Per Diem

Boiling

2011-11-27T10:38:51-05:00

I've spent my entire life bemused (when not enraged) by the extravagances of language, including hyperbole, unfounded generalizations, and a host of other pernicious and misleading rhetorical devices by my more agitated brethren and sisters of the Left. There seems to be another epidemic of the same disease at work, now, as the Occupy movement actively seeks to find a center (in more ways than one) and a way to be politically effective in a...

Lovable Women

2011-11-23T20:33:17-05:00

Pretty women... Fascinating… Sipping coffee, Dancing… pretty women. Pretty women Are a wonder. Pretty women! Sitting in the window or Standing on the stair Something in them cheers the air. Pretty women Silhouetted… Stay within you, Glancing… stay forever, Breathing lightly… Pretty women, Pretty women! Blowing out their candles or Combing out their hair, Even when they leave They still are there. They’re there. —Stephen Sondheim, from "Sweeney Todd" It’s always been my fortune in...

Dipsy Doodle of Death

2011-11-21T12:01:44-05:00

The U.S. stock markets have been in a state of wobbly uncertainty for so long, it seems masochistic even to think, never mind worry about it. Today, they look like they collectively are looking for the momentum to sink another 3%. The problem is, what strategies the remaining investors seem to have are all simply predicated on wanting a sure thing. They're pessimistic today because the "super committee" of Congress has forecast dismal failure at...

Freedom's just another word for people not knowing where you are

2011-11-19T10:33:58-05:00

Freedom, of course, is restricted to no sovereignty or boundary. I might say, if I were in a particularly lofty mood, that freedom itself has dominion. In itself and of itself. We can look for it, somewhat paradoxically, in any location. No doubt, one of the greatest instances I personally witnessed of a sense of freedom occurred in France. It was on the deuxiême étage, the third floor under the eaves, of my house in...

Funny, I'm a stranger myself here...

2011-08-13T09:20:00-04:00

What a strange race we humans are: on a micro basis, disaster strikes—anywhere, no questions asked, heaven and earth are moved: miners trapped 2 miles down... we rescue them. On a macro basis, with disastrous global implications foretold, economic or climatic, and we dither, argue, bitch, cry, but do nothing remedial...countries or banks in debt? Screw them! Beats the shit out of me.

Slippery rhetoric, slick arithmetic

2011-08-10T15:19:40-04:00

I have been opining for a few weeks now in the confines of Facebook. This means only 156 of my self-defined nearest and dearest (who else, then, could one call a "friend;" Facebook, as a kind of postmodern egalitarianism allows no other designation) get to see these pearls. I mean them to be entertaining at best, I suppose, and thought-provoking if they are to satisfy even my very few deepest desires. Instead I get a...

Another Triumph for Philip Morris

2011-06-27T04:50:30-04:00

An outdoor table at a café somewhere deep in the heart of Provence. Morning of market day. Perhaps it's that I haven't been here with my full consciousness intact during the warmer seasons in some time. Six months ago, it was winter, and hardly anyone sat out of doors, even in full sun, with the thermometer hovering in the 50s in daylight. A year ago I was preoccupied with the health and well-being of a...

Notes on the zeitgeist: More gibberish from Björk

2011-06-26T09:47:34-04:00

In an article that appeared in the NYTimes today, 2011 June 26, Jon Pareles, the chief popular music critic of the paper (according to Wikipedia), speaks of the transition of recorded music collections to the so-called "cloud," that is, the creation of virtual storage of our personal recordings on Internet servers elsewhere than our physical whereabouts and accessible using computers for playback at will, and all perfectly legally. In the process, the writer reports on...

Night Falls on Fox-Amphoux

2011-01-02T18:50:29-05:00

Early today it looked like the bad weather had its back broken for good, and yesterday's warm dry air that induced shutters to open wide and flies to come out of their torpor to buzz at closed windows would stay. The temperature creaked its way just barely into the sixties, Fahrenheit. Today started as a repeat of the first day of the new year, but then surrendered to what cannot be denied. It's winter. A...

Grey Days

2010-12-29T09:16:36-05:00

Perhaps it's my mood. Perhaps it's that I have been here it will be two weeks tomorrow. It has been sunny for two of those days. At least overcast the rest. Today is a corker. But before I get to today, let me do a quick review. There seem to be three kinds of overcast here: a sort of uniform dun color, cloudless and without variation. Or there are variations, a sort of mottling of...