My Mother...

Books. When I think of my Mother, I think of nothing so much as her devotion to books. Books not for their own sake, but for their function as the storehouse of ideas. For her, human thought was all that was truly holy about us, and books were the repository of those thoughts. She read vociferously, carnivorously, anything and everything that interested her. She did not read for recreation, she read as she breathed, for her very survival. I often think of the old woman of Ray Bradbury's "Fahrenheit 451", who immolates herself and her library, rather than submit to the state's "firemen", and think how easily, cheerfully, my Mother would have done the same.

You see, my Mother's reverence for thought, unexpurgated and unsullied by intellectual cowardice and conformity, was matched only by her loathing of the latter. Independence and freedom of the mind and conscience of the individual, were as inviolate to her as any sanctified space is to the most religious of souls. Anything and everything must always be open to question, nothing must ever be permitted to exist free of criticism, analysis, or contest. No question is ever "settled", but merely sidelined until better evidence or a more elegant hypothesis comes along. No individual or collective opinion must ever be regarded as infallible, as nothing human can ever be so. Acquire the evidence, consider it, weigh it, and draw your own conclusions. Trust no "authority", no intellectual "knight in shining armor" come to rescue you from ignorance, for only you can do that.

My Mother passed away this Tuesday, the 8th of December 2009. In the end, death came for her, as he comes to us all, but carried away only her life, which was the least significant of her possessions. He could not take her freedom, her independence, her dignity, her courage, or her spirit. Nor could he take the love of her sons, her family, or of all those who knew, admired, and loved her.

Peace Prize in our time...

Reading about Iran's approval of 10 new uranium enrichment plants this morning made me wonder just how long Obama's fantasy world can be maintained, not that the question hasn't occurred before. But in the course of mulling that over, it struck me that Obama may not be merely the combination of the worst traits of Nixon and Carter I once thought him to be. He may also be the reincarnation of Neville Chamberlain, and that may be a strangely positive thing. It can be argued that what ultimately brought Churchill out of the wilderness to lead a nation and a world to victory against fascism was the arch incompetence and sheer, willful, refusal to face reality of the world's most credulous negotiator. Chamberlain was noted for his extensive efforts at press management, and his overriding desire to be remembered as a domestic reformer, untroubled by foreign entanglements. Sound familiar?

Nixon's "The One"...

"The Imperial Presidency", title of a '73 work by Artie S., describes what Arthur considered a Presidency as office run amok. Nixon was at the time considered only the most recent, and perhaps most egregious, example of a trend that dated back to F.D.R. As G.M. sinks beneath the waves, and the bankers cash their relief checks, is this ringing any bells, oh thou children of the Obamasiah? Me, I was foolish enough to think we were finally rid of the 'Great Leader' notion after Reagan faded from the scene; but no, it's back, and this time it's PERSONAL!.

I wonder, are we truly so spiritually bankrupt that we don't give a damn if someone else makes all our choices for us, so long as health care's cheap? Do we long for the Big Brother of George O's nightmare to come and save us from ourselves? The backside of every great civilization's arc of existence consists mainly of the long slide to oblivion on the razor edge of "benevolent" dictatorships. The mob is fed, the elites content themselves with whatever pass times B.B. approves, and the barbarian hordes gather quietly at the borders and wait...

Ars Gratia Artis...

Been mulling the phrase over this afternoon. "art for art's sake", meaning... what? Other than the subtitle of the Lion's roar, that is. Literally, it implies the divorce of art from didactic goals, and is hence anathema to collectivists. Being a radical individualist and existentialist, the idea that art 'is what it is' does not, for me, bring on a case of the vapors. This does, however, leave us with the peculiarly unsatisfying idea that art is beyond criticism, or does it? If we can't critique art as 'not suitable to a purpose', how do we critique it? Here's a question, WHY do we critique it?? Why is it essential to us to be able to rate something... make that EVERYTHING. Why do "we", and by "we" I'm primarily referring to the people I've spent most of my life interacting with on a day to day basis (European descendants, by and large); why do we need to be able to place every object in a container, and every object in that container in some kind of hierarchical, mathematical order?

One of my passions is playing guitar, writing arrangements of jazz standards for same, and doing a little composing. There is a most peculiar mind set among musicians that you can 'rate' their capability by comparing their speed on the instrument. This is particularly true of guitarists, but it extends to horn players and pianists as well. The faster you play, the better you are. Why?? Faster is "better"??? No, faster is measurable. And most forms of criticism work backwards from what the critic needs to be true, to what is "true". Subjective qualities like "sensitivity", "empathy", etc., can't be measured with a marked stick and hence, won't work for the baseball card mentality, i.e., so many RBI's, so many hits, so many errors... So if you want to be able to "objectively" compare Beethoven to Liszt, count the number of notes they can get out in a minute. This desperate need to be able to measure things derives from the equally desperate and equally pointless need to rank them in some unarguable order that everyone will agree to. Again, why? I think it comes down to this: most people are so utterly devoid of confidence in their own perspective that they have to find a way to convince the world to agree with them, and you can't do that with vague notions about "sensitivity", but you can do it with a radar gun, by yiminy! Liszt BURNS man!! The dude was SMOKIN!!!

Me, I'll stick to what I like... and I don't care if you like it, approve of it, rank it 3d or 300th. What's the value in being anti-social if you can't tell the world to bugger off...

By the by, I'm not even going to suggest any symbolic relationship to penile endowment comparisons... no, not I...

Why am I doing this?

Briefly, I'm doing this because someone did a hatchet job on Mary Astor. It's like this...

So I'm watching "The Maltese Falcon" for the umpteenth time, and wondering, for the umpteenth time, why ANYONE would want anything to do with Mary Astor, who looks like nothing so much as a lesbian version of someone's great aunt, when the thought occurs to me, "look her up on Google Image and see if she always looked like that..." I did, she didn't. Now one of the images is linked to a Blog, which I navigate to and lo, here's someone thinking PRECISELY the same thing I am... This stuns me. As a dedicated anti-social anti-statist from way back, who has long ago given up on all of humanity, I am truly stunned that this question has occurred to anyone else. Hmmmm...

Now my day job, as fortune/random chance/fate/God/fat guy behind the curtain would have it, is running IT at, wait for it, "a major University". I've actually been quoted on the whole 'blog thing' in a talking head piece for the Media (I was vaguely supportive while being sagely cautious and... ZZZzzzzz, oops, drifted off there...), but never have I actually put one together.

Well, says I, time to step up. As I drift closer to whatever follows Act III and further and further from my fellow hairless apes, it occurs to me that I might want to try and re-establish some connection, and I can't think of a better way, which is not to suggest there isn't one.

So herein will lie my random thoughts on whatever fires up one of my remaining neurons, along with some links to stuff that still peaks my interest. In other words, an online diary, as blogs were intended to be, and not a feeble attempt at self-publishing. Take it for what it's worth or ignore it, I frankly don't give a rat's... Guess I'm going to have to work on that 'reconnecting' thing.

Ciao