24 Nov 2016 | Portland, OR> aft'r turning 50 spent thxgiving here in our town of berth. Up til th age of 25 we dint do no drugs or drink hardly a drop (sides a few drunken mishaps in our tweens) .. then th 2° quarter of our life we adapted mas to hooch like mos ppl due .. but leading up to yr #50 (as we push o'er said hill) we now considering spendin' th 3° quarter of our life sober + clean .. part of th reason Minor Threat inspired th soundtrack to our resent hed-shaving .. not that we gonna go full-on strait edge on U, dear Inurnet surfers, but such holiday events reinforce our thinking how dumb ppl act when drinking .. part of this allso relaytes to th 4 psycohlogical states weave talk'd of time + time b'fore:

1. unconscious incompetence
2. conscoius incompetence
3. conscious competence
4. unconscious competence
   

.. both in our life + in our riding of A Raft Manifest feels like we entering stage 3 (conchus know-how) .. wich purhaps also means we start spelling + riding granmatickly carwreck? In any event, inter us a sober + clean + responsible stage of our life we think .. to pave th way so we can finish out our life in unconchus stupor where ∀ll beecombs 2° naychair sin think/datastreaming.

barkin' eye

bald eagle along th Willamette

Reading Sometimes We Walk With Our Nails Out by Sarah Bartlett .. not sure where we got this book, but Bartlett hails from Portland so figgerd her appropriate .. poetry, wich we dont read much, but seems good for th genre .. intresting language, perhaps a bit precious for our tastes.

25 Nov | PDX to DC> also started to read The Practice of Everyday Life by Michel de Certeau but s/he bored us to deth .. another book we not sure where we got or for that matter what s/he = about. So insted red The Lives of Animals by JM Coetzee, which we pick'd up @ Powell's. So Princeton invites Coetzee to give a lecture there wich resulted in this post-postmodern es-story about a fictional novelist (Elizabeth Costello) giving a lecture @ a fixional university about animal rites + whatnot but even then knot so much an s-say on animal rites as mise en abîme navel-gazing fillosofee skirtin' thorny issues w/ tung embeddid so deep in cheek hard to swallow the «food for thought» .. or food to feed th datastream as we dicebat (aft'r ∀ll «To be a living bat is to be full of being.»)

26 Nov | DC to Copenhagen> home in DC < 20 hrs b'for we wint back to th airport to continue flyin' father ∃estwords now to Europa .... to cont. our datastream on Coetzee's book (based on notes we typed to ourself on our dumbphone) .. actually, th s-say by Coetzee cumprizes scarce ½ th book, th rest filled by introductions + follow-ups by notabull ackademicks in relidgun/ethics/literachur/biology etc. .. wich ∀ll seem'd a bit mucho (specially as anudder book we red recently (What is Posthumanism?) also wint on + on about The Lives of Animals + ∀ll her repercussions) .. tho yearned us to hear an ecologist's take on th subjick—if every1 + their mudders ate nuts + berrys mor animals wd probly suffer ± die ± git displaced by deforestation, etc. We mo' cuncerned w/ quality of life (wile alive) then killing of life. Hell, most farm animals (or factory products as Coetzee, err, Costello calls them) probly bedder off ded meat in our bellys. 1 person givin' up meat aint gonna do squat to alter our juggernautickle food sistem, nor 100 million drops in da bucket gonna alter th corse of climet change. To those priviledged white folk that point to Hindoos + say «look, if they kin do her so kin we» .. we punt back + say, «yah, look @ India. Hows that working out for them?» .. naïve to think vedgytarianism xcuses yo'self from th guilt ± shame of b-ing human, that she washes th blood from yo hands. ∀ll of us = part of same hippocrisis as Michael Corleone sez. ∀ll rationalizations (inklooting our one) gits served up w/ an unhealthy dose of hippocrisis no madder waht) .. th pairofdocks keep forking w/ every turn .. our axions fuel a re-axion elsewheres aint no way round her mounden of doggie-do. Take th hippocrisis of pet-owners .. we dig dogs too, dont mean we gotta keep 1 against her will w/ no udder carbone-footprinted purpose in her life 'cept for our happiness. As Coetzee (or 1 of his fictichus charactors he hides b-hind) points out, most relidguns identify themselves by what they DONT eat. What = clean or unclean in their ritechus eyes. We aint 1s to wanna pass judgment on a pertickler individual animal (tho we do think pigs = smarter + father up th food chain than, say, chickens) but low-order animals like shrimp or chicken just make th most ¢ense as far as land-based animals go, in terms of afishinsea within th overall food system .. + yeah, chickens aint th brightest tools in th shed in our honist opinion. If we had our druthers weed eat insex + bugs but they hard to come by. Hey, we gots to eat ∫umpin + sposing we dont ∫um udder capitalist pig will. Dog eat dog in this moondough. Dogs + pigs wd eat us given th chance. But we int' this idea of cleanliness as far as living w/ yo self w/in this fucked framework. Making choices that you feel both physicully + mentolly good about yo place in el moondough, to keep yo conchus clear + clean, so u sleep well @ nite. Perhaps a moral code = nessysorry for th masses, but we aint about denying or restricting, but choosing 1 way or anudder, by our recognizance, not cuz some relidgus freaks tells us udderwise. If u aint making th choice fur yoself aint no point in living, u just a cog in th juggerknot. Live by yer own code yo. This gots mas todo than w/ jus consuming carne, but also drinkin' hooch .. no 1 in their rite mind wants to hear «dont eat this» + «dont drink that» + then when u do u feel guilt + shame, jus aint productive. Ppl gots to make up their own minds presentid w/ th options they gots, like on this plane (talk about hippocrisis of carbone footprint) we got th option tween chicken or swine (+ even if fish = an option we dont do fish on planes). we aint no navel-grazing manorexic like Kafka who took th moral hiyh rode o'er even his own family @ th xpense of his health. Th elephant in th room that no 1 menshuns = overpopulation .. jus too menny fuckin' p-poles on this here moondough to sustain individual choice in such madders. This aint th fault of no 1 person but ∀ll humanity + no 1 person shd feel shame + restrict themselfs on behalf of th rest of humanity (unless of corse this makes them feel good + clean about themselfs) to xpect udderwise of udders = elitist + ritechus. Only th elite 1% think such noshuns (+ rarely practice what they preach), th udder 99% = animals who want to eat meat + th soul way they aint gunna if meat aint an economickly viable option. Innywaze, this = what reading Lives of Animals triggerd us to dadastream about here sted of traveloggin, tho we dint inkloot inny of our notes we rote to self @ least not in so menny words. Aint no way of addressing such issues w/o coming pre-loded w/ hippocrisis + lame justivacations .. Coetzee musters his best, but still, he a nobel-prize winning academick workin w/in smug cunstraints of a hiyher learning institution rife w/ self-refurential contradiction like a snake eating his own tale .. he has his charactor say «for an instant, before my whole structure of knowledge collapses in panic, i am alive inside that contradiction, dead and alive at the same time» .. bringin to mind Shrodinjures gat ± coinsidentolly we on our way to Copenhagen .. a city we never set foot in but ∃xists on our raydar cuz of her famous interpretation of quantum mechanix ..

cullapsing th wave fcn book-to-fork

+ no, our mudder never tot us to not play w/ our food, nor take pitchers .. + yes, we ate our brussel sprouts even tho scarce few things in el moondough we hate more .. no madder what we eat everything put in front of us (+ very rare we throw sumping in our fridge out .. cooking to us about afishinsea, using waht u got @ yo disposal b4 she gose bad). Food waste another topic scarce few wanna talk about xcept may'b Tristam Stuart .. th topic of another post entirely (we blog'd a bit alreddy here) ..

27 Nov | Paris, France> an hour in Copenhagen airport .. then thru th clusterfuck of CDG having to exit + go back thru security + train to another terminal. Waiting for a plane to Montpellier. Watch'd Tarzan on th plane, th over-th-top new-fangled 1, but int. th idea of Tarzan .. feral dude raised by apes. Dint sleep a wink, startin to hit us now. To finish our datastream about Coetzee's animal book .. todo in moderation. Dont say no, but steer clear of habits + hardfast rules. make th most sensible choice given th situation that minimizes our impact + makes us feel bedder about ourself, fizsickly + spiritchewly.

Copenhagen

+ now in Montpellier, but aint much new to say, we said our piece here over th summer .. Inurnet still sucks as does th food .. walk'd around lookin for sumpin to eat, slim pickings unless u into crappy crepes, goose liver or saucy beef, served w/ a dose of cigarette smoke wafting from every table.