A nicely provocative selection.. and thanks for kind words. I fear that Michael Rennie has left the stage, though his performance is immortalized - now on DVD. (My first comm'l tape purchase ever, was a Beta copy of TDTESS; it's still good fi.)

Carlin - His Napalm and Silly Putty wasn't up to previous, I thought though he's always irreverent enough for me. But this gem, only a year old - makes clear he hasn't lost focus: we Are (mostly) the arrogant pricks he adequately describes. Yep 200 years.. VS 4.5 Big Ones - and already we're aiming for radionuclides galore: ever in-the-name-of various Princes of Peace\ufffd.

It's also the 50th for Ginsburg's Howl - still as topical as the day its ban was attempted by the SF PeeDee. (Should have had my early one signed! I was living in SF then.)

Parasites.. pretty good metaphor, sadly - reminds of a similar book, "Life on Man" and those scary looking minidragons which inhabit our eyebrows. Another variant: the wag who noted that - seen from space, as you near the planet - "Man's works appear grey - man appears to be a planetary parasite." QED
Apparently "everything-IS-connected-to Everything else"! as Ashley Brilliant's cute postcard (on fridge) reminds.

Was pondering recently, how it was that (as in my early classes too) 'we' so abjectly infantilize our kids with BS pap about our perpetual National Goodness; I was trying to recall actual moments when - a piece of the pap-fabric was 'found out', rendered forever as another small tile in the mosaic of The Larger Lie? Two came immediately:

One.. a summer in Lewiston, Idaho, before starting in an Institute in fall: working in world's largest white pine mill. A dept. store salesman friend of the (school friend's) family with whom I was staying, mentioned both Veblen and Philip Wylie's *'momism' opus [[link|http://www.library.csi.cuny.edu/dept/history/lavender/momism.html|Generation of Vipers]] -- apparently plumbing the depths of my callowness and seeing the need for a prod or two. (Thanks! guy..)

* Written '42: Twenty printings by 1955. (Wonder if anyone still reads Wylie? Clearly they don't read Sinclair Lewis's take on home-grown fascism of the '30s.)

But well prior to that summer (and *cough* a solo accomplishment) I recall vividly the comic book story [Captain Marvel, most likely] which 'explained' with perfect brevity: what Waste is! -- all in an only seemingly-trite plot involving an alien "stealing street signs because his planet was running out of iron.."

Nay, twas crystalline in its clarity, though only years later was I able to see an Example, then immediately recall the story. (Physics later on, merely gave the tools to Measure the sorts of waste: energy or objects, or maybe if one includes information theory? the 'waste' of bloviating.) Al punte, beyond any of the required texts later.

I do not comprehend how it is that that there are people 50+ today.. who never got past the sensibilities of my pre-cog Lewiston summer. Something in US water which puts a %large of neurons in stasis? There's good news amidst the daily dross, though -- it seems to be always the case that, <1% of the population only ever 'Does' anything. Now if one ever finds self in the majority, well - -



Hard to bear that we have before us: One Whole Year of the asinine and crass Murican-politico Lying / routine character assassination - before any Action is even possible. Ah, to be on Corfu for that year! With NO wireless netstuff. Mail once a month?


Ashton