Friday Odds & Sods, Too: Electric Boogaloo

As autumn officially gets underway and the start of another year becomes just barely visible behind of the end of this one, it is pleasing to reflect how time, which we often perceive as a straight line, is really a matter of cycles.  Year follows year, season follows season, day, day,  and on and on. Only the limits of our own self-centered perspective makes us convince that time is the setting for the epic (or rather, the short story) of our own existence, with a clearly defined progression.  But never fear, dear reader: The eternal recurrence of Friday Odds & Sods will serve as a constant reminder of the true nature of past, present, and future.

• BAM is putting on a production of some of Samuel Beckett's one woman shows in two weeks, starring Irish actress Lisa Dawn.  I've never been in the audience of one of Beckett's plays (although I did make a very good Vladimir in college in English class, if I do say so myself), so I'm looking forward to attending.
• A very trenchant column (from Bloomberg, no less!) spelling out  the very clear moral hazards young people face when they go to work on Wall Street.  
• This is a recent discovery, a YouTube series retelling the history of World War I week by week.  What an age of miracles and wonders!
• Finally, for this weeks recipe, I offer the aptly named Corpse Reviver: Take 2 oz cognac, 1 oz Apple brandy, 1 oz sweet vermouth.  Stir, with ice, and strain into cocktail glass.  Smile.

Sex, Love, and Politics III: Alcibiades I (106c - 109e)

As always, the original text is here, and previous entries are here and here.

It must be admitted that, even 40-odd years since its birth, the old battle cry of "The personal is political," remains a succinct analysis of the relationship between the subject and the state, as a quick glance at our politics aptly demonstrates.  Deciding where and when the government should intervene in such issues as pregnancy, sex, and marriage remain subjects, if not of enlightened discourse, at least of 30 second campaign ads.  

Even beyond the sphere of these intimate issues, the role of the state is on lips of everyone this election year, from the pundits at Fox to the pundits at MSNBC.  Indeed, it almost seems impossible not to have an opinion on how Washington should act with regards to the economy, military action, policing of the border, et cetera, et cetera.  Going back in time, America's founding documents are dedicated to laying out (in principle, if not always in practice) clear areas of action and restriction of governmental power.  

Now in handy cartoon form!

You would be justified, dear reader, in wondering what these musings have to do with the Alcibiades.  When we left our heroes at the close of the last post, Socrates was in the midst of seducing Alcibiades, promising that it was only through Socrates' wisdom (and love) that Alcibiades could realize his political hopes.  But the issues that we debate today in our own soundbite-y way are direct descendants of those that are discussed in the portion of the dialogue that is the topic of this post, namely the proper role and function of the state, as well as the role of the citizen, insofar as he is a political participant, in ensuring that this function is carried out.

Son of Friday Odds & Sods

Since the moment Zeno observed, not doubt after a few glasses of ouzo on a hot Grecian day, that there are never enough minutes, or indeed millennia, to get anywhere at all, so one might as well stay where one is, time and space have been intimately linked in human thought.  Even beyond the level of metaphysical speculation, I would wager that most people know this connection is intuitively true.  A weathered tree, an old door, the view from the top of the stairs, all these things can send the soul back to another point in time.  In this particular instance, whenever you come to this particular place, you will be reminded of the time you read Friday Odds & Sods.

• We note in passing the rejection of independence by the people of Scotland and congratulate Her Royal Highness on passing on the realm intact to her heirs.  Although may we suggest cautious readers take to the stockpiling of scotch, the better to prepare for another '45.
• It was my very great pleasure to see the new lineup of the Carolina Chocolate Drops yesterday evening.  If you're looking for something to listen to this weekend, you could do worse than to check out the lead singer, Rhiannon Giddens, solo work.
• Another football season is well underway, although I would not be the first to remark that most of the interest and scandal seems to lie off season this year.  To get a glimpse of the sort of culture that many football players come into at a young age, look to the original Friday Night Lights.
• A good remedy to begin or end a long night out, the Stinger: Take .75 oz white creme de menthe and 2.25 oz  cognac, shake, and strain into cold glass.

The Highland Charge

 

The Bones of Thomas Paine

"There are eight million stories in the Naked City," they used to say on TV.   Adjusting for inflation since the '60s, that comes to about 10 or 12 million stories in circulation in the Metropolis today. Some of these stories are, of course, not worth the trouble it takes to hear them, and others one cannot avoid hearing not matter how much one might wish.  Oh my anonymous nighttime companion, while I never caught your name, the fact that you could vomit on the street at such a volume that you could wake me from a deep sleep when I was three floors above is a testament to the kind of night you had, if perhaps not your good judgment.

True to life tales of action and suspense

Even so, there is always a hope of sifting some gold out of the dross.  In the hope that, as Socrates remarks, knowing the men of the city is the origin of wisdom, or at least a source of temporary amusement, I have undertaken the labor on your behalf. This post I offer up as the result, the story of the sad death and bizarre afterlife of Thomas Paine

Return of Friday Odds & Sods

I read somewhere that as one ages one's perception of the passage of time speeds up so that by the time you've reached 30, about half of your life has already finished, subjectively speaking.  And when I compare, for instance, how long it used to take each hour of 7th Grade to pass to how quickly this week has gone by, this does in fact seem to be the case.  Of course every moment of ending is also a moment of beginning, or so a fortune cookie once told me, and in this case the drawing down of another week is the start of another Friday Odds & Sods.

• Despite the occasional recurrence of warmer weather, we seem to be slowly slipping into fall.  This is a sign that it is time to put away the things of summer and prepare for another winter.  Away with wearing white and clear liquors and up with black coats and a nice whiskey.  If you need a cold-weather tipple, might I recommend being Defiant?
• A good skewering of two idols of undeserved pretension, Apple & U2: U2's Forgettable Fire 
• I'm feeling like something classy for this weeks miracle cure, and you don't get much more classy than a Martini:  Take 5 parts gin, 1 part dry vermouth, dash of bitter, ice, stir and strain. Garnish with olive or lemon twist.  
• To close, a song to serve as a prayer for a pleasant fall season.  Until next time.

Sex, Love, and Politics II: Alcibiades I (103a-106c)

Link to previous post here, and to online text of Alcibiades I here

If an anthropologist from Proxima Centauri or thereabouts wanted to grasp just how odd Earth's population of hairless hominids was, a good starting point for the extraterrestrial's education would be sex.  Most other animals seem to get on with the business of rutting in a relatively neurosis-free sort of way, at least so far as we can tell.  Peacocks grow their plumage, salmon swim upstream, and nature, as it were, takes its course.  Only man, with his infinite capacity to trap himself in puzzles of his own devising, seems to want to ascribe special significance to his sexual impulses

He's hot and he knows you know it

Sex, Love, & Politics I: Alcibiades I

Although we Gallipots tend to partake of only so much wisdom as is short and easily quotable, it is nonetheless the case that on long weekends afternoons one's thoughts do tend towards contemplation of eternal verities. Such, in fact, is the current state of mind of your humble correspondent this Sunday. I would like, therefore, to take a slightly more serious tone for a few posts on a work that I have been wrestling with  recently, Plato's Alcibiades I.  Interested parties may find an online version with accompanying Greek here.

Mosaic Portrait of Alcibiades

Friday Odds & Sods

So I had a great post prepared, full of both contemporary relevance and timeless truth, with a fresh perspective on the human condition and likely to revolutionize the way we think about all aspects of the world and our place in it.  Then I remembered it was Friday, and you never release "A" material on Fridays.  So instead here are some random tidbits that had nowhere else to go.  Enjoy!

• Firstly, a Public Service Announcement.  Long-time residents of the Metropolis know first-hand that using or even just glancing at a smart phone instantly drops the IQ of subway riders and eliminates all spatial self-awareness.  Just today, your humble correspondent noticed two addicts who didn't even exit the station before getting their fix, instead deciding to stand motionless in the stairwell with Zen-like detachment, swiping away at Tinder.  Please, for the love of all that is Holy, wait two seconds to upload your pics of #your #subway #ride #yolo until you are out fully out of the subway station.
• Some weekend reading: Anthony Lane's review of the latest YA movie, If I Stay, offers some chuckles as well as insightful commentary on the present John-Green-ification of movies and literature.  Masha Gessen examines the roots of Russia's declining population, a nearly 50 year trend that shows little sign of reversing.

Unhappy Anniversaries

If forced to select the most miserable year in recorded history, a strong case could be made for 1914.  Some reasons for this choice are immediately obvious, such as the outbreak of World War I, Europe's four year long danse macabre.  Other events, while perhaps not as patently catastrophic, also speak to the quality and quantity of the year's misery. One of these other tragedies is the extinction of the passenger pigeon, a specie that just a few decades previously had been so numerous that it numbered in the billions and had flew in flocks miles long.

In a sense, both the extinction and the war can be seen as the denouement of the intertwined trends of the antebellum: technological advancement, industrial expansion, and imperial ideology.  Just as railroads delivered machine gun ammunition and phosgene gas to the front at the Somme, Ypres, and Verdun so that hundreds of thousands of young men could be mowed down in the name of God and country, so too railroads delivered thousands of hunters to every corner of a Manifest-Destiny-driven United States so that passenger pigeons could be mowed down in their nesting grounds and their meat sold back east.  The going rate was about 50 cents per dozen.

Happy Labor Day!

As another summer come to an end, culturally if not climate-wise, I would like to take a moment to recall that the reason for Labor's Day creation was Grover Cleveland's terror of workers celebrating an actual labor day, for various reasons.

Whatever serious and sober celebrations the laboring classes were expected to hold on this day of rest that Grover had so graciously granted, it is hard to imagine a West Indian carnival as one of them.  Yet at this very moment on my street the soca is blasting, girls are dancing, and rum is flowing.  What more could a working man ask for?