fever's gonna catch you when the bitch gets back

What was known as "feeling insecure" in the Seventies, became known instead as "low self-esteem" during the Eighties (Oprah-influenced).

One day I heard someone say, "Low self-esteem is the root of all evil" and it was sort of like an epiphany.  Like -- wow, could you actually have an over-arching, sound understanding of the nature of evil by understanding such a simple, short sentence?

"Low self-esteem is the root of all evil." 
The man who said this was on the TV show "Northern Exposure" -- he was a Native American -- I think it was the actor Graham Greene ("Thunderheart"; "Dances With Wolves")....

He makes that statement,
"Low self-esteem is the root of all evil,"
and the other person reacts like he doesn't quite get it,
and
Greene's character continues, with a clipped, brisk cadence:
"You-think-Hit-ler-liked-him-self??"

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
"Do you think
that

Hitler

liked himself?"

Now there was a question I had never contemplated.

But I caught up to what he meant, and thought about it sometimes, later....
Like -- when a person tries to --
put down,
or
hold down,
or
press down

people around them,
sometimes it's because the person --
the presser --
is trying to be the "top" --

only they're going about it sort of "back-ass-wards" -- instead of trying to be

successful,
or
to do well,
by
Doing Well --
i.e., Working Hard and Well,
Focusing, and
Putting One's Mind to it, in a Positive Way
and

truly

accomplishing something --

instead, they try to be
"the top"
by putting others
"down."

Which doesn't work and that tends to make them angrier, leading to
Downward spiral.

----------------------- These notes are connected to something else that occurs to me semi-frequently:  the idea of ever being "better" than anyone is, like, such a total fallacy, and yet there are unfortunately people who spend
precious
and
finite
reserves of Time and Energy attempting to show that they are "better" than someone.

All bigotry and
most
meanness is based on that.

And the thing is, no one is "better" because you can always switch the criteria.

If I stand next to a man I know, and a panel of judges was supposed to compare us and decide which one of us was "better" than the other, well -- how would they decide?

If being female is "better" than being male,
then they would have to decide that I was better.

If being a man is "better" than being a woman,
then the judges would say he was better.

If the person is better who knows more of Bob Dylan's music,
then I would be better.

If the criteria is, Who can weld better (or at all)
then he would be "better."

Ping-pong:
I win.

Motorcycle-riding:
he wins.

Gray hair:
he's better.

Highlighted hair:
I'm "better."

This is what I'm saying, the entire concept of being "better" is an endless cornucopia of meaningless mindlessness, a waste of human resources -- i.e., Time, Energy, Money, whatever.

=============== There, humankind!  It's the second week of April and I've done away with bigotry and meanness and evil.  Granted, those aren't easy jobs, but someone had to do it.

You're welcome.

(Now, need Diet Coke....)

-30-

the rugs of time

Leadership and Motivation
(or, Doing the Opposite of What Works)

'Twas the season
for unreason
When action countered
the comprehended policy
and made them wonder
what was under
the fuss and fumble,
pills and mumble
The smirk, the smug
Words and money
swept under the rug
and
Time-wasting
poor-tasting
ego-basting
group-sits,
commanded,
mandated,
Scheduled, demanded,
and insisted upon by same delinquent that cried, "get business!" how could they get it, when fungus used up all their time and energy on demoralizing room-fuls of Nothing, striving to engender controversy between people who should have been team-mates encouraging one another, saying with a satisfied leer after a near physical fight, "That's been coming for a long time!"

"It'll never change."
"I haven't had a raise in ten years."
"They don't feel better than you."
"It'll ne-e-e-eh-ver change."

Pessimism institutionalized;
hopelessness running amok

"the best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity"
-- W.B. Yeats

---------------------------

-30-

what's not to like?

"Sometimes critics don't realize how critical they are,"

Tina Turner said in an interview she gave, either in the late 80s or early 90s.  It was a funny sentence, and I could totally understand what she meant, I thought.

"Criticism" is a multi-faceted -- or at least several-faceted --

specimen?

phenomenon?

practice?

area?

thing?

There are people who are paid regularly for a job, a career, in doing Criticism.
Writing

reviews

of movies, books, plays, ballets, all kinds of arts.

So you think of that, and then the idea of "Criticism" seems like a useful, valid -- thing....

But -- take Criticism and start applying it to the person you're married to, and then save up all the Successes you have -- on the head of a pin ... (!) ...

---------------------------------
We're talking about two different kinds of Criticism.

1 is where someone is telling someone else that they're doing things wrong.
The other is where you're writing a review of something and you're talking about it.  And you could be talking all-good about it.  Like -- if I was a Movie Critic, I could write a review of a movie and say all good (fantastic!) things about it, and I would still be a "Critic."  My review would still come under the heading of "criticism."

on-line dictionary
criticism
1.  the act of passing judgment as to the merits of anything
2.  the act of passing severe judgment; censure; fault-finding
3.  the act or art of analyzing and evaluating or judging the quality of a literary or artistic work, musical performance, art exhibit, dramatic production, etc.
4.  a critical comment, article, or essay; critique

we can see -- two different kinds of criticism;

Item 2 is one kind of criticism;
Items 1, 3, and 4 refer to the other kind -- where you are a theater critic, or a book critic.

The criticism Tina Turner referred to in that interview was, some writers had railed that she had gone away from her R & B roots.
(She can sing whatever she wants to leave her alone!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! would have been my answer....They NEVER run this s--t by me!!!!!!!!!!)

============
When I read criticism, sometimes I see things I would criticize.  (Can you review a Review?  Can you criticize Critics?)

Three things I've determined are Not (legitimate) Criticism:
-- Making fun of the work
-- Taking a snotty attitude toward the artist, personally
-- Gratuitous bitching about the art and/or the artist

and another tendency with which I disagree -- I think it's unproductive, unedifying, and limiting to the writer or commenter himself -- is a tendency to try to "balance" positive points with negative ones.
("Okay I've said three nice things about the concert, now I have to come up with three negative things to say.  To -- make it, uhm, even. ...)  No, there's no necessity to make it "even." 

"It was a great concert have a nice day."
That can be my Review.
I don't have to throw in, "But with the song Bob Dylan's 115th Dream, I believe it would have been better if he'd sung it 30 seconds longer...."  No, ya don't have to do that.

----------------------------------
When Emily Bronte's novel, Wuthering Heights, was published in 1847 critics didn't know what to think of it.  The word "strange" got a work-out:

(The Examiner):  "This is a strange book."
(Douglas Jerrold's Weekly Newspaper)  "Wuthering Heights is a strange sort of book, -- baffling all regular criticism...."
(Atlas):  "Wuthering Heights is a strange, inartistic story.  There are evidences in every chapter of a sort of rugged power -- an unconscious strength -- which the possessor seems never to think of turning to the best advantage."

And -- some of the reviews, themselves, got a little "strange."...

------------  (Graham's Lady's Magazine):  "How a human being could have attempted such a book as the present without committing suicide before he had finished a dozen chapters, is a mystery.  It is a compound of vulgar depravity and unnatural horrors..." 

["sometimes critics don't realize how critical they are"....]

=== (North British Review):  "...The only consolation which we have in reflecting upon it is that it will never be generally read."
==========  lol  they assign it in school, to this day - !

--------------------------
-- "It goes to show you never can tell."
Chuck Berry

-30-

there's no one in the place

It's

quarter to three

There's no one in the place

except you and me

So, set 'em up, Joe --
I got a little story
you ought to know--

we're drinking, my friend,
to the end
of a brief episode

Make it one for my baby,
and one more
for the
road.

I got the routine, so drop another
nickel --
in the machine

I'm feeling so bad,
wish you'd make the music
pretty and sad.

Could tell you a lot,
but you've got to be
true to your code

So make it one for my baby
and one more for the road

You'd never know it
but buddy,
I'm a kind of poet
And I got a lot of things
to say

And when I'm gloomy,
you simply got to listen to me
'Til it's all talked away...

Well that's how it goes,
and Joe,
I know you're getting
pretty anxious to close

So thanks for the cheer,
I hope you didn't mind
my bending your ear

This torch that I found
must be drowned
or it soon might
explode

So make it
one for my baby,
and one more
for the road.

That long,

long

road. ...

---------------------------------
{"One for My Baby (and One More for the Road)"
written / Harold Arlen and Johnny Mercer
for the musical film, The Sky's the Limit (1943).
First performed:  in the film, by Fred Astaire.
Popularized by Frank Sinatra.  Sinatra recorded it multiple times:  1947, Columbia Records; 1954, Young at Heart soundtrack album; 1958, Frank Sinatra Sings for Only the Lonely; 1962, Sinatra & Sextet:  Live in Paris; 1966, Sinatra at the Sands; 1993, for his Duets album.}

Harold Arlen's biographer said the song is "musically inevitable, rhythmically insistent, and in that mood of 'metropolitan melancholic beauty' that writer John O'Hara finds in all of Arlen's music."

---------------------------- ...that's how it goes...

-30-

we'll always have Paris

In the film Play It Again Sam, the protagonist, Allan Felix, is this insecure guy who's trying to get over a divorce and date new women.

He gets advice and direction from Humphrey Bogart -- well, not actually, but in the mind of the Allan Felix character, he turns to Humphrey Bogart in one of the typical roles he played -- Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon, Rick Blaine in Casablanca, and similar strong, knowing characters in To Have and Have Not, The Big Sleep, Key Largo, and others.

The Bogart character appears in the room -- we, the audience, can see and hear him, and we understand that while Allan Felix also can hear and see Bogart, other characters in the movie cannot.

When Allan Felix is thinkng of putting his arm around the shoulders of a woman who's sitting next to him on a sofa, "Bogart" materializes at the end of the davenport and tells Allan, "Now move over closer to her."

Allan:  "How close?"

Bogart:  "The length of your lips."

---------------------------------
Tried imagining the icons I look up to -- what if they materialized in the room with me, periodically, and gave me directions?

Tina Turner:  "Keep working; your dreams can come true!"

Princess Diana:  "Focus on your goals. Locate your inner confidence."

Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis:  "Keep writing -- I can't wait to read your first book!"

"Now, click your heels together -- three times...." -- no, wait -- that's something else....

-30-

shake, rattle, and roll

                                evening


Dark
of the early part of night,
charcoal-and-navy blend:

Respite, to the worker;

oppression, to the desperate;

cover, for the sneak;

Atmosphere, to the romantic;

Peace, for the writer, or present-wrapper;

reflection-time, in Ohio;

porch-swing time, in Kentucky;

cocktail-time, in New York;
Coffee-and-work-reading-time, in Washington;
in the world's unsafe un-free trouble-spots, running-time

----------------------

-30-

a loftier level

In E.F. Benson's 6-volume series of "Lucia" novels, after Elizabeth Mapp and her friend Benjy plan to win the Mayoral election, Lucia runs, and wins.  ("Mapp is livid.") 

Mayor Lucia, having heard of a local man's misfortune and stress, tries a Mayor-Bloomberg-like move -- get people to stop gambling.  (This made me think of the NYC mayor's efforts to outlaw sales of very large cans of soda pop....)

Lucia's micro-crusade is not to make a law against it, but to make a small change:  she herself will refrain from gambling -- "leading by example."

--------------------- [excerpt]------------   "I want to consult you, Georgie," she said.  "Ever since the Hampshire Argus reported that I played bridge in Diva's cardroom, the whole question has been on my mind.  I don't think I ought to play for money."

"You can't call threepence a hundred money," said Georgie.

"It is not a large sum, but emphatically it is money.  It's the principle of the thing.  A very sad case -- all this is very private -- has just come to my notice.  Young Twistevant, the grocer's son, has been backing horses, and is in debt with his last quarter's rent unpaid.  Lately married and a baby coming.  All the result of gambling."

"I don't see how the baby is the result of gambling," said Georgie.  "Unless he bet he wouldn't have one."

Lucia gave the wintry smile that was reserved for jokes she didn't care about.

"I expressed myself badly," she said.  "I only meant that his want of money, when he will need it more than ever, is the result of gambling.  The principle is the same whether it's threepence or a starving baby.  And bridge surely, with its call both on prudence and enterprise, is a sufficiently good game to play for love:  for love of bridge.  Let us set an example.  When we have our next bridge party, let it be understood that there are no stakes."

"I don't think you'll get many bridge parties if that's understood," said Georgie.  "Everyone will go seven no-trumps at once."

"Then they'll be doubled," cried Lucia triumphantly.

"And redoubled.  It wouldn't be any fun.  Most monotonous.  The dealer might as well pick up his hand and say seven no-trumps, doubled and redoubled, before he looked at it."

"I hope we take a more intelligent interest in the game than that," said Lucia.  "The judgment in declaring, the skill in the play of the cards, the various systems so carefully thought out -- surely we shan't cease to practise them just because a few pence are no longer at stake?  Indeed, I think we shall have far pleasanter games.  They will be more tranquil, and

on a loftier level. 

The question of even a few pence sometimes produces acrimony."

"I can't agree," said Georgie.  "Those acrimonies are the result of pleasant excitement.  And what's the use of keeping the score, and wondering if you dare finesse, if it leads to nothing?  You might try playing for twopence a hundred instead of threepence--"

"I must repeat that it's the principle," interrupted Lucia.  "I feel that in my position it ought to be known that though I play cards, which I regard as quite a reasonable relaxation, I no longer play for money.  I feel sure we should find it just as exciting.  Let us put it to the test...."

======================= ...A gloom fell on the party as they cut for partners.  ...Only Lucia remained keen and critical.  She tried with agonised anxiety to recollect if there was another trump in and decided wrong.

"Too stupid of me, Padre," she said.  "I ought to have known.  I should have drawn it....quite inexcusable.  Many apologies."

"Eh, it's no matter...."

Then came the adding-up.  Georgie had not kept the score, and everyone accepted Lucia's addition without a murmur.  At half past ten, instead of eleven, it was agreed that it was wiser not to begin another rubber, and Georgie saw the languid guests to the door.  He came back to find Lucia replaying the last hand.

"You could have got another trick, dear," she said.  "Look; you should have discarded instead of trumping.  A most interesting maneuver.  As to our test, I think they were both quite as keen as ever, and for myself I never had a more enjoyable game."


The news of this depressing evening spread apace through Tilling....
-------------------- [end excerpt]

=================
{Trouble for Lucia.  E.F. Benson.  Copyright 1939.  Doubleday Doran.}

-30-