Humor

Repost-Wednesday Quotation: P.G. Wodehouse

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“You can’t be a successful dictator and design women’s underwear. One or the other. Not both.”

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If you have an hour or so, and you want to read one of the funnier short stories ever written, I recommend Uncle Fred Flits By, by Wodehouse.

I could not find it for free, but you can check out the first few pages at the above link.

Also, this piece discusses some of Wodehouse’s darker characters. There’s a polished musicality and a keen ear that leads to superb comic timing and great depth. It’s farcical and moves along nicely, but also a provides a look at a whole society and generation through the goings-on of a lovable fop.

You don’t have to be Anglo, nor an Anglophile, to appreciate such writing I don’t think.

What a ghastly Youtube still:

***I got nuttin’ these days but reposts. This blog doesn’t pay!

Repost: The Founder Of Peace Pavilion West-The Early Years

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The following is absolutely, 100% true: Dale Lonagan is back in the news, and the usual ‘Cult Leader or Visionary of The Modern Age?’ rumors have resurfaced. I thought I’d add some color to this barely sketched tale of peace and progress (how did The Human Pagoda come to be)?

Not Dale Lonagan!:

218px-jim_jones_receives_the_martin_luther_king2c_jr-_humanitarian_award_-_january_1977_28229By Nancy Wong – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=44427361

The backstory (indoor gamin): Dale Lonagan is the illegitimate child of an international bureaucrat and the climate change journalist sent to cover him. Like so many orphans, Dale’s early life is one of hardship. He was abandoned and neglected, but fortunately for humanity, he was cast adrift within the bosom of collective progress.

The lad learned to survive within the corridors of diffuse economic and unelected bureaucratic power, selling stolen hand-soap at the bathrooms and cafeterias of 405 E. 42nd St.

Aerial view of the United Nations headquarters, New York City

‘O Global child, brilliant and wild, Earth calls before the Fall‘

512px-vincent_van_gogh_-_gamin_au_kc3a9pi_28camille_roulin292c_1888Vincent van Gogh [Public domain]

For years, the boy knew only the touch of linoleum and cold marble, drifting off to sleep to the soft sursurrations of motions passing the floor.  How such bureaucratese might have nested in his brain is anyone’s guess, but I once heard him recite nineteen climate resolutions consecutively from memory.

***How the outside world may have looked to a young wharf child, peering out from within The International Style:

512px-united_nations_-_new_york2c_ny2c_usa_-_august_182c_2015_08Giorgio Galeotti [CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0)], from Wikimedia Commons

‘I’d just grab the gallon bags off a the truck at the loading docks. The 10 gallons were bigger than my head. I’d stash ’em alongside my bed (a bed made of shredded U.N. resolutions). I slept myself the world.’

Enter Marine Stroop-Gruyere, Ambassador Minister Undersecretary for the Culture Of Peace. This committed global citizen noticed a young boy darting and wrapping himself awkwardly within a row of global flags.

He wore no socks, nor shoes, and the flags seemed to keep him warm.

After months of debates within her own heart and mind, she took action. She coaxed the young savage from a translator’s booth with morsels of locally sourced honey graham crackers sold for $13.99 a package. She took young Dale to her bosom. Stroop-Gruyere enrolled Dale in the United Nations Tour Guide Program.

After some months, Dale blossomed, soon becoming the youngest ‘Ambassador to The Public‘ in the history of the institution.

Year after year, watching the gavels lift and drop, seeing the commmittees come and go, a long view developed within this growing visionary leader’s heart and mind. Dale began to see that his thoughts, words and actions could make a difference.

He was becoming fully human.

To Be Continued

Godzilla-Fearing Lizard People Collectively Working Towards Human Goals

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I don’t want to overlook the actual freedoms, innovation, tolerance, and open-mindedness West Coast cities can offer, but, boy, there sure are a lot of fruits, nuts, flakes and dreamers out here.  Across the nation, one wonders about character formation and institutional stability under what I’ll call doctrines of Liberatory Self-Help, and all the ways it can go wrong:

In the meantime, I’ve joined a great new group:  We can be pretty aggressive about recruitment goals, but we’re making progress:

Around Seattle, I’ve heard talk of the Ramtha School Of Enlightenment:

‘Ramtha’s School of Enlightenment (RSE) is an American spiritual sect near the rural town of Yelm, Washington. The school was established in 1988 by JZ Knight, who claims to channel a 35,000-year-old being called Ramtha the Enlightened One.’

Let’s just say if you don’t believe there are lizard-people out there, waiting to remorselessly devour tasty human flesh after the impending and catastrophic eruption of Mt.Rainier, well, buddy, you’re the one with problems.

This stuff is funny until you’re on your own, wandering an unknown road at dusk, just trying to find a source of warmth to regulate your body-temparature for the night:

Dear Reader, this means I may have to leave The Human Pagoda.  Please click through to read about our spiritual and material Leader, raised in the ducts of the United Nations.

—

By all means, please skeptically assess the level of your own skepticism, admitting new knowledge and experience, but with the ol’ bullshit detector constantly running:

Yoram Hozany at The American Mind: ‘Conservative Rationalism Has Failed:

‘In recent decades, American and European elites have devoted themselves to the project of rethinking society from scratch.

What were once linchpin concepts such as family and nation, man and woman, God and Scripture, the honorable and the sacred, have been found wanting and severely damaged, if not overthrown. The resulting void has been filled by new doctrines, until now mostly neo-Marxist or libertarian in character. But a racialist “white identity” politics in a Darwinian key is gathering momentum as well.’

This blog has found much truth in the Oakeshottian critique of rationalism, the Straussian critique of post-Nietzschean modernity, and the post-Kantian, Friesian critique of Left illiberalism.

What the hell is going on here, anyways?  What is a ‘flower crime-scene?’:

If we are coming apart, who’s putting us back together? : Via Youtube: ‘Are We Really Coming Apart?’ Charles Murray and Robert Putnam Discuss…Repost-Charles Murray Lecture At AEI: The Happiness Of People

Related On This Site: Once you take apart the old structure, you have to criticize the meritocracy you’ve helped create: David Brooks At The NY Times: ‘Why Our Elites Stink’

The anti-intellectual’s intellectual: Repost-Via Youtube: Eric Hoffer-’The Passionate State Of Mind’…

Leo Strauss:From Darwinian Conservatism By Larry Arnhart: “Surfing Strauss’s Third Wave of Modernity”

A deeper look at what education “ought” to be, which is remarkably like it is now: A Review Of Martha Nussbaum’s ‘Cultivating Humanity: A Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal Education.

How dare he?: Repost-Revisting Larry Summers: What Did He Say Again?From The Harvard Educational Review-

Still reliving the 60′s?: A Few Thoughts On Robert Bork’s “Slouching Towards Gomorrah”

The classical liberal tradition…looking for classical liberals in the postmodern wilderness: Isaiah Berlin’s negative liberty: A Few Thoughts On Isaiah Berlin’s “Two Concepts Of Liberty”… From George Monbiot: ‘How Freedom Became Tyranny’…Looking to supplant religion as moral source for the laws: From The Reason Archives: ‘Discussing Disgust’ Julian Sanchez Interviews Martha Nussbaum.New liberty away from Hobbes?: From Public Reason: A Discussion Of Gerald Gaus’s Book ‘The Order of Public Reason: A Theory of Freedom And Morality In A Diverse And Bounded World’…Richard Rorty tried to tie postmodernism and trendy leftist solidarity to liberalism, but wasn’t exactly classically liberal: Repost: Another Take On J.S. Mill From “Liberal England”Via Bloggingheads-Helen Andrews On Meritocracy

A Few Passing Thoughts On That Shabby Marxist Preacher On The Edge Of Town

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Plot(s) of the 1st and 2nd ‘Poltergeist’ movies:  A naive surburban family buys a house from greedy speculators who’ve built atop an ancient Indian burial ground.  Horror unfolds as they discover the truth about their home, the past and the supernatural as they must act to protect their innocent daughter.

Later, it turns out the spirits were just wayward souls moving Westward across America, having blindly followed their religious leader into a cave for eternity.  Slowly they rolled a boulder over the only entrance in preparation for the coming End times.

No more sunlight.

Let’s do a quick re-write:  The shabby, itinerant preacher wandering the countryside is actually just a Marxist.  Released from a local university due to recent budget cuts (evil oppressors), his trust fund is nearly gone.  Moving from town to town on the fringes, seeking (P)eople, (M)ankind and (E)quality, [others] don’t seem to want the light he has to bring.  Why can’t they see the material world as it really is?

Critical theory is actually a very valuable tool, [he says].

He knows a lot about art and the avant-garde, (S)cientific progress is coming and in fact his ideas are (S)cientific, too.  Some kids think he’s cool.  Maybe he’ll get into politics.

‘They’ don’t want you to succeed, he says.  Your identity is sacred.  Liberation is next.

The Environmental End Times are nigh!

All the inequality and suffering in the world can be explained by this here doctrine:

Muddy Waters Are No Laughing Matter

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It’s interesting to see where Bernhard Henri-Levy is headed:

On Jeremy Corbyn:

‘He is that “pilgrim of peace” shown in shocking videos, dug up by the British press this summer, meditating at gravesites in Tunis, at least one of which being that of an organizer of the massacre of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics.

He is that easy-going politician who has welcomed as a major donor to his campaign the same Ibrahim Hamami who, after years as a columnist for Hamas’ official newspaper, became an advocate for the knifing of Jews in Israel.’

Andrew Sullivan had a decent piece on Corbyn’s rise through the Labor party in Britain.

It’d be nice if the satirical impulse currently hovering over the safe targets (Christians, corporations, white men) were unleashed upon religious restrictions as found in Islam, the excesses of feminism, or say, a certain shabby, itinerant socialist preacher wandering the global countryside in search of his oppressed People.

It’d be even nicer if a lot of people with relatively [little] meaning in their lives weren’t looking to cartoons, comics and children’s books to be the sole source of meaning.  Or at least, that many ‘thought-leaders’ didn’t end up policing the cartoons, comics and children’s books they once enjoyed and now claim to be sacred and meaningful.

It seems there are taboos, here.

Converting important information channels into ideological echo-chambers is unsurprising given human nature (Twitter), I suppose, but converting laughter into ceaseless ‘explanation,’ artists into ‘celebrities’ and art blurbs into entire careers is a deeper offense.

How do you avoid getting sucked under muddy waters?:

One way is to go in the direction of nihilism, or the freely associative, and surrealistic:

That, too, has its dangers.

Perhaps we simply aren’t ready for Henri-Levy’s more libertine, radical, French liberalism, which he displayed by coming over in the spirit of Tocqueville and pissing on the sides of our highways.   Why, he even helped Obama and Hillary Clinton pursue a course of action in Libya.

As previously posted:

-Daniel Dennett: ‘Postmodernism And Truth’

–Repost-‘Roger Scruton In The City Journal: Cities For Living–Is Modernism Dead?’

–Land Art Links Along A With A Quite Modernist W.S. Merwin Poem

–William Logan At The New Criterion: ‘Pound’s Metro’…Monday Poem: ‘A Pact’ By Ezra Pound

More On Nietzsche’s influence-Part of Bryan Magee’s series:

Nietzsche directed his thought against Christian morality, secular morality (Kantian and utilitarian), was quite anti-democratic, and anti-Socratic Greek (the beginning of the end).

Quote found here at friesian.com (recovering Kantian idealism and moving in a libertarian direction):

‘Oddly enough, it is the intellctual snobbery and elitism of many of the literati that politically correct egalitarianism appeals to; their partiality to literary Marxism is based not on its economic theory but on its hostility to business and the middle class. The character of this anti-bourgeois sentiment therefore has more in common with its origin in aristocratic disdain for the lower orders than with egalitarianism.’

Related: From Darwinian Conservatism: Nietzsche-Aristocratic Radical or Aristocratic Liberal?

A Few Thoughts On The Stanford Encyclopedia Of Philosophy Entry: Nietzsche’s Moral And Political Philosophy..A Few Thoughts On Allan Bloom–The Nietzsche Connection…

Dinesh D’Souza And Daniel Dennett at Tufts University: Nietzsche’s Prophesy

Youtube-‘Week 2 Leo Strauss-The Three Waves Of Modernity’..From The Selected Writings By And About George Anastaplo: ‘Reason and Revelation: On Leo Strauss’

The classical liberal tradition…looking for classical liberals in the postmodern wilderness: Isaiah Berlin’s negative liberty: A Few Thoughts On Isaiah Berlin’s “Two Concepts Of Liberty”… From George Monbiot: ‘How Freedom Became Tyranny’…Looking to supplant religion as moral source for the laws: From The Reason Archives: ‘Discussing Disgust’ Julian Sanchez Interviews Martha Nussbaum.…

Recycled Humorous Links For Your Enjoyment

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–Sweet van

–Zombo.com. You won’t know unless you click.

–Who reads the newspapers?

–Still the funniest one, I think.

-Via David Thompson, if you don’t have time to watch Gymkata, this is the next best thing.

-Click here to experience ‘The Gobbler.‘

‘If you’re ever wondering what the War Room of “Dr. Strangelove” would look like if the movie had been directed by Prince, here you go.’

–

‘Think Foreigner’s ‘Eye Of The Tiger’ meets a standard Journey/Eddie Money-esque power rock ballad, chock full of all the standard cliches: ‘highest fever’ ‘roll the dice’ ”new horizon’ brand new start’ ‘hit the right spot‘

All of this tacked onto the end of Schwarzenegger’s pure uncut 80’s sci-fi action thriller…

Almost too much to bear.

Thanks, readers:

 

Monday Poem-Ogden Nash: The Purist

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The Purist 

I give you now Professor Twist,
A conscientious scientist,
Trustees exclaimed, “He never bungles!”
And sent him off to distant jungles.
Camped on a tropic riverside,
One day he missed his loving bride.
She had, the guide informed him later,
Been eaten by an alligator.
Professor Twist could not but smile.
“You mean,” he said, “a crocodile.”

–Ogden Nash

Update And Repost-Death & Tax Credits-From The Observer: ‘New York May Become First State To Incentivize Diversity In Writers’ Rooms’

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Egads, New York

Egads, New York:

Update: A7373 here and S 5370 here.  Both have passed the NY Senate And Assembly.

‘Well, thanks to two new bills currently gaining traction in Albany’s assembly and senate, New York may become the first state to incentivize adding diversity to a production’s writing staff.

The bills, A47373 and S 5370, would modify the existing production state tax credit, so that certain New York writing income would qualify as an eligible expense.  A company would have to employ women or people of color, and a portion of their New York salaries would qualify for the credit, which hasn’t been the case previously.  It’s capped at $50,000 per writer, and an overall expenditure of $3.5 million a year.’

So will writers’ rooms have to send-in photos every quarter, or a list of diverse-sounding names to ensure they’re receiving the credit?

Will there be surprise, on-site inspections with a potential room full of white guys fleeing like cockroaches?

On that note, via The Federalist, ‘Get Ready For Racial Quotas In Your Neighborhood:’

Play nice, children:

‘HUD intends to insert itself into local zoning efforts through the AFFH (Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing) program to push affirmative action in housing policy, directing HUD grant recipients to “affirmatively further the Act’s goals of promoting fair housing and equal opportunity.’

You will play nice.  Now, who isn’t playing nice?

Seriously, who?  Where do they live?

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Related On This Site: $8 cheeseburgers, operating losses and writers: From The New Yorker: ‘Writing Powered By Amtrak’

Repost-From Poemshape: ‘Let Poetry Die’

Ken Burns makes a good documentary, but he’s also arguing he absolutely needs your tax dollars in service of what he assumes to be a shared definition of the “common good” as he pursues that art.  The market just can’t support it otherwise. Repost-From ReasonTV Via Youtube: ‘Ken Burns on PBS Funding, Being a “Yellow-Dog Democrat,” & Missing Walter Cronkite’…From NPR: Grants To The NEA To Stimulate The Economy?…We’re already mixing art and politics, so…
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Here’s a suggestion to keep aesthetic and political judgements apart-Roger Scruton In The American Spectator Via A & L Daily: Farewell To Judgment…

From 2 Blowhards-We Need The Arts: A Sob Story…

 From Big Hollywood: ‘The National Endowment For The Art Of Persuasion?’

A museum industrial complex…more complexes…who are the people museums should be serving? James Panero At The New Criterion: ‘Time to Free NY’s Museums: The Met Responds’

Via Reason: ‘Salvador Allende’s Cybersocialist Command Center’

Two Monday Links On Nudging-No, You’re Going To Do What We Say

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NPR via Althouse ‘It Takes More Than A Produce Aisle To Refresh A Food Desert‘

How can you be against the ‘community?’

‘Alex Ortega, a public health researcher at the University of California, Los Angeles, agrees that providing access to nutritious food is only the first step.

“The next part of the intervention is to create demand,” he says, “so the community wants to come to the store and buy healthy fruits and vegetables and go home and prepare those foods in a healthy way, without lots of fat, salt or sugar.”

Dear Reader, I invite you to please indulge my fancy.  Below is an excerpted scene from my hit play Quinoa, Community, Cancer & You-How To Be Good & Healthy For the 21st Century:

Intern–Mr. Ortega, sir, the numbers aren’t…the numbers aren’t what we were hoping for.

AO–It’s ok, Andrea, let’s have a look.  This happens every month (rustling of papers…the audible ticking of the clock on the wall…a door closes sharply down the hall)

AO–I see then. I see. Who did the research here?  Who put this report together? (Ortega brings a heavy laborer’s hand to his brow and stares at his desk)

Intern–An independent firm, sir, but I did some research on HealthWebPlusNet.Gov and it says they’re affiliated with Community Interests & The General Will, same as us.  I don’t recognize no names on there.

AO-Do I know any of them?

Intern–I don’t think so, sir.  I haven’t seen them ever.

AO-Well, I’m not understanding then.  We’re getting great feedback on that quinoa recipe drop over Food Desert 2 last week.  I did a walkthrough over there on Tuesday. People seemed happy.

Intern-I know sir, I know. I hear those recipes are really good.  My auntie collects them all. They’re really great.

AO-And all the price-allocation dials are still turned to 11?

Intern-Of course, Mr. Ortega, of course.

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That’s just a teaser, folks.  There’s more where that came from.  But now onto the People’s Green Front, somewhere between science and ideology: Maria Konnikova At The New Yorker: ‘Hot Heads In Cold Weather‘

Capstick & Pidgeon?:

‘A slight change in presentation, however, may shift attitudes in the direction of climate science and away from the vicissitudes of local weather. A study out this month, from the Cardiff University psychologists Stuart Capstick and Nicholas Pidgeon, found that periods of exceptionally cold weather in the United Kingdom had the opposite effect as they did in the United States: more people believed in the truth of climate change. The reason for the difference? The media had framed the weather within the context of climate change, emphasizing that it was unnatural, rather than simply cold. Perhaps if people here were told that it’s not just brutal out there, it’s unnaturally brutal, they, too, might jump to a different conclusion.’

If you can’t think for yourself, there are plenty of people to do it for you.

The right people, of course, with all the right ideas, policies, and knowledge.

Related On This Site:  Sunstein’s got to create some space between the Bloomberg backlash and the totalitarians on the Left: Daddy’s Gonna Make You Do It…Cass Sunstein At The New Republic: ‘Why Paternalism Is Your Friend’

Kant is a major influence on libertarians, from Ayn Rand’s Objectivism to Robert Nozick’s ‘night-watchman’ state:  A Few Thoughts On Robert Nozick’s “Anarchy, State and Utopia”…Link To An Ayn Rand Paper: The Objectivist Attack On Kant: Repost-Youtube Via Libertarianism.Org-David Friedman: ‘The Machinery Of Freedom’…Anarcho-capitalism:  Pro-market, anti-state, anti-war…paleo-libertarian: Link To Lew Rockwell Via A Reader…

Anarcho-syndicalist, libertarian socialist and sometime blind supporter of lefty causes:  Via Youtube: (1 of 3) Kant, Chomsky and the Problem of Knowledge…

New liberty away from Hobbes…toward Hayek…but can you see Locke from there?: Repost-From Public Reason: A Discussion Of Gerald Gaus’s Book ‘The Order of Public Reason: A Theory of Freedom And Morality In A Diverse And Bounded World’

Richard Rorty tried to tie postmodernism and trendy leftist solidarity to liberalism:  Repost: Another Take On J.S. Mill From “Liberal England”

Catholic libertarianism: Youtube Via Reason TV-Judge Napolitano ‘Why Taxation is Theft, Abortion is Murder, & Government is Dangerous’

The classical liberal tradition…looking for classical liberals in the postmodern wilderness: Isaiah Berlin’s negative liberty: A Few Thoughts On Isaiah Berlin’s “Two Concepts Of Liberty”… From George Monbiot: ‘How Freedom Became Tyranny’…Looking to supplant religion as moral source for the laws: From The Reason Archives: ‘Discussing Disgust’ Julian Sanchez Interviews Martha Nussbaum.New liberty away from Hobbes?: From Public Reason: A Discussion Of Gerald Gaus’s Book ‘The Order of Public Reason: A Theory of Freedom And Morality In A Diverse And Bounded World’…Richard Rorty tried to tie postmodernism and leftist solidarity to liberalism, but wasn’t exactly classically liberal:  Repost: Another Take On J.S. Mill From “Liberal England”