Category: PHILOSOPHICAL MINUTE

FICTITIOUS FICTIONS, PHILOSOPHICAL MINUTE, THE SHORTS5 Comments

CONVERSATIONS with a REMARKABLE MAN: a Short Story

Steven Augustine

I remember the day of the morning I found out that my father had died.  His partner in my creation, my long-divorced mother, said only  Another victory for Big Tobacco when I called her with the news. I grabbed a light jacket (it was Fall in Berlin) and left my apartment on Bismarckstrasse. I had the idea that I should find a park bench in the vicinity of a fountain and sit with my thoughts. It was one of those undecided days of blinding sunshine interrupted with maddening frequency by chilling clouds. The clouds would come suddenly and refrigerate the … Continue reading CONVERSATIONS with a REMARKABLE MAN: a Short Story

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TUESDAY RUMINATIONS of an ALPHA NERD

Steven Augustine

  1 The Aleatory interaction of Opportunity and Capability:   Earth’s Racial Dominance Hierarchy explained in a nutshell. A nutshell self-servingly misunderstood by Racists of every temperament.   2 We are a Frontline ER overstaffed with Brilliant Diagnosticians yet conspicuously devoid of Surgeons.   3 “There is nothing wrong with literature participating in—or being used as material for—social and political debates: from Ulysses to The Golden Notebook to Beloved, many of the great works of twentieth-century fiction have served as touchstones in cultural conversations. Surely, though, we lose something when this is all we can figure out to do with literature—as any of the authors of those … Continue reading TUESDAY RUMINATIONS of an ALPHA NERD

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DOES THIS TINFOIL MAKE YOU LOOK FAT?

Steven Augustine

  In the summer of 2001 I had crossed the Baltic (in the sleeping car of an old Mitropa train, on a ferry) to leave Stockholm and return to Berlin. I had been away from Berlin, but for one or two visits, since 1995, when I’d fled the black diamond city (exasperation) to live in sun-stunned San Diego for a few years. When Dubya was running for Prezertainer I made the grandiose announcement that I would leave the country if the simp was elected and, unlike 99% of the Lefties who said the same thing, I really did it… though, … Continue reading DOES THIS TINFOIL MAKE YOU LOOK FAT?

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CANNIBALIZED NOTEBOOKS (2015-2018)

Steven Augustine

A) Putney Swope vs Tropic Thunder …has anyone made the connection?   B) Writing exercises: Describe the difference between the flavor of a lemon and the flavor of a lime. Compare the stilted, grandiloquent, pseudo-British English of mid-20th century American motion picture Space Aliens to the strikingly similar language spoken by Roman Senators in films of the same era (with special emphasis on the tic of the avoidance of the use of contractions) and use this Alien/Roman  dialect of English in a short story with a contemporary setting (without resorting to satire). Everyone remembers their “First time” but how many … Continue reading CANNIBALIZED NOTEBOOKS (2015-2018)

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VERA, NORA, ZELDA, CAITLIN, VIV or HUGO or TESS? (a pome)

Steven Augustine

    1. Vera, Nora, Zelda, Caitlin, Viv or Hugo or Tess? which of the famous Lit Wife Archetypes was best suited to the office of Hero Scribbler’s muse/ midwife/ domina/secretary/ succouring and/or bittering breast? and by extension hurt the works the least while providing palliative and/or punishing Sex? which would you prefer were you Scribbler of talented ambition? exquisite Vera   Sirin-sleek, proved Vlad by far the simplest blessed. though pie-faced Nora (who cleaved to blade-faced J and J to her as neither believed they’d ever do better)  playing first J’s whore-of-letters, then consort, homely scold and long-sufferingly anticipatory … Continue reading VERA, NORA, ZELDA, CAITLIN, VIV or HUGO or TESS? (a pome)

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ME TOO, TOO

Steven Augustine

It’s good to see power-drunk psychopaths like Harvey Weinstein fall before they’re too old for the comeuppance to mean anything (or really hurt). Weinstein is at just the right age for the revocation of his droit du seigneur, and the corollary public shaming,  to hurt: too old to bounce back but young enough that he might have continued to sexually abuse Serfs for another ten years,  had his invincibility charm not worn off. Why it wore off when it did we’ll probably never know. Why hasn’t Bill Clinton’s? Or Congressman X’s? The subtleties of the machinations remain esoteric. Jimmy Savile’s … Continue reading ME TOO, TOO

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FAILURE IS WHERE ALL OUR BEST POETRY COMES FROM (and this source will never dry up)

Steven Augustine

  In the following video (linked below), Yanis Varoufakis does a good job of displaying an ornate intelligence that might as well be purely decorative (it surely works its powers on his capable interviewer); Yanis is, as we know, already, from his assigned role as “Lefty” or “radical”, a Failure in the long tradition of failures, the essence of, and feel for which we all, in the Empire, ingest with mother’s milk. No agent of the Left has ever, or will ever, “win” in the Empire. That would be a contradiction that could only signal the Empire’s end. There isn’t … Continue reading FAILURE IS WHERE ALL OUR BEST POETRY COMES FROM (and this source will never dry up)

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Time: A Mortal Straight Male’s Perspective and Counsel

Steven Augustine

  Any fan of Martin Amis’ “Experience” will remember his father, Kingsley’s, character, in that book, as a craggily-lovable figure of fun and foibles. But Kingsley is about 70, in this documentary (linked above), and Martin is two years shy of that now; does Martin come off any better, in contemporary interviews (see below), than Kingsley does up there? Kingsley could almost be said to have a “spring in his step” in comparison. Who would have thought it, reading “Experience”, back in the innocent year of 2000? Well, it’s just another cautionary tale about Time, isn’t it? Time and its … Continue reading Time: A Mortal Straight Male’s Perspective and Counsel

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UTOPIA RULES: a few simple suggestions for fixing this shit

Steven Augustine

ONE: SEX Let’s end A) teen pregnancy B) the violence-triggering sexual frustration of male teens C) ignorance regarding the clitoris (and the unfortunate knock-on effects of this ignorance, later in life) among female teens and D) America’s Puritanical attitudes and sex laws… by popularizing Pragmatic Homosexuality among people under 18. Anyone ready and/or willing to transition to Het Sex after the age of 18 may well be a tad more ready for it than their immediate forebearers were, after c. ten years of safe, gentle, pressure-free experimentation and practise with humans of their own gender and age-group. And, again: fewer pregnant … Continue reading UTOPIA RULES: a few simple suggestions for fixing this shit

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HEAVEN vs UTOPIA: a parapolitical investigation

Steven Augustine

Utopia is a Left-Leaning young man’s dream and it is the Earthly analogue for Heaven.  No one older than a certain age* (well beyond the chemical tyranny of adolescence) Believes in the possibility or desirability of Utopia (the name itself being sarcastic). No straight, ideologically fired-up young Left-Leaning man who espouses Utopian (eg Socialist) fantasies is likely to admit that his Utopian dream is really one of infinitely-compliant Women and no competition from other men. Very few Communes (gritty attempts at Utopia) from the ’60s, ’70s or ’80s avoided devolving into partner-swapping melees (melees designed to the advantage of each … Continue reading HEAVEN vs UTOPIA: a parapolitical investigation

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DEATH ET AL

Steven Augustine

One of the many things that the Internet has changed is what we do with that stretch of time, between roughly two and four in the morning, if we are caught conscious and alone while it happens. There is a tacit curfew, enforced by fairytale logic, that the mind must obey, or face the consequences of violating. If one isn’t asleep before two, one risks being awake until dawn and thinking strange, un-daylit thoughts in those hours. What one did with that forlorn nether-interval, before the Internet came along, was read, watch TV test patterns, drink alone, or drink in … Continue reading DEATH ET AL

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FEMINISM meet FRENEMISM

Steven Augustine

I was raised on a weird cusp between a crumbling World Order and several Emergent World Orders. Being born in this particular historical moment had, and has, a variety of implications. One way in which this cusp-birth affects me is my view of Women. I think  it’s self-evident that Women are capable of doing, and have a right to have, whatever Men can. But I’ve also been raised to be chivalrous… to hold doors for Women, offer my seat to older women on the U-Bahn, and be generally protective of Women… which is a hold-over from the days that Women … Continue reading FEMINISM meet FRENEMISM

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SUNDRY CASUAL DEMOLITIONS

Steven Augustine

1. Two days ago I was on a 2-hour expedition with a very real friend (who displays, however, many of the properties of an imaginary being), C. My friend C and I have covered more than a thousand kilometers of Berlin since we started these walks late last year. She is one of my most intelligent chums: nothing I say goes over her head, and nothing I say is softened or simplified to reach her. She’s had a full, bizarre, busy and cinematic life already, and passes easily, back and forth,  between the Exotic and Mainstream worlds that I thread … Continue reading SUNDRY CASUAL DEMOLITIONS

AUTHENTIC FICTIONS, PHILOSOPHICAL MINUTE, THE SHORTS, the teleological null-point6 Comments

ouroboros borborygmus: a short story

Steven Augustine

  1. Stock was just beginning to dwell on the fact that he’d been sitting alone in the waiting room for an improbably long while when something happened. The door to the waiting room opened and Stock walked in and grabbed an old magazine and took a seat. Stock stared at himself. It wasn’t exactly Stock but Stock at a much younger age, maybe twenty, stylish but poor. He looked relaxed and very healthy. He was sun-burnished and the smell of his health crossed the room. Stock wondered if this was his grown son. A mesmerizingly-pure and beautiful version of his … Continue reading ouroboros borborygmus: a short story

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ART vs COMMUNITY

Steven Augustine

“ART is not the work of any community or in the name of any community or with any community’s aid or permission. The Community is already busy expressing itself when the Artist comes along; the expression of the Community is in the choral voice of flags, school plays, Rotary Clubs, dog fights, bake sales, church picnics, débutante balls, gossip, hate crimes, scarlet letters, Xmas pageants, multi-generational incest, parades, state fairs and local celebrities, et al. It is the ubiquity of Community’s expression (or its monetized, government-mediated, nationalist pseudo-expression) which calls forth an individualistic response from the rare (anti-) citizen; ie: ART … Continue reading ART vs COMMUNITY

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AGNOSTICS: THE BISEXUALS OF THE BELIEF-WARS

Steven Augustine

  I’m an Agnostic. It means, put simply, that I have no idea how or why the Universe came to be, nor what it means, nor if an Intelligence is involved somehow or behind it all. Can any rational being claim to know otherwise? No, but that doesn’t stop quite a few people who claim to be rational and yet claim to know otherwise. Quite a few Atheists actually “hate” Agnostics more than Christians/Jews/Muslims/followers of Zeus and Odin do. They need to do a little more thinking. It’s obvious that Natural Selection is the process by which living systems are … Continue reading AGNOSTICS: THE BISEXUALS OF THE BELIEF-WARS

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A HIGHER THEORY OF RACE

Steven Augustine

The concept of “Race” as it is understood and applied is “racist” and only used to collate and control (divide and conquer) the population. I think there is a better version. Which Race, of the following, do you belong to? (note: most people are hybrids of two or more of these Races): Artist? Banker? Lover? Dancer? Poet? Athlete? Jester? Chef? Scientist? Collector? Builder? Director? Cheerleader? Critic? Singer? Cryptographer? Gamer? Believer? Knitter? Hunter? Farmer? Father? Mother? Magician? Guide? Novelist? Pianist? Seeker? Sage? Composer? Aesthete? Gourmet? Persuader? Name one… Continue reading A HIGHER THEORY OF RACE

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THE REVERSE-NATIVITY

Steven Augustine

The question of exactly who is controlling the language has changed since the advent of electronic media. It used to be the pastors, who borrowed their authority from a conveniently mercurial God. The etymology of pastor passes through late Middle English from Anglo-Norman French and has to do with sheep. The pastors (and their kapos, the Sunday school teachers) were the Thought Police in America for the longest time; it wasn’t until the end of the 19th century that Harvard’s presidents weren’t either Clergymen or graduates of the divinity school: all but one of the first twenty, starting in 1640, … Continue reading THE REVERSE-NATIVITY

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DEATH AND….

Steven Augustine

The Corporate Government doesn’t need your tax money (it owns the money-printing machines, after all)… it needs your Time, which equals your Life. To pay your taxes (a mandatory expense: the purchase of your avoidance of prison) you convert your Life (its non-refundable hours) into the fee you pay them, while performing trivial tasks (aka your Job), for the Corporate Government, along the way. An efficient model of control. Corollary: all modern currencies are backed only, in truth, by lethal force. Continue reading DEATH AND….

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SUPERSTITIOUS NEWTON

Steven Augustine

  I have friends who have a fundamental aversion to fundamentalists who are, on the other hand, always claiming that whatever calamity comes their way is there to “teach them”. Teach them what? Sent by whom? Knoweth they not that Shit Happens? I also never tire of pointing out to even my relatively well-educated friends that there is no empirical evidence, *whatsoever*, to support the hypothesis that our “universal laws” of science are anything of the sort; we use local standards to evaluate data from distant sources to “confirm” local standards. We use light waves/ x-rays travelling from millions of … Continue reading SUPERSTITIOUS NEWTON

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THE ART-THREATENING WONDERMENTS of SLEEPING WITH YOUR MUSE

Steven Augustine

For a year or so after meeting my Beloved Wife, I couldn’t write. I didn’t merely stop writing…   I was no longer able. Some Darwinians suggest that the Arts are a mating display:  mate found, mating accomplished, the peacock feathers are free to fall off.  In my case it was also that so much of the creative effort had been driven by the energy of a sense of estrangement which I no longer felt, waking up with this woman to plan breakfast, a walk, a trip to the cinema or some museum. It was more than that. Who was it … Continue reading THE ART-THREATENING WONDERMENTS of SLEEPING WITH YOUR MUSE

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COMMENT IN A PROGRESSIVE THREAD: ARCHIVES

Steven Augustine

(the comment probably speaks for itself) Interesting collision of worldviews here, Joseph! But… (and this is a big etc)… are we invariably “not very tolerant of people who get found out as racists”? The culture itself is powerfully racist (ie, it draws race-based distinctions between people even when race is or should be irrelevant; when a “black” leading man and a “white” leading woman in a blockbuster go to second base on camera, it makes the news; Japanese leading men are “box office poison”, etc). Paula Deen got fired as a corporate precaution, not because she crossed a clear moral … Continue reading COMMENT IN A PROGRESSIVE THREAD: ARCHIVES

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CHANGE THE PREMISE

Steven Augustine

Change The Premise. Things will begin to make sense when we Change The Premise. Example: The War on Drugs: no progress after decades… how can this be? And why do they concentrate on the bottom of the pyramid, giving small-time dealers and users merciless sentences? We scratch our heads!  It makes no sense! But if we change the premise from “the War on Drugs is a sincere effort to cripple the Drug Economy”…  to…  “The War on Drugs is actually an effort to go through the motions while A) keeping the prices high and B) consolidating a monopoly on the … Continue reading CHANGE THE PREMISE

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THE TERMINOLOGY NEEDS SHARPENING

Steven Augustine

  Topical Paradox: One thing is now obvious: some of our sociological terminology needs to be sharpened. Ie: the term “racism” doesn’t seem to speak, with any accuracy, to pressing racial antagonisms in America today: it’s far too broad (and of another era) to characterize the hotspots at the front line of social conflict. The term “racism”, in most modern American cases of social interaction, really refers to very mild situations. Eg: non-Asians thinking all Asians are proficient in kung fu, or that all Hispanics are tempestuous, all Jews are good with money, and reciprocal misunderstandings about “whites”, etc. (Sidebar: … Continue reading THE TERMINOLOGY NEEDS SHARPENING

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GHOST IN THE SHELL GAME

Steven Augustine

  One of the interesting questions regarding power in the context of a State or Kingdom has to do with ceremonial, vs effective, ownership. For example, when Charlemagne laid the foundations for Strunk and White by decreeing that paragraphs had to be indented, words had to be separated by spaces and line-spacing had to be implemented to make sentences more legible, it wasn’t just a matter of style: the manuscript-illuminating priests had been very cleverly hoarding literacy, stealthily shifting the center of effective power away from the tribal chieftains who’d held on to it since dick-size and skill in battle were … Continue reading GHOST IN THE SHELL GAME

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IT’S GREAT TO HATE#2

Steven Augustine

I hate it when people mistake parroting their masters for having something to say. I hate Consuming which thinks it’s Creating. I hate it when The Brainwashed see themselves as the Cognoscenti and Passive Beneficiaries of Imperialism think they’re Anarchists and Dabblers think they’re Veterans, Band-wagoners think they’re Pioneers, The Cosseted think they’re The Downtrodden,  Petulance thinks it’s Rage, Greed thinks it’s Hunger, Inadequacy thinks it’s Boredom, Boredom thinks it’s Weltschmerz, Weltschmerz thinks it’s Genius, Genius thinks it’s Wisdom, Wisdom thinks it’s Universal, Sex thinks it’s Money, Money thinks it’s Talent, Algorithms think they’re Music and Bullshit thinks it’s Paint. … Continue reading IT’S GREAT TO HATE#2

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A TECHNICAL QUESTION FOR FAITH (from the short story HOMO ZERO)

Steven Augustine

[ed.’s note: from a short story I wrote a few years ago: a philosophical question of some importance: the crucial ambiguity of verification: which interrupts any possible statement-chain in any possible proof of teleological authorship] “While everybody else my age was wrestling with the question,” he said, gesturing with a cup of coffee, “of whether there’s a God or not, I was wrestling with the much-trickier issue of how, exactly, the guy would prove it to us if he were. I mean, seriously. Think about it. Conquistadors were able to convince the Aztecs they were Gods and they were just … Continue reading A TECHNICAL QUESTION FOR FAITH (from the short story HOMO ZERO)

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Echtpiphany

Steven Augustine

“We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order To Live”-Joan Didion I always misinterpreted that quote from Joan Didion. I always assumed she meant that, in order to make sense of the world, we arrange its events (and the events of our lives) into a narrative. We give the raw data not just context but stylish, shapely context; a story with a moral; a story with a beginning, middle and end. But I’ve come to a different conclusion about what she meant when she wrote, “We tell ourselves stories in order to live”. I once had a chat with a man I … Continue reading Echtpiphany

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NDG and Elizabeth Smart

Steven Augustine

He led her in her red silk pajamas up a trail into the rugged back country and over a ridge, hiking what she estimated to be three to five hours to a crude campsite. There, she said, he “sealed” her to him as his wife and raped her. She said she begged him to stop, pleading, “I’m just a little girl.” She struggled, but she said at age 14 she was no match for a grown man. Afterward, she cried herself to sleep. The next day, as she cried again, he told her she was “lucky,” Smart testified. He said … Continue reading NDG and Elizabeth Smart