Wednesday, August 25, 2010
Forced to Live Like It's a Curfew
translation: it means I 3> you.
daddy can never leave the senate. he just takes vacations. like forrest gump's dad.
Monday, August 16, 2010
A Glad Day for Surfing
Here, (right here) the senate transcends the capacities of the human body to locate itself. In the byzantine corridors of these blog posts we are lost in a big hotel, filled with glass elevators and numbered rooms off into infinitum. Where do we go? What do we write? Shall the irksome sound of silence descend upon the intarwebs blog stain we have smeared? What values do we hold here, if any? Power?
"As God as my judge I am not guilty"
"God is not your judge, I am. You get six months."
WTF has happened to senate? Terry Shivo anyone? Do the eyes of our blog follow the doctor's balloon? e-euthanasia? I think we are (here) on this page to learn how to be immortal, or better, learning not to be mortal, to refuse finitude and disavow death's poisonous breath. To desire this immortality is not the mastery of death, but the very limit of philosophical thinking. Or as Plato put it so many years ago, 'To philosophize is to learn how to die.' Together we surf, in postmodernist hyperspace, make a post and a glad day for surfing.
Thursday, August 12, 2010
Babycakes, Every Picture Tells a Story
To borrow a phrase, my ol' authority voice has gotten a bit out of hand lately--
so maybes I'll shelve that guy for a bit. Just taking a bit of a break
ya know, try out a couple other ways of talking.
Status report: My errant cig-butts kinda took over the entirety of the front yard surrounding my porch spot. There's this one bush, you see, and I kinda squirrel my wasted soldiers down there in piles of ash and filters. So Pops put out grampa's old crystal ashtray, i am now living quite large.
There's been a lot of electronic-conversation action this evening, but boys, keep an eye on your phones for some voice time, I'm looking at you Po-Mo and Daddy (And Nero, babycakes, your in there too).
On to about cig # 13-15, I think? Hell, I dunno. This is at least whiskey and ginger ale #3-- as always, only stiff ones. There was a beer in there somewhere.
Oh and plenty of:
Let's make this into one of them fireside chats:
Gang, the grand scheme moves forward-- today I got me a job on a farm.
Nourse Farm
I'm all full of shit, but quantifying/qualifying each and every aspect of a neurosis didn't do a damn thing for me but entrench these things further.
One evening, on this very porch I'm writing you all from now, I realized--shit,
I am absolutely unemployable now.
The track I'd pinned my plans along just didn't have room for a person of my position. Shit, its probably my own doing-- but I'm going nowhere by trying to fight the current.
So here's to the slow start toward baking our own brownies-- its not as if there's much to lose.
On this theme: I remember a night or two some years back, someone saying "Goddamn it, the april plant festival is only days away and we haven't built jack shit. Call the boys, we're sitting down and doing this tonight."
I get the feeling these days we've just about reached that point-- time for a bit of calling in and chicken-wire.
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
The ass arrives, beautiful and most brave
In seeking truth (e or otherwise) one must ask "What in us really wants truth?" We do not know where this urge for truth comes from, but still have it none the less is evidenced by the plethora of posts on various theories, anecdotes and rantings. Even more complicated, "accepted" truths passed through time and forged by a sum of human relations and enhancements such that they become obligatory to people as masses; it is sad for me to recognize that this has become true even to us noble senators. Instead of lying to ourselves and each other according to our obligation of the fixed conventions of this post-modern world we must question the value of truth, "Why not rather want untruth?" The value of truth has blinded us senators, we have lived too excited by the questioning of truth and gotten lost, truly lost.
The worst error I have seen on the Senate floor recently is one myself has been a part of. The shifting of "gears" from the aesthetic to the ethical to the stoic. Now to start the problem I have with this I will illustrate the underlying values in the two dichotomies. In the Stoic we have good and evil, an opposite value system that seems so useful and so very 'right' but it makes the mistake of the religious, it has the distaste of faith steeped in it. This faith I speak of is that in opposite values. This belief that the world can be divided into opposites (good&bad,truth&falsehood, even aestheticðical as well as the material and the immaterial) is nothing more than that, a belief. The relation between these so called opposites is far more complex, and even involves interdependency. Even Kierkegaard knew this in his work Either/Or, where each state of sphere of existence in effect represents a distinctive answer to the question, "What is it essentially to be a human being?" The radical nature of the choices of A/B (a seeming opposite value system)lies in the fact that in choosing one of the stages you are also choosing the kinds of reason available to you for defending your choice.
We with our philosophical prejudices have been baptizing our truths on the intar-webs and have been very far from having the good taste and the courage to let this be known, but that does not make our Google blog really a kitty litter box for the occasional e-loaf. This senate floor is and always will be a confessional for we four philosopher kings, giving the entire intar-webs insight into our character and maybe the occasional youtube video. However, the goal of a mass (Google) communication culture is enlightenment in reverse.(Thank you anti-intellectual E-crop rotation).
Now I hope this post has not come off as a condemnation of the senate as a whole, for every philosophical work is that of a memoir based on personal assertions, but instead I hope this post pushes us to make a new dawn of personal assertions. Ones that are truly for the future, one that are fit for a Senate blog and are beyond good and evil and all opposite value systems, a true post-modern memoir. I want this group of proud senators to immerse themselves in Roman love, for when you are in love you are in freedom, for e-expression is a gift and 'every age and every year has its own flowering spring.'
Now I hope that anyone that understands my words, eventually recognizes them as nonsensical, when he has used them-as steps-to climb up beyond them. (he must so to speak, throw away that ladder after he has climbed up it). He must transcend these writings and thoughts, and then he will see the world aright.
"You Are Dead to Me"
I've tried for years now to satisfy your ambitions of me; your ceaseless and tireless yearnings for me to transform into something I can never, due to my own nature, fully become. I reach out to you time and time again--hoping for a glance, a nod, any gesture of pride to burst through your black framed glasses from your dark brown eyes and shoot directly into my soul. All of my studies, my travels, even the girls I've brought home, they were all for you really in the end. To show you that I am a Man. I am worthy of your love, your affection, and your honor.
I know that things are different now. We aren't as close as we once were. I know my abstractions and obscurities try your patience time and time again. But Daddy, without you my life is shallow. It is a shadow of an idea. An idea a grand man, no, grand Senator had at a time when a bond of friendship seemed so dubious as though it would not last the aesthetic spring, the ethical summer, or the stoic fall. But the seasons of our lives will always change. Even for those of us who live in season-less hells central to the wang of our country. The days of our lives will play out. Those Senators chairs that sat with such phallic poise in the foyer may come to grow cob webs. The artwork that adorned the Senate walls of old may grow dusty. The stains left by a Post Modern friend on Daddy's blanket for Bears may grow crusty. And the shattered porcelain remains of a violent outburst between Senators may come to be the ruins of a once proud empire that ruled a cul de sac. Confounded images of a raucous Buffalo Senator will dissolve as Goodbye Horses fades to silence.
I ask you Daddy, was this not all for your love? These things may come to pass like the discarded soiled tissue Nero thoughtlessly casts aside after folding his laundry, but my love for you will not. I will one day make you proud. One day make you love me the way you loved me in the quiet, forgiving dark of a London hostel. And you will come to see that I am not the man you thought or hoped I would become. But I am the man you love.
With love and reverence always,
The Senate
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
Stoic Fruit of Summer and Aesthetic Fruit of Winter
The most recent dialectic on the senate floor has launched me into an earnest study of the aesthetic and the ethical. As Post-Modrnerer has already written, "you are two one entity split into the timid and the boisterous, the apologetic and the proud, but regardless of how different you may approach things, you both always arrive at the same destination." A very astute observation of the work of Either/Or, the constant choosing that is life, to be ethical or aesthetic, as both suffer from the melancholy and boredom as they are similar and one could argue arrive at the same destination. Both married man and prancing aesthete ultimately come to the point in the previous book the Diapsalmata where it states "I feel like a piece in a game of chess when my opponent says of it: That piece cannot be moved." But the arguments of the Judge have seem to grown more attractive in the years following undergraduate. The Judge writes, "The only absolute Either/Or is the choice between good and evil, but this is also absolutely ethical. The aesthetic choice is either altogether immediate, and thus no choice, or it loses itself in a great multiplicity." The judge believes that the aesthetic has its place, but as the servant of the ethical. It would seem that Kierkegaard thought that both the aesthetic and the ethical had their place as servants of the religious because of the final sermon at the end of the book. Now I haven't taken the step to the religious as Kierkegaard did, at the end of his life becoming a minister as his father always wished him to be, but instead have found new fancy in the realm of Stoicism. My new curiosity with the Stoic philosophy is not in vain as a little internet research has lead me to this fact; Kierkegaard contemplated adding the following postscript to the second edition of Either/Or (1849). "I hereby retract this book. It was a necessary deception in order, if possible, to deceive men into the religious, which has continually been my task all along. Maieutically it certainly has had its influence. Yet I do not need to retract it, for I have never claimed to be its author" (Journals, X 1 A 192).
Can the Stoic replace Kierkegaardian ethicist?
Instead of being tricked into the religious by Either/Or can one adopt the Stoic philosophy of Marcus Aurelius and live in the sphere of the ethical and armed with indignation a Senator here in the senate so deserves. I would like to think so, mainly because the season of Stoic fruit is wrapping on my wind ceil. Trapped here in what Post-Moderner has called the "the bigoted burn hole of the old that is central florida" I cannot help but feel a great divorce has happened between myself and the liberal arts playground that is Skidmore." The universe is flux, life is opinion (or poise)." Death hangs over thee. While thou livest, while it is in thy power, be good." "A man should be upright, not kept upright." "At dawn of day, when you dislike being called, have this thought ready: "I am called to man's labor; why then do I make a difficulty if I am going out to do what I was born to do and what I was brought into the world for?" All these Marcus Aurelius quotes seem to ring with me and truly edify me in a great way. It seems that the seasons have changed from aesthetic dance parties at off campus bars like Brunos in the winter time and been replaced by Stoic days of earnest intent to be upright. Now it is easy for me to say that the seasons have changed and the Stoic can replace the Kierkegaardian ethical (as of course only the truth which edifies is truth for you), but I change season with hesitation as I am unsure that all senators can see the leaves changes. I would hate to find out that this truth edifies only me and not my fellow senators, especially when armed with the cultural diagnosis of the immaterial and material particularly with reference to the alternative you. Cheers Senators and I pray this post has not fallen off the cliff to the pit of academia, rather i hope it is a continuation of the beautiful dialectic posted below.
Monday, August 2, 2010
The Dialectic Continues: A Post Modern Discussion of The Senate Part 1 (names and events slightly modified)
Post Moderner
did you and Nero just decide to joint text me
Senator
yeeeees
<3
Post Moderner
what are you guys talking about
or are you just bored
Senator
no
we had a threes company mix up on senate
and we have been discussing how afraid we were that we philosophangered our fellowPost Moderner, did you know that Nero and I are faggots?
Post Moderner
that secret flew the proverbial coop many senate meetings ago
Senator
i caught Nero's crazy disease and we've spent almost an hour frettin
Post Moderner
are you concerned that im the only one not getting the reach around in the senate centipede
Senator
we want you to join our gay sandwich and not missout on gravy
our
ahahahahhaha oh jesus
Post Moderner
yes?
Senator
we
we love you Post Moderner
i have a link you can check out if
you know
your into it
a little fileshare of about
12gb of Nero & Senator action
you know
if your into it
Post Moderner
are there cock knives?
Senator
on belts that are not holding up pants yes
now that my spasm of inner middleschool girl is spent
friday
most decent!
Post Moderner
yes most decent
Senator
i was both drunkly and appeased, your thoughts?
Post Moderner
i was happy from the moment your crotch appeared in front of me whilst standing upon a table surrounded by 1,000 material pose minded hipster aesthetes demanding thou cock be sucked for thou own ignorance of the modern city and ethical world (most likely from life spent dug far too deep into a farcical aesthetic life)
to Appalachia!
Senator
Post Moderner
love
yes yes yes yesss
truth
truth served is beautiful truth
The Dialectic Continues: A Post Modern Discussion of The Senate Part 2 (names and events slightly modified)
Post Moderner
did you and chris just decide to joint text me
Nero
maybe.....
yes we did
and we are both sorry
Post Moderner
what are you talking about
or are you just bored
Nero
both
i mean
our seante post
where we condemed the aesthete
it was accidental
i thought ur post was done by chris
im so sorry
i wouldnt have known unless Senator called me
and commented about my comment
Post Moderner
he called you over it?
Nero
yes we butt fuck
Post Moderner
i need to re-examine these comments im so confused
Nero
noooo nooo
dont reexamine
i mean
go ahead
but
dont take them to heart
Post Moderner
one's been removed!
Nero
im makeing a post about the transiton from aesthticism to stocism
it was Senator
he felt bad it was about a spear piercing kierkegarrd
Post Moderner
whats all this about a Jewish ethicist
Nero
its just an extrememe example of the ethicist
like
the most ethical i suppose
Post Moderner
so instead of A/B
its A/Jew
Nero
like the homosexual aesthete
another extrreme
yes exactly
Post Moderner
Homosexual/Jew
that must have been what Kierkegaard was going forNero
thats what i meant at least
Post Moderner
so there can be no Jewish Homosexuals?
or
Homosexuals are too afraid to abandon their crazy seductive lifestyles for the real challenges of Jewish Ethics
Nero
something close to the latter
but there just extremes on the spectum i use for hyperbole
its better to abstact them to the aesthete and ethical to avoid problems of prejudice
Post Moderner
sir i believe it is time you left the bigoted burn hole of the old that is central florida
Nero
im here to stay for while i think
but i want the senate floor free from hate
and Senator and i are sorry
even if theres no reason to be
we love you
Post Moderner
except between the jews and homosexuals
which i am neither
so i am saved
thank senate!
Nero
self aligned with god
free from despair
Post Moderner
truly
Nero
i just have been talking with Senator about stoicism and marcus aerilous alot and weve kinda adopted the ethical instead of the aesthtic since (for me) lack the context of liber arts campus to prance merrily on with sherry
and didnt want to destroy something that you find edify
i mean his post was almost indeciferable
i got more from phone convos and wiki quotes
or as ben stiller says, i shot some skeet
ok im so sorry
Senator and i are having butt sex
call it that
and well be ok