El Pasoans are assholes

Some neighbor or other is playing "his" music:  boom-boom-boom-boom...
asshole

streets? streets? what streets?

Streets?  Protests in the streets?  Ha Ha Ha
There are no streets in El Paso Texas.
These are autostrada, boulevards, highways.
Roads designed for trucks and tanks, not for human beings.
Too wide for the rebellious to set up barricades.....

resistance is useless?  Perhaps not, but you cannot simply transfer European tactics to a desert outpost, anymore than you can grow greenery that requires a lot of water.....

all very hopeless.....

gmooh

Either Central or Eastern Europe is a better place to live than the USA

I was just woken by a phone call---someone was selling something.  But it wasn't even a human voice!  It was a computer.

I've also been woken in the morning by that sort of call.

I lived in Bratislava from 1996 to 1999, and again from 2000-2008. From 2008 until 2009 I lived in Vienna.  I never got that sort of nuisance phone call during my entire time in Bratislava and Vienna.
NEVER!

KAPITALISTICKE SVINSTVO


GMOOH

stupidities

(partially corrected 27 June 2012)

Much of the lie which passes for culture in the USA, or I should say the USA's secular religion...

consists in saying;  Oh, people have problems everywhere---and suggesting things couldn't possible be better (blame it on frail human nature), or suggesting that things couldn't be better elsewhere (people have problems everywhere....)

what rubbish!  (AKA KAPITALISTICK SVINSTVO!)

Two examples:

The nearest (not totally over-priced) grocery store here in eptx is about 1.5 miles away.   It is not healthy to walk there in the blazing sun.  It is not practical to walk there to buy groceries. (A bicycle you say?  You are crazy if you want to ride a bicycle on these streets!  Totally not safe!)

EXAMPLE TWO

WHY DO healthy young doctors sit in their air-conditioned office and require frail, elderly
patients to travel to them?

It makes no sense.  It is easier for the doctors to travel.  They are young and healthy.

I put that down to the privileges of the privileged.....

By the way, as I was leaving the parking lot this morning (after safely arranging my eighty-something parents into the car, and putting their walkers into the car as well)..... I saw another father-son duo arriving at the place.  So, every time an elderly person needs to see a doctor, a son or daughter has to help him or her get there....So how many people are rearranging their lives to suit the convenience of doctors?
What rubbish!
zase, kapitalisticke svinstvo!

gmooh

May 1 General Global Strike

http://occuprint.org/wiki/uploads/Posters/GlobalStrike.pdf

eptx

El Paso, Texas is a desert outpost of a cruel empire.  And, without realizing it, the residents have absorbed the cruelty of the empire, and take it for granted.

Warning Label for Doctors

Every doctor's office should have a warning label:

WARNING: If you follow your doctor's advice, you may prolong your life to such an extent,
that someday you will be unable to live independently.  At that point you will find how little this country really cares about the elderly.  You may have to hire someone to take care of you.  (And that is not cheap.)  Or,  (if you are lucky) you will have to depend upon a younger relative--or (more hopefully) relatives.

But, you need to be clear in your own mind now that living to an old age means decay,
and ordinary tasks that you now take for granted will become difficult or impossible.  You will, sooner or later, be unable to live independently.  You should find out now exactly what that means, and prepare yourself for the worst.

obsolete technology

Here's the kind of misery the personal automobile creates:
If I wanted to use the university library, located on the other side of town,
I could not take public transport there---unless I were willing to use three different
buses, with inevitable gaps in-between transfers, and making a trip in, say 90 minutes....
(El Paso has CRAP public transport, and they have the sheer hubris to call it (wrongly, falsely) a "metro"--excuse me while I puke...)

So, I drive a car for 30 minutes, and then have to deal with parking.  That means I either pay for parking or arrange my visit to the library when there are few/no students on campus....And, then, when I've finally managed to park the car,  one must trek across the sterile campus in the blazing hot (and unhealthy heat of the) sun...for another twenty minutes before one arrives at the library.

Allowing ten minutes for the parking task, that means a person wastes an hour traveling to the library---and, of course, another hour traveling home.

It doesn't have to be that way.  With a real metro, there would be a ten or fifteen minute trip to the center/transfer point, and then a quick train to the university.  I bet it would take 25 minutes at most.
25 minutes versus 60 minutes.  Really, there's no question about what is best.  (And I haven't even said a word about anthropogenic climate change.)

The personal automobile is obsolete technology.
Let's get rid of it.

(But in the meantime, even better to get out of here, asap.....)

false pleasures or pure bullshit

green tea cappucino with x and y and z....etc. etc. (ad nauseam)

So, I am the king of the universe because of this crap?

kapitalisticke svinstvo...(zas)....

Broken Link?

Dear Readers,
I've just corrected a broken link--to Loic Wacquant's homepage.
Please be so kind as to let me know if you find a broken link.
Best wishes,
The Yankee Gringo

emotional work?

The therapist Harriet Fraad likes to talk about "emotional work".  Mothers, or women traditionally have helped people in the family to satisfy their emotional needs....I believe that much of what I've done in the past three years for my elderly parents is very much along those lines...

However, I am uncomfortable with the phrase because most of what is conventionally called
 "work" is not actually productive or positive---does not contribute to improving lives  (E.g.
advertising, crappy hollywood movies, killing people in the military...)

My Job

I empty urinals---morning and night.
I try not to splash the urine on the floor or spill it on myself.
(Contrary to the prejudices of the people who design Linkedin, not every person who performs valuable activities has a "title"---let alone a pension or health insurance.  Then again, I do not have a "boss"--a definite advantage.)
I have had no prior training.
Job satisfaction:  It is a relief when the job is done, but it never is.  There are merely longer or shorter pauses before the next bottle comes.
No opportunity of advancement; but I am hoping that someday I will die in my sleep and this nightmare will end.
I have two sisters who could do this job as well as I do; however, they have better things to do with their time.

The U.S.A. is a bad place to live....

"The United States is the only nation in the Western industrialized world that does not have paid maternity leave. The Scandinavian nations mandate both maternity and paternity leaves. France, Finland, Sweden, Austria, Portugal, Italy and Spain all guarantee more than three and a half weeks of paid vacation time. Every other nation in the EU as well as the UK guarantees more than two and a half weeks of paid vacation time. The United States guarantees none. "
--Dr. Harriet Fraad, in her essay , "Some Relationships Counseling for Feminism and the Left"---an essay which I strongly recommend. She does a good job of diagnosing where feminism failed and how it should be changed.  (Errors include the way it left out class and made a target of men.......not to mention the support provided by the CIA and FBI which pushed the movement in a less radical direction.)


At the time of writing I've not yet finished reading the essay, but have learned a lot.


http://rdwolff.com/content/some-relationship-counseling-feminism-and-left

El Pasoans are assholes.

My "neighbor" is playing "his" music.  Boom-Boom-Boom-Boom...
Asshole!

On being ill-at-ease in the land of one's bith.

I hear a sentence.  It is recognizably a sentence of my mother tongue.
I know the grammar, vocabulary.  The speaker's pronunciation presents no difficulties.

And, yet, I don't know what the hell they are saying.

At best, their sounds resound like a noise in an empty room; there is no context to support understanding.

At worst, I am horrified to imagine what the surrounding thoughts and emotions actually are--I listen with a feeling of revulsion and disgust.

eptx

The mere prospect of going anyplace in this f.-ing non-city is a f.-ing nightmare,
is f.-ing unpleasant because to go anywhere one simply must drive an f.-ing car.

gmooh!

The Librarian of Human Souls

In Defense of Librarians; the Library of Human Souls
Mark J. Lovas

COPYLEFT 2012; all rights reserved
(Permission to copy and distribute is allowed strictly for educational or cultural purposes only, so long as authorship is acknowledged; copying or sharing involving commercial interests is strictly forbidden.)

The two librarians—whose names no one knows-- sit on either sides of the Great Monitor.  I would like to say that they are nick-named “Tweedle Dum” and “Tweedle Dee”.  But by doing so I would only reveal my own weakness and fear.  By giving them such names I express my contempt for them, but that contempt is mingled with fear and resentment.  But fear is not respect, and the two should  never be confused.

The Nameless Librarians sit on either side of the Great Monitor.  The screen faces away from library patrons, and no patron has ever seen what is actually displayed there.  Theories abound.  Are the two great librarians surveying the souls of those who enter?  Plugging seemingly trivial details into the mind which resides within the Great Super-Computer to which their desktops are connected, producing as output a detailed character analysis? Or, perhaps, they are reading newspapers from foreign lands?  Or, might they have a direct line to the government’s security services, and derive from it a perfect summary of the most intimate details of every patron---including a report of the last time he or she brushed his or her teeth and changed his or her underwear?

Often patrons do not even get past the sight of the two librarians, but are stunned into silence, their motion halted as they contemplate the austere and dreadful majesty of the two men, who sit smiling, confident in their knowledge that they have access to the information about each patron, information about that very patron which he or she could not imagine.   Even today skilled mathematicians have derived algorithms which, it is said, can take as input the condition of a patron’s underwear, and derive from it not only a prediction about their favorite books and movies, but also all of their shopping habits and their sexual preferences and perversions in such great detail that no one could actually find time to read it all, if it were ever actually written down in one place.

It is not, however, ever written down in one place.—And that is for very good Security Reasons.

Rather, the information gatherers who we never meet, but are surely behind the behavior of the two guardians of the library........But here, I must pause.

Oh gentle reader, you may weary of my descriptions of the behind the scene action, and wish only to hear about actual human being, the foolish puppet toys whose strings are pulled by our information tyrants, our information madmen.

I too yearn for the gentle touch of fingers upon my skin, but, Alas!, this is a Puritan country, where touch deprivation is an obligatory right of all sentient beings.

You may think that the amount of information contained in even the most super computer still cannot allow definite predictions about what you will do next.  But, unfortunately, we can’t be sure because the librarians in this and all libraries jealously guard the secrets to which they have access.

The computers at the library, naturally enough, connect to the twenty-six branches of State Security responsible for monitor and control of the populace—or, “happiness propagation” in a more technical language.  And, it is for that reason that librarians today around the world regard themselves as a more important breed than ever before in the history of our species.

They recoil in horror at those who call them mere “technocrats”, and instead prefer the appellation “engineer of human souls”.  Although they do not know the origin of that phrase, they say that it has a nice, professional ring to it.  (I am getting a bit ahead of myself; but, this is an instance of the powerful Aesthetics of Librarianship, Information Provision and Revision.)

How, you may well ask, can a mere librarian deserve so noble a description?  Don’t they just help you find a book or a web site?

Today each librarian is supplied with a profile of potential troublemakers, labeled “threats to stability” (TTS).  As each patron enters, they are immediately placed into one of three categories. Further sub-classification will follow later.
(Indeed, there are rumors that cameras outside the building already begin to scan the potential patron’s face as soon as the light falls upon it at the right angle.)

It is no longer necessary to know what kinds of books a patron checks out or reads. It is not necessary to follow their browsing habits.  It is enough to consider their clothing, the dynamics of their gait, and other details far below conscious awareness.  All patrons are filmed as they proceed through the library.

As noted above, many scholarly treatises have been composed on the subject of the computer sitting between Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum.  Some say the screen always changes, with a variety of stimulating screen savers.  Others say that the screen is actually blank.  However, when TDee and TDum wink and nod to one another (hand gestures seem to be strictly forbidden, but other forms of non-verbal communication-- such as stamping of the feet or pounding of the fists as well as winks and nods-- occur almost without pause), they also sometimes seem to gesture in the direction of the computer monitor which separates them.  Their facial gestures possess a curious power.  Sometimes patrons enter the library with complete confidence and freedom from fear; but, when they see the librarians laughing and eyeing them from head to toe, many turn around and run away, lurching with an awkward backward motion, away from the librarians and toward the doors through which they have just entered.  Many frightened patrons  smash themselves against the doors.  Others freeze, and seem to lose all power to control their bodies, slumping to the floor unconscious.  What happens when they regain consciousness is not known.  I myself have never been able to proceed further into the library than the space between the entrance door and the desk of the librarian pair.  I don’t remember what happened after that.

Another debate concerns the actual number of librarians sitting in front of the entrance.  Some say that the librarians are sets of twins--twins in order to preserve the appearance of continuity even when there has been a change of guard.  Others suggest that long ago, the original pair of librarians were replaced by robotic substitutes.  That would explain why the librarians never actually communicate directly with patrons; however, there is a powerful community of scholars who say that they have actually spoken with the librarians.  The enormous size of this community which might be explained either by the influence of State Security (and especially its generous financing) or by the fact that they have spoken with the two librarians.  However, as I find the gaze and gestures of the librarians so overwhelming, I cannot imagine actually speaking to them.

I myself once yearned to be a librarian.  At an early age my mother explained to me that the intelligence of a librarian is inversely proportional to their slumped posture and the greasiness of their hair.  The better dressed among the staff are actually not permanent employees at all, and do not have unrestricted access to all of the privileges of State Security.

I was not able to pass even the most preliminary tests which are needed to begin the first of eight stages of training.  (There is a rumor that even the publicly know eight stages can be sub-divided into various exams and challenges which the would-be librarian must face, leading to an enormous number of steps.)

The training of future librarians includes not only tests of their loyalty to the State, but also tests of their physical endurance, and their aesthetic taste.  The highest levels of librarianship require the candidates to sit for hours every day watching movies produced by one of the many sub-divisions of State Security.  (There is, in fact, an organizational chart for State Security displayed in every library; however it is coded so that it appears to the naive eye to be directions for the bathroom, or how to operate the highly efficient dryers in the bathroom, or how to use the toilet paper in the most ecological fashion.)

Would-be librarians have several routes to entering the profession, and once in the profession, they are given several career paths to follow.  Those trainees who elicit the correct reactions while watching State Security propaganda films are immediately given a higher status, and begin to make movies themselves within weeks of passing their final exams.  Others choose to engage in the manipulation and correction of texts.  “Texts” here does not mean merely books, but all forms of information.  As soon as an event occurs, it is necessary to consult the canonical list of possible events.  Nothing occurs which is not on the list.  In one of the earliest and primitive versions of Event Analysis, a citizen cannot, for example, be dissatisfied with a purchase.  A citizen could only regret that they did not have the financial wherewithall to purchase a quality product.  So anger at the product or its producers and distributors would be immediately converted into guilt and a feeling of personal inadequacy.

That was, however, merely an initial proposal, a sub-theme for movies and news stories, which was soon widely accepted, repeated, and developed.  Today the librarian who corrects texts has moved many steps beyond that classical and less sophisticated version of Information Provision.

As I reflect upon these themes of the greatness of information and the majesty of its provision, I confess, dear reader, that my heart is heavy. I never entered the illustrious profession of librarian.  And whenever I walk past one of the great edifices of the science, I experience regret.  However, today I am starting a training course for library patrons.  It is not expensive and promises to help me fit into the library system, to play a  humble part within the noble adventure of information control and provision, even information revision.  I am only learning about the subject, but they say I will be so re-configured that my mind will automatically and without effort be able to satisfy the wishes of a librarian even before it has been expressed.  In this perfect symbiotic relationship it will no longer be necessary for me to even enter the library.  At the earliest inception of a thought, even before it is fully conscious, I will find myself with the longing for a cup of tea, specially brewed by an innovative branch of State Library Security. And, that cup of tea will specifically enable me to sleep, and to dream about a future in which I will be a librarian.  I am hopeful that my regret about my professional failure can be replaced by vivid dreams in which I too am a Librarian.

I am not sure how my dreams help the noble activities of Provision and Revision, but I have found it tremendously helpful not to think too much about it, and simply to let the tea work its effects.  And, in this way I am confident that I shall attain the happiness for which I have been striving for so many years.


El Paso, Texas
20 April 2012

eptx

El Pasoans are assholes.
My neighbor is playing "his" music:  BOOM...BOOM...BOOM......Boom....
asshole

"Shame"

(this version corrects an earlier misspelling; further corrections to be added)

I've just seen the American film "Shame".

I didn't expect much, and my prejudices were not threatened....

I expect a film to yield insight.  I would like to get inside a character or situation, but the

protagonist of this film was very much on the surface. So, I would call it a superficial film

with a pop psychology (Freudian) suggestion.  (viz., must have been something in his childhood

---How informative!)

Is the level of culture in the USA so low that this counts as a "serious" film?  I guess so.

Americans are afraid of sex, and then when they make a film about sex, it's not a film about

normal sex, but about perverse sex...... indeed, exploitative sex---but the issue of exploitation is very much back-stage.  Strictly speaking, the perspective of the film would lump together more normal (not for pay) sex with exploitative (for pay) sex because the hero of the film is unable to see the difference between them.  That is a distortion.  It ignores an important difference.  (And so when I hear the remark:  finally a film about sex in the USA---I am not impressed....)

get me out of here!

PS My conscience requires me to say that the film was shown at a place where people are

trying to encourage discussion and culture.  Good for them. I support such activities, but,

in the USA the level is so low...one starts with so many disadvantages...

PPS It seems to me that any Czech or Slovak film whatsoever has something to say about sex.......with

more understanding, and less superficially........aka, in an adult way....In the USA the men and women must go to the gym so that they display athletic bodies during the sex scenes.  That, too, is extremely boring! )-:  

gmmoh

An after-thought:
There are important questions about what happens to a person who spends excessive time viewing pornography on the internet.  One intelligent discussion of this found at Richard D Wolff's website where he interviews the therapist Harriet Fraad.  My gripe about the film is that it did nothing to increase my understanding beyond what I'd already gotten by hearing Fraad..

Moreover, I am not sure it was necessary in the film to have a bloody suicide scene to show that the protagonist's family was troubled.  On the contrary, that seems precisely the sort of heavy-handed approach that Hollywood specializes in.......Not subtle.......

LINKS

The Country Teacher
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1284526/

(equally good:  another film by Bohdan Slama, "Happiness" ("Stesti") (for some reason transalted as:  "Something Like Happiness")
ttp://www.imdb.com/title/tt0406098/

An Interview with Dr. Harriet Fraad--it's a few minutes into the show  (RWolff's Economic Update, 14 April, 2012)

http://rdwolff.com/content/economic-update-wbai-apr-14th-2012

About the porn industry and the effects of the capitalist system on families, working men:

http://truth-out.org/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&id=5791:capitalism-and-loneliness-why-pornography-is-a-multibilliondollar-industry

PS:  Fraad isn't in the business of seriously comparing the USA and other countries; that's not her goal. However, I can say (since I do it all the time) that when she documents the loneliness of the USA, and since I have lived elsewhere, this is further ground for my judgment that the USA is a bad place to live---worse than Austria, or even Slovakia.......Genuine friendships are harder to achieve in the USA.....

what a farce!

I would like to wear cotton clothes because they breathe, and feel soft against the skin.
But when I buy a t-short or a pair of jeans, the cotton has been treated with harsh chemicals,
thereby damaging the health of the unfortunate persons who have produced the clothing
and rendering the clothing uncomfortable until washed ten or twenty times......

Another crime of capitalism......

Recommended reading:
"The high price of blue jeans"  (in German)  in Der Standard (Austria):

http://derstandard.at/1331207351912/Blau-vor-bleich-Der-hohe-Preis-der-Bluejeans

you can't fool mother nature

build a city in the desert
give the houses green lawns---as if this were Scotland


or, better still:  give them rock gardens that are fed with pesticides


don't ever think about the consequences of your actions


pretend that water is infinite, and there are no evolutionary laws which produce pesticide-resistant plants....


continue to build freeways as if there were no such thing as anthropocentric global warming


in short behave stupidly and arrogantly


and then you will fit right in in El Paso Texas


recommended Link:


Pesticides linked to honey bee decline, from the London Guardian:


http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/mar/29/crop-pesticides-honeybee-decline?INTCMP=ILCNETTXT3487

Lies, Damned Lies, and the Computer Lie

Methodological Preliminary:
Back in the olden days, before the internet, I used to occasionally travel to exotic corners of the USA for job interviews.


And, in those ancient days, I used to hear professors at this or that university or college complain about "young people around here" or some such thing.


And it was always amazing to realize that they imagined that what they observed was a peculiarity of their region while it was actually pretty universal---or at least common in the USA.


So, too, I believe that my life is not unique, and when I complain, I am not being idiosyncratic.


Computer revolution?  Ha HA HA


I say it again:  the personal computer has not made my life better.  It has given me some enticing images of what life could be, occasionally a view of some art I might otherwise not see, but one has to add up all the pluses and minuses to get an accurate assessment.


And let's talk about the increasingly overwhelming assumption that everyone has access to the Intershit and a printer.


You don't get a piece of paper from the IRS, e.g.; you've got togo online and read on your screen---or print a page.


I own a small Mac and the screen seems to shrink every day.  It's not fun or even comfortable to read on screen.  (I just spent fifteen minutes looking at a document written by the EU which was single-spaced with small print.  Enlarging the size of the print does not do the job; the thing was hard to read.)


So, suppose I print.  Well, printers give off noxious gases.  They should be used in well-ventialted rooms.


but, guess what?  Most of the windows in this house were sealed by my father years ago in a fit of home improvement madness.  Sealed both to make the AC efficient and to keep out intruders.  The windows can be opened from the inside, but only with great difficulty.


And since this is a desert locality, opening the windows often means that the dust will blow in.


So, has the computer made my life better?  Are people really better off since the Berlin Wall came down?  Yeah, right.  And I am so happy to be free here in the land of junk food, big trucks and a permanent sun that promises skin cancer.  Happy as could be.

shabby elpasotexas

To call this place a "city" would be to pay it an undeserved complement.

It is a chaotic collection of trucks, fast food joints, roads, and strip malls.

Even the local university seems more designed for cars/trucks than for pedestrians......
(featuring wide roads that take a long time to cross, making the pedestrian an easy target for
the obviously more important vehicles.....)....

driving = wasted time

Every hour, minute, second I spend in a car is wasted time.
I am paying a tax to the rulers of the world every moment I have to spend in a car.
My time is wasted, stolen from me.
I cannot read or write.
I can only think badly, as I must watch out for other cars, etc. etc. etc.
A tax that is invisible but very real.
An imposition and an insult.
My time is stolen from me.
This is not freedom or democracy.  It is bullshit.

There are men and women who enjoyed, during their lifetimes, the fruits of struggle---struggle by those we call "leftists", anarchists, socialists, communists---and they enjoyed the fruits of those struggles, without ever asking where their advantages came from.


Today those advantages, those hard won benefits, are disappearing.  And the ignorance of those who did not know their own history is no small part of the problem.  Not willful ignorance, not an ignorance chosen, but ignorance all the less---ignorance which benefits all those whose heels are crushing us now.


My Prison/My Own Personal Hell


Some call it "ElPasoTexas",
I call it Hell;
It is most of all a prison of recurrent thoughts,
fantasies of escape,
memories of life before my imprisonment.


It is a prison of repeating thoughts,
and imperfect expression,
day after day,
a bad translation,
a translation which misleads, distorts,
and betrays the emotion behind it,
which blunts the emotion and clouds the thought,
a distorting mirror.


A life of undigested thoughts and an obsession with the thought
that even I deserve better than this.

Sunday 15 April 2012

They call it "the land of the free".
But, it is, in reality, nothing more than an enormous prison:
a prison of the psyche, a prison of the soul, a prison of the spirit,
in which the minds of the inhabitants are full of fears and anxieties,
---all due to the omnipresent injustice, racism, militarism, economic inequality,
and an all-powerful propaganda machine,
and all that is invisible to the inhabitants.

But to an honest visitor,
---and most visitors dare not speak out loud what they see,---
the whole thing stinks of misery.

El Paso, Texas has shit weather.

Outside, there is a dust storm (again).   I am inside with the doors and windows shut.  When I breathe it is slightly painful---the inner passages of my nose are irritated.  I can taste dust, dirt.

This is not the first time since Jan 2012 that this has happened....

I know what hell is.

To be shut up in this house,
--shut up because the windows and doors are closed to keep out the blowing dust--
And despite the closed windows, when I breathe my nostrils are irritated
I can taste the dust.....
To be shut up in this house,
in this city,
in this country,
with two ghosts,
this is hell.

hating el paso texas

boom boom boom
a neighbor is enjoying himself
the hell with the neighbors, he thinks.  I am not at work, and so I can do whatever I choose.

Thus the fragile freedom of a wage slave...

I HATE elpasotexas with all of my being.  and here's why, e.g....

I've just been in the car for thirty or more minutes
sitting in the car is not comfortable
the seat distorts my back
I cannot sit up straight
and if I try, my head touches the roof of the car
and I can't see out through the windshield

the car seat and windshield force you either to slump or to lean back
you cannot sit up straight

and at night your eyes are constantly assaulted by the bright lights of other vehicles

I would like to go out, to attend a social event,
to relate to other human beings in a non-competitive, non-commercial way....
and I know of one in particular----thirty minutes away by car.

But, you see, I am in no f-ing mood to get in the car again.

If this city actually had decent public transit
(as opposed to a shitty bus system with cheap
low quality buses that ran infrequently....)
--if this were Bratislava or Vienna, I could take a tram
or a bus or the metro...and it would be an easy trip.

I would go.

But I don't fancy an hour trip in a car right now.  (Thirty minutes there and thirty minutes back....)
I'd like just to drop in for an hour or so, but thought of driving makes me want to puke.

This is unnecessary from a merely human standpoint---even leaving out the fact of climate change.

A disgusting city!
A disgusting country!

GMOOH

eptx

a place where:
the sun, a hot sun, a merciless sun, always shines
the wind always blows
dust is everywhere
food is never fresh
every car is a huge truck that you can't see around
a truck that can't or won't stay in its own lane and barely fits in a parking place,
an enormous truck jutting forward and back to crowd you as you attempt to maneuver around it;

And, above all,
El Paso Texas is a place where
militarism is in the blood,
--Not because the citizens of the USA are born violent,
but they are made so,
by the country's violent past,
and by the collective denial of racism,
together with the necessity of survival,
in a capitalist culture where jobs are the crumbs that fall
from the rich man's table.

El Paso, Texas:
a place where exploitation is everywhere,
because
the green lawn must be trimmed and beautiful,
no matter how much water it costs,
no matter how little water people have across the border in Juarez,
no matter how little water there is for basic sanitation in that far away country,
and the lawns must be beautiful,
so someone will be paid to do it,
even if they are paid badly.

But I do not think that green lawns are good or beautiful,
least of all sensible in this miserable desert,
and I do not think that anyone should be exploited for the sake of my neighbor's "beautiful home".

Altogether El Paso, Texas is a disgusting place, with no redeeming virtues....

El Pasoans are assholes

Loud music
pound-pound-pound
at 1o-clock in the morning...
No, I don't need to hear that.....

fuck the automobile

fuck the automobile
fuck the auto industry
do I want to spend the rest of my life sitting in a god damn car for two hours a day?
Hell NO!

get me out of here!

Objection:  Are you crazy?  Do you want to put people out of work?
No, I don't wish harm towards the people who work in Detroit...
On the contrary, I just wish that they would spend their time making public transport
---trams, or "light rail" instead of personally piloted vehicles of climate destruction.

By all means, I think workers in Detroit (those who currently make cars) deserve more
pay, better benefits, and the ability to run the business---aka democracy in the workplace.

And I would try to convince them that they should not make automobiles, but buses,
trams, trains---- in short a genuine system of public transit.....

In fact, what's needed here is that the entire society, all of its productive resources, be
in the hands of working people, and that the purpose of production should be real
human needs----not the profits of the few......(And don't stop with one society.....)

resistance to Austerity

I leave it to others to make the arguments in detail.  (Others such as the economists Yanis Varoufakis or Richard D.Wolff)  But what we are being told today is a lie.  There is enough money.  It's not true to say, e.g., that there is not enough money for health care or public education.

This is a world-wide trend aimed at destroying the lives of working people.

And one way to resist the trend is simply to say:  The advocates of austerity are lying.

Of course, if you assume a capitalist economy, then you can say:  the rich have not got a proper incentive to invest or create jobs.  My response:  there is nothing inevitable about a capitalist economy.

Others might wish to argue that even within a capitalist economy, there's no good to be gained from destroying the lives of the vast majority of people.  But my point now is simply this: why the hell should they be able to decide for us?  They shouldn't----not any more than Kings and Queens should....And the comparison with aristocracy is apt.   Tomas Paine complained that aristocrats were no better than the rest of us, and he was right.....

comfort envy

It seems to me that the activists--however thoughtful and caring they may be---belong to a different class than I do.  I am in the class of those without hope, who are increasingly desperate.  I cannot think about the long term and the word "vision" irritates me.  But I recoil simultaneously from myself.  I am faced with the demands of two old people who are trapped in their old age, and their old age has equally ensnared me.  I am insulted and abused by the silence and indifference of two selfish, immature sisters.  And in the midst of all that, survival with some measure of sanity is the most I can hope for.  Vision for the long-term is an expensive jewel that exceeds my meagre means.....

El Pasoans are assholes

Put the dog outside and let him bark.  Who cares if the neighbor is bothered by it?

a short note to a friend

I am posting a (slightly revised version of a) short note I just sent to a friend in Europe:




You see, I would not simply like to complain, although I do complain, and I shall continue to... It's not just that I am unhappy, but rather, I see something bad, something ugly and evil--all around me. It's not just that I am unhappy (although I am), but I see people around me living badly----starting with my parents. My parents are just too, too isolated. They are alone socially. They do not have enough contacts with other people. And they are alone when it comes to the help they need. What is the point of living to be eighty-seven when you are bored most of the time? I see my father as mostly bored, alone. And I cannot possibly spend every day keeping him from feeling alone. so, I feel pain, on the one hand, because my life has stopped, and, on the other because, despite my unhappiness, the fundamentally bad situation of my parents has not changed. It has only been slightly ameliorated.......And I do think that even in Slovakia (not to mention Wien)  people, in general, have more social interaction than do people here. Here everything is mediated via technology (it is like a tax we have to pay to our capitalist masters for anything like a normal healthy life.....

the grouch reads

The Grouch reads....
about "akrasia", weakness and strength of will....

I was reading an essay by a philosopher last night.  He wants to advocate for "strength of will"---the idea that when you've made up your mind, you should stick to it---ignore voices (even in your own head) that go against your decision.....

Now, it strikes me, and has struck me on many occasions how bizarre this debate is.

The philosopher was talking about jogging early in the morning.  He imagined someone who had not recently exercised and who now was showing signs of decline, who decided he should start jogging in the morning.

Something about this set-up strikes me as perverse.  First of all, it's a solitary decision by an individual.
Secondly, jogging is an especially brutal form of exercise.  Where shall one jog?

In my current environment, I could jog on sidewalks, or on a tread mill, or?  Well, there arent' really any parks with green trees and shade.  Given the local heat one should not be outside in the sun between, say, eleven in the morning, and sunset....

Jogging is not an especially pleasant activity.

But, our haphazardly, not-designed cities and living spaces don't encourage walking.  Nor do they especially accomodate the real needs of our bodies.

So, here's an individual who is getting fat and has decided to start jogging.

And our philosopher sees this as a case where there's a need for willpower.  I  don't see it that way at all.

It shows a social failure.  We should be able to walk to work every day, say, or we should have ready and easy access to social forms of exercise such as dance or yoga classes---or, if that's what you like (though the whole notion of sport does not appeal to me) basketball.....

It is very spartan, very Puritan---this sort of early morning jog....and it is even so un-social, so individualistic.

The whole set-up strikes me as simply perverse.

And when philosophers talk about whether they should have another piece of cake or another beer, I think it is similarly bizarre and narrow.  They miss out on the broader component of one's life and one's location in a society.

Well, you might say they recognize the latter inadvertently.  I once read an essay by a philosopher who reasoned that his knowledge of the consequences of his action allowed him to turn down a drink of wine----just before he was about to take part in an important seminar.

But, what was (so far as I recall) invisible to that philosopher was the way that he was located in a social network----as a scholar among other scholars who cares about his scholarly activities--and how all of that situation was as much responsible, as much a part of his decision as anything that belonged to him as an individual.  Now, that might be a little unfair, because by "knowledge" (as I understood him) one thing he meant was recognizing all of that social embedding, recognizing his role.

And he did not speak of it as an individual achievement, though others might.  The conclusion I'm coming around to is that this thing that's called (wrongly) strength of character or will power has more to be with one's happy location in society than it has to do with any kind of inner achievement.

But it would not be surprising if philosophers in the USA were prone to blindly assume a sort of individualism....

there was no computer "revolution"

If by "revolution" you mean progress, I would deny that my life is better on account of computers.
To do taxes now, you need a computer, an internet connection, and a printer.
All of that stuff costs money.
And, there are the messy details:  should I print 15 or more pages of instructions?
Or, will I tire my eyes out by reading this stuff on the screen?

No, sorry, the world has not gotten better....And I don't expect the trend is going to change soon.

I repeat myself.

I just wanted to say:  The USA is a very ugly place, and El Paso, Texas is one of the ugliest places in it.

If I say anything at all, if I speak about who I am and where I am, I must (unless I lie) talk about ugliness and brutality, ignorance and stupidity, and a total absence of beauty.

Now, here's a thought

When I taught English in Austria, I recall hearing from students at a large insurance company that they were subject to frequent evaluations and controls. They had a performance quota which they were expected to reach.  And, they apparently were able to negotiate with their bosses or supervisors in order to arrive at a realistic quota.

That last fact gives me pause.  I wonder to what extent each employee could actually decide for him- or herself; but as I never really asked at the time, I don't know.

As a teacher of English I wasn't exactly subjected to quotas, but it was clear that I was being watched, and that if a student complained about me, I did hear about it.

As a professor of Philosophy, there are, of course, student evaluations.  And colleagues (or sometimes administrators) do visit the classroom in order to evaluate a colleague's teaching.

Worst of all, when I was employed by one private high school--a so-called "International school"--I once had five or six unannounced visits in the course of a period of something like six months.  At the time I remember recalling that as a Visiting Assistant Professor in universities in the USA, I had never experienced such harassment.  Nor had I even experienced that degree of intrusive inspection even at that very institution under a previous manager.  (Though, in these international high schools they call it a "Director" or some such thing.)

And, at this particular International School, there were extremely fine-grained attempts to weigh and measure the students--not merely academically, but in other ways.  Frankly, the whole thing struck me as fascistic from the first day.  Or, you might say it was "communistic" since from what I've read it wasn't enough to believe in the bright future of a "socialist" society, but one also had to be openly and publicly enthusiastic about it at the right moments.....

So, I think I can say I am familiar with the various sorts of control and measurement applied to human beings today.  Most of them seem to me to be misguided (at best) and abusive and degrading (more commonly).

And against all that, I want to set the fact that large entities responsible for large amounts of money were recently shown to be operating without any sort of genuine control or audit.  Those who were supposed to be doing the controls or audits actually were "cooking the books".

As a matter of fact, one might wonder whether all of my employers abroad (or, to be safe, most of them) did not face some such similar internal tension.

But none of this is my chief point.  It i s all the "wind up", no the"pitch"---to revert to an American baseball image.

Consider the health care workers who were coming to my parents' home to give my father physical therapy. My question is whether they were looking for progress to justify their activities.
And, insofar as they had to look for signs of progress, were they less inclined to think through the consequences of their actions?  Were they less inclined to set my father's increased physical strength in the context of his daily activities, his daily needs?  Just as the would-be athletes I hear talking about their activities at the local YMCA seem to take an incredibly mechanistic view of health when they talk about how many repetitions they've performed or how much weight they lift and such. Where is a view of how these exercises fit into their life as a whole?

As a concerned son who doesn't want to see his father fall over and injure himself, I am very sensitive to any sign that he is about to lose his balance.

However, on at least one occasion, when a physical therapist was present she said, "See, he regained his balance....."  To which I thought but did not say, "Yes, this time he did....."

We also know that health care is obsessively weighed and measured to guarantee that profits are made for--here I will be controversial--- those who don't deserve them.  (Yes I do make that judgment:  I do not believe that merely because someone possesses an abundance of resources, wealth earned who-knows-how, that they therefore deserve to increase those undeserved profits.)  So, I am afraid that whatever the intentions of any particular home care individual, I don't believe in the system.  I think I can imagine that any individual would do a better job without the class of individuals who demand a profit for their investment.

As I think about it, every high school I've know has been a cruel place---not a place where students were treated with full respect, and a place where being a teacher meant inevitably to be part of a degrading system.... And with that fully at the forefront of my consciousness, I recall the suggestion I heard recently from a brother-in-law, a professional man, an engineer, that I should seek employment in a high school.  What monumental ignorance!  To be blind to the cruelty of these institutions!  What sort of blindness.  A sad fact, and an overwhelming one......

El Pasoans are still assholes

So what if my dog barks non-stop? Does it bother the neighbor? Why should I care?

No Luddites here?

If a young woman takes pleasure in talking about her car....
If the conversation inevitably turns to cars,......

Well, how much time do these people actually waste talking about and thinking about their cars?

I've gotten the impression that if someone sees me in a parking lot with my father's car,
they've already made countless judgments about who I am.

--And that disturbs me.  It makes me want to throw up.  You are going to decide who I am because I am driving this car?

I call that a sick society.

More illnesses:

Old men who are obsessed with machines of war....machines for killing.....
Who seem to worship these airplanes and missiles (not to mention guns)...

Idolatry

A perverse way to spend a brain....

Not to love poetry or dance or music,

but to obsess about machines for killing, or polluting......

This is a sick country.

smiles

Smiles depress me,
--every bit as much as the obsequious "sir" at the end of everything.

So, too, the ready use of my first or given name.

When my friend smiles and calls me by name,
well, that's something.

When an unknown person does so,
that's something else altogether.

I don't mean informal social relations are bad.
I'm not against informality.

But, this is another thing:
the pretense that we are all friends when we are not,
and we are not going to be.

There is tremendous social pressure here.
In my own life it has been destructive of the ability to think things through,
or to recognize the utter ugliness of it all,
which would be a cleaner, clearer starting point than a false smile.

El Pasoans are assholes

Put the dog outside, and let him bark.  Who cares if it bothers the neighbors?

re-certification

Careful and serious scholars--at least in English-speaking countries--avoid the expression of such emotions as disgust.  Regular readers of this blog must realize that in that respect, and perhaps in many others, I am not a serious scholar---or, I often allow myself to express strong emotion when I blog.

Today the nurse is visiting my eighty-five year old mother.  But, she cannot see my eighty-seven year old father.  He has not yet been re-certified.  He will be, but she can't see him this week.

Re-certification?  What is this about?  Is an eighty-seven year old man going to get "better"?  Is he going  to get healthy again?  I think not.  But, in that case, what is "re-certification' about?  Aren't they just checking to make sure he hasn't died?

Heaven forbid that nurses should be paid to visit a person who is dead.  I mean those nurses!  They are greedy, aren't they?

Not like Amazon
 http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/apr/06/amazon-destroy-britain-book-industry
 or Wal-Mart....  Not like the manufacturers of weapons of mass destruction.....

Unlike Richard D Wolff,   from whom I have gained insights,
http://rdwolff.com/content/capitalism-us-runs-dry-rts-interview

I think we can make distinctions among the participants in the capitalist system:  some have the system imposed upon them, and do not benefit from it---while others, benefit unfairly, and would like to do everything possible to propagate the system......

no progress

Here I am typing on this tiny screen.  Bad enough that this country has no pubic transport, but now, thanks to the so-called "computer revolution", I have to shell out money every couple of years
for this!

My father is waiting for me.  I need to empty his urinals.

I am trying to join a Participatory Society based on line.  And after spending time filling
out the form, my application form doesn't work.

I am getting a headache.

Computers have not made my life better.

Internet Crowding

I just want to register a protest, a complaint, I just want to shout at the top of my lungs about the worthlessness of the internet.
Progress?
Progress?
Make me laugh!

Any internet page I know of is full of too much stuff.  (That includes this page.)
You cannot take it all in at a glance.
You miss something.
Inevitably.

Why is that so?  Why must every page be like that?

Compared to that, the average page of a book is refreshingly uncluttered.

The internet has made my life better?  No, really not at all.  I can imagine hundreds of ways my life could be better, without the internet.....

(An easy reaction to the above:  But you are using the internet now! ---- Yeah, and right now I have no job, no room of my own, no privacy, and also no friends within three thousand miles......So, what kind of life do I really have?  Oh, great, I can look at pictures of real people in Facebook.  Actually facebook makes me want to throw up; it's so useless.....)))  ((And before I had daily access to the internet, I had all of those things.--friends, a job, a life-----....that's the sort of difference the Internet has made to my life.....))

Thinking of books:  that's why they have tables of contents......Yet, for the internet, the idea has been tossed out.  And that's supposed to be progress?

a hypothesis, of sorts.....

I gather that there are businesses--so called---which monitor blogs like this one.  And they say that they are measuring something like "negativity".

talk about pseudo-science.  It looks like they are attempting to measuring content without paying attention to what's being said, or the truth or falsity of it.....

If I describe a bad thing using "bad" words, am I negative---or is it the thing I describe that is negative?

But, in any case, I don't appreciate this attempt to monitor me, not at all....

And I want to make a bet, or a sort of prediction.  I bet that my blog will be counted by them as negative, but the words of an intelligent but unprincipled political leader as he justifies murder will not be counted as "negative" by their techniques....

So much the worse for this particular form of pseudo-science, if I am right........

update, Sunday, 1 April 2012

El Pasoans are still assholes:  boom-boom-boom, in my ear right now, and earlier in the day.


Weather report:  wind, wind, wind, dust, dust, dust, ychh, yccchhh!,   yccccchhhhh!!!

gmooh

I don't like the thought that I've just written an email complaining about a purchase...

And maybe it has been answered by someone in India or on the other side of the globe....

someone not especially well treated by the company who pays them to answer my emails

And I've complained because something I purchased for my elderly parents was defective.

And I've stressed how it was for two old people, who don't have much chance to get out of the house.

And What about the person reading my message?  What about her parents?  Do they enjoy worse health than my own parents?  Might they be, for example, victims of a chemical spill by a USA company?
Or worse?

I'm being virtuous because it is for my parents?  But what about the parents of the person who is writing me "I am sorry"????  They deserve happiness every bit as much as my own parents.

But why is it that I have this sinking feeling.....why is it that I am worried or suspicious that probably
they have less than my own parents?

Because most of the world is less prosperous than the so-called developed nations, and that is not right, not good----cannot be justified.

our criminal society

"Marcuse observes that a consumers' society has replaced a troubled by a clear conscience and that it condemns all feelings of guilt.  But its peace of mind has to be disturbed.   As far as old people are concerned this society is not only guilty but downright criminal."--Simone de Beauvoir, "The Coming of Age"

the crisis

There is enough money out there, but it is sitting around.  Why?  Because the money is in the hands of a minority---"the 1%"---and that small minority cares about only one thing:  increasing their money.
So, they wont' invest it and they won't create jobs.  But what gives them the right to decide for us?  And how, actually, did they get all that money?  Those are the questions people should be asking.

In the meantime, here is a link to a useful report about what's going on in Europe.  And, I hope that anyone reading this will understand that what is going on in Europe is continuous with what is going on in the USA.

Francisco Louca makes two very important points in this interview:  First,   there is an ongoing attempt to make life for working people miserable---no public education, no health insurance, no rights in the workplace.  Secondly, people need to understand that if isolated individuals resist, they will be crushed; hence, organization and collective action is necessary....

http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival