i am yet to see anybody converted to a cause by being ridiculed into it. With the sole exception of fashion, of course. I will have to say, however, that this is all marvelous advice and should replace the ten commandments as the code for living, but what happens when you get really, rea
I don't find that any of the above complaints have been curtailed or prohibited in the public sphere. Watch Fox News every once in a while and it starts to feel as if nothing else is said. Anyone who calls you anything as all-encompassing, and non-specific, as racist, sexist or homophobic during an argument or discussion obviously can't argue, or feel incapable of arguing, with you about the issues at hand, so i probably wouldn't be pay
they tend to read more like essays That's what university does to you. You say/write somethng...and then like a some sorta sick puppy sit there patiently waiting to get graded Marco XX
Thank you Wisefawn That is what i love about JU - our minds are the only things worth giving, and here they are the only things we can give.It makes it impossible for us to detract from the gift for all the glitter of the wrapping. Dyl - your writing always does such quaint things to me. It makes me want to leave the best of myself, the parts i wish i could see i
Are you telling us that the advisors and members of the administration that influenced the decision to go to war are not neoconservative. Does neoconservatism not exist? I only used the term becasue it is a word that sums up a political position and philosophy that has been explicitly delineated and articulated by those who believe in it and those who use it as a guide for their political practice. There is no moral judgment implyed in the use of the w
Thanks Steven. and the title is Seinfeld over Steinbeck. And its not just the masses that have propelled the comedy of the mundane to stratospheric heights, it's also academia and its current practice of rubber stamping everything as culturally valid under the guise of "irony" and the not-so-subtle modern practice of homage (mostly blatant plagarism), double-coding (usually not knowing what the f&%k it is that you're trying too say) and parody (
I don't think we're selling ourselves short or selling out. It's just that the cannons have turned into culture's stagnate backwaters. The guardians are long dead, the bewitched have woken from the spell. When we read (and that means a whole heap of things in this age of intertextuality) we exert our democratic right to compile and put into effect our own cannons. We have seen it here on JU - bloggers coming up with their own lists and reasons, their o
Big Business has been more than successful at subsuming and assimilating sub-cultures and alternative lifestyles. Unfortunately ideologically stringent movements do not have the flexibility of organisations that that can snake and slither around the fixed, morally disinterested, end of profit turning. Where as business has been able to harvest the pink dollar and the the youth nihilist (sp?) dollar, ideologies can not hope to profit or benefit from dif
Life has this habit of throwing everything at you at once. A thorough going over by coincidence. It waits and then it just steamrolls you. It seems that your sister has embraced the steamroller, placing herself and her family in its path. Blood can drag you in like that sometimes, and it could be a misfortune or a blessing that this is so. I know that people with an addiction don't seem to want to help themselves, but often it's a matter of them not be
When an administration makes its case for war based on WMD and then shows so little concern over the lack of finding WMD, people who were skeptical at the outset have every right to speak out and question motives and honesty. I am very interested to see how memory serves Americans on election day. I thi
ps: it's mother-season 24-30 july Does that mean we can go mother hunting. I'll get my 12-gauge, you prepare the hounds. Marco XX PS I adore your mother, but then again, i'm sure your sick of hearing that. What's the count up to now? (of people who adore your mother that is, not how ma
There are so very few times that i read genuine poetry, that i hear that silent buzz underneath the words, the fabric that connects them, telling me the words could not be joined in any other way, that editing and the sound of the dishwasher cannot touch this. A truly great peice. Marco
This is the epitome of that figure of speech, the fabled two-way street. Thank you miggy. Even though you have been somewhat scarce of late Marco XX
In a recent conversation with a friend, we were discussing why it is that blogs that seem to lean to the more frivolous and flippant consistently win out over the blogs that possess a certain density or majesty. Now we must keep in mind that those adjectives – frivolous, flippant and dense, majestic – are subjective to the extreme, shifting from reader to r
What you are leaving out of the equation is that the administration sold the war as being about WMDs. Certainly many Americans agree with your motivations for war -- maybe to the point that, in their minds they don't really remember the dialogue leading up to war. The WMD argument swayed many people, who are now understandably un
CS Guy, Draginol and Historyishere - thanks for your contribution. I should have known better seeing as American politics is not the ad hoc, throw together improvisation that some people think it to be. There seems to be complex philosophical and doctrinal systems at work, interacting, mutating and then influencing policy dirction and then the execution of that policy. I am still not sure if the the politicians and military men operate and mov
No Dyl, I haven't gone facist I was trying to understand a point of view other than my own, something alien to me, but something real and influential nonetheless. If i can at least articulate it then i might try and come to understand it. If i leave out my own prejudice and state it as i think others (believers) might see it, then i might be able to see it without the "i" contam
Firstly, you’ll have to excuse the title. Knowing the limited readership of my blog, I wanted a title that might actually attract some of the more conservative of you here on JU. Secondly. What is the point of this article? Well it’s not really an article as such; it’s more of a curious exploration, an attempted mapping of JU’s conservative topography. I want
I've lost something...can't remember what...er...*gargle*...does that make me a loser? Maybe that's what it is, all the losers of the world having lost - what it is to be "cool", that El Dorado of "being", of "becoming" cool and hip and groovy, all those things that make us complete smiling parodies of ourselves, mannequinized, bamboozled and sooo freakin' cool maaaannnn! Sorry. Lost myself for a bit in reminiscence, in my glorious 1980's he
I think it's a reaction to lack of chemicals. It will pass, eventually. Thanks for the addition of that qualifier - "eventually". As pay back, as soon as he gets over this neuro-chemical hell I'm going to quit myself. No patches, no gum - just the sheer pleasure of being around someone who has their ner
Dyl, Smoking around him at the moment is like sticking a paper cut finger into a shark infested pool half way through a feeding frenzy. Now, as enjoyable as all that sounds, i think i'll refrain for awhile and let the madness and blod lust to dissapate. As far as your last statement... for as long as i have known you here on JU, you have never written a sub par sentence or sentiment. AND i hope that loss of will you mentioned is in no
still, it must be deflecting a bit of the heat off you I'm like Nixon. Even after the election of a new representative to wear the mantle, i still, posthumously, receive the criticism. <TD class="mb-B
At the least he could buy the drinks with all his unused cig money, right? That would be assuming he had any goodwill left at all. He's become a ganglia of screaming neurons, a walking heap of neurotransmitter deficits. Buying rounds was the last thing on his mind. Kurtz has nothing on my sibling.
Not more than 5 days ago my dear brother decided to give up the vile carcinogens that we affectionately know as cigarettes. In doing so he turned into a vile carcinogen himself. As a smoker he was a mildly amusing, go lucky young man, full of life and aplomb, talkative and amicable to all and sundry – even to those he didn’t much care for. After his
Thanks Draginol. I'll give that a try. Marco
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