Capitalism is Dead

"Long live the billionaire bailout society."

"just nerves burning out in a vacuum"

Still so relevant:

You see, there isn’t any such thing as just Art or just Experience. Art can be as abstract as you wish, but it must be meaningful. Experience can be “kicks,” it can be as ecstatic as you can make it — but ecstasy as an end in itself is nothing — it’s just nerves burning out in a vacuum.

Courtesy of an ongoing project to re-post all 700 of Kenneth Rexroth's columns from the 1960 San Francisco Examiner, 50 years later to the day, here.

Marco Roth, today:

...By comparison with most of the 19th-century novels, and even with most 20th-century modernist novels of the "stream of consciousness" school, the neuronovels [like Ian McEwans Enduring Love] have in them very little of society, of different classes, of individuals interacting, of development either alongside or against historical forces and expectations.[...]It now seems we've gone beyond the loss of society and religion to the loss of the self, an object whose intricacies can only be described by future science. It's not, of course, that morality, society, and selfhood no longer exist, but they are now the property of specialists writing in the idioms of their disciplines. So the new genre of the neuronovel, which looks on the face of it to expand the writ of literature, appears as another sign of the novel's diminishing purview.

Tell me again...

...Why the fuck I work so hard for a living (and without health care) in a world where these fake "profit"-posting professional bullshitters, reloaders and extortionists at Goldman Sachs get Croesus-sized tax-payer government hand-outs every illegal scam they pull, where 90% of the economy is complete bullshit that couldn't give a shit about the average working person let alone any honest investor, and where these juvenile fuckstick assholes are still actively encouraged and enabled by the old bullshitters now in political cabinets to continue running all of us right off the fucking cliff, again and again./?

Taibbi responds to some common criticisms of his newest article here.

Unmistakable signs of overpopulation

Still, that's a fair bit more generous than the people listing "used tissue" or "used toothbrush" and "wanted: Woodway Desmo S treadmill, plus working piano."

I exaggerate, but not much.

Adding insult to injury

From here:

Twelve French wine industry figures were convicted Wednesday of selling 18 million bottles (13.5 million liters) of falsely labeled wine to US wine powerhouse E&J Gallo at an inflated price. The wine was ultimately sold under E&J's ubiquitous "Red Bicyclette" Pinot Noir label.

The convicted were sentenced by a French judge, who gave them suspended jail sentences and fines ranging from 3,000 to 18,000 euros apiece. They had made seven million euros from their massive fraud [...] After a year-long judicial investigation, the defendants were accused of substituting wine made from less expensive local grape varieties for the Pinot Noir, which is popular on the American market.

In handing down the sentences, the French judge said, "the scale of the fraud caused severe damage for the wines of the Languedoc for which the United States is an important outlet."

However, a lawyer for two of the defendants argued that there was no harm, since "not a single American consumer complained."

Deficit Hysteria

A few links to correct for the mass of ignorance out there (for which both the ever-opportunist right wing and our current "moderate Republican" president bear increasing responsibility):

http://crooksandliars.com/john-amato/obamabiden-deficit-hawks

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2010/02/deficit-fever-by-digby-suddenly-you_02.html

Most substantial of all, listen to James Galbraith talk to this obnoxious guy, whoever he is:

http://www.jimbotalk.net/programhighlights?date=20100201


Though granted, putting things in context is hardly an American pastime these days, still plagued as we are by Cheney's desperate and laughable narrative of "the age of terror."

Citing concerns over security...

Aid groups have yet to reach many areas of Washington, DC, where people remain freezing in their unheated homes or risk being victimized by savage, unruly mobs:

NPR seeks out DHorowitz in his infinite wisdom for Howard Zinn obituary

How fitting, really.

(via ATR) More that is well said on the subject, here.

Customer and online testimonials

If you are curious what other people say about my work, feel free to click the following links:

• http://crookedtimber.org/2008/03/11/timber-bookshelves-world-domination-etc/

• http://www.sharpsand.net/2008/04/13/548/

• http://www.designspongeonline.com/2009/06/sneak-peek-nick-dewar.html


• http://www.britishblogs.co.uk/similar-to/daphne-with-her-thighs-in-bark/

recently...

Our engagement rings are a light Nambaro (Cocobolo) wood harvested sustainably from Nicaragua with recycled sterling handmade by Marlon Obando Solano of Naturaleza Organic Jewelry (more about his excellent business here and here). Some cool photos here.