A Comments Section, Part 90

A couple of comments from the comments section of this Politico article... An interesting article, by the way. Reminds me of how people try to boil down a baseball game into stats and box scores. Of course, over time, the stats that are considered relevant tend to change as well. Can we perform a calculus to determine how this change is changing? Of course we can. And then we can make forecasts and strategies ad nauseum. But the mind tends to lose sight of the metaphors at work fairly quickly. Like xeroxes of zeroxes. Soon whole communities are engaging in whimsical rituals of error, from which I quote but a few:

"Of course I under[stand] the constutional law. I learned last night some new info from MoneyRocks with Eric Bolling about this community center/mosque. FIrst this Iman has been forwardly honet with the 9/11 families. He throws up a legal barrior to hide his investors. Which makes him more dubious and questionable. Second this so called community center is closer too ground zero than just two blocks. Also the imam has been dodging the press on interviews on this vary subject. Two things the American people want to know is this: why this location and where the funding is coming from. Now just who are his investors? Why are they hiding behind the law? Now I understand the Vatican Bank not revealing there funds but this one is completely different. Now this Imam who wishes to show goodwill,now who and what is he hiding?"

I love the exciting usages of "now" in this one. Keeps you attentive, sounds conversational. Very engaging. This next one's a little more caustic:

"The cabal of Islamic Muslim nations is trying to invade the US and other countries, that have religious tolerence.This is something nobody seems to realize. Our country was founded to seperate religion and state, Muslim nations were founded to combine religion and state. Our shiria, socialist president says he has been looking for a church. Maybe we could build him a mosque down the street from the Whitehouse."

...Almost workman-like. Efficient, but rough. Still, it hits its dramatic marks pretty well. And it keeps you moving, like a lawyer or a pastor. Ends with one hell of a one-two punch! So if you weren't completely sure, that final, awkward show of cleverness should push you one way or the other. I wouldn't be surprised if the author made a few dollars on this one, although it'd be less surprising if the guy he copied it from was actually the one getting paid. Sometimes it's a payment enough to be heard.

It can be lonely out there. But there is hope:

Morning Constitutional

Two houses of government: the kabuki house and the reality house.

The kabuki house is for posers and preachers and afternoon sleepers. It caters to a population that values formality, austerity, and ideology.

The reality house is like a super-sized Big Brother house. There are contests, points, and immunity. Alliances form and fracture. Lobbyists compete for access to the PA system. The American Audience votes via text or online as to how much food and of what quality will be supplied to the reality house.

One half of all representatives shall be representative of a respective sample of their own American demographics. Such demographics shall be selected and distributed among these fifty-percent of representatives so as to represent an accurate representative distribution, determined via national poll.

The other half shall be charged with nominating acceptable candidates for the above-mentioned fifty-percent. These nominations shall proceed the first Monday of every fiscal quarter, with a vote on the second Tuesday of the same period.

The determination of which half of representatives shall be representative, and which half shall be charged with nominating these representatives, shall be the sole discretion of a representative sample of corporations and unions, which shall exist in a proportion of sixty-percent corporations, forty-percent unions. One-half the members of this determining body shall be selected via a national opinion poll of children under the age of nine. The other half shall be selected via a computer program, which shall be agreed upon by a majority vote of a representative sample of corporations and unions, whose membership shall exist in the proportion of forty-percent corporations, sixty-percent unions.

4th of July...

Hard to describe. I am in an armpit. Unshorn. Flea-bitten. Me--and the
armpit. Maybe I am the flea. There is a swollen lymph-node and it
radiates pain all the way from the heel--the scarred,veiny, calloused scabrous
heel. Always sweating--radiating lead... Metallic discomfort up and
down the right side of the body, it would appear. The body favors this
uncomfortable side by lying on the other, stretching its elbow up and
over its head and back and around and under the two soaked pillows.
That is when I can breathe. Then it brings its arm back down, clutching
tightly at its chest, as if in an effort to protect the painful,
swollen node from the invisible crawling stingers that first afflicted
the heel some hours ago, passing poison up the right side of the body,
terminating in the armpit where I reside, terrified and clutching more
tightly than ever. I am. I am terrified and grasping at the porous,
metal-soaked walls. The chlorinated roots of the scraggly hair all
around me leaves a pungent chalk in my nostrils and around my eyes and
on my grasping limbs. I am hot and cold too often at odd intervals to
know whether I am hot or cold, living or just breathing at odd
intervals, responding to conditions or to the condition of the body I
am struggling to inhabit. How the hell did I get here? How will
I get out? What then?

Hi, I'm Mike Miller. On this, the fourth day of July in the year 2008, my thoughts drift in the direction of escape. Escape from debt. Escape from worry. From social responsibility and anxiety. From empathy. From pain and expectation. Escape from custom. Escape from systems of all kinds. Escape from economics. Escape from routine. Escape from uncertainty. Escape from poverty. Escape from entitlement. Escape from guilt and the fear of failure. Or the fear of success. Or the expectation of success. Or the expectation of entitlement. Or the social responsibility of expectation. Of empathy. Or the routine of anxiety. The economics of anxiety. The uncertainty of debt. The industry of debt. The guilty customs of expecation and pain. The poverty of entitlement...
My heart flutters at this notion of escape from time-to-time. When I am feeling sick and stuck, or sweaty and forlorn. Twisted up with abstract guilt. Pressured and ignored all at once--I'm sure you feel it too, from time-to-time. The kind of feeling makes you want to blow something up or knock something down or throw something up or out or away... Makes you imagine fire and tremors and ripping and caving walls and twisted debris. Kind of feeling makes you imagine drawing lines in or stomping emphatically on dirt. To create an impact or just to feel the impact of creation on yourself. To feel you and gravity and time and debris convolute and constitute and consecrate and reconcentrate... Well, that or it just makes you want to escape. My heart flutters at these notions from time-to-time.
What are we celebrating today?
What are we celebrating that we do not desecrate in every dimension of our feedback-distorted, irradiated proxy-lives?

WhoaA there!