Saturday, March 30, 2013

not happiness

My neighbor is remarkably restrained.  But when he or she is there, if they speak, I hear them. Not that I can understand every word, but I know they are there.  When there is one person there, I may hear an alarm clock or a door close.  When there are two of them I hear them talking, laughing, enjoying themselves.  And I secretly envy them for their friendship and the pleasure each takes in the other's company--a natural joy that I seem to experience less frequently with each new day. 

Yet, they don't play a loud stereo or seem to have a TV.  Thank God!  And if, rarely, I do hear more than two voices, they stop early enough in the evening so that I've really got no reason to complain.

Occasionally I hear music---thump-thump-thump-thump----from downstairs. But I cannot tell exactly where it comes from.

Then there is that odd shower--sounding like it will drown me---seeming to come from above my head.

Most days the noise of traffic from the nearby busy street is constant.

Sometimes drunk students sing and shout during the night.

A brightly illuminated billboard ( a source of income for the university) shines through
the thin curtains of my flat and often wakes me at night.

Noisiest of all is the cleaning lady who uninhibitedly shouts.  She inhabits the building during working hours from Monday to Friday.  Sometimes I feel that she is more owner-proprietor than an employee.  She is more comfortable with her presence than I am.  She seems be a stereotypically indifferent worker of the Communist period---able to carry out the assigned task with a minimum of enthusiasm and able to do what's necessary without strain.  Don't get me wrong.  I think her restrained performance is less full of bad faith than the feigned enthusiasm of an American coffee-seller, wrapped in the mumbo-jumbo language of happy consumers and individualized products.

In my building, the apartments radiate out around a central core.  That large core, containing a stairwell and elevators, is a marvellous amplifier. The voices of people on the stairs echo and are amplified.  This is disturbing and unwanted.  The cleaning lady unnerves me with her free-spirited, loud conversations.

I see dogs of all sizes pooping on the grass.  Their owners stand nearby.  They must live in a building like mine.  I cannot imagine it.  A dog of any size barking in the central core of the building would be deafening.  There are too many dogs in this city.  --Too many dogs, bicycles, roller bladers and cars.  (But cramped into small apartments, perhaps the dogs too --like their owners---yearn for weekends and holidays, trips outside of the cramped confines of the city, and the crowded apartment.  So, finally, life is lived in small portions.  You aim always at that weekend in the country or that beach-sun-sea holiday, and stop noticing the intervening misery.  --A tremendous, but necessary, act of the imagination.)

When I walk on the pedestrian path I am every bit as nervous as if I were driving on a crowded freeway.  Bicycles approach behind me, traveling fast, quietly.  It doesn't help to have rollerbladers and any other sort of swiftly moving persons.  In the end, the pedestrian path is crowded and chaotic, and a simple walk to the store is unpleasant.  The better the weather, the more crowding; and consequently I dread the arrival of real spring and summer.  I expect someday to be run down by a rollerblader or a new form of travel which allows swift, silent motion.  Or, perhaps, I shall one day only have a sore neck from constantly glancing behind me, fearful that I'll be run down. When I walk, I am in a constant state of awareness, approaching terror.  I don't want to be run down.  It's not nice....... I can't relax.

I don't like looking at the billboards along the road.  Some seem to be planted in the grass along the path, destroying any tranquility the lawns might otherwise communicate.  The billboards are garish and tasteless.  Either they represent a fantasy world or they are crude and loud with their slogans and colors.  Six or eight scantily clad beauties would entice me to a night club.  A shining car promises me happiness. An athlete wants me to use his bank. Etc., etc., And I don't like the sound of the cars flying by.  There's nothing nice about it. It is irritating. This is not beauty.

When I lived in Vienna, I lived in a building much older than the one I currently inhabit. It might have been two or three or more times as old.  In the past they did not know how to build such thin walls without the building falling down.  (Or, so I surmise.)  And consequently I did not hear my neighbors through the walls---unlike my current accomodation.  So, you see, there's an example of so-called "progress" that has nothing to do with our actual quality of life.  Like so much else in the world.

We are all of us drowning in a sea of commodities (dogs, cars, bicycles, bicycle trailers, rollerblades) while the happy shore toward which we all aim during weekends and holidays (because, after all, that's the only time we really live) recedes ever further from our grasp.  And in a frantic effort to reach the shore, we accumulate ever more vehicles and noise-makers, which only push us ever further away from our destination, now no longer even visible, but only a faint memory.  Our efforts are self-defeating, but we resent anyone who dares to point it out.

Physical Therapy at its worst

I spent three years living with my elderly parents.  During that time, both my father and mother acquired walkers--metal frames with wheels, a seat, a basket to put things in, and brakes.

Recently my mother began visiting yet another physical therapist.  He immediately told her that her walker is the wrong size.  It is too tall for her, with the consequence that she is forced to walk toe-ball-heel and not heel-ball-toe.  And, in the process, her Achilles tendon will have been shortened, increasing her chances of losing balance.

Note well:  In two and a half years, other physical therapists and their assistants have seen that walker, and seen my mother use it. Not one realized it is the wrong size. ---And who the hell ordered it in the first place? A private company that contracts with Medicare who paid for it. 

So, I figure two or three (maybe more therapists) and equally three or four therapist's assistants saw that god damn walker that didnt' fit---and they did not notice that it is too tall.

That's a very bad record for the actual delivery of services.  Were I not trying to polite, I could find much harsher words for this negligence.  My god!  This is my mother, and she's not getting what she deserves in the capitalist USA.

What's more, if my mother is getting treatment from incompetent or negligent therapists, you can bet that she is not alone.  Indeed, given the size of the USA, it would not be far off the mark to guess that millions of people are similarly being deceived in order for private companies to gain access to their Medicare funds.  (And I really don't care if the companies all themselves "not-for-profit".)

my personal failure




I've got a marvellous grammar book.  It's got a million examples.  Everything fits into a finite number of categories---which,errr, each  have a certain finite number of sub-categories.....  And, err, when I try to lead it, I get lost.

I forget what the original category was, and then, (I apologize for my lack of emotional conrol)
I come across truly idiotic examples......

Idiotic in the sense that the actual thought behind the sentence is idiocy.

And the textbook authors are proud of the fact that their examples are living, genuine language.

Alas, if only the sentences they have chosen said something interesting; the thoughts themselves are not interesting thoughts but merely recycled trash!

This is, I confess, my personal problem. (Sorry to impose, dear reader!)  Obviously (possibly) the grammar textbook has been used by many generations of students who have thereby mastered this complex subject.....I, evidently, am no longer a student, but am possessed of deep aesthetic and other prejudices.  Sigh.

what governments can do

As I sit here, during a time when an insane opposition between the bad government and all that is good---mythologically markets and private enterprise (yccch)-----I noticed that on the title page of a certain novel I've begun to read (in Czech) there is a small acknowledgment of finanical support from the Ministry of Culture.

The book is a complex attempt to understand a complex past, hence its title, "Germans; Geography of Loss".

What would an analogous book look like in English?  Of course, since the USA has not been invaded, we can't construct a perfect analogy.  Yet, we can imagine: the story of a Vietnamese or Mexican family living in the USA, and the lost memories of the new generation.....the inescapably fragile nature of a family's history and the rapid degeneration of memories as they are replaced by myths and half-truths.....and the enormous magnitude of the forgotten realities......

How ironic that a Czech can imagine that the problem is a foreign power, an external force, an intrusion from outside--though surely that is a crude distortion, a half-truth, whose inaccuracy is exposed in Katalpa's novel----while in the USA it is economic tyranny at home which ruins lives.--A domestic tyranny, not an external force, dominates everything.  --And it also dominated culture and ordinary life during the mythological post-war years.  Not that people did not live, or have never lived, but it is possible to see from another perspective that perfectly possible human things --not things requiring a divine intellect or enhanced cognition, but things allowable with our fragile frame--were excluded, silently, and without discussion about their exclusion.....

In the USA everything is overwhelmed by a frantic need to justify what, perhaps, can't really be justified.

Reference
Jakuba Ktalpa, němci, Host, Brno  2012

Friday, March 29, 2013

social media

Let's see, does social media (so called---as if we weren't social prior to their expansion)
actually allow us to see the other person's face?

I am a bit cautious about endorsing the views of Dacher Keltner because he seems to me to be rather over-enthusiastic about the results and methods of Ekman, however, I do think he has a point when he complains that such "media" bypass our ability to read faces, a tool developed by long years of evolutionary history....

Wednesday, March 27, 2013

a solution to the crisis

Part One:
A solution to the Crisis; Reagan-style

When the air-traffic controllers didn't do their job (when they went on strike)
Ronald Reagan fired them.

Today, wealthy investors are on strike. They are not doing their job. They are not investing, creating jobs, etc.

ERGO, we should follow Reagan and fire those bums who are not doing their jobs.

Part Two
A Solution for Greece: Intellectual Property Rights

The Greek people should assert their intellectual property rights and demand payment
for all of their words that we have borrowed.

You can't even say 'crisis' without speaking Greek. In fact, if we stopped using words we borrowed from Greek, we couldn't even have an educated conversation. So, it's time to pay back what we borrowed.

Saturday, March 23, 2013

punishing the victims........in Cyprus

Let's see...
There's a worldwide economic crisis because.....

The capitalist class is on strike,
refusing to invest.

And taxes on working people (who did not cause the crisis) go up....
And government services for working people (who did not cause the crisis) go down,
And the pay of working people (who did not cause the crisis) goes down.

And, in Cyprus,
bankers made bad decisions.....

And then there are working people,
who have been saving their money for retirement.

So, since Cypriot bankers made bad decisions,
there may still be (according to what i just read in today's "Guardian")
a tax on the savings of working people
to pay for the bad decisions by the----not the bad decisions of working people, but the bad decisons that they did not make....... The tax is to pay for the bad decisions which were made by un-elected bankers.......

Something is wrong here, very wrong.
Something stinks.

Friday, March 22, 2013

unhappy with the left

There are leftists who refuse to tread upon the ground of individual psychology.
Yet individuals with their thoughts exist.  There are ways to talk about their minds.
When the capitalist decides to act in a way that is sure to cause suffering, he's got something in his head.---And, there's more going on than laws of accumulation.
But this topic seems to be censored.

Put differently:
As Tomas said of the Czechoslovak communists:
It was bad faith when they pleaded ignorance.
Oedipus put out his eyes when he saw the suffering he had caused.
Yet Oedipus was ignorant if anyone is.
The Capitalist is no Oedipus; he's got to know!

guest-blogger

Today we have a guest blogger, who writes under the pseudonym, "Kronstadt".

Demoralization

They say that communism was demoralizing because there was no room for progress.  Whether you worked hard, or barely worked at all, you got the same thing.

Today we can work our asses off, and still only just get by.

I have a friend who rents a flat from his employer.  Every month, twenty-five percent of his pay immediately goes back to his employer.

The furniture in the flat is old, broken-down.  A broom for sweeping the floor is on its last legs. the floor is covered with the sort of tile you'd put in a bathroom or kitchen or common area in a hospital.
If you lean against the back of a chair, the back might fall off.  The place wasn't properly cleaned before the friend moved in.

And, he says:  What sort of self-respect do these people have?  The people who rent such a place!  What is in their minds?  Do they think that the renter deserves no better?  Would they be satisfied living in such a place?

But the water is always hot, and there is heat in the winter.  So, he won't die that way, anyway...

Tuesday, March 19, 2013

The academic learns the art of suppression and understatement,
 but I've thrown all that away.
Good riddance.


If I'm going to be poor, then I should,
at least, practice the art of honesty,
and thow away fear.








UNFINISHED DRAFT

The visitor wanted to know:
Is this where the revolution happened?

Freed from his cage at work,
his intellect was now free to formulate questions,
even though they seemed to be pre-formulated
and pre-formatted by the images stuffed into his head
while he'd been watching TV.

He was moving uphill, near the  top of the square,
with McDonald's to his left and an empty Sausage Stand to his right:
The Illustrious Saint sat atop his enormous horse beyond the deserted Stand.

Where did the revolution happen?

It never happened.

That event on the TV screens wasn't the revolution.

--After all, we know that nothing real appears on TV.--

But the revolution?

No revolution happened:

It was a restoration of Capital,
a return of the poor rich boys,
and a new wave of inhumanity and struggle.

All symbolized by the preference for the Fast Food of the Multinationals
at the square of nation's saint.

What I wanna know is this:
The day they shut down the Sausage Vendors on Vaclavské Naměsti,
how much more money did McDonalds take in?

FOOTNOTE
Recently I read at a blog described as
hyper-professionalized,
a truly Calvinist comment
dividing the world into
the good student and bad student of Philosophy,
Sinner and Saint,
God's Chosen and God's Damnned,
written with religious fervor,
--I know who the Sinners are!--
expressing a pre-scientific approach to human psychology;
But,
best of all,
scrupulously
and insincerely,
--but Professionally--
qualified,
just a bit,
with the concession that this was an over-simplification.

Which just goes to showm
how utterly superficial is the professional writing style,
and how
it can perfectly well co-exist
with the most unenlightened and unprofound of world-views.





Monday, March 18, 2013

A Manifesto for Socialist Sense

A Manifesto for Socialist Sense The link will take you to the thoughts of Michael Roberts, a Marxist Economist who used to work in London. I find his blog edifying.

Sunday, March 17, 2013

fuck computers

My computer is getting to be as annoying as a car. Update this. Update that. This is not compatible, so click here.... ETC ETC And my life has not gotten better. Sorry, not one tiny bit................ eg it is not in any way "easier" to do taxes on line my crap computer doesn't make it easy to have many windows open at once and adjusted to readability and I still have to waste fucking money to print out forms and such, and then some idiot planned them to have tiny font Yes, font sizes on the internet are SHRINKINGLY SMALL, and that's a rule.... No thank you for this new way to annoy the hell out of me.

Wednesday, March 13, 2013

pope--schmope

It's bad enough hearing economic nonsense (just leave the market alone----and let people die and starve and freeze to death.........), but when we are saturated with crap about the pope, I really want to throw up.... http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=767&Itemid=74&jumival=9868 http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/03/14/pope-m14.htm

the cluttered Internet---it doesn't have to be that way

Once again I notice.... As I was trying to read a message I got through hotmail, the text was getting crowded out by the adds....damned annoying.... Similar problems over at gmail. No, I am not thankful for these "free" (ha ha) services. Yes, I do believe that capitalists tend to be assholes, but you can argue with me about whether imperialists (such as the soldiers/politicians responsible for torture, death squads, invasions---Rumsfeld and his ilk----)are worse than those who own the public resource which is the web.... and you can tell me that capitalism produces imperialsm, or needs it. I am prepared to listen to arguments about that. But about the basic predominance of assholes, I don't think I need arguments to convince me, and my daily life is pretty good proof of the reality. Yes, let's take back the commons.

Tuesday, March 12, 2013

Saturday, March 9, 2013

from time to time

From time to time I manage to read a few pages of the classic novel, "The Good Soldier Schwejk." In the part I was reading the other night, S. is being interrogated by a sort of military policeman who is looking for Russian spies---who he was told speak perfect Czech--as does Schwejk. He asks Schwejk about drinking tea. (Schwejk is drinking tea with rum.) Do they drink tea with rum in Russia? There is rum everywhere in the world. And are Russian women beautiful? There are beautiful women everywhere in the world. Disappointing answers, but whatever S. says the policeman is convinced that S. is a spy, and he admires him for his ability to remain calm in the face of his (the policeman's) subtle method of questioning. There's a lesson in that for police and spies everywhere................. and, not to be too subtle, for the spies on the internet as well......

Friday, March 8, 2013

decent housing

Decent housing means many things, but it should include quiet. The walls should not be so thin that you hear your neighbors......

Tuesday, March 5, 2013

Chavez dies

He did more to help the ordinary people in his country than any president has done in my lifetime. In fact, no president since Roosevelt has done as much for the ordinary people of the USA as Chavez did for the ordinary people of Venezuela. And, there were times when Chavez spoke to the USA openly, without flattery, thereby provoking the wrath of the beast. I can respect him for that, as well. But we shouldn't be reliant upon one man or one woman. Nor should we dominated or ruled or controlled or led by one man or one woman, or a class of so-called leaders. If we expect salvation to come when someone helps us, we are sunk.

Monday, March 4, 2013

FAQ's

We have prepared a list of frequently asked questions. You may find them impossible to read as they appear in a text with single-spacing and it is very crowded. But if you don't find the question you wanted to ask, you won't be able to ask a real person anyway. So, you had better strain your eyes and read that crowded text. Have a nice day!

Why the Internet is CRAP

There is a standard format for papers submitted to academic journals: double-spaced and with generous margins, and with font size of 12cpi. Most of the information displayed on the internet is not so easy to read. There may be no margins. The font size is smaller. And the crowded text is the equivalent of single-spaced. This is a concrete example of how the Internet is really not an improvement.

Sunday, March 3, 2013

washing machines

"Ted' teprve Tomáš pochopil, že je vyslýchán."

An ordinary conversation--or what should be an uncomplicated ordinary conversation---can turn into an assertion of authority, a claim by one side that the other is out of line, behaving badly, not following the rules---without discussion, without acknowledgement, but merely by a brute assertion of authority, a brute invocation of the ancient principle, "I am on this side of the counter--the right side (and I ask the questions) and you are on the wrong side...........and you are not allowed to ask any questions....Your only job is to answer my questions."

Washing machines, it would seem, are a precious commodity in Central Europe.

I pay maybe a dollar and a half, or two dollars to use two machines for three hours.  If I use them for three and a half hours, the price doubles.

Two dollars might not sound like much to you, but my monthly pay isn't much either.  What I pay for one month of washing machine use would buy groceries for two or three days.  Often at the end of the month, that is a significant sum of money.

When I use the machines, I have to register electronically via my ID card.  In addition, the ladies in charge write down various personal details in a book:  how many machines did I use?, Did I use the drying room?, and how long did I use the machines?

It is as if they were rationing a precious commodity, or keeping track of potentially illegal activities.

Today I dared to ask why they were collecting all of this personal information.  (Does my employer really need to know how often I wash my clothes?  Or how many washing machines I use?)

First came the answer:  Well, someone else may want to use a machine.  ---But, I protested, I already used the machine.  I've finished.  I'm here to pay.  That can't be the reason.

And, now a new answer came:  Well, we have this book, these forms, and so we have to fill them out.

But, I asked:  Why?  Why do you need all of this personal information?

They ignored my question.  It was if I had behaved badly, and they were pretending not to hear me.  Or they were pretending I did not exist.  I was, evidently, in their eyes a sort of non-person, or a non-entity.  (He doesn't understand the rules:  WE ASK THE QUESTIONS HERE!!)

I suspect that my employer is making a profit from renting washing machines to people like me.

Why is it that I have a feeling as though I've been through all of this before?

In retrospect, the lady who originally gave me the key to the laundry room would have normally asked all these questions, and would have written everything down in the little book before she gave me the key.  In this case, she didn't.  And, she was present as my questioning occurred.  She was present and she was silent.  Couldn't she have answered a few questions?  Couldn't she have intervened.  Rather, she remained silent as a tomb.  What was wrong with her?  Was it schadenfreude?

For god's sake, all I wanted to do was pay what I owed!---Not be submitted to silly questions.

And I have had unpleasant experiences with washing machines before:

http://www.mundanebehavior.org/outburst/lovas-08012001.htm

Voices echo in my brain:
Don't ask why.
Just follow the rules.
We don't need to know why.
Leave your brain at the door when you enter, and just do what I tell you.

There is something about that desk.  If you are on one side, you have power, and you ask the questions.
If you are on the other side, you answer the questions.  PUNKT!  End of the story.  No questions allowed.

Errr, is that "freedom"?  Well, that's what we've got here..................

I think that next week I'll make a suggestion.  The washing machine custodians should put a sign on one side of their desk:  WE ask the questions here; not you. You only ANSWER questions.



































Friday, March 1, 2013

unhappy lap (tops)

Grey thoughts during an infinitely grey winter, as cars whoooosh, whooooosh on their way to environmental destruction, fulfilling capitalism's self-destructive impulses.............

my lap is unhappy
longing for......
the joy of fulfillment:
when she sits there.......

She is unhappy,
tied down,
chained to the wall,
connected,
but only on a short connector....

I am unhappy:
Why the hell did I buy a "lap" top?
What's the good of its compact size when I don't have wifi??


I miss reading Joyce:
those girl graduates,
he wrote,
and the happy chairs under them.

My unhappy lap,
empty,
is not a happy chair.

noted in passing: class warfare in the USA

The title of a recent article in the "Black Agenda Report" tells it all:
"Why isn't Closing 129 Chicago Pulbic Schools National News?"

Follow the link for the text and audio:

http://blackagendareport.com/content/why-isnt-closing-129-chicago-public-schools-national-news