Garbage

Last night Lawrence O'Donnell gaslighted Trumpty Dumpty when he threw the former  president's appellation right back in "The Dumpster's" face. Trump brought political discourse to a new low when he called Kamala Harris "garbage" (this after responding to president Biden's heartfelt and memorable speech by calling him the worst president in US history). "Garbage" was how O'Donnell described Trump's behavior. O'Donnell is a journalist known for his keen-eyed preening of facts and calling Trump "garbage" is simply a matter of record. Everyone knows Trump aka "The Dumpster" is a repository for garbage. Rudy Giuliani, Mike Lindell, Jim Jordan, JD Vance, Mike Johnson etc are all the unrecycled "garbage"--that Trump doesn't have the courtesy to bring to the dump. Oh and yeah Trump himself is the kind of garbage that earns a fine when it's left the middle of Fifth Avenue (where the former president will be found exercising his immunity when he starts shooting people). O'Donnell was never so irate nor so brilliant as he was last night in reporting on the nation wide "garbage" crisis.

read "Francis Levy's Divine Comedy," Exquisite Corpse

and listen to "Duke of Earl by Gene Chandler

Bannon

photo: Gage Skidmore

Eloquence and erudition can be hypnotic. Words cast a spell. They're like a disingenuous seduction.You're won over only to become a scorned lover who's nothing more than a notch on some Lothario's belt. Netanyahu and Trump are great speakers. Biden not so much. In the past Kennedy outshone Nixon and Obama, McCain. Bernie sanders is perfervid. AOC adds beauty to the mix. Majorie Taylor Greene is "grunge" and Matt Gaetz with his ghoulish pompadour is the Boris Karloff of the house. A number of factors can tip the scales. William Jennings Bryan famously came up short against Clarence Darrow on the evolution issue. Hearing someone like Bannon quoting Milton's "better to reign in hell than serve in heaven" in  American Dharma, you may have to wake yourself up when your conscience is caught off guard by that and his wicked repartee.

read "Fav Lines From Francis Levy's Seven Days in Rio" Two Dollar Radio

and listen to "There's a Moon Out Tonight" by The Capris

Picasso

When you took algebra you learned about equations with two unknowns and about plotting lines with coordinates representing X and Y values. Would that the universe followed such neat laws. The kinds of mathematical relationships are reflected in math, but have little if nothing to do with life. The amount of unknowns is generally incalculable. Imagine trying to plot a graph of one's life, even as you got closer to the point where you were closer to the end. Calculus is designed to deal with variation, but it's a little like "there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy, Horatio." Math like art is a form of beauty that distills and at the same time excludes the complexity of the life force as it paints its truth. "Art is a lie that makes us realize truth" is the famous Picasso quote.

read "Francis Levy's Divine Comedy," Exquisite Corpse

and listen to "Duke of Earl by Gene Chandler

Raskolnikov

There are unrepentant criminals and sociopaths who only know a "crime" is something you can't get away with? Are crimes those acts which societies regard as offenses against norms? For instance, inTexas, even a woman in danger of death is guilty if she terminates a pregnancy. Most New Yorkers would encourage her and the inmates of Sachsenhausen to break the law.Those opposed to a carceral state tell inmates to escape no matter what. Raskolnikov had no problem seeing the murder of the old pawnbroker as a crime. If anything Dostoevsky's character has an over active conscience. The novel, after the murder, is about wrestling with their own evil--amongst other things. Kamala Harris was the attorney general of California before she became vice president. She knows how to try a case. Her opponent has publically stated he could walk down Fifth Avenue and shoot people (btw what happens if another gunslinger shoots him back, do they partake of presidential immunity?) and that major celebrities can grab women by the crotch. How will she prosecute her felonious opponent?

read "Francis Levy's Divine Comedy," Exquisite Corpse

and listen to "Duke of Earl by Gene Chandler

Alfred Döblin

'Alfred Doblin (1878-1957

Hive mind is a meme which places an entomological spin on human behavior. Actually in a beehive, the queen dominates and there's little room for alienation.You don't find bees behaving like characters in Berlin Alexanderplatz, the Alfred Doblin novel made into a TV series by Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Better yet there are no Holden Caulfield bees or bees that jump off bridges after reading the Sufferings of Young Werther. As Lionel Trilling once pointed out non-conformity can be a form of conformity. It's called trying too hard. You've seen those characters with the Count of Monte Cristo fixations entering the gathering wearing green cowboy boots and red scarfs around their necks. You don't find too many bees (except for the queen) dressed to kill. Conversely the comforts of the hive where identity is set are often lost on the average girl or guy. Prescribed behavior may be the order of the day in the military, therapeutic communities or cults like the Branch Davidians. But for your average lifer every day is an exercise in self-invention. You get up feeling a little like Meursault inThe Stranger then it's SOS (shave, shit and shower) and off to another thankless day drowning in a sea of workstations.

read "An Incident of Defenestration" by Francis Levy, Vol. 1 Brooklyn

and also read "Francis Levy's Divine Comedy," Exquisite Corpse

Todestrieb

Freud's couch (Robert Huffstutter)

Freud's concept of the death instinct" orTodestrieb in German is like flesh eating bacteria. First an arm, then a leg. That's whats happening to the Democratic Party. The only difference is that it's embarrassing, like a kid having a tantrum, the dirty tear-stained face followed by enuresis. Another form of this tantrum actually is paralysis. The mob famously fitted their enemies with cement shoes but this kind of defeat is one of those routs in football. The game is over. There's no way of catching up. Yet you have to run out the clock.

Lucy

Lucy (Australopithecus)

You will never foresee the future nor unravel the past. If you have a child, they are the carriers of yorr genetic footprint, your DNA. The chromosomal structure of a fossil can be analyzed. However, you can't walk with Lucy while she forages. Survival itself transforms and evolves. Homo sapiens, if it survives, will not only look but exercise the ability intrinsic to its name ina unique way concomitant with the conditions of its time. Homo sapiens are by definition epistemologists. What does it mean, to know, to be wise, sapient? Will the brain itself atrophy and even grow smaller in size with the advent of A.I.? Will there be, for instance, a Darwinian struggle between Virtual and de facto Realitly? Will one be able skip out of the material world with Empress Travel goggles? Who is to adjudicate which is "the real thing" to quote Stoppard? Will the line become so blurry that ultimately it will be impossible to know? Will there be a danger of losing one's self on vacations spun out by imagination? Which embodiment or something else? 

read "Pet Buddha" by Francis Levy, Vol. 1 Brooklyn

and listen to "Tears of a Clown" by Smokey Robinson and The Miracles