Sarin-dipity

Shoko Asahara (née Chizuo Matsumoto), former leader of the Aum Shinrikyo doomsday cult, has himself been doomed by a Japanese court for his part in two nerve gas attacks in 1994 and 1995 that killed a total of 27 people and injured nearly 5,500.
-- Posted 12:20:00 AM by Paul Hrissikopoulos

Yay!: Could the SoCal supermarket strike be nearing an end after 4 1/2 long months? Perhaps I'll soon be able to step foot back in my favorite Albertson's with the BofA ATM and no goddamned f**king club cards! Fingers crossed.
-- Posted 10:02:00 PM by Paul Hrissikopoulos

Woman Refuses Televised Proposal:



-- Posted 12:54:00 AM by Paul Hrissikopoulos

The Little Demon

What has been talked about here -- the instinctive compulsions that nature has instituted to assure the preservation and proliferation of the human species -- constitutes what could be called the demonic side of human nature. And these are not the only examples of it. Others could have been mentioned. There are, for example, the tragic tensions of those -- the artists, the composers, the poets -- who lose themselves in the creative cultivation of beauty and are torn away from all successful adjustment to the mundane necessities of life. There comes a point, in fact, where beauty, for its reckless devotees, becomes the advocate of death against life.

There are, in any case, few persons who are not touched by one or another of the manifestations of this demonic dimension of human nature and experience. Essentially untamed and unruly, it assumes a multitude of forms, varying with every person. I like to picture it as a little demon companion, in attendance on every civilized person: sometimes representing the sexual urge, at other times the ego's endless search for reassurance, but always constant and persistent, always at hand with outrageous and sometimes positively indecent suggestions, determined to mess up the even tenor of one's life wherever it can, a major nuisance or a minor one, depending on circumstances and on the level of resistance it encounters, but seldom, if ever, to be wholly shaken off. Locked out at the front door, it comes in at the back one or through the window. And if all these entries be closed to it, it presents itself in a variety of the most ingenious and inviting disguises.

People do better or worse in contending with this troublesome little companion: in rejecting its suggestions or, when they cannot be wholly resisted, in concealing the effects of them. There are some who do very well indeed in this last respect, putting on a bold front of serene independence, as though they had all the circumstances of their lives, thank you, well under control.

One would do well not to be too easily misled by those impressive displays of total personal autonomy. There are few who have not, at one time or another, had to do battle with the little troublemaker, and if there is at the moment no outward evidence of its being a factor in their lives, don't worry: you may be sure it has been there in the past, or soon will be...

George F. Kennan,
Around the Cragged Hill
-- Posted 6:21:00 PM by Paul Hrissikopoulos

Around the Cragged Hill

And thanks to oxblog for reminding me to wish a belated 100th birthday to the great George F. Kennan, author of the famous and eerily prescient "X" article and overall victor in the arena of life. I have no doubt his next hundred years will put the first to shame.
-- Posted 6:00:00 PM by Paul Hrissikopoulos

I repeat

Sooner or later, Europe and America are going to realize that they're on the same team. And the sooner they do, the better.
-- Posted 5:47:00 PM by Paul Hrissikopoulos

Friedrich, you ignorant slut

Joel Veitch offers Nietzsche an eloquent rebuttal. And while we're here, this is eerily similar to a dream that I had just last night. Rumblings of Fate? Always in motion, the future is...
-- Posted 5:28:00 PM by Paul Hrissikopoulos

On Immaculate Perception

When the moon rose yesterday I fancied that she wanted to give birth to a sun: so broad and pregnant she lay on the horizon. But she lied to me with her pregnancy; and I should sooner believe in the man in the moon than in the woman.

Indeed, he is not much of a man either, this shy nocturnal enthusiast. Verily, with a bad conscience he passes over the roofs. For he is lecherous and jealous, the monk in the moon, lecherous after the earth and all the joys of lovers.

No, I do not like him, this tomcat on the roofs! I loathe all that crawl about half-closed windows! Piously and silently he passes over carpets of starts; but I do not like softly treading men's feet, on which no spur jingles. The step of everything honest speaks; but the cat steals over the ground. Behold, like a cat the moon comes along, dishonestly.

This parable I offer you, sentimental hypocrites, you who are "pure perceivers." I call you -- lechers.

You too love the earth and the earthy: I have seen through you; but there is shame in your love, and bad conscience -- you are like the moon. Your spirit has been persuaded to despise the earthly; but your gut has not been persuaded, and it is what is strongest in you. And now your spirit is ashamed at having given in to your gut, and, to hide from its shame, it sneaks on furtive and lying paths.

"This would be the highest to my mind" -- thus says your lying spirit to itself -- "to look at life without desire and not, like a dog, with my tounge hanging out. To be happy in looking, with a will that has died and without the grasping and greed of selfishness, the whole body cold and ashen, but with drunken moon eyes. This I should like best" -- thus the seduced seduces himself -- "to love the earth as the moon loves her, and to touch her beauty only with my eyes. And this is what the immaculate perception of all things shall mean to me: that I want nothing from them, except to be allowed to lie prostrate before them like a mirror with a hundred eyes."

O you sentimental hypocrites, you lechers! You lack innocence in your desire and therefore you slander all desire. Verily, it is not as creators, procreators, and those who have joy in becoming that you love the earth. Where is innocence? Where there is a will to procreate. And he who wants to create beyond himself has the purest will.

Where is beauty? Where I must will with all my will; where I want to love and persih that an image may not remain a mere image. Loving and perishing: that has rhymed for eternities. The will to love, that is to be willing also to die. Thus I speak to you cowards!

But now your emasculated leers wish to be called "contemplation." And that which permits itself to be touched by cowardly glances you would baptize "beautiful." How you soil noble names!

But this shall be your curse, you who are immaculate, you pure perceivers, that you shall never give birth, even if you lie broad and pregnant on the horizon. Verily, you fill your mouth with noble words; and are we to believe that you heart is overflowing, you liars? But my words are small, despised, crooked words: gladly I pick up what falls under the table at your meals. I can still use it to tell hypocrites the truth. Indeed, my fishbones, clamshells, and thorny leaves shall tickle the noses of hypocrites. Bad air always surrounds you and your meals: for your lecherous thoughts, your lies and secrets, are in the air. Would that you dared to believe yourselves -- yourselves and your guts. Whoever does not believe himself always lies.

Behind a god's mask you hide from yourselves, in your "purity"; your revolting worm has crawled into a god's mask. Verily, you deceive with your "contemplation." Zarathustra too was once fooled by your godlike skins and did not realize that they were stuffed with snakes' coils. I once fancied that I saw a god's soul at play in your play, you pure perceivers. No better art I once fancied than your arts. Snakes' filth and bad odors were concealed from me by the distance, and that the cunning of a lizard was crawling around lecherously.

But I came close to you, and the day dawned on me, and now it dawns on you too; the moon's love has come to an end. Look there! Caught and pale he stands there, confronted by the dawn. For already she approaches, glowing; her love for the earth approaches. All solar love is innocence and creative longing.

Look there: how she approaches impatiently over the sea. Do you not feel the thirst and the hot breath of her love? She would suck at the sea and drink its depth into her heights; and the sea's desire rises toward her with a thousand breasts. It wants to be kissed and sucked by the thirst of the sun; it wants to become air and height and a footpath of light, and itself light.

Verily, like the sun I love life and all deep seas. And this is what perceptive knowledge means to me: all that is deep shall rise up to my heights.

Thus spoke Zarathustra.

Friedrich Nietzsche,
Thus Spoke Zarathustra
-- Posted 3:48:00 PM by Paul Hrissikopoulos

L'opportuniste

I did witness this exchange last night during the Wisconsin primary coverage on MSNBC, in which Teamsters Union president James Hoffa mentioned that John Kerry had promised in a private meeting to "drill all over the United States" for oil because it would create union jobs. I must say that Mr. Hoffa seemed pretty serious to me. Chris Matthews' jaw almost hit the floor, too. I'm telling you again Democrats: give me Edwards or I'll give you Bush.
-- Posted 4:27:00 PM by Paul Hrissikopoulos

For shame deny that thou bear'st love to any,
Who for thy self art so unprovident.
Grant, if thou wilt, thou art beloved of many,
But that thou none lov'st is most evident:
For thou art so possessed with murderous hate,
That 'gainst thy self thou stick'st not to conspire,
Seeking that beauteous roof to ruinate
Which to repair should be thy chief desire.
O! change thy thought, that I may change my mind:
Shall hate be fairer lodged than gentle love?
Be, as thy presence is, gracious and kind,
Or to thyself at least kind-hearted prove:
Make thee another self for love of me,
That beauty still may live in thine or thee.

William Shakespeare,
Sonnet X
-- Posted 3:43:00 AM by Paul Hrissikopoulos

Is it for fear to wet a widow's eye,
That thou consum'st thy self in single life?
Ah! if thou issueless shalt hap to die,
The world will wail thee like a makeless wife;
The world will be thy widow and still weep
That thou no form of thee hast left behind,
When every private widow well may keep
By children's eyes, her husband's shape in mind:
Look what an unthrift in the world doth spend
Shifts but his place, for still the world enjoys it;
But beauty's waste hath in the world an end,
And kept unused the user so destroys it.
No love toward others in that bosom sits
That on himself such murd'rous shame commits.

William Shakespeare,
Sonnet IX
-- Posted 3:06:00 AM by Paul Hrissikopoulos

Lighten up, François:Triumph the Insult Comic Dog does it again! I'm sorry, but if you can't take a brutal shanking from Triumph with a smile, then you need to go back and work on it. Triumph is the one of the Modern Media's greatest works of genius precisely because he is such a pure little Forbidden Planet id monster -- you can almost hear Robert Smigel thinking to himself "oh, fuck... why am I saying this?!" as he shouts out his agonized, ecstatic "Yhhhheeeeessss!" Not to mention, when Triumph insults you, at least he has the cajones to do it to your face, unlike the cowardly insult puppets of lesser nations.

Anyway, pissing off self-important poseurs can be a full-time occupation in this world, and I've no doubt that we've got the right dog on the job. Happily, not everybody publicly confirms their jackassery when confronted with Triumph's caustic wit. NPR passed the test, much to my pleasant surprise. Terry Gross even snorted. Now I listen to Fresh Air every day.

Well, I shouldn't get too down on the humorless Canadian government. Must be hard living with a stick so far up one's ass that it scratches one's tonsils. It all reminds me of what a wise college roommate once said with a slow, sad, disapproving shake of the head when I told him I was thinking about visiting Quebec instead of France: "All of the attitude, none of the scenery."

UPDATE: Yhheeess! Yhhhhheeeeesss! An online treasure trove of Triumph video clips! My face still hurts from watching the "Star Wars" one.
-- Posted 4:19:00 PM by Paul Hrissikopoulos

Heigh-ho, alas and also lackaday

The Economist has more on the biochemistry of love. Are we not approaching a state of Wilsonian consilience when a scientist can look at her data and state: "We were built not to be happy but to reproduce"...? So here's a shout out to all of you women who fucked up my "love map". May you live unusually long lives filled with emotional torment and uncomfortable but non-life-threatening diseases.
-- Posted 3:27:00 PM by Paul Hrissikopoulos

Job creation... for politicians!

Have we had enough of the fearmongering about outsourcing yet? Convenient how these things always happen to become giant, apocalyptic crises only during election years. I remember hearing about software jobs going to India when I first jumped into the programming job market ten years ago -- why the sudden panic? Funny, I thought it was a hell-crazy tech bubble burst that threw the techies onto the dole, not Indian outsourcing. But hey -- scapegoating foreigners has always been good politics. What can I say -- it works!

And to you protectionist, anti-globalization lefties: why are you against the global redistribution of wealth? You know, if national economies keep growing, and they keep shifting out jobs to poor countries, then eventually they'll run out of poor countries... right? And thence shall commence the age of the tight global labor market. Now that sounds like a Workers' Paradise to me! Of course, it demands a little sacrifice from us "haves" in the here and now, but we're all ready to throw down for the Human Cause... right? No? Then may I posit that either:

a) You sided with some lame, pie-in-the-sky socioeconomic model, and now can't get over your bruised ego after seeing its wheels come off at the first whiff of human nature, while at the same time your bourgeois arch-nemesis is actually succeeding in slowly rescuing the world from poverty with a grittier, sweatier machination based on a more realistic assessment of said human nature... or...

b) Your stated political beliefs are but a flimsy facade whose only real purpose is to hide away your true self-interested self, allowing you to feel smug and pure as you lounge around the sidewalk cafe and poke food into your face while innocents starve elsewhere on the globe, because gosh -- you'd help if you could, but evil capitalists won't let you save the world!

Now, now -- don't get your panties in a twist. I get pissy at the hypocritical righties too, who get all hard and sexy while proselytizing the virtues of free trade -- when it happens to fatten their pocketbooks -- but then turn into petulant, sobbing cry-babies when they suddenly find themselves having to follow their own advice about "changing in a changing world." Again, I sympathize -- it's human nature to see life as a story in which you are the main character, and so when misfortune befalls you then -- well -- it must be the end of the world! But some friendly advice from one layoff to another: stop whining and go get another f'ing job!

Meanwhile, the politicians vote themselves a pay raise and shift the scare machine into high gear... but who's complaining? The election year fear coaster beats the Hell out of anything in the Six Flags inventory. And you didn't even have to stand in line...

UPDATE: Jeff Jarvis has more thoughts on the politicians' favorite shepherd's crook.
-- Posted 1:33:00 PM by Paul Hrissikopoulos

It's not your daddy's gay bar

Since nobody seems to be saying anything about Andrew Sullivan's appearance on Real Time with Bill Maher Friday last, I guess I'll just have to do it myself.

I had quite a good time watching it, though I wish someone had taken Carol Moseley Braun to task for what seemed to me to be some rather Orwellian abuse of the word "Orwellian". And was it just me, or could you hear the *splunk* of cognitive dissonance when the Everyone-Who-Doesn't-Parrot-The-Democratic-Party-Line-Must-Be-Rush-Limbaugh audience finally figured out Mr. Sullivan was actually gay? "Omigod! He's gay?????? And he supported the war?" That's right, kids! Homosexuality isn't just for dogmatic left-wing jingo-jockeys anymore! Most shocking!

And then, as if to compound the poor darlings' confusion, he immediately wheeled around and attacked Republicans for openly wanting homosexuals to simply "not exist", and did so with such passion and precision that it actually brought tears to my eyes. I have to say one thing about the Massachusetts high court's ruling on gay marriage -- I think that those who are so hot to trot about fusing church and state are finally getting their comeuppance. Perhaps now they'll realize that strong-arming their precious religious traditions into law will not necessarily "church up" the government, but may backfire and result in the secularization of their sacred rituals instead. The lesson is simple: if you don't want people monkeying with your shit, stop cramming it down their throats. I happen to have tremendous respect for religion and a profound appreciation for the amazing efficacy with which it can bring clarity and balance to the conscience and consciousness of its practitioners -- which is precisely the reason I would want it kept away from the politics of official government codification. As for civil unions, perhaps kin to the PACS of France -- I thought we had already learnt our lesson about "separate but equal" in this country. Apparently not.

Anyway, it was a good show. I hope to see all of the guests on the panel return.
-- Posted 4:45:00 PM by Paul Hrissikopoulos

Closer to Me

Aussie chanteuse and personal monolith Olivia Newton-John will be performing at ECPAC, El Cajon's performing arts center/county jail, on February 16th. At long last, my first crush will be getting physical on a stage that I myself twice graced as a young violinist back in my Jr. High School days! It also happens to be the place where I once most dishonorably ditched out on a performance of La Bohème, the penance for which will finally be paid later this month. It's a small world after all...
-- Posted 1:21:00 AM by Paul Hrissikopoulos

Kerry sweeps Michigan and Washington State:


-- Posted 9:58:00 PM by Paul Hrissikopoulos

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain:




-- Posted 4:34:00 PM by Paul Hrissikopoulos

The Economist

"Let the dollar drop."
-- Posted 2:36:00 PM by Paul Hrissikopoulos

Gardyloo!

The Ratchet of Progress slips a notch or two. (via: d,ox)
-- Posted 12:44:00 PM by Paul Hrissikopoulos

Kerry is so very

...typical. *sniff*... *sniff sniff* Ah, that noxious excrement-like smell can only mean one thing -- it's election time again! Has it already been four years since I had the somewhat dubious honor of working for the McCain 2000 campaign? Wonderful, motivated, good-natured, can-do people they were -- eager to stem the tide of sewer money in American politics. Unfortunately, once somebody in W's camp got a hold of our volunteer e-mail address list, we all had to put up with the bizarre, threatening, obscenity-laced PsyOp-like emails sent by the Bushies (via disposable, anonymous accounts of course) in an attempt to demoralize us naïve dreamers. Sticks and stones, I always say. It was, however, my first glimpse into the seedier side of politics -- a place where people actually froth at the mouth and get denim-busting erections while brainstorming up ways to inflict suffering upon their opponents.

I was there -- at the Pacific Design Center in Los Angeles -- Super Tuesday last, the night Bush crushed our campaign like a tin can. And I was not far away when a tired, irritated Senator McCain almost bitch slapped Maria Shriver on national television. I'd be lying if I said it wasn't a bitter moment for me, too. But then that's politics. Enter the arena at your own peril.

So it should be obvious that my support for the liberation of Iraq does not stem from any special love for the Bush/Cheney ticket. For me, Saddam was a bad, bad man responsible for a million-plus deaths and counting, and after failing the Iraqi people on a couple of notable occasions in the past, perhaps we owed them a little more than lip service and well-wishes. But as I said from the start, the dethroning of Saddam was primarily about upholding international law. The anti-war Left's argument about some imminent WMD threat being the reason for going in is disingenuous (or misinformed), as I clearly remember that the violated Gulf War ceasefire, the 12 years of endless tit-for-tat carnage in the No Fly Zones, and the 17 flouted UN Security Council resolutions all figured prominently in the decision to go to war... or rather, to finally end it.

But what if the election-year WMD propaganda actually sticks, and Bush decides to alienate those of us who were trying to give him the benefit of the doubt (lest we find ourselves guilty of the same kind of irrational hatred and witchhuntery leveled at Bill Clinton in his tenure by many on the Right) -- well, don't expect me to take it too hard. Even now, I can almost see myself accepting the somewhat Sorosian notion that Bush has fulfilled his destiny, and is now to be scapegoated and sacrificed for the good of a reunited West. Not exactly fair, I admit -- but since when have politics been fair? Certainly not four years ago. Anyway, isn't a public servant's true allegiance to the Greater Good? I suppose I agree with Sam Huntington that an integrated West is the only way for core Western individualist values to survive and thrive in the 21st Century and beyond. Sooner or later, as other great civilizations rise in this world, Europe and America are going to realize that they're on the same team. And the sooner they do, the better.

Yes, I suspect history will be kind to George W. Bush. And, to the chorus of rolling eyes and gasps from my Lefty friends, I believe it is even possible that he might be credited by future generations as the man whose actions brought about the beginning of the end of the thousand-year schism opened by the Crusades. Scoff if you must, but time is a strange and inscrutable thing -- particularly to us dumb, hairless monkeys. No Merlins, we.

Nevertheless, I take my vote seriously and I have a duty to the here and now. And, frankly, there is more to American politics than Iraq. And if both sides force me into choosing between crappy and crappier, then chose I will...
-- Posted 3:20:00 PM by Paul Hrissikopoulos

Kinder über alles

One of the few advantages of being a repulsive, monastic, antisocial hermit/loser is the certitude that I'll never be responsible for an unwanted child. Or so you'd think. But thanks to evil California bureaucrats, I may be a deadbeat dad yet. (via Glenn Reynolds)
-- Posted 10:38:00 AM by Paul Hrissikopoulos

Alright... alright alright alright! I'll enable my RSS feed! Geeze

There. Like anyone reads this thing. For you other Blogspot minions who want to get in on the craze, complete instructions (and some helpful Blogspot-specific template tags) can be found here.
-- Posted 10:28:00 AM by Paul Hrissikopoulos