I hope you have heard the old phrase ‘lies, damn lies, and statistics’ otherwise the title may just seem a very odd thing to say. And if there is one thing I hate, it is odd things to say. I profoundly believe in the revolutionary act of saying things above doing things. I haven’t done anything for a very long time, but boy have I said some things. Things to absolve any sin. I have for instance a wonderful collection of sins which set my central object at beautiful counterpoint to the unfortunate. The devils!
A position on hypocrisy, which renders me the eternal un-hypocrite.
And yet I give myself away. Like a bad lute player improvising in solitude, she gives herself away in her accidents. Little slips structured like a language. We can’t help but give ourselves away in our prose. Is it non-sense or unsense or merely senseless and which is preferred? The three Ps: pornography, propaganda and profligate prostitution party. What if Aliens came down to earth and saw our ways and mores from the outside, what would these wise outsiders think? They have arrived, they are Islamic State and they are distinctly unwise. If there was a god and he had a son that would of course be an obscenity. But does this vulgar obscenity give us the possibility of the un-obscenity. Without it we have a necessary obscenity. A triangle on the floor. At one apex the UK tabloid newspaper The Sun, at another a gushing volcano of internet video pornography and at the other the hidden Islamic State propaganda. All forming a Penrose Tribar. A Borromean knot of Penrose Tribars. An intertwined mirror image. One impossible with any apex removed the other only possible with any apex removed. And as atheism sets itself in negation to god. So does Christianity, which with Islam forms this vulgar trinity. Each impossible without the other two. The monotheist, the anti-monotheist and the un-monothiest. We can have any two but not all three, or we can have all three but if any is removed the whole disintegrates. For the sake of animal humans let us hope it is the latter.
You and I are at war. You think I write for your comprehension like Orwell at his most mediocre. To flatter! To flatter you? Never. The lower upper middle brow of the lower upper middle class drosser. I wouldn’t treat you with such disdain. I mean to give myself away in a mess of vulgarity and pretension. Half formed ideas from half understood books half read and probably half written. The idea that prose “should” be easily understood and clear. Stephen Pinker’s style guide. Orwell’s five rules. I think my lifetime supply of sanity may be running a bit low. I won it on a scratchcard but I’ve been using it up too quickly.
Outturn vs projection. Lets put rocket boosters on jobs. The clarity of prose not making up for the complete lack of clarity of meaning. I’m lovin’ it. Sitting quietly on a bench with a far away look through a restaurant. Aggregate demand and planning Mrs Jones’ trip to Co-Op for milk. Call the dairy, work those cows. Employ another driver. But now the driver spent more in a restaurant. Start again. My own personal competence in a graph. Projected to grow with rocket boosters. Really filthy prose. Making the page stink. Held noses. Analysis “in” a graph. I am competent. Extremely competent. At producing bull shit clarity. Politics and the English language. Very sane. Increased productivity and increased employment with static GDP. Beauty in the contradiction. Automatic prose.
I love words! Indiscriminately. Anti-Semitic rants from drunken ruined men I love as much as total purity. Clear straightforward prose. Dear David, I am afraid I can no longer remain unemployed by you and will be showing up for work tomorrow. I fear that you have been denying multiplier effects intentionally. An iceberg of meaning under a clear sentence. Statistics are like Nietzsche: you can find a quote arguing anything as well as its opposite. Return to the beginning and repeat.
It all comes down to the brutal unpleasantness of “we”.
