roasted chestnuts after midnight

(wisdom from the fly on the wall*)

The death of the big family and the kids we raise now as mercenaries. And the pressure we put on them. Falling births means overparenting, and now mothers and fathers act as agents for their kids and act as their servants.

Linguistic revolution and the meaninglessness of a secret—JRS

More we understand the more we belittle the object of our understanding. When puzzled we are silent. You can tell when someone doesn’t understand something—he refuses to ask questions.

Raising your kids in this place would be a crime.

Leaves rustling in the wood is all I hear.

The perfect nose on blondie. Red’s got a new purse to talk about. Why do I feel for these? God help the middle class.

And the folks you choose to surround yourself with. Marnie why are you so angry?

‘The pen is mightier than the sword’—I guess those with pens would benefit from this truism and its attendant moral weight.

Be wary of those who say everything can be reduced to just one thing. They are bitter and have no imagination.

The Daedalus inventions to get us closer to the sun, and it was Roosevelt in a wheelchair, and Churchill in his big fat top hat that saved our asses, and how do we repay them, by making Kennedy/Clinton our new god and it is the image’s victory over the word, and the end of reason except as a provider of another false image... and to fill the void we make reality shows ha ha whatever that’s not reality, nothing could be more controlled, like rats in a cage, a controlled experiment, and experimental television follows so soon after experimental science, and neither can replace the power of the imagination.

It is not power that scares us but awareness of power on the part of the possessor; our uncertainty over whether it would be abused.

But why should anyone punish the powerful? Those with power to punish will rarely punish those with power. That’s why Slobodan won’t go to jail. And Adscam. And etc etc so why are you surprised at injustice when really it's just a system defending itself. Relative to the system, everything is the way it ought to be.

Too big to control, and those who say everything is fine are of course all doing fine, so they aren’t lying, but try to step out of your shoes and into the shoes of your friends for a minute.

I miss the big donut shop. I’m missing out on a thousand hugs every day. Oh where’s my love?

We're not lacking in victories, but the ability to exploit a victory--that's what's so unreliable.

Write something in a way that is memorable. Like to be or not to be. And we mock it now because it seems so obvious. Successful wisdom retires retires so so tiresome.

*semi-inspired after re-reading sections of Voltaire's Bastards