Category: REQUIRED READING

GUEST ED, REQUIRED READINGLeave a comment

NOW MORE THAN EVER

Steven Augustine

Anyone who’s read this place over the years knows that a book I hold in high esteem is Human Wishes/ Enemy Combatant, by fallen Comrade Edmond Caldwell. As I just wrote, in the comments section of the obit I wrote here for Edmond,  in an exchange with a writer who has written more than one review of Human Wishes/ Enemy Combatant: I think EC would have really “enjoyed” the horror and struggle of 2020; not a week goes by that I don’t think, “You’re REALLY missing it!” We exchanged a few hundred emails and it was in reading through them, … Continue reading NOW MORE THAN EVER

REQUIRED READINGLeave a comment

REACH OUT AND _______ SOMEONE

Steven Augustine

  The biggest division between the feeling-tone of my worldview and that of quite a few (laugh) is the casual presumption, among the Normed Populace, that nobody, in US Gov or Corp Gov or anywhere else, could possibly be bothered to put “that much insane fucking thought and energy” into fucking with us, or fucking us up or otherwise making us do A or Z or covertly doing A or Z to us. Read this long excerpt (about 75% of the original text, in fact: below) of an article detailing how the Colombian Gov, proxying for US Gov, obviously, though … Continue reading REACH OUT AND _______ SOMEONE

PASTOR PRIME, REQUIRED READING, THINKING TO THE NTH ON THE TOPIC, WE ACTUALLY DON'T HATE THIS AT ALL4 Comments

IDIOT’S GUIDE TO GLEEFULLY-and-FEARLESSLY FLIPPING-THE-SKY-GOD-OFF @ 60

Steven Augustine

  Got in from the far-distant recording studio a bit later than usual,  last night (sank into bed, finally, at 2am), then woke at about 5:30am, let Beloved Wife sleep late, made Offsprung’s breakfast, accompanied Offsprung across town on public transpo to school (as ever) and was home again shortly before 9am, at which point Beloved Wife playfully blocked me from entering the kitchen. Meaning, I surmised in an instant, that despite the fact that I’m not into the folk ritual of tracking and highlighting the commonest mortal milestone, she had a little store-bought cake waiting in there for me, … Continue reading IDIOT’S GUIDE TO GLEEFULLY-and-FEARLESSLY FLIPPING-THE-SKY-GOD-OFF @ 60

BECAUSE THEY SAY WHO'S SMART AND WHO ISN'T, CRUSH THIS MEME, FUCKING SHIT I REALLY REALLY HATE, HUXWELLIAN, REQUIRED READINGLeave a comment

LET X=

Steven Augustine

1-LOWER MATH   Today’s winkingly pseudo-progressive racialism award goes to Eric Ross Weinstein, who coyly tweeted, the night before Xmas (emphasis mine): My scientific take on Race & IQ has nothing to do w either Race or IQ: Let X(p) be any continuously varying measurable scalar that can be defined for every person p in any population P_i. Then I would never expect m(X(P_i))=m(X(P_j)) where m is the mean & P_i, P_j are distinct. Speaking as a p, P_i and P_j are distinct in what quantifiable and non-trivial way(s), precisely… the median quality of their extravagant toupees? Have we all already casually forgotten … Continue reading LET X=

MURKKA, PSYCHOPATHY MASQUERADING AS POLITICS, REQUIRED READINGLeave a comment

JUST SAYIN’ : A FOOTNOTE or “A TOUCH OF IRONY”

Steven Augustine

So imagine a Central American nation (with a history of political assassinations) in which the former head of the Secret Police runs for office, as the Vice Presidential candidate, alongside an airhead actor running for President, and wins. Soon after this Vice President makes it into the number two spot  (the next in line for the position of President if anything lethal or incapacitating happens to the standing President), an attempt is made on the standing President’s life… and it’s reported (without much fanfare) that the would-be assassin is acquainted with the Vice President’s family;  even better: let’s  say the would-be … Continue reading JUST SAYIN’ : A FOOTNOTE or “A TOUCH OF IRONY”

REQUIRED READING2 Comments

A ONCE-TIDY NARRATIVE BECOMES COMPLICATED

Steven Augustine

It’s not my natural style to traffic in Hollywood gossip. But as a man who was gulled into becoming a father by a manipulative, devious, conscience-lacking asshole of the upper-middle classes, in ’79 (“Don’t worry, I can’t get pregnant: doctor says there’s too much scar tissue on my cervix!” no doctor, no scar tissue), a woman who’s been playing the New Age Saint ever since, surrounded and supported now by mutual college friends, some of whom couldn’t stand her when we were all young, I find this compelling. Because (this shouldn’t need to be pointed out): all women aren’t saints … Continue reading A ONCE-TIDY NARRATIVE BECOMES COMPLICATED

BITTER LAUGHS, CORPSE-GREEN CAT SHIT, CRUSH THIS MEME, DUMB AS A RUBBER LADDER, ELEPHANT IN THE ELEVATOR, REQUIRED READINGLeave a comment

SNAILS in the COFFIN: SUNDRY ICKY, DISTURBING and/or BLASPHEMOUS THINGS

Steven Augustine

Take the case of the cultural jingoist and editor of The New Yorker David Remnick, who noted in his letter nominating TV critic Emily Nussbaum for a Pulitzer Prize (which she won in 2016), that “television has become the dominant cultural product of our age—it reaches us everywhere, and has replaced movies and books as the thing we talk about with our friends, families and colleagues.” Remnick did not stop there; to emphasize the untrammeled authority of TV, and literature’s ongoing uselessness, he casts it in military terms as a feeble enemy, now defeated. “Those of us who love TV,” he writes, … Continue reading SNAILS in the COFFIN: SUNDRY ICKY, DISTURBING and/or BLASPHEMOUS THINGS

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THE BEST OBIT REGARDING THE UNEXPECTED DEATH THAT HIT ME THE HARDEST in 2017

Steven Augustine

The Writers Joseph Ramsey and Boyd Nielson have done a salute-worthy job of honoring the lost presence and important work (far from lost, but at risk) of my friend, the Writer Edmond Caldwell. Joseph and Boyd knew Edmond face to face, in real life, while Edmond and I were virtual comrades for about a decade, exchanging emails and interacting on each other’s sites and across various platforms, starting when Blogging was new and the Literary Internet was seething with a conflicted sense of its unprecedented potential. I never knew half of what Boyd and Joseph knew about Edmond, but this … Continue reading THE BEST OBIT REGARDING THE UNEXPECTED DEATH THAT HIT ME THE HARDEST in 2017

PHILOSOPHICAL MINUTE, REQUIRED READING, THINKING TO THE NTH ON THE TOPICLeave a comment

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)

FIGHT THE STUPID, FUCKING SHIT I REALLY REALLY HATE, HUXWELLIAN, MURKKA, NO LOGIC NO JUSTICE, REQUIRED READING, THINKING TO THE NTH ON THE TOPICLeave a comment

WHAT IS LEFT

Steven Augustine

I’ve never been a swooning fan of Cornel West’s presentation (like those other On-Camera Academics, Slavoj Zizek and Camille Paglia, West’s branding tics… in Paglia’s case it was demotic gum-chewing, in Zizek’s case the tics are literal…  are as lurid as a Professional Wrestlers’ masks and capes) but the man has tried to maintain a consistent, coherently dissident  presence, against tremendous odds, for quite some time. Since 2008, at least, he has struggled: almost a decade of swimming against a terrifyingly lockstep crowd. The tremendous odds against which West had to set himself were generated by the Charismatic Obama Regime … Continue reading WHAT IS LEFT

obituary letter, REQUIRED READING9 Comments

But now a gentleman passing

Steven Augustine

  A few weeks ago, an old friend I’ve known since the 1980s, a musician, a friend from that side of my life, stopped answering emails. We were in the habit of sending each other preposterous news items and reacting to these news items with pithily sardonic one-liners. I sent three or four unanswered emails to him and began to worry after the third week of silence. I sent an email that said, “Hey! Just checking… everything okay in California?” An hour later he replied: he’d been busy with building a new recording studio. I was relieved. I sent a … Continue reading But now a gentleman passing

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WHO THE FUCK IS EMMANUEL RADNITZKY?

Steven Augustine

    1946: A SIGNIFICANT YEAR FOR THE CIA and the ICA both. If ever I find the extra hour or two, per day, for several days in a row, I’m going to flesh out, in virtual print, my theory that the bafflingly-famous (in Puritanical mid-20th century America) Man Ray, Marcel Duchamp and Max Ernst often appeared in photographs with beautiful nude younger women because “DADA” was used as an Intelligence “Honeytrap” to attract powerful people to that “wild and crazy Bohemian” S&M scene, leaving the targets vulnerable to blackmail and control. The cast of characters of such an article … Continue reading WHO THE FUCK IS EMMANUEL RADNITZKY?

BITS and BLOBS, REQUIRED READING, THINKING TO THE NTH ON THE TOPICLeave a comment

IMPERIALIST NOTES: a ZINE within the ZINE

Steven Augustine

1. FEARLESS = THOUGHTLESS (or, as Joyce puts it, more judgmentally, in Ulysses: “No fear: no brains.”) Recently, one late afternoon, I took the U-Bahn to a stop in a neighborhood far enough away (Kreuzberg, near the border between Kreuzberg and Friedrichshain, demarcated by the river) that walking from the stop would give me a good two-hour walk home. I always take an mp3 player and my best outdoor-headphones and listen to music. It was a cold, cloudy and windy day, which worked well with the epic music I was listening to. It was only about four thirty when I … Continue reading IMPERIALIST NOTES: a ZINE within the ZINE

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IN CASE YOU’VE FORGOTTEN… OR NEVER KNEW

Steven Augustine

Not that I consider Assange a transparently uncompromised broker of filter-free info but this was/is 300 times more Truthful than anything, on the general topic(s),  you’ll see on/in  BBC, CNN, SLATE, HUFFPO, ABC, NBC, PBS, The Daily Show, The Daily Beast, Vice, NY Times or the especially-egregiously propaganda-rotten New Yorker… Interesting that Assange couldn’t see Trump coming*; after the surprise of Dubya “winning” in 2000 and the “shock” of BHO’s 2008 win, I learned to expect a “surprise” every election. That’s the New Paradigm, isn’t it? Expect a Black Lesbian in office sooner than you’d think. But first we’ll probably … Continue reading IN CASE YOU’VE FORGOTTEN… OR NEVER KNEW

PHILOSOPHICAL MINUTE, REQUIRED READINGLeave a comment

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

ELEPHANT IN THE ELEVATOR, from the DEPT of I SHIT YOU NOT, FUCKING SHIT I REALLY REALLY HATE, REQUIRED READINGLeave a comment

BUT THE DOUGHNUTS ARE CHEAP and the PORN IS FREE, SO…. (a quick aggregation of Horrors)

Steven Augustine

Think of the worst, most violently selfish and dangerous people you’ve ever known or heard about and realize that those are the types in control of The Planet.  It is irrefutably so. Logically speaking, how could decent, peace-loving, compassionate people hope to stand a chance in the struggle for power when the struggle pits them against people willing and able to lie, cheat, manipulate, dissemble and kill… and do all of the aforementioned with great pleasure and consummate skill, often? The psychopaths always win (and they always hire a nice thick layer of smiling, attractive actors to put a chummy, sexy … Continue reading BUT THE DOUGHNUTS ARE CHEAP and the PORN IS FREE, SO…. (a quick aggregation of Horrors)

NO LOGIC NO JUSTICE, REQUIRED READINGLeave a comment

STILL ABSOLUTELY GERMAINE

Steven Augustine

The problem with the Nanny Fascist bludgeon of choice (Twitter) is that it privileges dumb jokes and inarticulate rage (Hitler’s appeal was in his irrationally emotional and passionately gestural speeches, no?) over reasoned discourse. It only takes 140-letters (or fewer) to write something stupid, whereas publishing a thoughtful essay,  addressing every pertinent side of an issue, would require well over 1,000 fragmentary Tweets: Stupid wins. And don’t doubt for a moment that Twitter would have been a key element in the Klan’s lynching parties had the tech existed in 1911. The Brown Shirts, McCarthyites and Stasi would all have loved … Continue reading STILL ABSOLUTELY GERMAINE

CORPSE-GREEN CAT SHIT, CRUSH THIS MEME, DUMB AS A RUBBER LADDER, ELEPHANT IN THE ELEVATOR, GET OFF MY GRUMPY OLD LAWN, HIGH QUACKERY, HUXWELLIAN, IDIOCIES OF A PREVIOUS ME, NO LOGIC NO JUSTICE, REQUIRED READING7 Comments

THREE MINI-ESSAYS on GOURMET VARIETIES of ABSOLUTELY PREPOSTEROUS BULLSHIT

Steven Augustine

1. GENDER BULLSHIT Solidly-mediocre purveyor of Normative Pap, Hollywood asset Matt Damon, recently took the risky step of addressing the hot topic of sexual servitude in Hollywood with what he obviously thought was a carefully-calibrated non-statement that nobody could reasonably take exception to. However, an article at The Guardian (and what exactly are they guarding, I’ve often wondered, beyond the obvious?) now  informs us: Damon said there was “a difference between patting someone on the butt and rape or child molestation. Both of those behaviours need to be confronted and eradicated without question, but they shouldn’t be conflated.” He added … Continue reading THREE MINI-ESSAYS on GOURMET VARIETIES of ABSOLUTELY PREPOSTEROUS BULLSHIT

NO LOGIC NO JUSTICE, PHILOSOPHICAL MINUTE, REQUIRED READINGLeave a comment

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