark, intended ironically (or even sarcastically) has now ended my patronage of The Coffee Shop, a famous US coffee shop whose name I dare not mention.

I had been chased out of my parents’ house by a phone call from my older sister.  Her husband has put forward the claim that “the Jews” were responsible for World War Two, and he is a man who seems to have definite Nazi tendencies.  (Someone in his lineage once owned slaves, and he is proud of that fact.)  My sister, not to be outdone, it seems, by her husband, was overheard to tell my mother:

       Unlike you (my mother) and I, there are Hispanic
       immigrants in this country who do not understand
       the laws---or, perhaps she meant to suggest that
       these other people do not respect the laws.

       People (quite reasonably I understood her to mean)
       don’t wish to pay taxes if they will go to allowing       
       the children of illegals to be educated....

       The conversation was not intended for me.  However, as my father’s hearing is getting worse, my mother and father choose to use the “speaker phone” option in order to increase the volume.  Consequently every phone conversation is broadcast all over the small house.   At the time of this conversation I had actually quickly turned on my Ipod and put the headset on, but it only partially drowned out the conversation.

       Other points my sister made:

       People who support abortion (and the tone of her
       voice suggested that they were ignorant (or perhaps        deceptive, but surely spitefully willful)
       “refused” to describe a baby as a “baby”,
       but insisted (willfully, spitefully) on calling
       it a “fetus.”

The tone of the conversation was very disturbing with the powerful hateful emotional content, and the severe “us-versus-them” mentality.

Offhand, I find it disturbing, but isn't it simply unchristian to so thoroughly view other human beings as so very OTHER?---to deny their common humanity? I’m no Christian myself, I believe there are Christians who espouse that religion and manage to feel more sympathy for other human beings.

Trying to escape that nastiness, I had gone to The Coffee Shop.  I don’t say I ever successfully settled down to work on this particular day.  But, I’d been there before and know some of the workers by name.  I have talked to them before about various topics, and I’ve not hesitated to express controversial opinions.  Moreover, I have, on more than one occasion, explained that my conversational style was rather open or free or even “crazy”,  hoping thereby to prevent unintended offense in advance.  And I had even apologized, on at least two occasions, when I feared I might have caused unintended offense.

Alas, all that was not enough.

Today when I heard a worker repeating an order (Skinny Latte with double froth, etc., etc. etc......or some such nonsense), I was amazed by the length of the description.  So, speaking aloud I said something along the lines of “Coffee with viagra”—not having any particular audience in mind, but plainly intending to mock or echo in a sarcastic fashion that original lengthy description.  (Supplying drugs in the coffee would be a natural progression in the unending desire to offer customer choices.)

I said it, and as no one reacted, I forgot about it.   Ahhh, but I was wrong to think that no one was listening.

I returned to my table, did a little work, and maybe ten or fifteen or more minutes passed.  I decided to phone home to make sure the parents were ok.  And, then I packed up my belongings and moved toward the rest room.  At that point a young woman interrupted me.  In fact, she has an unusual name (unusual in my experience) and I had bothered to write it down and try to use it because I wanted to be polite.

She informed me that she was some sort of manager.  She had a more precise expression to use, but that sort of officialese from Corporate Headquarters never slides between the entry doors of my memory with ease.
And she informed me that this was a “sexual harassment free zone”—or something along those lines.

She had heard me say something about “viagra”.  And, I explained to her mine was an “echoic” utterance--it needed to be understood as a reflection on something said earlier---- something she seemed to fully understand.  It was just a joke.  She seemed to agree.

And, I reminded her that I had warned her and other workers that my language was a bit free, but that I had no evil in my heart.  Again, she seemed to understand.

But I believed the word she used was “warning”.  She was warning me.

In other words, she was doing me a favor, a kindness.

In Kafka’s “The Trial”, when the lower officers of the court come to K's home one morning, he is warned:  We are being nice to you, we don’t have to treat you this way...It was exactly the same sort of niceness I experienced in this gentle “warning”....  Because, there could be no appeal to her decision.  She had decided what I could and could not say, and I simply did not have the right of appeal.   Even while she listened to me explain myself, and (essentially) argue it was not in any way offensive, it was not a real conversation.  We were not two equal conversational partners. She stood closer to the real sources of power.  I would not be allowed to do or say anything which challenged the corporate image.

(In retrospect, I say now:  She listened to every word I said, and apparently even understood.  But it was a meaningless exercise---a waste of time.  In fact I was just as big a fool as Kafka’s K!  K had foolishly imagined that he could present his case, defend himself!  So, too, I thought I could somehow appeal the manager’s decision.---  What a fool I was!]

At which point I asked her a few questions,

“Did you imagine that I had any intention to sexually harass anyone”?

Her answer: “No.”

Did anyone else think I was sexually harassing them?   Her answer: “No”.

Then, what’s the problem?  Her answer, more or less, was that someone overhearing what I said might think I was engaged in sexual harassment.  (Not that anyone actually had thought that, but only that “someone” “might”....)

Well, I said:  In other words, someone might misunderstand.   (And, again, she seemed to agree.)

In all seriousness,  Dear Reader, if one is forbidden to say anything that someone overhearing might possibly misunderstand, there won’t be much left to talk about.

And, if it only applies to sexual subjects, or subjects possibly connected to sexual matters, then that is equally a serious limitation upon freedom of expression.

I am sorry that I didn’t think to ask:  Plainly, this doesn’t apply to words like “Hitler” or “Nazi”.

If I talked about Nazis, would the company be afraid that I might be one, and I would I also be warned?  (Or, since they haven't declared themselves a "Nazi Free Zone" would it be irrelevant?

In other words, at this particular coffee shop, at any rate, one must constantly be on one’s guard lest one offend someone.  One must engage in self-censorship.

Well, I shall not be going back there.  And, I don’t believe that for one minute the plan is to protect people from sexual harassment, rather than to create a certain image, to protect profits.  (Certainly it’s not a company that doesn’t hesitate to exploit people.)

Since I had gone out of my way, from the very first day, to guard against giving unwanted offense, I don’t know whether I should laugh or cry.  But I know two things: I won’t return to any coffee shop bearing that company’s logo, and I cannot remain in this country.

However limited the casual conversations I might have had from time to time with friendly non-supervisory coffee house employees, they were something good.  Now, it seems, I can’t even enjoy that degree of social contact in this sick country.

This is not a “free” country----not by a long-shot!

Recommended Reading:

Milan Kundera, The Joke


After-thought
The more I think about it, the more I think that this manager does not understand what "sexual harassment" is!
She merely has a vague idea that there is a company policy and that she's got to enforce it.
 I made a joke (or attempted to make one). My joke betrays or reveals certain of my attitudes.  I am not, for example, a fundamentalist Christian or a conservative Catholic.  And people of those religious persuasions might be offended by what I said, but, in essence what offends them is that I think differently about sex, not that I was thereby harassing them.  (I wasn't attempting to highlight a particular individual's gender,nor was I engaged in making a joke about women,or pointedly alluding to sexual acts while making eye contact with a particular individual, or any such thing.) Someone might find it offensive that I believe that sex is not something holy, but psychological and biological and still very important.  But they would have no right to be offended by those beliefs, or by my public expression of them; to do so would be tantamount to demanding that I share their religious outlook.  Nonetheless, my joke was not essentially sexual; it was essentially mocking the insincere pretense at customer-satisfaction that motivates a capitalist firm.  
Secondly, she is, in effect, laying down a policy:  No one is allowed to say anything related to sex which another person might not like.  That is a policy which makes it impossible to have a serious discussion about a controversial subject--such as abortion--because there is always the possibility that someone is offended merely by the existence of another point of view distinct from their own (as was my sister above).  
Of course, these overly broad (and inaccurate) interpretations of "sexual harassment" guarantee that the company image is preserved, and that is following a fundamental law of psychology.  It works in biology as well as the social realm.  A degree of hyper-sensitivity is a way of protecting a privileged value--in this case, I say, it is the company image, or what it sells itself as. (I don't believe for one minute the company cares--about women, or workers, or the people who grow coffee....It's all just marketing.....) In other words, this particular manager was protecting the BRAND, not women. AKA, this is a case of FALSE POSITIVES.  Better err on the side of claiming something is sexual harassment rather than RISK DAMAGE TO THE BRAND. Anything that threatens the distinctive brand must be stomped on.  Dear me.  I've been there before! 
http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=8227038


 THE GODS OF CAPITALISM WILL HAVE THEIR SACRIFICES!!