Interpolations in the Bhagvad Gita.

There are 8 trillion verses interpolated into the Bhagvad Gita by
1) evil priestly cabals
2) evil non-priestly cabals
3) everybody else
What is my proof you ask? Answer- Tehelka magazine has an expose on one of the interpolators - viz. Baba Hindutva Nutjob who revealed in a taped interview with an undercover reporter that he personally interpolated 89 gazillion verses into the Gita while slitting open the stomachs of miscellaneous women from educationally backward communities and tearing out the unborn babies from their wombs and saying disrespectful things about their taste in bangles. Incidentally, the Baba has also admitted that Narendra Modi  is his chaddi buddy and never organizes a pogrom without sending him an invite.
I now uncover to you the true original Bhagvad Gita with my own commentary
'..a.....' (verse 22)
and  '.......l........' (verse 124)
Commentary- Suck my cock. Seriously. Just get down on your knees, squeeze your hairy little man-boobs together and wait patiently in that posture, from here to Eternity, for the refreshing spray of my spunk on your rotting epiglottis.

Racial coding in Amitav Ghosh.

Annotating a superb account of a Tamil family's escape from the Japanese invasion of Burma- the setting of H.E. Bates' 'the Jacaranda Tree' but also a theme in Karunanidhi's greatest hit'Parashakti'- Prof Ghosh notes w.r.t exit permits 'These permits, and the routes they provided access to, were also racially coded. The ‘White’ routes were generally shorter and easier and were largely reserved for retreating soldiers and European and Eurasian civilians; the ‘Black’ routes were longer and much more arduous – Asians were generally allowed to use only these routes. Another account in my possession, written by an Indian, provides a harrowing account of the writer’s attempts to acquire ‘White route’ permits for his wife and young children.'


This clearly shows the greatness of Ghosh Babu as anthropologist and popular author. He tells us something nobody ever guessed- viz. the British were Racist, the British Empire instrumentalized Race for Service Provision discrimination- but does so in a context which, perhaps uniquely, utterly nullifies and renders ludicrous, the illocutionary force of his claim.


In Burma, at that time, some Whites didn't get exit permits at all but were ordered to stay back by their employers. Some Blacks did, that too by the easiest route and, what's more managed to bring back their teak furniture and Lars et penates etc. all on the Govt's dime.


All soldiers and similar strategically valuable personnel, no matter how Black, were given priority over Civilians, no matter how White.


Thus, contra Ghosh, the retreat from Burma- at a time when a lot of Indians had gone over to the enemy- provides, not material for a thesis about 'racial coding', but a sui generis instance of the utility of 'Racial profiling' because no White in the area was assiduously, or at all, the object of recruitment by the Axis powers or their compradors.


Indeed, Ghosh himself does not contradict the notion that Indians, in general, would have been better off staying in Burma under the Japs. Why does Ghosh bring 'racial coding' into this when it makes him look a facile Politically correct Professorial shithead?


The answer is- he has coded himself as such in order to cipher his middle brow oeuvre. Amitav does a fair bit of research but, by a failure of digestion, can't rise to the level of a James Michener because he insists on making everything boring and stupid by continually discovering fascinating facts like White slavers were racist to black slaves. Women were sometimes discriminated against coz some people thought they were weak or stupid or something. Also there was once this Muslim guy or Mulatto or whatever who didn't actually bugger all the bhadralok Bongs in the vicinity before cutting their throat while saying snide things about their Doctoral theses- which is like real important coz...urm... the Media dun bin turning us all into so many Anders Behring Breiviks due to, urm, Gucci.. sorry, I mean Gramsci's...concept of, like, hegemony and and ...globalisation? yeah throw that in and can the subaltern speak and Ranajit Guha is not actually turning tricks, even as you read this now, spreading Red Light in Vienna's Gurtel road.


Which aint to say our author is intellectually facile. Not at all. It is merely to build a bridge to his readership that, from start to finish, Amitav concerns himself with things like racial coding of the most witless sort.

Which us guys think cool coz we are boring, stupid and massively fucked in the head.


Who reads novels? Really really stupid and boring people. Why do cunts like us read novels? Coz, in our bones, we know everybody is stupid and boring. Amitav reads like- and hence writes for- us.


For which, personally, I blame David Cameron- that boy aint right.

Delhi in Lonon

In my Delhi boyhood my Mother beat

Me & Delhi on my Fulham street

Beats like her & with her Art

Not with hands but just her Heart.

Acceptation is certain Sinn

For camouflaged by, fond, my thoughts

Leopard! Change thou thy spots.

Acceptation is certain Sinn

Thy Ethiop! I'm bleached within.

Not Love is bought but sweating made

Lest this thought distress the Marwari maid

'Not Love is bought but sweating made'

Bollywood rose from out the Sea

To hear Ruskin hymn  Dharavi.

Notes

1) The Marwaris are a caste of, often very wealthy, entrepreneurs from the arid and socially conservative  State of Rajasthan.

2) Dharavi- the terrible slum in Mumbai featured in 'Slumdog Millionaire'. It first enters Eng. Lit. when apostrophized in  John Ruskin's Newidgate Prize poem 'Salsette and Elephanta'. Gandhi considered Ruskin his Guru chiefly, it appears, because the latter was under the impression that being nice to very poor people would mean they'd work for you both more whole-heartedly as well as more cheaply than could possibly, otherwise, be the case.

More hymns to Hitler

 'neath Eiffel, Herr Hitler, in abashed, matronly, pose

 As Eiger's steeple bell, fell Venusberg o'erthrows

& Heine's Tannhauser- ah! there's the rub

Revenge, we, Wagner on the Jockey Club

Wagner's attempt to conquer Paris came a cropper when the Jockey Club- of which, perhaps, Swann was already a member- became incensed against him and, by their hooliganism, forced him to withdraw his production. One theory regarding the Jockey Club's animus against 'Tannhauser' is  based on its members' gentlemanly habit of only arriving at the Opera in time for their ballerina inamoratas' sweating their way through the Second Act disco number before themselves frenziedly rushing backstage to copulate with those still clammy and quivering carcasses. Wagner, unforgivably, had shifted the ballet to the first Act and so, quite correctly, the Jockey Club Cavaliers, more thoroughbred than Wagner's bildungsburgertum vision of those at the Landgrave's Court, permitted no virginal Elizabeth to intercede for our Meistersinger but, sans ceremony, sent him packing.

Heinrich Heine's Tannhauser, it appears, marries Jerusalem to Athens,  domesticates Venus as the Sabbath, and gets off a splendid dig at Weimar's futility- 'in Heine's poem, Venus is a gemutlich sweetheart whom Tannhauser leaves in a fit of jealousy because she is immortal and has had many lovers and will have many more. But, it turns, out the Pope has no power over Venus and so the minstrel returns to his cute little wife-ikkins who makes him a nice broth and asks after his disillusioning travels. At this point, Heine makes an equation between Venus and the Sabbath-

"To Frankfort I on Schobbas came,
Where dumplings were my food.
They have the best religion there:
Goose-giblets, too, are good.

before getting off a typical piece of satire-

"In Weimar, the widowed muse's seat,
Midst general grief I arrive.
The people are crying 'Goethe's dead,
And Eckermann's still alive!'"[A]

(hat tip to Shiela- vide previous post re. Tannhauser's dillema)

Emergence, Occassionalism and Reverse Mereology

If Imam Jafar as Sadiq's concept of 'takvin' is understood as Emergence- in what relationship might it stand to the Ghazzali brothers' Occasionalism and causationless poetic aetiology?

Perhaps, in an Occassionalist Universe, Emergence becomes the fundamental intuition, not of Time- for Time, here, is mere heteroclite seriality or jeitzeit juxtaposition- but the Brouwerian 'two-ity' which provides the basis of an acausal Constructivism, a Mereological metric in which, bizarrely, the part exceeds the whole because, every possible emergent in which it might participate becomes its choice sequence and knight's tour of a more ample dimension of freedom in alam al amr, whereas the emergent's  indifference curve between ingredient mixes becomes a constraint upon what amr can express in alam al khalq.

In this sense, then, the glory of the Ghazal is its reverse mereology or, salva veritae, reverse Tzimtzum; its turning of theodicy on its head- not justifying God's ways to Man, but making Man, making haecceity, interesting to God and inflationarily expanding the scope of His amr. 
But only apparently. Hence its pathos. Which actually makes it kinda cool.

Rational Choice hermeneutics and Reverse Mereology

Applying Rational Choice hermeneutics to this paper titled Rational Choice hermeneutics reverses, at least for its own project as intellectual provender, the traditional Economic theory linking the market for food to the market for faeces.
This is a timely move.
Already the Japanese pet food industry is concentrating attention not on the quality of the comestible supplied but the smelliness of the resulting turd. Similarly, to deal with India's farting cows  and the threat they pose vis a vis global warming, the fodder industry is considering a change in it's priorities from maximising milk output or weight gain to minimising methane content in bovine flatulence.
Turning to humans however- with the exception of the elderly or the constipated or those sad lost souls upon whom museli merchants prey vampire fashion- the food industry has not explicitly dedicated itself to maximising neither taste nor nutritional value but parameters relating to the faecal product. (Unless South Park got it right and there is indeed a sinister nexus between Mexican fast food providers and the manufacturers of anal tampons.)
Rational Choice hermeneutics can explain, but not ameliorate, this seeming atavism or retardation on the part of the fast food industry. Whereas food has been subsumed under the rubric of Nutrition- an objective, anonymous, Universal process- shitting remains under the sign of haecceity and Verstehen, the anal sphincter its Gadamerian 'merging of horizons'.

The next and necessary step- viz. to recognize itself as a reverse-mereology- the turd as larger than the world- for Rational Choice hermeneutics will, of course, permit it to lay the foundation of a new food industry dedicated to optimizing faecal parameters and, hopefully, ultimately disintermediating the diner altogether.

However, this is a challenge RCH has not yet set itself thus vitiating its own project.

Instead it has concerned itself with explaining things better dealt with by purely mathematical theories uncontaminated by psychologism or Shutzian 'ideal types'.
Let us consider a claimed success for Rational Choice hermeneutics- viz. the Big Player hypothesis re. herding in asset markers.

“Big Players” make it harder to form reliable expectations in the affected markets.  A Big 
Player is a privileged agent, such as a finance minister, who acts on the basis of 
discretion rather than rules.  The assumption of discretion means that the Big Player is 
learning as he goes.  The little players, however, cannot predict exactly what the Big 
Player will learn.  To predict how the Big Player will behave, the little players must have 
a relatively specific model of him – how he learns, evaluates situations, incorporates new 
information, and makes decisions.  In other words, the little players’ model of the Big 
Player must be an ideal type of low anonymity.  Thus, while they may have a reasonably 
precise picture of the Big Player, that picture may be precisely wrong.  The expectations 
of market participants are therefore less reliable in the presence of a Big Player.  On the 
other hand, if the finance minister were governed by rules rather than discretion, little 
players could employ a more anonymous ideal type to predict his behavior because fewer 
specifics about how he thinks would be required to make predictions.  A loose system 
constraint lets the minister use his discretion.  When he does (becoming a Big Player), 
the little players must formulate a concrete ideal type of him. They run the risk, therefore, 
of being precisely wrong about him.  This is the basic idea behind the theory of Big 
Players, developed by Koppl and his co-authors (Ahmed et al. 1997, Koppl 2002, Koppl 
and Yeager 1996, Koppl and Nardone 2001).  Their statistical results are consistent with 39
the prediction that Big Players induce herding in asset markets.  The theory of Big 
Players is but one example of the sort of empirically relevant theory that can be produced 
by a rational-choice hermeneutics. 

Change the term "Big Player' to 'almighty asshole' and, at once, Rational Choice hermeneutics has taken the first step to embracing reverse mereology- of the sort I prescribe- and, what is more, can abandon Schutzian 'ideal types' for a genuine 'merging of event horizons' by a purely mathematical, Hawkings-Penrose, comparative metrics of asshole super-density which would explain things like why George Soros was able to take down Norman Lamont's pants (though the latter appeared the bigger asshole) back in 1992.

Essentially, Rational Choice theories have a half-life (i.e. the period within which over 50% of its assumptions and findings and methods are shown to be utter shite) inversely proportional to their rapproachment with hermeneutics precisely because hermeneutics is a reverse-mereology project labouring to make the turd larger than the world. In other words, there are two opposite run-away processes simultaneously occurring- viz. Rationality's evaporation by reason of Intentionality's disappearing up it's own arsehole being offset by Hermeneutic's meditative expansion of the turd coming the other way.

Tannhauser's dilemma and Krishna's Visvarupa

Tannhauser's dilemma is an example of Rational Choice Hermeneutics. The argument presented is that somehow Tannhauser's bizarre behaviour during the song contest- he says love is purely sensual and ends up singing the praises of Venus- evidences not a Neitzchean amor fati but is actually a rational choice. Had Tannhauser stuck with the notion that love's true awakening is in the memory of church bells, not the Venusberg ballet, then he'd win the hand of his beloved Elizabeth and remedy the disgrace of having lost the previous contest. Instead, he has to go off on pilgrimage to Rome to seek penance. The Pontiff says the meistersinger will be as soon forgiven as his own staff of office puts forth green leaves. Elizabeth dies of a broken heart as does Tannhauser and the news reaches too late that the Papal staff has indeed flowered.

I don't pretend to understand the reasoning behind the essay in question. The authors quote Paisley Livingston's 'Literature and Rationality' (2001) to the effect that there is no rationality without intentionality- conscious or unconscious. However, they fail to see- though their analysis uses counterfactuals- that in a literary work the 'counterfactuals' are competing systems of values or intentionalites (meta-preferences) not states of the world. 

They write- 'The crucial question is: What are Tannhäuser’s options once the tournament has begun? If he plays by the rules, he simply has to put some effort in conjuring up a song. And since we who are in the audience have reason to believe that Tannhäuser is the most talented of all the Wartburg poets, we have little doubt that, if he wants to win the tournament, he can. Hence, if he plays by the rules Tannhäuser must simply make up his mind about whether or not he wants to win the tournament. In what follows we shall argue that both options are bad options, confronting Tannhäuser with a terrible dilemma—a dilemma he can only solve by breaking out of the boundaries set by the courtly rules, by sabotaging the contest—by an act of creative destruction that exemplifies the true hero.

Losing the contest is a bad outcome for obvious reasons. Having just rediscovered his love for Elisabeth the thought that somebody else might claim her as his prize must be appalling. But winning the contest is not a good idea either and it is quite straightforward to see why. As we have seen Tannhäuser does understand that he has gravely sinned and there is also no doubt
that he has a keen sense of Elisabeth’s purity. By asking for her hand and marrying her without having been granted absolution first, he would act against his own beliefs about Elisabeth’s nature and betray his own decision to repent. Moreover, he would significantly add to his sins. The Catholic Church is very clear on this point: Before getting married, spouses must approach the sacrament of penance because marriage is itself a sacrament; see, for example, the code of canon law (codex iuris canonici 1983, 1065§2) or Hörmann’s encyclopaedia of Christian morality (1976, 190-214).

So, what can Tannhäuser do? Both possible outcomes of the tournament have bad consequences. And, of course, the whole tournament, right here and right now, was not Tannhäuser’s idea. In fact, given his predicament, he must feel quite gulled by the sudden announcement of the tournament shortly after his arrival at the Wartburg. As with many dilemmas, the way out requires a creative, unusual solution—requires not to play by the rules. And this is what Tannhäuser does. His outburst sabotages the tournament and it does so very effectively. The first prize is never awarded and this is really the best outcome Tannhäuser could have hoped for. Of course, it might be his emotions that make Tannhäuser praise Venus after listening to the tame Wolfram and Walther, but the point is that his emotions solve his dilemma for him—and in a rather brilliant way. Not only does he not lose Elisabeth, he also gains time to do penance and seek absolution. Further, if one is willing to accept this view there is absolutely no surprise in Tannhäuser’s reaction once chaos
has broken out and the angry knights and singers, along with the Landgrave, send him away, off to Rome. This is precisely what, on some deeper level, he had wanted (and, prior to his reunion with the Landgrave and his knights, had planned).

Tannhäuser’s outburst is an act of creative destruction and as such an heroic act—lighting, in Emily Dickinson’s words, the Possible’s slow fuse—solving the apparently unsolvable.
Heroes of all times and cultures committed such acts or, rather perhaps, were made through such acts: Heracles who captures Cerberus by treating it with kindness instead of enmity; Alexander who severs the Gordian knot instead of trying to untie it; Columbus who breaks the
egg’s shell to make it stand up; Schumpeter’s entrepreneur who destroys a monopoly through radical innovation; or Luke Skywalker who triumphs over his father’s dark side not by wounding him but by being wounded. '

I don't know German and have only seen Wagner's Opera on TV with subtitles. Still, this doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Win the contest and then get absolution as part of the run up to your wedding is the obvious way to go.

Similarly, one might argue, in the Gita, the obvious thing for Krishna to do is to say to Arjuna- listen mate, Drona and Bhishma have received the boon never to be killed in battle. They will protect your cousins. All you need to do is to shoot down their arrows to protect your brothers. It's a stalemate. Nobody gets hurt and sooner or later the various allies and mercenaries on both sides will just up sticks and go home.

The authors of the Tannhauser essay conclude by saying 'Thus, we can now see that Tannhäuser’s salvation in the Virgin Mary necessitates his public praise of Venus—seemingly a paradox but only seemingly...' and later on- ''Where previous authors have argued that Wagner’s Tannhäuser libretto suffers from serious logical blunders, Rational Choice Hermeneutics  is able to restore coherency. In fact, if one is willing to accept the premises of RCH, we have shown that there is not the slightest flaw in Wagner’s conception of the opera. On the contrary, the construction of the opera with the centrally located tournament of song and its ensuing high drama must then be viewed as an immensely ingenious coup de théâtre.  .'

As I said, I know nothing about the critical reception of Wagner's opera. To me it looks straightforwardly Schopenhauerian- Love is of the Will but Music is free-'if the Universe perish, Music will remain'. Add in Nietzche's notion of amor fati and the whole thing couldn't be otherwise than it is and not degenerate into a sort of Shavian sit-com .

The problem with this essay is that the authors assume Tannhauser could have sung on any theme he wished. He could have made any argument. Is this true? Would Tannhauser really be a 'meistersinger'- would his song interest us- if not Truth, not Sincerity, but expediency governed his performance? There are plenty of medieval legends about some fiddler or other  quibbling his way out of a pact with the Devil. They just aren't a fit subject matter for Wagner, the student of Schopenhauer.

This is not to say Game theory has no place in Hermeneutics. It's just that rational choice across states of the world aren't what great literature does for a living. On the contrary, the 'counter factuals' one needs to be looking at have to do with meta-intentionalities and reverse mereologies such as that whereby Lord Krishna's Visvarupa is an axe which cuts down not the tree of Dark Anger (Manyu) but the Gita itself as the essence of the hymn leaved banyan whose roots are in heaven and branches down here below.

Is Paninian Sanskrit occassionalist?

I guess most people have a sort of vague notion that Classical Skt derives all words from verbs and thus has a default, real time, efficient cause, Mimamsa. But is this really the case?
Prof. Matilal emphasized the quite separate tradition of Shatkatayana who has a pretty early date when, presumably, the ritualist aspect would have been more prominent rather than Skt as an ars dictaminis.
However, Paninian Skt was particularly valuable to savants expounding non-common sense ontologies.
Occassionalism, Nihilsm, reverse Mereology- the list is endless.
How does this affect its principle of compositionality?
For occassionalim, nothing acts upon anything else- verbs refer not to actions to be described but illusions to be denied. What sort of poetic aetiology and canons of taste would this give rise to? Passive constructions informed by nirukta eymology tend to highlight not actions but menus of choice and by so doing shift the focus of attention to higher order intentions which can't be embodied or anthropomorphized except by doing nothing else and, that too,  only doing it to point to its own project as failure.
In this sense, Paninian Skt- itself the fruit of the Nirukta tradition- becomes the ideal language for occassionalism as anti derivative of any non common sense Ontology. An ironic outcome, surely,  for a 'totalitarianism of the verb', though I suppose, its practice may have been viewed as the dual of something else which really did address  the realm where blizzarding verbs are the ineffable Noun's cloud of unknowing.

Ontology, South Park and the turd in the microwave.

South Park's Imaginationland trilogy solved the problem of Meinongian objects- at least within its own topos- but what does it mean to say that South Park will soon be off the air?  Its last episode, till Fall, yielded the Erigenan epiphany that all things that are are shite- turds in the microwave to be precise- but did so by foregrounding itself as shite. But this raises the problem of what doing Ontology does to that Ontology once done. Especially if its completion and being done with Ontology arises out of its being done with itself- like that turd in the microwave previously referred to.
True, South Park isn't yet off the air- and only once it is will the episode under discussion acquire the property it ascribes to itself- but since, in a sense, every subsequent episode will be posthumous and done after being done with itself- it already is because it isn't.
In this sense, South Park exorcises by backward induction its own hauntology and possibility of deconstruction thus becoming truly outside ontics and hence purely deontic. But precisely for that reason- i.e. its being done with its own topos by having previously solved its own Ontological question- its metaphorical method is turned to pure Metatronics.
In this sense, already, every one of its episodes is that Elijah whose return, in the curious syntax of the conclusion to the Old Testament, turns the hearts of fathers to their sons and the hearts of sons to their fathers, lest God strike the land with a curse.

Dharavi in English poetry

Vikas Swarup- the Slumdog guy- genius and all round good egg that he is, has- of course- reclaimed Dharavi for Indglish literature by making it the launching pad for his, not merely politically but also soteriologically correct, project of  always constraining narratology to maximise 'poetic justice'.

What however of Dharavi's first appearance in English poetry?

Tis eve — and o'er the face of parting day 
Quick smiles of summer lightning flit and play, 
In pulses of broad light, less seen than felt, 
They mix in heaven, and on the mountains melt, 
Their silent transport fills th' exulting air — 
'Tis eve, and where is evening half so fair ? 
Oh, deeply, softly, sobs the Indian sea 
O'er thy dark sands, majestic Dharavee

( this is excerpted, it is perhaps otiose of me to mention, from  that vilest and most worthless of wankers, Mahatma Gandhi's one acknowledged Guru, John I-won't-Roger-my-bride-coz-her-Daddy-didn't-dower-her-right Ruskin's 'Salsette and Elephanta')

Condemn me for an ignoramus (what? I never claimed to be Bengali!) if you will, but it is only today that I learnt of the infinitely more interesting 'Salsette & Elephanta' of  Arthur Hugh Clough (whose correspondence with Mathew Arnold, re. the Gita, Lionel Trilling mentioned to me that one time I accidentally opened one of his books mistaking it for Porn- what? I never claimed to be Bengali and the only fucking reason I ever started reading my Sister's Undergrad Eng Lit texts was coz the only wank worthy writing available to me then (I was 13 and this was New Delhi in the mid 70's) was embedded in Chaucer's 'The Miller's tale' and Aristophanes' 'Lysistrata', not to mention Queenie Leavis's 'Give over with your Lawrence worship already, F.R- no way I'm letting you corn-hole me, you great big poof, so just scrub out your tongue with soap and get back down there coz tampons aint been invented yet and what do you think your Sainted Mom's black pud was made from anyway?.')- anyroad, to get back to what I was saying, it was only today that I got a dekko of Arthur Hugh Clough's entry, on the same subject, for the 1839 Newdigate (not Nudie-gate- as, alas!, I learn't to my cost at the tender age of 13), and ...urm... I've forgotten the precise point I was trying to make.

Dharavi. That's right. We were talking about Dharavi.

Ruskin and what he stood for- in his Salsette and Elephanta- Gandhi, and what he came to stand for after his meretricious commerce with Ruskin resulted in his 'Hind Swaraj', not to mention his 'kindly get raped' counsel to his dynasty's true Infanta- ensured that Dharavi would become a byword for a dehumanising slum and literary topos, or Res gestae, for the gravamen against Lord Shiva and the Devatas and Mithra and Brahmins and so forth- i.e. the usual suspects for Benthamite Utilitarianism's fag-hag-as-consort of convenience to early Victorian cackhanded Evangelism.

Clough- the guy who actually fucking helped Florence Nightingale unlike Ruskin who shat on everybody including his own parents and his wife and Whistler and so on- Clough shows how English aint necessarily crap- it's actually Vikas Swarup's Indglish avant la lettre.


Why? How? The answer is that, for Clough, Dharavi aint a particularly auriferous prospect in Darien but the jumping off point for an internal moral audit- not Ruskin's triumphalist, Racist, shite.
 Like Vikas Swarup, Clough shows us how, why, Dharavi is so thickly sown with auspicious stars that for it to enter our 'heart's deep cave' is to know Shiva as Smarahara- all one formerly considered worthy of Love, so utterly burned away, no fatality attaches itself to the Heart's faculties- all is auspiciousness and an eternal honeymooning with Ruth- fore-mother, ubiquitous Theotokos, of Christ.

Ahmed Ghazzali's causationless aetiology

There's a wonderful translation of the Savaanih here which got me wondering whether there might be a specifically Sufi esoteric orthopraxy- parallel to Ashari Occassionalist orthodoxy- which we ought to bear in mind while savouring a Ghazal's 'husn-e-talil' (beauty in poetic aetiology).

The hackneyed way to do this would be to gas on about teleology and the 'medieval mind- final causes, allegory, highly correlated systems, blah, blah, blah.

The trouble is, Ghazali's Lebenswelt was, in many ways, more sophisticated and urbane than my benighted intellectual coolie-dom in which all efficient causes are occluded by Media pi-jaw or Managementspeak or User Interfaces specially designed for morons almost as stupid as myself.

What, then, would a causationless aetiology cash out as for a bloke like me? Like most people of my generation,I think of emotions as 'Darwinian algorithms of the mind' and even efficient causes as arising out of a sort of Anthropic Selection Principle operating across a fitness landscape of Multiverses with different fundamental Laws or constants. Thus, to get away from efficient causes and glimpse the lifted horizon offered by causationless aetiology, is essentially (in Hindu terms) to escape Prakriti and seek to adopt the viewpoint of Purusha. The Ghazal then becomes not a trivialising 'talking to women' but talking to Prakriti.
Since, in our Weltenshaung, efficient causes gain efficacy by having been selected for, husn-e-taleel becomes the last word in pathos as that all puissant 'tyrant' is proven to be nothing but a series of snapshots in the mirror whose temporal existence is virtual and imaginary.
For which, needless to say, I blame David Cameron.
That boy aint right.

Higher Orders of Nothingness

First order Nothingness is the existence of Nothing. Second order Nothingness is the impossibility of the existence of something rather than Nothing. Third order Nothingness is the unimaginability of impossible types of existences as alternatives to Nothingness. Fourth order Nothingness is...urm...Rahul Gandhi's politics? No. Natural numbers don't actually run high enough to express that ultimate nullity.

10 top tips for mastering micturation from Fortune 500 M.Ds

1) Delegate
2) Okay, delegating was a real bad idea. Hire McKinsey.
3) Fire McKinsey- micturation aint mission critical but more of a P.R thing
4) Hire Hill & Knowlton
5) Okay, so we've fired Hill & Knowlton but how're we gonna get the smell off the carpets?
6) Hire McKinsey to get the smell off the carpets.
7) Okay, so we've fired McKinsey but how're we gonna get the smell off the carpet which they went and spread onto the drapes?
8) Endow a Chair in Mastering Micturation at Duke
9) It's a Chair, for fuck's sake, not a seat on the N.Y subway for bums to pee all over!
10) Ask Congress for a bailout and blame the Chinese.