Long talk with Phil this evening...

We discussed (but of course) the World Cup.  Several of the tidbits I shared with him about Ronaldo were unknown to Phil, even in buzzy alt Deutschland.  I daresay his mind was blown to hear how soccer balls have a way of lifting themselves just before Ronaldo kicks them.  The rest, including the scuttlebutt about the League of Incestuous Homosexual (Père/fils) Pedophiles, didn't seem to faze him.  I don't know if I've persuaded him to watch the Ballade of Hugo Sánchez, which is all my joy of late on Netflix.  

Anent Cultural/Racial Histories--

The dismal fact about those which are officially recognized and given a whole month out of the calendar to celebrate is that they don't exist.  There is no "Black History"--nor, for the matter of that, is there, really, a Black Culture, that it'd take more than a week or so out of a calendar year to analyze and classify.  On the other hand, say that we give Japanese civilization the month, at least, that its many achievements (artistic, philosophical, sociological) demand that we devote to it--What then shall we grant as an adequate amount of time to contemplate the vast, ancient civilization of China? Or India?  One should say, rather, the civilizations (plural) of India.  Come on.  Give me a break.

I notice that those (pointy headed ignoramuses) who propose to celebrate White Culture never have any notion what that would be. They seldom realize that modern European culture begins with Homer (unless it's 3,000 years before that, with the epic of Gilgamesh).  Then Virgil.  Then Dante.  Then Milton.  They couldn't distinguish between Perpendicular and Flamboyant Gothic if their life depended on it--much less between the Italian and the English madrigalists.  What is the significance of vocal polyphony? Josquin des Près?  Or Johann Sebastian Bach?  Please, if you don't know what I'm talking about, just shut up.

Longboarder soars down Colorado hill at 70mph!

Could anything be more fun than this?  Happy Colorado that has such endless hills!

Surfing the Net, in the couple of days after my last post, I became an immoderate fan of the incomparable Cristiano Ronaldo.  Then, by chance little less than divine, the first match of the World Cup 2018 tournament just happened to be between Spain and Portugal, with Ronaldo as captain of the Portuguese team--and the very enthralling first match ever to see if you are a soccer newbie like myself, from which I learned basically everything about why one becomes an enthusiastic fan of the world's favorite sport:  (1) Why it does not particularly matter what the score is; (2) why individual performance of the team members (who have, still, to be team members) is what really matters; (3) how a "hat-trick," like Ronaldo's magical, equalizing, scoring penalty kick, makes Ronaldo the greatest of the great (GOAT), and is, in itself, properly understood, what the game of soccer is all about.  I remain enthralled, thrilled and captivated.

But, Reconciling me to Life in the Modern World,

I have just watched watched (on the 27", ultra high definition monitor of my only slightly out-of-date Apple computer) the eight-minute recap of the opening match (between Saudi Arabia and Russia) of the 2018 FIFA World Cup tournament--with glimpses of Putin and the Potentate of Saudi Arabia sitting fairly close to one another in the stands.  Even though I don't (as an American) care a lot about what I call soccer, I must acknowledge that the players are excitingly young, masculine, good-looking and wonderfully skillful--and I cannot fail to recognize that, to the rest of the world, the World Cup is the Biggest Deal there is.

You might think, given that my paternal grandfather and my maternal grandmother were both alcoholics,

That I would have but scant chance of not being an alcoholic, but--and I thank Almighty God (if that's who rolled my genetic dice)--that in actual fact I am not at all alcoholic:  I can drink till I'm quite tipsy, if the wines at dinner are particularly delicious, and still feel no ill effects the next morning. Or I can leave a bottle of wine half drunk for several weeks on top of my refrigerator, if it should happen during that while that I have nothing to eat that would taste good with it.  Wine or beer without food  (except for an occasional glass of sherry, or, perhaps, a gin rickey on a hot day) doesn't interest me, and the effect of alcohol in itself, generally, I find depressing and depressive; it absolutely does not get me "high."

If I had not had one dear friend (dead now twenty years next march) who was a bona fide alcoholic, and who assured me, under oath, that the experience of alcohol was always a "high" for him--and not simply a base, cowardly and mindless lifting of inhibitions--I might venture that no downer, alcohol, opiate or barbiturate, ever gets anyone high (in the sense that good sex, profound philosophy, perfect music, witty conversation, cannabis and qat get one, in fact, high).  So little indeed do I value the loss of inhibition. I must say, even, that my now two decades dead friend (despite how "high" he may have believed himself to be), was actually, when in his cups, an unpleasant, contentious swine. Does it matter that I despise downer freaks and think them, at best, deluded?  The problem is that there are so many of them (whose notion of a good time is losing their inhibitions), that despising them makes me virtually the enemy of most of my fellow humans. In a world of Dub Step, Hip Hop and Twerking, after all, a certain, foregone dismissive contempt of whatever presents itself is probably only prudent.

As soon as I pay my library fines, I'm going to read Michael Pollan's "The Omnivore's Dilemma."

Michael Pollan is a smart man, with an entrancing prose-style, several of whose books over the past dozen years or so I have read; one of which, the Botany of Desire, was as dear to my friend Marcus as it was to me, and cemented our friendship everlastingly, even now that Marcus himself is gone, and what remains of him, in fond remembrance, is our shared tastes (and, to some degree perhaps, aversions),  Anyway, Michael Pollan is indeed a smart, even a wise man, and what I have liked best about his elemental wisdom, is his take on the necessary business and ethos of agriculture/farming. Plainly, the correct understanding of our hominid species' special relationship to the planet, that we engage upon when we farm or garden, is this: we thereby create both an asylum (for some creatures, for a while) and (inevitably, ultimately)  a

killing-field, or abattoir, for a select number of plants and animals; and that we cannot have the one--whether affording special refuge, or harvesting/slaughtering--without the other.  So we must, if we are responsible agriculturists, accept our duty to manage both aspects, the nurturing and the slaying, as matter-of-factly and as humanely as possible.  The French, having beautiful and various soils and terrains, and an immense variety of livestock, and long experience in cultivating them, seem to have brought this sad but dry-eyed wisdom to its ultimate fulfillment, in their creation of the super-fatted livers of ducks and geese--arguably the most delicious substance in earth.  And what is wonderful to me is how calmly and rationally--indeed philosophically--French ducks and geese accept this fact of agricultural existence: They seem quite to like the farmworkers who care for them, and actually to enjoy the no-nonsense, business-like gavage they get at the hands of grandmotherly peasant ladies.

The Holy Bible: "The Goat-Herder's Guide to the Universe"

Thanks and a tip of the hat to Seth Andrews, the Thinking Atheist.

Those who believe in god/s are morons;

Those who believe in the Devil are idiots.

Regarding Cannabis

Throughout most of my adult life (since I was 21 years old)--with the exception of the last 11 years that I have lived in Honolulu--I have smoked marijuana as often, and as regularly (i.e., 2 or 3 joints or bowlfuls a day) as I could.  As I am now nearly 76 years old, that comes to 44 years of fairly consistent, moderate marijuana use--with long, intermittent periods of abstinence.  And, with the concurrence of my case-worker, and upon the advice of my doctor, I expect to resume the practice of smoking (or otherwise ingesting) marijuana sometime within the next month or two:  For both recreational and medicinal purposes; as an aid to study (of languages and philosophy) and to the practice of music, and to relieve the pain of arthritis and edema. Hopefully as well it will stave off memory loss and senile dementia.

Good good-bye to Anthony Bourdain,

Who hanged himself this morning, age 61, probably in a final drunken fit of auto-suspensive masturbation, in the way that so many fine, alcoholic, no longer beautiful gentlemen do take their leave of us (reminding us that, even in death, they were epicurean connoisseurs)--though none will, of course, even if he knows or suspects it to be true, say so.  Still, I gotta say, too bad: I liked the son of a bitch. I have read several of his autobiographical accounts of himself-in-the world, and, sadly, I have foreseen that this is what it would come to: Bourdain was, in the first place, an open, unrestrained alcoholic. In the second place, if you dig even a tiny bit into him, you perceive the gnawing sexual vanity of one who was beautiful in his young manhood, and who was crushingly humiliated by the decay of his good looks in middle age.  I think it goes no deeper than this, though the exquisite poise and balance of his prose (In my humble estimation, he was the best writer of English of the last half century) makes one wish that there had been more to him than that. Without the alcoholism, there might have been.

Quite an uptick in the number of page-views for this humble blog lately...especially on the part of French page-viewers--

I can only assume it's because of my devotion to the memory of Marie-Anne Charlotte de Corday d'Aumont, and to her Quick and Ready Way of Dealing With (Assassinating) Enemies of the People, which, with great respect, I also advocate, and whose example (especially in regards to the murder of Marat) I celebrate.  When I say, as I often do, "Kill Cops!" I'm sure that my Gallic cousins know just what I mean, and why I mean that they ("Cops") should be killed: because, by killing them, as our chère Charlotte would say, we are saving the lives of our innocent fellow-citizens.  

Marion County Oregon deputy punches a man in a mental health crisis

This horrifying, infuriating video has, in my opinion, only one proper response:  Kill those policemen.  Find out who they are, hunt them down, and slay them.  Better that there were no cops at all than such cops as these.

Pets and Children, Why do we have them?

If you ask females of the appalling-many (lower classes),  why they want babies, they'll answer (all unconscious of the depravity of their response) that they "want somebody to love them."  That is, they want beings attached to them so utterly dependent on them that (wretched though they be, and despite the rigors and torments of their existence) they will be compelled to love their mothers in order to survive.  This, I believe, is the reason for the existence of fatherless Negro and illegitimate lower class (trailer trash) White children.  Heaven knows, it is not that they are loved.

But funnily enough, Trump, making an official Memorial Day speech a few days ago, wished us all:

"Happy Memorial Day."

Now there are two kinds of Americans:  (1) Those who understand that wishing people a happy Memorial Day is wildly, obscenely inappropriate, and (2) those who don't understand it, and probably wouldn't understand it even if it were explained to them.  How can two so divergent disparities constitute one nation?  As Roseanne Barr clearly shows us:  They can't.  They never have and they never will.