Tuesday, December 31, 2013

coarse world

This is the kind of coarse world I see around me.

My father, even if senile, even if a member of the category "frail elderly", is yet a human being deserving of respect and dignity.

He is not a child, and it is wrong to condescend to him if he makes an attempt to please you through humor.

He has suffered disrespect in his life---indeed, at an early age.  He was told, when quite young, that his father was "too poor" to pay for a college education.

And, so naturally, the fact that my father achieved a college education is important to him.  (And, it was an important fact for my life as well.)

So, today, if you speak to him as if he were a child, and do not listen to him, if you do not attempt to grasp in some measure that he has had a long life, and he was once young and full of life as you are today, then you do him wrong.

If your powers of imagining are so limited that you cannot understand that his "stories" are glimpses of a past you do not know, then you do him wrong, and you impoverish yourself as well.

I don't feel that my father is getting the respect he deserves.

ethical dilemmas

In the trite and reductive way in which ethical philosophers spin their yarns, I now offer the following:

Imagine that a family member who you love is drowning.

They have fastened their arms around your neck.   They are fearful, but also grateful that your neck is available, as they find amazing strength to squeeze it.

You can, for a time, support them.  However, let us suppose, that the desperate energy in their grasp is slowly pulling you down with them.

If you extricate yourself, have you done something wrong?

Would it be better that you both drown?

And, imagine that, at the same time your loved one is pulling you under, small sea creatures are nipping away at your legs, or that birds are poking your skull, attempting to eat your brain.

Now, that's getting close to my current situation.

Sunday, December 29, 2013

compare and contrast: capitalism and communism

As I prepare my morning coffee, I worry that sounds from the kitchen will wake my elderly parents.

I recall that in Slovakia, in the high rises built by communists, the kitchens had doors, allowing you to seal off the noises and smells from the bedrooms.  (Do you say the communists don't deserve credit for that?  They didn't design the layout.  Perhaps, but it doesn't matter to the point I'm making.)

No such possibility exists in this house where my parents live, a house constructed after the Second World War in the U.S.A..

How annoying.  How thoughtless.  How characteristic of the sort of massed-produced lives that we enjoy in the land of the free.

totalitarianism watch

As I've just written friends describing the difficulties faced by my elderly parents,
I can confidently await the response of the email provider:  advertisments targeted to me,
as if they knew a g.d. thing about me.

The sheer arrogance of it is breath-taking.

No, this new intrusiveness is not welcome or helpful.

I do wish, however, that I could punish these intrusive assholes, but merely to catalogue
the outrageousness of it exhausts my vocabulary and my power of imagination.

No thank you.  I am not grateful to the geniuses of the internet for what they have done,
and what they are doing.

Long live Trotsky!

Wednesday, December 25, 2013

what do these assholes think?

Here I sit in El Paso, Texas (which I have sometimes described as the asshole of the universe, and at other times as the desert outpost of a cruel empire)..

and it is that day of peace and goodwill toward all exploiters,

and there's a dog barking himself hoarse,

and he's been doing it for twenty minutes.

What does the asshole neighbor think:  Fido is sooo cute.....

Having purchased the dog, the neighbor has property rights, etc.

Get me out of here.  This is a miserable place.

What a cute dog!  How cute to hear him bark!  How could anyone possibly find it disturbing if my dog barks for hours, and hours, and hours, .......

trite axioms of thought

"What you can't imagine, you won't imagine..........."

Yesterday, the perfectly good care-giver for my elderly parents did the grocery shopping.
I was encouraged by my mother to stay home because there are so many drunks and bad drivers on the road, and, tired from lack of sleep, I did so.

Today, I may yet have to go out, on an official holiday, to impose upon people who are forced to a labor during an official holiday, to buy items not on the CG's list.

Does the word "holiday" mean anything any more?

In effect, the CG was not just shopping for my parents, but for me as well; but she's got no idea of my eating habits.

Is it petty of me to complain? She endures the penalty meted out to care-givers:  poor pay, insecurity, and a lack of respect.  Indeed, the prettiest point of such jobs is that employees are simultaneously expected to follow orders and not complain, but also expected to exercise creativity and independent thought in order to prevent the management from experiencing any discomfort.

The need to accumulate capital always wages war with the attempt to be human.

"I hate you."

In my mind, "I hate you" is a childish, or overly-dramatic saying.

Nonetheless, a couple of years ago, when pushed into a corner, I could find no better way to register my opposition to the suggestions being made to me.

Moreover, I had, at that time, endured three years of lost autonomy on account of giving in to the suggestions of family members.

Recently  apologized to the target of that childish saying. Yet, I worry that an apology went too far.

More words are needed.  By saying IHY I did not intend to convey a desire to do harm to the person.  Rather, I was engaged in an act of self-defense.  I wanted him to cease pushing me.  In truth, he had arguments of a sort.  But, in actual fact, he also made assumptions I did not share.  And, I'd not got the energy to unearth those assumptions.  Nor, I think, would he have been interested in discussing them.

In that context, IHY was, whilst childish, probably the best I could have done. 

totalitarianism watch : German and Texan versions

As Capitalism continues to crash, states become more repressive.....

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/12/24/pens-d24.html

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/12/patrick-durusau-salinas-card.html

Tuesday, December 24, 2013

disgusting capitalism

Obama murders at a distance with high-tech airplanes that we pay for.
Companies lie and cheat.
Bankers lie, cheat, and steal---and when they get in trouble, governments come to their rescue.
And intellectuals "justify" it.

But if I just go to the grocery store to buy food, my behavior is monitored by in-house cameras, and a TV screen at the entrance stands prominently as a threat to all of us that we had better not even think about taking something without paying, telling us "We are watching you!".  And who is watching them with their crappy food and high prices?

And if I board a crappy, crowded bus, with shit suspension, high off the ground, with stinky people, and noisy technology---doors beeping, computers with phoney voices telling me someone is getting on and off---subjected to ALL THAT SHEER UGLINESS, and, on top of it all, you can be sure that someone will poke me in the side and demand that I prove I've paid for the ride.

Capitalism is offensive on every possible level.

25.12.2013

Long live Trotsky!
Vsetko je kapitalisticke svinstvo.

Wednesday, December 18, 2013

What the hell are they thinking?

I love little Fido.  So I take Fido everywhere.
Unfortunately, those cruel people at the grocery store (unlike trains, buses, and pubs) do not allow me to bring Fido with me.

I have to tie him up outside.

Little Fido loves me and I love him.  So, when I'm inside buying groceries, he cries,
and whines, and barks---pretty much non-stop.

He can be heard for miles around.

I am sure everyone loves Fido as much as I do, so the sound of his voice could not possibly
be irritating or annoying or maddening.  No.  That would be impossible.

I do sometimes take a long time to shop.  And little Fido, dear sweet thing that he is (You know he loves me so!  And I love him too!) barks himself hoarse.

That's so sad.

Oh, life is sad.  But I love little Fido, and he makes me feel good in a world where there is so much unnecessary suffering and people can be very inconsiderate.

Tuesday, December 17, 2013

internet idiocy

I shall never forget the student in my English class in Vienna who told me
she hadn't read something we were supposed to discuss...... because
the article took longer to read than her daily commute.....

Now I want to complain about something else.

I do not like this relatively new (though not totally new) feature of internet pages whereby the picture or content or whatever changes every five seconds or whatever it is.  It is g.d. annoying.
Seems like this is for people who have a short attention span?  (Do we really want to encourage that sort of thing?  I mean, e.g., "we" as in people at a university?)

The two seem connected--as in, "I read it once (quickly) during my commute, and that's what I got out of it...." (Implied:  I don't intend to read the thing again; one quick reading was enough.)

Well, some texts don't deserve a second reading, but you can mis-read even a short text of little value.  I do it all the time with all the stuff coming into my email----some of which is crap,
and some of which is good stuff.....(Personal confession designed to increase sympathy for my griping.....)

Monday, December 16, 2013

what absurd things people say

I mention that my parents are in their eighties and I hear, "Oh what a nice age..."
A nice age!  Have you got any idea of the problems they have?
Have you any idea of what it means to rely upon in-home care provided by a for-profit
company?  A company that pays good people a wage so low that they can't survive?
And pushes them and controls them in other ways as well....

Can you imagine how painful it is for me to be so far away, and to be able to do so little
to help?

Can you imagine how a phone conversation is upsetting because it only brings home the distance?  And I hang up with a dread feeling of emptiness.........

To be old and to be far from your children and family!  Do you think that is sweet or nice or lovely?  Are you so stupid?

No, you obviously have no idea, none whatsoever.  You fantasize about what it
must be like, and your imagination overreaches.

Just as so many fantasize about what the USA is like on the basis of propagandistic
Hollywood movies and American serials.....

The human race has many flaws, and there are times when talking is utterly pointless.

Wednesday, December 11, 2013

Saint Kevyn Orr

Link to the World Socialist Web Site on the benevolence of Kevyn Orr; as I read this story, I thought, "This man's a saint!  How could anyone complain that he's well paid?"
www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/12/10/orri-d10.html

bang..bang...bang

Who would I complain to?  What would be the point?
My employer has a modest workshop below my building, and the workers are banging.

I do not welcome spring or summer when we open our windows to noises---noises like
their bang, bang, bang.

God knows.  Within the confines of this building there are enough noises.  The elevator alone is a nuisance.

Talking in the central tube of the high rise.  Cars outside.

And best of all:  the dog left chained or tied outside the local German-owned grocery store,
where we must,
everytime,
prove,
PROVE,
that we've not stolen,
with an ostentatious display of our empty grocery cart,
proving that we assembled all of our purchases
onto the conveyor belt,
which the sleepy or grumpy or indifferent woman
(unless it's the one man)
will scan for us.

And,
just to be sure,
there's always the security guard,
equally emitting an air of boredom and lack of job satisfaction,
watching us,
lest we get out of line.

The fresh air of so-called democracy,
has never smelled so much like the stale air of a toilet.

Sunday, December 8, 2013

miscellaneous notes from nowhere

A. Shaikh's "Rethinking Microeconomics" deserves careful study.  Even the opening pages by themselves brush aside a lot of bullshit I've heard recently.

Human beings are complicated.  It is pefectly possible to serve the profit motive, and, so insist on keeping the upper hand over one's employees (if one is, say the owner-manager of a company which supplies home care to the elderly) and, at the same time, be horrified (as a human being) at the thought that one of the employees might steal from and elderly client.

Saturday, December 7, 2013

looting of pensions

I haven't got time to discuss in detail the so-called "bankruptcy" of Detroit.

I do believe that there is no real "crisis", however, and that the entire procedure is a smoke screen to give legality and the appearance of a just process to something that is no more than theft--looting.

A valuable source of information here is the website of the "Socialist Equality Party" in the USA
https://www.wsws.org/

as well as their Workers' Inquiry:

detroitinquiry.org


Wednesday, December 4, 2013

newspaper prices

If I buy the local so-called "left" newspaper, it costs 16 crowns (I think; I'm not checking.)
If I buy the so-called business newspaper, it costs 25 crowns.

That's a big difference. 

Yesterday, I was struck by the portraits of business personalities.  Large photos of businessmen posing.  Yes, I do mean posing.  Standing in a smart suit with legs arranged in what ballet calls a third or almost fifth position, with one hand on the rail of stairs.  (Or did I imagine it?)

Arms crossed over the chest, as if to emphasize one's manliness.

And so on.

Could the price have something to do with these silly pictures?  I mean it reminds me of the friend who once said (looking at the aesthetics of a communist era dormitory in Bratislava):  It's not just that the Communists had no taste, but they actually attempted (and failed) to propagate some sort of new aesthetic.....  (IE better if they had stuck to purely utilitarian buildings)...

Something similar seems to me to be true of the local business newspaper.  This is pure hagiography,  Just as in the medieval times there were statues of saints, now we've got these portraits of successful businessmen.

And those propagandistic drums!  I mean when you repeat something a thousand times, it lose all meaning, right?

As in the man who runs a construction business and was inspired (sic) by American practices.
Would-be workers wait around outside near the construction site, and the employer comes around and chooses the fittest.  (Reminds me of a slave auction)  The Czech enterpreneur, inspired by the American system, had been doing that until the naughty government came and made a terrible "labor law" (how dare they?!)---and so he could no longer hire people in that fashion.

The newspaper coyly notes that he actually complained of "socialism"!

I must study this with greater objectivity---"this" meaning this so-called business newspaper.  It is really an outstanding piece of anthropology.  What sort of culture would produce this entity?  What sort of culture would produce such a cult?

Wednesday, November 27, 2013

I must be hallucinating.

Have I understood rightly?
I'm watching CTV......and....
I must be misunderstanding...
But it seems that these politicians who are not engineers, and not scientists,
and have no real knowledge....
have just told a young man that he must study what companies want....
which means technical subjects...

Errrr, politicians who know nothing of science.
(No, I don't count Neo-Classical Economics or Law as Sciences.....)

In other words, you must be a slave to Capital---from your earliest years...............
In other words, you must serve the interests of those who have given us another Crisis.....

But these guys who are pompously giving advice are neither scientists nor engineers........They do, however, serve the interests of the ruling class.

And, so you say that what's just is what's in the interest of the strong?
And, what if the strong make a mistake?
What if they make a mistake about what's in their interests?.............

(Capital quae capital always accumulates?)

Sunday, November 24, 2013

corruption falls from the sky like acid rain

Yesterday, I had a conversation with a Czech raised outside of the Czech Republic.  So, we spoke in English.

I told him about the lie that Detroit is bankrupt, and how the bankruptcy lawyer is living in an expensive apartment paid for by the mayor, and how the workers at GM lost their pensions so that banks could be paid, and other horrors of capitalism.

And he answered by saying, "So, you have corruption too?"

And I said that Czechs were naive in imagining that only they had these problems.

When I said that, I imagined I was being brave, but I wasn't.  What I really think is that the problem is capitalism.  It is a distraction to speak of corruption as if the problem were merely bad individuals.

Recommended Links:

New report exposes lies used to justify Detroit bankruptcy, World Socialist Website,
22 November, 2013:  https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/11/22/detr-n22.html

The Guardian's article on the Demos study:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/nov/20/detroit-accused-exaggerating-18bn-debts

Wednesday, November 13, 2013

Did I imagine it?

Miners in the Czech Republic are striking.  They don't want their wages decreased. (|At any rate, that's what I understand of the matter.)
Recently the mine owner appeared on TV with a union representative.
The moderator became excited when the mine owner talked about harming the company.
He turned to the union representative, and asked (something like) "Are you trying to hurt the company?"
Let's stop for a minute.  The company is not a person.  Miners are people.  We might equally well ask: Is the company hurting the miners?  Or, are the owners of the mine trying to hurt the miners by decreasing their wages?
Of course, no one said any of that.

The union representative did win my respect by calmly remarking that strikes always hurt the company.  (And they hurt the strikers too, since they don't get their wages!)
Duuuhhhh. What kind of idiot was that interviewer?  Can you imagine that a strike doesn't hurt people?

Really, this is a shocking level of ignorance.  (Perhaps some ideology is at work?)

our current woes

I told one of my students that elections were irrelevant because bankers were running the world anyway.   Whoever got elected would take orders from the bankers.  (Cf. Yanis Varoufakis's useful coinage:  bankruptocracy) 

At the following link, Texan John Weeks (transplanted to the UK)  tells it like it is:

http://economistsagainstausterity.wordpress.com/

Sunday, November 10, 2013

in the innocent, oh-so-innocent, east.............


My student asked me: Why don't you have a car?

---You are a teacher after all.



And I was stunned,

speechless,

almost embarrassed.


Thoughts tumbled through my mind,

and I suppressed annoyance at the simplicity of the question.

And, so,

I began to explain the expenses involved in owning a car.

Instead of saying that I don't want to be a contributor to climate destruction,

which is what I think.

Instead of saying that I cannot understand how anyone today can innocently

ask such a question.


But later I thought,

that this was so terribly capitalist:

seeking individual solutions for a social problem,

because there is money to make public transport comfortable,

to make buses or trams or trains frequent,

and un-crowded.


And I also thought of the remark Chomsky once made,

that smoking cigarettes is,

today,

in the USA,

the prerogative of those who work in the offices of the universities,

while students are largely tobacco-free.


And I saw my student had something in common with

an office worker in the Land of the Free,

standing outside in the cold,

working hard to ingest enough of the drug,

before she returned to her boring job.


We are all trying to squeeze something out of life,

but,

in the meantime,

we are being squeezed,

twisted,

brought into line,

the life wrung out of us every day.

Saturday, November 9, 2013

Capitalism's lack of respect

I just noticed a small box with the words "Killing Arafat" at the website of the so-called liberal newspaper, "The Guardian."

The murder of Arafat is a crime, and it is good that it has been made public.

Turning the thing into a piece of advertising is altogether a different matter. 

It's just not respectful when it becomes "another story".  And, there's no easy way to describe the problem here because it is systemic, and omnipresent.

The short form of the problem is:  capitalism respects nothing and no one.

To the extent that Al-Jazeera makes the truth known, that's good.  But, it is a sign of the degraded nature of the system that even this good thing must be packaged and twisted around to satisfy advertising and marketing managers.......to satisfy the god of profit........

The USA's Institutional Disrespect for the Elderly

In 2009 when I returned for what was to be a three year stay with my parents, my father was using a cane. My mother was, at that point, walking unassisted.

A couple of years later both of them got walkers.

We later learned that both of them had received walkers which did not fit.  My father, a tall man, had received a walker that was too small, forcing him to stoop.  My mother, a short person, had received a walker which was too tall, forcing her to walk on her toes.

Somehow, for two years, no one noticed this error--not the doctors, not the nurses, and not even the physical therapists.  Oh, sorry, there was one therapist who noticed my father's mis-fit; she suggested I take a power tool and adjust the handle of my father's walker upward.  Not being skilled with power tools, I was reluctant to damage my father's walker.  (There is, in fact, a world of presumption in her suggestion.  I have never owned a drill, and have rarely used one; but never mind, that's what comes from being a member of the precariat.)

Finally, my parents were forced to purchase new walkers.  Because the USA health system is cheap, stingy, and refused to recognize the error which had been made.  In other words, my parents paid for someone else's error. (How like the crisis!)

And, of course, the manufacturers of medical devices made a double profit on this error.

Now, the same thing has happened with the hospital beds my parents are using.

Several years ago, early in the morning I was awoken by my mother's startled scream.  My father had fallen out of bed.  By some miracle, I managed to lift him back into the bed.  About this time, my father had a stroke, and he needed all the help I could manage to provide.   (Today my father is frail, and falling out of bed would be very dangerous.)

Hospital beds have railing, which itself can be dangerous, but also can prevent falling out of bed.

I remember when my father's bed was delivered.  It was just before Christmas, and, as holidays (time off from work) are such a rare thing in the USA, I was sympathetic to the plight of the men delivering the bed.

Now, more than two years later, my mother has informed me that the bed they delivered had the wrong mattress, and it was set up incorrectly.

So, who will pay for the new mattress?

Here we go again.  Double profits for the greedy capitalist firms, and another hole in the meagre savings of an elderly couple.

Shame. Shame. Shame.

The USA system of medical care is nothing to be proud of.

As Richard D Wolff remarked recently, this miserable and ineffective system of medical care is proof of what a profit-based capitalism produces.  In fact, I would add, the sort of stories I've told above very much remind me of the fabled inefficiency of "communism".....

I recently heard a doctor bragging about the quality of USA medical care. Yeah, for the rich, it works fine.  But the system, as a system for everyone (why, wouldn't that be what you'd expect in a real democracy?..duhhhh....) doesn't work.  I could say a few things about the stilted mind-set and emotional life a person who is proud of this system, but let's just say that he's missing something..........

Sunday, October 27, 2013

If I were god....

If I were God, I would create a hell for all of the engineers who create and design warning buzzers---deliberately obnoxious and loud noises, totally redundant--to tell me, e.g., that the bus doors are about to close or that the elevator door is open....

I would trap those geniuses in a room where all they could hear would be those ugly noises, and all they could see would be the lights at the intersection flashing, counting down the time left to cross....
10 ...9...8.....7....

And they would hear and see this crap for all of eternity.

Oh would that I could do that to them....................

Sunday, October 20, 2013

David Walsh's review of "Pulp Fiction"

I never understood what was good about Pulp Fiction.  But, I think David Walsh does an excellent job of summing up its good and bad points, and provided something so rare in coversations about movies (in my neighborhood anyway) --an actual analysis of the film.

I continue to be amazed and pleased by the reviews at the World Socialist Web Site.  Who would have imagined?  Where have I been to have missed all this?

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/1998/08/pulp-a13.html

Saturday, October 19, 2013

The Stupidity of a Doctor

I asked some students what they would do if they had a million euros....

I would buy a Lamborghini and a Jaguar.

I would take a trip around the world.

I would invest it.....maybe in real estate...

If I had a million dollars, I would hire a nurse and doctor to take care of my parents
around-the-clock.

I would also take regular visits home.

But none of that would solve the problem of the insensitivity and stupidity of doctors.

A doctor recently suggested that my mother could no longer take care of my father, and
that he should be placed in a "home".
To even suggest that my mother and father might need to separate, at this late time
in their live, has caused an incalculable amount of emotional suffering for my parents.

If there is such a thing as emotional intelligence, then this particular doctor has (once again)
proved that he is emotionally un-intelligent, an idiot.

(I've written about this guy on this blog before.  He used to piss me off too......)


Wednesday, October 9, 2013

Zeman verus Obama

My student said, "But surely Obama is better than Zeman".

(Miloš Zeman, President of the Czech Republic)

My answer:  "How many people has Zeman killed?"

Obama, with drones, has killed hudreds, maybe more.

He promised to close Guantanomo, and he did not.

I don't have much good to say about Zeman, but so far as I know, he has not yet murdered anyone, and he has not endorsed the use of torture.  (In fact, I think I heard him once say something about US war crimes...........)

Link:
Guardian Video about Guantanamo:

http://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2013/oct/11/guantanamo-bay-hunger-strikes-video-animation

Note:
Innocent people are being tortured in Guantanamo.  People who are KNOWN to be innocent.

Added note:
This is exactly the danger which Edward Snowden has warned us about.  The USA and UK and other governments now have the power (through the internet) to manipulate any conversation you've ever had on SKYPE or the internet, and use it against you---if ever you are falsely accused, or if your name happens (mistakenly) to appear on a certain list.

The danger which Snowden warns about has already happened without even trying to fabricate a story which "paints" you as bad!  Innocent people  have been tortured and imprisoned in Guantanamo.

Follow-up Note:
And now there are important reports on the brutal savagery of drone attacks....
http://www.democracynow.org/2013/10/23/how_do_you_justify_killing_a

Did I imagine it?

Margaret Mary Vojko, formerly an employee of Duquesne University, was buried in a cardboard casket....(After teaching for twenty five years.....as an "Adjunct Professor" she died poor.)

Refugees in Italy were buried in....?  Well, were their caskets cardboard?  I can't tell, but on the TV screen (computer screen) they don't look like cardboard.......

More respect for the dead in Italy?  I really cannot say; but it makes me wonder............

http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/opinion/perspectives/death-of-an-adjunct-703773/

Sunday, October 6, 2013

little things matter

I am now posting an email I just sent to a friend:

Just imagine.  The Czech Post Office in downtown Prague---not far from the train station---is
open Saturday and Sunday from 2pm until midnight!
 
That's amazing and convenient.
 
I went there yesterday to mail a letter, and did not have to wait in line.  In Pardubice, I ALWAYS
wait in line!
 
In the USA they would not believe me if I told them the post office is open on Sunday---and
after dark!
 
Little things like this matter.

Sunday, September 29, 2013

disbelief

The Gringo is very naive.  He cannot believe the things people say, even when (especially when) he is a participant in the conversation....

"Students are not allowed to lock their doors.."

Unspoken implication:  students have no right to privacy.....

Spoken response:  "I am not a student...."

"I know that..."

Then why are you telling me about your mistreatment of students?

Jeez Louise, even students deserve a little privacy.  What a monster you really are.....

Note carefully what's going on here.  When the monster mindlessly recites the rules, she is not merely informing ignorant me of a fact; she is also asserting her superiority. She knows the rules and I don't.  The fact that she mindlessly repeats them is irrelevant.  Her knowledge is a sort of stick with which she will beat people.  She really is a sort of monster.....

Saturday, September 28, 2013

David Petraeus

Corey Robinson has a nice post at "Crooked Timber" about the recent public confrontation of David Petraeus by a group of young people.

Especially nice is a quote from Adam Smith.

http://crookedtimber.org/2013/09/22/voldemort-comes-to-cuny/#more-30865

I have not carefully read all of the comments, but I'm not much taken by the way some of them were about right-left issues:  If we lefties allow that to be done to people on the right, then we can expect it by people on the right against us......

That seems to me a mistaken way of thinking.  It suggests a sort of symmetry that doesn't exist.
After all, isn't one point which emerges from this example that the "right" precisely do have the police on their side?

Petraeus is a bloody murderer and has no business teaching in a university.  Defenses of his "academic freedom" are a joke. He's not an academic.

The students are right to be outraged. The little bit of verbal abuse he may have endured is nothing compared to the suffering Petraeus has caused. 

When administrators criticize the students, they are also refusing to re-examine their decision to put Petraeus in a place where he doesn't belong.

Yes, he should be allowed to speak for himself--at the Hague......

Sunday, September 22, 2013

weather report

It always amazes me when I read something (in Czech or Slovak as it happens) and, without footnotes or references or quotation marks, the writer repeats the words of someone else.

As in the editorial writer yesterday in a Czech newspaper who said (words to the effect that)

What the Greek problem shows us is that we have all been living beyond our means.

Which is consistent with the omnipresent endorsement of austerity which I seem to find again and again in Czech newspapers.....

And I think of my mother struggling to care for my father, and not having enough help.
I think of me working in Central Europe because had I stayed in the USA, I would not have had either a full-time job or health insurance.

Indeed, my education was possible because my parents helped me.  Were they living beyond their means when they provided their children a college education? "Provided" because university education is not free in the USA.

The other night I mentioned the idea of full employment to a friend.  And by "full employment" I mean decent work, and not drudgery.  To which my friend replied that East Germany had full employment 

But that was precisely not the sort of work I have in mind.  Not work that makes people stupider.
Not work that leaves people feeling they have been cheated or abused.

I tried to explain to her:  I don't want to go backwards.  I don't want to repeat the mistakes of the past.  But I see no reason why full employment with decent work, interesting work, should be impossible.

I don't want to go backwards; but what I see today is that we are going backwards.  And our decline is being hastened by the wise men who dare to say that we've all been "living beyond our means".




Sunday, September 15, 2013

no one wants to know

The help available to my elderly parents is inadequate.
I won't spell that out except to say that they do receive some help,
and it falls far short of their needs.

If one person in a couple is weaker than the other, naturally, the stronger will
help the weak.

But we are talking about two elderly people--both of whom are now weak,
both of whom should be getting assistance.

It is cruel and it is uncivilized.  But that is the USA.

People I know in Europe find this unbelievable, and imagine that I am exagerrating.
How little they know.

Friday, September 13, 2013

Did I get this right?

Are my ears deceiving me?  Is my memory bad?

The head of Yahoo before a government committee is asked why she didn't tell her customers (citizens, nay, fellow citizens of a democratic country)

that they were being spied on?

And she used the word "treason"?  If she, as an individual, were to reveal bad behavior by a government, that would be "treason"?  What the hell is treason?  You mean it's not treasonous if the government betrays the most basic principles of democracy?  Errr, no matter what the government does, the government is right----what do you call that?  Well, it's not democracy. It sounds like the esteemed boss of Yahoo is motivated by blind obedience and self-interest....... and, of course, fear..... Is that how you get to be head of a huge corporation?  Is that creativity and enterpreurship in action?  Is that innovation?

And she said (in effect) she didn't want to go to prison?

But, err, those people who are being illegally spied upon....  I suppose they don't matter.  We can sacrifice them, right?

In Snowden's first interview, he described the possibility that a person who had committed no crime, and had zero evil intent, could, given the lack of safeguards and non-transparencey, be framed.  He did not actually say this has happened---but, I wonder, has it?  And might S. know of a case where it had?  This is speculation, but, it's not unfounded.

So, return to an individual who has been deemed "suspicious"----though surely the bureaurcats will find some fancier expression----and who doesn't know it.  Errr, that's robbing them of the right to face their accusers.....Something, I recall that was supposed to be somewhere at the foundation of American democracy...

And, so at the most basic level, what the Yahoo boss was protecting was, one might say, un-American.......and what the government itself was doing was, uhhhh, un-American----and that's not "treason"?? 

What about the people (us!) who have been secretly spied upon?  Do they want to be spied upon?  What about the fact that once a government feels the need to spy upon its citizens---especially in an indiscriminate and universal fashion---- it shows itself not to be a democracy?

But then the expert who was commenting upon all this clarified things for me when he remarked that public knowledge (especially abroad) of all this spying was bad for Yahoo's business overseas.  Oh dear, we can't have that.  An American corporation whose prospects overseas are damaged......Gee, that might hurt me, right?  (No, I think not.......The behavior by Yahoo's boss shows how much companies really care about me.....  or you....)

recommendation

I just want to recommend Michael Dawson's blog:  "The Consumer Trap".

http://www.consumertrap.com/

The book of the same name is worth reading.  It also provides an antidote to philosophers who blandly (and cheerfully, and misleadingly)  compare Plato's Theory of Forms to advertising's creation of artificial desires----something I hope to write about at greater length in the future...

Thursday, September 12, 2013

the democracy deficit

Could there be a sort of device which helped the elderly avoid falling?
A device combining state of the art robotics and AI?

I say this thinking of my 88 year old father.

If a team of researchers at, say, MIT, worked on this....

If they had worked on this starting in the 1960's, say, what, by now, might they have come up with?

Instead, they gave us the Internet and Drones.

And there was never a public discussion of these uses of public money.......

Sunday, September 8, 2013

An Open Letter to The President of the USA

Dear President Obama,

I've heard you say that you do not deserve the Nobel Prize for Peace.

Thank you for speaking the truth.

Now, you should remember that actions speak louder than words.  You should give the prize back, along with the money.

Sincerely yours,
The Yankee Gringo

Friday, September 6, 2013

a bit of humility, but not too much..............

The profession of being a foreigner is a humbling one. Imperfect language mastery, and real cultural differences create a real stew.....

But it is still irksome to hear, "You behave as if you thought you were still in America...."
As, for all practical purpose, I left there in 1996....... , I am more likely to make a comparison between Vienna and Pardubice, a comparison disfavorable to Pardubice----more likely than a comparion to El Paso, Texas which is also less civilized than Vienna.....

On the other hand, I suppose that means I violate certain local expectations of behavior, in addition to sometimes simply not understanding........

Thursday, September 5, 2013

capitalism is inhuman and disgusting

I've just returned from the post office, where I was sending a letter to my parents.
I used a larger than usual envelope because I was sending a photo, and didn't want to bend it.

So, I had to fill in a customs declaration.

What utter stupidity.

What utter redundancy when we know that today the US Postal Service carefully controls every piece of mail, and, in fact, copies the envelopes, in order to compile a file on every citizen----who she communicates with, and who communicates with her.....And, a citizen like myself who lives and works abroad--- I am an economic migrant because I couldn't find a full time job with benefits in the USA----is even more suspicious.

What price can I put on my own letter, a poem, and a foto?

For my parents, those things are priceless.  My mother's own words:  Your father treasures your letters.

What price to put on a father or mother's love?

What a stupid question.  Their love is priceless, and for that reason my letter is also priceless.

Yet, the stupidity of capitalism and markets insists on squeezing everything into a coffin.

The lady at the post office was surprised by what I told her.  Alas.  People in Eastern Europe tend to be very naive about what the USA really is.  It is unfortunate.  Good people in many respects, yet, in this one area, very naive. 

Monday, September 2, 2013

the Habsburgs and "mentality"

A  Polish girl on the train yesterday, a student of nursing, mentioned that there is a certain 'mentality' common to Slovaks and Poles....among others..

Usually I hear that word from Central European friends when they talk about the older generation.  I would describe them as the older generation who suffered through a failed social experiment.
Suffered because the system was not democratic.  Nor, I think was it really socialist, because socialism is democratic.

The system retained a rigid social hierarchy.  Workers did not manage themselves or make decisions as they would at Mondragon or a proper democratic workplace.  And corruption and shortages resulted from the maneuvers of managers who wanted their bonuses.

Yet the idea of a "mentality" has resonance for me.

E.g.,

I've been living in temporary accomodation, a sort of hotel.  I've just returned from Vienna, and the shocking difference between the standards here and there is fresh in my mind.

We were told that we would be out of our regular accomodation for about three weeks.
When the three weeks were up, I wrote an email to the person in charge asking about when
we could move back.  The answer was very polite, but the essence of the message was:  Please be patient.

Now, I spent four or five hours last night moving.  I returned from Vienna at 7pm to find a message on my door saying:  Your room is now ready.

Well, that message was posted on Friday morning, sometime after I had already left.
And, I am happy to leave the so-called hotel. It's of a standard comparable (I would imagine) to the YMCA in the USA.  Shared bathrooms. Shared kitchen.  A room too small for my belongings, so that frequently a glass or shampoo bottle might tumble to the floor because there's just not enough room.

So, I wasn't exactly wanting to stay in that hotel as long as possible.

But today around 8am as I was starting to move, I was confronted by someone who evidently imagines herself important.  She informed me that I was already supposed to be gone.
Yeah, right!  When I'd asked about moving, I was told: Please be patient.  When it is time for me
to move, I've got to do it quickly.  They can miss a deadline, but I cannot.

Err, that's not symmetrical. 

I told her that I had never been informed of the deadline.  My note (telling me that I could now move) specified no deadline.

She did not know that.   but her bossiness was not going to stop merely because she was ignorant....

Later I spoke to the lady who actually will clean my room.  She told me that it didn't matter if I took all day to move out...............

Now, isn't that interesting........

She wrote back, politely asking me to be patient.

Friday morning I left early because I had to catch a train.  I returned Sunday around 7pm,
and found a message on my door.  It was a friendly message telling me that my "room" (it is really an apartment, but the bureaucracy thinks we are all students living temporarily in rooms....)
is ready.:

This is all adding insult to injury, as I have been thoroughly overwhelmed for the past month by the inadequate living conditions. 
UNFINISHED

a poem




If I knew a way to bring my parents joy,

I would not hesitate.

 

When my mother tells me

she wants me to be happy,

after all these years,

I finally believe it.

--And it hurts.


I was blind,


--not selfish,

but stupid.



My father did so many little things,

out of sincere kindness,

like sending me postcards of American Indians.


--A thousand little things that I did not understand.--



You might call it egoism,

but that would be unfair to my younger self:

The mind is burdened and cluttered,

by a thousand smaller or larger obstacles:

You can't see past them,

and you can't see around them.


Until one day they disappear,

and the sweet sadness starts.





Pardubice

2 September 2013








Thursday, August 29, 2013

another war?

"The impact of war is self-evident, since economically it is exactly the same as if the nation were to drop a part of its capital into the ocean."
--Marx, Grundrisse, The Chapter on Money.

Eastern Europe Forever

The concept of "Eastern Europe" will continue to be active in my consciousness so long as:

There is a shortage of washing machines.

I must register in advance to use one (make a reservation).

I am told that if I want to use one, I'll have to get up early in the morning so that I'm at the front of the line.


There's another concept that gets food when I pay my employer for the privilege of using a washing machine, but I'm too polite to let it find verbal expression.............

Tuesday, August 20, 2013

overheard

More Good News

Overheard:  You can't understand this unless you work on it full time....

My reaction:  Yeah, and if you don't understand it, you don't understand the world you live in.
And I cannot work on it full time.  So, where does that leave me?

Sunday, August 18, 2013

Local News

A couple days ago the local newspapers all said
The Recession is Over!---Yipeee!  Hooo-Rah!

But they did not say:
The tax on food is cancelled.
Everybody gets a raise.
Lunches at work will now include fresh fruit and vegetables.
Everyone will get a decent job.
We will have democracy in the workplace.
Investments will aim at social goods, like full employment, and preserving the environment.

None of that.

There is a bumbling, stumbling Elephant or Rhino in the room,
and his name is Capital.

That didn't get mentioned either.

Saturday, August 17, 2013

good song

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9c1vSIpHA0

Thursday, August 15, 2013

censorship?

Is Google.cz or Google.com censoring "Naked Capitalism"? I've tried to go there four times, and I get the banner for the site, and an ad. Nothing else..
It's an interesting idea: insofar as social structures are invisible, we mis-read the actions of other people. As a boy, I certainly misunderstood my father because I failed to understand that the McCarthy era had a permanent effect upon him, and he genuinely feared losing his job should his teenage son turn out to be a communist. So, too, when I gripe and whine about my current situations, I may be blind to social or cultural factors influencing me or others. That is a risk; and, for that reason I have written many times that while I try to say what's true (even if it is a merely "personal" truth about myself) I do not pretend to full scholarly or scientific objectivity. That's the best I can do right now by way of apology should a friend or acquaintance be personally offended by anything I've written here.

Wednesday, August 14, 2013

mea culpa?

I've just started reading Costas Panayotakis's "Remaking Scarcity", and I'm enjoying it.

Early on, he complains that by saying the money given to bankers amounted to "socialism for the rich", one unnecessarily let pass the assumption that socialism is bad.  It would have been better, he suggests, to simply state that this was an example of capitalism's injustice, or favoritism for a small class of people.

That's all correct enough, and he's right that it might be misunderstood as assuming that socialism were bad; but surely it need not be meant that way.  After all, the point is: if anybody here is getting help from the government (which is what "you"--capitalists and their apologists call socialism) then it's not us, but them.......

Otherwise put, as an ironic utterance, "socialism" is used in a way to echo the capitalist businessman's complaints; not in propria persona (apologies if the Latin is wrong).

And the context is that ordinary people are accused and abused for any help they might get from the government.

Initially, his point seemed to me to be right; however, now I'm not so sure.

At any rate, I am confident that the book will be worth reading.
How many times have I woken in the night?--disturbed because there was enough light to wake me--And, been unable to arrange the shadows in a way that made sense?

How many times have I woken with fear, worried that my father was in trouble?

And how can I be thankful or grateful or in any way understanding when I receive an email informing me when I must move, as if I were a soldier in the army?

How can I be thankful for the shattered nights?

So many shattered nights, and not just on account of this or that email.

Am I to really say or imagine that this is a good life?

As if I were some idiot popularizer of good-feeling and shallow wisdom?

I can taste the bitterness of my isolation and submission,

and there is nothing in that of beauty or reason, or, even, common sense.

No,

I am not used to it,

and,

No,

I don't really believe or accept any of the empty words offered to justify it.

My silence is not assent.

My silent screams are deafening.



Tuesday, August 13, 2013

dignity in work? that's a joke...............

There are times when my conversations with other human beings are so maddeningly stupid that I feel I would be better off if I never opened my mouth at all.....

My mother is eighty-seven years old and she is still working.  She cares for my eighty-eight year old father.  And, when she waits on him at breakfast, I could burst into tears, or scream.  As she herself says, by now she should have leisure---but she doesn't.

And it's not because there is a law of nature which decrees that we must work all of our lives.

First of all, there are those privileged scum who don't have to work, and who have never had to work.  Indeed, they can pay to have others create propaganda designed to present us from seeing the truth of what I've just said.

But secondly, the health care system in the USA (and the financial system, and the educational system and the political system) is organized around profit and the class who gets the profits.

There's no necessity that my mother should have to work as she does.

However, here in the self-proclaimed center of Europe, it is hard for people to see these facts for what they are.  Much confusion and ignorance about the nature of the USA and capitalism have been propagated since the restoration of capital.  And I was too confused and slow on my feet to say any of this to the person who assured me yesterday that this is all "just the way things are", and so we simply have to accept it.  Now, who benefits from that sort of acceptance, conformity, and passivity?

That's at least something..................

I've been going on for several days about how I don't like it here---in this temporary accomodation.......temporary-while my regular residence is being up-graded...............

But I've just learned that, at least, the rent I'll be paying is significantly lower.

That's something.

On the other hand, would I have complained less if I knew it sooner?

(Did I miss an email informing me of the price?)

Sigh.  (I can't keep up...............)

investments

There are days when I run from a dance studio to catch a train, and I'm unable to really stretch out.
Then, cramped in the narrow confines of the luxurious trains provided for the public in Central Europe, I do, occasionally, get awful cramps in my legs.

Knowing that, during a recent ride on a train, sitting in the most rear seat of the wagon, with the least generous leg room, I found myself forced to elevate my feet by stretching both legs up toward the ceiling.

This might have produced stares from my fellow-passengers, but I don't think anyone actually imagined I was doing something dangerous.

However, the two black-uniformed private police (a private police hired by a public company, mind you) seemed to think otherwise---Or, at least one of them did.

I hasten to add that these unintelligent guard-dogs are a frequent appearance on Czech trains.  They wander the aisles engaging in boisterous conversation with one another (itself very unprofessional, when you get right down to it) staring into compartments, and staring at people, and generally looking for something to do.........Very unfriendly, and they don't make me feel at all safe.

So, the one guard told me that I should sit in a "normal" position. I told him what I was doing---that
I didn't want painful cramps, and he left me alone.

I should have told him that the so-called "normal" sitting position has nothing normal about it. Public transportation seems to be designed by sadists who ignore the fact that human beings have two legs.

In any case, this all lead to a brief conversation with a rather more intelligent (than these guard dogs) woman sitting to my right.

We happened to hit upon the topic of the investment tax......and how it would solve many budget shortfalls.

But, she asked, would investors stop investing?

I neglected to point out that what we have today is an investment strike. Investors are not investing today, so they could hardly stop doing so.

And if there were more money coming into government coffers, and they spent it, that would, quite possibly mean money for new businesses. 

Maybe.

But what sort of "investments" do we have in the real world?  Should I really thank the investors for creating an electronic spying system?  Do I really think the IPad or any other Apple product has made my life better?

No, I don't.

There were books, music, friendships, etc. before there was Apple, and the quality of my life has NOT been improved by Apple.  Indeed, many of the problems in the world are connected to the system that makes Apple possible.

Indeed, there is a capitalist myth, a bit of fantasy that "investment" is some sort of gift to mankind, like Prometheus' fire, but that is pure bullshit.

People who invest want profits; they don't give a damn about human goodness.  If they ever do benefit me, that's an unintended side-effect.

Oh, yeah, I almost forgot:  the poor businessman only gives us what we want.  So, it's all OUR fault!---Yeah, right:  after they have manipulated the hell out of us with billions of dollars of advertising, we know what we want.  What a pathetic lie.  Some call it information asymmetry.  I call it pathetic narcissistic infantile lust for the crudest sort of power.

Monday, August 12, 2013

No "Do not disturb"; no privacy

This is ridiculous!

I hesitate to leave my room and go to the shared bathroom because:  The cleaning lady might come at any minute.  (I hear her moving around outside.)

I hesitate to walk down the hall to the kitchen---the other end of the hall, perhaps twelve feet away.
Ishall have to carry my ...

UPdate:  She's here.  Just on the other side of the door, cleaning the bathroom. (Thank you! It needs it.  Generously applying smelly chemicals.....)

But when she finishes, I shall have to make two or three trips up and down the hall to the kitchen, carrying a bowl of rice, pots, etc. before I can prepare my lunch.  And, of course, once I've cooked it all, I will (sooner or later) have to carry it all back.

I have work to do.  I don't want to socialize.  I don't want to be required to say "hello" or anything else at all to anyone.....

I want my privacy back.
The sterility of a hospital---the excessively chemical nature of the cleanliness---is matched, in some bizarre prelude to hell, by framed reproductions of "great art" hanging on the walls of my room--"official art", as a friend might say.  As if in fulfillment of a law of kitsch, there is, as there must be, a Van Gogh among the reproductions.

Add to this the incessant tapping---not ceasing entirely, there are pauses--which seems to come from a room above me.  And, of course the traffic noise from the nearby street.  I notice that there are fewer motorcycles.  They seem to be the source of pleasure on weekends---a very capitalist sort of pleasure for people who have been degraded all week in what they have to do in order to earn their daily bread.  People who seek to escape, their heads full of degraded images of happiness courtesy of the propaganda system.

At times, in my disgust at the people around me, I nearly equal Plato's arrogance.  But this is an attitude toward people in the abstract, not for anyone I've actually ever spoken to.

I wanted to write, however, of the insanity of washing machines, or the insanity they provoke from the local inhabitants...........

As I have written here before of my difficulties with washing my clothes, I shall assume the reader remembers the broad context.  Here, for foreigners employed by or studying at the university, there is, in effect, a shortage of washing machines.

I was, at the start of the month, compelled to move from my usual accomodation to a desultory and uncomfortable room in what they call a "hotel".  I must go to a different building when I want to wash my clothes.  (Curiously, I know that upstairs in this very building, there actually are washing machines.  But, that seems not to matter.)

And, yesterday, as I was retrieving some clothes in a different high-rise, I had a conversation with the custodian, the door-keeper.  She told me that this building would be shutting down until school started.  I wondered where I would was my clothes.  The washing machines in a second building were now broken.

She calculated that I would be allowed to return to my normal residence in ten days.  And, with a friendly smile, she assured me that I had just washed my clothes, and so, I wouldn't need to wash my clothes again for the next ten days....

What presumption!  What brutal condescension!

Worst of all, she believed that she was being helpful or friendly.

I am still reeling in disbelief at this utter stupidity.  Do I need someone else to tell me when and how often I am going to wash my clothes?

To call this "Eastern Europe" just doesn't go far enough.  I need some even stronger expression.




Sunday, August 11, 2013

the abstraction of markets and the willingness to find excuses

Richard D. Wolff says that economists use markets as an excuse. A "market" is an abstraction, but it comes into being as a result of the action of individuals.....

Philosophers use the market as an excuse when they tell potential students: the market is bad.

That's code for:  you may not (probably won't) get a job, and there's nothing we can do about it.

Well, once upon a time, that's how I took it, when as a twenty-year old, I got a letter admitting me to a Ph.D. program in P|hilosophy, and warning me about the bad market.

Maybe the letter didn't actually use the word "market"; it doesn't matter.  That's a word that philosophers do use.

Is there anything they might do to change things?  Could they attempt to influence the direction of public education?  Surely they could have, and surely they did not.  (Like a good capitalist, I judge by results; and lately the result has been for many years that public education in the USA is in decline.)

And why wouldn't they do something like that?  Political action would distract from the research they enjoy and which gains them rewards in our capitalist society................

And what do I think about that?  Well, I don't have such a high opinion of philosophers as I used to.  They seem like very ordinary conformists who keep their heads low, and do nothing out of the ordinary......In that respect, really very average and ordinary.......and not especially admirable..........but also powerless and acquiescent...............

After -thoughts: And what about me?  I've done nothing particularly political in my life.  I am reminded of the dissident who remarked that most people weren't dissidents, and that is to be expected.  But when I think of my youthful self, that letter was damaging.  And, it was especially damaging because I was in no position to understand it.  And today I do think that a letter like that is, at best, morally ambiguous.   Here's a young person who's actually quite ignorant of the class structure in the USA.  Here's a young person who actually understands very little about how the world works--and he (I, in my youth) is in no position to understand that letter---except as a slap
in the face.  ("Yeah you can get a Ph.D., but when it's done, you wont get a job............ So,how can you commit yourself fully to that?)
|
Put this all differently:  Why are there such limits?  Why are there few jobs teaching Philosophy?
Because Philosophy contributes less to human beings than Banking?  --That was a joke.
There's no good reason why there shouldn't be more jobs teaching philosophy, and more chances for people to learn philosophy.  None at all.  There is no mythological market that decreed that we have too many Philosophy Ph.D.'s.....

But that letter, in effect, evoked the myth of the market...............

after a dance workshop


After a week of training

My arms want to move themselves

In the patterns we have established:

 

My right hand would like to touch my left,

and send him on his journey through space.


My hands are dry now,

not cupping water to my face,

but they speak to me,

and each longs for the embrace of the space,

as we move in circles,

smaller,

larger,

answering the movement of hips and spine.

 

My shoulders are itchy too,

and I can hardly stop them from joining their sisters and cousins,

brothers and uncles,

aunts and friends,

who all seem to be saying

that they've had a night's sleep,

and won't wait for the music to start.

 
Sitting won't do,

and walking won't either;

they are all whispering to me,

nodding,

nudging me,

asking me to stand up,

and begin those concentric motions,

maybe even to hum aloud:

„Dummmm, Dummmm-dumm-dumm....“

Mimicking the teacher's voice,

setting them out on that journey,

which never really stops,

and always comes back.

To a place far away and always near.

trapped in an eastern european hotel

I am sure that the cleaning ladies work hard,
keeping this place clean,
and antiseptic-sterile.

But my reaction is:
The cleanliness and sterility is
like nothing so much as a hospital,
a place where people go to die.

Saturday, August 10, 2013

eastern europe forever

It must bring no joy to the formerly socialist nations if economic prosperity has not been the reward for joining the EU....

Plato says the dog is a philosophical animal.  It is friendly to those it knows, and barks at strangers.  The vratnice continues to be the most philosophical of university employees.

After a convoluted ten minute conversation with the door keepers in a neighboring tower block,
I learned that I could not wash my clothes there.

I had crossed the courtyard from my own building to the neighboring tower block, carrying two bags stuffed with dirty clothing----and that scarcely exhausts my store of dirty clothing.

After being mis-identified as a hotel guest who had come to play cards, and repeating my original request (I'd like to wash my clothes), I faced the question "Now?".

Errr, well I was toting two bags full of dirty clothes.......

I was told that the washing machines were broken, and I would have to retrace my steps and proceed to another tower block where the washing machines were functional.

That word, "Now?" rings in my ears.

Because once I had arrived at the tower block with working washing machines, I was given a reservation for two washing machines in an hour and a half.

I apologize to Czech friends for whom I have respect and affection, but I am sorry to say that as long as washing machines are rationed in this way, I shall continue to think of the Czech Republic as Eastern Europe.  (And it is irrelevant to point out, as a student once did, that every family in the Czech Republic has a washing machine.  What good does that do me?  Why should I be living at a level of less comfort than the local population?  Because I am a teacher?  Because I am a foreigner?--is that how guests are treated?)

I know that there is nothing intrinsic to the "east" which makes a location poorer.  However, when it is so difficult to simply wash my clothes----and I'll be paying for it anyway----I cannot regard the local standards as acceptable.  It's just too much of a hassle.

Note:
A curiosity:  In the tower block which mainly houses local students the washers cost half as much as the washers in the tower blocks which house mainly foreigners.  But, more than that, I object chiefly to the very fact that my employer is making money from my need to simply wash my clothes.

Tuesday, August 6, 2013

Do not disturb

It suddenly occured to me that what this hotel needs is "Do not disturb" signs.

Why aren't there any?

It is common enough for policemen or doctors to put a sign on their doors:  "Do not knock!", or
"Wait until called".

Am I to draw the conclusion that an ordinary citizen has no right to privacy?

Well, it certainly feels that way to me.  Last year I was living in this hotel for a couple of months, and the intrusions at regular intervals of noisy cleaning staff caused great irritation.

When I complained about it, loudly, and in broken language, to the staff themselves, I was punished the next day by the manager who evicted me.  (After she had pounded on the door of my rented apartment with great force....)

So, now I find myself back in the uncomfortable hotel, sharing a bathroom and a kitchen.

The doors squeak.  The floors are uncarpeted, and magnify every noise.  The keys are provided with a metal room-number plate which provides clinking and clanging noise in abundance.

Please allow me to emphasize:  The doors squeak, and they cannot be shut without making a noise.

Currently, I am living in one small room, just off a small corridor.  At the end of this entry hall there is another room.  To the right is the bathroom.  If my neighbor enters, he must take out his keys---causing clanging and jangling noises--open the outer door, and shut it.  Opening and shutting that outer door creates noise, especially as it is shut.  Then, entering the hall, he will again make a noise with his keys (the metal number plate inevitably striking the keys like a knocker to its bell) and then he will open another noisy door.  As the floors are uncarpeted, every sound resounds and is magnified.

The noise caused by austere building is one thing.  Quite another things is the omission of a "Do not disturb" sign.  Its absence deprives me of a basic right:  the right to privacy, the right to decide whether or when my work will be interrupted.

And, yes, dear reader, what I do is "work", even if unpayed.  I do not accept the crass commercial evaluation of all things human.  What is truly valuable has no price, and cannot be given a price. 

Indeed, this has been my frequent lament:  I work at home.  My neighbors are chemists and they have their laboratories.  I am not a chemist.  I have no laboratory.  I work at home, with my books, and the internet.  And work requires freedom from interruptions.  Is that so hard to understand?  Work requires the confidence that unexpected events won't intrude, not the tense expectation that any minute a door will slam, or someone will knock at the door.......

In truth, I won't stay here today.  But when I return, I don't know what sort of noises will be waiting for me......

Saturday, August 3, 2013

a poem

Note for readers:  Poetry--even if it is bad poetry--- is not prose.  Poetry is not hard fact.  It may use argument as a conceit, but it is not philosophy, least of all the "professional" kind....  Poetry can be lying, but not the way prose is.  So, don't jump to conclusions if you dare to read what I am about to post below.....you cannot make any simple inferences from what I write to who I am, what I think, or what I will do next.


So capitalism is having another crisis?
Thank you very much for telling me!
 

My sweat seems to have been converted on my body
into lively fungi and molds,
or something else living,
detectible by the nose,
but invisible and silent,
something whose name I do not know...

just as much as,
what were once unspoken dreams and hopes,
have rotted away,
and today lay stinking to high heaven beside the decaying corpse of capitalism.

Thursday, August 1, 2013

the annals of stupidity

So, here I am back in the Czech Republic (The land of Czechs and no balance).
And, I have not yet recovered from my jet lag.

Oh, how nice.  Bam-Bam-...errr, was it "tap.tap..." ? In any case, once again, my sleep was disturbed.  This time by the manager of university housing, accompanied by a crowd--or so it seemed.

I was on the phone late talking to my parents.  There is an eight hour time difference between West Texas and Central Europe. When it is nine am here, it is one in the morning there.....   My conversation with my parents ended around 3 in the morning.  The morning intrusion occurred around 9:30.

I did not get eight hours of sleep.

Errr, with the Internet, the Manager might have sent me an email.  Don't you think?

The plumber had to adjust the radiators.  Errr, couldn't they have know that earlier?  Warned me in advance?

I am now in a state of half-consciousness due to lack of sleep.  Thank you very much Ms. Manager!

If I had know, I might have cleaned up.  That much the Manager understood, and she said "Doesn't matter..."  But, Dear Lady, it most certainly does matter.  It matters because there is a big difference between getting eight hours of sleep and not getting eight hours of sleep.

There is a big difference between an unannounced interruption and a previously announced intrusion.

But the stupidity I want to mention is this:  I apologized to the Plumber and told him the room was a mess......

This is a guy who's been here before.  And the last time I asked him to repair a drain---which he did not do.  And the last time he stunk to high heaven........(Soap is cheap, even here.....)  I cannot blame him for failing to fix the drain; my language skills are not strong enough for me to be confident that he understood me, but, gosh gee, at the time, it sure seemed that he did.  I mean if I point at a sink, there's only a few possibilities......

So, the guy does his job, and leaves my room.  And, I hear him repeat my words in the hall,  "It was a mess."

How clever.   He couldn't even think of his own words for describing the mess.  Yes, a domestic mess because I've not got a wife who functions as a domestic servant....(Here I outrageously presume to know about the domestic arrangments of the plumber.....)

Yeah right.  What a beautiful world this is!  What stupidity and lack of consideration.............

secrecy versus privacy

Recently Glenn Greenwald appeared on one of the mouthpieces for the establishment.  (aka corporate media)

The interviewer asked him whether governments don't have a right to keep some things secret.

I think the clear implication was that any reasonable person would say they do, or they must, for at least some things.

Greenwald did not say, however, what I think would be an apt retort:  What about OUR right to privacy?  What about our right to non-interference?  What about our right to free association?  What about the right of Afghan mothers not to see their babies butchered by terror from the skies?

G. did not, however, ask any of those questions.

Myself, I think it's logical: If they can read my mail, then I have a right to read theirs.

Link to new article in the Guardian detailing the degree to which our internet activities are monitored:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/31/nsa-top-secret-program-online-data

Sunday, July 28, 2013





Not Exactly Shakespeare's Ages of Man Revisited

 

Life presents us with obstacles,

matched to our age and situation.

---No!

Better said:

Being alive is nothing but a Pain-In-The-Ass!

--A NON-STOP pain-in-the-ass!



My mother cares for my father.

A so-called “care provider“ (nice lady)

cares for my mother,

and helps my father,

approximately five times a week.

 

Not that it's enough,

but it is something good,

five times a week.


And it is expensive!

And the care provider is,

despite that fact,

under-paid.......


Life is a non-stop obstacle:

In the plane to and from my parents' home,

I faced a problem suited to my age:

conversation with a similarly aged stranger!


Conversation with a stranger:

That's something like sitting in a taxi,

and being jostled about,

wondering if we'll make it around the corner,

or if we'll run the light,

or crash,

and, all the while listening to the driver complain,

about the Laziness of Europeans.


Because that's what both of my American fellow passengers

told me at the outset,

--straight out.


The French especially commit the sin

of wanting their weekends free.

Unlike the Good Germans,

who,

like us,

check their email on the weekends.

 

I was too startled and naive to protest at the time,

But later I post-hearsed the proper response:

“You fool! The weekend is or should be Sacred!

People died so that you could have a weekend.


But I am always slow,

and especially so,

when sitting uncomfortably,

in a Lufthansa jet,

where I feel guilty about not having good German.