As I may have mentioned here before, I've been working on a new book for several years now. Not writing it yet, no. That would be too easy. Instead, I've approached this task in the time-honored way: by neurotically freaking myself out about whether or not I have a coherent subject to write about. This entails much agonized soul searching, metaphorical blood letting -- and lots and lots of research. The research is mainly to determine if I am certifiably insane. I'm worried about this, as only those so certified are allowed to publish books -- a fact about the trade you'll be forgiven for not having known. Odd as it may seem, all this recent stuff about harebrained Nazis, 19th century trance-and-dentalists, 20th century eugenicists, Blavatskyites, blatherskites and other assorted nut cases including the seven dwarfs: Balmy, Dippy, Dopey, Jerky, Sappy, Wacky and Zippy...

...all this began as an attempt to get a sort of cultural handle on Narcissistic Personality Disorder, a la Christopher Lasch's The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations. While this book lays out the real deal, it was published 25 years ago, and thus missed some of the more spectacular displays of dementia that have graced our so-called culture since. What is even more amazing than these displays themselves, is the fact that they are now taken by most of the populace as no more surprising than the appearance of a new breakfast cereal. "Oh, you're a Pagan? A Wiccan? An Angel? An Indigo Child? An American Indian Wampum Wannabe? Oh, how nice for you! One lump or two?" Tracking the mushroom-like growth of these alternative spiritual options -- that is to say, idiot-fringe cults -- has become nearly as common as counting carbs. Personally, I'd like to add a few phrenological bumps to their noggins. One lump or two?

But my current problem in relating Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) -- as defined by the DSM-IV -- to New Age Nut-jobism (NAN) -- as defined by the phase of the moon -- is a spate of books purportedly about narcissism, but really about how to 86 that annoying guy in your life. Thus what is truly diseased, exploitative and depraved is made out by some sleight-of-hand pretzel logic to seem a scarcity of self-esteem, a lack of "care of the self," a deficit of imagined needs gone unmet. And thus are the tables turned, the planchette of the Ouija board churned, and what remaining bridges burned. Ignorance is wisdom as water is wine. And drunk on that inversion, these sullen monsters of ever inward indulgence delight in absolving themselves of relationship with any but themselves. Here's a handful of examples...

BOOK TITLE	TRANSLATION
When Your "Perfect Partner" Goes Perfectly Wrong: Loving or Leaving the Narcissist in Your Life	Is he running roughshod over your plans for him? Laughing at your spiritual quest? Refusing to learn to fetch? Dump the bum. But do it with love.
from a review in: Small Press Bookwatch October 1, 2004 via: HighBeam Research Copyright © 2004 Midwest Book Review Here is a self-help guide that teaches the reader to be alert for signs of egotistical and controlling behavior, a partner who can never be happy no matter what you do, and other red flags, as well as what to do to defend oneself from being a pawn in a sex game, caught in a replay of past abuse, surrounded on all sides by a family of narcissists, and coping with narcissists in the workplace or among one's friends as well as romantic partners. The true stories of those who weathered manipulation are sure to reverberate with anyone who has endured similar maltreatment and selfishness.
BOOK TITLE	TRANSLATION
Loving the Self-Absorbed: How to Create a More Satisfying Relationship with a Narcissistic Partner	You really can't create a satisfying relationship with a narcissistic partner, and you know it. Dump the bum. But do it with love.
from a review in: Esquire November 1, 2003 via: HighBeam Research Copyright © 2003 Hearst Communications, Inc. Things we won't be covering in the index this month: The Vincent Gallo truffle collection from Vosges Haut-Chocolate ... Battlestar Galactica: the DMD release ... Loving the Self-Absorbed: How to Create a More Satisfying Relationship with a Narcissistic Partner, by Nina W. Brown ... Serena Williams's acting debut on Showtime's Street Time ... The five-day, four-night "Conquering Your Everest" vacation for men at Miraval resort and spa.
BOOK TITLE	TRANSLATION
The Wizard of Oz and Other Narcissists: Coping with the One-Way Relationship in Work, Love, and Family	He promised you Kansas, Dorothy, but now you're living in Trenton, NJ. Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain. Dump the bum. But do it with love.
from a review in: The New York Public Library Book of Popular Americana January 1, 1994 via: HighBeam Research Copyright © 2003 Hearst Communications, Inc. The Wizard of Oz: the popular name for a juvenile fantasy that is the principal American contribution to the fairy tale. It concerns the adventures of a farm girl, Dorothy Gale, and her dog, Toto, in magical Oz, whence they are transported by a Kansas tornado. Accompanied by a scarecrow, a cowardly lion, and a tin woodsman, they follow a yellow brick road to the Emerald City of Oz, where they enlist the help of the Wizard to foil the Wicked Witch of the West and make their way safely back to Kansas.
BOOK TITLE	TRANSLATION
Care of the Soul: A Guide for Cultivating Depth and Sacredness in Everyday Life	You know how to get your spiritual needs met, girl. But he's just spiritually needy. Dump the bum. But do it with love.
from the book: ...but when our narcissism is transformed, the result is the love of self that engenders a sense of union with all of nature and things. You might say that we then have a shared narcissism, a mutual self-love, a kind of mystical consanguity among all creatures. Not shying away from mysticism, we might say that... symptomatic narcissism can only be healed when it becomes a genuine religious virtue. All human symptoms and problems, when they are taken to their depth and realized in a soulful way, find their ultimate solution in a religious sensibility.
BOOK TITLE	TRANSLATION
Emotional Vampires: Dealing with People Who Drain You Dry	Why are Granny's teeth so long and sharp? The better to eat you with, my dear. But he just doesn't get it, does he. Dump the bum. But do it with love.
from a review in: Publishers Weekly July 31, 2000 via: HighBeam Research Copyright © 2000 Reed Business Information Clinical psychologist and business consultant Albert Bernstein's Emotional Vampires... is a humorous yet serious look at our interactions with people who seem to sap our energy. Through anecdotes, Bernstein... makes the various categories of vampires distinctive and recognizable (AntiSocial, Histrionic, Narcissistic, Obsessive-Compulsive and Paranoid) and offers practical guidance for how readers can deal with them effectively...

Searching for additional dirt... uh... that is to say background on Thomas Carlyle, I came across this book called The Iron Triangle: Inside the Secret World of the Carlyle Group. And of course then I was up all bloody night wondering whether or not this particular cabal -- for, all conspiracy theorizing aside, such it indeed seems to be -- the "The Carlyle Group," bore any relationship to the Victorian man of letters and all-around racist swine who carried on a 38-year correspondence with my favorite guy to attack ad hominemily, Ralph Waldo Emerson. Rely on that, Raplphy boy!

It's a difficult story to tell. And it may be simply my own ignorance that has drawn me on deeper into the welter of hypertextual associations that can in the end -- let's admit it for once -- prove anything one may imagine. Sort of like statistics. Or sufficient quantities of fungible assets.

But in my own defense on this point, I would argue that I was initially led astray by this charming photograph of David M. Levy. And it's not what you're thinking: that I have a thing for guys who look like Harpo Marx. No. It's because he wrote this article I stumbled across called The Secret History of the Dismal Science: Economics, Religion and Race in the 19th Century, which, as it not so coincidentally turns out, has a lot to do with our poster boy for racial swinishness, Thomas Carlyle. Levy also wrote a book on roughly the same set of subjects, titled How the Dismal Science Got Its Name: Classical Economics & the Ur-Text of Racial Politics.

In the "Secret History" article linked above, Levy writes of this nastily disgruntled Charlton-Heston / Jehovah-looking dude...

Carlyle disagreed with the conclusion that slavery was wrong because he disagreed with the assumption that under the skin, people are all the same. He argued that blacks were subhumans ("two-legged cattle"), who needed the tutelage of whites wielding the "beneficent whip" if they were to contribute to the good of society.

Carlyle is hard to take seriously because he is so outrageous. Yet it is important not to underestimate his influence. By laying out the argument against economics in detail, Carlyle revived the pro-slavery movement in mid-19th century Britain. His argument was taken up by calmer critics, who eschewed his polemical excesses while retaining his basic assumptions. For example, W. R. Greg, who together with Francis Galton, founded the eugenics movement...

Aha! Now we're getting somewhere. I've chopped the quote summarily because this seemingly tangential aside really ain't so tangential. This is why I've been searching out everything I can find on Carlyle in the first place. In the Beautiful Mind Garage, no connection is too bizarre to follow up on. So I follow up, what else?

In John Nichol's 1904 biography of Carlyle, there's footnote I found especially interesting, as it speaks to the longtime friendship between Carlyle and Emerson, and the former's indubitable influence of the latter. There's more than you want to know here, I realize, but humor me and pretend you're tracking...

Sir C. Gavan Duffy, in the "Conversations and Correspondence," now being published in the _Contemporary Review_, naturally emphasises Carlyle's politer, more genial side, and prints several expressions of sympathy with the "Tenant Agitations"; but his demur to the _Reminiscences of My Irish Journey_ being accepted as an accurate account of the writer's real sentiments is of little avail in face of the letters to Emerson, more strongly accentuating the same views, _e.g._ "Bothered almost to madness with Irish balderdash.... '_Blacklead_ these two million idle beggars,' I sometimes advised, 'and sell them in Brazil as niggers!'

Now is that nice language? I ask you. But it didn't seem to freak Waldo out too much, as these two continued their Anglo-Saxonizing correspondentification for another 23 years.

Yeah, but so what? Does this prove -- or even suggest -- anything about the purview of that hairy eyeball on the cover of The Iron Triangle: Inside the Secret World of the Carlyle Group? Dunno. I haven't read the book yet (as if I ever will). However, given the cast of characters it surveys, and some of their shady -- not to mention treacherous -- dealings with certain foreign governments, the following adds a bit of spice. See if you don't agree.

Carlyle died in 1881, but the prestigious Germanophilic scholar's theory of heroes and hero-worship, and his immensely successful multi-volume biography of the heroic Frederick the Great, had left a legacy that reinforced the development of what Fritz Stern has called the 'Germanic ideology'. German critics of modernity, democracy, rationalism, and so-called Jewish materialism saw in Carlyle a kindred spirit, one whose ideas of leadership dovetailed with proto-volkisch calls for a Fuhrer who would rescue Germany from its spiritual decay. In 1875 Carlyle sent a warm congratulatory note to Paul de Lagarde, one of the most prominent of these critics, who was an early articulator of the Fuhrer principle, and who openly advocated the expulsion of Jews from Germany. In the Weimar Republic, Carlyle's On Heroes was re-issued under the imprint of the Diederichs house, one of Germany's most notorious right-wing publishers in the decade before Hitler's seizure of power.

This reception of Carlyle in Germany suggests not that Hitler was the fulfillment of Carlyle, but rather that he was in part the invention of a 'romantic-volkisch' sensibility that had adapted Carlyle for its own purposes. If the public image of Hitler corresponded so closely to Carlyle's hero in the eyes of Nazis and anti-fascists alike, it was because that image was manufactured to correspond to what Carlyle was understood to have written. The term 'public image' is used here pointedly, for it is essential that we distinguish between the Hitler who existed as a person and the Hitler who was sold as a hero to the German people.

from: Hitler and Carlyle's 'Historical Greatness' by Alan Steinweis
source: History Today, 1 June 1995
via: HighBeam Research
Copyright © 1995 History Today Ltd.

Disclaimer: This post is for educational and/or recreational purposes only. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

So I get this call from some telemarketing spammer this morning offering to refinance my home. Only thing is, I don't own a home. I'm so angry at this 999th intrusion into the sacrosanct privacy of my (rented) home, that I somehow manage to pull a muscle in my... back. Actually, it isn't in my back, it's a bit lower down, but I'm not sure if I'm allowed to say "ass" here.

Now, several hours later, this particular part of my lower-lower back hurts like... tarnation. I would have written "hell," were I not so concerned with offending a certain portion of my target demographic. Which is kind of weird, if you think about it, as that same demographic is so vocal about the purported fact that we're all headed there. In a handbasket, others often add.

As it turns out, I do have a lower-back problem, which has mercifully not kicked up too bad for many years now. When it does, it's a... female dog. But one of the reasons it hasn't is that I have these pills called Flexeril, which are muscle relaxants. They keep big ol' hurty muscles from going into spasm, which is when things get really interesting, especially when said big ol' muscle is clamping down like a vice on your sciatic nerve, the main purpose of which is to make you wish you were dead when it gets thusly clamped down on and sends pain signals to your brain triggering the terminal death wish syndrome. I've studied a little medicine, so I know these things.

If I thought before that telemarketers were a pain in the ass, now this belief has been underscored in a literal way. Ow! Ouch! Oh this is such a drag! Because I needed to post something to this blog today and now... well OK, I'll admit it: this telemarketing incident and its painful aftermath have been a mixed blessing. The truth is, I was up past four this morning trying to think of something amusing to blog here. It occurred to me to title the entry "it was 20 years ago today" and find something funny in the HighBeam document database -- something that had happened in January, 1985. I got plenty of hits, but it seems that nothing funny happened in 1985. In fact, nothing even remotely interesting appears to have happened that entire year. I bet it was really my frame of mind at 4am that skewed my perception of funniness and interestingness. Nonetheless and suffice it to say: that didn't work. So I went to bed and immediately fell into a minor stupor -- not unlike my waking state, except that my eyes are closed.

Now, however, I have this really interesting thing to blog about: my ass! It must true what they say: God works in mysterious ways.

So I took a Flexeril, yes. Which is making me a little crazy, as Flexeril is what's known as a "soporific"; that is to say, it makes you a little crazy. If you want to know more about it, you can click on the picture of me giving Robin a piggyback ride through the famous Colorado surf. Come to think of it, perhaps all that strenuous surfing is what set me up for the unfortunate results of my wrath at the hapless telemarketer. Who can really know about these things? But one side-effect, as you can see, is that we both got quite a tan.

If you do click on that photo, you will also learn that: "There are many ways you can develop a muscle spasm. It may be caused by a sprain or strain from twisting, bending, or lifting; an injury such as whiplash from a car accident; or poor posture at the computer." [Emphasis mine.]

Bingo! That must be it. Poor posture. I knew it. People are always telling me that I'm posturing, but I never knew what they meant. Maybe it's like "vogue-ing" in that Madonna song. Also, I guess I should mention that this Flexeril stuff can also affect your head in weird ways. For one thing, it's not a good idea to write anything while you're taking it, as the outcome could be embarrassing the next day after it wears off. You might find yourself saying, for instance: "Ohmygod! I can't believe I wrote all that stupid stuff on a public blog!" Ignoring for a moment that all blogs are public or else they wouldn't be called that. They'd be called diaries or notebooks or private jottings -- although no one has ever seen an actual jotting in the wild, so their existence is questioned by many. Sort of like the Yeti and the Loch Ness monster. However, I am seeing both right now -- and they're both wearing party hats.

Concerned at this latest development, I turn to HighBeam for an answer. As usual, I am not disappointed...

P.K [some old geezer admitted to a mental hospital] had been receiving psychotherapy on an as-needed basis, but he had never been hospitalized for the depression. He was currently taking paroxetine (Paxil), enteric-coated aspirin (Ecotrin), cyclobenzaprine (Flexeril), tramadol (Ultram), and timolol (Timoptic) eye drops...

Aha! Didn't I tell you? There it is in black and white: Flexeril. And -- as is often the case in these posts, had you noticed? -- it gets better...

P.K. reported an increased loss of vision after his wife's death. During this time, he began to experience a variety of nonthreatening visual hallucinations such as blue elephants, bouquets of pink carnations, different-sized faces of unknown people wearing "bizarre head gear," and lace-like patterns. The hallucinations would appear suddenly and without warning during normal activities and would resolve within a few minutes. P.K. denied being frightened by the hallucinations and believed them to be a result of the Paxil.

from: Hallucinations in the vision-impaired elderly: The Charles Bonnet syndrome
by Tanisha Robinson Mojica and Patricia Polgar Bailey
source: The Nurse Practitioner, 1 August 1 2000
via: HighBeam Research

Yeah? Well I've got news for these Nurse Practitioners with the three names each. I don't think it was the Paxil. I think it was the Flexeril. Because I'm not taking Paxil (anymore), yet I am right now seeing those same people wearing bizarre head gear! Here, I'll take a snapshot to prove it...


So far, no blue elephants, but if I start getting those too, rest assured: you'll be the first to know.

Step right up Ladies and Gents. Yes, even you youngsters too late born to grasp the allusion in the banner to my upper right. That's perfectly alright. Not all of us have the benefit of looking back on long and wasted lives. Don't worry, though, your time will come. No need to push the river, as it were.

But oh dear, I'm forgetting my manners. Please allow me to introduce myself. Mr. Kite here, ever at your service. As you can see from my attire, I'm as fine a 19th century gentleman as you're likely to find anywhere these darksome latter days. Which is why I was amazed -- nay, astounded -- to find this picture of myself in the Microsoft Clipart and Media Gallery.

And I must say, they're doing a bangup job over there. Take the fellow I think of as Biz Guy, for example. Now this, if you'll allow me to point out, is an exemplary piece of neo-cubist post-socialist realism. Picasso would be eating his heart out.

Of course the dada-surrealist school is also represented...

And what collection would be complete without what was once called, in less politically sensitive times, "primitive" art?

It is nearly inconceivable that all these styles are the the output of a single Microsoft artist. But it's true. She is disconsolate, however, as she just got a bad review from her manager, and now she's thinking she'll have to get a job on a tuna boat.

But what does all this have to do with HighBeam Research, you ask? And I knew you were going to ask. In fact, I was hoping you would. Because you see, nothing demonstrates the utility of a fine historical document recovery system better than just such answers to just such questions. And here you thought I was merely fooling around. Hah!

Seattle is becoming an art mecca. Bill Gates, whose mother is director of the Seattle Art Museum, is a museum member, and both Sotheby's and Christie's have Seattle branches. Computer industry nouveau riche are becoming art investors.

CULTURE FOLLOWS MONEY. It was that way in the time of the Medicis, and it's that way in the time of cyberwealth. Notes Patterson Sims, the former associate director of the Seattle Art Museum, speaking of Seattle's new cyberrich: "It's not going to take two generations for these people to realize that they should collect art. They're exercising stock options and doing it now."

from: Swapping options for art: Microsoft and its new millionaires have made the Emerald City a hot market for contemporary art
by Doris Athineos
source: Forbes, 2 December 1996
via: HighBeam Research
Copyright © 1996 Forbes, Inc.