Whatcha Reading?

[Mark]

Yesterday I noticed in one of his comments on COTO that Waldo is reading, Family of Secrets. I got that book from the library the other day and just started reading it myself.

Come across any good books lately?

I want to read Eva Golinger's recent book, The Empire's Web: Encyclopedia of Interventionism and Subversion, but it was published in Venezuela in Spanish and I don't know if it is out in English yet.

[waldopaper]

Me three ladies, and Em... your poetry leaves me speechless. For a while. Can't shut up a bullshitter for long. Only Mr. Reaper can do that. And even HE aint successful with the good ones.

I think the general obsession of folk our age of: "...are YOU going to outlive YOUR MONEY" is the worst waste-of-time I can possibly imagine. The other day at the doc's place, I got that Jerry Garcia flash: "If I had known I wuz gonna live this long, I woulda taken better care of myself." Well... not really. I think increasingly luck-o-the-draw pretty much trumps everything. Mr. Reaper appears around corners... nods, winks, flashes me the "peace sign." I flip his ass the bird. We been doin that for years. I'm gettin to almost LIKE the fukker.

Cal- I think yer dog-thing is way-cool. All dogs go to heaven for a reason. They are our oldest and best species friends for a reason. What that is... I ain't sure... but I think it has to do with some kind of interlock between dog-brain and monkey-brain. I wonder if anybody has done any serious research on "triadic awareness" or even the presence of "mirror neurons" in dogs. I suspect the mirror neurons are present, but rout themselves through the brain in a completely different way.

What can ye say about dogs? My best answer is, they got "heart." Not much brain to speak of... but what a noble heart! I think that's why all dogs go to heaven.

[BO]

Just read Joe Bageant's latest...

The Bastards Never Die
"A short history of why we eat oil, can't smoke pot, and why assault weapons are so expensive in our hour of need"

OK, not a complete book...but BO hardly reads books anymore unless they're reference books. And outside of Joe, there ain't much worth reading anyway. Love how he describes his own works as 'feral scholarship.' The man's brilliant. A modern day Twain.

[BO]

Just read Joe Bageant's latest...

The Bastards Never Die
"A short history of why we eat oil, can't smoke pot, and why assault weapons are so expensive in our hour of need"

OK, not a complete book...but BO hardly reads books anymore unless they're reference books. And outside of Joe, there ain't much worth reading anyway. Love how he describes his own works as 'feral scholarship.' The man's brilliant. A modern day Twain.

[Mark]

Bageant may have gotten that from Stan Goff. Goff's website is called Feral Scholar. Been around for years. Thanks for the link, BO!

[BO]

Interesting perspective, Pan. Guess I understood his thesis as having more to do with our evolving kleptocracy than support for libertarian ideals. I think Marx would have given him high marks.

I liked the 'screaming man' approach. It was appropriately schizophrenic for these schizophrenic times. But then, I'm a tad schizo myself. I'd feel lonely without my own screaming man.

[Mark]

Uh, is my screaming man supposed to have a companion? Why doesn't anybody ever tell me these things? HOW THE HELL AM I SUPPOSED TO DEVELOP A POLITE, QUIET, WELL-MANNERED ALTER EGO THIS LATE IN LIFE?

When I was 18 years old in Greenwich Village, one of the things I did to survive was read my poetry in coffee shops. It wasn't very good poetry, but I remember one called, "Quietly, and in a Mild-Mannered Way," which basically said that wasn't how to do things. Nowadays they have poetry slams and not even poetry is written or spoken quietly and in a mild-mannered way.

[curt]

I have a wierd musical taste and it sometimes scares the dickens outa me. I liked this, for example;

Truth is, I've been reading a lot about southern rock, Lynyrd Skynyrd, the plane crash, gettin rich and the results of that, plus a bunch of opinions over what went down, when and how and why a certain band shouldn't be playin' under a certain name these days. Hell, I dunno, I guess I'm a sucker for a good story. Funny, on one of the web pages I kept bumpin' into, there's a map of the southern states....it includes Oklahoma. I was born just on the north side of the Arkansas River, in Kansas. So what the hell am I doin' hangin' out readin' stuff about southern rock and listenin' to Van Zandt and all? I can tellyaz why. It's because I was born ON the line. Neither here nor there. Stuck in the middle, I can hang with both sides and feel right at home too.

Here's another one. Here's to Ronnie.

[Mark]

Just started Backstabbing for Beginners: My Crash Course in International Diplomacy by Michael Soussan.

[Mark]

And Getting a Grip: Clarity, Creativity, and Courage in a World Gone Mad by Frances Moore Lappe.

I don't usually look at anything that smacks of positive psychology, but Lappe has a track record and it is a very small book.

[Mark]

Soussan worked for the head of the UN's Oil for Food Program. When he saw corruption, he tried to speak out, but his boss and everyone else silenced him and did nothing. He claims he was shocked, shocked I tell you, to learn that his boss had also been taking oil kickbacks.

When he first started at the UN, a mentor advised him to be his own man. He quickly learned that he was part of a bureaucracy and couldn't be his own man and still keep his job. Later, as a professor at NYU, a student who wanted to work at the UN came to him for advice and he told her to be her own woman and, "if you see something rotten, don't be afraid to speak out." The fucker forgot to mention that there's nobody to speak out to because what's rotten is the bureaucracy itself. I sure hope his student reads his book before getting into the swamp with the alligators.

Lappe's book is really cool. Full of good stuff like, with regard to cooperatives:

* In Italy's Emilia Romagna regions, a network of five thousand diverse cooperatives generate over 30 percent of economic output, and the region is one of the wealthiest in Europe.

* In Columbia, the Saludcoop health care co-op, the nation's second largest employer, provides services to a quarter of the population.

* In Kuwait, 80 percent of all retail sales are rung up by the Union of Consumer Co-operative Societies.

* In India, a network of over one hundred thousand village dairy cooperatives, owned by nearly eleven million members, are largely responsible for India's becoming the world's biggest milk producer.

All positive stuff, but nothing impractical.

[BO]

BO read two of his brother's poems in the American Poetry Review today. But I cants say who he is otherwise BO might get outed. But, BO is proud of his brother and wanted to say so.

BO likes to watch. So BO is getting ready to watch Oliver Stone's Salvador. Supposedly his best. After that, BO's hoping the sky clears up so he can go outside and see the meteor shower and bask in his own insignificance. You can't read meteor showers. But they tell an incredible story. BO needs to get some popcorn and load Ride of the Valkyries onto his iPod.

[waldopaper]

...kiwww da wabbit... (it scares the hell out of the slopes}