Dalai Lama's guide to happiness

Best fart joke ever. Wisest, most high-minded and kindest human being I've ever seen.  Charming. No wonder the Chinese hate him. They sense, fear rightly, that, when this fellow dies, the Maitreya Buddha will be born. The Lord of Light and of self-defined and self-created Individualist Democracy, Anarchy, if you will, among kind, wise, well-educated and crafty people; like what should have happened at Tienanmen Square--that thing we all felt happening then, but which, alas, did not happen.  I can see the Czechs and Poles and Slovaks and Iranians and Japanese getting there. But the Chinese, eheu, have still a few wrong collective notions about how much control, and over whom, a central authority may be exercised. They feel it in their bones, and they communicate it to one another by example and by precept--and they're wrong: They may not reclaim Taiwan. ¡See what they are doing in Hong Kong (God damn Margaret Thatcher, for the surrender of which, and for the decommissioning of Britannia)! 

Black Sea Wines Documentary Film

Nysa, I note, is the birthplace of the god Dionysos:   Which brings up a whole lot of to-be-decided-later issues which were never decided: Besides food, what is wine? God to whom? Plus, from what I understand about fetal development, it (wine) ought never, ever to be drunk by women (who might be pregnant). Rationally and ethically that's what I get to. Sorry, Ladies, your right to get drunk has just been curtailed by your potential fetus's right to exist. And no, I don't believe that a central nervous system depressant, like alcohol, ever can get you high, although if it tastes good, and your host is not chary of it, wine may have an improving effect on the people seated next to you at dinner. I'll venture that close to a Metaphysic or Deification of the Blood of the Grape. Ladies--and Dudes--should still imbibe moderately, and should not have any difficulty going potty modestly and discreetly when they need to on account of it, and should never, ever feel like they might be sick. They will be.

I'm for, however, unlimited, ad libitum pre-natal ingestion of cannabis (and tea and chocolate), for both mother and child. For Cannabis both soothes and excites--but never depresses--our body and our mind. Wine, out of season, or not at the right time, will just bring you down. All right, sometimes you need to be down. The rest of the time you ingest stimulants. There's a balance we all set for ourselves naturally--and thanks to the Buddha for pointing out that there are some issues that are normally taken care of, and balances achieved, without exerting a lot of will power.  Love, and do and what thou willst, and do what the fuck you want.

Mrs. Osborne, my piano teacher, whose personal taste was for Chopin, was bemused by my love of Bach:

"You like dancing in fetters," she said.

When I was Seventeen,

I discovered Pope (Alexander), Milton, Bertrand Russell, and Ayn Rand, whose villains (James Taggart and Lillian [Mrs. Hank] Rearden)  and whose contempt for the ethos of collectivism, I found, variously, delicious and thrilling. It did not make me want to bomb churches with little negro girls in them, but it gave an edge to my appreciation of Hogarth. And the Russellian part of my self-indoctrination made it forever in my life impossible for me to  enjoy bad writing (Hemingway, J.K. Rowling) or sloppy thinking; but rendered me susceptible, in the fulness of time, to the wicked, charming insights of Jean Baudrillard.

But the most formative literary influence on  me? Probably Hermann Hesse, with his Mozart-worship and Ludi mit Glassperlen and Journey to the East. Hook, line and sinker.  When the Master said to me, "You've got something wrong here," that's what it was: Mozart-worship.  

Professor Vincent Ferraro on Going to War with Iran | Connecting Point |...

Top Israeli Expert: US Can’t Defeat Iran in a Conventional War; Absolute...

Hey!

Tucker Carlson Stops War With Iran! Dems Upset.

"Full-fledged war without prospect of victory." 

How fucking dare they? Who the fuck is Steven Mnuchin? Goldmann Sachs--the enemy. Without disguise. Sickening.

Most Delectable Foods:

All right, for the Honor of Things French, and the eventual all-rightness of stuffing ducks and geese beyond their normal capacity, causing thereby their livers to grow fat (and then killing them), okay, Pâté de Foie gras (#1).  Followed closely by (#2) acorn-fed Spanish ham and good prosciutto. Then, maybe (#3), strawberries or sour cherries in crême fraîche.  Okay? Well, not far behind is Angry Orchard's Crisp Apple cider, which is nip-and-tuck with Berlinerweisse mit Himbeernsamft.

¿White Supremacy?

In written-out music, oil-painting and technology (and science), okay. But I think for brush-painting and ceramics (and maybe poetry) the Chinese and the Japanese are undoubtedly Supreme. And, certainly, the Palm for dreamy, semi-functional architecture goes to the Persians, and to the Mughals (who were half Persians, as it happens, or Persians as much as anything).

The Truth About Aristotle

Jeez, I enjoyed this.  ¿¡What though Stephan Molyneux, whom I rather like, is called some rather ugly names by David Pakman!? I do not, quite, know what is meant by "White Supremacy." And I haven't talked to Stephan Molyneux to ask him if that's what he is, but I certainly agree with him that, if, as Cicero said, "Aristotle was a river of gold," in his actual personal Greek prose, we are indeed bereft that nothing of it survives. 

It occurs to me that, if Alexander (He wasn't entirely good!) hadn't destroyed it--had it burnt, actually--we should probably have to include Persepolis

among those ravishingly beautiful architectural monuments that we--or somebody at the UN decides are to be preserved forever in situ, unchanged, regardless of their purpose and function in the real world. No doubt. They say Persepolis was lovely. 

But my favorite chose persane is the water garden, as at the al-Hambra, and as in Kashmir, which these preternaturally clever Persians invented, using only gravity flow, to  cool and embellish the stark, hot aridity of geographical Persia. The very word Paradise is, I think, a Persian word, and means something like "enclosed garden w/fountain."

Gotta say I love this picture of this particular garden--if you click on it it expands--which is very old and very lovely.

Iran, you know, is Persia, the Homeland of Persians,

which, who, while they may now be writhing under the disgusting and humiliating hegemony of Mullahs and Ayatollahs--Of course in our secular, Western understanding this makes them Utter Barbarians Who Know Not The Law--But there are 81,000,000 of them, peculiarly ethnically distinct (and, in my opinion, ordinarily, physically strikingly beautiful), and they are used, in their long history, at various times, to being the most extraordinarily civilized people on the planet. Among the things you have to mention, along with the Taj Mahal, and the Parthenon, and the stained glass in the cathedral at Chartres, is the dome of the Shah Mosque at Isfahan.  If Mr. Bolton thinks he can nuke that with impunity, he's got another think coming.

Did anyone mention Mossadegh?

Is The U.S. Going To War With Iran? | AJ+

¿"We" dare?

There's hardly a Patriotic Consensus like there used to be, that somehow excused and made possible the Endless War in Iraq and Afghanistan and Libya and the Yemen, which the official New York Times' and Wall Street Journal's editorial opinion epitomised. But they'd be mad to think they have that kind of support now. Wouldn't they be? Interestingly--one glimpses here the scaly claw of the Lizard Master--Trump really probably is certifiably demented (as was his father, at an early age); his very subsidence into lunacy and imbecility being simply a meaningless cover for the deployment of armed force.

Regarding the Reintroduction of Wolves in the Western States

"Healthy landscapes  (!?) require the presence of native (?) plants and animals." Says fucking who? In my opinion--in my well informed and considered opinion--in the very healthiest landscapes there are no predatory animals or venomous snakes which might kill me. Fuck you if you think differently.

Lest, however, I be thought an hypocritical, Philistine bigot incapable of appreciating Diversity, I hasten to make a partial exception (from my implicit Animal Holocaust) for my noble cousin Coatl, Gentleman Rattler, whose family is older than mine, and who warns us before he kills us--so long as he inhabit what I consider desert waste anyway, which I never intrude upon without being wholly mindful of his lordship over it. But bears, wolves and cougars, alas, there is simply no more room for in the continental United States--although there may, still, be room for them in Alaska and, of course, Canada.

Moreover, I think it a heinous and criminal act ever to kill a bobcat or a lynx, unless it were to eat them, as sometimes happens, of necessity, in the northern wilderness. And this, by the way (necessity...northern wilderness), is the only excuse I can think of for the alarming and disgusting practice of cannibalism (killing and eating their fellow dolphins) by orcas--who imagine, I think, that, by not eating us (and only in the most trying circumstances--as, for example, at Sea World--killing us), they have outwitted us. Perhaps they have.

Dominant Life-Form on the Planet Earth?

It's obvious when you think about it.

Joe Rogan Experience #1035 - Paul Stamets (Any relation of Stamitz?)

The statistic to bear in mind: Anybody who has ever, even once by accident, ingested enough psilocybin mushroom to get high on, is: 27% likelier than others never to commit theft, and 18% likelier never to commit a crime of violence. 

Oregon versus Washington marijuana laws (Marijuana News)

Do you notice how intelligent, and how stoned, if a little out-dated, is this conversation? I am moved to remark that this video epitomises a general trend of videography in the last few years that I (who in the deepest recess of my imagination am the Procopius of the Third Millennium) detect of accelerated perfection in the art and technique of videography (with understood resonance on the Internet). Much is communicated, by smart people, swiftly, beyond the reach of censors.

China suggests snub will continue until Canada releases Meng Wanzhou | P...

What of course is criminal and an abomination before god is the fucking extradition treaty between the U.S. and its lickspittle lackey Canada. Canada has no goddamned right to detain this woman, nor, least of all, has the United States the least goddamned right to ask Canada to detain her. The people who engineered this detention should be fired, nay punished, and the evil law they have cited to justify this outrage rescinded. Forthwith and retroactively.

Not being a neurotic woman--that vilest, most annoying and least of things--

I'm not obsessively preoccupied with my bowels, and I don't have, or imagine that I have, celiac disease, and I'm not at all afraid to eat gluten, even seitan. But I suppose that I'd be as  obsessively, even neurotically, obsessed with my bowels too, if my auto-immune system were attacking my small intestine. Le povere.

I've never been to Las Vegas

--but something in me tells me that, in dismissing the metaphysical implications inherent in the phenomenon of  Wayne Newton's singing of 'Blue Velvet,' I may have  fundamentally failed to comprehend what, at its glitziest, the Mob can be. What though the Colorado' River's water and hydroelectric power be wasted on a Desert Gomorrah, whose sole purpose at its very inception was to be a Refuge for Bandits (and their money)! Che-rist Almighty.  Even now, a century since, the colossal collusion of local corruption and federal powers--and the Mob--in the creation of Las Vegas is a stench in my pious Westerner's nostrils.

I Perceive, from these and other remarks I've made, that what I most--not hate--dislike in this world is the plain, simple (Sicily-derived) Mob.  Cosa Nostra. Crime that tries to be organized. And I realize that, in the case of Las Vegas, I may be mistaken in thinking: ¡What a Waste of Resources! and perhaps I should (just get down out of my head-space and) recognize the vibrant sexual undertow which has fashioned this American Siwa Oasis (which anyway used to have a lot of homosexual orgying going on in it). Maybe Las Vegas is the paraphilia capitol of the universe. It certainly deserves to be.

The Problem with Women's Soccer--obvious, but unmentionable--

Is that, compared to Men's Soccer, it is insufferably, exasperatingly, inept, slow and unathletic. Those who like watching it must like watching women do anything whatsoever; not because of what they do, or because of the skill with which they do it, but, really, just because those doing it are women. Just, I suppose, as I enjoy watching Peewee Baseball, not for the baseball, but on account of the cuteness of the kids playing it. But god damn heterosexuals, and their morbid, subterfugitive, utterly fake enthusiasms.

Prof Dame Mary Beard - Tyranny and democracy

I post this more than anything to show how Mrs. Beard and I completely agree and concur--as to Trump's being most like, if anyone, the emperor Eleogabalas, and what the relevant quote from Tacitus is to describe what the Powers That Are have done to Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and the Yemen. Bitterly, soberly, distinctly: They create a Desert and call it Peace.

Italian Grandma Makes Sausage and Peppers

The artistry of this--getting all its several ingredients cooked each to its exact doneness and no more, before combining them into a glorious, child-vanquishing, Italian slumgullion--is fairy-tale like. 

Come to think of it, Gina Petettini is one of five or six magical/sublime old ladies whom I have known in this life--at least two of whom were Classicists, and one of whom, now that I think of it, was not old--and all of whom, as it happens, were Italian. Must be a type. 

Rune Malte Bertram-Nielsen

is the genius of this video which depicts every real (masculine) man's deepest desire, consummately fulfilled: He lives alone, contentedly and productively, "small," without wife or dog, in boundless, beneficent nature: Yama-do--or, maybe, Yamabushi-do, would be the Japanese word. Try as I will, I cannot see the noble and assuredly comely young Mr. Bertram-Nielsen as a sexual being; his dignity and serene composure forbid it. Nor am I the least curious to know if he ever gets up with a morning hard-on, or how exactly he goes to the bathroom.  I assume he buries it like I do when in nature. But then, does he carry a clod of earth in his backpack, like what Muslims carry in their turbans, to wipe his (forgive me) butt with? And then does he wash with water (like I do)? But that aside, on longer acquaintance with this admirable young Dane, one discovers in him traits of brilliance that defy vulgarization: His control of fire is absolute, and his camp cookery is varied, plentiful and delicious. 

Edmund de Waal's utter Fraudulence (or Incompetence), as a Ceramicist or as an Artist of any sort, cries unto fucking Heaven

Of course he also writes--about rich Austrian Jews whose private art collections were pillaged during the Great War by the Nazis.  Alas that it should ever have happened, but I am tired of hearing about it. No one, not even Jews, may claim special victimhood by the goddamned Nazis, whose crimes and predations in Czechoslovakia and the Netherlands, against Czech children and innocent Dutch citizens--if you want to know--have occasioned with me particularly the profoundest and most unappeasable sorrow. A friend--now dead these twenty years--once told me that his ideal of Genteel Civilized Refinement was a certain old Jewish lady that he had known in Vienna, of an ancient Jewish family. He evidently had tea with her and found her enchanting. Him I believe.