Updated Aphorism

In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man masturbates.

Life Lesson, Learned Too Late

They'll only take what you are willing to give up.

Not Homeless

Things have been crazy for me. I've worked the last 11 days in a row and have made less money than I would have working four of the seven days of a week at the majority of the jobs I have had since around 2004. I have two jobs. I'm supposed to quit one to go work for the other, or stay at the old one now that I have realized that the new one is no better. Soon, management of two restaurants will hate me for the crime of attempting to pay my rent and also not sell my belongings. I can't quit either nor stay employed at either should I not quit either. 

If I had the energy to write politics, I'd say that what's interesting nowadays, and, really, this has been the case for a while now, for many, many billions of people, but also increasingly-more of us privileged enough to live in the developed world, is that, for numerous reasons, including increased efficiency, globalization, and the concentration of wealth in the hands of fewer and fewer people, it's really no longer necessary for capitalism to set the the minimum value of labor at the cost of the perpetuation human existence towards ensuring that there is sufficient labor for capitalism to persist. Never mind all of the sentimental or moral reasons to pay people enough to eat; if they die, they can't come to work. Now it doesn't matter.

But I'm not here to complain.

Just to share with you the joy of knowing that whatever I'm going through and whatever you are going through, it remains true that Miles Davis made some amazing music that can be listened to right now.

Unfuckingbelivable stuff from an unrecorded quintet. Shorter further out that I've ever hear him, Davis fantastically concise, and also gracious enough to realize that, for whatever reason, it was Chick Corea's night, and that he should step away and let his new rhythm section, well, yeah.

I love 1970s Miles, but sometimes, the bands get so large and, well, not unwieldy, but, let's just say that fog doesn't always conceal a mystery waiting to be solved.

Here's another band, only probably less than a year after the '69 band, larger, still coherent.

Watch and remember that there is a point even if nobody knows what it is. It has to be true, if only because Jack DeJohnette says as much. I believe him.

Living Death and Dying Death

Treat people as abstractions and symbols and this is what you get.

Ask to be treated as abstractions and symbols and this is what you get.

As far as I can tell, every perspective on what the problem is and what the solution is offers no escape from the above.

Hil

Hillary really seems to believe that her victory is enough of a consolation prize to negate our miseries. Sadly, there are enough people who agree that she'll never disabuse herself or her notion. If she loses, she'll blame us. We'll have deprived ourselves of the joy of witnessing her happiness.

RIP

More and more I feel like we're running out of things to memorialize. At least, positive things.

Not the most Bernie but this is what touched me the deepest.

He would want us to dance. Don't be shy.

For Real This Time

Good links over at BLCKDGRD (given that virtually everyone who reads this blog comes through a link from BLCKDGRD, it's oddly recursive to bother linking there - I'm just sending you backwards, aren't I?).

FUNK here.

A decent Guardian piece here.

Lenin's Tomb.

I wouldn't be optimistic whichever way the vote had gone. I feel oddly divorced form politics just now. Hence my sarcasm below (though, on the off chance that anyone from SSL is reading, I just want to say I do love you for real!). I didn't have to look up any of the facts in my previous post. 

I think I actually like Simon's response (a video for Kraftwerk's "Europe Endless"). Sure, the EU is not the harbinger of utopia. But, certainly, some other kind of dream seems to be dying, too.