So, I really wasn't in any kind of trance when I was writing last time. In fact, I don't think I ever go into any kind of transcendental state when I am writing. The only change I feel as a writer from when I am not writing is that I now am more aware of what I am thinking and less able to make sense of the world.

What I mean by this is that when I am just thinking, I can begin to put things together, to synthesize and combine. But when I write, I don't seem to have that luxury. Besides, now I have to go put out the trash...

I just read an interesting article by Bob Yagelski from SUNY Albany. It is about the importance of writing as an experience as opposed to writing as a means of creating texts. Many of the writers he talks about seem to get into a sort of Emersonian trance like experience and well...

Laurel is hungry so my trance is over.

perfection

"Why do people want to spell tacos with an apostrophe? Here it is again!" This is my daughter talking about a local ad in a penny saver. Some time ago, I had gone into Hot Harry's Burrito Bar and complained to one of my ex-students about their spelling of Taco's on the window in front of the restaurant. He said he had mentioned it to the boss some time ago, but I think he was covering. Probably only a handful of people ever notice or care. They have fixed the apostrophe.

The larger question is for myself. Why do I care? The error did not "hinder comprehension" in any way. The answer to this is layered somewhere in Nietzsche's idea that it is in our nature to impose our will on the world, to make it conform to the standards we create. He says that all moral systems are "natural" in the sense that they always operate at an almost instinctive level. We almost always feel that somehow, somewhere, deep down, we are right. Nietzsche said we cannot abide by Laissez Alles (Let it Go). We must insist on things to conform to a rule.

This may explain why when playing Dicetopia over the break, Whitney and Laurel had to check my list of six letter words beginning with the letter S. You got 30 seconds to come up with the longest list. Mine was the longest by about two or three words. I thought we would just say how many words we came up with and be done with it. But Whitney asks, "read off your list" to me. Like I need monitoring... I was a famous cheater as a child, and I continue with that tradition, at least from her point of view. I consider my cheating simple carelessness with a slight benefit to me. I misread one of my words, and they both pounced, saying that has seven letters. Now Laurel pulls her pencil out and starts crossing off things and I'm down to 10, equal to the number she had. Now I'm feeling attacked and singled out, so I look at her list. It has a combination "word" made of two words, so I cross that off. Then I read another one that is misspelled, and so I cross that off too. And to press the issue, I'm not allowing possessives, so their's is out too! Why not just Laissez Aller?

Let me tell another story- actually two related stories... It's Christmas Eve, and Pastor Dave is giving his children's sermon and he explains that Jesus' birthday is on December 25. I look over at Whitney in the other choir loft, and she looks back and we both shake our heads- no, we are saying via telepathy... no one knows when Jesus was born; that date was taken from a Roman festival celebrating the winter soltstice. Everyone knows that! Stop lying to the kids. Laissez Aller? It's Christmas Sunday now, and I've gone to church with Jane and Vinny. No one to kibbutz with in my pew because the Cervonis are ushering. So the pastor starts explaining how journeys are so central to the human story, how the Greeks told so many stories about having to go do something somewhere and get back safely. I'm thinking... yes, my sci fi and fantasy kids would be thinking, yes we know all about the Quest! It is the core to any adventure story. A knight, a princess, a dangerous road, a dragon, a dark knight (nemesis), a holy grail, and a deeper lesson learned. That's the formula. But this pastor starts well, and then makes a terrible error. He says, as an example, "Like Ulysses and the Golden Fleece..." I start thinking... Odysseus never went after the golden fleece- that was Jason with his Argonauts. As soon as we return to the house, I'm on line checking. Yes, Ulysses has a golden fleece adventure, but that's some lame video game. The real Ulysses/Odysseus never did that! Did he bother to check? I know.... Laisses Aller, right?

Right now, I'm going to have to go on line because I can't remember if the phrase from Nietzsche is Laisses Aller or Laisses Allez. If I'm wrong, and it's the second, I'll need to go back and edit this post so that it's right. Or maybe I'll try... just this once... to laisses allez.

Undercover Boss

Having read a website about Undercover Boss and then being in the room while it was on.... tells me that either the entire website is a scam or ... people are idiots with no idea what they're watching. The whole show is simply stupid. The format is forced and obvious, the writing is tedious, and the story... I should say "story" because it's not a story in the sense of being interesting or having characters...

The website was all complimentary and gushing about how interesting it was to see a boss working in his own company. Like we were supposed to believe that any of this was real. And when I say real I should say "real" in the sense of being not set up in advance and mediated and programmed. Before I go into the problems with reality and representations and the differences, let me just say that this is really bad television. It certainly isn't art.

It's almost like we're supposed to believe that a CEO cares about his employees. For the sake of a good reality show.... he can act this way... so nice to see the big man have his heart break listening to his employee's hard knock life. Will he return to the board room and give his workers a chance to unionize or raise their wages? Please. This garbage is just set up to make us all think that someday a boss will listen to the workers. The real world is far more complicated than this. Real bosses would honestly replace every worker they have with a computer if they could.

It's nice to see a phone operator seeing the issue more clearly than the boss. His apparent "disappointment" with his Machiavellian customer service person is just a sham. Anyone who thinks this CEO "learned" all sorts of lessons needs to do a .... reality check.

I remembered one of my thoughts I intended to blog on...

There are now Elves on people's shelves? It has been explained to me that the elf watches the child and reports back to Santa on the child's behavior. The parent moves the stoolie elf from place to place to increase the illusion and the sense of Big Brother watching...

This sounds much like Jeremy Bentham's design for a prison, called the Panopticon. You can look it up... Foucault writes about Bentham's ideas in his book on punishment. I can't recall the title. Anyway, Bentham said prisons should be designed with all prisoners on the outer wall of a circular structure with the guard in the center. The prisoner would have what appeared to be constant supervision from the guard because he never knew if there was anyone watching, and the guard had total access and could hide from the prisoner's view.

My suggestion for truly effective Benthamite control of your children is to put an elf on the shelf with a voice in it that can scare the kid as well. As you see the kid misbehaving, the elf would say, I'm telling Santa!

We were driving down the highway this week and my daughter was disturbed by a billboard with a big nasty cop in the frame.... The words said something to the effect of "we see you when you're speeding" She was disturbed by the use of Santa as a law enforcement tool. But aren't we already using Santa as a law enforcement tool?

I would like to share an observation from Machiavelli's The Prince: "The Romans never liked the dictum we constantly hear from the wise men of our day, that time will take care of things... the Romans liked to take care of things... because time will sweep everything before it and can bring good things as well as bad, bad things as well as good" (14),

I'm not sure why I liked this so much, except to say that I often fall back on time as if it were my back yard hammock. If I don't want to bother with something, I avoid it, figuring that time will work it out in the end. Of course, I'm not much of a Roman. Like the wise men of our day, I am far more likely to let time take care of things.

Where was I?

The blog problem for me is that I often forget what I consider my best thoughts. If I could blog simultaneously while driving, I would be famous by now because I swear I am brilliant when I drive. By the time I get to my computer, the great thoughts are just so much pablum. Here I am trying to remember the great idea I was going to write about. Was it politics? Religion? Education? Who knows.

I must say, on the political side, I can almost bear to watch the news these days. For a while there I had pretty much given up any hope. The tax compromise that Obama signed this past week was pretty hard to swallow. Many commentators wondered if he was just too soft to do the job. And I started to wonder too. What happened to the guy who actually ran on a platform of increasing taxes? For the first time in my memory, a president said he would raise taxes and then went back on his word and didn't raise them (on the wealthiest Americans). His explanation for this was that it was good for the country and that was the best deal he could get with the Republicans.

Was this just a case of hard nosed pragmatism? Or was it something weaker and less noble? Can a person who actually looks out for the well being of most of us (a utilitarian) still govern today? I started to wonder. And then, before I knew what was happening, Don't Ask was repealed and they were passing the STAR treaty and they even managed to make commercials less offensive. One congressman who voted against this last measure was reported to have asked, "when are we going to stop... will we start controlling what can be advertised soon?" Moments like these really make one wonder if there should be a minimum test for members of congress.... Anyway, I have a bit of hope for the future of American Politics... for now...