The Lost Long-Forgotten Luso-Hebraic World Alliance

"Antonio Vieira, a Jesuit missionary, one of the greatest writers of Portugal. . . believed that the Jews should be recalled to his country (which between 1580 and 1640 lost its dynasty and freedom and became a Spanish kingdom) because they could re-create the wealth and greatness of his much-suffered and beloved land. He also believed that the Jews could be converted and that the Ten Tribes could be found in America. Vieira persuased King John IV in 1649 to found a Jewish company, exempt from the Inquisition and provided with a fleet which would ultimately recover Brazil. In a truly Messianic work he prophesied that the new pro-Jewish kingdom of Portugal would be the Biblical fifth universal monarchy and rival the power of the ancient Babylonian kings."
- Paul Tabori, The Anatomy of Exile

Obstacle #568 To Civil Society In Iraq

Stats Courtesy of Facebook.

The Quotable Absurdist

The spirit of sarcasm lives and thrives in the midst of universal wreck; its balls are enchanted and itself invulnerable, and it braves retaliations and reprisals because itself is a mere flash, a bodiless and magical nothing.
- Henri-Frédéric Amiel

How ridiculous and how strange to be surprised at anything which happens in life!
- Marcus Aurelius

There are some things that are so serious that you can only joke about them.
- Niels Bohr

There is only one step from the sublime to the ridiculous.
- Napoleon Bonaparte

We're all the punchline to a joke they won't let us in on.
- Isaac Brock

You can't make up anything anymore. The world itself is a satire. All you're doing is recording it.
- Art Buchwald

At any street corner the feeling of absurdity can strike any man in the face.
- Albert Camus

Living the absurd means a total lack of hope (which is not the same as despair), a permanent reflection (which is not the same as renunciation), and a conscious dissatisfaction (which is not the same as juvenile anxiety).
- Albert Camus

If you cannot be a poet, be the poem.
- David Carradine

In order to attain the impossible, one must attempt the absurd.
- Miguel de Cervantes

Coincidences are spiritual puns.
- G.K. Chesterton

In a world where everything is ridiculous, nothing can be ridiculed. You cannot unmask a mask.
- G. K. Chesterton, On the Comic Spirit

A minimum of silliness is essential for everything, for affirming and even for denying.
- Emile Cioran

We smile, because no answer is conceivable, because the answer would be even more meaningless than the question.
- Emile Cioran

Life creates itself in delirium and is undone in ennui.
- Emile Cioran

We derive our vitality from our store of madness.
- Emile Cioran

Men are mad most of their lives; few live sane, fewer die so. The acts of people are baffling unless we realize that their wits are disordered. Man is driven to justice by his lunacy.
- Edward Dahlberg

The most terrifying verse I know: merrily merrily merrily life is but a dream.
— Joan Didion

I don't necessarily agree with everything I think.
- Andrew Eldritch

Given the choice between folly and sacrament one should always chose folly. Sacrament will not bring you closer to god, but folly just might.
- Erasmus

Are you really sure that a floor can't also be a ceiling?
- M.C. Escher

Nonsense and beauty have close connections.
- E. M. Forster

The universe is not consistency but radical confusion, and poetry opens there the crevices through which this can be seen.
- Ed Foster

Imagination is the only weapon in the war against reality.
- Jules de Gaultier

Being confirmed by others frees me from being responsible for the absurdity of my belief.
- Theodor Geiger

We do not have to visit a madhouse to find disordered minds; our planet is the mental institution of the universe.
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Modern man must descend the spiral of his own absurdity to the lowest point; only then can he look beyond it. It is obviously impossible to get around it, jump over it, or simply avoid it.
- Václav Havel

The privilege of absurdity; to which no living creature is subject but man only.
- Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan

Of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing can ever be made.
- Immanuel Kant

. . . for it is always irony to say something and yet not say it.
- Søren Kierkegaard

It is not in the world of ideas that life is lived. Life is lived for better or worse in life, and to a man in life, his life can be no more absurd than it can be the opposite of absurd, whatever that opposite may be.
- Archibald MacLeish

Imagine the Creator as a low comedian, and at once the world becomes explicable.
- Henry Louis Mencken

Bad humor is an evasion of reality; good humor is an acceptance of it.
- Malcolm Muggeridge

In politics, absurdity is not a handicap.
- Napolean

The irrationality of a thing is no argument against its existence, rather a condition of it.
- Friedrich Nietzsche

Good-humor is a philosophic state of mind; it seems to say to Nature that we take her no more seriously than she takes us.
- Ernest Renan

People who cannot recognize a palpable absurdity are very much in the way of civilization.
- Agnes Repplier

Why shouldn't things be largely absurd, futile, and transitory? They are so, and we are so, and they and we go very well together.
- George Santayana

The more absurd life is, the more unsupportable death is.
- Jean-Paul Sartre, The Words

To the fool-king belongs the world.
- Friedrich Schiller

The life of every individual, viewed as a whole and in general and when only its most significant features are emphasised, is really a tragedy; but gone through in detail, it has the characteristics of a comedy.
- Arthur Schopenhauer

Mankind cannot get on without a certain amount of absurdity.
- Arthur Schopenhauer

It's after the end of the world. Don't you know that yet?
- Sun Ra

Why shouldn't truth be stranger than Fiction? Fiction, after all, has to make sense.
- Mark Twain

And killing time is perhaps the essence of comedy, just as the essence of tragedy is killing eternity.
- Miguel de Unamuno

Life is a shipwreck, but we must not forget to sing in the lifeboats.
- Voltaire

UMB-A-RELLA I AM COMING!

Rihanna is everything I look for in a boo. Reliable ("Told you I'll be here forever"), metaphysical in scope ("You're a part of my entity, here for infinity") and highly accommodating ("You can stand under my umb-a-rella") particularly when it comes to penetration ("Oh baby it's raining, you can always come into me"). This "Good Girl Gone Bad" still has a heart of gold, that much is for sure, in addition to legs that can take you to heaven faster than Babylonian ziggurats. It's probably no coincidence that both my favourite Batman villain (The Penguin) and my favourite R&B enchanteur both share an obsession with umbrellas. Remember the prophecy of Travis Bickle: "All the animals come out at night - whores, skunk pussies, buggers, queens, fairies, dopers, junkies, sick, venal. Someday a real rain will come and wash all this scum off the streets." He too sought protection under the warmth of a moist umbrella, but was denied at every turn. Or Perry Farrell: "One come a day the water will run, no man will stand for things that he had done." Or Andrew Eldritch: "In a flood of your tears, in sackcloth and ashes and ashes and secondhand passion." Or, most famously, Bob Dylan: "And it's a hard rain's a-gonna fall." Who can save us from the coming devastation? Who can protect us as our earthly possessions wash away? Only Rihanna and the enveloping warmth of her umb-a-rella. Like a sexy womb I just want to dive in and fall asleep there suckling her teat. One of my favourite love songs is "Obession" by Killing Joke. A pertinent line is: "Whole nations crave for release from this suspense, and I explode in you, my beautiful obsession!" Like a missile defence shield against the tensions and terrors of the modern age, Rihanna's umb-a-rella provides hope that there can be safety when the storm comes: luscious, luscious safety. This Barbadian ingenue's apocalyptic love song has saved me from total despair, and it just might save the world, too. To paraphrase Led Zeppelin, and interpret this as you will: "Umb-a-rella I am cooooomiiiing!"

Rhyming Couplet Of The Day

I love you for free and I'm not your mother,
But you don't even bother :(
- Objection! (A Tango), Shakira

The Unofficial National Anthem Of Humankind

Amazes me that a band with such a decidedly downcast view of the human race could be socialists. "Who's responsible? You fucking are," seems a strange fit with the notion of man being a slave to impersonal dialectics of history. I understand though: it's difficult to follow ugly truths to their natural conclusions. Easier to stop short and pledge post-Christian allegiance to a secular utopia/class messiah. A millennium of cultural conditioning dies hard, which is why many universities--which started out as religious institutions--continue to pledge allegiance to that latter-day Neo-Testament prophet Karl Marx. Another misanthrope hiding his contempt behind a veneer of righteousness, peering so close to the void only to close his eyes and imagine light. Bonus points for the obscure historical references, which not enough songs contain, and a unique definition of life.

Manic Street Preachers - Of Walking Abortion

Life is: lead weights pendulum died
Pure or lost
Spectator or crucified
Recognize truth
Acedia's blackest hole
Junkies, winos, whores
The nation's moral suicide

Loser, liar, fake or phoney
No one cares
Everyone is guilty
Fucked up, dont know why

We all are of walking abortions
Shalom, shalom
We all love our children

We all are of walking abortions
Shalom, shalom
We all love our children
There are no horizons

Mussolini hangs from a butcher's hook
Hitler reprised in the worm of your soul
Horthy's corpse screened to a million
Tiso revived
The horror of a bullfight

Fragments of uniforms
Open black ruins
A moral conscience
You've no wounds to show
So wash your car in your 'X' baseball shoes

We all are of walking abortions
Shalom, shalom
We all love our children

We all are of walking abortions
Shalom, shalom
We all love our children
There are no horizons

Little people in little houses
Like maggots small blind and worthless
The massacred innocent blood stains us all

Who's responsible? You fucking are
Who's responsible? You fucking are
Who's responsible? You fucking are
Who's responsible? you fucking are

Michael Vick & Dog-On-Dog Violence

Michael Vick, you are an asshole. You are worse than Guernica. You should be thrown in a pit and forced to fight other criminals to the death. People who abuse dogs show their own cowardice and weakness. This is the result at least in part of a mainstream hip-hop culture that values power without responsibility, that takes growing up without a father as an excuse to act like a child. It's no surprise that subscribers to this caveman value system would abuse animals. They consider animals their moral equals, competitors even for the same raw meat. I know the type. I knew a guy who'd start teasing his dog in a vicious way if people started playing with it. He was jealous of the attention. He was too morally defunct to make any distinction between man and animal, likely because he himself skirted the line. Of course he dressed and acted hip-hop. And he was white, for the record. I consider hip-hop no more instrinsically black than I'd consider Christianity intrinsically Jewish. Both are value systems that quickly spread beyond their original contexts because they held a visceral mass appeal amidst a world of declining empires. The details have changed but the plot barely has. And since I consider it my fundamental right as a human being to make value judgements, make value judgements I shall. One thing that pisses me off is when obvious aggressors play the victim card when it happens to be convenient. For instance, 50 Cent is suing an Internet advertising company that used his likeness without his permission. Fair enough. What annoys me is this: "The rapper, whose real name is Curtis James Jackson, is a well-known victim of gun violence, Raymond [his lawyer] said." While this may be true, it's about as disingenuous as saying Lee Harvey Oswald was a well-known victim of assassination. It would be one thing if 50 Cent was shot nine times because he wrote a book critical of the Prophet Muhammad and had a fatwa put against him by the Iranian government. That might justify victimhood status. As it stands, proudly participating in a culture of gun violence should earn you the status "oft-wounded advocate," at best. The truth is so obvious I guess the media figures there's no point stating it. Pit bulls are bred to be violent; they can't overcome their nature. Human beings can, and respect for the notion of human potential and moral agency should make us use the term victim sparingly. Dogs can't help living like dogs; people can. And this is why no sympathy should be shown to cold-blooded killers.

Prometheus Thanks For The Fire

I sentence you to Stygian depths. Moons that orbit each other. Slow-loading menus presenting no choices. Sometimes I have to express my inchoate feelings but to do so directly would reduce them to what they are, but they feel so much deeper than what they are. As a blank page they could be anything, as snapshots they are cheap and disposable. Unspeakable or simply not worth speaking of. We float around on yesterday's clouds. Chasms are where God yawned and winds are where he sighs. I must believe in God because if the alternative is my neighbour than I will shoot my neighbour. What atheists wouldn't use opium if presented free to them every week? If you could sniff God you'd sniff him, if you could smoke God you'd smoke him, but to feel him is irrational, as if you don't spend every weekend vainly fleeing from reason. I wish our ancestors walked the earth, not as zombies but as pedestrians driving battleaxes into cars. No more barbarian invasions because the time of ethnogenesis is over. The clay has dried. The roads are paved. The tribes are confederated. My conflict is that I am genetically predisposed to await a Messiah, but I know one isn't coming. This creates friction. I know the responsibility is mine and no one else is obligated. I know common interests don't interest the common. But I'm still predisposed and so, disappointment. If we haven't learned by now we'll never, and there's the nub. Our ancestors didn't know, they could still be idealistic. History has stolen our excuses before we were even born. I want to throw money-lenders out of the temple but I know that Stalin went one better, he killed millions of them, and they still came back. Facts are a brick wall humanity is still trying to bash its head through. Bash away until tomorrow, work and play sedation. Opium or laughing gas, down or up but never between. No one likes these thoughts, not even me, but they'll be gone tomorrow. If I may blame my predisposition, I can treat it like my own fault instead of the world. And I must, because myself I can change, but the world... It's been tried. My heart skips like mountains skip like lambs skip for the One who isn't coming. The pagans win. Angry prophets may come around but Baal outlasts them all. The fight to control history, to give it a beginning and end, to give it a meaning and a king: it continues to fight! But few are watching. An echo of an echo of a sigh. Prometheus thanks for the fire. I'm just not sure it was worth your sacrifice.

Best Nickname For My Balls Taken From Lecture Notes

"Male spheres of power"

Inspirational If Slightly Obsolete Rhyming Couplet Of The Day

Whatever happens, we have got
The Maxim gun, and they have not.
- Hilaire Belloc

Transformers: Robot Explosion Orgy

Transformers: The Movie is two-hundred tons of pure titanium all-American crap. A mix of Independence Day, Terminator, Men In Black and Birth Of A Nation, Transformers offers all you would expect from an overblown Hollywood robot supermegadventure directed by noted Junkion Michael Bay. By which I mean: Fast cars! Tough-talking multiracial soldiers! Teenage romance! Competent attractive females! Fat black hackers! Hot robot-on-robot action! Also expect a new catch-phrase to start sweeping the nation, the phrase that most embodies and ricochets throughout the film: "Insert the cube into my chest!" This can be used in nearly any context, particularly as a Dadaist random rejoinder or a heat of the moment sexual command. It is also the most compelling piece of dialogue in a film that features both an autistic Camaro and a jive-talking robot ("brobot") named Jazz. Of course clichéd dialogue coming from super-advanced robots with the personalities of twelve-year-olds is part of the whole Transformers appeal, but the fact that the robots only start talking halfway through the film makes them feel like impromptu time travellers from the 80s.

To be fair, the film does have its positives: there's a generally successful current of self-deprecating humour, a charming performance from that character actor who looks like a rat, and the robot-on-man sex scenes are surprisingly erotic (and tasteful). That being said, the whole mood of the first half is inevitably "transformed" into a Team America-style hackneyed explosion orgy, ending in the inevitable insertion of a cube into a robot's unmentionables. The cube in question is much like that cool demon-summoning cube from Hellraiser except it's for robots, looks like the Borg and has a thing for chests. The film could've used more of it quite frankly, as it worked especially well opposite Jon Voight. Disappointingly though, the film failed to answer the question I've been wondering about since the cartoon series: namely, before the Great Robot Schism, why would the Autobots trust a group called the Decepticons in the first place? It's hardly deceitful if they're literally advertising their deceitfulness in their name.

Nostalgia may be colouring my memories, but I remember the original Transformers movie being a stone-cold classic. It had epic battles in space, usurpation struggles within the bad guy hierarchy (bad guy-on-bad guy action rules) and a planet made of garbage. It was a goddamn interstellar epic, featuring none other than a near-death Orson Welles playing a planet-devouring behemoth threatening Autobots and Decepticons alike. (He described his role as "a big toy who attacks a bunch of smaller toys.") Spectacular! Even thinking about it makes me want to play with toys. It may be because I've aged terribly, but the new Transformers film didn't have nearly the same effect on me. Partly it's the humans' fault. Unless it's a GI Joe crossover, humans are mostly superfluous in my ideal conception of the Transformers universe and their presence should be kept to a minimum. Frankly I find the whole concept of humanity needing alien robot protectors to be demeaning. We have nuclear weapons, we're not babies! Unicron, destroy of worlds: now there's a compelling threat. Orson Welles, what has been done to your legacy? William Randolph Hearst couldn't have done a bigger hatchet job.

ON FLAME WITH ROCK N' ROLL!

Because nothing says rock n' roll more than things on fire.


10. Blue Öyster Cult - Metal Years


9. Killing Joke - Fire Dances


8. Electric Six - Fire


7. New Bomb Turks - Nightmare Scenario


6. Sonic Youth - Bad Moon Rising


5. Rage Against The Machine - Rage Against The Machine


4. X - Los Angeles


3. Swans - Love Of Life


2. Pink Floyd - Wish You Were Here


1. Jane's Addiction - Nothing's Shocking

Hamilton: A Little Piece Of Paradise

"A woman and man fight in a Beer Store parking lot over who gets to chug their last bottle of beer. Both grab it. She wins the battle, but loses the war when she pulls the bottle from him so hard, she bonks herself in the face, smashes the bottle and ends up wearing the beer."

- Hamilton Spectator Police Blotter

Ten Best Grudge Matches In Head Wide Open's History

10. Good Vs. Evil
9. Me Vs. Hooligans
8. Jennifer Capriati Vs. Ruyter Suys
7. Head Wide Open Vs. Mohammed Yousaf Qureshi
6. Curious Bovine Vs. Crying Spaniard
5. Head Wide Open Vs. Pearl Jam Fans
4. Black Dog Vs. Blonde Dog
3. Mussolini Vs. Self-Doubt
2. Head Wide Open Vs. Monarch Child
1. Dick Cheney Vs. Kraven The Hunter

A Novel Interpretation

"When Dostoyevsky said that beauty will save the world he meant, no doubt, the beauty of Russian arms."
- I. Kobrin, quoted in Walter Lacquer's Black Hundred: The Rise of the Extreme Right in Russia

Post-Nihilism

Post-nihilism, that's what I'm after, the final stage. First there is blissful ignorance of nothing, then myopic despair at nothing, and finally, hopefully recognition that, in the words of André Malraux, "Man can build his greatness on the nothingness that crushes him." Or as King Lear bluntly put it: "Nothing can come of nothing. Speak again." It is optimism filtered through pessimism, enlightened innocence borne out of the deepest cynicism, the reconstruction after deconstruction. It is the result of the learning-through-experience of key principles like "As Above So Below" and "No Way Out But Forward Go!" It is the conquest-through-absorption of anxiety, doubt, frustration, despair. It is an ongoing process that should involve continual moving, living, reading, experiencing, tasting and overcoming. An imperfect utopia, to be sure, because there can be no other kind. It requires faith that the mirage can be willed into reality, and that prophecies are made real if they are self-fulfilling.

My journey to this understanding is immaterial, literally, because it is a subjective process. Most of the most momentous things that have happened in my life have been invisible. No less real because of it, but invisible nonetheless. It was like Shakespeare's sound and fury, signifying nothing, except it made no sound and little fury. The birth-moment came when I realized it was up to me to draw my own signification, and thus redeem the past as a necessary midwife to a better future. Not the death of regret, but rather it's obsolescence. And as above so below. Lessons learned inside can be applied to the outside. The subjective and the objective co-habit the same sphere--reality--and action and thought exist on the same spectrum. The struggle musn't be for nothing; it has a purpose if given a purpose. Thus from nihilism emerges post-nihilism, given the principle that: If surrounded by darkness, you yourself must become the sun.

It's an ongoing process. Suns dawn and descend. But just because it's a cycle doesn't make it a circle. The model should be a spiral staircase, moving in ever-higher cycles. There can be progress even in routine. The prisoner at the beginning of his sentence isn't the same as at the end, even if he never leaves his cell. Of course the spiral staircase can lead to oblivion, if nihilism remains the state. Or it can flatten into a circle, for the pre-nihilistic rhythm-sacralizing rituals of childhood and dogma. The tower of Babel, a spiral ziggurat, is lambasted in such circles for a reason. It represents the self-propelled wheel, the dream of reaching the top of the staircase through one's own exertions, entering Heaven. This is close to post-nihilism, except it misses the revelation that Heaven is not a material place to enter but the immaterial state of working towards it. And that even as a recognized creation of the mind, it remains a holy, wholly mortal creation.

Never Mind The Bomb, Iran Has... Killer Dolphins!

In 2000 the press reported that dolphins trained to kill for the Soviet Navy had been sold to Iran.

- From Wikipedia article on Military Dolphins

Song Of The Day

Today's song of the day is an anthem for our times, courtesy of Jarvis Cocker's electro-erotic side-project Relaxed Muscle. Read this article while listening for added effect. Or just turn on the TV.

Relaxed Muscle - Sexualized

Ooh!
Ooh!

The drink that I drink is sexualized
The thoughts that I think are sexualized
The life I live is sexualized
I shoot from the hip 'cos I'm sexualized

The posters on the walls - all sexualized
Shopping malls - all sexualized
The car that I drive is sexualized
Yeah, the hole in my life is sexualized

Oh-oh, sexualized
It's keeping me up all day and all night
And I ain't got no more time for the wife
So, sex me, sex me, sex me, sex me, sex me, sex me, sex me, sex me

Prudent preachers are sexualized
Student teachers are sexualized
Instructors in the gym - all sexualized
Fill you to the brim 'cos I'm sexualized

I woke up in the morning I was sexualized
A new day was dawning I was sexualized
Read the morning paper, it was sexualized
I really got to make-up - got to sexualize

Oh-oh, sexualized
You're keeping me up all day and all night
And I ain't got no more time for the wife
So, sex me, sex me, sex me, sex me, sex me, sex me, sex me, sex me

Oh, God it's in my eyes!
'cos everywhere I look
Everything's sexualized
I said, oh, a goddess in my eyes
'cos everywhere I look
It's all sexualized

It's all sexualized
Oh, oh, all sexualized
Oh, all sexualized
Ohh

The girls in FHM are sexualized
Take a look at them, they're all sexualized
On the TV it's all sexualized
Everything that I see is all sexualized

Everybody in the street - sexualized
And children on the swings - yeah sexualized
When you're talking on the phone - sexualized
And they're sitting in their homes all sexualized

Oh-oh, sexualized
Keeping me up all day and all night
And I can't even get it on with the wife
So, sex me, sex me, sex me, sex me, sex me, sex me, sex me, sex me!

Oh, it's in my eyes!
'cos everywhere I look
It's all sexualized
I said, oh, I gotta shut my eyes
'cos everywhere I look
It's all sexualized

Ten Disciplines I Wish Colleges Offered Degrees In

10. Diabology
The study of the Devil, including his role in human history and rock n' roll. Taught with sympathy.

9. Killology
The study of the physical and mental processes of killing, as well as a how-to guide.

8. 'Pataphysics
The study of what lies beyond metaphysics, and the art of bullshit in general.

7. Thanatology
The study of death among human beings. Advanced degrees given posthumously.

6. Enigmatology
The study of puzzles and all that is cryptic. Essays to be written in the forms of riddles.

5. Psychogeography
The study of the effects of geography on the emotions and behavior of individuals. All lectures delivered while wandering.

4. Intoxicology
The study of the socio-cultural role of intoxication, focussing on personal case studies and experimentation.

3. Necromancy
The art of raising (and controlling!) the dead, with an emphasis on zombies.

2. Liminology
The study of in-between states, including the nature of metaphysical doorways and interdimensional portals.

1. Nihilology
The study of nothing, literally and figuratively.

Hero Of The Day

In 1985, Calment moved into a nursing home, having lived on her own until age 110. However, she did not gain international fame until 1988, when the centenary of Vincent van Gogh's visit to Arles provided an occasion to meet reporters. She said that at age 14, she met van Gogh in her father's shop, later describing him as "dirty, badly dressed and disagreeable." In 1996, the nursing home where she lived released a CD entitled Time's Mistress. It featured her reminiscing, set to rap and other tunes. "A very short one." When asked on her 120th birthday what kind of future she would expect to have.

- Wikipedia article on French supercentenarian Jeanne Calment

Spinning The Obsolete

Yes, so I realize "my generation doesn't buy CDs anymore," but fuck my generation if I haven't said so already. I like collecting things, I like holding things, I like looking at things. I like shuffling through racks and looking for that rare long-sought gem. There's such a thing as too much easy availability. Being able to have anything is perilously close to having nothing, it becomes a void of overwhelming. The catch isn't as relish-inducing without the chase. My reason for buying CDs is that it induces irrational personal satisfaction, and that is enough for me. Morality issues are a tangent. Outside perceptions are a tangent. I'm no longer in touch with anyone who shares my taste in music, so there are no peers to impress. Women have notoriously bad taste in music, so there are no romantic interests to impress. I impress myself with my collection and that's the only impression I care to make. I went to the closing sale at Sam the Record Man and got myself six CDs for fifty dollars. They include In the Cold Light of Morning by forgotten British scuzz-gloom rockers Dream City Film Club, Crackle by the immortal Bauhaus, the eponymous Pleasure Forever by Pleasure Forever, The Obliterati by post-punk living relics Mission of Burma and The Difference Between Me and You Is That I'm Not on Fire and Mcluskyism by the too witty by half Mclusky. My collection advances in its endless forward campaign.

This is about more than CDs for me. It's about principle. One principle: personal satisfaction counts more than the cold game of numbers, and personal satisfaction is anti-rational if not irrational. I could download sixty albums at once, but to amass sixty albums over the space of two years gives me associated memories of the thrill of the hunt to look back on. This goes back to my fundamental socio-political principle, that mankind seeks utopia not out of any real longing for the boredom that would be perfection, but for the seeking process itself. If everything was in abundance we'd still hoard it, because we are hoarding animals. To live without blinkers is to recognize our irrational nature and enlist the intellectual impulse in the aid of the primitive impulse, and vice versa. Since my primitive side enjoys the primitive hunt, why should I deprive it of its due? The money I spend is just a temple sacrifice, and temple sacrifices have sustained thousands of happy tribes for millennia. How much happiness has the no-sacrifice historical blip that is the modern moment provided? I don't want all this convenience! Some convenience sure, but it's nice to walk somewhere instead of driving, isn't it? When the sun is out? Maybe not at the time, but looking back you'll thank yourself because exertion is mentally rewarding. In the short-term we like rewards, but in the long-term we like earning them at least as much.

All these tangents express a certain process I've endured. This process has been that of coming to grips with the anti-rationality of myself in particular and mankind in general. Happiness is a precious enough thing that the reasons for it shouldn't have to make sense. Whatever brings the warm sublime equilibrium buzz has proven its worth. The rational must work to guide and moderate the anti-rational, not to destroy it for the sake of some false abstract principle like historical determinism or cost efficiency. All of this is to say that I like collecting music and will continue to do so. The world may turn and the world may burn. There just isn't enough time to ruminate in secular hells like logic and other people. I've spent time there and it burns, if not tickles. My indulgences are ballast for my sanity. So what if the holy democratic consensus has turned against books and CDs and walking and analog existence? To fight the false consensus is the noblest of fights, and if you disagree my point is such that it can only benefit. Self-direction is forward direction, as long as that's where you're looking. To be disconnected from the main circuit is to be forced to wire your own. Even if, by necessity, it must be cobbled together from other discarded parts, it remains an achievement. If the world says it's obsolete the world can go on upgrading itself out of existence.