R.I.P. Oklahoma

[Joseph Tracy]

Good reply. I had serious issues with flying but  until this trip I had never been out of the US apart from Mexico and Canada. We are all contributing to the mess but I don't at all think that invalidates art or the importance of clear thinking and language.  The world of letters has certainly affected more in my life than political ideas or forming a usable map of the world. The artfulness of language seems to be for humans the main vector of how we see, know, imagine, work with the fields of both experience and  ideas, and even  the possibilities which experience and ideas suggest.

I'm working toward a very low emission life and the trip was a family visit to 2 of my children I have not been able to see for a while. Still, we all want to keep our high carbon lifestyles and a person can always find a good reason to do so but the choice is stark when you add it up and we need to set new standards for ourselves or suffer the terrible consequences. My next big trip will be by bicycle. I have a very large garden which provides most of our food and minimizes travel and helps see us through thin times.By the end f the year the house will no longer burn any oil.  
I don't accept the excuses for Obama. No one is asking that he engineer a solution but  he has betrayed and gone in the opposite direction of most of his promises. He neither uses the bully pulpit nor the Justice department nor his power as Commander in Chief to make real changes. I believe P was using Velveeta as a stand in for the young Obama and the beginning of his presidency, admiring the slick operation of the Golden Fang, unable to control the bankers, his cabinet etc..  
I'm not pure, I don't expect purity. I expect realism and effort because the stakes are pretty high.

Anyway, thanks. All your thoughts speak to me.  
On May 21, 2013, at 11:12 PM, bandwraith at aol.com wrote:

> But wait, Joe, you're doing Jason Velveeta wrong by this comparison. I like Jason. He's the key to understanding The Golden Fang, doncha know. His dope may be crummy, but his information is right on the money. That's typical Pynchon high/low magic/punning.
> 
> It's ironic, and of course you must have been aware of this, that you picked up on McKibben "WHILE ON A FLIGHT TO OKINAWA." No lavaratorial assaults, I hope, on the poor Junk fisherman below. And I'm not being judgmental here, just pointing out that all pointing should begin in front of the silver mirror in order to understand The Golden Fang, and how it keeps us all narcotized- and otherwise into our separate greedy little pastimes- me too. 
>  
> And probably Pynchon's as well. Which raises the question- is parody, satire, art in general, and any otherwise counterforce-type resistance more than just entertainment on the way to oblivion (and a paycheck for Pynchon), or is it effective in showing us a way out of this mess? Setting aside the Nabokovian argument that art should be unconcerned, for a moment, and focusing on the impending global meltdown, what can any us do, beside point fingers and call eachother names? Given the gravity, no pun, of the situation, should any of us even be wasting time reading novels, let alone writing them?
>  
> As far as Obama goes, he's obviously not the answer, but how can we expect him to engineer anything approaching a solution- even the beginnings of a solution- to climate change, when he can't even get a universal background check for assault weapons through congress? I suspect that Velveeta is probably less hamstrung. At least his dope could be used for "honey slides.'
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Joseph Tracy 
> To: P-list List 
> Sent: Tue, May 21, 2013 9:39 pm
> Subject: Re: R.I.P. Oklahoma
> 
>                   (...)
> Fuck Jason Velveeta and fuck his little dog too.