A Brutal Emotional Experience

I am a bourgeois and the other day I was captured by an avant-garde artist who promised to subject me to a brutal emotional experience.

“Hey bourgeois, I’m going to explode all your comforting illusions!” he said.  He had hair dyed two different colors and a cast iron scrotal piercing.

“Okay.” I said.  “Let’s get this over with.”

“You think that your life is worth living but you know what?  IT isn’t.  Cause nothing is worth doing!”

“What about dispelling people’s illusions?” I said “You obviously think that’s worth doing.”

“Huh.” he said “I had not thought about that. This whole thing has gone south. I was supposed to make you feel bad but instead you have made me feel bad.”

“I’m really sorry” I said.  And I really was.

Customer relations

Id like to walk barefoot inn a carpet of bosoms.
That’s difficult — where would the rib cages go?
Hmm…
Could I interest you instead in a carpet of tooshies?
That would do nicely, thank you.

Ape Man of the Seven Seas

“Don’t think this bravos a brusque brute: in truth he brims with brio!”
It’s true, but what does it mean?

Buying and Selling Listening and Talking

Whenever you say something you are trying to get someone to spend some time paying attention to you. Since nobody lives forever that means you’re asking them to spend some of their precious remaining hours on what you say.
If you try to sell someone a good or service for money you’re asking them to pay you the time they (or their dead bequeathers) worked to make that money.
Listening is like spending.
Talking is like selling.
You want to avoid being ripped off — buying or listening to something the purveyor wouldn’t buy or listen to herself.
So authors should include their credit card bills.
Somebody arguing for refinement who consumes the gross is a trickster and vice versa. We should demand to know what our favorite authors eat and where they shop.

“I’m Awfully Frond of You”

These are great t- shirts but can lead to heart break. Fern horticulturalists buy them at the Fern Fest and give them as gifts to other fern gardeners back home. But then they view them as declarations of love but they’re just meant to mean “I like ferns and thought you’d enjoy it”
These shirts wreck homes

Good Thing About Old Age

I’m glad human beings get old and weak eventually.  Consider the alternative!  The older generation would just keep getting bigger and bigger and stronger and stronger, so our parents would be ogres running around and our grandparents these gigantic giants blundering through the forest crushing everybody, and then how could you ever start a business or get a new idea going with these huge old monsters blocking your path.

 

I’ll tell you how you could.  You couldn’t.

Checking email too often?

Strictly speaking that’s impossible!
Because if you care about the people you know ) every moment could conceivably bring news of infinite importance from each of them.
So ideally we should all wear glasses with continual real time updating if the souls and bodies if everyone we know.
And while we’re at it everyone we don’t.
Because someone you don’t know is all the more likely to say something unexpectedly important.

Ulysses and the Sirens

Years after Ulysses had his successful adventure resisting the song of the sirens, he reflected that this was the highest moment in his life and endeavored to recapture it.  He would lash himself to the mast every morning, and put himself in the presence of things he desired, and resist them.  As he strove with greater and greater keenness to capture the pleasure of resisting the song of the sirens, he placed more and more of his life out of reach: his wife Penelope, his son Telemachus, his dog, his food, his wine, his bed — until finally, drunk on his own powers of resistance he starved to death.  And this was the secret of the song of the sirens, which truth be told was an ordinary melody and the secret of the rocks they dashed their victims on, since the beach in the Mediterranean which they sang upon, was, truth be told, as soft and as harmless as a bed.

Enceladus Might Have Life!

It’s got these huge oceans of liquid water and it’s fueled by tidal forces from Saturn.

It would cost a measly five billion dollars to explore it by dropping some kind of robot on the surface of the ice (its ocean has a few km of ice on top of it) and having it drill down to the bottom and take a glass of water.

Unfortunately the budget of NASA is only 18 billion dollars.  By contrast the Department of Defense Budget is 1.2 trillion dollars.

So…

SAUDI ROYAL FAMILY!  If you truly love Islam fund an exploratory mission.  It will be like half your espresso budget.  And you can change the name of it from Enceladus to Prophet Mohammed Peace Upon Him!

Rich Christians!  If you love Jesus and want him to get PR find life on Enceladus and we can change it to EVERYBODY WORSHIP JESUS!  Pope — you are a cool pope.  WE all know the secret basements in vatican city are full of gold and jewels and porno art by the great masters.  Sell some of that shit on ebay.

Vladimir Putin — you have a whopping swiss bank account.  Explore Enceladus!  Make it part of Russia!  Name it after your girlfriend!  

Misc. Rich People — here is a chance to do something that will make you famous after your death.

DON’T YOU WANT THAT?

“I hate professors complimenting themselves for being subversive “

You shouldn’t! Everybody needs compliments and they’re the only ones who will give them some