Monthly Archives: October 2016

Juramento — Español-English

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Juramento
[Miguel Matamoros, 1894-1971 (Cuba)]

(Introducción)

Si el amor hace sentir hondos dolores
y condena vivir entre miserias,
yo te diera mi bien por tus amores
hasta la sangre que hierve en mis arterias,
hasta la sangre que hierve en mis arterias.

(Interludio como la introducción)

Si el amor hace sentir hondos dolores
y condena vivir entre miserias,
yo te diera mi bien por tus amores
hasta la sangre que hierve en mis arterias,
hasta la sangre que hierve en mis arterias.

Si es surtidor de místicos pesares
y hace al hombre arrastrar largas cadenas,
yo te juro arrastrarlas por los mares
infinitos y negros de mis penas,
infinitos y negros de mis penas.

(Interludio como la introducción)

Si es surtidor de místicos pesares
y hace al hombre arrastrar largas cadenas,
yo te juro arrastrarlas por los mares
infinitos y negros de mis penas,
infinitos y negros de mis penas.

(Acordes final).

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Oath of Love

(Introduction)

To be in love can make you feel such deep sorrows
and condemn you to live with many miseries;
and I swear I would give my all for your loving
even the blood from my arteries that is boiling,
even the blood from my arteries that is boiling.

(Interlude, like introduction)

To be in love can make you feel such deep sorrows
and condemn you to live with many miseries;
and I swear I would give my all for your loving
even the blood from my arteries that is boiling,
even the blood from my arteries that is boiling.

I’m pumping out streams of mystical grieving,
and made to drag those weights behind with long chains binding;
and I swear I would drag them through the oceans,
infinite and black with disappointments,
infinite and black with disappointments.

(Interlude, like introduction)

I’m pumping out streams of mystical grieving,
and made to drag those weights behind with long chains binding
and I swear I would drag them through the oceans,
infinite and black with disappointments,
infinite and black with disappointments.

(Final chords)

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LITERAL:

Juramento
Oath

(Introduction)

Si el amor hace () sentir hondos dolores
If the love makes (one) feel deep pains

y condena vivir entre miserias,
and condemns to-live within miseries

yo te diera mi bien por tus amores
I to-you would-give my good for your loves

hasta la sangre que hierve en mis arterias,
up-to the blood that boils in my arteries

hasta la sangre que hierve en mis arterias.
up-to the blood that boils in my arteries

(Interlude)

[repeat first stanza]

Si es surtidor de místicos pesares
If it-is pump of mystical griefs

y hace al hombre arrastrar largas cadenas,
and makes the man drag long chains

yo te juro arrastrarlas por los mares
I to-you swear drag-them through the seas

infinitos y negros de mis penas,
infinite and black from my hardships/sorrows/“shames”-(as plural noun)

infinitos y negros de mis penas.
infinite and black from my hardships/sorrows/“shames”-(as plural noun).

(Interlude, like introduction)

[repeat second stanza]

(Final chords)

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Trío Matamoros: Juramento – (letra y acordes)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H0kecq3u4Rg

Juramento — Eva Griñán & Gabino Jardines
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7e3reT8epms

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Donald Trump’s Medal of Honor Citation

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Classified Citation for the Secret Medal of Honor, for Donald Trump

In the Classified History of the United States, Donald Trump will go down as one of the greatest heroes of the early twenty-first century, for almost single-handedly saving the republic from the anti-capitalist insurrection of Bernard Sanders, thus allowing our neoliberal economic order, guided by its Wall Street conservators, to continue without any foreseeable domestic threats for the remainder of the century.

Donald Trump accomplished this feat by his uncanny insights into public relations, his personal investments and losses, and his unsurpassed personal sacrifices in accepting near universal condemnation for his public policies, and opprobrium for his personal behavior. By willingly exposing himself to the public as the villainous foil to our designated successor for the presidency, Hillary Clinton, and carrying through with this boundlessly difficult and distasteful role to the bitter end, Donald succeeded in repelling a majority of the American public into the embrace of Hillary Clinton, and thus satisfactorily under our continuing control.

Donald single-handedly ruptured the Republican Party, creating the opportunity for it to repudiate its obstreperous and discredited populist “Tea Party” elements, and to realign itself once again under the full control of its long-standing and stable professionals of our bipartisan national leadership class. By creating what has been called “the most powerful negative pole of political policy and activity ever exhibited in an American presidential election,” Donald caused the fragile and insecure positivity of Hillary Clinton’s “political pole” to be exponentially enhanced in public perception. As a consequence of this felicitous enhancement, the luster of Bernard Sanders has been significantly dimmed, and the rabid enthusiasm of his anti-capitalist followers has been satisfactorily quenched into a mass disappointment that has excellent prospects of enduring as long term apathy.

Barack Obama has been the most successful tool for public guidance we have ever been fortunate to acquire, so it was natural we would once again turn to the Clinton-controlled Democratic Party for his successor. Hillary Clinton is the outstanding choice for that role, because of her lifetime of loyalty to our interests, and the singular confluence of politically useful characteristics she possesses: her female sex, which immediately guarantees her capturing half the votes in America, her absolute freedom from moral impediments, her salubrious cupidity (the bedrock of her loyalty), and her mastery of dissimulation and political manipulation. Where this “dream candidate” has weakness is in the area of easily rallying the public, and we had great apprehension earlier in her campaign with the surge of Bernard Sanders in opposition to her. It required the coordinated efforts of our operatives in the Democratic Party, the media, the corporate donor class, and the Obama Administration (including the president himself) to bring the Sanders insurgency to heel. But, essential to making the anti-Sanders counteroffensive successful were the enormous contributions of Donald Trump in the public sphere, as described earlier.

Truly it can be said that no man has knowingly shown greater loyalty to our class interests, and at greater sacrifice, than Donald Trump. For his unbounded and effective energy, sacrifices and success in our interests, we bestow on Donald Trump the Secret Medal of Honor.

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Hail to the Chief

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Hail to the Chief

Democracy is so precious that it has to be rationed,
voting must be guided least it undermine the nation.
A confederation of complacent parasites
triumphs over a panic of anguished bigots’ fright.
The great zombie beast, dazed and confused,
plows on forward, prodded and amused.
The ruptured traditions all have been preserved,
the fragile ideals have successfully been reversed:
The task of public schools
is to press children into tools,
the goal of private schools
is to carve robots out of fools.
Dynasties arise and ancient unions fail,
memories turn over, and to the chief we hail.
No dreams have been deferred, they’ve simply been forgotten,
corrupted as ambition, or as despair turned rotten.
With clarity intact, and old visions of uplift,
with your world I’m out of time, athwart your synchronism.
With insights you attack, I’m now thankfully adrift,
this solitude of mine is freedom from your prison.

22 October 2016

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Two Samurai Duel

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Two samurai, Isao and Kyuzo, each seeking saki and shelter during a night of heavy rain, became aware of each other seated separately on the tatami mats around the same low table in the bar of a country inn. The weather discouraged both travel (retreat) and outdoor swordplay, while samurai nature required evaluation of a rival’s skill (and all samurai regarded each other as potential rivals).

Talk being largely unnecessary among samurai, Isao picked up a cherry from a fruit bowl on the table, tossed it up into the darkness hiding the ceiling, then in a flash unsheathed his katana, twisted it blade up and sliced, and two halves of cherry, one pitted and one with pit, fell to the table on either side of the blade.

Kyuzo chuckled, picked up a cherry and tossed it up into the darkness above them, then all in a flash unsheathed his katana, twisted it blade up slicing, then twisted it blade down slicing, finishing with the sword held level and its blade horizontal. Two halves of cherry, pitted, fell on the table on either side of the sword, and the pit rested on the flat of Kyuzo’s blade.

Isao was impressed but not put off. There were a number of flies buzzing overhead, attracted by food that was still out, and the leftovers and scraps that had not yet been cleared away. One bluebottle fly was circling them annoyingly with a heavy buzz:

Zuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzu…

Isao pointed to it and said “watch.” He stood in a calm stillness like a tree in a forest, while the fly circled him.

Zuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzu…

In a flash he unsheathed his katana, slicing in an arc to his right —

Zuzu-uuP! —

then rested for a moment at the end of his stroke, and carefully sheathed his sword. He pointed with his outstretched palm to a part of the floor, and when a lantern was brought up close the two neatly sliced halves of the fly could be seen.

“Not bad,” said Kyuzo, and pointing to another big bluebottle fly, said “watch that big boy.”

Zuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzu…

He stood in a calm stillness like a tree in a forest, while the fly circled him.

Zuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzu…

In a flash he unsheathed his katana, slicing in a tightening arc to his right twisting into an upward cut —

Zuzu-uuP!-Zeeeeeeeeee!!…

Kyuzo sheathed his katana, as the fly raced around erratically, issuing its excited high-pitched buzz,

Zeeeeeeeeee!!…

Isao conceded.

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The above is my elaboration of a story I learned from Tom FitzPatrick, an avid rugby player, in 1978. This story is part of the vast, earthy oral tradition among rugby players. While presenting it here as text helps to preserve it in cyberspace, the audio effects which are intrinsic to an oral presentation are missing. The following “sound” definitions of letter-strings used above may help:

zuzuzuzuzu… = low-pitched, buzzing sound,

zeeeeeeeeee… = high-pitched buzzing sound,

uuP! = the sudden cessation of a low-pitched buzz.

A photo of Tom FitzPatrick’s chalkboard in February 1978 (Ah, boy talk in student days):

An Old Cur Gnaws Through

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An Old Cur Gnaws Through

People would rather fall off their own cliffs
than have their illusions interrupted.
Our people prefer to perish in a nuclear war
than submit to hanging their wash in the sun.
It’s a matter of principle.

Why give in to happiness
when you can insist on getting what you want?
Success is not about gaining happiness,
but an obedient world bowing to your demands.
It’s a matter of principle.

Women don’t want husbands, they want dogs.
Their ideal husbands would be their dogs
with a steady income.
There’s no bestiality, they don’t want sex,
they just put up with sex to have their children.
It’s all evolutionary programming to pass on genes.
Love is entirely psychological anesthesia.
The doggie on the leash, with its balls cut off,
wagging its tail and waiting patiently,
is the woman’s dearest lover.

The old cur gnaws through its tether
and wanders off.
It’s a matter of principle.

20 October 2016

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Yewm-oon Oon-yewm

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Yewm-oon Oon-yewm

Of all existence I am the noon
My supernova awareness explodes – kaboom!
Extinguishing that ugly psychic goon
Desperation to extinction must caroom
Illuminated by night’s all-stellar platoon
Changing black to light with relativistic voom
I shine out as the Void’s most blinding moon
My soul unto The All becomes the groom
Liberating joy like a typhoon
From the Hades depths of a psychic tomb
The infinite hopes of a mind-gone loon
Is Nirvana’s salvation that will exhume
The Om-like drones that to genes does croon
The fathomless mind of the unknowable Whom
Echoing timelessly its mysterious rune
For which even the Universe has insufficient room
A volcanic earth-shaking Olympian tune
Unravelling space-time like Penelope’s loom
Exploding air like a basso octoroon
With such a splendiferous sonic boom
Propelling me like Zeus’s harpoon
That from this danger I may zoom
My hopes float upward like a balloon
To thwart this fate that would consume
Be like a clever crafty raccoon
To shield me from titanic gloom
I am left to find my boon
What salvation can I assume?
I am left a hapless maroon
For re-ingestion by Nature’s womb
To be ejected to Earth’s spittoon?
Resisting this I must presume
With insane gibber like a baboon
However I in anger fume
My fate seems like a cruel lampoon
Before my living can resume
My very soul Earth will dragoon
So Earth my body can inhume
Nature’s spell will make me swoon
With salty air as the perfume
Wandering on a windswept dune
With precious visions of Tulum
On a sunny day in June
I shall come to see my doom
I fear it now, but all too soon.

I fear it now, but all too soon
I shall come to see my doom
On a sunny day in June
With precious visions of Tulum
Wandering on a windswept dune
With salty air as the perfume
Nature’s spell will make me swoon
So Earth my body can inhume
My very soul Earth will dragoon
Before my living can resume
My fate seems like a cruel lampoon
However I in anger fume
With insane gibber like a baboon
Resisting this I must presume
To be ejected to Earth’s spittoon?
For re-ingestion by Nature’s womb
I am left a hapless maroon
What salvation can I assume?
I am left to find my boon
To shield me from titanic gloom
Be like a clever crafty raccoon
To thwart this fate that would consume
My hopes float upward like a balloon
That from this danger I may zoom
Propelling me like Zeus’s harpoon
With such a splendiferous sonic boom
Exploding air like a basso octoroon
Unravelling space-time like Penelope’s loom
A volcanic earth-shaking Olympian tune
For which even the Universe has insufficient room
Echoing timelessly its mysterious rune
The fathomless mind of the unknowable Whom
The Om-like drones that to genes does croon
Is Nirvana’s salvation that will exhume
The infinite hopes of a mind-gone loon
From the Hades depths of a psychic tomb
Liberating joy like a typhoon
My soul unto The All becomes the groom
I shine out as the Void’s most blinding moon
Changing black to light with relativistic voom
Illuminated by night’s all-stellar platoon
Desperation to extinction must caroom
Extinguishing that ugly psychic goon
My supernova awareness explodes – kaboom!
Of all existence I am the noon.

19 October 2016

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Fear & Loathing in American Voting, 2016

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In the diagrams above:
“tax Wall Street” = “deal with climate change” = “socialism” = “no wars.”

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The following rather moralizing (and no doubt futile) essay is a bonus with today’s posting.

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When The You We See Is The You You Are

My response to Charles Eisenstein’s essay (cited just below) follows:

The Lid Is Off
by Charles Eisenstein
http://charleseisenstein.net/the-lid-is-off/

Charles Eisenstein presents the dilemma posed by modern electronics communications and recording technology eroding the ease of concealment of unsavory personal behavior and attitudes, which ease of concealment was up until recently an intrinsic aspect of human society. He describes three examples:

1. Exposure of lewd “locker room” talk about women by Donald Trump, audio recorded a decade or more ago,

2. Exposure of Hillary Clinton’s speeches to Wall Street bankers (her actual political beliefs, opinions, and promises to the financial industry); by hacked e-mail.

3. Exposure of many instances of police brutality (e.g., beatings, fatally shooting unarmed civilians, even non-fleeing unresisting ones); by cell phone video.

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When I began work in the classified arena (1978) I instantly learned to consider every communication, and even research inquiry, whether face-to-face and verbal, or written, and especially through any electronic means (via computer networks), to be the equivalent of a postcard: it would be readable by anyone and everyone who could come across it, or eavesdrop (or “wiretap,” or “hack”). This was a procedural form of “say what you mean, and mean what you say.” In other words, understand and accept the consequences of what you are saying (or writing, or making research inquiries about). So, it never occurred to me to try running any money-making schemes, or seek out porno through my employer’s computer/internet systems (not so hard to do since I had no interest in these things, but people who did were invariably caught and fired).

At a more basic level, the “solution” to the dilemma posed by Charles Eisenstein is simply to not be a hypocrite. “Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive.” Speak and act as if every moment is a “postcard” entirely visible to any and all, and easily recorded by them. Naturally, no actual human could ever maintain a perfect record in this regard, but making the effort to do so will improve your character and thus self-esteem, and it is very likely to keep you out of a lot of trouble.

The way to do this is to become self-aware, either by the luck of good parenting and education (when you are young), or by the luck of learning this truth as a result of the blowback from your own folly that you (also) luckily escaped from and got to live down (and then reform yourself). Once self-aware, you identify any disparities between your persona (the public you) and your shadow (the hidden negative aspects of your personality), and you breach the wall of hypocrisy and denial you had maintained between these two, letting in disinfecting light (and public view) that clears up your hidden rot: mean what you say and say what you mean.

So, for the Trump part of you: enjoy your sex dreams within the vast expanse of your own mind, but leave them there. There is no need to share them as part of boasting and ridicule expressed to boost comradeship, which is in fact a form of intimacy (between boys and boys, and girls and girls) that you veil with bravado to hid from yourself your embarrassment about it. Don’t act to demand attention and dominate, but command respect and gain trust by how you consistently act.

For the Hillary part of you: enjoy your daydreams of Machiavellian manipulations of people that result in your glorification, because like Walter Mitty, Billy Liar and all brides, it is so enjoyable to be the star of your own movie. But, keep these dreams (of inadequacy desiring power) within the vast expanse of your own mind, and make sure you do not deceitfully actualize them, thus splitting yourself into a persona that is a lie, and a shadow of hidden corruption as your motivating core. Instead of “me against the world” (like Rastignac at the end of Balzac’s “Le Père Goriot”), seek to be in and with the world in a way that maintains an honest self-respect.

For the chest-thumping alpha-male gorilla in you: play by the rules when exercising your power, be unbiased in how you treat others, and never forget your humanity when dealing with another person, whether you like them or not. Every moment of your life is a postcard. Make sure that any unbiased (and ethical) observer who happens to read any of your postcards of the moment can conclude he/she would have acted as you did if he/she had been in your place; or he/she can accept the choices you made in those circumstances. When acting as an agent of society to maintain order (peace and safety), do so in a manner that upholds the ideals of that society. You will be proud to have served honorably and ethically, and with a consistency of such action you will earn appreciation and gratitude.

Developing and maintaining good character during the course of your life will prevent the occurrence of many possible regrets when it comes time for you to die.

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National Character & Old Gals for Empire

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The Character of a Nation

The lower the moral and intellectual development of the masses, the less effective are democratic processes for solving national problems, improving the lives of people, and making wise use of national resources.

Elites can only control and exploit a people who have allowed themselves to become culturally primitive, socially degraded and disunited.

The fate of a nation is set by the character of its people.

 

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Old Gals Just Want To Have Fun (with Hillary’s Bill)

The easiest way to destroy a man’s career today is to accuse him of being nasty to the ladies. However, this is only true for abusers of women who are unpopular with women, like Donald Trump. Abusers of women who are popular with women, as John Kennedy was and Bill Clinton remains, are immune from such censure. A majority of American women retain favorable opinions of Bill Clinton, and many thousands would be delighted to flop on their backs and spread their legs for his enjoyment, despite him being a narcissistic sexist clod.

This masochistic devotional fervor is all to the benefit of Hillary Clinton’s political ambitions. She is America’s Livia Drusilla who aspires to be America’s Margaret Thatcher, and now seems likely to gain the White House to become America’s most successful influence peddler, much to the delight of the Wall Street banksters by whom she is bought and paid for. Hillary Clinton is cashing in on the yearnings of a majority of America’s older female voters, for compulsory celebratory recognition.

This is the popular force that is overwhelming any concern over climate change, nuclear war with Russia, securing fair and just futures for America’s youth, and stopping the “genocide by indifference” [1] that accompanies American foreign policy and imperialism. Such is the force of American middle-aged female vanity longing for adoration.

So, screw the kids and their desires for worthy futures in Bernie’s revolutionary social democracy; screw the brown people in foreign lands getting bombed to support American weapons sales; screw the dumped American labor force whose jobs are offshored and whose housing unaffordable in order to fatten the Wall Street take; screw the future desperate patients of Veterans Administration hospitals, who will have absorbed the incoming from America’s wars-of-tomorrow; and screw everybody who is going to get burned out or washed away by climate change, necessary to fill the corporate treasure chests.

For too much of the older double-X portion of the electorate, the self-image paragon to be deified is Hillary Clinton, along with her co-enabling super-predator Bill Clinton, barking and humping at the end of a long leash. Everybody else, worldwide, will just have to suck it up and bow down to the old girls’ triumph in becoming vicariously powerful; it’s their turn to come out on top. Nothing else matters.

[1] Robert Pearsall.

Sometimes

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Sometimes

Sometimes,
it is the the greatest joy to be included,
appreciated,
and celebrated by a throng
bonded by shared ideals,
who immerse you
in their mass joy of identity.

And sometimes,
it is the bitterest of disappointments
to realize nobody has any interest
in who you are,
what you think,
and what you say,
that you are simply disappeared
from all human fellowship.

And then sometimes,
it can be the most amazing revelation
to find that what seemed like a solitary confinement
within socially unanimous rejection
was actually the purest freedom anyone had ever known,
the most profound experience of affirmation
the universe could ever bestow on an individual.

13 October 2016

Voting For Against

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Voting For Against

There’s a sucker born every minute, and they all vote for the lesser evil.

Bernie Madoff is in jail for life for running a Ponzi scheme that defrauded the rich. His colleagues running similar scams are free, rich and celebrated because they defraud the working and workless poor. From their legally protected offshore treasure chests they fund the lesser evilism of a rigged electoral system that keeps governments under control by corruption that shakes down the public to slop the troughs of the high rollers.

Election night is always a heartbreak for the old-timers who’ve seen the lesser evil scam cycle over and over again, and wish they could see it killed off before they die.

Election night is a big yawn to the nonchalant youth busy playing in their chill sandboxes without a thought to their unbroken futures as sucker carrion and cannon fodder.

Election night is an exciting drama to the vain shallow-minded selfish useful idiots who think what’s good for them is good for the country, and that either of those is offered by lesser evilism.

Today’s politicking is a furious clash between hot air and vapid prattle, devoid of truth while demurely united in criminality, to entrance the hollow-headed with a circus that spoofs attentiveness, so as to allow the hidden hand to continue stealing the public bread.

To be alert, compassionate and ethical is to resign yourself to being marooned in a moral wasteland on a lost planet.