about the supposed “left” in this country, but the Don Imus thing has made me lose faith in it, and the so-called “netroots,” entirely.

There is no left in this country. Those that claim the title are every bit like those on the right: tribal, unsophisticated, reactionary, capitalist tending toward fascist, and above all bound to an evangelical morality that seeks to find demons and their victims everywhere in order to be seen fighting the former and saving the arduously constructed latter, that they might earn their salvation, or at least the regard of their similarly-aligned peers.

They are identical in consciousness and method to the extreme right that they oppose, but it is not the mythofascist sensibility that leads to their opposition, it’s merely the worship of slightly different gods (race and gender uncategoribility instead of a facile Christian morality).

In short, Americans are fascists with a tendency to a certain moralistic whorism, even (and sometimes I think especially) the so-called progressive opposition. Don’t trust us, just steer clear of the continent, lest ye be either infantalized or crucified even as you are most certainly exploited.

that for societies to work and function holistically, they must be subject to one of two kinds of control:

– Legal/force control, enforced centrally via the state
– Ideological/emotional control, enforced informally through social interaction

I think the choice that you prefer may depend in large part on the degree to which you feel as though you might run afoul of one or the other in actual implementation. For example, I feel very uncomfortable with the notion of social control because I find it to be deeply emotionally traumatic and easily internalized, while I don’t feel the same very personal despair about state control; furthermore, I know that I am radically different in terms of the way my consciousness works than most other people around me, which makes social control more dangerous for me than for many.

Thus I can reasonably expect that for me, social control will feel more totalitarian or oppressive than state control. I fully realize that for many others, the opposite is true. If a genie popped out of the bottle and offered me the choice to terraform society according to one or the other model, I’d have to choose between giving the majority what they want (thus throwing myself under the bus) or giving myself what I want (thus making everyone around me unhappy).

Just musing.

Every now and then I get so lost in thought that I completely forget to get my MetroCard out and swipe it before walking through the turnstile. I forget, even, that the turnstile is there in the first place.

This leads to an embarrassing moment in which I hit the locked turnstile at full walking clip and basically hang myself up over it with a loud “woah” and a stunned look on my face. Someone nearby always has the New Yorker helpfulness to say: “Oh, you need a MetroCard to take the subway, see. You can buy them right over there.”

Station managers always eye me suspiciously when this happens, and I don’t blame them, honestly. I’d eye me suspiciously, too. I mean, who walks right into a turnstile without stopping?

—

I was a bit worried yesterday about whether I’d have ideas for a Durkheim paper I have to write, but this morning I seem to be swimming in ideas. Best one right now concerns the analytical borders of totemism—the question of what other analytical categories totems are ultimately not synonymous with and why.

—

I will basically be writing papers and working nonstop until next winter. I have a feeling, too, that the time is going to pass very quickly.

I need to read Hegel.

—

I was walking around Times Square tonight and I realized: I’m likely in the wrong line of business. Urbanism? Mass media? Preposterous! By the time you arrive at such things you have, almost by definition, exceeded carrying capacity. How many more generations of this can we see? One? Two at most?

Everyone talks about the twentieth century as if it were shocking and transformative. Just wait for this one. Looking around the city, around the Internet, and around the growing bits of California, it’s easy to see that things are not gonna continue as they are. It’s hard to know whether they’re gonna continue.

—

Every now and then I catch a whiff of totality—for a brief moment, natural science, social science, arts and literature, euclidean space, history, and me all begin to congeal into some larger system in which all are related and the topology is clear.

Then I lose it.

31 years on this rock and it always comes down to the same thing: I am who I am and who I am may just dictate that people will be hurt/annoyed/disappointed with me. The loner is not disdainful, just resigned. Experience is a brutal instructor and people are who they are just as I am who I am.

Someday I will be dead and at that moment finally I will be as discrete and measured as everyone has always desired me to be.

Do I feel like an outsider? Absolutely. Do people think that’s naive and narcissistic? Sure, but what does it matter? Do they propose to change the fact? Or will they just push me farther to the fringe by explaining to me the ways in which I’m wrong to think I’m on it?

Life has a way of telling one what it thinks over and over and over again. I won’t say that I don’t need anyone. I’ve never thought that. In fact, I need everyone. Everyone. But what I have is me.

If they’ll disown you for the thought and they’ll also disown you for its absence then what you can do is simple: tend your god damn garden. I have since I was a child wished that people could see inside me. Because despite never stopping trying and despite the facility that some have said I demonstrate with words, I’ve often felt as though I’m absolutely, categorically unable to connect to the world, or as though if I don’t want to be the outsider that I have to try to be something that I’m not.

I am who I am. I do not apologize to the world for it, but I also don’t reject the world or try to stand in opposition to it.

I guess right now I’m just tremendously lonely. Fragile? That too. After all, I’m a sweet guy most of the time but I’m largely held together by broken promises and abandoned prayers.

—

Only people on whom life has not actually been hard can say things like “Oh, life is hard on everyone.”

Or maybe that is one of my many (infinite, even?) unhealthy conceits.

Damn I’m lonely right now, here in this fucking I-House room. 🙁

—

Unbearable pathos dominates the realm of the fallen gods. By my own need for sociality I have always felt utterly censored. People think me honest only because they think me rude. I don’t always say what I think and fully 50 percent of my blog posts are hidden from the world, which absolutely pains me because they’re the ones I most wanted everyone to see when I wrote them.

An ex once told me that I was the most emotional unemotional (or vice versa) person she’d ever met. To this day I don’t know what that means, but I know that we didn’t stay together long enough for her to explain it to me and I’m pretty sure that afterward she hated my guts.

—

Those times when you most want to cry out are precisely those times at which you musn’t. Social being has taught me that over the years more than anything else. This lovely “individualistic” west can destroy a certain type of individual. Somewhere I’ve still got Courtney’s quote about Kurt written down:

“He needed love more than anyone else I’ve ever met, but he had no way to ask for it.”

I suppose that’s everyone. But I also suppose I’ll never actually know.

Running late, as always. Last night I called the family as I’d promised to do and it was nice to talk but it also meant that for the seond night in a row I didn’t get to bed until after 2.00.

This is the danger of phones.

I was supposed to get up at 6.00 and do laundry and some work stuff but by the time I’d hit snooze a few times involuntarily it was 7.00 beforw I got up which means that it’s now almost 8.30 and my laundry’s only just finished, not to mention the fact that I feel like Hades.

Gotta shower while I dress and pack my bag while I run toward the subway.

Someday when I get up it will be tea in the garden and a morning paper. Clearly, however, we’re not there yet.

Lesson 1: Remember to ask people how they are before you ask them for something.

(Oops. Work on it.)

—

I don’t get things done on the “slow and steady plan.” Clearly I am more mercurial than that. I get things done on the “with the tides” plan:

Monday – Nothing
Tuesday – Uh-uh
Wednesday – Bupkis
Thursday – Nada
Friday – What?
Saturday – You have to be kidding
Sunday – Not so much
Monday – **HOLY SHIT GOT 70 THINGS DONE**
Tuesday – What’s happening?
Wednesday – Zzzzzz…

I guess that’s just the way I am.

Okay, it’s gonna be one of those weeks.

There is a shit-ton to do.
All classes are back in session.
Yesterday I developed a back ache and was already annoyed by that. My alarm did not wake me up, which means I am already running late.

Now in waking I have found two additional things that promise to make today “Grrrrrr-eat!”

First: I seem to have a fairly solid stomach ache that feels like it might decide to be with me all day.

Second: The I-House heating system was running full New York tilt last night despite its being relatively warm out. As a result, it was very hot inside when I got home last night, so I opened the window and slept with my head at that end of the bed to get as much outside air as possible. My hand must have strayed to the heater while I slept because this morning I have a rather grotesque and painful (if thankfully not severe) burn down the length of my little finger.

So, to recap: Too much to do. Back hurts. Stomach hurts. Hand hurts. Late for work. Cheerful as hell.

—

Other titles considered for this entry:

“Hark the Hurting of the Hand”
“More Smarts in my Little Finger”
“Bernie Mac and the Burn Attack”
“Busy Fingers and the the Pain that Lingers”

—

I can’t complain too much, though. Yesterday was pretty damn good.

Haven’t posted in a while. I don’t quite know how things are rolling along. I do know that I don’t feel quite as articulate as I have throughout most of my life, but I think this comes down to several factors:

– Task and situation overload
– Lack of sleep in general
– Crap diet (hahahaha true)
– Being so happy I’m stupid

Life does at the same time retain a certain characteristic complexity so I’m not sure that the present milieu is destined to last, but for the moment that’s where things are. And the blog posts… well, they come in waves. They’re like the tide, they go out and come in.

—

Was just talking to my bro who is on a train from the bottom of the known Earth to the top of it, or, more accurately, from Disney to Portland. I myself have a very limited experience with train rides, most of it having been accumulated when I was very young. On the whole I have a kind of wistful, friendly envy of the situation. It sounds like a wonderful sort of trip to take with your daughter.

—

All these years and I still can’t bring myself to like Sake.

—

I really actually don’t have anything to say, clearly. Therefore, I’ll go to bed, since I have to get up in a few (very) short hours to go to work. Mazal Tov.