Epic Quotes IX & X

“Judging from what is happening in Russia and China, and even Vietnam, communist and capitalist societies eventually seem have one thing in common – the DNA of their dreams. After their revolutions, after building socialist societies that millions of workers and peasants paid for with their lives, both countries now have begun to reverse some of the gains of their revolutions and have turned into unbridled capitalist economies. For them, too, the ability to consume has become the yardstick by which progress is measured. For this kind of “progress” you need industry. To feed the industry you need a steady supply of raw material. For that, you need mines, dams, domination, colonies, war. Old powers are waning, new ones rising. Same story, different characters – rich countries plundering poor ones. Yesterday it was Europe and America, today it’s India and China. Maybe tomorrow it will be Africa. Will there be a tomorrow? Perhaps it’s too late to ask, but then hope has little to do with reason.”

“The first step towards reimagining a world gone terribly wrong would be to stop the annihilation of those who have a different imagination – an imagination that is outside of capitalism as well as communism. An imagination which has an altogether different understanding of what constitutes happiness and fulfilment. To gain this philosophical space, it is necessary to concede some physical space for the survival of those who may look like the keepers of our past, but who may really be the guides to our future. To do this, we have to ask our rulers: Can you leave the water in the rivers? The trees in the forest? Can you leave the bauxite in the mountain? If they say cannot, then perhaps they should stop preaching morality to the victims of their wars.”

Arundhati Roy, Walking with the Comrades

A Poem Written in Six Minutes

I think a lot of home,

And a lot about the past,

I contemplate what I’ll do,

What things that I know now

will last.

My mind runs miles

Around sodden, weary tracks.

What ifs, what mays, forgotten smiles

And even if I could go back,

What of that?

I have nothing to regret, other than the fact

That time and thought play tricks upon us all.

(I can’t help that, but regret it just the same)

I think a lot of home, and past

And know of course that what is gone is gone,

But keep thinking anyway.

 

 

 

 

Office Working, Harvard Graduating Comic Book Author, Apparently Just an All-Around Amazing Person Celebrity Date Attempt: Rashida Jones

Rashida,

I’m listening to The Knife’s new album right now, and holy hell, I feel like I’m watching Salad Fingers on acid, only scarier somehow. Also, any chance you would like to get bagels or whiskey sometime?

Yeah, sure, that sounds like I’m asking you out on a date, but its more like a provisional invitation, to, I don’t know, whatever people do together at dinner. Did you see the thing about President Obama?! Calling that woman attractive?! What is this world coming to when a man, enjoying gender privileges bestowed by almost the entirety of recorded human civilization, can’t call a woman hot in public, in front of crowds, the nation, the press, and almost the whole of planet earth? It’s almost as if women are subjected to an entirely different and arbitrary set of expectations while trying to achieve career goals; expectations that are buttressed by thousands of years of malignant intellectual justification and pseudo-science, bigoted legal precedent, and plain old stupidity.

I mean, I saw the remarks, and the defensive posturing amongst the blogs which followed: they were very dumb, and echoed the almost insufferable MRA advocates who descend upon online forums I actually enjoy Gawker (sometimes), The Atlantic, Salon, American Thinker (kidding!), etc., whenever these types of things are discussed. I could make an enormous list of things that are absurd, harmful blots upon the world, but to briefly indulge this foray into dissatisfaction: what would I abolish immediately? Here’s a short list:

1) The Cato Institute – thanks for providing intellectual, theoretical, and faux-historical cover for an entire galaxy of retrograde policies designed to do little more than transform the entire globe into a dystopian blend of Randian anti-statism and Snowcrash corporate balkanization.

2) Rand Paul – he is in ‘ascendance’ now, because he yelled about drones (to block Obama’s appointment of John Brennan (Thanks Andrew Johnson, I am forced to admit that you were right, I’m not sure why I was arguing for altruism in this case, it was probably the rum)). He adheres to a political theology that barely exceeds the logical and moral capacities of a 2nd grader and is somehow treated as a serious thinker.

3) Every word in the English language beginning with ‘quant-”, only because this piece of legitimate verbiage has been hijacked and sullied by a nefarious band of terminological pirates, intent on transforming longstanding pieces of the human linguistic tradition into technologically and financially utopian buzzwords.

4) Mitch McConnell. I will always despise this man.

5) Jonah Goldberg. Yeah, sure, he’s not that important anymore, and he has been roundly and justly destroyed in many an article already. But still, his ponderous stupidity makes him worthy of abolition.

6) Applebees Inc. This one doesn’t really need an explanation.

There’s a quick list of things that should be stricken from this earth with all deliberate speed. I guess I don’t have much else to to add and hope this brief letter offers at least some small way to interpret my character, even if I’m a random internet guy who is willing to try and make a spectacle out of asking celebrities to do things, those ‘things’, in every case, being coffee or sandwiches or tall glasses of bourbon and other mundane stuff. Let me know!

Cheers,

Devin

The Great Wall, and Fog

I spent the day on the Jiankou section of the Great Wall with an informal group of hiking enthusiasts. Jiankou is a steep, hilly, unrestored stretch about an hour and a half outside Beijing. Visibility was nil, fifty feet or so, but if you hiked fast and got out beyond the conversation of the main group, stopped, and listened, it was like being in the woods during a snowstorm. Eerie quiet, excepting birds and wind.

Epic Quotes VIII

“As the Secretary General of the United Nations, an organization of the 147 member states who represent almost all of the human inhabitants of the planet Earth. I send greetings on behalf of the people of our planet. We step out of our solar system into the universe seeking only peace and friendship, to teach if we are called upon, to be taught if we are fortunate. We know full well that our planet and all its inhabitants are but a small part of this immense universe that surrounds us and it is with humility and hope that we take this step.”

- The Golden Record, 1977 (yes, I know about Kurt Waldheim’s controversial service in the Wehrmacht)

A Postcard to Congressman Eric Cantor

What’s up Eric!

The depth and breadth of your willful stupidity is simply incredible. In fact, if I ever in my life achieve anything with such virtuosic totality as you have proud ignorance I will be happy.

- Cheers

Devin

 

 

A Postcard to the New York Times

Oh Sea, I am lonely like you, I am strange and far like you, I am sorrowful like you, my brain, my heart, my life, like yours have touched strange shores. 

 

A Postcard to Senator Mitch McConnell

Hi Mitch

Have you ever woken up in the morning, gotten dressed, looked yourself in the mirror before setting out to work on demolishing women’s rights, hating poor people via cruel policy decisions, and denying basic climatological facts and thought, “Man, you know what, I’m a huge gaping asshole”?

Cheers,

- Devin

What’s Up Man: Llewelyn Moss

Llewelyn,

What’s up sir. Hey, wanna go shooting sometime? I’m not actually that good, but my brother and father are pretty good. I’ve seen both of them hit a penny with an air loaded pellet rifle from about 20-30 yards, scopeless. It was a Sears brand rifle too, the kind that leaked if you primed the chamber more than 3 or 4 times (we were really young, and always primed it more, because we were stupid). Anyway, I’m kinda pissed at the Coen brothers, they killed you off before the ultimate confrontation, before the mano-a-mano battle of you vs. Chigurh. You were gunned down by a bunch of trigger happy drug runners; an end totally un-befitting a man so obviously versed in combat and clearly a survivor of some heavy Vietnam shit. You didn’t deserve that.

You should have faced off against Chigurh and you should have, would have, won, but maybe, perhaps, the movie would have lost something if that had happened, I don’t really know, I’m not a critic, all I know is I wanted to see you dismantle Chigurh and affirm all my unjustifiable lone-hero fantasies in what would have been the most spectacular, suspenseful example of that genre to date. A la: “I’m gonna make you my special project”. That didn’t happen, obviously, but I am still in awe of Moss. Compassionate yet cutthroat, invincible yet vulnerable, seemingly omniscient but fatally flawed, he is a perfect hero/villain. Greedy, but only greedy because he is ultra competitive, and skilled, holy hell his skills, his intuitive grasp of situations and implications and real world tasks. He can weld anything, he’s trained in reconnaissance, self defense, short and long range firearms, he’s a problem solver and pragmatic wizard, a man amongst men. A patient, intelligent, unstoppable force of one, just as all my wildest self-indulgent dreams would have it. Until of course he gets Uzi-ed in a hotel pool because his mother accidentally betrayed his location.

So yeah man, lets chill sometime, drink a bud heavy or two and sit on buckets near a campfire in almost total silence (I imagine this would be your choice of activity) and maybe I’ll soak up some of that steely invincibility, that cold and almost impossible ability to focus on the task at hand, and then maybe I’ll quit wasting days on end on facebook, or ‘new media’ sites, or lamenting how much time I waste at said locations. Perhaps I’ll shed my tiresome twenty year old laments about ‘meaning’ and hone in on a skill and do it well, for decades. Perhaps, that is, if you’re willing to hang out.

Cheers,

Devin

Ghost Plagued Osama Hunting Dedicated Screen and Stage Performing Celebrity Date Attempt: Jessica Chastain

All the world’s a stage,

And all the men and women merely players:

They have their exits and their entrances;

And one man in his time plays many parts,

Like running off to Beijing, China

In response to prevailing economic conditions in the United States.

Or the navel gazing twenty something, ‘trying to find himself’

As an undergrad, then in grad school, oh and wandering the Indochinese Peninsula.

Or as the facebook political freedom fighter, posting and resposting links

To articles, so many articles, valiantly spreading knowledge – from home,

Far from the noisome crowds, and I mean, seriously, its cold and rainy out there

How can anybody effectively protest in this weather?

And of course the artist, the ‘creative’, the culturally in-tune,

The guy who listened to Of Monsters and Men when that video,

‘Little Talks’, had less than a million views.

Or the rugged fly-fishing bearded snowboarder dude, conquering actively volcanic Indonesian peaks for breakfast,

And radio-tagging great white sharks off the South African coast right before having sandwiches for a late lunch.

I don’t know, that guy might not be real. Anyway, the point is:

Wanna go get half-price tapas and wine sometime? Like, together?

Sans Instagram, sans professional sports, sans popular television programming references, sans everything (except:

Traditional spanish appetizers, a city of some sort, other patrons, a livable atmosphere, gravitational fields, The electro-magnetic spectrum, the two of us, etc.)

Cheers,

Devin