Saturday, December 31, 2016

Rene Magritte

???(19??)
Empty Mask (1928)
On the Threshold of Liberty (1937)
The Annunciation (1930)

Thursday, December 29, 2016

Stringed

I don't know
I don't know anything
If you ask me a question
I give you a blank stare
That's your answer

I don't know how I feel
Its a dead end
Im not sure if I feel anything
It doesn't seem like it.

I don't know where I am
I think I'm at my house
But its at a distance
Is that weird?
Who knows

I don't know myself
Am I lossing myself?
Who knows
Maybe this is me.
- Elizabeth Shadows, "I don't know?

Friday, December 16, 2016

The Lodovico Technique...

LODOVICO:

[To IAGO] O Spartan dog,
More fell than anguish, hunger, or the sea!
Look on the tragic loading of this bed;
This is thy work: the object poisons sight;
Let it be hid. Gratiano, keep the house,
And seize upon the fortunes of the Moor,
For they succeed on you. To you, lord governor,
Remains the censure of this hellish villain;
The time, the place, the torture: O, enforce it!
Myself will straight aboard: and to the state
This heavy act with heavy heart relate.
-W. Shakespeare, "Othello" (Act V, Sc. II)

Thursday, December 15, 2016

We're Not Worthy...

ὃς μὲν ἀπηνής αὐτὸς ἔῃ καὶ ἀπηνέα εἰδῇ,
τῷ δὲ καταρῶνται πάντες βροτοὶ ἄλγε᾽ ὀπίσσω
ζωῷ, ἀτὰρ τεθνεῶτί γ᾽ ἐφεψιόωνται ἅπαντες.
ὃς δ᾽ ἂν ἀμύμων αὐτὸς ἔῃ καὶ ἀμύμονα εἰδῇ,
τοῦ μέν τε κλέος εὐρὺ διὰ ξεῖνοι φορέουσι
πάντας ἐπ᾽ ἀνθρώπους, πολλοί τέ μιν ἐσθλὸν ἔειπον

If a man is harsh himself and thinks harsh thoughts,
all men pray that pains should befall him hereafter
while he is alive. And when he is dead, all men ephepsióōntai [ridicule] him.
But if a man is blameless himself and thinks blameless thoughts,
the guest-strangers he has entertained carry his kléos far and wide
to all mankind, and many are they who call him esthlós [worthy].
-Homer, "Odyssey"

Friday, December 9, 2016

Katchi

Waterhouse told The FADER that “katchi” is ”[Bridges’] mother’s old Louisiana Indian term for ‘loving touch.’” His family uses it among themselves as a code for “massage.”

Saturday, December 3, 2016

On the Surplus Wages of the Salaried Bourgeois

On the Emergence of Managerial Capitalism (Capitalism w/Asian Values)
from the Fincancial Times
The “global minotaur” of the title is not Germany but the twin deficits of the US. Just as the bull-headed monster of Crete was fed a gory human tribute, so the US sat until recently at the heart of a system that siphoned capital towards Wall Street. This was then spewed out as economic demand — a GSRM of devilish force, keeping the world economy afloat for decades, but doomed to self-destruction. Along the way, this minotaur is deployed to explain everything that irks the leftist polemicist. The Wall Street mergers and acquisitions boom, the US defence budget, Walmart — all were just the creature’s “hand maidens”.

The destruction of the minotaur by a storm of its own making laid bare the instability of world demand. This is where the saga of Greece and the eurozone re-enters the tale. What Germany has built is a system of fixed exchange rates without any means of recycling surpluses towards deficit countries. Neither benign hegemon (like the US after the second world war) nor voracious, irresponsible minotaur, Germany squats sullenly atop the European economy, bargaining stagnation outside its borders for the security of its surplus.