gift horse

With some drawn-out days left yet before the inaugeration, Obama's repeated proclamation that there is to be only one seated president at a time is a little sore sounding. The present seated president seems rather ineffectual as the world is exploded, froze, folded, spindled, mutilated around him, and Obama's silence strikes me much like the brooding of Achilles--his refusal to join the fight nearly costing the Greeks their victory in Troy.

Hanseatic or A Fistful of Hamas

A very mere few of the gurus and soothsayers, jilted and can't be bothered, saw this one coming: that rather than celebrating another calendar-brand holiday, like the two decade old anniversary of the collapse of the Soviet Union, which incidentally was caused in part by unsustainably cheap petroleum prices wrought by changes in the way Arab states sell fuel despite the pretenders to its overthrow, we're instead looking at absolute financial-meltdown, carnage and dreaded reevaluation. Is this the bequest of Hope, the yes-we-can? The next president of the United States of America may have been handed a much-diminished superpower, which never was that much different than the Soviet Union (though neither party would want to hear that). Both sulking monsters and accomdations of survival--of unity. Now the whole world is going insane. There is nothing new under the sun, but now American empire tilts on the brink, surreptitious wars are raised, and those on the sidelines, like powerhouse Germany, say they had little to do in causing the problem and should therefore suffer lesser consequences. The former may be resoundingly true, but the latter has dire consequences.

übermensch

I know I said that New Year's resolutions struck me as somewhat wanting, lest I revisit the dreaded diary or smoking cessation program, but I imagine they're worth a second look. It would be something if we could resolve to be less human, less fallible--or at least not to forget the lessons that we've already learned. In other aspects of life, belief, people can turn to dogma, a simple set of axioms as guiding principles in religion, philosophy, business-style, since no one of us can keep all the rules in our heads at one time. There's not really something dogmatic for relationships--thank goodness--there are no adherents, at least none that I would like to meet or mimic, of this or that school of matrimonial success. Without dogma, every one of us is allowed to treat each other as unique, forgiving and forgetful, even though the occasional lapse.

coke social

It’s entertaining sometimes to skim over the shipwrecks of social networking sites—Web 2.0, and find abandoned or severely neglected homepages, blogs and photography collections. I’d like to think most of these things, like my inactive mySpace presence, littered with unread posts, die these quiet deaths because they’ve served their purpose or have been made obsolete. I hope people give up because they’ve found their perfect match and aren’t much interested in braving the wilds of the Internet dating-scene anymore. Those posts and comments do keep coming in periodically, unread but loyally broadcast for holidays and birthdays by a small tribe of true-believers (those hold-outs for landing the dream job or landing the right person by the merits of their profiles), which seems like sad, vindictive graffiti peppered on some forgotten monument to a forgotten cause or decorating a dozing relative with Christmas garland.