Orthographical Scraping

Not their technology, our technology!-- Jason Cope

I freely confess that my page views from Russia perplex me. They surge in my darkest moments, engaging in confirmation bias or astonishment, even ridicule, perhaps exploitation, then recede when I have a valid critique, or perhaps to them, I am a unique specimen, the now wavering invalid who defied Google, the Philadelphia police, University of Pennsylvania’s psychiatric procedures, and my rental agent, only to fall to family and a shyster excuse for a wheelchair technician. Such largesse would not be granted to me in the post-Soviet Putin era, not being an apt love interest for the traitorous Edward Snowden, but whatever is going in the globe’s largest, but sparsely populated nation, which could be quite easily defeated by the Chinese military, something which I am sure our intelligence agencies know better than I on the sheer strength of numbers alone, I was not manipulated by Russian propaganda during the election cycle. Like many in the right wing, Trump was not my first choice during the primaries, but I was then an independent, and do not engage in backing a particular political horse, state or nation-wide, all that often. Trump prevailed, and I was actually going to throw my vote to the libertarians. Instead, I took pity on my aunt. I concede, during my unhappy engagement with Yabberz, that some of the spin on the Clinton Foundation may have been doctored, but this was not an influence on my vote. That goes to Monica Lewinsky and the Starr Report, because it is just possible that we would have been just that more vigilant about the rise of Al Qada and Osama bin Laden had we the people not been in an uproar about impeachment and sexual impropriety during President Clinton’s second term.

Now, the dowager defended Bill in her communities, as the Senate voted down the House articles, but in the aftermath of two decades of terrorism and failed neo-conservative warfare, I put the onus for this on the Clintons. Had the Clinton administration heeded the rising temperature of Islamic radicalism, GW would not have had a rationale for Iraq 2.0, in our failed game of chicken with Baathist prawns. This is how my pyramid is built, and continuously disappointed, my gravitation toward anarchy no better or worse than what has gone before. District 9 remains my favorite niche film in the science fiction genre, and I’d argue that it isn’t quite as ironclad for progressive tolerance as meets the eye, though it never references apartheid overtly, because native black South Africans inhabit an anomalous place in the energy of the documentary narrative. Regardless of Blomkamp’s intent, we come away uniquely challenged by his unique little gem: first contact might neither be as transcendent or malicious as the industry often feeds it to us. Arrival tilts its axis on the same pole, and opts for the benevolence of Close Encounters of the Third Kind, or Starman, never quite considering Blomkamp’s striking thought that we’d wind up with Serbian camp conditions instead. Having been around since Khrushchev and the fabled shoe tactic, I have no love lost for collective state models, nor modern leftist cult style corruption which results in the death of Putin's opposition. I have been disenfranchised by corruption on the American left, and while I may not be the enemy of Slavic mindsets, don’t presume I am your appeaser either. Implosive anger such as mine often leads to attacks on the social altruism towards which we naturally incline, such as those striking Austin. I’m quite aware of that, though in this case, if law enforcement is correct that this involves music industry figures, that adds up to quite a bit of specious hemlock. So we wait and see, wondering if Greg Abbott will have a political life after his tenure.

That Nick Gillespie liked two of my tweets since I started supporting Reason isn't a job contract, and it doen't mean Brian will green light my next pitch. The magazine is just this side of too California for my tastes, but since I desire to keep exploring libertarian themes, it is nonetheless a small hope against alarm at the occasional spastic tremor.

Stockholm Material, Prescient Palpitations

The notion that the future is hidden--that prediction is the realm of seers, necromancers, and other unsavory types--is part of our cultural heritage. NC Dalkey, Rand Corporation.

The fact that I referenced a Baltic residency in Stockholm this morning doesn't necessarily follow that traumatized subconsciousness had intimations of the sword wielder to which I woke on France24 news feed this evening, but duress usually recognizes itself in the snap of another's desperation. A UN undersecretary, also appearing on France24 three months ago, said the disabled are often lost in this debate, and there are reasons these voices are often so muffled. Standards of objective analysis.

Helpific, for instance, has nothing to do with the self-justification for Russia's military expansion, nor apologias for the assassination of Putin's most steadfast opposition, coming forth from the Kremlin. I am the one who collapsed one into the other, limiting the establishment's ability to take me seriously, since Estonians seem collectively endearing and should welcome NATO's protection, but why don't we see more reports about the disabled in Europe, in comparison to their American counterparts? Bedcause Angela Merkel uses supported employment factories as a form of silencing dissidence?

Merely asking the question, is Vladimir Putin a war criminal? Fleet Street is courageously hitting this harder than mainstream media at home, but Obama and Cameron would sooner bake fecal bricks than unite with Erdogan in a  hawkish alliance against Putin's program, following the heels of Hitler's playbook, even if the battlefield is increasingly under the direction of Google Earth. How does the search giant get satellite access?

War is terrible, creating sometimes excruciating collateral damage, but it is also sometimes necessary, which is why the Defense Department should hire more civilian disabled contractors. We're willing, sometimes as ruthless as KGB clerks with maverick smiles.

Diabolical Frames

Helpific began to follow me on twitter, the micro-blogger wanna be conglomerate, and as usual, I plodded out a profile on the site without formally translating the requests for help nor entering one of my own, befuddled as to what Estonians or Russians would believe themselves capable of doing for an embittered American on the other side of the world, then pomdered the rise of Putin cronyism, tickled my fancy with the notion of soliciting a contract in code, then thought of the FSB alerting the FBI to my account, considered the irony of that. Yet there are provocateurs who waste Putin's opposition for the sake of a unified Russian federation, and Armin Mueller-Stahl has to reflect with some accuracy how the Slavic triad works, an extended association of family and connections.

Zsolt Bugarszki invited me to post on Helpific, but I'm not sure a criminal solicitation was what he had in mind, nor am I partial to Baltic collectivism, the bear lurking on the eastern front, as another one bites the dust. I have to make coffee and set my alarm, get to bed earlier this morning, having rescheduled my evaluation for another power chair which your taxes shouldn't have to foot, but even my desire for illegal retribution to balance the scales hits the blank slate of not knowing whom to trust to attempt a quid pro quo.  I'd have to risk something myself in return, in lieu of  offering federal reserve notes.

Zsolt told me the site is in Beta, probably not a bad idea, in the long run, and since we're on the subject, this local meet up raises the usual material versus intractable ethical conflict. I may follow Richard Dawkins. I may learn from him and may even agree with him that Catholicism has a mild polytheistic doctrine, but we'll destroy ourselves if we believe we'll eliminate anti-social behavior through neuroscience. I'm really happy that I am not going to be around to witness how we convert the human animal into porridge, our species knocking itself off without the benefit of an asteroid.

An Alibi for Boris Nemtsov

"The man in the hut can hurt you."-- Bill Maher

If I approached the FSB and attempted to negotiate with them, I still face the same difficulty I would if I approached a gang affiliate. I work on the assumption that every African American has closer ties to someone willing to shoot, and someone able to shoot, than I do, but with that as a given, I simply lack the knowledge as to where to find ruthless people, not that those who've humiliated and abused me are substantial. Eight years on Page and Norris Streets, and all I have is a Paratransit driver who one day showed me where he used to deal drugs. I would not recognize him if I saw him again, and he has moved on, if he did not get murdered himself.

Then you have to consider the contractor, the stresses you'd bring to bear on the individual, how you could be sure they would not kill you even if they took out your target, or didn't take out your target, the pieces grow exponentially.

And what would FSB agents do once they found out what I wanted, handle me or refer any effort on my part to the FBI, and then the Philadelphia police would laugh, because the cops know how often they've restored me to a wheelchair in 20 odd years, not that police themselves cannot be bought, but my leverage is small potatoes. People tend to leave spinsters alone. We're unpleasant, but that wouldn't necessarily make me an asset 

If I had the ability to tell Vladimir Putin anything, I'd tell him you cannot gun down opponents indefinitely. It makes Russia look as backward as the political cartoons depicted at the end of the Victorian era, right at the outset of the great war. No one will ever know the truth about Nemtsov's killing. Putin's protestations may be genuine, or they may be plausible deniability. Either way, the man is as inept as the cronies holding him aloft. 

But I'm still turning it over. To echo a former supervisor's question: What would I have to gain? If my body is in the preliminary end stage of a chronic condition, not much personally, but NSCIL, which like everything in the US, is the national independent living center association, knows full well that corruption runs rampant in IL. The federal mandate acquired leads to complacency, and sometimes, if you want an omelet, you need to break some eggs.

Hot Air

THE revolutionary idea that defines the boundary between modern times and the past is the mastery of risk-- the Economist, world authority.

I always do this. Convince myself to stay up and work after cat care, eating, defecation-- which always tires me-- and then manage to fritter my weariness away on an overly focused awareness of the tinnitus giving my ear drum a steady buzzing. The one PBS segment for which Miles O'Brien has my gratitude is his short piece on tinnitus. I do not know if I revolt after this post and push myself, but people, the one division between spastic brain damaged viewpoints and ablest viewpoints which may never be overcome is why you engage in such unnecessary behavior.

This balloon crash is an entirely manufactured tragedy, much like the deaths in Ukraine, which should not be happening. Those 14 page views from Ukraine sober me, because I have a distaste for Euro-centric sectarian deaths, and may get myself in serious trouble by giving Russian security services and the EU a piece of my mind. I'm a powerless, defenseless, unhappy writer living in one of America's oldest cities founded by Quakers, and I receive 14 page views from an Eastern European country killing itself over Russian hegemony and western capitalism. This because I am acerbic and callous, but not acerbic and callous enough not to condemn the Russian Federation for the deaths of Litvinenko and Berezovsky. Their murders represent a misguided savagery, even in a world where brutality is contingent, but not the way Putin's actors go about it. I joined a Linked In group, and if I get active on the site, I'll probably be banned due to this blog-- not that I think much of Linked In. It is less confusing than Google Plus, but what of it. Relatively educated people can be inane.

All technologies have risks, but hot air balloon gliding is an absolutely unnecessary form of flight.

Salaam Devereux!

The Real Thing looks at James in the context of the very material world in which his novels were written, published and read. --Greg Zacharias

Hum. Those who know Erik would tell you I am being unfair to the dying doctor. S/He invests his zeal in a positive way, in contrast to my seething due to the fact that his adversary burned me, and burned me at a fairly crisp temperature. My rebuttal to this is that Erik and Cassie engaged in fraudulent activity to the point that the DOJ investigated, and I don't like excusing criminality because the individuals engaged in it have glaring chronic conditions, nor do I enjoy being neighbors with such people, and then expected to be civil due to the fact that they've had heart attacks and numerous strokes, regressing thereby. 

In the aftermath of the bombing, much has been made of the fact that the Russians asked the FBI to investigate Tamerlan Tsarnaev, and that our agents found nothing illegal. I am baffled by this dove cooing by the executive branches involved. Bortnikov is willing to see journalists murdered, willing to kill Berezovsky, but can't imprison an ethic Chechen on suspicions of radicalization simply because the Chechen had legal American status?

Romans know when dead fish begins to decompose, and the stench can overwhelm.

I made contact with a live Google voice yesterday, but will attempt live interaction again tomorrow to resolve monetization, because spastics need to prep the necessary data requirements. Perhaps I should take my proposal that I made on list when Greg and I were courteous seriously. I started this blog to generate projects along these lines, after all. Lot of work; would not need to contact Kidman necessarily. An alliance with Frigide Bargot would offer prodigal cover, nyet? Burn injuries move from acute to chronic with age.

Oligarchs

"Snakes don't eat people."-- the incredulous Jennifer Lopez

Luis Llosa may have been offering a homage to Spielberg with Anaconda, but the film was ridiculous, barely lucid in its underlying subtext of preserving the Amazon's mystique. At this point in my life I fail to see why mechanical sharks and snake machines with a malevolent sense of humor shouldn't be made Secretary General of the United Nations, and if I ever get through The Feast of The Goat by Llhosa the novelist, I will have to view the filmmaker's adaptation, and this unwittingly brings me back to my trouble: my literacy fluency has done absolutely nothing for me, not in terms of personal security, and Llhosa has stated to English media repeatedly that he belonged to a Latin American left which thought it could change things. But that seemingly took forever in blue jeans.

Modernism changed literature and left it for dead, which does not mean that content will not continue to be sold as impulse products for consumers, but what has modernism done to the moral glue, the third chimpanzee's empathy? And by that I mean us, culling Jared's title. I have spent my entire life consuming the English novel and science fiction, and only later getting into the subtlety, sheer marvel, of the action taking place on the continent. Stendhal is more than Balzac's equal, and I can only wonder at where Marcel picked up his cues, not quite 100 years later-- but Joyce? If we were to superimpose Ulysses onto the scripts for The Following, aren't we saying that an abstract modality, taken to its absurd forms, makes it easier to clear the way for immolation? And yes, I get the subversive irony of the fact that James Purefoy brings the terminal degree scholar into the ever burgeoning tent of the American serial killer (hello to my internal vengeance driver). Late 20th century cold war thrillers were an early version of this video game mentality, with the real monster being the American operative flipped for money, or the thrill of it.

In the good old days, I would not have feared a Soviet agent. The Soviet agent believed in what Lenin and Stalin bequeathed, but today's Russian thugs lead us back to Bulgakov's ridicule, which doesn't need an apologia for its reductionist, dystopian tendencies. Bulgakov may not be the best counter example for me to use to bolster hostility towards Joycean meta-fictional overlay, because I may hear the jazz in Mikhail's masterpiece, but cannot say he is right about Christian orthodoxy, but unlike Joyce, Bulgakov is empathetic to the need for hope.

I said something stupid in group when some there asked me if I was a grad student. I said we have a lot to blame the Modernists for, in the accusative. Let me put it this way: I doubt Joyce could have foreseen Osama Bin Laden, but I can see what the rise of Al Qaida means when I read the mock epic of this over educated Anglo-Irishman.

Since I had my bowel impaction yesterday, went off schedule, and have to go to the store, I leave you with that questionable lucidity.