Previous William Thomas Sherman Info Page postings, quotes, observations, etc.
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["Hermann Prey - "In der Fremde" (Schumann)"] and ["Mondnacht/Moonlit Night - Eichendorff, Schumann, P. Schreier"]
We tend to function less well and are less free when we are deprived or starved of something we need or require (or at least what we believe or assume we require.) Yet why typically is it are we deprived of something? Ignorance, negligence, or lack of effort on our part to procure it are decisive factors. But then there is crime, and at least as much as our own usually pardonable infirmities and failings, it is crime that makes us more unhealthy and less free. How much do any of us individually or collectively lose out on because of widespread and persistent crime one wonders? Off hand and based on the experience of recent decades, I would think a great deal. But, of course, the specific harm done depends to a main extent on both the gravity and prevalence of the crime and the kind of offenses perpetrated.
And yet there is a school of thought which asseverates that ultimately we have no power over such things, i.e. the world is too great for us; so that by implication our happiness is one such as is servile and unfree. If you can't fight City Hall, you sure can't combat the evil one. At the same time, paradoxically, these same people actually praise and tout crime as a higher form of liberation. Why? Because it is supposed to be evidence of their being more free to do what they like or care to.
Meanwhile, there is what amounts to a species of spirit persons, along with the aforementioned and like-minded regular people (i.e. goomerists), whose proclivity ,and for some vocation, it is to conscientiously and un-apologetically use wrong doing for what seems their own personal advantage; with such tendency and predisposition varying from individual to another. Then there is a second sort, orkonists, for whom crime is not merely a means but an end also. Leave aside the worthiness of crime as an end, or whether such of itself is of crucial significance to them at heart, this outlook, doctrine, and arch-philosophy certainly does empower them most among those disposed to crime and discord as means. In consequence of this, the more others, such as goomerists, lean toward crime, the more they are susceptible to being made a follower, and perhaps slave, of the latter.
So much for the goomerists.
As seen on MTV.
["Mama I'm Coming Home Ozzy Osbourne"]
As Disney's John Darling is to Harry Potter, is Hammer films' "The Reptile" (1966) to "Avatar"? (You be the judge.)
Circa 1960.
["The Alamo Music By MARTY ROBBINS"]
To --
True love is forever;
She's no less a beauty too!
But we're stuck here,
And the days are too few.
I'd buy her a present.
I would if I could.
I'd buy her some flowers
To do me some good.
Oh, that down
Would come this wall!
For what ever did I want?
Just to kiss her!
That's all,
That's all!
R.I.P. Richard Manuel, Rick Danko. (Shame though the audio on these isn't as good as it could/should be -- hope your PC/Mac has good speakers.)
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["John Lennon - Instant Karma (Live)" With the Plastic Ono Elephants Memory Band, NYC]
It's only really bad in Hell, but Hell as much of anything is a state of seeing and believing that comes from people of immoral and irrational mind; so that if you do and can avoid people of such mind you can as much as avoid Hell.
Like Aristophanes, I think Lucian's writings survived antiquity because although an adroit craftsman, learned scholar, and sometimes clever observer, he is not often actually funny, not unlike Petronius, Apuleius, Ariosto, Rabelais, Cervantes, Swift, Fielding, and Sterne in these respects either; and all are in their way, at least as humorists (and leaving aside their technical proficiency as authors and artists otherwise), merely or mostly cynics.* Now for actual funny, see Theophrastus, Erasmus, Edmund Spenser (really, some of his Faerie Queene is quite hilarious, e.g., Book 3, canto 10), Smollett, (the better) Joe Miller, Thomas Love Peacock, or else Cicero, Samuel Johnson, and Goldsmith on a good day. Notwithstanding, in his debunking of worldly arrogance and leveling of other-worldly pomposity, Lucian is an invigorating inspiration and soothing tonic when it comes to knowing how to deal with supercilious and presuming spirit people.
* Boccaccio and Chaucer somewhat similarly, though no one quite claims them for humorists in the ordinary sense of the word. Ariosto is sometimes refreshingly droll, but apparently not by intention. Le Sage, the picaresque novelists, Gay, and Beaumarchais seem to hark back to Greek-Latin comedy and Cervantes; and which are more along the lines of pleasantly amusing, earthy and ribald than raucously risible as such (again, broadly speaking.) Addison and Steele can as well be sweetly mirthful, yet in a more gentle and kindly fashion than these last writers, by comparison, tend to. As for Plautus, Menander, Martial, and Juvenal’s works, I have to admit I have yet to more properly acquaint myself with them (though naturally at some point I intend on doing so.)
