in one ear...well, both ears, actually

[mustinvestigate]

Since my job is primarily data-diving and refining my antisocial skills, I decided to take a break from listening to so much Tom Waits (honing those aforementioned skills a leeeetle too keen) and crack out some classic public domain audio books.

I started with the Sage of Baltimore’s In Defense of Women, and, uh…let’s just say, with a defense like

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[sachehund]

As a professional critic of life and letters, my principal business in the world is that of manufacturing platitudes for tomorrow, which is to say, ideas so novel that they will be instantly rejected as insane and outrageous by all right thinking men, and so apposite and sound that they will eventually conquer that instinctive opposition, and force themselves into the traditional wisdom of the race. <--- That blurb says enough on its own when you click on the page. Anyone who talks themselves up that much tends to miss the point more often than most, especially if they're keen on talking up their 'thinking outside the box' skeelz.

Also, I couldn't help but notice:

Like most pinko theory, great job deconstructing the faults of capitalism, not so great on the faults of humankind that make real existing socialism such a mess…

During my tenure at a third-shift job where I could read/listen to a bunch of crap for hours on end, one of the things I picked up was the giant list of transcriptions from Jim Jones. Everything from the stuff he

[mustinvestigate]

That's really sad - I didn't know much about Jonestown at all until this prompted me to look it up.

One thing that frustrates me about human nature is that, every time an effort is made to level the field with any success, there are enough people who will leap on that as a chance to enrich themselves to ruin the whole endeavor.

[sachehund]

There's a couple interesting documentaries about the whole ordeal. It's... I hate to sound cold about it, but it's an amazing case study, especially from a writing point of view.

Otherwise, yes, it's an amazingly depressing event. It was more than a little jarring to hear the stories of the men and women who cleaned up the whole mess. There were also the stories of the people on the northern east coast of America, talking about seeing the number of silver caskets being flown or shipped in.

It's chilling to think about.