Kiss Ass

Kiss Ass

 

There’s an odd perspective out there

circulating in various unstated ways

like a polluted groundwater

drilling softly into the soles of our feet.

 

It is the view that the host does not welcome the guest

but rather

the guest must kiss the ass

of the host.

 

It’s a thermal inversion

a flip of priorities

an ignorance of opportunities

a death of unity.

 

How did this happen?

 

Writers

There is an ocean of writers that swells against our shores. They crash upon our beaches and leave forlorn bits of insight if we take the time to peek into the flotsam they have left behind. They are like a mounting wave of zombies crawling over a barrier, relentless in their desire to inflict their views upon us. I am overwhelmed at their number and the sheer volume of words that pour forth from them. They gush out as if from a broken conduit to hell. It all passes over my head like the wave that took me under on the beach when I was five years old, feeling the power of the sea for the first time.
Sad to say, I am one of them.
It is a hopeless position to be in.
No one has time for this.
In fact, many of them are not that bad, many are even good.
But that makes no difference at all.
The raves will still go to those who play the game the most strategically, and manipulate the audience the most effectively, those who plumb the public psychology the most cynically; and damn those who seek to find an honest expression.
And it's not easy to say that that's a bad thing sometimes,
because
there
are just
too
many
damn
writers.

Marathon

It's a good thing the NY marathon has been cancelled in the wake of Hurricane Sandy. It was an insensitive waste of money in the face of all the people who had been deprived of basic services, after all. Someone finally came to their senses.
It's also a good thing because marathons are pathetic spectacles of mass masochism. Can you imagine what it takes to get all those people out there toe to toe, ass to belly, thinking that enduring self-inflicted torture is victory? One tends toward the view that yet another form of brainwashing has infected a substantial body of humanity.
Marathon running is not a sport. It is a form of mass delusion.
Sport in general has some key features that marathon running lacks:
1) strong hand-eye coordination
2) agility in multiple body parts
3) quick reactions to sudden and unexpected situations, setting into play multiple body parts
4) strategy beyond simple endurance
5) teamwork coupled with individual effort
6) multifaceted intellectual and physical skills in the particulars of an ordered discipline

Marathon running is monotonic, duller than snakeshit, lacking in most of the key features noted above.
Why do people do it?

Misery loves company, and we're all too fat.

American values

It's not too easy to express clearly what any nation's or culture's values are, but the way this phrase is being bandied about in the current climate of ass-kissing for votes is nothing short of bewildering.
What the hell does it mean?
For example, when Rom-Ry berate the Obama admin for not upholding American values in the Libyan embassy attacks...what the fuck do they mean? Which American values? Family? Church? Three square a day? How do they relate to Libya? Why would American values have any relevance whatsoever in Libya? What the fuck are they talking about?
I can only surmise that they are talking about the core value of freedom of expression. That's what needs to be defended. Of course for radical Islamists that's the problem. Why should people be allowed to say such things?
They have a point, given their lack of experience of open expression.
But wait...it was a terrorist attack, not a protest.
Ah, now which values do we mean? The value of self-defense? That's not an American value. That's a human value, or even more; an organismal value.
That can't be what they mean.
What do they mean?
I think they mean the value of the US as being the biggest and baddest motherfucker on the planet, the value of being able to tell other soveriegn states what to do, when to do it, and when and where to jump when we ask them to. That's what needs to be defended. That's what American values are.
I think they mean the value of arrogance.

I see no value in that at all.

The Unshaven Man

Sometimes one has nothing better to do than issue a bit of a rant. Now is as good a time as any to do that.
For quite awhile now I've been peeved to no end at this extraordinarily irritating trend of men who cultivate the unshaven look. We see it a lot in tv shows and Hollywood movies. If I saw a doctor looking like the one in the tv show House walk into my room I'd kick him in the nuts and tell him to get away from me (in spite of the fact that the actor is a reasonable facsimile of a blues musician). Apparently some one out there, perhaps a gaggle of fools in LALA land, believes this to be an attractive, masculine look  - a devil-may-care look perhaps, a look of a man who has too many more exciting things to do in his life than worry about his appearance - there simply isn't any time to shave.
Well, then grow a beard, asshole. Make up your mind.
Talk about indecisiveness; a lack of masculinity.
I've had difficulty discerning whether women find this look attractive. At the level of whiskers most of these guys cultivate it's hard to see how it can be good for the muff dive.
Which is of course, the point.
It's a cultivated look, not even remotely related to a devil-may-care stance or approach to life and the world, or any kind of practicality.
It's Hollywood.
It's bullshit.
It's like walking around with a flag flying over your head with the logo:
'I AM A STUPID SHIT'.
Because, as any man who has gone a few days without shaving knows, ants begin to crawl across your face, they crawl down your arms and begin to invade your torso, and elsewhere.
It doesn't feel good.
It begins to feel better if you actually let it grow out into an actual and real beard.
But these assholes truly cultivate this look by using their little electric razors set at 1/4 inch depth to assure the appearance of a four-day beard.
Why would you want to feel bad all the time?
The hypocrisy is clear, but it's still a mystery.

Nadine Gordimer

Reading another novel by Nadine Gordimer. I don't know why I do this to myself. Her prose is so tortured, so dense, so filled with excess verbiage, that I get tempted to throw the book against the wall. A 320 page book could have been so much more eloquently stated in 200 pages, or even less. This one is called None to Accompany Me, but it applies equally to all the others.
So while I'm inclined to throw the book against the wall... I don't.
There is insight into the political and social life of South Africa that keeps me plodding along. Gordimer truly has had something useful to say about South Africa, and the deeper things that spring from the conflicts in that country, and it makes me willing to wade through a style of writing that I see as tedious.
It begs the question as to what is good writing.
Gordimer's prose is crap, but is she a good writer anyway?

The Experts

It's a funny thing about tourists - so many seem to come back to their natal abodes and cohorts as sudden experts on almost every aspect of the place they've visited, however briefly. Their friends and family gush and quiver with excitement and envy at every new tale told of the 'adventure'.

Well, a trip to a new place, exposure to a new culture, and a new geography, different politics, etc., is an adventure. It's a wonderful thing to do. But what can you learn about a place on a two or three week visit?

Damn little. That's the truth.

All the same, you're bound to hear rabid pontificating and lecturing from returning tourists who've ventured into unknown lands. It seems like it's the worst with Americans, but maybe it's just a more general phenomenon of tourism. It seems like it's worse with Americans because they are on average affluent enough to be frequent tourists.

This realization will only come to one after one has lived in a tourist destination, or a foreign land of some attraction, and had the opportunity to listen to the speeches of the returning touristas about that place.

Generally, they don't know their asses from a hole in the ground.

I lived in South Africa for 8 years and traveled widely in that time as a biologist scouring the bush for insects. I read and listened to the local news and literature extensively, I listened to the music, walked the streets, watched the cricket and rugby and soccer, enjoyed braais, drank in the pubs, drove the bloody dangerous roads endlessly, worked and taught and laughed with a wide cross-section of the society, got burglarized regularly, got paid in rands not dollars, paid taxes  - participated in every way as a member of South African society.

After all that time, I still don't know my ass from a hole in the ground. The history and culture and land is complex and it is likely that a foreigner will never really be in with it (South African tourists to the USA - you fall into this category too).

But there's something about Americans (USA Americans, that is). About 2-3 years after movng to SA an American couple came over to work on higher degrees. We had a few get-togethers. Within 6 months they were absolute experts on a vast array of aspects of South African life. It was astounding! They would go on and on, contradicting anything I tried to say from my own experience.

It was also absolute bullshit.

Fascinating phenomenon.

Be humble and honest, people. Life is much nicer that way.