Sterile Saturation

"And still somehow, it's life's illusions I recall..."-- folk lyric

While bedridden, and technically this is still my condition, I changed my AT&T plan so I could stream on my poor old phone, and believed the 22G Unlimited would be enough per billing period. Before the October blow to my fortunes it would have been, but I ate a great deal of data whetting my appetite with sometimes dubious ventures. I do not know what to make of USA’s Mr. Robot. Though its points are obvious, some of the threads seem tenuous, some scenes too brittle, too tense, and why writers had to harken back to Alf to remind us of the material world which we once knew before the digital age seems flimsy; this flimsiness is comparable, while my bad leg flexes in taut discomfort, to the obscure intent of The Lobster. My initial reaction to the movie, viewed in the pre-dawn dusk, very similar to my current hour, was confusion, and a sense the direction was belabored, forced. I caught the fabulism on my own, and might have realized this effort was from the European left. Had I known anything about Yorgos Lanthimos I might have been better prepared for what to expect. Tasha’s review, obviously sympathetic, was helpful, Brody's less so. Why does everything have to fall under the category of agitprop for New Yorker critics? Exclaiming to myself, “I had my trash quotient for the day,” I closed my Prime app and moved on, but now find myself unsettled, and may try the film again at a later time with my ear plugs less used than my others. Lanthimos’ opening scene exposes us to a woman driving intently in the rain. She stops in a pasture in the middle of nowhere, leaves her car, shoots a horse with what appears to be a Colt 45 revolver, and then we jump to David in his apartment, with his dog/brother. Was the opening the ex-wife, executing chivalry? The atmosphere of this film is deliberately heavy, as if the very oxygen we breathe was shackled, and everyone’s diction, but for David’s cadence, on occasion, is over accentuated and cutting, as if to drag Ovid into Orwell’s world, merging the totem aspect of Metamorphosis with a regulatory authority dictating your every move, relaxed only in bondage to the opposite sex so that you can gouge your own eyeballs out with a generic steak knife, or at least make the effort to do so, in order to be complimentary to an equally terse, stilted partner. This is the denouement, where David and Short Sighted Woman evade the Hotel and authority altogether, and find themselves in a restaurant which smacks of a fleeting 2016 realism, open ended, disturbing. Weisz’s abstract character, deceived into compliance, was blinded by the rebel leader during a city visit to a chamber orchestra where the couple, with glaring incaution, make no effort to hide the fact that they’re on their way to third base. The Leader not only broke the heavy petting kiss with a scolding, but exacted an irreversible penalty. Farrell, in the eatery’s bathroom, transforms himself into the invertebrate he suggested to the Manager, and Weisz no longer has the ability to discern this as a waiter fills her glass with water: this is how we always see lobsters when we dine, in a small tank, claws taped. Part of my reconsideration for Lanthimos’ intentions is a certain quixotic preoccupation with imperfection which still manages to permeate in some way, part of it is about modern isolation, and how digital interaction binds and wards us off at the same time. (This does not mean to imply I read it the same way as Robinson with “Facebook relationship status messages,” but I can see where she gets the interpolation.)

There are few pleasures I can point to in this hard life where I have defied or evaded death so often: my work in DC, my somewhat incendiary affairs with married men, on which I shall not dwell, my poetry reading in Pittsburgh, less for the poets, tepid aging beatniks, some dead, more for the fact I did it all by myself, this 87 adventure from eastern to western inner city; my cats, some of my bylines. But this is it, I don’t have people so much as passive indignation towards mamma’s family on Facebook, all being usurped, inflamed tendons furling Great Expectations into ash. Whatever the error of my choices, fomented by lack of fulfillment, I was never quite dispassionate enough to extract myself from them, and even today, on occasion, I recast my own version of Cinderella, with a gallant to sweep me off my feet—not quite so harmless an escape.

Digitalis

This is all I know, so far: AdSense, which is Shareaholic's derivative model, is a fee for profit advertising service. The account holder pays a fee, and receives a pay out for every 10 dollar accrual. I am far less clear about Ad Words, other than I have agreed to pay Google for the clicks. What the dowager gets out of it, as an improvised individual desperate upon desperate for a needed change, is entirely unknown. I can afford to allow the search giant to profiteer off my posts for one billing, and if I get nothing, then I'll cancel the campaign. but I am telling Google publicly, right now, that I may have softened my vehemence decibel, but my anger will never be entirely diminished. Everyone has a side, spanning the gamut, from Jewish supervisors to building managers, but I have 33 years of a hostile environment with exactly the same landlord under which I am a crime victim, repetitively. For those of you with better mobility, you believe you could live with this without disparagement?
Better than a shelter? Not by all that much, as I've dealt with shelter clients at Project Share, and it seems to make little difference whose rod is on their spine, the housing authority or the shelter managers. In addition to which, and this is my failure, alone, I let spend down methodologies evaporate my savings, savings which, if I do survive past 65, I needed. I literally have nothing, bar one, I frightened Presby's corporate office with the liability I have on them. That's it, that, and my 50,000 dollar education which garnished me a return somewhere in the neighborhood of 80k before taxes, roughly estimated. 

There is no discernible difference to this valiantly active domain, not yet, but the masses love the virtue of patience.

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Update: this was a failure of comprehension. No more ad words. The charge will be insubstantial. Notice all the help I am getting attempting to monetize my work, sigh.

Crohn's Management: One

It is interesting that The Washington Post Volokh Conspiracy series contributor Jane Bambauer explains claim liberty First Amendment rights just as I am seriously beginning to wonder about all the penalties invoked on half baked academics, and getting my ass realigned by either playful or stark libertarian Caucasians who would probably prefer I go away and play kiss and make up with reasonable accommodation bromides. What Bambauer has achieved in explicating her studies is an example of what I want to do, not as it pertains to constitutional law, but on something. I thought I was capable of work at her level, and so did others, but hypothetically, had I attained a Harvard degree, been peer to Ross and Niall Ferguson, would things have been any different? Zuckerberg, his backers, like rich homosexual nutcases, Google, its ruthless efficiency paradigm rather belling its feel the love effusiveness, Microsoft, Silicon Valley gargantuanism birthed a monster, after a fashion, and I do not know why, following in Bambauer's footsteps as an expert in something that I accomplished matters, particularly as I am angry enough to court violence. I would not, like the alt.right, of late, duck for police protection. I'd go down with a roar that would have deafened our 43rd president, on that carrier. Many on the left would see that as a pathology at war with its finer essence, but what is it, exactly, I think I can repair any better than Ann Coulter modal grammars, or Ross'es superciliousness?  We all have a prescription, and can turn thence immediately to lower brow media, like this, as a reminder of our ground game. I am stuck on Race Street, with my past shoveled in my face daily, with a now irrelevant, once prominent, corrupt transsexual who sourced my very first article, black males who threaten and verbally lacerate me, seventy year old and plus seniors who have tried to get me evicted since I moved in, and yet I persist with some sort of belief, if I can climb back, become, miraculously, a CATO fellow, then this justifies the level of my rage in poverty and failure. Dream on. 

Big Box Pits

"we have no housing options at this time" --Pat Toomey's office, my fantasy avenger

One of the most sophisticated of the late Law & Order series, before Jesse Martin left and the fat poster boy for nigger grievances took over, now making his drum roll rapid timing on black-ish, is "Bottomless". Purely as a story, it opens like an exquisite floral bouquet, with an implicit acknowledgement of the fact the we're all expendable on the basis of income, career skill set, and age. It doesn't quite come out and call Walmart a devil, or simplify old school identity politics through Lieu and her retired boss of yesteryear, but it is a rather deft spin on ableism, white privilege, and the truth that one person's pain may initiate an investigation, in this case, grieving Chinese dry cleaners with a dead daughter fresh off her bar exam, with a frivolous lawsuit opening into criminally complicit sex which winds its way back to how deft Beijing is at playing the lack of accountability game, to the point the initial manslaughter is virtually obliterated from view. We're all little drops in the bucket, blanketed over by multi-billion dollar corporations, and I ridicule what, in contemporary terms, is a mortal emotional wound, one which I can no longer quite control (it's hot), with nicotine or fish oil or my usual methods, by tap dancing a mafia godmother game. Psychologically, it no longer is one, but for the fact I soften dissolute menace by putting the people with power on a pack of cards, and trying to hold myself together by rationalizing that I do not want to be placed in a psychiatric facility over ignorant vermin. Fine, but the problem: I've never, ever, gotten a victory for the cruelty I have sustained. Trudy Richardson and Debra Horne will no more than likely get a slap on the wrist for the devastating damage I've been forced to swallow for 32 years with "fraternal corporate" contractors with HUD's localized housing authorities. I've only ever had one of them, but they are all collusionary, and  complicit, with inept federal civil servants. In the end, it is all the same. Politburo or federal civil servant. I cannot sit and cull law firms on my cell when I have a fissure in my chest ready to burst my body and spray the walls with hemoglobin. The day I spoke to the gentleman at Silver & Silver I held the oar steady and just said okay, resigned. He is the one who said "wait," and gave me a referral, but it is too late. I hate Debra. I hate Trudy. And the disability activists. My humanity, at the moment, is too compromised for my grit. I am 56, battling elisions, repetitions, fear of my family, fear I'll never publish a brand article again (ie, people who publish in The Philadelphia Inquirer don't wind up like half-assed idiots on niume, or do they?). I had to reach for William Shatner's name, an actor I've known as Captain Kirk since I was a baby. 


Libertarian writers only hit liberals on the most general terms when it comes to Walmart. They need to take better aim, and have my courage, if not the cliff face on which I am so precariously ready to topple, to illustrate that it is also federalism which leads companies like V Halter to stick its thumb up its ass, as there are no private contractors for naval fleets. Today is my 27th, corrected, anniversary with AT&T, as the grand old utility reminds me. I almost left them in 1999 for unlimited Internet, never howled at them, or complained, and they've rolled over for me like a beached whale. This is my stand in for interpersonal intimacy.

Reenactment Auxiliary

In case of the removal of the President from office or of his death or resignation, the Vice President shall become President., 25th amendment, sec.1

Running the air a little in the heat of the day before I go to lie down, daring, when I do, to shut the air conditioning off, in sooty urban ninety degree weather, little changed since oh, let's say, 1918, before the technology of Freon was widely available so that toady peasants could live past sixty. I've heard twice now that "hate", whether as an entity, a thing, which only exists as an advanced internal motivation in primates, or a modal verb, is a strong word. The ambulatory world uses it as a moral teaching tool, like in Kung Fu, David Carradine went up against an old monk controlling the warrior who appeared to have superhuman strength, until Caine journeyed to the monk's residence, and the Shaolin broke the corroded man's will through focused meditation, and viewers then saw little more than emaciated bark and dust, the supporting actor impossibly shriveled.

 It isn't quite so allegorical in real world terms, when the tsunami strikes with as much steady consistency as it does with surge and currents. For developmental damage, it is simply part and parcel of our vocabulary, not extraordinary in the least. If we had extraordinary, we'd be running the Phineas Priests better than they run themselves. Richard Spencer, in his carefully plotted alt.right facade, his pretense toward being a reasonable think tank, probably knows quite a few of these anarchists a la mode, in their conflicted ballet with local and federal law enforcement. I write this in speculation only, and do not claim his ethno romantic views on white privilege serve as a front for domestic paramilitary enthusiasts. They can believe anything they please, except when it comes to insurrection. Authority looks askance at sedition against a purportedly constitutional republic, one thing it shares with otherwise discredited regimes where governance is a wink and a nod. They only way extremism ever comes out victorious is in numbers, sympathizers, converts. This is one way the status quo moves. Innovation is another, like the technology surrounding television. We very rarely dwell on how complex the components of video are. We grasp the basic concepts of how electricity is harnessed, controlled, but our numbers are fewer in the expertise of audio, or radio waves, satellite technology. Count me in as useless when it comes to these applications, how magnetism carries voice, how antenna captures signals, how transistors convert this so that pixels can create exactly what cameras film. Control these mediums and then you control the dissemination of the facts to be distorted in one variation or another, but how to lust for power and keep it in the dynastic sense is increasingly difficult to do, despite Chancellor Merkel, and it cannot be done by terrorizing Spokane with pipe bombs and strategic bank heists. Take Silicon Valley and its oligarchy: Tim Cook, Peter Thiel, Chris Hughes in New York, Zuckerberg, Jack, even Ev Williams, and their enablers. They may not all share the characteristics of a regressive, if occasionally patriarchal, homosexuality, but they all have, to some degree, a coastal, dandyish elitism-- even Thiel, who seems, at least superficially, to be a boy he-man who doesn't grow up, but we've been co-opted by them, augmenting, as they have, the Defense Department technology which is now the digital age, and whether intentional or not, unless the Internet is destroyed, (unlikely), freedom is dead.
This may seem like I give the saying nothing environment of social media too much importance. Toomey, to pick a conventional establishment example, doesn't live on it. He is a legislator, a man of great privilege, juxtaposed against the hordes, but nothing, and no one is free, in this age of computer science, cameras, facial recognition software, quarantines Apple, Google, and their heirs knowing everything. Minority Report  will seem like a piss in the bucket, compared to where we're headed. Along the way, hate will flare, and for those whom justice has never lifted a finger, it's comprehensible. Libertarians may see the dowager's hostility to homosexual culture as a violation of liberty and privacy. On one level, it is. But what political aspirants like Austin Petersen do not see in their paramount individualism, is, gay men and lesbians generate victims too, as did my mother's once best friend, even in the closet. Kmac's eventual happiness with one of her husband's relatives had repercussions, and created estrangements. Don't Semitic moralists also have the right to believe sexual sodomy is sinful, as well? Liberty for all is not quite the utilitarian striving that it seems, in this context. Not that I am forsaking libertarian beliefs. They've helped me a good deal, but freedom is exceedingly fragile against a collective which automation has made so banal it's difficult to see how aesthetic transcendence will find space to flourish in future world.

Death Knell of the Knell

If anything killed my appreciation of the digital  medium, it's Facebook. Much like Yabberz, I don't like it, though most of my feed is my family behaving like the American Catholic class. I understand it is like anything else, account links and feed, but it's rather killed the internet for me, all tacky, flashy, bread and circuses. I prefer Twitter, though we all have to resist that to some degree. Yet I am uneasy, because there is spillover, and not just the Chicago attack. People do horrendous things, thinking what, that they'll get a following for engaging in victimization?
Craig Brittain and I make an unlikely alliance. I followed him first, primarily because Uber models intrigue me, and anything I might apply to make independent living less static is worth paying attention to. He complained this afternoon about leftist troll accounts, and I waded in without need of reference, without backing down either, and he kindly gave me permission to explore opportunities with him, so I sent him a LinkedIn connection request. I'm not partial to LinkedIn either, but it is necessary for me to maintain a presence there, even if I find work-- but I am unsure indicting Twitter's administrators to crack down on bogus accounts solves our freewheeling problems with  the online wild west. I myself am getting slightly over my head with libertarian factionalism, addressing Adam in the familiar as though he's remember the hard bitten wheelchair woman in her skirts, but that's neither here nor there. He proselytizes well for those who adore him; my alienated dissonance is of another timbre, however. Disaffection probably means I need some breathing space. 

Apricot Canning

"But you are human, human as I could make you."-- William Hurt, before embracing the garrulous conservative approach.

The British android series Humans doesn’t bring anything new to the table. In the SO2 climax, Laura’s mildly insistent argument to the actor performing Hester was an apologia to the viewing audience for the fact that we can only approximate what we hope sentient machines will be like. The actress in Ex Machina does a little better, merely observing the death of her creator. The geek who freed her had scruples, in the movie’s initial inclination toward sympathy. The end is ambiguous, mildly chilling—but we still don’t really comprehend the issues inherent in AI creation. Forbes had an interesting backstory piece about Bell Labs technical secrets leading to the behemoths of our 21^st century anxieties: Apple, Google, Facebook, and the government’s drive to break AT&T into component spinoffs might serve as a warning to the Big Three. What we might also consider, however, is that we don’t need Hal, Arnold Schwartzenegger, or Spielberg’s sentimental AI romance to be alarmed at the human digital interface already having something of a negative impact. Computer processing as it already exists sets off sequential events with detrimental results. Do we want drone technology and drone kills to eliminate human pilots? Or facial recognition software to turn the planet into a quantum prison? Despite William Hurt’s ostensible cameo, allowing the audience to pit the British no nonsense sensibility against AI’s grandiosity, comparing David with Odi, and their inadvertent threat, Humans is more or less an English domestic quarrel with diversity and its economic caste system. Leo Elster, if not an anemic beatnik, looks like an exhausted punk who’s lost the nerve to be crude. Niska is the outraged feminist who goes butch, making a rather huge leap, conceptually, into simulated incest. The writers don’t really trouble themselves with how a self-aware android would intuit penetration as a violation, or even why Mia and Hester pursue sexual objectives, proletarian as they are, the caretaker and exploited chemical worker. The actor who embodies the Beatrice/Karen composite puts in a sturdy performance as a woman divided between domestic tranquility and despair, the least autonomic of the prototypes, hence improbable.

Since Asimov inflicted readers with the moral dilemma of robotic awareness in the mid-20^th century, machines are either victimized children or a malevolent efficiency model. In Terminator, the machines are DOD systems which eliminated most of human civilization, then came up with time travel to ensure the resistance did not survive Siri’s destruction. Granted, the saga is simply an action thriller with characters to root for, but we never ask if machines designed for combat would be so relentless, and we might wind up with something quite different if we bring these things to life, an alien mindset that doesn’t mirror and magnify human behavior. I am not saying I was unmoved by the story line of the series, but we’ve seen it all before, trapped by our own anthropomorphic tendencies. If Terminator offers a sliver of hope against the hubris of the military industrial complex, and The Matrix is a futurist parable warning us not to be too caught up in technical optimism, Humans has faith we’ll remain true to our core values in the age of Google, with a Zuckerberg-like CEO trying to make happiness just that much less effortless. Uh huh.

Cromwell's Invidious Frustration With The Unforeseen

For the more delicate and costly articles of food for the sick we relied mostly on the agents of the Sanitary Commission.-- William T Sherman, ushering in the modern era, p 883

In terms of its neo-realism, Surrogates has many issues. Critics ask why humans would desire to be enveloped in a body length sensory console, but as the studio FX for this Willis vehicle illustrates, our physical bodies could not long survive such extended periods of inactivity, unless one has to adapt, as Cromwell's Canter does, to being a mobility impaired tyrant. The plot is also problematic. If VSI hired Stone to kill its founder in order to prevent catastrophe, one that makes the Third Reich seem inept, then you hire a contract killer to penetrate to the source, to make sure the hit is done right. If Willis can do it as Greer in the flesh, one can assume Kodjoe's no nonsense cueball supervisory agent could have found someone methodical and efficient enough to kill Canter before he uploaded the virus. But beneath the surface of its weak story, the industry's kick in the teeth toward itself might generate rancor. Even seeing what we see, and making pneumatic blockbuster allegories reveling in the very psychosis of mortality, we cannot stop the train. We're already plugged in and enhanced automated liars, and even the dowager, courageous as she is with appalling truths about physicality, poverty, and a stacked, corrupt deck, has certain episodes of omission. I do not reveal certain things about Lakisha Doe, not because I know she is online, but because her guilt doesn't deserve that I use it to hurt her. She wasn't a bad assistant as far as really African blacks go; tried to help me, using her money to buy me clothes, but I did not want a nigger surrogate for a daughter, and booted her, doing her a favor, really. Where she is at now with her dental company is better than where she was with me on the waiver system. And I'm sitting here writing this to jack up. God forbid I stay offline for a week and prioritize my many issues. I am sure this is what many followers who've abandoned this voice think. Do what you need to do, but like Rosamund Pike, many of are infected avatars, and mine concurs with Cromwell's final, insidious, implosive, intent. In the alternate timeline of Surrogates' futureworld, Canter would have become an immortal legend, demonized in eternal infamy. The truth of the matter, however, is there are already thousands of people in an extended matrix much akin to sim operators, forced to view the world through lenses with limited periphery. Of course it will not evolve in the manner of the graphic serial brought to life like a plastic surgery bill, but the allegory already lives. Much as Black Mirror's writers already know. Humanity isn't sure what exactly it wants for itself, a homogeneous utopia which removes adversity from our existence, which is what makes us thrive, or to limit our collective altruism for individual circumstances unique to each.

Andreas Lubitz Makes Depression Look Like What It Isn't

When presented with an infrared spectrum, it is easy to become confused by the peaks present. Brian C Smith, Infrared Spectral Interpretation, A Systematic Approach, p.27


The Sony Bravia flat screen from Dell cost somewhere between $650 to $699 or so, still flush from parental demise, one of the last times your queen mother had a universal circus going at the expense of the center city personnel running this building, making the ex bull doze himself a drive to Radio Shack for digital antenna, cajoling Timothy to screw it altogether. "Yours is better than mine," Frank observed, cryptically. I have no real way to evaluate electronic appliances, but even after years of abandoning the old concave analog sets, I have a more stable picture, barring cellular interference, and so what?

You'd like simplicity? I hate the television. I hate watching it. And despite the miracle of the micro ink and touch interface, I hate kindle, I hate my smartphone, and the diaphanous platform chattering Ev William's Medium represents. Oh, it is pretty, marvelously pleasing to the eye, but we have destroyed something essential about pre-digital culture, all of us. We've cheapened something about learning through each other, even while I fight the welfare system closing its industrial age manacles on my intransigence. 

Speaking hypothetically, I do not think Presbyterian Homes has the wherewithal to take me to court to force my institutionalization, as it is simply a matter of my age, my lack of affluence to buy myself time, and I don't think anyone paying attention to me on social media feels they have the ability to prevent it, whether or not they care. If the situation were reversed, and it was one of you, and I was a Levy brother, for example, would I sacrifice time, money, to be your shield? It is a counterfactual speculation.

But as much as blunt force trauma is also a simplified argument, like rolls of coins in a sock to create a cat o nine, the actions of Lubitz are simply unfathomable. Depression doesn't entirely impede empathy, and I would not destroy the lives of innocents in a bid for relief from entrapment between rust iron bully dykes like Debra Horne and abusive or otherwise indifferent caretakers. As I keep hammering it home, I am, like many thousands, a quadriplegic under the medical restraint of Prometheus Unbound. Vengeance might seem applicable in  that context of a life with such a degree of cruelty, even if positivism might suggest alternatives, but not so randomly applied without any cause whatsoever.

An intuitive sensibility only, but nevertheless, I don't think Lubitz could have been possible before Microsoft made personal computing what it is, just as my further ostracism wouldn't have been possible if I would have been more objective, careful of my temper, frustrated with the bizarre remote which, as a cheap plastic implement, has a mind of its own, insisting the channel change bounce its signal sideways, and taking at least five minutes to obey the press of my fingertips. Smashing the damn thing would be an appeasement. My mind is on a controversial piece. I best get pitching.

Mimic

Blogger managed to frighten me, and I am still digesting it, as a prelude to the arc of my life ending exactly as it started, bodily functions constrained, wondering why viewers of my posts necessarily need to feel victorious in censoring a voice soon to fade regardless. Humanity knows it is in trouble, and power has shifted away from territorial governance to corporate control on a global scale, just as David Mitchell presaged it in Cloud Atlas, and just as the main catastrophe in the novel indicated, it won't really change that we're doomed to irrational repetition of conflicting interests, whether vengeance is refined through engineering efficiency or relegated to vulgarity, I am not certain I ever had a choice about my destiny, part failed scholar, part failed systems module, part semi-failed writer who cannot grasp everything, computer science being one topic of unfortunate illiteracy. Even if I desired comprehension, I could not grasp the complex aspects of circuitry and code, but understand the power it generates, and it scared me; I'm used to human censure, but not being wiped off search because I cause offense, or am considered irrelevant, or simply a provocateur.

Decorum would insist that I need not lift the curtains I do to prove a point, but I'm suggesting otherwise. We pay a price for sustaining people like me, especially when the judicial process cannot rectify the trauma which has to be necessarily absorbed. I am ignoring the health systems in place for that rather than seeking adequate treatment because mental health is a game of Russian roulette, and pharmaceuticals don't work. I learned this about intake long ago, just like prison, therapy is a cycle of recidivism by degree, and makes treating professionals themselves vulnerable, which liberal journalists ignore when they talk about crisis in services. There is no getting better for approximately a third of trauma clusters, only volume muting, and Google muted my volume, why?

The inferences? What I've insinuated about hate? Perhaps. I do not hate my ex-fiance in the traditional sense of domestic discord. I hate what he is, how the Bronx molded him, and hate how he lives, and how I live too. For my subjective intent, it isn't worth the price, which is why I engaged in an inappropriate social outreach and gave Tony Stiles my telephone number. His local notoriety doesn't mean anything to me personally except that it gives him a capacity I've lost in being vanquished so I took a chance, not really expecting that he'd oblige me with a reciprocal response as a knight in shining armor. I'm looking at a position for a health journalist, and I am not motivated, indecisive as to whether I should force myself to apply anyway. I'd rather become a dictator and overthrow a representative government, a brief and flaring bookend to my tortured legacy.

All of my five emails to Pennsylvania's political establishment

I clicked on Sheila Huff's account from my now well used Apple iPhone without thinking, and was prepared for the doctored breasts which meet your eye if you click her tweet. PhillyTechGuy may get another visit from me if Huff's site gave me a virus, but I cannot role play it that way. It is gratuitous. I'm not offended, I do not protest smut, and Miss Huff may use her riders as she pleases, but a woman of 53 is not 35, driven by those needs for an embryo hormones. Menstrual cycle stoppage triggers subtle changes.

I read Craig Whitlock's summary feature carefully, and do not have an issue with his inability to offer his readers a salient exposure (after all, I cannot get case managers to admit highly discriminatory behavior toward me, not on the record). We used to be able to say men are men and women are women, and apparently the Pentagon got its zipper caught between Paula Broadwell's antagonism toward a social climber when Paula herself was the one doing the serving  Jill Kelley's voluminous email exchanges with a Marine like Allen make my turn of the century chattiness seem tame. The small short story I mailed to Brian Sims may be considered private mail, but emails don't work that way. We all know it and forget it, unless we use a firewall encrypted by Captcha, which is what I used yesterday to solicit Sims again, daring my terse attitude to refer to his orientation with a sensibility of watered down aspersion. Perhaps Sims and Toomey know what I am trying to say in more uncouth terms, but these are very busy men, and Sims might ask me, in critique, if Republican austerity measures helped me out.

No. Losing Paratransit only accentuates my isolation, but that the service is now heavily restricted is partly the fault of militant activist victories, as per Cassie James Holdsworth, and Erik. The right wing is basically correct. Septa's buses are functionally accessible, unless too crowded to displace seated riders for wheelchair users, but my mobility isn't any easier. I wanted to own my own home, with a lawn, but apparently all realtors have some sort of federal contract with HUD. Part of a disabled mindset involves a trusting nativity. I'd ask someone like Joan Tarshis if she'd like a roommate if my intellect did not already know we don't do things like that-- although I did quite openly feel a surge of gusto with this guy, and had to struggle not to ask Mr. Stiles to come get me the fuck out of here, please. That would be putting a lot on libertarian self-reliance.  

Foul Mood

For the record, I did not want to see the Foley beheading video Gillmor references in our flagship periodical. I have seen enough since the Iranian revolution in 79 that nothing the Arabs or their related sects do to us, or each other, shocks me. The only difference between then and now is the superficial glitterati factor, as true for ISIS as it is for Ferguson, but I also did not need Gillmor to articulate what I've long worried about, where the line is-- not solely due to the fact that my conscience vies with the temptation toward criminality due to desperation out of a lifelong oppression under the heel of every ethic identity, my own, others, and the disabled themselves-- we're cruel as well, as the diction in some of my posts evinces. If I thought I had the savvy to handle it, I'd use ISIS for my own objectives, much as Marthe Keller uses Bruce Dern's mortally scarred veteran, and this is a fairly chilling admission from a fifty two year old naive twit getting squeezed out on both ends, from the system and the people not quite subject to it in the same way (yet), my cries for latitude, for room to breathe, increasingly limited, other than to give my notice and try to make a run for it on some fairly long odds. What do I want?

I want the company Presbyterian Homes out of my fucking life, that is what I want, and for equally myopic black women to stop using my back as a career opportunity while I'm killing myself on my graduate education writing penny articles. Charles Horton, the vice chair on the mayor's commission on disability, was little more than useless, giving me the number for Rita Foley, a black accessibility coordinator for this collusionary enterprise. Her pay grade is so dear she doesn't return telephone calls, and assumes we all embrace liberation theology, since her voice mail, for a city agency, ends on "have a blessed day." Now we know: Philadelphia isn't the American city of independence, merely the functional arm of minority Adventists.

I'm truly not a liberal anymore. I'll grant progressives this: Darren Wilson used excessive force to subdue Michael Brown, but after the life I've led under Eastern Pennsylvania's modus operandi, I'll donate to Wilson's defense fund. Tolerance never meant we had the right to eat each other alive because we cannot learn to divine and respect difference, and difference sometimes means apart from.

Black listed

And the wrought-iron maze he had explored in the kitchen like a gold miner pawing through pay dirt was in fact a revolting clump of scars. Not a tree, as she said. Maybe shaped like one, but nothing like any tree he knew because trees were inviting. -- Toni Morrison, Beloved, p. 30

Too worn out from viral inflammation which has been a constant since the moronic custodial staff put the heat on in October, I need a gynecologist. I need to be embarrassed by an already speculative infection, dirty cripple spatially trailing in a twenty second dimension above the shoulder, except it is not that simple, not to be clever enough. It is not that difficult to extrapolate the challenge of bodies and hygiene; the stereotype has some truth. Without any true diagnostic training, however, going into blind alleys are unnecessary detriments.

I do not know why I hang on to spastic dowager as an avatar. Google wants me to integrate. Examiner wants me to integrate. AT&T pities me with motherly stern reminders. An Examiner film critic on conference called the handle clever; it is.

Presby has to be dismantled, because the classification engenders schema of further exploitation. Rise up. I implore you. Now that I've incited, I have to lie down with my irritated drying skin. I may have mentioned I have soured on Hahnemann. Temple University hospital is acceptable--not necessarily better than my former nearly bankrupt caretaker, but acceptable. I hate Temple University, something I avoided discussing previously because Jerry told me not to transfer and I did anyway. Why did I get so fucked up over this angry beatnik? I will die with this fucked up entangled scar tissue for a dynamic instructor whose star has dimmed. I'd ask you to shoot me, but I'm too tired to be taken seriously.

Did I mention I worry about getting black balled? I do.

I have pushed the envelope, perhaps sorry probtheme no longer burns in my urethra, (am I?) but I haven't really really pushed. Hmm. Does my savagery shame my conceit? I have to lie down and then find a gyn, caught in the ridicule of examining pubic hair on a daily basis, battling crabs, yeast, discharges, hemorrhages. This manufactures the nihilist. 

Forced Conversion Expressions

"I was filled with anticipation; the tension had grown to the point where I didn't want to have open space behind me." -- Bill Johnston translation, location 237

In the not so distant past, Hari Sreenivasan was the good guy, fighting for a more sound equilibrium among our numerous yet fragile masses. There are still many cases of egregious exploitation everywhere, but this PBS profile also has its own egregious tilt. Never mind the lack of any sort of sexual discipline in inner city communities; never mind the fructose-heavy husband who we can speculate has some sort of disability claim pending that games the system and hurts real chronic condition inclusion. We all game it these days, even me, playing evasion to the last resort, angry that I allowed desire to trap me here, even though I did not realize it in my twenties. In my own lack of efficacy, I did not realize my conservative provider had already activated the 5c. The tranquility, however temporary, is luxurious, yet hesitation remains. Utility and device. No one has ever quite sold me. Google and Amazon better than Microsoft, yes, but I will never quite see micro chip miniaturization as indispensable.  My sister Stephanie, on the white end of slovenly entitlement, sent me a text. Can't open it. Still in the tutorial stage, but we'll get there, despite women with more children than they can handle. Who am I to judge with my over-extended self-reliance? If I was smart I'd euthanize Vinnie and send the little female back to the no kill track and neuter shelter. It may come to that, but I can scream common sense while I learn to post home shots. Don't have children you cannot afford, regardless of your position on termination.

Progressives need some sort of reigning in, some sort of personal responsibility, just as I knew, before I pulled on my last decent affinity with another woman, that disability center assurances were broken reeds, piercing though the palms, poor adductor. Too much proficiency may be dangerous, but universal leveling leads to collapse under its own weight. Twenty five words in to an abstract that has more layers than I supposed, the signatory status of an auteur we hope survives extinction. Demise. Distinction may be all we have, but it is not much of an answer to destructive overkill.

For the most part, the better part of valor, I forgive Stephanie, and little Benny. I understand their precarious dashed hopes, despite the fact that they believe in a straight jacket containment for spastic investments. I cannot, however, love them as fully as I used to before they allowed this city to grind me into chum. Children are important, but not so important that they narrow futurist import.

Old Lions, Fresh Solstice

Not to take issue with Chris Zimmer, since she and I have different agendas, but I give SVU's writers credit for reminding us that adjudication doesn't rectify the hidden costs of our scars. It may have been a soft boiled episode, but Hargitay and Vassilieva brought it home, recapping the earlier story lines. I am soft on Dick Wolf, meaning I forgive what Zimmer opines as tepid, out of familiar reassurance, and I can assure you I don't enjoy rolling off my daybed feeling revictimized every day, but the hardest thing to expurgate from disability activism is the internecine cruelty embedded within it.

In 2002, right around the time I was exiled from the Poets & Writers community, Septa CCT instituted restricted eligibility, and it has been like a Jamesian turn of the screw ever since. There are things I have not discussed about service providers and threats to my survival, items I've held back, attempting to avoid certain stereotypical aspects, and I do not always succeed. If I accuse Philadelphia's spina bifida loud mouth of tunnel vision, I am not so far behind strumming cat guts with a bow.

Reinvention is a difficult task when the environment in which it needs to be done is one you never wanted in the first place that holds so much baggage, more damage than pleasure, and little that is fresh, invigorating. Risk adverse to another failure due to productive decline, I have little desire to utilize the campus of my alma mater; it is older than old. I want to let it go, be rid of the whole city with its inability to govern itself, although these days that is apparently a bicoastal affliction.

I can't work this morning. Post-a-vent yes, slight revising, waiting for one of Anthony Perkin's last films. Another Lovecraft variation, maybe I should pack it in now, resign myself to Inglis House, death industry bar none. In a few years, my lateral transfer skills will be more difficult. I will be off Blogger more than likely, barring a Google Amazon takeover of independent living itself, which I'd support. So many limits, so few choices, and Linda will go on, no matter. Gutting subordinates is often its own reward. I am going to bed.

The Black Irish, Consiigliore

"The blind stripling did not answer. His wallface frowned weakly.  He moved his head uncertainly."--James Joyce, Ulysses, p 165

Typical of cognitive brain density limitations, getting bluCigs down, the timing, charging, and usage, this is no easy feat, but I have the basics. It simulates real inhalation better when the battery and atomizer are fresh, but should not be held in the mouth like the simple Aero. I do not have the discretionary income to keep myself amply supplied with both, but freely confess I do not have the physiological strength to break dependence on nicotine's narcotic grip. When I cramp due to withdrawal, my mobility is further impaired, never mind my psyche, and stress. All that is an extension of my existence is my small personal library, my bylines and the detritus of my intellect striven against a poverty that flakes my emotions like brittle mica. That's it. Nothing else defines me. Dead felines die with me, and I have no idea what Google's policy is on memoriam accounts, as Google may freely do what it wishes with its services. I have never had my own place, or a husband, a family, a home, my own furnishings. Objects in the Jamesian sense, far and very few between. Is this what bothers you about my foray into difference, and its macabre insinuations?

I wonder. This studio is devoid. A tangle of wires and not enough outlets. Obsolescent electronic devices. Bins of dead letter bills entitlements, cheap cat toys, thick and outdated telephone directories used as antenna props. I should be reading for group, but the kindle is charging, and so I am here, in time honored Dickensonian fashion, I am going to work for mio padre, in a vain attempt to offset illustrious destitution while my seventy-eight year old progenitor still lives, pondering my antipathy to Joyce. It may have something to do with Jerry's driving energy for the destructive correspondences, and the Joycean gamesmanship, which I don't like even while appreciating, which is curious, since all modernists have some national pathos at play. That which James deploys turns my stomach, however. I haven't written much about the museum where I participate in these activities, as opposed to writing around it, due to my column, but it is not quite Upstairs Downstairs so much as brimming with dialectical tensions, and the black security guards who patrol in residence wear a look of perplexity:

"Are you Jewish?"
"No Italian."

And I am studying Irish literature, white welfare trash under the auspices of a sometimes intolerant black urban city state, watching those beholden to MLK's lack of content in character spin their wheels. Ho ho ho and a bottle of rum.

Forge of Valor

As much as I love the convenience of the Amazon business model, this aftershock in light of my negative review of Out of the Black will not die, and I see this in part as not just a contest between two writers who may never break ranks out into successful authorship, but a critique of digital immediacy. Would I have purchased this text had I viewed it on a bookshelf in a book store like Borders? Hard to say. Quentin Tarantino may opine to the ever plodding Charlie Rose that he "likes genre," but I am more diffident than the stylized filmmaker, who needs a transfusion, if the failure of his Jewish revenge fantasy is any indicator. I tend to prefer the next generation when it comes to authors who can challenge the conventions of  genre, and Lee Doty is not such an author, but rather a talented hack who cannot escape comparisons to Rowling and come out worse for wear. In a very real sense I am tired of discussing this, wish Doty well in all his future endeavors, but will not let it go that his novel drops the ball, not once, but four or five times, and screams out for a brave editor who would have helped this fantasy operator clean up his act. I bought the text on the strength of another customer reviewer who asked, "When was the last time a fat nurse was the hero?" A lesson in here for keeping faith with professional critics, as per my training.

As to my Amazon reviews, I do not write them for the sake of the Common Reader, or to move products with the company, per se, but to keep my critical faculties engaged with the intent of a future project for publication. My distaste for Lee Doty's notable and continued cop outs did not receive the full weight of my intellectual censure, but this is precisely because it was not worth my time and effort to point out its defects. My review is a write off, and not a real effort, and no further exertion on my part will be forthcoming. Doty behaves as if I killed his daughter's teddy bear just to be a bully. Due to this I'll never read another work by him knowingly.