Observed on Twitter @ FED via
Bullaburra is a small town in the state of New South Wales, Australia, in the City of Blue Mountains. It is one of the towns that stretch ... On the south side of Bullaburra, Red Gum Park offers some scope for walks, with ...
Despite some reservations (a little too bro-y for one thing), I really enjoyed David Chang’s Netflix series Ugly Delicious. So I’m happy to see that he’s got a new series coming out called Breakfast, Lunch & Dinner
Clive James recently filled out the Guardian’s “Books That Made Me” questionnaire. I was so struck by his answers—as well as the questions themselves—that I decided to play along:
• The book I am currently reading. John Stangeland’s Warren William: Magnificent Scoundrel of Pre-Code Hollywood.."
Books that made me | About Last Night
21ST CENTURY TREATMENTS: Bedroom booster Viagra offers new hope to cancer patients.
A frat boy might put it like this:
Ashes to ashes
Dust to dust
Life is short
So party we must.
Or in the words of a 1970 beer commercial:
You only go around once in life
So you have to grab for all the gusto you can.
From time to time it is perhaps appropriate that we should relax a little the bonds that tether us to the straight and narrow. A fitting apologia for a bit of indulgence and even overindulgence is found in Seneca, On Tranquillity of Mind, XVII, 8-9, tr. Basore:
At times we ought to reach even the point of intoxication, not drowning ourselves in drink, yet succumbing to it; for it washes away troubles, and stirs the mind from its very depths and heals its sorrow just as it does certain ills of the body; and the inventor of wine is not called the Releaser [Liber, Bacchus] on account of the license it gives to the tongue, but because it frees the mind from bondage to cares and emancipates it and gives it new life and makes it bolder in all that it attempts. But, as in freedom, so in wine there is a wholesome moderation.Sed ut libertatis ita vini salubris moderatio est.. . .
Yet we ought not to do this often, for fear that the mind may contract an evil habit; nevertheless there are times when it must be drawn into rejoicing and freedom, and gloomy sobriety must be banished for a while.
The Champs, Tequila. Arguably unique in that its lyrics consist of exactly one trisyllabic word.
Electric Flag, Wine. Great video of the late Mike Bloomfield and his Gibson Les Paul in their prime, at the Monterey Pop Festival, 1967. Definitive proof that a Jew can play the blues. Cultural appropriation at its finest. We all could profit from more cultural appropriation, blacks especially. Think what they could learn from the kike, the chink, and the honkey, not to mention the dago, the guinea, the greaseball, and the wop.
Canned Heat, Whisky-Headed Woman.
Tommy McClennan, Whisky-Headed Woman, 1939
Doors, Whisky Bar
Buck Owens, Cigarettes, Whisky, and Wild, Wild Women
Cigarettes are a blot on the whole human race
A man is a monkey with one in his face
So gather 'round friends and listen to your brother
A fire on one end, a fool on the other.
Ramblin' Jack Elliot's version
What are you drinking? I'm having me a Whisky Highball, classic, and simplicity itself: ginger ale and your favorite whisky. Mine tonight is Canada Dry ginger ale and Jim Beam bourbon.
Addendum 9/16
David G. writes,
Back when I was working for Google and making crap loads of money, I started sampling high-end bourbon and scotch. Maybe I'm just not a connoisseur, but in my judgement, although some of the 12-year-old Glen's were marginally better than Jack Daniels, none of the bourbons were, and there were several high-end whiskeys that were noticeably worse than Jack, so now that I'm poor, I really don't mind going back to my old friend Jack.Also, as I'm sure you are aware, you can't post a list of songs on the internet and not have someone tell you you missed some. One you probably know:EmmyLou Harris, Two More Bottles of Wineand one you probably don't, unless you follow local Arizona bands:Roger Clyne and the Peacemakers, Jack vs. Jose.
Jack is good enough for me, too, and so is Jose Cuervo Gold, and if you are mixing these bad boys, not with each other mind you, but with, say, ginger ale or tonic water respectively, then there is no call to shell out for the top-shelf hooch which is outrageously overpriced. You don't always get what you pay for. If a snob challlenges your judgment, Dave, arrange a blind taste test.
How to Grow Old and the Question of an Immortality Worth Wanting
Sage advice from Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) who grew old indeed. The best part of his short essay follows:
I think that a successful old age is easiest for those who have strong impersonal interests involving appropriate activities. It is in this sphere that long experience is really fruitful, and it is in this sphere that the wisdom born of experience can be exercised without being oppressive. It is no use telling grownup children not to make mistakes, both because they will not believe you, and because mistakes are an essential part of education. But if you are one of those who are incapable of impersonal interests, you may find that your life will be empty unless you concern yourself with your children and grandchildren. In that case you must realise that while you can still render them material services, such as making them an allowance or knitting them jumpers, you must not expect that they will enjoy your company.
Without a doubt, "strong impersonal interests involving appropriate activities" is the key.
Some old people are oppressed by the fear of death. In the young there there is a justification for this feeling. Young men who have reason to fear that they will be killed in battle may justifiably feel bitter in the thought that they have been cheated of the best things that life has to offer. But in an old man who has known human joys and sorrows, and has achieved whatever work it was in him to do, the fear of death is somewhat abject and ignoble. The best way to overcome it -so at least it seems to me- is to make your interests gradually wider and more impersonal, until bit by bit the walls of the ego recede, and your life becomes increasingly merged in the universal life.
An individual human existence should be like a river: small at first, narrowly contained within its banks, and rushing passionately past rocks and over waterfalls. Gradually the river grows wider, the banks recede, the waters flow more quietly, and in the end, without any visible break, they become merged in the sea, and painlessly lose their individual being. The man who, in old age, can see his life in this way, will not suffer from the fear of death, since the things he cares for will continue. And if, with the decay of vitality, weariness increases, the thought of rest will not be unwelcome. I should wish to die while still at work, knowing that others will carry on what I can no longer do and content in the thought that what was possible has been done.[from “Portraits From Memory And Other Essays”]
The second paragraph raises deep and difficult questions. The philosopher in me has often entertained, with considerable hospitality, the thought that an immortality worth wanting must involve a transcending of the petty and personal ego, the self that separates us from other selves and the world. An immortality worth wanting must involve a sloughing off of the petty self and a merging into an impersonal, universal, transcendental awareness of impersonal Platonica including eternal truths, changeless essences, absolute values, and noble ideals. Those philosophers of a predominantly theoretical bent will be attracted to this conception reminiscent as it is of Aristotle'sbios theoretikos as exemplified in its highest instance, noesis noeseos.
"But then you would no longer exist! You would be swallowed up in death, the greatest calamity of them all." To this objection I had a ready reply: "It all depends on who I am in the innermost core of my selfhood; if I am in truth the eternal Atman, and not this indigent and limited psychophysical complex; if I am the transcendental witness self, then I will not cease to exist. In the measure that I identify with that deathless, impersonal awareness of eide and Wahrheiten an sich, I am proof against extinction by the body's death. I will merge at last with the sea of transcendental awareness which is my true self and give up my false petty individuality for a greater individuality, that of the Absolute.
That is one strand, the monistic strand, in my thinking about selfhood and immortality. It dominated my thinking in my twenties and thirties.
But another is the personalist strand which takes very seriously the reality of persons in the plural and the possibility of deep I-Thou (as opposed to I-It) relations between persons and between a finite person and the ultimate person, the First Person, if you will, God.
On both conceptions there is a distinction between the true self and the false self. Controversy erupts over the nature of the true self. Is it trans-individual, or is it individuated? Is there one true self or many? Are we to aspire to an obliteration of the individual self or to its transformation? On neither conception is survival the schlepping on of the crass and carnal earthly self. Is the death of the individual a great calamity or is it a benign release into true selfhood? The controversy is ancient.Ramanuja to Shankara: I don't want to become sugar; I want to taste sugar!
As for Lord Russell, he would not have spoken of the eternal Atman, but he was a convinced atheist and mortalist. He was sure his individual consciousness would cease at death. But this did not bother him because the objects of his ultimate concern were impersonal. "The things I care for will continue, and others will carry on what I can no longer do."
This record-breaking pumpkin is heavier than a small car and big enough to fit inside CNN
This record-breaking pumpkin is heavier than a small car and big enough to fit inside CNN
