Desire Lines

When you were young, and your excitement showed
But as time goes by, is it outgrown?
Is that the way things go -- forever reaching for the gold?
Forever fades black and comes up cold.

Walking free. Come with me. Far away. Everyday.

When you were young, you never knew which way you'd go.
What once was grace, now undertows.
"Well everyday do what you can,
and if you let them turn you 'round
whatever goes up, must come down."

-- Bradford Cox (Deerhunter) 2010

bread and circuses

It is scarcely possible that the eyes of contemporaries should discover in the public bliss the latent causes of decay and corruption. This long peace, and the uniform government of the Romans, introduced a slow and secret poison into the vitals of the Empire. The minds of men were gradually reduced to the same level, the fire of genius extinguished, and even the military spirit evaporated. From long ago, when we sold our vote to no man, the People have long since abdicated our duties and cast off our cares; we who once bestowed military command, high civil office, legions and all else, now meddle no more and long eagerly for just two things -- bread and circuses."
-- Juvenal, Satire X (2nd century AD)

government fiction

"Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."

-- Frédéric Bastiat, Essays on Political Economy (1873)

doubts are traitors

"Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win, by fearing to attempt."
-- William Shakespeare (Measure for Measure) c.1604

communication technology beneficial?

"What it comes down to for me is this: Will the technologies of communication in our culture serve to enlighten us and help us to understand one another better, or will they deceive us and keep us apart?"
-- Roger Waters (1988)

myth vs. truth

"The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie -- deliberate, contrived and dishonest, but the myth -- persistent, persuasive and unrealistic."
-- John F. Kennedy (1962)

misinformation

"If you don't read the newspaper, you're uninformed.
If you read the newspaper, you're misinformed."
-- Mark Twain

sunken waltz

washed my face in the rivers of empire.
made my bed from a cardboard crate
down in the city of quartz.

no news, no new regrets.
tossed a susan b. over my shoulder,
and prayed it would rain and rain --
submerge the whole western states.
call it a last fair deal
with an american seal
and corporate handshake.

take the story of carpenter mike --
dropped his tools and his keys and left
and headed out as far as he could
past the city's gated neighborhoods.
he slept 'neath the stars,
wrote down what he dreamt,
and he built a machine
for no one to see,
then took flight
first light of new morning.

-- Joey Burns / John Convertino (Calexico) 2003

life decisions

"There are only three important decisions you need to make in your life. What to do. Whom you do it with. And where you do it. Everything else takes care of itself."
-- Bill Bonner, The Daily Reckoning (2010)

policy short-sightedness

"The fallacy of overlooking secondary consequences ... is the persistent tendency of man to see only the immediate effects of a given policy, or its effects only on a special group, and to neglect to inquire what the long-run effects of that policy will be not only on that special group but on all groups."
-- Henry Hazlitt, Economics in one Lesson (1946)

beach culture

"The beach is something you walk across to get to the water. The social aspect of surfing never meant all that much to me."
-- Phil Edwards

just think

"Five percent of the people think; ten percent of the people think they think; and the other eighty-five percent would rather die than think."
-- Thomas A. Edison

fight club

"You are not your job. You're not how much money you have in the bank. You're not the car you drive. You're not the contents of your wallet."

"The things you own end up owning you.... It's only after we've lost everything that we're free to do anything.... Only after disaster can we be resurrected."

-- Tyler Durden (Chuck Palahniuk / Jim Uhls / David Fincher)

this time

Looking back on my life,
you know that all I see
are things I could have changed,
I could have done.
Where did the good times go?
Good times so hard to hold.
No time for sad lament;
a wasted life is bitter spent.
--Richard Ashcroft (The Verve) 1997

inflation not anticipated

"Will the Federal Reserve's actions to combat the crisis lead to higher inflation down the road? The answer is no; the Federal Reserve is committed to keeping inflation low and will be able to do so. In the near term, elevated unemployment and stable inflation expectations should keep inflation subdued, and indeed, inflation could move lower from here."
-- Ben Bernanke, speech to the Economic Club of Washington, D.C. (Dec. 7, 2009)