- right well running strange tonight - foro whatever reason megaupload oisn't kicking back the L url so I'm making a very quick and hopefully temporary detour to wu and we'll see - but in the meantime I get to uling this stuff.
this is Norma by the way .. We're trying something new..
I was lying in bed with ALF this morning. He always takes a while to wake up, and I was trying to get him interested in current events because I'd just had a dream about them. You know how dreams are, on the surface they are about immediate things and underneath they are about things that really concern us.
But it's always hard to get the ALF interested in current events. I mean he stood beside Moses at the parting of the red sea and comforted Alexander upon the death of his boyhood love - so compared to these guys George Romney and Roone Arledge are pretty much historical non entities.
But I try. In my dream I started out thinking about how candidates change what they say according to what's gonna get them laid - because they are men. And then I went on to thinking that if you like someone's looks they can say and do anything and you'll make excuses for it, but if you don't then no matter how good or nice they are they are out of luck. I don't know where ALF fits in, ha hah. Actually he's a doll IT took a while for me to figure that out but the secret is to find a guy who doesn't care about anything but you then they'll do what you want.
( ALF's note: My dear the great and turrable lesson was it larned by Parnell and that woman. She brought down the people, she brought down the nation and their souls as well shall hover here twixt heaven and hell till the second coming of the blessed savior Jaysus Christ who shall judge the living and the dead and all those in between when the dead rise from their graves and the living shout hallelujah hossannah!)
Norma; See what I mean?
We're still working on putting the pieces together. Greetngs to the scene- To Stairway, Red Telephone, Miko, the two Waynes. Slash/Root et all
and thanks for downloading the tunes they're sorta premature at this stage but hey, they are cheap enough
Here's Tamlin he's better at this stuff then I am .
The Mark Twain house in Stanford Connecticut will be open to the public on December fourth. It will be decorated, as much as possible, in the manner it was whilst the deceased humorist and public speaker lived there with his wife and children. This event will be something of a grand re opening as the administration the house has recently concluded a court case which found the previous administration guilty of embezzling one point five million dollars over the previous seven years.
"We're doing extensive research to make the house authentic to the era and the way it would have been when Sam lived here," said one of the caretakers. All caretakers refer to the previous owner as "Sam", so as to establish greater intimacy with the dead author.
The caretaker continued, "Just to do the research to find out how one room should look will cost about a quarter million dollars."
Live music on the piano will be provided on the day of the tour.
Tickets are thirty dollars and available either online or at the door.
This next mention hardly deserves to be written out. Let's call it an observation. Fortunately I don't know what it means and therefore can not be accused of willful imposition of the readers time.
The story begins with a lady, sort of. She was a psychology teacher in Hofstra University which I attended in the late seventies. It wasn't so much that we did not get along as that we could not get along. It was almost as if there was an invisible barrier between us.
The mind does tend to do things like it will absolutely refuse to remember some people's names. It will refuse to remember anything about them other then a vague distaste perhaps. And what is remarkable as well, this sort of thing can happen even in the absence of specific issues of disagreement.
In the case of myself and this teacher we never got far enough along to disagree about anything. It is something that we rarely consider the implications of when we think that many a mind is made up about another person within the first few seconds of meeting them. This works both in positive terms and in negative terms.
Most of us are familiar with prejudice. Actually prejudice makes a lot of sense - we look at someone - recognize that they are in a group competing with with our group and we hate them for it. What's so irrational about that?
On a personal level guys go after girls and think they should dress nice, or be nice, or have a sense of humor, when in fact she's made up her mind within a few moments of meeting the fellow and all the other stuff is just to ease the situation along.
As far as I was concerned and as far as I could tell the same with the woman , there were no romantic complications involved. Perhaps it's so that there's never absolutely no romantic feelings for good or ill when members of the opposite sex meet, but such were in this case not a big deal. It was something else.
I've spent thirty years trying to bring the "Something else" into the conscious mind. There was no great animosity between us, rather it was a case there being, just beyond the fogs of pleasantry and manners, an impenetrable wall. Furthermore I never then or since got the impression that the resistance to communicate was based on personal feelings. It was more as if I had to be stopped not for who I was, but because of who I represented.
Remember that psychology is considered something of a soft science. Unlike mathematics or engineering where the hypothesis either works or doesn't in a soft science the results are up for interpretation. Especially in the seventies this was problematic. Psychoanalysis was being questioned more then ever and there was a grab bag of theories competing for the status of authenticity and the federal dollars that would follow.
One of the tragedies that has plagued the field for centuries that those afflicted with mental disorders are often the least able to press their needs upon society.
Before I conclude the observation though there's two more things to be aware of.
After two or three years as an undergraduate I began to realize that the department of psychology was split into two factions. One was the experimental faction, which was sort of laid back and let the results show up when they did. The other was the behavioral modification faction. At this time what that meant was psychoactive drugs - and we are not talking about Ayuhaska, the south american hallucinogenic plant. The second group was to me a little frightening, because they were, and are, more then willing to render opinions as to others mental fitness at the drop of a hat.
This is not to deny that essentially that is their job but I always get a shiver when the hangman takes a little too much joy in his work.
And as well one probably need not mention that whether it is the misreading of astronomical positions, the incorrect assessment of humors, or even the failure to sustain correct genetic readings, at times there have been medicines far worse then the diseases.
The second pertinent factor is I wrote a term paper for this teacher and placed in on her desk. It was about the conditioning of chickens - no joke. And I hated it. i hated it even more when a week later the woman informed me she had not received the paper and I had to write the thing over again.
How this happened I do not know.I do know for certain the paper was there, and perhaps it fell off her desk. I've never accepted the possibility that the woman lied just to be obnoxious. Not that she liked me too much, but it would be unprofessional. I think actually she saw the paper there and assumed it was garbage and threw it out. This happened on an unconscious level however. What she was doing was being a good team player.
By purposely attempting to discourage me in following through my possible desires to go in to the field she was acting, albeit unconsciously, as a gatekeeper.
For all I know she may have done me a favor but it must be admitted that she was probably able to ascertain, in her own mind, that I was not of the philosophical orientation that she felt most comfortable with.
For as to the great question - "Who to advantage nature or nurture?" Those who have been fortunate as to circumstances often insist their seeming superiority is in the blood and genes whereas those of lesser fortune tend to focus on the more pragmatic advantages of food and shelter. Suffice to say I am of the latter category and she was not. Suffice to say, as well, her actions, and those of others dissuaded me from choosing psychology as a career.
Epilogue- Saying I hated writing up the result of psychological experiments remains an understatement. By chance Paul Krugman this week quoted Alan Greenspan's assessment of the economic picture a few years ago and it struck me what I hate about a certain style of writing - and thinking. It's a closed system.
Greenspan didn't care about the truth he just wanted the party to keep on going.
That was how he became Very Important!
And there's so many people like that it makes me sick.
It's all a bloody con job. One came upon them in the hundreds during the first flush of the information revolution - people talking about networking, and synergistic relationships and new paradigms and enhanced productivity and it was pathetic. Perhaps that's one reason why I don't belong in academia, despite the many who suggest I do.
It's also sad. Words on a merry go round. I got a d minus on the paper and in retrospect I wished I had failed it. I should have failed it. I am ashamed that I did not - because it was a stupid assignment meant not to enlighten but to enslave - meant to demonstrate one's willingness to submit to authority.
If I cared more about it I would have purposely failed it. After thirty years I still feel guilty about it, because I went along with it. I did what I knew was wrong not because the pay was so good, but because I couldn't be bothered doing what was right. I guess I didn't take them seriously enough.That was my real crime - hubris.
Returning to the present I'm still waiting on the upload to Wupload
the file has two originals and two covers - the originals are on four month spec for a local band which means we'll see what they think of them but for four months only I and them can record them. Then there's Red River Vally inthe arraignment by Paul Weston and Jo Stafford
duh what's going on ? both sites have allowed uploads but have prevented me from getting the url to download them - am running short of time
me no like this = will attempt correction meanwhile will post this
tamlin
No comments:
Post a Comment