* On Favorite Authors

Teaching the ENGL capstone course for the first time, I'm also getting to teach some favorites I haven't taught in a long time--including William Wordsworth. As enthusiastic as I've been re Lyrical Ballads, however, I still have to interject my rather irreverent attitude/teaching style into my presentation of the Sage of Grasmere. And some students don't know how to handle this. Which led me to a new aphorism, a new "quot.-of-the-day" from yours truly:

If you can't laugh at your favorite authors . . . you haven't read them long enough.

* RADIO RANT: The Savage Within

Michael Savage admonished godless liberals last night (8/27) for not understanding something about good Christian conservatives, shouting, half-apoplectically, "Why do you think people worship God? To control the animal within!" A pretty scary (self-)admission, and a pretty poor reason to believe in a deity.

Ergo—some Quots. of the Day:

Those who restrain desire, do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained. . . .
    --William Blake

Verily, I have often laughed at the weaklings who thought themselves good because they had no claws.
    --Nietzsche

The will to overcome an emotion is ultimately only the will of another, or of several other, emotions.
    --Nietzsche

* The Tao of Toothaches

I'm finally getting over another 4-5 day period of toothgumtraumapain, and I'm still surprised how surprised I was at that "old" feeling, when I shouldn't have been. The feeling I refer to is how monomaniacally obsessed one becomes with one's own debilitating pain, to the exclusion of all else. Work, food, love—"F--- it all: I've got a tooth that's killing me!" . . . Quot. of the Day:

For there was never yet philosopher / That could endure the toothache patiently. . . .
    --Shakespeare

And the mere philistine that I am endures it even less well.

And I don't think that I'm being especially masochistic in noting that such acute & enduring pain becomes a talisman of sorts, almost a blessing in its ability to concentrate the mind, to constantly remind you that you're alive, that {ugh} "life is pain"; to teach you that your holy list of Immediate-Things-To-Do is an utterly ridiculous thing, at last—a lesson that I'm forgetting again already! Indeed, it's not entirely unlike an unsolicited vision quest or a near-death experience: if only one could keep that "vision" more within the view of the glass-darkly lens of everyday consciousness. (NOT that I'm hoping for more dental trouble. Please, no. Please, no. Please, no.)

* Happy Thoughts IV

Quot. of the Day:

The various modes of worship, which prevailed in the Roman world, were all considered by the people, as equally true; by the philosopher, as equally false; and by the magistrate, as equally useful.
    --Gibbon

* Happy Thoughts III

Quot. of the Day:

Metaphysics is the finding of bad reasons for what we believe on instinct . . . .
    --F. H. Bradley

* Happy Thoughts II

Quot. of the Day:

Everything that a man does in service of the state he does against his own nature.
    --Nietzsche

* A Philosophy of Blogging

Quot. of the Day:

The NEWSPAPER is the second-hand in the clock of history; and it is not only made of baser metal than those that point to the minute and the hour, but it seldom goes right.
    --Schopenhauer

The BLOG, then, is the millisecond "hand" (or LED)?—and almost never goes right. But therein lies both its charm and power.

* Thinking Happy Thoughts

Quot. of the Day:

Every existing thing is born without reason, prolongs itself out of weakness and dies by chance.
    --Jean-Paul Sartre

* RADIO RANT: Fox Sports Flag-Wavers

I have nothing against Memorial Day in principle. (Well, maybe I do: are "we" supposed to be honoring U.S. troops who died in the 19th-c. "Indian Wars," too?) But I consciously had sports talk radio on in the background today to escape all the flag-waving on the cable news networks. However, Fox Sports Radio's segues today are little more than an extension of the Republican-P.R. arm of Fox News. Besides these constant reminders to remember our troops (including quots. from G. W.), how many sports-talk people have I heard in the last few days say something like—"Without our men in uniform, we wouldn't have the freedom to even be talking here." Ah, and what a freedom that is—to deliberate on whether the Yankees can make up a 12-and-a-half-game deficit in the American League East. John Fricke–whom I usually consider one of the more intelligent & articulate personalities on FSR—even said today that, without the troops, we wouldn't be able to enjoy "our braughts and beer"! And we wouldn't be able to surf for internet porn, and droolingly follow the tabloid reports on Lindsay Lohan, and freely & bravely choose—between Coke and Pepsi.

Obviously, our "freedoms" are much more limited than we commonly think, by the sheer ideological force of the discourses in which we live, speak, and act. The founder of French surrealism, André, once wrote, [Quot. of the Day:]

The man who cannot imagine a horse galloping on a tomato is an idiot.

But, au contraire, the person who does imagine such things today is deemed psychotic. Politically, the U.S. political spectrum from the most radical liberalism to the most reactionary conservatism is but an iceberg-tip of ideational possibilities. Musically, the same old chord progressions and clich$eacute; lyrical hooks are recycled over and over, as if the really new would blow open the "doors of perception" that corporate capitalism must keep closed, or else. . . . I'm going to take a nap now, to better consider the opportunities of pRuNe CiRcUsEs and SiLiCoN lIzArDs. . . .

Wait—there's Memorial Day, on TV right now: it's Pat Boone, dressed in an American-flag suit, hawking his new book. Hmmm. I think he just called me a communist.

* RADIO RANT: "The man that hath no music"

Michael Savage was harping on the 60's hippies movement again last night (5/22/07), as the major impetus of contemporary liberalism—itself the ruination of the nation. As a true conservative, Savage even asserted that Plato was right in kicking all the poets and musicians out his his ideal Republic. (An overgeneralization: music of certain less "emotional," more "rational," modes [scales] would still be allowed, if I recall. But no doubt the modern "blues" scale would be verboten.) Plato was "on to something," Savage continued, because artists (read: liberal artists) have always been dangerous to "family" values and social order.

But if you've read Plato's Republic, it's pretty clear that this conservative utopia borders on a police state, run by philosopher-kings whose claim to a greater rationalism is only rivaled by certain contemporary radio-talk-show hosts; social order would be maintained by a military class (the "brawn" to the elite rulers' "brains"), who would keep the workers in line, since this third class could only be mindless bundles of emotions & appetencies (cf. the "lower animals" in Orwell's allegory).

Yes, by God, I'd keep Bob Dylan and Jimi Hendrix out of the ears of such masses, so easily turned by metaphor and melody. Let them only read (if allowed to do so) lame treatises in support of the party line: this is Savage's true calling, after all, to provide the propagandistic accoutrements for a latter-day politbureau; and as in Stalin's day, such soporifics would be officially dubbed the only "good"—because "true"—art.

Finally, it was rather strange that Savage put forth—uh—Joan Baez?? as the epitome of 60's aesthetic radicalism. The bourgeois coffee-house drivel that was much "folk-rock" of that day was already smug co-optation, the kind of the stuff Savage himself probably enjoyed at one time. I prefer(red) "hippie" music that employed a distortion pedal, at least; but that, too, was quickly co-opted, as "Purple Haze" became a bumper tune for Rush Limbaugh—and (later) Metallica, a musical segue for the Savage-meister himself {1}.  [Impromptu Quot. of the Day: "You know you're gettin' old when your favorite teen-age-rebellious rock anthems start showin' up as background music to car & ketchup commercials." --TCG]  So, really—NOT TO WORRY, Mr. Savage: the radical artists that you fear have damned little chance to "corrupt the morals of the youth" when the youth are corrupted from the crib already, interpellated into the Law of the Father from day one. . . . Quot. of the Day:

The man that hath no music in himself,
Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds,
Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils.
The motions of his spirit are dull as night,
And his affections dark as Erebus.
Let no such man be trusted. Mark the music.
    --Shakespeare (The Merchant of Venice 5.1)

{1} In fact, one wonders why all that speed/goth/death-metal bumper music is allowed in the great "Republic" that is the "Savage Nation"—a rabid, visceral, arational subtext that rather deconstructs the message of this man who dons a mask of reason.

* Bad Bird Bandits

I had the great pleasure of an afternoon/evening at Fran K.'s last Sunday, a wonderful antidote to my utterly mundane urban existence, a place outside of town that reminded me of childhood summers at my grandma's in the small town of Ft. Pierre, SoDak, Grandma Mollie's old house a mere block away from a deliciously "uncivilized" slough and three blocks away from the Missouri River (sans tourist traps).

The human conversations were entertaining as well. But at one point, my wife told the story of Blue Jays robbing a House Finch nest on her front porch. And I felt half-brained & incomplete, in not being able to quote Robert Francis's moving retort of a poem, called "Blue Jay." So here it is [Quot. of the Day]:

So bandit-eyed, so undovelike a bird
to be my pastoral father's favorite—
skulker and blusterer
whose every arrival is a raid.

Love made the bird no gentler
nor him who loved less gentle.
Still, still the wild blue feather
brings my mild father.
    --Robert Francis

The subsequent conversation involved rationalizations regarding "nature's way," etc. (I even referred to Darwin myself, if I recall.) But I was too tongue-tied/brain-dead to bring up "intuition's way," my own identification with the vultures & corvids, etc., of our ecosphere. And so this poem.

* RADIO RANT: "All Praise, American Woman"!

With Mother's Day coming up, some local morning talk show fellow mentioned "American Woman" as a song glorifying good ol' U.S. womanhood—that's why it's also such a popular song on the 4th of July, he added. (I didn't know this, if true.) To his credit, the fellow noted the irony of the fact that it was written and popularized by a Canadian band, the Guess Who (in 1970; their guitarist went on to form another popular band, Bachman-Turner Overdrive). To his discredit, he (and apparently many Americans) have never listened to, or understood, the song lyrics, which pretty much slam that "American Woman," and tell her emphatically to "stay away from me." One might cleverly argue that this is ironic, too, that the fellow really loves her desperately and is "protesting too much." However, the following lyrics belie such a possibility [Quot. of the Day]:

I don’t need your war machines—
I don’t need your ghetto scenes—
Coloured lights can hypnotize—
Sparkle [in] someone else’s eyes—
Now woman, get away from me—
American Woman—mama, let me be—

Now there's a song fit for a 4th of July parade. . . . So: play along! (preferably, w/ a little "tube-screamer" fuzzbox effect)::::

 B5 D5     E5         D5 E5
------||------------------------------------|------------------------------------||
------||------------------------------------|------------------------------------||
------||o-----------------------------------|-----------------------------------o||
----7-||o--9-9-9-9-9---7-9---9-9-------7----|---9-9-9-9-9---7-9\------------7---o||
-9--5-||---7-7-7-7-7---5-7---7-7---9---5----|---7-7-7-7-7---5-7\--------9---5----||
-7----||---------------------------7--------|---------------------------7--------||
 4  &      1   &   2   &   3   &   4   &        1   &   2   &   3   &   4   &

* "And I'm, LIKE, . . ."

The interminable, like, use of like as, like, an interjection is, like, a simile for a society of, like, simulations.
Quot. of the Day:

The interminable use of like as an interjection is, like, a simile for a society of simulations.
    --TCG [from a March 2005 journal entry]

(In sum, it's an unconscious deconstruction of one's own identity and reality? In my best Eric Cartman voice: "kewl.")

* Literature = "Lies"; The Shortest Epic Ever

Quot. of the Day:

All literature: the left brain's lame attempt to verbalize (and so botch) the right brain's non-verbal truths.
    --TCG [based on a February 2004 journal entry]

. . . And so I appreciate all the more the following poem—the shortest "epic" ever written (quoted entire):

         EPIC

Book I: Oh, Goddess[,] help me sing of Nothing.

Books II-XI:

Book XII: Thanks a lot.

    --[(20th-c.) anonymous poet]

* "This Ain't the Summer of Love"

I was a touch too young to remember Woodstock—that "Summer of Love"; what I did remember from that era—a few years later, in high school—was a radio report that heroin was being smuggled into the U.S. . . . in the bodies of dead American soldiers killed in 'Nam. I don't think the phrase "This ain't the Summer of Love" occurred to me then, but all the same, a deadly chill ran up my spine for the first time, of disillusionment regarding the whole human enterprise. And obviously, that glorious (or whatever) "season" has retreated further and further into the ideological distance [Quot. of the Day]:

This ain't the Garden of Eden—
There ain't no angels above—
And things ain't what they used to be—
And this ain't the Summer of Love—
    --The Blue Öyster Cult

Of course, the Rush Limbaughs and Jerry Falwells of the world would play the "Pat Tillman" card on me: "If you only believed, son!" Okay, we can get into the heavy theological argument about how an omnipotent "God" could allow all this murder and mayhem, about notions of privatio bono and all that. But I'm tired—and so I'll be as knee-jerk dismissive as they are: [mild expletive deleted] ME.

* Playing in the "Worm Dirt"

The new controversy surrounding the death of soldier/former NFL player Pat Tillman in Afghanistan regards his & his family's purported (lack of) "faith." Thus an Army lieutenant colonel has attacked the Tillmans' subsequent vocal concerns about the military's handling of Pat's death as perhaps based on their lack of religious belief, and therefore lack of solace & closure: "Well, if you are an atheist and you don't believe in anything, if you die, what is there to go to? Nothing. You are worm dirt." [—ugh, punctuation & grammar—] In sum, the family can't get over his death, presumably, without the crutch of faith that he is now a good Christian soul in Heaven.

As for myself, I find great solace in the fact that I'll be "worm dirt" some day in the future, mingling my atoms with the rest of the planet & cosmos—first, dirt and "worm food"; then worm; now—robin? (And so, then, with more real wings than those of Christian angels?!) Plus, I'll be free of all this bogus human ideology that must deny its own DIRT-filled existence. Even the Good Gray Poet may have believed something very similar a good century and a half ago (Quot. of the Day):

I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,
If you want me again look for me under your bootsoles.
    --Walt Whitman

Ditto, Pat Tillman, and requiescat. . . . (Yes, Whitman always claimed to be both the poet of the "body" and the "soul," and his emphasis on the "soul" became greater, the older he got. But by far his best poetry was that of the "body" and of the "earth"—that is, of "worm dirt.")

* Nietzsche Be Damned

Quots. of the Day:

What does not destroy me makes me stronger.
    --Nietzsche

What does not destroy me leaves me incredibly weak, hurt, bitter, and debilitated.
    --TCG

* A Cynic's Significant Other

Quot. of the Day:

A spouse is someone you are really nasty to so that you can be halfway nice to the rest of the world. . . .
       --TCG [from a November 1996 journal entry]

Maybe I'm a social eunuch, but I do love my significant bother—er, other!

* RADIO RANT: Crazy English Majors

A new generation of students afraid to write anything but . . . haikus about trees?!Given that the VA Tech murderer was an English major who had previously "distinguished" himself with some highly suspect creative writing, I can imagine—indeed fear—a paranoid "tightening" of policies and procedures in higher education, particular in English/creative writing venues—and a new generation of students afraid to write anything but . . . haikus about trees?! I have read many student writings that walked a border between "sanity" (a problematic term itself) and sociopathy; for some, I recommended counseling (and fancied that, as someone with a background in psychology, too, I talked more than one out of suicide); with others, I trusted my gut instinct that a certain healthy ego strength still ruled the day, and I was generally reassured by these students' subsequent successes. But my main point here is that there is a fine line between the William Blakes and (young) Allen Ginsbergs of the world and the Unabomber. Indeed, I would suspect that these two classes of—uh—eccentrics are practically indistinguishable to the lay public (damned near all of us) until the inevitably retrospective "I told you he'd go off some day." And my concern here, again, is only that positive creative "eccentricity" doesn't become an object of censorship and self-censorship.

Michael Savage was little help in this regard last night [4/18/07], tossing out words like "insane" and "psycho" as if they were current scientific/psychiatric terms. "Mentally ill," the cable-news talking-shrinks' term, I can better stomach, but that catch-all phrase encompasses everything from minor neurotic obsessions to psychoses such as paranoid schizophrenia. In no way does "mental illness" necessarily = "psycho" or "insane." (I'm reminded of a student response from an old Intro to Lit class: "Coleridge must of [sic] been psychotic when he wrote 'Kubla Khan'"!)

However, and characteristically, Savage immediately contradicts his original diagnosis in leaping at one caller's speculations that the killer seemed actually quite "focused" and SANE, and indeed, behaved like a terrorist operative. . . . AH, Savage leads the caller on: Al Qaeda terrorism! YES! Savage then grasps at Cho's use of the name "Ishmael" as some "iconic" reference to Islam. I would more humbly (and more obviously) offer the hypothesis that he was an English major, after all, and was more likely to have learned the mythos of this wanderer/outcast from Herman Melville and other references to the Biblical name in Western literature than from the Koran and/or "Islamo-fascist" propaganda. Once again: every theory is "a species of involuntary and unconscious autobiography" (Nietzsche). And Michael Savage seems less able to get beyond that human-all-too-human limitation than most.

* White Shamans and Plastic Medicine Men

A Native American colleague of mine asked me to check into the bona fides of a certain Don Miguel Ruiz. . . . I began my email to her by saying that the fellow seemed harmless enough—very much in the vein of Castaneda's "Don Juan"—although Ruiz's apparently semi-famous "Four Agreements" didn't strike me as particularly Native, or original, or illuminating. (Well, at least there are four of them!) But other tenets of Ruiz set off alarms in my head, such as his (Native?!) belief in Atlantis and his (no doubt lucrative) classes in "Angel Teaching." Thus I wasn't too surprised to see him on a web-page list of "Books to Avoid about Native Spirituality"—in sum, he's a faker, a member of what Vine Deloria called the "New-Age/medicine man circuit."

Quot. of the Day:

"One who knows [the way] does not speak; one who speaks does not know [the way]."
    --Tao Te Ching

But all of the above means nothing to mainstream culture, apparently, a spiritually bankrupt society always more than ready to grasp in desperation at any new "way" to "salvation," "self-growth," and all that rot. Of course, any book that Oprah Winfrey mentions becomes solid gold: "This book by don Miguel Ruiz, simple yet so powerful, has made a tremendous difference in how I think and act in every encounter." For shame, Oprah (or, as some of my African-American colleagues have called yu'—"Okra"): maybe you know who's "real" on the African-American circuit, but don't let your New Age inclinations completely "color" your notion of who is really "red."

Finally, I'm reminded of a joke that pokes fun, good-naturedly, at Native "spirituality":

Three Indian women go down to Mexico one night to celebrate college graduation. They get drunk and wake up in jail, only to discover that they are to be executed in the morning, though none of them can remember what they did the night before.

The first one, a Lakota woman, is strapped into the electric chair and is asked if she has any last words. She says, "I just graduated from Oglala Lakota College and believe in the almighty power of Wakan Tanka to intervene on behalf of the innocent." They throw the switch and nothing happens. They all immediately fall to the floor on their knees, beg for forgiveness, and release her.

The second one, a Cherokee woman, is strapped in and utters her last words: "I just graduated from the Haskell Indian Nations University, and I believe that the spirits of my ancestors who died along the Trail of Tears will intervene on the part of the innocent." They throw the switch and again, nothing happens. Once more they all fall to their knees, beg for forgiveness, and release her.

The last woman, a Navajo, is strapped in and says, "Well, I'm from Diné College and just graduated with a degree in Electrical Engineering, and I'll tell you right now—you ain't gonna electrocute nobody if you don't plug this thing in."  [anonymous email post; slightly revised by TCG, 2/07]