How do I stir up the Cambridge Philosophy budget scoffers?

he may have......but you'll never know. <laughing>

and btw, explain to me.......what was the Tantalus test? Did I pass or am I a miserable failure?

Lola:-

Intellectuals don't explain their jests.They use them to discover fellow travellers.It was a very difficult "riddle" though.I put it together with Vic in the pub late one night.Vic was the guy who mentioned the furniture.He has two daughters and does some part-time gardening for me.He's a mine of useless information and that is right up my street.You certainly get lateral thinking with Vic.

You are NOT a miserable failure by any stretch.Let's say you are a newly hatched intellectual.If you ever get to the fledgling stage you will fly on your own.

"Said to have lasted..."! Who the hell said that? Please strike them soundly for me. Years back, I read a 40 lb book by Marilyn French wherein she laid out the feminist case for this notion. One of her main lines of argument was drawn from archaeological data, and particularly, data from a neolithic site in Anatolia named Catal Huyuk excavated by (yup) Cambridge boy Mellaart. As it happened, I'd just written a big paper on the place (this is one bloody interesting site, by the way) and that gave me some traction in understanding how French found what she wanted to find. She stacked up a small battalion of "possibly"s until it began to sound, to her, like a Greek chorus singing tragic certainties.

And here's another tale. A lady poet from Montreal came avisiting to give a little presentation on her poems and noggin contents. She was up in front there with an overhead projector facing about 40 ladies and two non-ladies, myself and my writing prof George Bowering (later appointed poet laureate - loved the guy, hated his writing). The screen lit up with all sorts of things....shells, flowers...round succubus things and she said that if it hadn't been for men with their rude concrete dicks, buildings would have been soft and round instead of rectangular and thrusting. I remained, being in enemy territory, mouse-quiet. But I'd studied enough archaeology at that point that I had a very good understanding of the evolution of human structures, from the early dim evidences of encampments and mastadon bone plus sticks plus hides slung together, to mud brick buildings such as we see at the lower levels of Jericho, all quite roundish in shape like igloos, and then up to what we see in Catal Huyuk...rectangles. But that change didn't arise as a consequence of triumphant cockness, but simply because folks began to use timbers in building...and then ya get straight lines.

Which ain't to say early human groups weren't universally or mainly organized along matriarchal lines, it's just that it is something of a faith stance. The inferences drawn from mythologies are...um...thin.

MG:-

Great stuff that.Loved "noggin contents".You must be a Jack Nicholson fan.

I think that decoding myths and nursery rhymes a quite interesting liesure time activity.Have you seen the Tantalus stuff that has Lola puzzled?

The main evidence for the long matriarchy is the total absence of any meaningful progress.

spendy.

MG:-

Read Spengler on the "onion" domes in the Kremlin.

Mosques are rounded at the heaven end.I once saw a similar curved line in a close up of Jamie Gillies.

I agree entirely, dolling.



How old are you, spendius?

Old enough to know better.

I have given plenty of clues.And you can't teach an old dog new tricks.

you have, it's true. But I'll tell you if you'll tell me.

Well, I'll just tell you.......as you may have guessed. I'm the age of Bill Clinton.......a genuine baby boomer........I'm 58.

So now, it's your turn.

And btw, I've taught a few old dogs new tricks......but then again, a few old dogs have taught me a thing or two too.

spendy, old boy, you had me on the floor there.

Now, following precisely the same daily regimen as Alcibiades, and for the same reasons, I am off to the gymnasium in the company of a highly sexual compatriot.

I'm too old for exercising. But I guess I've gotta go too.........

Lola :-

That "two too" wit is a riddle I know well.

You look pretty bonny for 58.A lot better than Bill Clinton.

An Int has to have reached a certain state of surfeit and unshock.I'm there.There are no new tricks for me.Only variations on a whatsit theme.

Drat,blast and damn!!!

The keeper has just turned up to put me back in the cage.I'm let out for the pub quiz.

Thanks for a pleasant time passer.Both of you.

Enjoy the pub quiz, Spendius.

the too two thing just happened. It's one of those things about English. But I'm sure it's too easy to be uncommon. But I'm a common enough sort.

Now, back to work.

we had some fun, didn't we?

Looking back I see I didn't answer your questions.

Everytime I found the bottle it had considerably less in it. It was a very big bottle of Vodka.

And yes, at that time I had underestimated them. That's why I'm so proud of them as smart thinkers and of me for raising the little devils. They are Faustian too.

But I'm a proud sort and should be punished.

MG:-

The Napoleonic Alcibiades I presume.A fair old role model for a man who is,to some extent at least,at odds with what looks like a status quo.One ought to beware of confusing the hierarchs with the minions.
It is the Lysanders you need to watch.Your hero did have to flee persecution.Admittedly in pretty company which I hope is the case with your highly sexual compatriot.That sounds enough like doing what is best for oneself at any given time to be Alcibiadian.

What a fortunate unfortunate, poor Alcibiades. Pretty cool house to grow up in. Fine group of drinking buddies. I found one account (forgotten where now) of the fellow, dressed in purple, entering a filled stadium whereupon all in attendance, male and female, 'audibly gasped at his beauty'. This has happened to me only a few times, and it is pleasant.

Lysander alert taken into advisement.

Lola:-

Ref blatham's post 1160053 p19.

"And then ya get straight lines."

Straight lines eh?Major Faustian symbol.Very revealing.The expression of the pure urban soul.There are no straight lines in Nature.In the rural idyll the lanes wind around at the convenience of the landscape.In the urban landscape they crash straight through.Bulldozing hills and filling in valleys.The straighter the better.Same with rivers.New York is total straight line culture in 3 dimensions apart from the odd eccentric curve.It defies Nature.This is the history and physiognomy of the Faustian project.Perspective.The mind accustomed to such a view defies Nature too.It wants to be different from Nature.Unrelated.Defiant.Instead of woods and pastures-parks;mountains-tourist viewpoints;springs-fountains;meadows-flower beds;ponds-formal pools;bushes-clipped hedges.After that the rural is citified-vast rectangular praries.Lakes become marinas.Quiet becomes noise.Rustic man becomes city-man.Dress is attuned to rectangular stone.Mobile grinning or astonished gargoyles become rigid.Feelings veiled.Natural colour,which changes minute by minute becomes factory colour.Stars can't shine through the narrowed frequency orange glow.The yokel becomes a comic character who grows the food and that's vanishing.
This is the living history of the Faustian world.The residue of the rural is used to sell mass produced goods straight off a straight production line.Roman roads were straight.The straight line as harbinger of the end times.And the supine smirk of the silly self-satisfied has a machined core.
Andy Warhol saw it in a vision.

As the matriarchy was replaced by the patriarchy the curve was replaced by the straight line.That's what's up with these apologies for feminists.They are Faustian.They all wear pants now.

Check out Lay Down Your Weary Tune.

You ever played with bent darts?

You know, I was anxious about Manhattan. I grew up in a little farming town bordered on one side by a curling steamroller of a river, and on the other by non architect-designed mountains. In Vancouver, I could heft up my kayak and walk to the ocean in good weather, or head up to ski in even better weather. I worked, often, out of doors. I could smell a snowfall coming a day in advance and had ample personal experience with looking up to the heavens chasing a high arching fly ball and then slipping and sliding on my back through a pile of ripe cowshit.

And I LOVE manhattan. It's the people. They are from every sort of idyll god saw fit to chuck down. This place is pregnant with human variation.

MG:-

I wasn't knocking it.Would I knock Lola's chosen ambience?I'm sure you are half right at least.

But the memory of the rustic goes deep.Far too deep for me to get rid of it.

The main point is that it has nowhere to go.It is creatively sterilised.It is at its limit.It isn't a criticism that.The process is inevitable like a rose blooming and fading.Omar has a verse.

The answer my friend is blowing in the wind.