When I lived and worked on Parnassus, and “no, I’m not making that up,” I once received an e-mail from Fred Toates, asking for a re-print.  It was one of the proudest days of my life.  I was weaned on Toates’s feedforward philosophical admonitions.  It was more-than touching.  I was elated and gobsmacked.  Few, or none will know what I’m talking about.  Then I got an e-mail from a colleague who basically said, “nice job on that commentary about Harlow.” I was almost shaken with gratitude.  I didn’t know anyone read this stuff.  I didn’t know anyone cared.  I read Toates, and more.  I cared.  Did I tell them?

I seldom think much about the duct tape

wrapping my black plastic evening wear

flip-flops (although fluorescent orange tape

definitely impinges upon the sensorium,

in dim light; broad spectrum is wowsers!),

unless they need more duct tape.  

A trip to the hardware store for a roll of black

to match the discreditable slippers was “unlikely.”

I bought them one sunny day in Palo

Alto at a Walgreen’s while visiting a friend’s AI

conference.  My dogs were barking.  I’ll concede

it’s kinda shabby looking with duct tape.

I didn’t bother finding the red or the silver

tape, ’cause it’s duct tape, pal, who cares?  

The orange tape was right there, sitting

on the desk, and black goes with everything.

If I had to go out in public for black tape,

there may be some black tape out in the barn,

cuz electrical tape is beneath me.

Holy Piccolo Pete and my blood-curdly-caked external meatus in the ululating shrillness of the dark wilderness where the straight way was lost!  Sending Arthur money was the best hundred bucks I ever spent!   I’m actually considering getting some sort of job to proceed with regular tithing to his cathedral of tears.

Obviously, we all owe Matt Taibbi an eternal debt of gratitude for his ongoing savage humiliation of the Nancy capitalists who continue destroying our lives.  It’s fair to say he got under the flinty thin skin of these epicurean dealmakers.  I bow deeply in Taibbi’s direction for his regular savagery against their felonious assaults upon democracy, and for writing one of the best extended phrases ever written in the Mother Tongue.

However, Arthur Silber rightly castigates Taibbi for parroting the official US/Israeli government lines that “Ahmadinejad is nuts.”  “He can’t be allowed to have nukes!”  “Something must be done!”  If you ever actually listen to, say, an interview of Ahmadinejad by Charlie Rose, you would rightly conclude that “Charlie Rose is nuts.”  

Also, if you pay any attention to such news, you would also rightly conclude that “Uncle Sam is nuts,” “The New York Times is nuts,”  “Diane Sawyer and Brian Ross are nuts,”, “Erin Burnett is nuts,” and so on.  Any casual brush with history would inform you of these elementary facts.

I urge you to read Arthur’s spat-out of Taibbi’s harmful Pavlovian regurgitation of neoconservative crop milk.

So many end-games to play, so little time.

Fat sperm whales, become hummingbirds!

We’ll get you more oil (at certain costs), but use it

wiser!  Obama’s economic disasters advisors

suggest a strike on Iran a payroll tax cut

while the economy strengthens…wait…whut?

That whole Peak Oil myth is like the myth

Of Sisyphus, sez Obama’s Citi’s Orszag.

Guns ‘n’ Butter.  Think, man, think!  Thinker,

Thunker!  Drinker, drunker!  Finker…Funker!

Yes, that’s it!  Spy on your neighbors!

The Mooslim hordes, the crazy Joos, of course,

Department of Homeland Security?  Hello?

I tink I taw a puddy-tat!  Woof.

Ladies and Germs, I give you

Barack Obama:

“It’s the radar gun that keeps the industry honest and if that’s eliminated, we don’t have a program that will keep the industry in check,” said Mike Doyle, director of the University of Georgia’s Center for Food Safety, which works with the produce industry to improve safety measures on farms and in packinghouses. “This is really important because you and I eat that food and we don’t want to get sick.”

White House Office of Management and Budget spokeswoman Meg Reilly said the decision to cut the $5 million program was made after USDA decided it had limited impact. She said it also USDA determined it was not a good fit within its Agricultural Marketing Service division, which is partially funded by fees collected from produce growers.

“While food safety is a vitally important part of successfully marketing produce and other agricultural products, other federal and state public health agencies are better equipped to perform this function,” USDA spokeswoman Courtney Rowe said in a statement.

Marketing.  May I just add, what a fucking psychopath.

Less than zero: Revised, sharply downward.

Any number you can think of, revised.

Sustainable growth rates.  Competent bankers.

Net terrorist attacks against us.

Fraud, fraud, fraud, fraud, fraud.

Fraudy, fraudy, fraudy, fraudy, fraudulent.

Bull. Shit.  Shit is fucked up and.

I prefer the dawn chorus to ads

For erectile dysfunction.  The chirping,

Chittering, whirring of the dinosaurian.

The dawn breaking, bringing.  Light.

Full spectrum light.  Not Full

Spectrum Domination of Nature.

Wait: we have storm drains to live in?

In a post entitled, “The Harrowing,” The Epicurean Dealmaker (TED) makes quite a spectacle of himself, not at all unusual for investment bankers, but somewhat unusual from him in its straightforward straits, forward! bullshit, wherein he’s lamenting that investment bankers will “suffer the greatest harm” in their ongoing self-made financial collapse:

Now is the winter of investment bankers’ discontent. The long foreshadowed harrowing of my industry, the great winnowing of its inhabitants, is underway. The huge, tottering edifice of proprietary trading, structured products, and bespoke derivatives, which suckled at the twin teats of Greenspan’s largesse and investors’ desperation for yield in the age of negative real rates, will suffer the greatest harm. But the rest of us-innocent or not of the worst offenses of our industry-will suffer the fallout, too. Pay will be slashed, jobs will be cut-never to return-and egos will be racked upon the callous indifference of executives and shareholders more concerned with their own personal trials and tribulations than the suffering of their bought-and-paid-for minions.

[egos racked?  the bought-and-paid-for minions?  Say it ain’t so, Mama!]

Our enemies will rejoice. Spiteful, envious souls will gnaw greedily on the bitter bones of schadenfreude in cramped and narrow defiles, sucking out the meager marrow to satisfy their self-righteous, operatic anger. Let them. Those humans among us who remain, who survive-and rest assured, Dear Friends, some of us will survive-will remember.

O yes, Dearly Beloved, we will remember. We will remember our friends and enemies. We shall never forget.

Enjoy the show.

Egos racked upon callous indifference?  Say it’s not so, bro!

Look, pal, believe it or not, I know people who are trans-global executive CEOs and whatnot, people who explicitly rejected the business of financial parasitism, people who make things, people I trust.  One guy I know, I axed him, bro, “That’s pretty high-end technical shit you guys are into, do you spend your whole time doing powerpoints on the technical advantages of your products?”  His response, more or less was, “Nah, we tried that.  It [being technically honest and explicit] doesn’t work.  Buy them dinners and drinks.”  And that’s’ the whole show.  

“A self-portrait. It was after a dangerous eight-hour operation on my lung. Afterward I walked and walked the country around Chadds, getting my strength back, wearing these French cavalier’s boots which belonged to the painter Howard Pyle. As I walked, I had to watch my feet because I was so unsteady. And I suddenly got the idea that we all stupidly crush things underfoot and ruin them – without thinking. Like the weed here getting crushed. That black line is not merely a compositional device it’s the presence of death. Before my operation I had been looking at Albrecht Durer’s works. During the operation they say my heart stopped once. At that moment I could see Durer standing there in black, and he started coming at me across the tile floor. when my heart started, he, Durer – death – receded. So this painting is highly emotional – dangerous and looming. I like it. ”

– Andrew Wyeth

Apparently, Cachaito Lopez is no longer with us.  From wiki:

Born in Havana on February 2, 1933, Orlando “Cachaíto” López first got actively involved in music when he was only nine years old. By the age of eleven he was involved with an orchestra with his aunt. His early desire was to play the violin, but his Grandfather Pedro insisted he take up the double bass, as there had been a long tradition of bassists in the López family – legend has it that there are over 30 bassists in its lineage; a trend that they did not want stopped.

About a decade ago, I was bompin’ ’round Jack London Square on a brisk, sunny day, a weekday, for some reason, and I wandered into some craft-store/kite shop, where some short-ish Hispanic gentleman was attempting to get some query across to the clerk en Espanol.  My “Landscaping Spanish” from days of old was horrendous, but I managed to figure out that he was looking for “hand-shirts,” or in other words, “gloves.”  

His name was Orlando “Cachaito” Lopez, and he was the bassist for the Buena Vista Social Club.  He was front-lining a gig at Yoshi’s that night, and wanted to protect his hand-parts from the frisky, brisky Bay.