That's Napoleon in a green vet's bag (and the vet's right arm) yesterday afternoon. Three days ago we noticed a bump on his back above the right leg, Thursday night we saw an open would seeping pus. I tried getting him in a cat carrier Friday morning, but that wasn't working, so I called the vet I had made an appointment with for Napoleon and they recommended a vet out of Gaithersburg that makes home visits. Their receptionist asked me to put Napoleon in a bathroom or walk-in closet before vet arrived so if he freaked out he couldn't hide. Vet walked into bathroom, walked out in thirty seconds with Napoleon in a bag.
This is our fault. We've tried to get him into cat carriers in the past couple of years to get him to a vet for rabies shots but his resistance has been such that we were afraid - he was born feral, he comes and goes - he'd be so traumatized by the caging, the vet, the shots, that as soon as we let him out he'd disappear and never come back.
Bite, probably a cat bite, infected, abscessed. Napoleon spent last night recovering from surgery. The vet says though there is a 99% chance it was a cat bite and a 99% chance the cat that bit Napoleon wasn't rabid (he may have been bit countless times before but since none because infected we would never have known), but we are going to need quarantine him for six months in a crate in a room. We can let him out of the crate while we're in the room but he must be in a crate when the door to the room is opened to let us in or out: since there is a 99% chance he won't get rabies there's a 99% chance we won't need to get rabies shots as long as Napoleon is present to present no signs of rabies after six months; if he disappears, it's shots for us. MOCO Animal Control doesn't care whether or not we get shots but is concerned (reasonably) that a possibly rabies infected cat be released outdoors.
- This is going to be hard on Napoleon. Will keep the six or seven of you who personally know him updated as well as those Kind few of you who follow along here updated too.
- So, a Futile Weekend Blogging Post! Have some links engaging the clusterfuck.
- Ink black triptych.
- Call him irresponsible... please: This brings us to the heart of the matter. Just as I view the State as monstrous and illegitimate, so too I view any and all spying and surveillance activities as entirely illegitimate and almost completely without merit of any kind. I've been over this ground many times. For the detailed argument as to why "intelligence" generally is an elaborate (and very profitable) fraud, you can start here and here. The links provide much more background. Always remember that "intelligence" is almost always wrong. I said that spying and surveillance are "almost completely without merit of any kind" only because there are very rare instances where the "intelligence" stumbles upon a small piece of information that is correct. And as rare as it is, even correct information will be disregarded when it runs counter to a policy that the government has already embraced.
- A war on the imagination: Culture and politics, or at least the presentation of politics, have merged. Politics are entertainment. They are thought of as a movie, for the most part. Violence is expected in movies. What is perhaps more troublesome, however, is the trivializing of the entire culture. The validation of taking pride in one’s immaturity. The consciousness of, I think, a majority of the U.S. population, and probably a clear majority of those under thirty five, has created intellectual mechanisms to fuse and synthesize categories of experience. Watching Vice TV specials becomes the same as critical theory, and the same again as fictionalized History channel specials, and the same too with kitsch science fiction. I am not sure Battlestar Gallactica is perceived much differently than, say, 60 Minutes.
- The Birth of Thanaticism: The role of the state is not to manage biopower but to manage thanopower. From whom is the maintenance of life to be withdrawn first? Which populations should fester and die off? First, those of no use as labor or consumers, and who have ceased already to be physically and mentally fit for the armed forces.
- The Passenger.
- The Crisis of Capitalism This Time Around. The prologue to David Harvey's new book, Seventeen Contradictions and the End of Capitalism.
- The last two chapters of Harvey's book: The difficulty with the humanist tradition in short is that it does not internalise a good understanding of its own inescapable internal contradictions, most clearly captured in the contradiction between freedom and domination. The result is that humanist leanings and sentiments often get presented these days in a somewhat offhand and embarrassed way, except when their position is safely backed by religious doctrine and authority. There is, as a result, no full-blooded contemporary defence of the propositions of or prospects for a secular humanism even though there are innumerable individual works that loosely subscribe to the tradition or even polemicise as to its obvious virtues (as happens in the NGO world). Its dangerous traps and foundational contradictions, particularly questions of coercion, violence and domination, are shied away from because they are too awkward to confront. The result is what Frantz Fanon characterised as ‘insipid humanitarianism’. There is plenty of evidence of that manifest in its recent revival. The bourgeois and liberal tradition of secular humanism forms a mushy ethical base for largely ineffective moralising about the sad state of the world and the mounting of equally ineffective campaigns against the plights of chronic poverty and environmental degradation. It is probably for this reason that the French philosopher Louis Althusser launched his fierce and influential campaign back in the 1960s to eject all talk of socialist humanism and alienation from the Marxist tradition. The humanism of the young Marx, as expressed in The Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, Althusser argued, was separated from the scientific Marx of Capital by an ‘epistemological rupture’ that we ignore at our peril. Marxist humanism, he wrote, is pure ideology, theoretically vacuous and politically misleading, if not dangerous. The devotion of a dedicated Marxist like the long-imprisoned Antonio Gramsci to the ‘absolute humanism of human history’ was, in Althusser’s view, entirely misplaced.
- Hey, new places on the blogrolls. Please check them oout as they float to the top.
- Three guesses what I fell asleep listening to.
IF I TOLD HIM, A COMPLETED PORTRAIT OF PICASSO
Gertrude Stein
If I told him would he like it. Would he like it if I told him.
Would he like it would Napoleon would Napoleon would would he like it.
If Napoleon if I told him if I told
him if Napoleon. Would he like it if I told him if I told him if
Napoleon. Would he like it if Napoleon if Napoleon if I told him. If I
told him if Napoleon if Napoleon if I told him. If I told him would he
like it would he like it if I told him.
Now.
Not now.
And now.
Now.
Exactly as as kings.
Feeling full for it.
Exactitude as kings.
So to beseech you as full as for it.
Exactly or as kings.
Shutters shut and open so do queens.
Shutters shut and shutters and so shutters shut and shutters and so and
so shutters and so shutters shut and so shutters shut and shutters and
so. And so shutters shut and so and also. And also and so and so and
also.
Exact resemblance to exact resemblance
the exact resemblance as exact resemblance, exactly as resembling,
exactly resembling, exactly in resemblance exactly and resemblance. For
this is so. Because.
Now actively repeat at all, now actively repeat at all, now actively repeat at all.
Have hold and hear, actively repeat at all.
I judge judge.
As a resemblance to him.
Who comes first. Napoleon the first.
Who comes too coming coming too, who
goes there, as they go they share, who shares all, all is as all as as
yet or as yet.
Now to date now to date. Now and now and date and the date.
Who came first Napoleon at first. Who came first Napoleon the first. Who came first, Napoleon first.
Presently.
Exactly do they do.
First exactly.
Exactly do they do.
First exactly.
And first exactly.
Exactly do they do.
And first exactly and exactly.
And do they do.
At first exactly and first exactly and do they do.
The first exactly.
And do they do.
The first exactly.
At first exactly.
First as exactly.
As first as exactly.
Presently
As presently.
As as presently.
He he he he and he and he and and he
and he and he and and as and as he and as he and he. He is and as he is,
and as he is and he is, he is and as he and he and as he is and he and
he and and he and he.
Can curls rob can curls quote, quotable.
As presently.
As exactitude.
As trains.
Has trains.
Has trains.
As trains.
As trains.
Presently.
Proportions.
Presently.
As proportions as presently.
Farther and whether.
Was there was there was there what was there was there what was there was there there was there.
Whether and in there.
As even say so.
One.
I land.
Two.
I land.
Three.
The land.
Three
The land.
Three.
The land.
Two
I land.
Two
I land.
One
I land.
Two
I land.
As a so.
The cannot.
A note.
They cannot
A float.
They cannot.
They dote.
They cannot.
They as denote.
Miracles play.
Play fairly.
Play fairly well.
A well.
As well.
As or as presently.
Let me recite what history teaches. History teaches.
