The New Devil's Dictionary: Delusion

Delusion, n.--A shared belief supported by power, therefore true. When the belief is not shared by the group, untrue, and therefore, the holder of it is mentally ill and resistant to reasoned argument or objective proof.

When the holder of said belief is not strong enough to enforce it on the group the belief itself is untrue, and therefore, they are heretical or mentally ill; also designates the pathology at the core of all civilizations.

Examples include the core belief of Aztec civilization that violent imperialism and the capture and sacrifice of enemy warriors was necessary in order to prevent the universe from plunging into eternal darkness. Incan civilization held that expansionist measures were necessary to please the gods and feed the cults of the dead emperors. Roman civilization felt it necessary to spread "Pax Romana" (Roman peace) to the barbarians, and so on.

Current examples posit that the core belief in the profit motive will continue to provide sustainable prosperity ad infinitum and redeem the world, while another related core belief of contemporary human civilization posits the "need" for entrenched and unaccountable hierarchy in order that the species may continue into the future. (also see "Identity politics" and "Pathology")

Edgar Allan Poe @ J to the Power of 7

WWW--Of all of the pieces, articles, and observations I've written on this site since August of 2006, I can say that this series written on Edgar Allan Poe comprises some of the very best of my writing. I have related very deeply to Poe almost my entire life for a host of reasons and consider him above Whitman and the New England "mystics." His only real peer in my opinion is Mark Twain, possibly Herman Melville, and Ambrose Bierce coming close on his heels.

Poe saw the horror that was the America of his time and the darkness of the human soul, while Melville, Twain, and Bierce saw where it was all heading, Melville even before the American Civil War in his prescient short story, "Bartelby, the Scrivener: A Tale of Wall Street" (1853). Read this story now and tell me with a straight face that the man wasn't brilliant, wasn't aware of the wrong-turn America began taking around that time, now culminating in what could very well be the endgame of the species.

For being the bearer of bad news, Melville's incredible popularity waned, and he died poor and all-but-forgotten. Edgar Allan Poe wasn't much luckier, yet the notion that he wasn't popular or famous during his short life is inaccurate--he was. The problem was that Poe's publishers were greedy scumbags who paid him poorly, just like most employers nowadays; he was literally the very first American to attempt making a living by writing alone, which should tell you something about the rest of his literary peers at the time.

At the very end of his life, things were looking up. I admire all of the aforementioned writers deeply, but with Poe--with Poe--I feel like one of many of his humble protectors. In the last few years, morons in various America cities have tried to claim him as their own, and without any merit. Philadelphia is perhaps the most egregious case in their claim to his remains, but Boston might be even more galling, the town he hated the most and called "frogpondia." What do these people want?

Publicity, of course, and God knows they don't have the moral courage Poe had to be himself, for better or for worse. What they want is to take the easy route: none of the suffering and poverty that the great writer had to endure, with some of the benefits he was barely able to have in life. The legend came after his death. Riding on the coattails of a dead man who suffered the tortures of the damned is immoral. Enjoy (or don't)...

A good place to start (follow the labels):http://chickasawpicklesmell.blogspot.com/2007/08/poe-toaster-is-not-mark-felt.html

The New Devil's Dictionary: Fortune Teller

Fortune Teller, n--Someone who tells a paying customer what they already know (see "Tarot cards").

From the Blough family vaults: A dirty postcard to a mistress

Kansas, 1907--It seems my great-great grandfather liked to screw-around on his wife. This is close to 101-years-ago, when the dead are scarcely a memory any longer. If you want an idea of how much you're going to be remembered--if at all--this is a good lesson.

But be wise, dear friend, and be sure to destroy all of the physical evidence that might fall into the wrong hands of, say...a historian. Then, they, your descendants and others in the future, could accidentally discover what a fool, a coward, and a scoundrel you were. One ancestor forgot to burn a pile of his post card collection, the majority-of-which were written to his mistress. Oh, it was a very different America, and yet the it's still the same. There was Populism them with all its own internal-contradictions just as there is today. Some of my ancestors were prairie Populists.

As far as I can tell from the accounts, my great-great grandfather was a very wrong-headed small businessman who owned a hotel for a time. It burned-down around the time of this card. A petty bourgeois, some of the worst among us, and I believe his own father was a barber and leather-worker in the Old West. Since the Revolutionary War, some of the Bloughs have worked closely with horses, and we're a vast surname. I have my great-great-great grandfather's Old West Bible. You have to wonder whose hair he cut during his time living in 19th century Kansas. He died in the 1890s of poor health, possibly tuberculosis or pneumonia.

On December 25th, 1907, his mistress felt it important to mail him saying that her ride on the railways had gone well. Wonderful, at least they were satisfied, though I doubt Mrs. Blough was. If you think everything nowadays is new, unique, and that you're the first person to have sex...you must be under the age of 30. That's right kids, you're not the first people to discover illicit-fucking, I hate breaking it to you. Most of you are as boring as you suspect, so try to work on that one. Your parents are full-of-shit too, so why imitate them so much?

My point is, I reject a lot of things in my family history. Many people do, or like to think that they do. I'm not mistaken in my assertions, but all Americans of every color harbor bigotry and racist conditioning, it's inherent to our culture.

While these lily-white slobs were playing house, thousands of Native Americans were being herded into the reservations, thousands were being forcibly-sterilized for being "different" or troubled, millions of workers were being exploited and flogged like slaves, while blacks were being lynched from the highest-trees and still worked as slaves when they weren't being hounded under vagrancy laws; and while our military was slaughtering untold thousands of Filipinos, these ancestors--not the mistress--of mine were screwing in their ignorance. Such are the lives of the middle class.

It's a funny little card from an unfunny little era, not so different from our own. It was yesterday, and I reject the racism and the hypocrisies of that time and this era. Why is reincarnation necessary at all?

Postscript, 09.18.2008: There are what appear to be remnants of writing along the left-margin of the postcard. Yes, some of them are stains from deterioration, very perceptive. I'm guessing it's a reference to the spurned- wife.