Basic mathBasic math
“The difference between something and nothing is nothing.” – Paul Bowles, The Sheltering Sky
Category: Economics
Lucky brutes along the bell curveLucky brutes along the bell curve
“We are all at best compromised agents, whether by biology, social circumstance, or brute luck. The differences among us are differences of degree that do not admit of categorical division into the normal and the abnormal.” – Barbara H. Fried, “Beyond Blame”
We’ve locked ourselves up and thrown away the keysWe’ve locked ourselves up and thrown away the keys
“What grows clearer every year is that the incarcerating state is not feared. It is seen as a palliative to a fear of violent crime, a fear mobilized by political parties and candidates desperate to find points of contact with a distant and disaffected electorate. While the state has not prevented job loss, workplace disempowerment, spiraling health care costs, and the disintegration of educational institutions from kindergarten to university, those seeking official positions can gain credibility by promising to get tough on crime. What such rhetoric implies may be even more significant, namely that the state is ‘for’ the law abiding and ‘against’ offenders, that even the most economically insecure among the law-abiding have a robust civic status in comparison to the lawbreakers. To say that Americans lack a sober fear of this swollen system of cruelty—and, indeed, use it as a mode of making social distinctions—is not to discount the pain and suffering of the victims of violent crime. It is only to draw attention to something hiding in plain sight. The public is both inured to and invested in this reality that is seen too much and too little. We see it constantly in the virtual world of criminal justice television, where hard treatment, shame, and degradation of prisoners are frequently portrayed as added consequences of breaking the rules and rarely as civic problems.” – Albert W. Dzur, “Twelve Absent Men”
What the Dead Can DoWhat the Dead Can Do
Fourteen degrees Fahrenheit at daybreak.
The stairwell smells of dirty
diapers and stale cigarette smoke.
A man dressed several levels
below stylish picks through
the garbage bin behind a business.
Three blocks away at three
o’clock this morning, a man
was shot to death on the street.
The subjective impression
of his last moments are as
all of our such moments are,
forever lost. His blood froze
in spots on the concrete sidewalk.
The man at the garbage bin
pulls out a jacket discarded
there, says to no one walking by,
“Let the dead bury their dead.”
Rehabilitative fancies, anyone?Rehabilitative fancies, anyone?
“We are not blackboards that can be erased. Our actions do mark us, and for life. There has been reflected in psychiatry, and especially in the criminal justice system, a kind of stupid optimism about the ability of people to change.” – Terence Sellers, Psychopathia Sexualis
No compass, no mapNo compass, no map
“How might we return to where we never were?” – Terence Sellers, Psychopathia Sexualis
They could stand to be remindedThey could stand to be reminded
“The duty of a public prosecutor is to seek justice, not merely to convict.” – Illinois Supreme Court Rules, Article VIII, Illinois Rules of Professional Conduct of 2010, Rule 3.8
What gods are good forWhat gods are good for
“A progressive renunciation of constitutional instincts, whose activation might afford the ego primary pleasure, appears to be one of the foundations of the development of human civilization. Some part of this instinctual repression is effected by its religions, in that they require the individual to sacrifice his instinctual pleasure to the Deity. ‘Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord.’ In the development of the ancient religions one seems to discern that many things which mankind had renounced as ‘iniquities’ had been surrendered to the Deity and were still permitted in his name, so that the handing over to him of bad and socially harmful instincts was the means by which man freed himself from their domination.” – Sigmund Freud, “Obsessive Actions and Religious Practices” (ed. Gay)
A paraphraseA paraphrase
The sins of the fathers are visited upon the children, even unto the third and fourth generations. (Exodus 34:7)
We are what we eatWe are what we eat
“Nothing in life is so expensive as illness—and stupidity.” – Sigmund Freud, “On Beginning the Treatment” (ed. Gay)
Learn your lessons, precious snowflakeLearn your lessons, precious snowflake
“Education can be described without more ado as an incitement to the conquest of the pleasure principle, and to its replacement by the reality principle; it seeks, that is, to lend its help to the developmental process which affects the ego. To this end it makes use of an offer of love as a reward from the educators; and it therefore fails if a spoilt child thinks that it possesses that love in any case and cannot lose it whatever happens.” — Sigmund Freud, “Formulations on the Two Principles of Mental Functioning” (ed. Gay)
One thing it’s good forOne thing it’s good for
“The march of Providence is so slow and our desires so impatient; the work of progress is so immense and our means of abiding it so feeble; the life of humanity is so long, that of the individual so brief, that we often see only the ebb of the advancing wave and are thus discouraged. It is history that teaches us to hope.” – Robert E. Lee
The BellThe Bell
The joggers and joggettes of Evanston
gather in packs on grizzly November days
and run south into Oniontown.
At their head is the crier who clangs
his bell and calls, “Stand aside! Stand aside!”
The joggers and joggettes are young
and slender and beautiful, their faces
unlined, brows unfurrowed, their clothing
new and unfrayed, well-styled and of
perfect fit. Their conversation is of matters
pertinent. You may overhear snatches
of it as they trot past. The bell clangs.
The joggers and joggettes trot along
the sidewalks. They will nudge you
in the most polite manner possible
if you have not paid attention to the cries
of the crier and the clangings of the bell.
What’s your pleasure, sailor?What’s your pleasure, sailor?
“The extraordinarily wide dissemination of the perversions forces us to suppose that the disposition to perversion is itself of no great rarity but must form a part of what passes as the normal constitution.” — Sigmund Freud, “Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality” (ed. Gay)
Four acesFour aces
“Foreign policy is not a game of Risk. Great nations achieve lasting influence and security not by bloody gambits but through economic growth, scientific innovation, military deterrence, and the power of ideas.” – Steve Coll, “Remote Control”
They know what’s importantThey know what’s important
“The expectation that cats can be made to change their nature, like wayward teens in a Scared Straight course, is a new development in feline-human relations. Humans bred dogs to be loyal and companionate; cats domesticated themselves. Biologists call them ‘commensal domesticates,’ meaning that they can live with humans, and yet, unlike most other domesticated species, they can revert at any time to feral status. What you glean from the general feline vibe is evolutionary truth: cats can take us or leave us.” — Ariel Levy, “Living-Room Leopards”
Up Evanston WayUp Evanston Way
Mansions for sale
up Evanston way
Along Edgemere Court
private drive
three-point-five million a pop
Thirty-five thousand a year
to heat and cool
Servants’ quarters
around back
Never been any slaves up here
Does everyone win if everyone loses?Does everyone win if everyone loses?
“The point of playing games is to confront and accept our inadequacies, a comforting boilerplate that makes it easier to rationalize the cruelty of the way we are slotted into value-based roles in the world. You’re not as good as this person so you get less than them. You’re better so you get more. When playing against other people, this makes direct sense, but when play is computerized, this emotional mandate becomes masochism, a perverse mewling for the rack to be tightened to the point where it becomes intolerable, and once released, one lubricates one’s emotions with the shame of not having been able to tolerate more. When Milton’s Satan wonders if Adam and Eve’s happiness is ‘Proof of their obedience and their faith,’ he is critiquing the logic of game satisfaction and our expectation that accepting punishment should signify a player’s faith and obedience to the rules. But what differentiates players from slaves? Induced by the seductions and security of the game, the player accepts that their present conditions can be improved in some way by their own actions, and if there are inadequacies in their present, they must come from their own personal flaws. Slaves recognize that they are trapped in conditions that have little to do with their personal virtue, that under such conditions, play is a deeper form of servitude, a relieving pantomime that, rather than challenging authority structures, makes them more bearable. Games torture players by regularly affirming their inadequacy, yet their structural values are reassuring, sparing us the anxiety of having to create new values out of nothing at all. The fear of failure is always comforting in that it at least dispels that ambiguity over what the distinction between good and bad should be in the first place. Being met with the resistance of punishment reminds the player there is some godlike meaning we are capable of discovering, it depends only on the player doing well enough to prove worthy of it. Before we can go in search of it, we have to accept there is something inadequate in us, which in turn depends on belief in some ideal state to which we could compare ourselves. Is this what I’m supposed to be doing? Yes, this is what you’re supposed to be doing. Don’t screw it up. I’ll try.” — Michael Thomsen, “Reign in Drool” (emphasis in original)
In a wifely wayIn a wifely way
“My wife had opened a bottle of liqueur, on which the word ‘Ananas’ appeared and which was a gift from our friend Otto: for he has a habit of making presents on every possible occasion. It has to be hoped, I thought to myself, that some day he would find a wife to cure him of the habit. This liqueur gave off such a strong smell of fusel oil that I refused to touch it. My wife suggested our giving the bottle to the servants, but I—with even greater prudence—vetoed the suggestion, adding in a philanthropic spirit that there was no need for them to be poisoned either.” – Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams (emphasis in original; ed. Gay)
Watch this spaceWatch this space
“The Internet began as an unlikely collaboration between the military and academia. This fact alone explains much of its contradictory character. The military wanted to link their giant mainframe computers together to share data in order to build better bombs and rockets. They also needed a robust system, open-ended and flexible enough to be extended indefinitely but sufficiently rugged to withstand nuclear attack. The generals turned to the geeks just as they had during the Second World War. Isolated in their cozy ivory towers, the scientists wanted to share data and multitask easily. The system they created elegantly embodied their liberal ideals as well as the military’s strict requirements. It would be transparent from end to end. It was also anonymous and egalitarian, in that all data would be treated equally regardless of either source or destination. Scientists built these values into the Net’s core protocols, or agreed methods of doing things. Programs can certainly be devised to weigh, block, or trace data, but they are all additions to the protocols, not replacements. The fact is that freedom for good or evil is built into the very foundation of the Internet. Any attempt by anyone on any level to limit it in any way is an application built on top of that. And what one application can do, another can undo.” – Jay Nelson, “Can the Internet Be Tamed?” (emphasis in original)
Would you like another cup of tea, dear?Would you like another cup of tea, dear?
“No people are more often wrong than those who will not allow themselves to be wrong.” – Francois Duc De La Rochefoucauld, Reflections (trans. Bund & Friswell)
ClarifiedClarified
Squirrels in West Rogers Park
are fat. Skin ’em and gut ’em
and stuff ’em with cloves of sauteed
garlic. Sprinkle with black
pepper. Wrap ’em in foil.
Set ’em to baking in the coals.
They come out all juicy, the meat
melting off the bones. The skulls
can be dipped in clarified
butter and eaten whole.
Betrothed to FacebookBetrothed to Facebook
“We deceive ourselves if we believe that there are violent passions like ambition and love that can triumph over others. Idleness, languishing as she is, does not often fail in being mistress; she usurps authority over all the plans and actions of life; imperceptibly consuming and destroying both passions and virtues.” – Francois Duc De La Rochefoucauld, Reflections (trans. Bund & Friswell)
What’s the price of priceless?What’s the price of priceless?
“Sovereign ability consists in knowing the value of things.” – Francois Duc De La Rochefoucauld, Reflections (trans. Bund & Friswell)
Dancing on the ceilingDancing on the ceiling
“No one can spend more than he has—that is true of individuals, it is also true of nations. If one spends oneself on power, grand politics, economic affairs, world commerce, parliamentary institutions, military interests—if one expends in this direction the quantum of reason, seriousness, will, self-overcoming that one is, then there will be a shortage in the other direction. Culture and the state—one should not deceive oneself over this—are antagonists: the ‘cultural state’ is merely a modern idea. The one lives off the other, the one thrives at the expense of the other. All great cultural epochs are epochs of political decline: that which is great in the cultural sense has been unpolitical, even anti-political.” – Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols (trans. Hollingdale; emphasis in original)
The Church of EdmundThe Church of Edmund
Edmund sat on the corner in front of the Fourth
Presbyterian Church. He rattled a battered
McDonald’s cup at passersby, Excuse me, could you
help me get a shower? Sir? Lady?
His eyes were tired, very tired. No one
stopped, no one dropped anything into
his cup. Someone had earlier,
I looked into the cup and there were
a few pennies, at least one nickel, and maybe
a dime. No quarters had been given that I saw.
I passed by him twice. I had other
business at the church. During
a break, I took a walk around
the block and saw Edmund a second time. I sat
down next to him and introduced
myself. It was a warm September
evening and the sun was still up,
though low and soon to set. I
asked him his name, he told me he
was Edmund. I shook his hand.
Before I go any further with
this—what is this? What do I
think I’m doing here? What did I
think I was doing when I sat down
on the curbing next to Edmund on
the corner in front of the Fourth
Presbyterian Church?
He told me he was homeless. He said
he’d been hit on the head with
a baseball bat, Here, he said, and he
showed me the place on the back
of his head. He said he’d been
a dealer, cocaine and heroin, and he’d
done time. I asked him if he was
clean and he said, Yes, I never used,
man, you can’t use it and sell it.
He said, I flat-lined for ninety-six
seconds, now I’m homeless and need a shower
and a place to sleep for the night.
I don’t know what I was
doing, I don’t know why I sat beside
him and talked with him, I’m no
saint, I’m not saving any part
of this world. I don’t know why
I’m writing this except writing stuff like
this is part of what I do. I gave Edmund
a twenty-dollar bill and told him, God
bless, and shook his hand again,
and don’t want you for a moment
to think I’m a good person for it,
I’m sitting here in this church at
a meeting of well-housed, well-fed people,
one of whom is me, and as far as I know,
Edmund is still sitting on the corner shaking
his McDonald’s cup, and even if he’s not and
that twenty helped him off the street tonight,
he’s almost certain to be back on the corner,
some corner, come tomorrow and the days after that.
Shower CurtainShower Curtain
Lunch is a plastic cup of instant noodles.
Pour boiling water in the cup and let it
sit for three minutes. Be careful serving
it to children, it is hot. You can
eat it straight out of the cup.
I am not a child. The cup of instant
noodles is beef flavor and tastes
of salt. Its aroma is that of the vinyl
shower curtain that hangs in my
bathroom. The curtain came with
the apartment and is clean and white.
The cup of instant noodles was
purchased with other such cups as
part of a store of emergency
supplies in event of fire, flood,
earthquake, hurricane, insurrection,
coup d’etat, bridge collapse, shipwreck,
bankruptcy, injury, or disease.
The job is over and the money
is gone. The emergency is now.
The ship that was expected to arrive
in port today is gone, the news
just in of its loss, run aground
and broken on a distant reef.
The cargo was uninsured.
Crank-turners on the split shiftCrank-turners on the split shift
“When you talk about Nabokov and Coover, you’re talking about real geniuses, the writers who weathered real shock and invented this stuff in contemporary fiction. But after the pioneers always come the crank turners, the little gray people who take the machines others have built and just turn the crank, and little pellets of metafiction come out the other end. The crank-turners capitalize for a while on sheer fashion, and they get their plaudits and grants and buy their IRAs and retire to the Hamptons.” — David Foster Wallace (interview with Larry McCaffery in The Review of Contemporary Fiction, Summer 1993, Vol. 13.2)
Chicken Noodle SoupChicken Noodle Soup
She knew
right away. He saw
it in the look on her
face. He never knew
how she knew. He rolled
away and said, Sorry.
I can’t
I can’t do this, she said. I can’t
—it will be six weeks before
graduation and I can’t. He told her
whatever she wanted to do,
he would be with her.
They saved their money.
There was no conversation
in the waiting room. He was
the only man. He went out
to the hall and lay
down on the thin carpet, out
of the way. He tried
to get some sleep.
It had been a long night.
She held a piece
of paper in her
hand, said, We need
to get this filled. Outside
the building, she held
a hand out to the wall
and steadied herself and bent
over and threw up. The sky
was overcast, the day warm.
He opened a can
of chicken noodle soup, diluted
it in the pan, heated
and stirred and ladled it into
a bowl. She sat at their
kitchen table and slowly
ate the soup. She said,
Thank you. He said, You’re
welcome. They never spoke
about it again.
SupermarketSupermarket
There was only one cashier on
duty and she wasn’t
there. The manager was pissed
off and pushed the restocking
cart into one of the customers,
careful to avoid eye contact.
The automatic change dispenser
didn’t dispense any change.
The cashier arrived and told
the manager, You put it on
backwards. She unlocked her
register, rang up the customer’s
purchases, made change from
her own purse—Have a good day.