I’m not talking about me.

I’m no Scholar.

I’m a Blogger.

They call me the Gloomy Boomer. You can read my Blog for free. You can subscribe to my blog for free. You wanna do that? Fine. Give me your email.

You’ve reached your free article limit

Anybody get’s their news off the internet is familiar with the above announcement. You wanna keep reading, you gotta subscribe.

Meaning you pay.

I’m not talking about my Blog, mind you. My blog will always be free. I’m talking about the major news outlets.

I can’t read the New York Times unless I subscribe. I can’t read the Atlantic unless I subscribe. The New Yorker gives me a couple articles a month…after that, I gotta subscribe. The Wall Street Journal teases my ass with the Intro but when I try to scroll down, I’m blocked…unless I subscribe. This is Bullshit. Used to be you could read all the free shit you liked on the internet. These Peckers have wised up. Now you gotta subscribe. Not everybody’s charging. You can still read The Guardian for free. Same with CNN. Rolling Stone. Politico. The Hill. Etcetera and so on…But the day is coming when you’ll pay a subscription fee for every single site you click on to.

You’ll be paying a subscription fee to wipe your own ass.

In the end, everybody pays. Unless you’re dead.

A Scholar worth reading

This is a book I plan to read. It’s not about dead people’s bones. It’s about the Data. The records. The records of dead people. The records of everything. The books. The images. The toys. The things. Things you can touch. Ultimately, that’s what we are. The Records. It’s about preserving the Records. These Records are stored in vast underground chambers in various locations. That’s where the records are. Forget about the cloud. The Cloud is storage, a storage without preservation. The cloud (internet) is only progress. And progress vanishes with a strong wind.

Check out the dedication Brian Murphy offers at the beginning of his book:

This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing in from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such a violence that the angel can no longer close them. The storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress.

—Walter Benjamin, “Theses on the Philosophy of History” (1940)

Just like the Ancient Egyptians before us, we’re hung up on preserving the dead.

Recording the Dead.

Keeping the Records.

The hieroglyphs carved on the walls of the tombs of the dead.

Hieroglyphs from the tomb of Seti I (KV17), 13th century BC…Wikipedia

I love the Ancient Egyptians. (even the tomb raiders, I love.) I love that we’re no different from the King Tutsters. We too are preserving the records. You just don’t hear much about it. Why? Because we’re hung up on PROGRESS!

Deep down, though, where it counts, we yearn for a solid unchanging world. A world where the Records are preserved and revered…

We wanna be remembered.

You can subscribe to my website for free

I’ll hold on to your email address for all eternity.

It won’t cost you a dime.

Ever.

I don’t farm your email. Sell it to the Hucksters. I’m not one of those sneaky weasels.

Trust me.

I actually care about you.

All I’m ever gonna do is use your email to send you alerts concerning my latest post. And what are my posts good for?

Maybe a laugh.

Maybe tips on good books to read.

Like for instance Brian Murphy’s book.

Brian Michael Murphy

This guy is young.

He’s an Academic. I don’t care much for Scholars. But there are a few I like. Nome Chomsky. Howard Zinn. Timothy Leary. People who’ve cut through the bullshit rather than piling it up. These are the one’s I like. And I think Brian Michael Murphy fits the bill.

Brian Michael Murphy is dean of the college and director of the MFA in Public Action at Bennington College.

He’s also a black dude. A mixed raced black dude, like good old Obama. Remember President Obama?

A former Prez who actually did no harm to the role.

Kind of amazing, in leu of current events.

Brian Michael Murphy is a scholar. I’ll go out on a limb and say a black dude who also happens to be a Scholar almost always has something interesting to say. That’s cuz Black people have a view from the bottom. The bottom is were hard truths are revealed. Turns out, what Murphy has to say about how, why and where we preserve our Records is revealing. Here’s an interesting quote from his book. From the chapter where he discusses TIME CAPSULES:

Probably the persons who open the Capsule will have a physical appearance very like our own, except that they should have learned the principle of breeding a better race… . They should be, and probably will be, a race of supermen and superwomen, as judged by our standards; but only common men and women as judged by their standards… . This will be a healthy world governed by wholesome people. The abnormal will have no place in it.

—A. W. Robertson, Chairman of the Board, Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company, 1939

This is what people believed in 1939. White people. Sadly, many White people are thinking the same way today…

Brian Michael Murphy is also a poet

He wrote a poem about his mixed race heritage. It’s pretty funny. Well…my idea of funny. Check it out here:

Two Poems by Brian Michael Murphy.

I’ll leave you with a YouTube of Murphy speaking about his book.

It’s worth watching.

Especially if you interested at all about where we store the Records.

And why we store them.