Does it Make YOU More Powerful?

507 (Spring-Fall 1887)

The valuation "I believe that this and that is so" as the essence of "truth." In valuations are expressed conditions of preservation and growth. All our organs of knowledge and our senses are developed only with regard to conditions of preservation and growth. Trust in reason and its categories, in dialectic, therefore the valuation of logic, proves only their usefulness for life, proved by experience--not that something is true.

That a great deal of belief must be present; that judgments may be ventured; that doubt concerning all essential values is lacking--that is the precondition of every living thing and its life. Therefore, what is needed is that something must be held to be true--not that something is true.

"The real and the apparent world"--I have traced this antithesis back to value relations. We have projected the conditions of our preservation as predicates of being in general. Because we have to be stable in our beliefs if we are to prosper, we have made the "real" world a world not of change and becoming, but one of being.

--Nietzsche, WtP

Shrek, The Musical

So I saw Shrek, The Musical, last night. It carried the same story line as the original cartoon, but was laced with a whole bunch of different jokes, gags, and of course, there was the music as well. The overall message in musical morals I got were:

1) If you're a girl waiting for your Prince, you'll have to "settle" and adapt to him.
2) If you're a "freak", that's a good thing. People will eventually learn to love you for who you are.
3) Beware of people who try and make everyone the same (more like them - ie. - short like Lord Farquaad - [btw- the 'r' in Farquadd is silent].
4) Whoever has the hardest childhood upbringing, automatically gains moral superiority and is designated the better person.
5) If you kiss him, you'll end up looking like your one true love (an ogre, most likely).

I guess I mostly agree with musical moral #5. The rest of the musical morals.... you can keep. The show was "entertaining" though.

And thinking a little more about how this fairy tale compares with others I've heard in the ever more distant, yet strangely recent past, I wonder whatever happened to those vintage princess and the frog stories where the frog aspires to be a Prince or Cinderella longs to become a more "Charming" Princess? I used to like those stories and their values a LOT better. And what happened to all those witches enchanting and casting spells on everybody? Did they ALL give up their broomsticks and kettles and turn Broadway and/or Hollywood producer?

Which brings me to previously omitted musical moral #6:

6) Our Fairy Tales need updating.

Hmmmm... that almost sounds like an attempted violation of moral #3 to me. I mean, there is a certain sameness in "universal difference", isn't there? But then, I've been down that universal "tolerance", universal "non-discrimination" road before. Of course, I was less than 6 months old at the time and couldn't tell the difference between my mother and anybody else in the room and I certainly wasn't really very concerned in finding the answers to the following pertinent questions, like "Who's going to change my diaper? Wah-h-h-h-h-h! Who's going to feed me? Wah-h-h-h-h-h!" cuz it kinda magically happened. But does anybody really believe that any Hollywood/Broadway producer types would "step up" and change my didee if I cried loud enough? I guess that's why they call them "Fairy Tales". For/with the Hollywood/Broadway crowd, teaching people about "real" responsibility is always "someone else's" problem. Maybe that why they call it "entertainment".

Shrek, the Musical. It's a fairy tale one should LOVE to hear/tell about, but one should never "kiss", (see musical moral #5). ;)

Sapophian Muses

...and other risk free but entertaining perversions

"Just don't get caught!"
...said the Candyman looking to harvest low fruit.

"What? You search? You would multiply yourself by ten, by a hundred? You seek followers? Seek zeros!"

-- Nietzsche

What, you seek "higher fruit"?

My tale, Socrates, is one of your sort, for love was the theme which occupied us – love after a fashion: Lysias has been writing about a fair youth who was being tempted, but not by a lover; and this was the point: he ingeniously proved that the non-lover should be accepted rather than the lover.

--Plato, "Phaedrus"

Then one needs to learn how to harness their own horses as Pythodoras did and then fit them with new bits and bridles. Else they'll NEVER be heard by Antiphon and thereby reach Cephalus. ;)

Vendetta... farfala vendetta! ;)

Wallowing in My Own Crapulence

Return to Childhood

The Early Years

Here I begin to sing
In time with viguela
of a man who reveals
an extraordinary sorrow
like a solitary bird
consoles himself with a song

The holy saints are coming
They all come to help me
when my tongue is tied
and my vision is troubled
I beg my God to assist me
and this time he helps

Here I begin to sing
In time with viguela
of a man who reveals
an extraordinary sorrow
like a solitary bird
consoles himself with a song

....or not

To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them?-- Shakespeare, "Hamlet"

Crutching Your Own Solutions

Salvador Dali (1904-89)
Soft Self-Portrait with Fried Bacon
Dali himself -- Modern Art Surrealist Master Painter -- styles his self-portrait as "an anti-psychological self-portrait, instead of painting the soul, or the inner of one-self, to paint solely the appearance, the cover, my soul's glove. This glove of my soul can be eaten and is even a little sharp, like high-bred game; therefor ants appear together with the fried bacon. As the most generous of all painters I continuously offer myself as food and thus give our era the most delicious delicacies."