The... work

Well, let's see here...

First off, I could continue the adnotations upon Nordau (or, for that matter, Ballas even). God knows that line's been warmly received -- in little measure due to the idiot, and in much larger measure due to the many interesting things I know he doesn't, that by the contrast become exposed. Such is the lot of idiots in this world : if they weren't so ubiquitously prattly, if their tell-tale self-assurance weren't quite this readily self-destructuring into ridicule... wise men would forever keep their peace. Which, I suppose, makes the idiot a kin of mosquitoes, at least in its social presentation.

I could also work some new piece I ran into, a deeply idiotic gob of Americana titled "Corn Girl". It goes like so :

"It is a queer title for a book; what can it mean?" is the exclamation of those who open it for the first time.

Visit this city—walk with me from nine o'clock till midnight, through the streets of New York, in the month of August, then read the first interview of the author with little Katy, the Hot Corn girl, and the story of her life, and you will not ask, "What does it mean?" But you may ask, what does it mean that I see so many squalid-looking women, so many tender children, so many boys, who with well directed labor might work their way to fortune; or crippled men, sitting upon the stone steps along the street crying, "Hot corn! here's your nice hot corn—smoking hot, smoking hot, just from the pot!" Your heart, if it has not grown callous, will be pained as mine has been at the sights of[14] misery you will meet with, and you will then exclaim, "What does it mean that I see these things in the very heart of this great commercial city, where wealth, luxury, extravagance, all abound in such profusion? Surely the condition of the people, the ways and wants of the poor, cannot be known, or they would be improved. Why does not somebody write a book illustrating these 'Life Scenes in New York,' whose every page shall be a cry, startling as this of 'Hot corn, hot corn!' now pealing in the midnight air?"

So thought I; and so straightway set about the work, with ample material at hand, and more accumulating at every step. In writing a book, the first thought of the author is, what shall be my title? What better could I have than HOT CORN, since that was the inciting cry that waked my pen to action, to paint these life scenes in vivid pictures, for the world to look at and improve?

If, in my daily walks and midnight rambles, I have seen revolting sights, the details of which are harrowing to your soul as you read, so much the more need that they be opened to your view. Wounds must be seen to be healed. Old sores are often pronounced incurable, simply because they are old.

First, strip off their dirty covering, then probe and wash, and then apply the healing balsam. If not already gangrened from long neglect, you may save the patient's life, and at all events, ease his suffering, and smooth his road to the grave.

Be mine the task to strip and expose, and yours to wash and heal.[15]

Of just such life scenes as I depict, there are enough transpiring every night to fill a volume.

Come, walk with me, of an August evening, from the Battery to Union Square, and you shall see all the characters of a romance.

'Tis concert night at Castle Garden. Stand here a short half hour, and look at the gay and smiling throng. There is material for many a tale.

Three thousand robes of fine cloth, silks, gauze, and lace, pass the Battery gates in one night, fluttering to the open sea breeze, without one thought from those who wear them for the poor little girl that sits shivering by the path, crying hot corn, or vainly striving to beg one penny from the overflowing purses that freely give dollars for amusement, and less than nothing to misery, or for its annihilation. Little do they think that this child has a mother at home, who once counted one in just such a thoughtless throng.

Here might a chapter be written, but let us on; we shall find plenty of subjects. If we stop to write the history of that little girl and her mother, we shall fill our book before we start.

The Philadelphia boat has just landed her passengers at Pier No. 1., North River, and the crowd are coming up Battery Place. Here is a picture of American character. Every one is pushing forward as though there was but one bed left in the city, and to obtain that he intended to outstride and overreach all his fellow travellers. Take care, little hot corn girl, or you will be run over, and your store trampled under-foot.[16] Bitter tears for your loss will run down your hollow cheeks, but they will gain you no sympathy. The only answer that you will get, will be, "Why didn't you get out of the way, you little dirty brat—good enough for you." Yes, good enough for you, that you have lost your entire stock of merchandize; what business had you in the way of commerce, or path of pleasure?

"But, sir," says benevolence in a drab bonnet, "you have hurt the child."

"What if I have? She has no business in the way. She is nothing but a hot corn girl; they are no better than beggars and often are little thieves. Why don't she stay at home?" Sure enough. Simply because necessity or cruelty drives her into the street. Now your cruelty will drive her home to be beaten by a drunken father, for your act of wanton carelessness.

Stand aside, my little sufferer, or you will be run over again. Here comes a little dark skinned, black-eyed, black-haired man, with life and death in his very step.

What magic power impels him forward. He is a Jew—a dealer in second-hand clothes. Surely his business cannot be so important that he need to upset little children, or step on the gouty toes of slow-going old gentlemen, in his hurry to get forward.

Can anything be more tritely tediously insufferable, in its oh-so-stereotypical UStardation ? And it's almost a century old, too! There it sits, open before me, but...

Or I could put flesh upon an idea I woke with, one of these mornings. It's been days ; it used to be the case such notions would be rounded and published immediately -- but apparently, not anymore. It starts with the picture of two young women, naked in the grass, by a riverside. They're cousins, one's local, the other a visitor. The visitor's been just ravished, most violently yet strangely willingly. Her comment to the other goes along the lines of

I don't know, cousin. When he held me down and drove that spear right into my heart... I rather lost myself.

Earlier she had been, on her side, propping herself up on her elbow, breast proud to the breezeⁱ, wailing her fulfillment to the winds, consciously, deliberately, self-awakeningly ; while the local gentleman had his way with her. It's a great position for pushing back, anyways, as you're more than welcome to find out just as soon as you're such a gentleman yourself, or manage to somehow meat meet one.

The two were naked in the grass in expectation of just such an encounter, though the foreigner did not know. The local secretly contrived to ease her into the manners of the place, and succeded. The entire thing'd work as recuperation of the 1800s cuntimbeciles, those anodyne Austens, Brontes and whatnot oratanii (perhaps vaguely fashioned in the manner of pride & prejudice, for being the least offensive in the pile of ordures those regrettably literate deplorables churned out).

The two young women both carried the baptismal name of Julie, through one of those coincidences that by the involvement of people, or should we say female beings, are not all that coincidental.

... reads the entry paragraph in the solitary julie.txt, and that's as far as it goes. Too much dang work to get it done. Not that it's not enjoyable work. Not that my productivity with it isn't 9000%+ (for lack of more markings on the dial beyond 9000%+) above anyone else's. It's just...

I have, of course, been doing a lot towards Eulora these days ; but that's always been the case, if discreetely. I've just as similarily been doing a lot towards running my ever-widerly sprawled empire, though that, for being the job of a hundred "World Leaders" (that none of the declaratively present duppel somehow manage to even come close to doing), is never seemingly worth the mention. Who knows, perhaps if I don't say anything it's the case I'm not doing anything either, and "things just happen". (What things ? Oh, nothing, no things indeed, for who's to notice things in the first place.)

Or I could review a movie. What movie though ? I watched a thing with a deliciously pubescent Liz Taylorⁱⁱ, but the script was terrible in general ; her part and lines in particular. I watched another thingⁱⁱⁱ, with a slightly older Liz Taylor -- she's fully blown idiot, about as uninteresting as any other. There's hardly a decade passed between the two! How quickly their time passes ; and how slim their chances of catching on a lifeline in that quickening quickness. Alas...

Nobody cares, really. I could do any and all I want, any time I want, any position, way, mean or means, method, application, whatever. Anything, whatever-so-ever I think of, no matter what it is.

But there's only one of me ; and so, so many of them. Let's then jointly say a prayer -- not for von Herder, this time, but for the herd of matter itself. Matter, material, endless, infinite, ubiquitous, everywhere. At beck, at call, patiently awaiting its day in the sun and the glory of the Master's hand. His focused attention, His peternatural gaze.

There's so very boundlessly much of it, and... whoever can be arsed, really.

1. This part's not entirely mine, but the welcome if readily offered contribution of Nature itself ; for upon waking with the idea I visited a slavegirl in her bed, and that's how she took it -- most adequately, not merely to her station, or to our relationship, but rather to the creative sprout supposedly hidden away in my mind.

   Not that hidden from her though, apparently. Isn't slavery the most wonderful thing ? [↩]

2. No, not that tiresome nonsense with the horse ; the strange thing with baPTIsmals and episcopalians and whatnot. It was no doubt a comedy at the time ; meanwhile it's become about as confusingly incomprehensible as Ed Wood's fare. The passage of time with its attendant loss of "social consensus" and such "rules" "everyone knows" that meanwhile nobody remembers will do just that. The comedy of not even a century ago now looks a lot like an attempt at dancing with an absent partner, on a silent tune. The poor girls twirling about merely appear deranged, postpartum psychosis or something. Who the fuck (besides, I guess, the Cohen brothers -- they put it in the gal that got rattled) even recalls wtf an episcopalian even was, or how it relates to a methodist. [↩]
3. The one where she's the abandoned daughter of some idiot who can't pay her bills -- but that's ok, because 1950s fantasies of "careerwomen" and whatnot, all dudes are cucks and there's always a mass of indistinct (but acrobaticly athletic) brothers ready to fall all over themselves to serve (as furniture). Because hurr, whatever.

   Why, would you prefer the story of Steve McQueen and a bunch of other cucks "escaping" from some prison some other cucks built and run for Greater Cuckoldia-Reich ? Cuz that's available too, just as long as you don't expect to see films about comfortable males with slaves and servants, going about the business of being comfortable and enjoying their dues on this Earth. That "can never be", because... again, hurr! [↩]