This concerns everyone

The Sun is setting in the West and rising in the East.

It is time for new adventures, to set out to new places, people, and things.

Move, move, move, before it is too late, before
you become yourself.

To stay on the crest of the wave, on the cusp of opportunity--"To know what comes next--that is the art of being a Frenchman."-- How to free your self from yourself, without enslaving yourself or merely rendering yourself up too much to another thing?

Rationalize everything--except your body.

I am running on empty. It is time to refill.

For the first time in along time, I want to live. How can I make this moment last--not as a Feeling, but as an Idea?

If you live for Ideas, you may be lucky enough to experience that Feeling a few more times. And if not, then at least you tried.

"Virtue is its own reward."--a maxim sorely misunderstood. What it really means is:
"Whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger."

-- from the diary of Barack Hussein Obama II, May 1988

I will execute the Law!

"Ball!" - Chief Justice John Roberts, Graham v. Florida, entire concurring opinion

"If you want mud you got it!" - Associate Justice Antonin Scalia, dissenting opinion

"Take it from me: I'm a mom." - Michelle Obama

"The master may wear slippers instead of boots, but he's still got his foot on your neck." - Elena Kagen

"In 40 years or sooner I can imagine that a tiger might become the President of these United States." - RFK

"This is real blogging, indecipherably tight knots of allusion!"
- Reza Negarastani

Q: A mentally disabled 17 year old buys a bull that he is told is magic but only on the condition that he loves the bull. If the bull dies on the way to Basra, is the contract enforceable?
A: I need more facts!

Hey Pat,
Are you getting more complacent or am i just a little tipsy.
Either way, i'm into it.

xo,

Tina, third row second seat to the left corporate law

"We don't have time to think. We're making money."
- Prof. Edward J. Esche, Dean of Arts and Education,
Middlesex University

"A rising tide sinks all boats." - Ronald Reagan

"I don't have the narcissism to really enjoy hurting others." - Karl Rove

"Obama plays it cooler than cool. Like, he complimented my wife's shoes but shat on her sweater."
- Chris Oynes, Minerals Management Service Associate Director

"Sex is alienation." - Barack Obama

Here Lies Hate

She had gamely accepted an offer to listen for the first time to “Here Lies Love,” a new rock opera by David Byrne and Fatboy Slim that chronicles her rise from country girl to the First Lady of the Philippines. Removing the earbuds, tilting her head slightly, she said in an exaggerated tone, “I’m flattered, I can’t believe it!”

-- New York Times, 7 May 2010

"Yeah, whatever, we saw Marie Antoinette." - Maxim magazine

"Imelda Marcos is to hipsters what Nixon is to liberals: a monster whose revisionist recasting as a tragic figure by the latter belies a grotesque, desperate conservatism in the dominated fraction of the ruling class. It’s classic Bourdieu. These hipster attempts at symbolic subversion are just that: symbolic. 'It is we, the people of taste, not the vulgar rich, who should rule.'——a desperate lashing out by a bunch of clowns who are realizing too late, too late that they should have studied finance instead of 'critical' theory. Even the Beatles——those self-involved, pre-Thatcherite (see 'Taxman') cads——knew better than to prostrate themselves before the pink heels of that mutant bitch queen. Neither progressive nor reactionary, the hipster pleas helplessness. 'I am not political,' the hipster says, 'but I’m not opposed to others being political.' In fact hipsters like nothing more than this division of labor: like Imelda, they live (quite well) off the labor of others, but they're good natured about it--humble about the fact that they are not self-supporting, either individually or as a class——as long as they can exempt themselves from the obligation to secure justice for those who provide for them." -- Chuck Palahniuk

"I wouldn't get worked up about it. I hear it's just not that good."
- Barack Obama

Diseases of Our Age

"23 March 2010

Diseases of our age:

neoteny (consumers)
amnesia (politicians)
anton-babinsky syndrome (economists)
reduplicative paramnesia (commuters)
fugue state (financiers)
dapgras delusion (michelle)
blindsight (academics)
intermetamorphosis (pop musicians)
generalized anosognosia (military)
somatoparaphrenia (senate)
cotard delusion (citizenry)
glossolalia (media)
mirror self-misidentification (me)"

- from the diary of 44th President of the United States of America Barack Hussein Obama II

The Shape of Hate

"There's nothing to barricade in Arizona." - Swedish clerical worker in a French HIV/AIDS NGO

"We need documents, not slogans!" - same NGO worker's employer

"It is impossible to contract HIV from a bourgeois!" - Jacob Zuma

"The cliché is true: it hurts to know that your former partner has met some one else before you have. But that's just it, and it's just that: a cliché. I will get over it." - Wallis Simpson

"Loneliness is freedom." - Barack Obama

"You make money to live, you don't live to make money." - as heard in Greenpoint, Brooklyn

"I don't have time in my life for positive emotions right now: I'm really busy." - rejection text from a financial worker

"Morality is like mathematics: one needs no existential stake in a situation--no need for emotions like sympathy, empathy, or identification--in order to work out its moral arithmetic, although I suppose the former is useful for cultivating the will to execute the conclusions of the latter." - Bill Brennan

"Why don't the same people who loved Avatar also love Somali pirates?" - Roger Ebert

"Eat my mick dick, you fucking faggots." - Oscar Wilde, at his sentencing

"Just because I work for the census doesn't mean I can't start some shit!" - West Village census worker

"It's funny: we fight for oil abroad, and we fight oil at home." - Barack Obama, solitary, chainsmoking by a White House fireplace, wrapped in a warm wool blanket and seated in FDR's wheel chair.

Two Thousand Eight

Vast strategic maneuver--perfect co-ordination--utter rout--half a million prisoners--complete demoralization--control of the whole of Africa--bring the war within measurable distance of its end--victory--greatest victory in human history--victory, victory, victory!

Under the table my feet make convulsive movements. I do not stir from my seat, but in my mind I am running, swiftly running, I am with the crowds outside, cheering myself deaf. I look up again at the portrait of Barack Obama. The colossus that bestrode the world! Barack, against which the hordes of Asia dashed themselves in vain! Ten minutes ago--yes, only ten minutes--there had still been equivocation in my heart as I wondered whether the news from the front would be of victory or defeat. Ah, it was more than a Eurasian army that had perished! Much had changed in me since that first day in Social Services, but the final, indispensable, healing change had never happened, until this moment.

The voice from the television was still pouring forth its tale of prisoners and booty and slaughter, but the shouting outside had died down a little. The waiters were turning back to their work. One of them approached with the gin bottle. Sitting in a blissful dream, I pay no attention as my glass is filled up. I am not running or cheering any longer. I am back in Social Services. Everything is forgiven. Our souls are white as snow. I confess to you confessing everything, implicating everybody. I walk down the white-tiled corridor, with the feeling of walking in sunlight, and an armed guard at my back. The long-hoped-for bullet is entering my brain.

Gaze up at his enormous face. Four years it has taken us to learn what kind of smile is hidden beneath that dark skin. O cruel, needless misunderstanding! O stubborn, self-willed exile from the loving breast! Two gin-scented tears trickle down the sides of my nose. But it is all right, everything is all right, the struggle is finished. I have won the victory over myself. I love Barack Obama.

Untitled

He likes granola, pita chips, and guacamole
dressed in his shirt sleeves
‘No suit coats in my oval office.’
Fifteen people killed today
by drone attacks in Pakistan
love Barack Obama.

баня

I am cold in the cold pool,
but inside it is warm:
Barack Obama.

31 Flavors

So many pleasures from which to choose:
I don’t know, can any One
really be the best?
Barack Obama.

Bucket Brigade #1

Barack Obama used the word
‘economy’ or ‘economic’
thirty one times in his address to the nation,
proof that the white of his eyes
are truly as luminous
as our own.

The Soviet Mind Game

"To write a book that would inspire others (and only others) to violence: this is the dream of every intellectual." - Leo Strauss

"Economics is 'science'." - Joseph Schumpeter

"Similar minds think alike." - Solath Sar

"The Revolution was never the same for me after CCR broke up." -Fidel Castro

"Bill Gates is the Leopold II of our time." - Thomas Penfield Jackson

"In LA you can make a living but never catch a break; in New York you can catch a break but never make a living." - Stephen Baldwin

"I'm going to leverage this syphilis into something really crazy!" - Nietzsche

"Carla is perfect for Nicolas: she is to French music what he is to French politics: the triumph of America." - Villepin

"What Ségolène has going for her over Aubry is that she's a sort of a traditional French woman, by which I mean, she's gorgeous, really just terribly attractive." - Nicolas Sarkozy

"I have nothing left to give you except what you would ask of me." - Carla Bruni

"Finding some one who will love you more than you will ever have to love them: that is true love." - Michelle Obama

"This is the best class project ever!" - Lady Gaga

"Mod summer of '66 forever!" - Richard Branson

"Swallow the razor and all your dreams will come true!"
- unnamed Goldman Sachs executive

"Prepare the battle wheel chair."
"Sir it hasn't been tested."
"Damn you, Einstein, I am ready!"
- from the archives of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt

"I welcome their hatred." - Obama

Six Monsters in Search of a Destroyer

"I will avenge the sans-culottes!" - George Soros

"Mr. Céline, how do you feel about the fact that your three anti-semitic novels haven't been translated into English?"
"Horrible!"

"O Rambo, what is the guiding wisdom of our days?"
"Everything is permissible!"

"Sr. Bolaño, why are you crying?"
"I haven't drunk one of these since '73."

"What about the drugs, Anita?"
"That's just how it went down, Bryant!"
-Anita O'day, Today Show, 1991

"Tanigaki sang like a bird!" - Yukio Hatoyama, covered in blood

"Katherine Heigl: is that what young women want to be today? Is that what men want? I don't get it." - Ruth Joan Bader Ginsburg

"How beautifully the men grieve in this country, weeping openly and without shame!" - Wen Jiabao

"I will fight the panther in the Octagon!" - Barack Obama

"If our form of government carries with it a certain inequality of fortune, this is justifiable in order that as a rule the administration of public affairs may be entrusted to those who are most able to give them their whole time, but not, as some maintain, in order that the rich may always be put first. On the contrary, it is of importance that an opposite choice should occasionally teach the people that the deserts of men offer claims to pre-eminence more important than those of riches." - Arisman Pongruanrong

"I applaud Arisman's leadership of the People, but I have always had a certain distaste for his art. Why, in his music videos, all these women being yanked about by the elbow? So many of his songs are about wanting to save his love, but who is he to be their savior? There is something paternalistic in his sense of Romance, pathos subtended by inequality. I would never treat my Lydia like that."
- Thaksin Shinawatra

"You don't know what it costs to look this cheap." - Warren Buffet

Brown Sugar

click to read.

The Mandrake

“CALLIMACO. God— I know—that's absolutely right. But what can I do, then? What plan can I pursue? I mean, where can I turn? I mean— God! —don't you see— I've got to have a plan, I've got to do something—even if its something insane, or dangerous, or even ruthless of evil! Because I would much rather die than go on living like this! If I could sleep at night, I mean if I could eat, if I could talk, if I could enjoy myself in any way at all, I'd be more patient, I could wait— I could wait for a more favorable moment; but there's no escape for me; there's no relief anywhere; and if I can't find immediately some plan to hang on to, I will certainly die in convulsions and frenzy; and when I realize that this may be the moment of my death, then I lose all my fears and hesitations, and I just can't wait to throw myself totally into the most bestial course of action! Yes, bestial! Bestial, cruel, and degraded! I'm ready— I'm ready—
LIGURIO. Please— Don’t say such things— Can’t you try to control your impetuosity?
CALLIMACO. You can see very well that precisely in order to control it I’m allowing my mind to range freely over all these various thoughts. In this way, you can see, I’m not doing any harm. But I mean it, I’ve got to have some hope to chew on —I don’t care if it’s even a false hope!— just anything to take this pressure off my brain—

- Machiavelli, The Mandrake, trans. Wallace Shawn"

- undated entry from the winter 2006/7 diary of junior United States Senator from Illinois Barack Hussein Obama II

The Strong Forget

"19 June 2009

peaches > lady gaga; art > sex > money; madonna > m.i.a.; greece > germany; france > britain; sweden > denmark > norway > finland; israel = iran; gamorra > the godfather; argento > bava > fulci; italian fascism > german fascism; marinetti > goebbels; gabriele d'annunzio > marcus garvey > mussolini > hitler > franco > chiang kai shek; hate > fear; excess > salvation; novels > newspapers; martin luther king jr > malcolm x; class > race; politics > aesthetics > ethics; main street > wall street; nationalization > subsidization; independent regulation > self-regulation; democracy > benevolent technocracy; isabelle huppert > juliet binoche; stones > beatles; roland kirk > chet baker; gary cooper > charlie chaplin; rip torn > marlon brando; legs > tits; the onion > stuff white people like; society > family > self > god; scotch > bourbon; good doctors > lawyers > doctors; firemen > policemen; deep impact > armageddon; blur > oasis; system that can be exploited > system of exploitation; results > efficiency; isolation > social media; ranciere > badiou; morales > chavez; harper’s > the new republic; democracy of ends > democracy of means; direct popular election of the president > the electoral college; simple majority > supermajority ; no presidential term limits > term limits ; public financing of federal elections > special interest financing; jean-pierre melville > scorcese; zero 7 > lovage; community > stockholm syndrome; forgetting > forgiving."

-- from the diary of 44th President of the United States of America Barack Hussein Obama II

...things that do not interest me and their opposites

"20 Jan 1997:

almost didn't get a chance to write today on account of the holiday. thinking a lot lately about what do i REALLY want? thought this would help:

things that do not interest me and their opposites:

home ownership / apartment rental; biological children / adoption; marriage / camaraderie; the continuation of American political military and economic hegemony / leadership by example; waged labor / lassitude; tort reform / justice; freedom to choose my healthcare provider / provision of healthcare along the same lines as utilities; deportation or preventing entry of illegal immigrants / creating the conditions where people are not compelled to escape their country; prison / decriminalization; marijuana / sharpness of mind; sex / art; happiness / purpose; free markets / fair markets; The Democratic Party / equality; nationalism / globalism; electronic gadgets / books; television / cinema; identity politics / universalism; the potential of the internet to do anything good / rational thought; religion / art; tarantino / kiarostami; pop / jazz; jazz guitar / coltrane; yoga / boxing; secular humanism / superhumanism; theater / literature; humanitarian aid / fair trade; teach for america / education reform; peace corps / democratic development; preserving current high salaries for doctors / state funding of medical school; political art / good art; health / intensity; suburbs / cities; moralism / nihilism; self-interest / egalitarianism; productive society / beautiful society."

- from the diary of Illinois State Senator Barack Hussein Obama II of the 13th District