Notes from the Academy

I am amazed at the number of historians whose writing is basically, bottom-line, awful. Sentences go wandering around, passive voice rules, jargon fills every nook and cranny, impenetrable academic-speak and obscurities are the order of the day.

In fact, I’m convinced that most of them secretly want to by Toynbee …who secretly wanted to be Oswald Spengler … who secretly wanted to be one of the German Metaphysicals . . . who secretly wanted to write so badly that no one would notice they didn’t have a single freaking idea in their pointed little heads and were just spouting gibberish for the hell of it.

shoes

I write this (in my head) as I watch a young woman in backless high-heel shoes teeter across a brick courtyard in downtown Boston. She comes within a hair’s breadth of falling at least twice, and then totters unsteadily off along the sidewalk.

I am convinced, now, that the women’s shoe industry is dominated by a sinister conspiracy of orthopedic surgeons drumming up future business, or else of geeky hetero white guys who nobody would date in high school and this is their way of getting revenge on women everywhere.

feathers

J.J. Bittermuch writes me from Hell:

Read in an old Scientific American a while back that some researchers have figured out how to make plastic out of the otherwise useless chicken feathers from poultry-processing plants.

Wonder if we couldn’t do the same thing with left over liberals.

~

And, in almost precisely the same terms.

Sewage treatment and Neoconservatives . . .

But maybe that would come under the heading of hazmat.

There is a species of bully . . .

There is a species of bully . . . most recently manifested as Republicans and Feminists, but found in every age and every movement. . . which starts off with taking a swing at your head with an ice-ax and then, inevitably, dissolves into bewildered fury and cries of “oppression” when you have the audacity to duck.

Blog Whacking

I see in the paper that corporations are beginning to crack down on employees’ private blogs (even when they’re hosted by some other company) because of the possible “legal ramifications” of what the employees might make public.

Oh goody gum drops.

Yet another justification for our masters to muzzle us.

Sort of makes you long for Fascism, doesn’t it? At least it was up front about being a bastard.

I'm back

like it says

Stay Tuned

I'm off to visit my family in New Mexico for a ten days or so. But stay tuned. I'll be back with more drivel soon.

Definitions

Ideology — definition, the learned study of idiots; a field of research whose major question is how can people strive for liberty and well being, and then go out and shoot somebody and giggle. See Fascism, Feminism, Capitalism, Radicalism, Democracy, Vegetarianism, etc.

Female empowerment

J.J. Bittermuch reports from hell:

The woman MBA says proudly: “They’ve found something that will do the work of three men . . . one woman.”

And her corporate master responds with a smile: “And if the silly cow is willing to let us exploit her like that, who are we to object?”

Subalterns

Notes from the academy:

Subaltern historians: in theory, these are (mostly third world) scholars who look at effects on vulnerable cultures of Western colonialism and economic exploitation.

That’s in theory.

In practice it means that the people who were powerful and bloody rich before the British got there, and then got richer and more powerful while the British were there, and own the whole damn country now that the British are gone … announce that they’re victims and you should damn well hurry up with the foreign aid. And while you’re at it, apologize.

In a word . . .

Happy New Year . . .

Let's hope we survive it.