The reason this statement from the opening of Stevens’ dissent in the Heller decision struck me as interesting was for having echoed his earlier complaint in Citizen’s United (and Ginsburg’s in Shelby?) that the court was in breech of arbitrarily overturning a previous opinion of the court (of stare decisis )…. Stevens says this with some justice, I feel, and wonder if a loose respect for precedent will become a regular feature of the Roberts Court.

Some interesting Blood Meridian ideas in these lectures (1) (2). To build out the Moby Dick comparison a little more: the Glanton Gang like the Pequod; the taking of scalps like the taking of blubber; the almost total absence of women of in both; both having had a historical basis and relying on secondhand sources; (both maybe, who knows, a combination of history and personal history); the idiot and Pip; the westward motion; the philosophical sermonizing; the Delewares and the crew of Ahab’s whaleboat; (in general: the Glanton Gang and Pequod crew are both a rag tag, mixed-race, mixed-nationality group)…. On the other hand: what is the “white whale” of Blood Meridian? The monomania is equivalent but toward what, in Blood Meridian, is it directed? Blood itself?

I didn’t find convincing the lecturer’s arguments that the kid was not a moral figure or that the Judge, at the conclusion, is somehow celebrating his existence as an enduring literary character,– and her talk about the syntax of the bible I thought to be reaching — nevertheless

Hejinian’s My Life if carried to the extreme, would be an amalgam of lives, our lives (maybe a Democratic Response to Plutarch’s Lives) (‘I’ would be a node in the demotic net, ‘I’ would be simply one of the many many security cameras, however not necessarily meant for security, possibly meant for something antagonistic to security — meant for comedy, for example):

Each ‘Life’ written in the same manner, with the same style and ‘I’, or ‘voice’. but from a different security camera view point– it would probably wind up as, most of all, the editor’s life. (I guess: the ‘Life’ of a true democracy would be the combined but edited input of all these cameras).

I say this would be My Life carried to the extreme because Hejinian I think strives in her book for a sort of Democracy of the moments of her life (but this is more something the book has made me think rather than something I’m sure she herself thinks) and that such a democracy suggests a further mingling of her atoms of moments of life with others’ atoms of moments of life. That all atoms of Life would be comprised by Our Life. My life may look different from yours but not so the atoms of our lives, which are the essential building blocks of life.

Clarify: the more we say that one moment of our life is no different from another — for example, our birthday the same as someone else’s birthday, or the moment we take out the trash, from the moment we give birth to a child, (or establish a true relationship with a child)– the more we say that our life is another’s –: the more all moments are equally valuable, the more all people are equally ourselves.

Konso (Received a necklace from friend M. said to be from Konso. Konso people.)

It was as if, he thought, the print within quotes meant and sounded the same as the print outside of the quotes, the print in italics like the print without italics, the words inside like those outside his head.… Slotation: Back Into Balance

Oregon black exclusion laws: The law authorized a punishment for any black settler remaining in the territory to be whipped with “not less than twenty nor more than thirty-nine stripes” for every six months they remained.

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Then, drinking, he discovered suddenly that no more of the liquid was entering his mouth. Swallowing, it was no longer passing down his throat, his throat and mouth filled now with a solid and unmoving column which without reflex or revulsion sprang, columnar and intact and still retaining the mold of his gullet, outward glinting in the moonlight, splintering, vanishing in the myriad murmur of the dewed grass. He drank again. Again his throat merely filled solidly until two icy rills ran from his mouth-corners; again the intact column sprang slivering, glinting, shivering, while he panted the chill of air into his throat, the jug poised before his mouth while he spoke to it: “Awright. Ah’m ghy try you again. Soon as you makes up yo mind to stay whar I puts you, Ah’ll leff you alone.” He drank, dilling his gullet for the third time and lowered the jug one instant ahead of the bright intact repetition, panting, indrawing the cool of air until he could breathe.”

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“It’s like there’s a desire to be alienated—a desire to have a translation which you won’t quite understand, and that that will make you feel somehow closer to a language you don’t know.” Comment from Emily Wilson.

Of the desire to be alienated, I wonder if the existence of television provides one explanation: if television is the essence of the non-alienating, of the seducing, then you expect from things of real value, things like the Odyssey, a certain amount of inaccessability, of being alienating.

Sort of reminds of a news item from a few weeks ago: there was a report that found that people shared “fake-news” stories far more than real news stories. Why, because, fake news is entertainment, suprising and amazing and something you want to have others see, while true news is boring and complicated often and perhaps something you’d prefer to forget.

Therefore, a sort of prejudice evolves that the truth will be boring and beyond you, when you’re looking for the true and for things that are serious.

marshal yardarm tassle-bolt… poem

Question: Was the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia in the mid/late 90’s authorized by the U.N?

Something I remember of that time: Republicans were saying it was a “wag-the-dog” type operation and that Clinton was trying, by means of this bombing, to distract the U.S. public from the Monica Lewinsky affair; meanwhile there was a general awareness that Rwanda had occurred earlier in the decade and that Western Powers had done nothing about that but really ought to have done something about that. There was an analaogy in the minds of many people of the West between Rwanda and Kosovo, I think is fair to say. I feel like the term “boots on the ground” may also have originated or gained currency during that time, Republicans having argued that an air war by itself couldn’t achieve anything; what you really needed was “boots on the ground.” (Here is ngrams viewer for boots on the ground. Here is ngrams viewer for Somalia,Rwanda. boots on the ground,Black Hawk Down)

Answer to foregoing question: apparently not: the bombing was not authorized by the U.N., which was a fact that arose during a dispute I had with a very pro-russian person, who sought to compare the Russian invasion of Crimea with the NATO bombing of Kosovo and environs, an idea that seemed wrong and even incredible to me on the face of it, but which I didn’t recall enough about to confidently deny.

This surprised me: Although it was the largest nuclear disaster since the Chernobyl disaster of 1986, and the radiation released exceeded official safety guidelines, there were no casualties officially reported to be caused by radiation exposure.

It was roughly the same size and weight as a Volkswagen Beetle, though flatter in shape… Glyptodon

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(36?) Just saw the movie Guadalcanal Diary in which, at one point, the character named Taxi cries out (transcribed exactly this way in the subtitles) “Yahoo! Mail.” Making me wonder if this could pertain to the origin of the free email service by that name: Wikipedia says not.

The spasm of any muscle is what Kundera understood as excitement, erection, “sin”; if these spasms can be slowed, they can be stopped, “sin” will be slowed and stopped… August

bubbles circles rings circles bubbles eyes cupped rings… to be read as if the words could not be combined into phrases.

Odysseus,Ulysses… I observe with interest that “Odysseus” begins meaningfully to spike right after the publication of Ulysses (1922).

Créer un poncif, cest le génie.
Je dois créer un poncif. –Baudelaire

vibora… “Aeroméxico investiga presencia de víbora en avión” (Informador)