White bull in snowstorm

                   I'll preface this by suggesting that one of the dangers one faces in setting oneself in opposition to the wishes of others is that in moments of weakness we may forget the rules  - and it is the rules in a way that we are really fighting for. It is adherence to a better set of rules, hypothetically at least, that makes us better then our opponents.  But one does tire. Sometimes you get the feeling that beneath all the rationalizations, justifications and excuses the people you are are opposed to are just "bad guys."  Basically that's how cops keep sane. They really can't go that far into motivation of the bad guys. 
                 It also doesn't help when one has the certain knowledge that by cutting a few corners and applying rapid solutions to problems one will not be condemned, but rather applauded by those in their own camp.
               Myth, which is my beat, so to speak, is very close to the id. It tries to, as it were, allow representatives from all over the psyche to co-exist..History,  which shapes myth, is a slightly different story. In victory one may be magnanimous - but it is by no means necessary and  in doing so one increases risk.  In practical terms this comes down to killing everyone in a defeated tribe, or merely killing the males, or merely killing the males of the ability to fight. Do you see how merciful we have become? This sort of slaughter hardly ever happens nowadays,. even if it does happen in the  bible all the time.


               In any case one of the telling aspects of a professional it seems is they tend not to over rate their ability to change things. Al Jesson, my mentor and Pyschoanalyst, MD, Phd, etc constantly stated at the end of his career that he was unsure most of his patients would not have healed themselves.


              The point I am getting at is that one must at all times bear in mind the strong possibility that a cure, however attained, by science, or belief, is not always possible. People may simply believe, in their  hearts, that doing things that we think of as bad, are not so. What is more this process of belief systems goes beyond mere doing things for rewards. If the mind were that simple we'd have made a better world a long time ago. Do you see what I'm getting at?  There are instances where no matter how sensible one argues for a truth the opponent will not accept it, even, or maybe especially, if one is arguing for the good of the opponent.



           Basically Naomi's thesis is that Milton Friedman is the modern version of Herbert Spenser, a servant, apologist for those needing excuses to appropriate other people's money.  Where I come from, Brooklyn, everyone was familiar with "the mob." It touched everyone and in some regards it was a poor man's social order. But the mob was an effective killing machine because the one who pulled the trigger was never the one who gave the command to do so - and hence the connection was easier to hide.  The stupidity of the current Republican hit men is not unexpected, but let's pray it remains so.


===========


here's the actual essay   as written offline


===================

  Am currently reviewing Naomi Kleins'  "The Shock Doctrine". Waited longer then ordinary because I thought I knew what it was about since she's been speaking about it for several years, in articles and interviews, but there's an element to it I was not aware of.

    Incidently , for the sake of consistency, and because it's no longer a phrase in over use one can use the phrase "Through the looking glass" with a reasonable amount of certainly, as long as you don't over do it. Broad;y speaking it refers to the need or option of an operative to benefit from the exact opposite of their purported interest.

       In other words the DA's interest is best served by convincing the public that a great threat is extant and that he or she can solve it, given resources and a free hand. The beauty of a looking glass operation is that since the perceived threat is non existent it is that much easier to prevent it's getting worse. My background in politics educated me all too well as to how this works and it borders on Taoist awareness.

    The threat which is presented to the public is not a real threat  and likewise if a real threat should arise it is then prevented from public perception. Politicians do this because we know that the public is simple minded and/or because we want to spare them any undue anxiety. It's like the many who cheats on his wife and gets upset when someone tells her, because he loves her.

      And Klein and I have been traveling roughly parallel paths for years. She started with the No Logo thing, and I was was astounded at the way the creation of the corporate logo seemed to have an almost psychic   effect on the corporation itself - as if it were taken beyond human responsibility. 

      And I may as well be honest here. Prior to the second world war ( a period when germans placed harelips in ovens) it was standard medical procedure to regard a cleft palate as part of a constellation of incurable birth defects, one of which was mental retardation. Having done rather well on intelligence tests in sixth grade I was not about to accept that designation. Aside from whatever hearing loss or the way people will shun "monsters" and avoid  talking to them, I was of the mind to believe that the lifestyle of the harelip, which at the time meant being locked up in attic rooms, if you were lucky, was not conducive to generalized intelligence.

          In short the world was dead set on driving me bonkers and I did not and do not wish this to happen. One might also add that genetic modification of the human species is just around the corner and there will be more like me in the sense of being "imperfect" and we are going to have to find a way to live, or die.

      So what I did, even as a child, is I made it into a game. Rather then being Quasimodo haunting the heights of Notre Dame,  I thought of myself as a space pilot on long missions, interacting primarily  with technology.

             In any event, Naomi Klein makes an interesting connection between the use of debilitating conditioning to remove a persons resistance to obeying orders and the strange insistence, which we must assume os an actual belief, among disaster capitalists  that before a new world can be created the old must be destroyed.  We've covered many times what could be called the primary advertising paradigm.  Introduce pain, introduce product, remove pain and then the removal of pain is associated with the introduction of the product and then the subject does what you want , which is to buy the product.

   It has nothing to do with whether the product is desirable or not.

   Obviously I'm not going to review the entire Shock Doctrine book, but I will it's worth considering in light of personal survival terms. We've covered the myth of the eternal return in various ways, but obviously the human psyche is so predisposed to it  that it really ought be thought of in terms of a primal force, a dragon if you will.Nietzsche  was a jerk, with his beyond good and evil. The syphilis that killed him obviously was not - to live in a mytho-poetic reality however which is one way of dealing with the information war  a truer metaphor is to live not  through the looking glass, but in the looking glass, like the zen finger pointing at the moon.

And academics have names for everything - which isn't all that bad. Another myth so common as to be axiomatic is the myth of the golden era.  We call it the garden of eden but the great tragedy about this myth  ( and all myths have great tragedies associated with them) is that we may believe that the only way to return to the garden of Eden is to destroy everything in our present world.

  The problem with that myth, suffice to say, is the believers usually are not willing to just destroy themselves, but insist on destroying the lives of everyone else first.

         So don't kid yourself

 -- Tamlin

     

               

have *You* got all yer Marbles?

             This will be the last of a series of articles that provides a post script to the long term investigation in the the effects of the information revolution that we we did before the economic collapse and our two year  haitus offline.    Just to remind all there is so much redundancy and duplication  of information  on the net - let alone the usual "innocent"  misunderstanding that we've man it a rule, from the start  ( in 1995) to try as much as possible to not cover the usual stuff - which is easier done  then it sounds because  I am a systems analyst type guy and look at chunks of information as if they  were comparatively neutral in terms of affect.
           Another way to go about this then is not to begin with predetermined notions of good or desirable - which is somewhat  more impossible  ( if it is possible to be more or less possible)
            And further more the vast majority of readers won't understand what I am saying anyway - but that's alright because I don't intend to make money doing this.

               ALF is still preparing his sequence of releases. Actually part of the fun, for us is realizing tunes that are in effect responses to the world situation.  We've guarded our privacy intensely throughout the years and partly that is because of an adversion to  schtick. You see the first thing a business business manager and/ or agent. company etc wants to know is "How do you intend to market yourself?" and that question usually comes in the form of   "Who do you sound like?"
              As one twerp said to me once "They ( meaning the big boys in the front office who don't associate with the scum who actually make the music)  want you to be different - but not too different."
             This is not to say that we are somehow better then everyone else or more moral - but in actuality the music business is in such sad shape that by keeping our distance from these creeps we've been able to keep out of trouble - so far - and we hope to continue to do so.
         But anyway the big production pieces will require more finishing touches and in the meanwhile we'll try to let lose a  loose units.  Sort of  like when pop music meant something.


                 Next   to sum up the epilogue to the technology/information age question I was intriqued by a statement by  Mukesh Ambani. He's sort of the Warren Buffet of India. When asked about global events first off - India is comparitively free of the more negative effects of  globalization - the labor force is certainly not overpaid. but much more importantly he said that the economic problems currently plaguing the world would evolve into sovereign problems. Note he did not say what most would say which is that the economic problems would become political problems - because essentially they cannot be solve in political methods. This is  both good and bad news. The problems can be solved but unfortunately, as I see it, we are not even at  step one on the road to doing so.

               For God's sake we don't need promises of hope - we need specific remedies - like bring back the 70% top tax rate - or if not that then some actually decisive move- but such is impossible given the current political  situation and about fifty years is a good gestimate as to when change will occur and we may also suggest that change will coincide with some disaster which will crush the current funding methods once and for all - in the way that world war one ended the  rotten empires of China, Russia, England, and Austrohungary.


---------------

One day I chanced to find myself in a large room with a larger then man sized snake. There were no windows in the room, nor any other source of light other then the snake itself, which glowed with and iridescent blue light. For a few moments, it being not Sunday, we said nothing. The snake, it’s head moving back and forth, seemed to be observing me. Finally it said

“I know that you have been sent here by your masters to kill me, yet I sense no eagerness on your part to do so.” The expression on the snakes face then changed from curious to a knowing smile.

“Would you betray them?” It asked.

“Not at all,” I said, “But..”

And here, at this point I realized the gravity of the situation. I realized that I have been in that same room, with that same giant snake, countless times before and had I but eyes to see the numberless corpses of my past lives would be all around me.

The snake which dances to the music of time slumbered awake again and again asked,

“Would you betray them?” It smiled.

I realized that the inquiry was of the nature of what is called a trick question.”

The key was in the concept of betrayal. Can one betray they whom have betrayed one? And what if the promises made and broken were not specific but rather implicit, suggestions rather then hard and fast agreements?

“You have your sword, Tamlin. Why don’t you use it?” Said the snake.

My instructions had been simple. “Go forth and kill.” It was then I realized, with a chill, that we two were not alone in the room. There was a third presence, unseen, unheard, unperceivable by ordinary means yet there, and it was hungry! It thirsted for knowledge it hungered to make itself known but throughout all the eternities it had lived until this moment it had failed to do anything other then bring death to our universe.

I had not it in my power to set the snake free but I could at least refrain from enslaving it. The snake read my mind and for the first time I felt a glimmer of sympathy shine forth from it. This sympathy was somehow akin to an incommunicable sadness and I was a little relieved to see that it was not going to share it’s understanding with me.

I turned around to discover that I was once again in that world which we know as home.

The previous story was inspired by a comment made to me by a physics teacher when I was an undergraduate. His name was Sterling Gorril and he was talking about calculating reverberation times in rooms as a result of the various factors. He said “When you take a shoebox and you put some marbles in it then either you’ve taken them out, or they are still there.” It’s self evident, but an amusing symbolic representation of basically, everything. The shoebox is time/space – the marble is the moment or if you like, reality. Far less then one in a hundred will understand this, at least in our day and age. Moving the marble from inside the box to outside the box without tearing a hole in, or opening the box, is the essence of quantum mechanics. It is the content of the universe, and what we call the fractal arrangement is the form. That method of form creation permeates everything from organic life, to planetary construction and arrangements, to galactic organization. Once again Tvat Tsam Asi”

Okay, on to current events. I must apologize for misspelling the Mayor of New Yorks’s name last time out. It’s Bloomberg – not Bloomburg.

Starting with “the Mayor” I’ve lived much of my life in the shadow on NYC and can suggest two parameters needed to be aware of when one is the major. One is you have to move fast or else you’ll find yourself being blamed for the previous mayors faults and in turn the good that you do is not recognized until you’re out of office. The other is the people on the street are always going to be far to the left of the people in the boardrooms.

Don’t worry. The world doesn’t need yet another blog about Occupy Wall Street and I don’t plan on writing one. My role here at the mediaco named after me is to do the large scale system analysis, which I then bring to the ALF and he ignores me! Actually he puts up with me but we understand that our core interests have to take precedence over any seemingly apparent strategic opportunities. To do otherwise would be to adopt the mindset of our competitors and that seems pointless. What’s the sense of being better then everyone if you’re going to behave just like them?

This is not to say that strategy isn’t fun, just that it’s not reliable in the long run.

So the OWS demonstrators have been evicted. Many thought the authorities would wait for the snow to push them out but the surer course was taken. Firstly what if the snow doesn’t come? Then there is the spectacle of people, essentially arguing for economic readjustment, at Christmas time. Images of “A Christmas Carol” are the last thing the bankers need at this point.

And lets also consider the guy who makes the quite rational point that the OWS movement is like a cancer that must not be allowed to grow. Steve Allen used to rant about commercials and when people would reply that commercials were not in fact controlling our minds he’d reply “Well someone ought to tell CocaCola that because they’re spending millions on trivialities.” Likewise we learned from the recent Middle eastern wars that buy not allowing dissent to begin one can virtually remove it’s coming into being. This is done in seemingly minor ways, by controlling things that seem trivial, such as music and media, but . like advertising, it works.

Actually it’s almost like a card game – the two sides play their hands one after another. The irony is that the US supported the Arab spring wholeheartedly , but now that the idea has spead to America, it’s less welcome.

In any event one of the remarkable aspects of OWS is the global reach and this calls to mind

1848, when the empires of Europe were at risk. They did not fall for another fifty years, and it took the first world war to bring them down. To some extent the promises of progress do come true. The English middle class did eventually benefit from the industrial revolution – but only after several generations of poverty and disease.

That is frightening. As it happens technology is impacting on baks, if anything, more then on some other fields, but the critical factor is this. If they woke up tomorrow and wanted to change to help the poor they would have no way to go about it. The mechanism isn’t there.

A well known aspect of the industrial revolution is the change from an agrarian, decentralized economy, of (Ironically) Jeffersonian gentlemen farmers to that of the centralized urban manufacturing wage slaves. To do this required immense amounts of Capital and there  Marx was not blind in that he saw that this was necessary. In the past Capital expenditures had been the prerogative of the state – they built the walls around cities and the castles. Capital, as distributed by the Rothchilds was the silent third partner along with business and government. The government needed to change the laws to prevent individuals escaping the clutches of the businesses. The businesses had to do the actual manufacturing and Capital had to establish the firms in the first place.

                      Now, here’s an interesting idea, suggested by the bond trader, Bill Gross. It reminds me of what Jerry Garcia said about ‘The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test” – he said that Tom Wolfe, being a writer tended to see Ken Kesey, another writer, as the center of the “trip” but most other people saw Neil Cassidy in that role. Which is to say that Bill is probably predisposed towards seeing the current and varied financial fiascos in terms of the bond market, but nevertheless I think he may be on to something. At least he's willing to say something different, which is there has got to be a better way to allocate  funding then what we have at present. Neither he nor I at this point dare suggest what that may be because my gut tells me whatever it is will be   very unpopular sin some quarters.

               Like the empires of the middle nineteenth century, however efficacious they may have been in the past it is becoming painfully obvious that the current financial system is obsolete and It needs far more then tinkering around the edges to become viable again. What we are just about barely capable of realizing is that the European fiscal crisis and the inability of the US banking system to stabilize cash flows are related.

At that point I begin to fuzz out. As a musician I can only suggest more D major chords, but Bill Gross suggests that the entire system of using bonds to capitalize major expenditures needs to be changed. And of course the difference between stocks and bonds is somewhat more conceptual then actual. Both involve spending money and justify that via a return on investment.

While we must expect investors to look for the high return opportunities for them to function requires the full gamut of services a modern society can and must provide. Such services, including, but not limited to infrastructure are generally less profitable, but they also entail far less risk.

   Unfortunately what one man might call a no brainer, building a highway for instance, others may object to. In any case we may as well look across the Pacific to China we see concrete evidence of the virtues of distributed economic planning according to practical and not ideological commands.

-Tamlin

gobble gob

                        Right well just a restatement of the obvious which is that if you go looking for personal data you probably will be disappointed - as a matter of principle one shy's away from such things. After all we are at war - this is information warfare 401 and as such it is imperative that we all with hold as much information from the data suck machines learn as much about their operations as possible.

       Other then that things are rather lovely. The world is going to hell, but what else is new?  The following is written in my Buckminster Fuller mode so I apologize for that and don't worry - will get back to normal soon.


I'm going to say something that's a little strange. To do so I'll preface things with a few comments.

To retain their self respect a person must respect others. (Bear with me on
this. I've used this axiom, if you will, as a very effective defense mechanism, 

because, believe it or not there are those among us who would take advantage of
real or perceived superiorities to be "that which is less then polite."


Humanity is a hierarchical species and this hierarchy is given form, made
Evident, by a series of social indices which is turn are based upon and the source
of actual social differentiations. One dramatic school, that of the line of
Strindberg and Bergman, which I am comfortable with, but which in turn is based
upon a very rigid set of behavioral rules, would say that the unfortunate means by
which the lower ninety eight percent of the human species regulates itself is
Humiliation.


Of course Germans are a little strange anyway. I have a cousin who was in 

a car crash and had a scar across his face ( which is now less noticable) from his
mouth to his ear and my fathers comment was simply "Hmm, looks like a sword
scar."


                To explain, for all you non aryans this is something that now is thankfully not done anymore but up to and past the first world war among the German elites, who often attended military  schools, dueling was, as in many nations, practiced and to their minds one had  not proven their mettle until they had received a sword scar. Considering the current vogue for tattoos we ought not dismiss this out of hand.


                I write so much that I'm not always sure of what I've put online and plus  a
lot of material is in what Twain would call the fifty year bag - meaning not to be
published until fifty years after my death - for obvious reasons. If one were to find
themselves on a remote island surrounded by devotees of the volcanno goddess
who demanded human sacrifice for every little social faux pas one would learn to
be carefull and living among the human race for me it is no different.


                 In any case I think I mentioned that the real risk for revolution comes not
from the illiterate proletariat or the agricultural peasantry but rather it comes from the educated and ambitious bourgoisie for the reason that we know well that the notion that the elites are worth two or three million times what the rest of us are worth is preposterous. It's nice pay if you can get it but don't expect your
peers to fall for the bullshit you hand the masses.

     And realistically while the numbers of the disenfranchised bourgousis vary even should they retorically take up arms the military tends to remain in the


service of they who write the checks. The alternative, which is called either
guerilla tactics of freedom fighters or terrorism, depending on who's side you are
on, is not amenable to me.


So lacking the options of bloodshed we play the other games.
Which brings us around the the current situation here at the Tamlinmediaco.

I was reflecting the the other day and thinking back to an aquantence who
was a TV critic. He started in City College writes sports reviews and then got a job
doing TV with the local Long Island paper in the late 60's. Very amusing guy,
reminded me of Hannah Betts over in the London Times, she had one of the worst
remits a columinist could wind up with. She reviewed cosmetics, but she did it
with a degree of intelligence that took your breath away. In other words the
writing was often more interesting, much more interesting then the subject
written about.

         And Marv started out as you would imagine reviewing television programs , but
somewhere in the 80's it became obvious that the programming was not the main thing anymore. Of course, we did not see this at the time as well as we do now.
Television has taken some major hits in recent times, as has the music industry


and I don't feel a great deal of sympathy for either because the people who
wound up in charge basically had no interest other then bean counting.
Kurt Cobain, who was cynical enough to kill himself, referred to the artist in
the terms his employers used - they are "Unit shifters." They don't even bother
giving the product the dignity of a name!


But I am not going to kill myself. I've been in situations where it could have
been done, where in essence, I realized that those around me felt they had reached the limits of what they could extract from me and thus would not be inconvienced by my death. But I am a nice boy. To think of my brains splattered across the desk of the President of Time Warner does not appeal to me. Kurt did
things his way. I do things my way.




The only suggestion as to the matter one cares to make is that Kurt probably
thought his ritual sacrifice would make more of an impression on the system then
it did. But the sytem is not human. It likes to pretend it is human but it is not.
Some call it evil. It is not. It just is. It's the dark side of TVAT TSaM ASI - or "You
are That." To some degree or another it is an extention of our own perceptual
bias's. I say this is terms that outreach the usual psychological definitions of, for
instance, "projection".

                     Again, to refer to the Sanskit



                                       I am the Slayer
                                       I am the Slain
                                        I am the act of Slaying
                                                          Upanishads





     In other words we create the corporation in our own images - something that is comprehendible in psychological terms, but what we don't comprehend and we cannot comprehend is we create the corporation that it will destroy us in the manner which we desire.

That's how it is with all the phenomenological creations of man. There can be no understanding without complete understanding and there can be no complete understanding without understanding that which cannot be understood, or dissolution.




In ordinary life this just means that everything has it's cost. You may get what you want and discover it's not so great, but that's the way it goes. the quick version Returning to more mundane matters America is suseptable to Utopian fantasies every decade or so. In the gold rush the guys who made the most were the ones that sold the mules, the pans and provisions to the prospectors. In the internet rush those who sold the quick buck schemes and promises of vast rewards on the stock market made the most.


The classic model of the inventor in the backroom doesn't seem to work too
often.    However  Mike Bloomberg and Mark Zuckerberg beat the odds - and 

they did it by repurposing content. That is the key. Mr Bloomberg, now the 

Mayor of New York City is a well liked guy. If James Breslin says a politicain is
alright it's worth bearing in mind. Mark, on the other hand, acording to the
movie is a tad on the ambitious side. They are both multibillionaires and they did
by making a product - not by getting capitol and buying everything in sight.

      They both apparently worked hard, but there comes a time in every business
where it becomes physically impossible for one person to do all the work and then
the more critical factor is the abiity to hire and keep quality people. It always
helps to know what you are doing and it's also a good idea to hire those who have
disadvantages socially because among other things you know they are not there
because they play a good round of golf.



As a content guy my concerns are a little different. A rare skill set is being
the head of a film firm, because you not only have to get the pieces together that
will make a good film, but, more importantly you have think like the public. In TV for instance in 2008 I came back from a decade in the UK and discover
the fantasy is mainstream and reality is of only limited interest. There's several
possible explanations for this trend which is also in evidence in cinema. The
most amusing possibility is that we have all entered into higher realms of
cosciousness and are thinking symbolically and metaphorically.

                As a reference point it's worth mentioning that during the last depression
reality films and songs as well came to the fore. The twenties were noted for
singing dancing showgirl extravaganzas. The thirties brought us the first gangster
movies and the hardboiled pragmatic American viewpoint that was to reach it's
apex in the post war film noir detective films.

                  In current entertainment some things are eternal. We still like things that
explode. We still like seeing people take their clothes off, but the defiance of
authority doesn't resonate like it did for so many years. If anything the CIA, the
FBI etc are now once again the good guys who are battling Vampires, Aliens and
mutants of all sorts - all bent on World domination,

When I wear my entertainment mogul hat things in political terms tend to
get very mixed up. I used to ask why there was no portrayals of wicked
corporations - Eg In the cowboy movies there was always the bad man who
wanted to steal the water rights or the railroad rights or what have you. More to the point where are the pot boilers - where the heck is little Nell, made homeless by the wicked banker whos busy raping Nells sister after having killed their father in a corrupt business deal?

I have a very traditional notion of art . You might even say it's maket
oriented. Whatever sells is good. So Hollywood's walking a fine line. They need
bad guys but they can't call businesspeople bad guys. So we have a new race of
super heroes to admire.



Getting back to our story though there have been people who have become
wealthy on the net by creating start ups. There are two factors to work between
when we ask not "How do I do the thing good?", but rather "How do I make
money at it?" It sounds twisted but a large part of what I do is for lack of a better
phrase "high art". Even pop artists like ELvis often wind up being richer after they
are dead then when they live. As far as I am concerned too many composers
make too little money when they live and at this stage of the game if I have to
sacrifice great art to put a roof over my head and feed myself - so be it - because
ultimately the blame has to be laid at the feet of the public.


  I joke that the smarter and more capable I become the less anyone is interested in hiring me for anything. As indicated previously my instinct for self  preservation remains unsullied. I understand that life tries to humiliate me. I understand that it seems unfair. What else is new?
   In terms of production all that matters is the top two or three percent of  any field. The rest is worthless and the kicker is the difference between the 98th percentile and the 99th percentile is not that great. It's like a race where the difference between winning and being out of the money is trivial in terms of time.

It's a brutal reality and the reason why in the past people would kill for the slightest advantage. Nowadays we don't kill for political power only for moral  truth.

The next factor is that what one has to work with, the raw materials so to speak is not that different from what one's competitors have. I doubt that Micheal Bloomberg had informed sources that made his financial news service better then others. Even if he had that would not have made the critical difference. The main thing is organizing the material that people want to know about or experience and presenting it in a comprehendable way.


        With Facebook, if anything the case is even more obvious. What Zuckerberg had or expended was time and energy. That's what coding is about. This is not to be disengenous. A lot of coders get screwed or become "Mircroserfs" in the modern parlance.

I'll give you an example of how the world works. I have a PC which has
very little "mileage" but has been problematic from the beginning. It was given to
me for this reason when no one else, even Best Buy where it was bought could
discern the problem. It froze, it didn't boot, it evidenced weirdness. I worked on it for months. It would work for hours, or even days and then freak out. I checked the Boot Script The BIOS, the Virals, the hard drive and everything you could think of - still no good. I ran a dozen different start up repair
disks, ran the replace ment particion several times, each time having to replace all
the software on the HD.


       After awhile I grew tired of thinking I had the thing fixed. I needed a break. So I take the cover off and discover that the enclosure of the CPU is covered with a mat of dust. I wiggle a few wires. I put it back together. It works. The simple answer is no matter what diagnostic I ran I'd never have caught
the problem. Once before, long ago on an Apple 6100 the power unit went and it
also took months to diagnosis - because of the intermittent outages. The unit in other words was overheating - so it was not a software problem nor a hardware problem and hence could not be diagnosed in ordinary methodology.

              The great thing about the net and MP3's is not the contemporary stuff -
it's getting to hear all the old stuff that you never heard in the first place and in
many cases realizing that no matter how good the performers were and the songs
were some other factor was in the way. Maybe they didn't have the promotion, or he record was recorded poorly, or what have you. The key thing is you have to cover all the bases to get to home plate.

You can't just ignore things and allow your superiority in other fields to
make up the difference.

IF you do that you can say, with the scientist, "Well, it should work."

But if it doesn't don't be surprised. 

 

-Tamlin

                                             hab a grooby daze hibbies

                   ---ALF

doan forgit da ribba

     Uh, for me the river will always be the east river- which is actually not a river but a tributary which rolls along the western side of the Island of Manhattan - but like that mysterious isle it's a dark cold fathomless river and as a child I be on the other side - on the Brooklyn side lookin over at  what seemed to be the capitol of the world & wondering

         and so there's a Ray Davies tribute album out and I wasn't real impressed conceptually  - the record company trotted out all the official working class heroes and had them do  cover versions including , probably , one of the tune I'm sending along today - as to the artists themselves in this foul era for rock and roll I'm ambivalent - I don't think it's right to  hold musicians to any higher standard then we hold any one else - but on the other hand I have standards that do not necessarily dovetail with those prevailing in da mocket prace.

        If you interested in how censorship works it's not complicated.  In terms of cause and effect one is allowed to state effect  - poverty, misery, war disease - but one is strictly forbidden from stating that such effects have causes.  The determination of cause and the ascribing hence of blame is reserved for the master/ruler class.

It  maintains this is needed since otherwise there will be no order and we will revert to savagery , indecency and bad manners.   I don't argue with humans I try to stay out of their way.




          But one day this summer on a whim I recorded Waterloo Sunset - one of Rays tunes that didn't get the sales it deserved perhaps - without the Beach Boys tribute falsetto that the tune is noted for.  As always we have a lot of tunes in the can and this one is a one off .
    But to all the working class heroes I just want to say no hard feelings  - and can I borrow a g's?"

    I didn't bother to encode it into MP3 or add tags but suffice to say all rights remain for respective owners - meaning if you sell it you will not like what happens.

<a href="http://www.megaupload.com/?d=6IU2N1MC" >  ALF-WaterlooSunset.wav</a>



                                 http://www.megaupload.com/?d=6IU2N1MC



             -Alfie  - the lovable  alien

                     It occurs to me that depending on how the browsers config'ed   it may try to play the wav file online - so, unless you want that  - better look into it

note also - this file won't be available for too long

 _tamlin


 

 

re enlisting

Hello World

Here we are again

                          First a few minor mentions viz the Gui – will be adopting a new look pretty soon.  I've opened up the comments section so you don't need any special credentials to comment.  I'm fairly liberal in terms of language - probably google will freak before I do - but I might be a little suspicious if you seem to be trolling, or promoting or any of those other goofy things  that people who ought to know better are sometimes tempted to do.

               As always - since the  beginning we specifically
                        A - do no advertising - so If you got here I either gave you the URL or someone of fairly sane nature did. There's certain tricks to gaining promotional status and I know a few and I avoid them. Eg the site that tells you how to do stuff, the site that uses a lot of  high profile search terms and  of course the site that is a conduit to other sites.  Hey, the portals have a hard enough time separating the wheat from the chaff as it is w/o us confusing the matters all up ward.
                          Plus we adhere to the seven degrees of separation doctrine. If the visitors are capable of ascertaining the level we're working on then I want their good graces and approval - if not then it hardly matters now - does it?
                        and B  We do no data collection and never have. I don't even get a thrill out of fan clubs personally. The notion that before you buy a toaster you have to give the company your name and address is sick.    That goes triple for these firms that want your credit card numbers - for reference purposes and etc. That's double sick.  And also, again, I feel for the pressures that firms like google must deal with - eg I wrote in an email something about having quit smoking and find that there's an advert up top the proggie to help me quit.   They assure me that no human has read my email, but that doesn't mean no human will not do so in the future. If they decide to change policy then you are potentially screwed - and it is practically a de facto law that modern corporations are constantly changing policies - and most of the time the change is to the detriment of the user. I point to the recent Apple I-disk  fiasco just as a typical case where anyone who takes any corporation at their word is a  fool. Caveat Emptor.

             And you play with fire when you trust judges.experience teaches they can be got to.

                     The White on black theme of the page is not working at all. I was looking for some sort of impersonal corporate impression, and probably will continue to go in that direction when and if we ever need "such a thing".  You know, you walk down Manhatten Streets and there’s these’s huge buildings with cornerstones chipped with the name of the primary firm, eg the owner. At this point that’s a little presumptuous. When the name of firm and address is sufficiently impressive it’s called a tombstone, incidentally. 

                    This is apart from the Logo. They are something that is meant to convey immortality and at the same time mutable variation. They usually don’t have specific meanings, which is one of the reasons why they are called Logos. The Logos is a religious term meant to convey a symbolic reality.

In advertising for example the products of the human body, excrement, hair, flem, spittle, fingernails, farts, burps and even tears have well known emotive effects – mostly negative, but in mind control, negative and positive stimulus are often the same thing. The standard formula is 2 present negative stimulus, 2 create discomfort,3 present product and 4 terminate negative stimulus.

                       Whether you’re selling toothpaste political candidates, crackpot economic theories or racial genocide the principles of conditioning do not vary. The Logos is one of these living/dead things. “Oh, it’s magic!” and “It’s the Spirit of Adventure!” - It can also be seen as an ambivalent term, which sets a confuision wheel spinning and then that wheel, of dialectic appraisals can then often be seduced into the decision that the conditioner wants.

                          Corporations invest tens of millions on their logos but an amateur can do the same thing, if gifted. Hagen Daas, is an ice cream company but the name of the product means nothing, literally. One could explain that Da is yes in Russian and DaDa a reference to one’s father and so on but the point is the multiplicity of meaning creates the ambivalence of understanding which can decided upon in favor of the corporate masters.

                            In any case I’m gravitiating towards a bluish green. AS I indicated the major computer companies both use blue as their key identifier, but that’s very much a western thing. Blue equals the sky, the sky is where the ThunderGods Live. Asians are fonder of Red and in particular red with Gold lettering. Red is the blood color. I kinda like Maroon. It’s has that medieval feel. In any even the current thing has got to go. It is too hard on the eyes.

Here’s a story about one after noon that changed a person’s life.

Re-enlistment Day

Much has been said of the class war in America and the amusing part is that when it was the rick beating up on the poor it was called competition, but when it’s the other way around it’s called class warfare. There’s other conflicts going on as well. One obvious one is the old against the young – and this can’t be overly simplified the way some would have it. Then there’s one that hardly can be classified a conflict but nevertheless involves conflicting interests. As women enter the workforce they have every right to expect equal pay for equal work, but the males they work with may not see it that way.

Even on the level of street survival there are new alliances coming into play. The white suburbanites have, in the past twenty odd years, increasingly had to rely upon sources in the black community to buy their recreational drugs. I don’t even wanna talk numbers here. The size and scope of the prison system, the amount of gun violence, even the number of people addicted to various drugs are all things that, like so much in our information age, nobody gives a damn about. In the classic lines of Joe Conrad we would “Exterminate them! Exterminate them all!”

I met Carl when I was homeless. It’s not his real name. He was a black man, in his thirties, about six feet, probably good looking if you care to bother, and in the early stages of a heroin addiction that will probably kill him in ten years or so.

Being homeless gives one a great opportunity to share experiences. It’s about the only opportunity one has. I’d talk about the rock and roll craziness and he’d talk about the various scams that he’d pull on the white kids. It didn’t bother me none. I grew up in urban settings and you might say can see things from both sides.

Carl would hang at the Port authority bus terminal on the west and wait for the honkies with the loud tee shirts and baseball caps to get off the buses. These were the boys from the Jersey suburbs – know what I’m saying. Carl knew nine ways to Sunday how to rip you off. You stick the bag down your crotch and holler, cops, then retrieve a different bag. Plus there’s dozens of things that look like dope. Basically you’ve got to understand you’re gonna get burnt sometimes and build a trusting relationship with someone.

Plus there’s other scams, gambling, hot merchandize, forged tickets but these are all basically “rites du passage’” for the urban male and soon people move on to other things.

Carl’s whole life changed in one after noon. He was a veteran also, like so many of the homeless. Actually the veterans are playing a role in the new economy. In the tent cities they are forming what are essentially security services, because they are not afraid of knives and guns. When there’s women and children and a gang man come along, a Crip or Blood say, or even worse a lone wacko and they pull out a weapon there’s not much a woman or child can do. Plus, it might sound strange but by and large, but many veterans, in my experience, view themselves as the good guys – the protectors of the weak and innocent, unlike the masters, who all too often are basically predators.

Then there’s the cops, of course, and at times it’s better to be punished by the system, which will put you in jail, then by an individual, who will possibly harm you, but still, the cops do what they are told and those that tell them what to do are the cause of the problem in the first place so there’s no help there.

So, Carl get’s out of high school in what passes for the black middle class and after a few years of hanging out on street corners he enlists in the army. This was the Clinton years when as much as I dislike the guy, at least we weren’t in a war. The thing was in those the unemployment was around five percent and for black people employment is like the accountant’s phrase – “Last in First out.” Cynic’s such as yours truly could suggest that the apparent economic good times were chimerical, but it’s is of no matter.

And. Like a lot of other things, when they want you to join they are going to offer you a special deal and then once you’re hooked then they can go about changing the terms. What Carl got was the best two years of his life. He gets a tour of duty in Germany where he gets weekends off, where he’s got coupla blonde girlfriends, some of the world’s best hashish and better living conditions then he’s ever known. He’s even on his way to learning a trade. He was learning how to cook for large numbers of people.

He only had one unfortunate incident, with a Sergeant, another black man. They just didn’t like each from the start. One time the Sergeant caught Carl sleeping on sentry duty and they settled things with their fists. No official mention of the incident was made, something for which Carl remained grateful.

Then the fateful day came. It was time to re-enlist. Carl went down to the office and spoke to the man there and said , “No problem, Just give me the same deal as last time and I’m in”

The man behind the desk says, “Well, we’ll do what we can.”

Carl says “Well you have to put that in writing”

The man says “I can only repeat what I say. We can’t promise anything.”

The reality and gravity of the situation began to settle in. As he was relating the tale Carl turned to me and said, “You know the Army’s got it’s own way of doing things and saying things and when they say “We’ll do what we can,” that means “No way in hell” (Actually he said it more colorfully but I’ll spare the sensibilities of the more delicate among our readers.)

Carl knew what “We’ll do what we can,” meant.” It meant “Iraq”

No Booze, no blondes, no fun and summer temperatures around a hundred and twenty in the shade, not only that but there was people there shootin’ bullets at you. Real bullets.

Carl did not have a great dislike of white people. I’m white myself and I didn’t feel threatened by him. Then again I didn’t have anything to steal on me at the time. I don’t know, if I was black, if I’d even be so mellow. Maybe he thought about all those rich boys come off the Jersey buses for the erb. He probably didn’t see too many of them in the army. Long and the short of it was Carl was used to better things then the Iraq war and he turned the offer down.

I try to keep my eyes open. You know what I’m saying? I notice that’s Carls eyes would do that fluttering thing where the eyeball go up in the head that happens when a junkies getting the rush.

And one morning I get up early in the shelter and I sees him going out, so I follow him, casual like, being as I was not exactly pressed for time at the moment. I sees he goes behind some wrecked cars behind a gas station and drives out an automobile. Of course you’re not supposed to have an Auto in the homeless shelter – you’re considered too well off, but I wasn’t gonna rat on him. The car looked like and sounded like it wasn’t long for the world anyway. Probably didn’t have no insurance either.

I hid in the bushes. Always hiding in the bushes nowadays. Always hiding. Always hiding. It’s a war zone everywhere you look.

The funny thing, amusing even, was the car. I don’t recall the make, but it was a beat up compact and the motor went like a wooga wooga and out of the tailpipe come a steady stream of smoke from all the oil it was burning. But the smoke didn’t come straight our, rather it was a squirly-cue like a pigs tail

I thought that was pretty funny, actually, myself.

I got out of that place as soon as I could.

-Tamlin

The Paradox of Progress = Part Two

  

Last Time out.....

                         "In any case the contest is about who controls what. The people in cloudland want to maximize revenue. They don't want you using hacked software, or pirated media and if you are correspondingly that much more stupid as a result it is small price to pay to keep the servants down. You must obey!

 There's a paradox here - one that is not new. As an employer it is in your interest to keep workers healthy, as you would any livestock,  and to teach them basic rudimentary skills in math and writing- but the more you teach them the greater becomes the possibility that they will escape your control, so most try to arrive at some sort of happy medium."

               ----  That's the disgruntled viewpoint. I recall one time being on the Island of Jamaica and speaking with a man about the colonial experience. He did not have fond memories of British rule and his biggest complaint was "Don't you see? They kept us stupid to prevent us from  taking control of our own lives." 

                                                         Does that sound familiar? 

          You would think that improving the quality of life, educationally and every other way would be a  no brainer - but instead there's that cheap fear that someone out there is going to have it easier then us.

    And it is not rare to find a CEO in America wishing he had a better educated workforce.  A healthy population, an educated population - these are things most agree to be good - the question is who will pay for them? I'm not here to attempt to answer them. Basically, after discovering the ways and means of the information age state the Tamlinmediaco's task is to work within those confines- which means that the  roles hitherto held to be the responsibility of society must be taken over by the corporation and the  corporation consequently must undergo a radical change in it's composition and responsibilities.

  To use an increasingly common metaphor the era of the empires is over but the era of government goes on. The Russian empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Chinese Empire, the British Empire, all outlived their usefulness and had to be replaced - the same holds true with the present economic empires, CitiBank et al. - and  in time we may begin even to see them in a more positive light - but at present it is enough merely to  make them go away.

       I try not to write in too academic a style. I read such material and am convinced that it sounds better to the person that writes it then to the reader.

  Fortunately I'm not in a contest to write a best seller. There's an adage to the effect that what we may experience at first as tragedy, we can think back on later in comedic terms. The Sanderson's and the Graingfords, eternal feuding neighbors in Mark Twains work, are a good example - if you don't think too hard about the dead kid.

  After tragedy and comedy, of course comes the best telling of a story - payday.

Payday is when you are far enough removed from an experience to milk it for all it's worth.

      Psychology mirrors the Social environment and vice versa. In science talk ontogenesis mirrors phylogenesis   and once again vice versa. What happens to the individual happens to a society. Individuals  really are the microcosm, or monad, of human society.

   I gave a little hint about what I'm about to talk about when i spoke of the evolution of the corporation. Self proclaimed "futurologists" tend to fall into optimistic or apocalyptic camps but one need not, and ought not, make such intense generalizations.

               When we think of community as a desired goal it's worthwhile to consider the kind of community  that feels right - preferably one without too many people.

  What I am about to speak of goes to the heart of man as homo sapiens - the tool maker. Perhaps telecom brings us together, or perhaps it allows us to remain apart. As we develop ever more complex languages we increasingly limit the number of people with whom we can correspond.

    I've mentioned before the so called Coney Island/Theme Park scenario. Coney island, like early movie theatres, was available to the general public, - a subway ride away whereas Theme Parks are intentionally designed so that only persons of a substantial income may visit. It's a form of segregation -based  on income instead of race - and it permeates the entire society.  We are all free to buy helicopters for weekend jaunts, but as to whether we choose to do so - that's another question.

   Where I used to live on Lpng Island was another Jamacia, several in fact, including Jamaica estates and in the twenties, being about ten miles from Manhatten, they were quite affluent. One can still see vague traces of the glory days  - Large houses that no one can afford, rotting away  - A Boulevard that is six lanes wide with beat up store fronts on either side - and the White Elephant to end all white elephants - Call it the Grand Theatre.  (I don't remember the actual name.)

       

        It was built in the heyday of hollywood, one of the Cathedrals of the Common Man, where Joe Average could, for a reasonable fee, dress up and sit down to the finest entertainment America had to offer - right next to the big shots.

 Now, of course, the average Joe Average never even sees a big shot in person - there's so few and they guard their privacy

       When I went to the Grand it had become a Porno House. It sat something like four thousand people and was filthy.  Porno is now big business but in those days it was the raincoat brigade and you'd see on guy in the middle of a hundred seats - they too valued their privacy.   If you're familiar with acoustics you know that if you have a  large room, virtually empty of people the sound will be very loud and so it was - the breathing of the Gods had nothing on them.

  There was a second floor lobby with  the red carpets that had long ago seen better days.  There were a few girls in casual attire smoking cigarettes - outside the men's bathroom.

          But the piece de resistance was the movie screen itself. It was maybe thirty by fifty feet - none of these fifteen foot screens like you see in a multiplex. This was when movies were movies  - BIGTIME! When one would thrill to the spectacles years in the making and exploding onto  the movie screen.

       What you actually saw by the end I will leave to your imagination. But one can think of extreme close ups and what they look like when they are forty feet across.

          I would not be so bold as to suggest I have seen Hell.  Too many men, seeking sympathy, exaggerate their miseries - but I have seen the end of the world.

         In the shopping centers there's Labor Day sales, and Columbus Day sales, and Pre Christmas Sales and  January Sales  but in the Grand Theatre time stands still. A heavy hippted momma come a shaking and a smiling

      And the Horns Blaze out, "Ladies and Gennelmen, Mister  Gene Pinney, sanging his latest number one hit record  - "Town without Pity."

=Tamlin

      

All the Best Cowboys...

                              "She's got Greta Garbo  sighs

                                She's got Bette Davis eyes"

                                                           Kim Carnes

              In the cat et gory of great mines thinkin they like I notice that Pete Townsend is gettingsome flak on account of his inchoate  suggestions regawding dese tech invocations. Ordinarily I'd leave him to the beavers but since I had the same idea recently - and since I din't have too clear an idea bout what sayin I was it seems appropo to further elaborate.

                 In other words, the sand in the oyster is the fact what while  music is being increasingly distributed on ancillary hardware platforms the musicians aren't getting paid. And what is more, and more interesting to me, Pete suggests that it would be a good thing if some sort of framework could be brought into existence that could indentify and aide people on their roads to Parnassus.

                     In fact this suggestion has applications beyond the music industry and points to a flaw in the information revolution  as a whole. People of courage have made the connection that although the information age has increased productivity and the amount of information we have access to - it hasn't really done a lot for our bankbooks and in some areas one could even suggest the quality of life has declined precipitously.

            The irony is that while our ability to find information has increased multifold, our ability to find people has diminished. In days gone by when one wanted to know something or someone they went to an expert who could give a good recommendation based on many factors - but now this sort of judgement is left to, in effect, a primitive neural network. The reason for human;s propensity to live in hierarchical societies is , after all, that they worked.   In the case of Mr Townsends field , pop music, the old wise men and women who started the companies have been replaced and they are not capable of doing the job. They farm it out to subordinates but that rarely works. This is a systematic observation.
            Disregarding my own situation - my impression is that there's a lot of talent out there in a lot of fields but it isn't being utilized because of something no one was aware of would happen when we began restructuring society on the basis of money and not ability.
              

        When you actually do stuff sometimes your descriptions and understandings of said stuff are not as concise and as distinct as they who merely sit back and observe. Nature is sloppy as well as profuse. The Taoists have notion of this which says "The more you have to say about something the less you probably know about it."

       Any people who do stuff know theideas begin asfuzzy notionson thehorizon which get closer and closer and they either become realitiesor they don't.  Suffice to say I'm gonna listen to Pete because he has actually done stuff. He got that Quadrophenia movie made which in some ways was groundbreaking and unique- no one cares about the railroads anymore and the same is true with musicals

Live concert shows are more watchable and coherent. Peppers and Tommy were song cycles inthat the central thread - the story line if you will was abstractificus.

       The PFloyd movie the wall I neversaw because there were no tap dancers and I want tap dancers in my movies!

       So anyway Peter says that he feels that it would be a nice idea if there were some organization to ipod world and the rest of theonline distributers. He and I are not fans - we are makers and hence we have to look at things from apractical point of view. Idealism sucks. A classical example is the free market is a good thing except in the case when a nation is just starting out - because they may possibly never get anywhere near the level of marketing that the big  boys have - and so protectionism for them is the way to go. To explain, while self ssufficency is admirable and all that human beings have very long periods of dependency and if you place them in the big world too soon, a few will survive and by massive effort become nearly superhuman - but by far the vast majority will die.

    God knows I've become familiar with watching rock bands and artist dreams die.

It'd a real teenage wasteland, to coin a phrase.

      That  distribution channels giving input into the system would be desirable is only a vague notion at present. Ordinarily artists want to limit said input so as to maintain continuity of theme.  But one ought be able to see through the negatives that we currently ascribe to organizations to the positives - in fact if we don't we have no chance of winning this war. A firm, a company, whatever you call it, is at best an opportunity for people of ability to work together and explore the "more ethereal essences of being" without being bogged down having to do everything on our own.

      And I think we can speak to this because we're both throwbacks in the sense of  partially being one man band type artists eg composers, which has it's  interesting aspects, but it's not rock and roll.

        And BTW many people use you-tube et al as primary rock sources - but they pay the artists zilch.  I regard myself as outside all present revenue streams . the record companies are like the euro empires of the 19th century - extant but obsolete and they would ordinarily be the place to look for innovations - but quite logically they are not going to create products that are going to put themselves out of business.  They are not completely insane - they are just frightened.

       It's a case where the urge to self preservation leads to doom.

     One could think of other suggestions but I will trouble you with them on some other day

Tamlin

chugga chugga

hello  again, still getting up to speed, but hoping to be alittle friendlier as we gain some confidence with this here thing.


  Today we   have three tunes by ALF. There are three complete songcycles in the  can, Toyland, which is based on a theme of childrens toys, The Perfect Wave, which is based on surf music and cocktail cha cha music, and Main Street USA,  which is about how hard it is to ba an adult.
       The tunes are two from the kiddie show,  "Leave my Teddy Bear Alone" and  "Timothy Crabbe"  and a surf instrumental from "The Perfect  Wave" called "Somewhere West of Waikiki (Pt's 1 & 2). At this stage I just threw then ancillary material in to the archive because  I am always short of time. Plus  I am being perhaps overly careful about the graphical component of things,    Some may know that before the flood we'd gotten to the point of releasing films to go with the tunes and eventually I want to get back to that point. Plus I really have to have some sort of ongoing    radio  station  which would have to be most  instrumentals.
  


                In any case I apologize for the site looking bland as dishwater.  


     ALF's Stuff can be gotten here 


The  Newest   --         3 by ALF


http://www.megaupload.com/?d=66Y6A4GV




still around is "I'm a Runner"
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=32X3EBQG









     I mean I miss all the doodads and filigree of HTML  -but anyway here we go with the rant ---

NB – basically I write these blurbs in between other things  so that could explain the lack of direction and/or the reptition

        Before we begin to \day two apologies stemming from the haphazical state of things here.

          I'm by no means committed to blogspot. I'm trying to get used to it, but it's clumsy in comparison with plain old html. If you've ever been to the third world you know that people are forever offering to help you - they want to cut our hair - they want to show you round - they want to introduce you to their big breasted sister - and of course what they really want is to suck you dry of money and they same holds true with a lot of the "helpful people" on the internet.

          I'm starting to get very busy on the production end of things and still have to review wordpress and google gadgets and pay schemes- again - it's all crap - no one has any taste on this planet  - I mean literally consider the type of typical thing you'd find in Disneyland in 1960 and you realize they had to start from scratch because no one had the slightest idea  (except for a few antique collectors) where they were at.

           And another thing - since the pay schemes are going to be voluntary it makes as much sense just to send me a check for a dollar rather then hassle with pay pals  knowing your CC card number and selling your info to god knows who.

        Plus then I'll have sort of a mailing list, which would be optional on your part.

                       From what I understand donations through paypal of under a buck are still subjected to high percentage viz cover charge - the thing is I don't know what to do about a mailing address on my end - but the idea is worth bearing in mind. Probably will wait until I can get a PO Box together – so for the time being the stuff will remain free.

            Just pray for me and I’ll  pray for you  

        And lastly in legal terms one is afforded protection from intervention in snail mail that does not, as far as I know exist w/email.  

======================

   There is a  logic thread to the following - can you find it?

          I tried out "Kindle for Mac" yesterday. Worthless, It don't read PDF'd, it don't import txt, rtf or hrtf. Unless you Buy product from Amazon it doesn't essentially nothing. Hey, but that's their right to do.

It reminded me of a guy I knew years ago, worked for Atlantic records as a lawyer, but I doubt he lasted. Music companies have their own employment patterns - they hire on a one to one basis e.g. somebody knows somebody, until the firm gets bloated and then they announce massive layoffs and repeat the cycle again. The nice thing is nobodies feelings get hurt.

         But this guy was not really top rank - I have a pretty good feeling for these things (not perfect by any means however),and one of the ways he showed it was insecurity. He had a flat and a girlfriend in the village, but he came off as i he'd be a lot happier in Connecticut.  He played. bass, I think in alt rock bands and he could do that   and he knew that the better players are noticeable for their ability to adopt different styles, but he did not have the time or opportunity to dedicate, whereas I did, so that was a problem right there.

      And to narrow the discussion down to the personality type he was of the belief that if someone could not improve the state of his wallet or his sex life they were, as we say,  prima facia, worthless. The great thing about people like this is one never gets attached to them because they are creeps  and as the  Budda so rightly say, It is attachment that is the source of all suffering in the world.

               In a way jealousy is a form of compliment, because the jealous person considers the other as a form of threat to whatever they are seeking to keep to themselves.  There's other forms of jealousy, leading up to paranoia, which is a particularly nasty form of neurosis and difficult to extinguish.

            And amusing question is raised by the occupy Wall Street crowd. That is why do the protestors seem to be exclusively white and middle class or better? Why are there comparatively few of the really poor to be seen?

              Rhetoric, the real thing, is a fascinating subject. It is not the efflorescent verbal flourishes that we often confuse it with. It is more like verbal kung-fu and the goal is to kill the opponent. One feints, one jabs, one slices and parley parley thrust. Like my beloved Alchemy it almost a lost art. It's heydays were in the Roman Senate form 50 - 300 CE and then in the Middle ages from, e;even until about 1400 CE.

           Like I say it's a fascinating subject because the degrees of mastery are so deep and complex.Part of a Judges Job, for instance, in a court room is to remind the attorneys when they are getting off the subject and for instance telling us about the impoverished  boyhood of the defendant, but a master rhetorician will change the subject just slightly enough to make something totally irrelevant seem germane.

       Remember Reagan's fellow who sold missiles to Iranians and he took his orders and marched up the hill, at the time the nation was deeply moved at the loyalty and true blueness of the guy - but it was, after all disobeying the wishes of congress which was supposed to be in charge. It was great theatre, it was good rhetoric, but it was not law.

         People may put down strategy as the  ballywick  of amateurs but if you have your logistics under control it can be effective. Sometimes one has to be seen to be doing something, even if one is not. Often it's the other way around. One must be seen as doing nothing while they are in action, actually.

     Do you remember earth day? Hundreds of thousands demonstrated about something where the crucial desisions could be made by a dozen or two. Result? Let's say it's still up in the air.

         As I said the lawyer from Atlantic  didn't care for me in part because he realized that I was someone he should have gotten to know. I'm not talking courtesy, I'm talking common sense.

       People ask why the Marxian revolutions did not arrise from the industrial proletariate. like he said they would but fro a combination of the agrarian masses and the disenfranchised intellectual elite. The brighter ones of you should be beginning to understand what'll getting ot by now.

              David Brooks, et all, are running scared because the people that want change are not impressed by how well he writes. It's like I always say about the boyfriend and the husband. The husband will let his wife cheat because she gave kids, she cools the meals and she puts out every once in a while, but if she cheats on the boyfriend - that's it. end  of game  because the boyfriends dealing with enough negatives i a part time affair as it is.

      It's the people most like those presently in power that have lost the most and are the most upset. You can tell Joe Blow that the president of some company is worth 3 million a year and  he may be stupid enough to believe you but don't try that on the guy who went to school with the CEO and knows quite well his limitations.

  After being fooled so many times and lied to so many times, words are not enough, one feels as if they are presented with the Gordian knot

    Bring back the 70% maximum   tax bracket.

  I have no problem with that. Do You?

        

                         Tamlin