The Boulevards of Extinction. Andrew Benson Brown

      The Boulevards of Extinction

      Copyright © 2015 A. Brunneis. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.

      Resource Publications

      An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers

      199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3

      Eugene, OR 97401

      www.wipfandstock.com

      ISBN 13: 978-1-4982-2999-9

      EISBN 13: 978-1-4982-3000-1

      Manufactured in the U.S.A. 02/13/2017

      For Cassandra,

      Whose prophecies will always have an ear

      Μοῦσά μοι Εὐρυμεδοντιάδεω τὴν ποντοχάρυβδιν, τὴν ἐγγαστριμάχαιραν, ὃς ἐσθίει οὐ κατὰ κόσμον, ἔννεφ᾿, ὅπως ψηφῖδι <κακῇ> κακὸν οἶτον ὄληται βουλῇ δημοσίῃ παρὰ θῖν᾿ ἁλὸς ἀτρυγέτοιο.

      —Hipponax, fragment 128

      Part 1

      The world is a watercolor drop on a crude oil canvas.

      When Folly speaks in her own person the fools only hear praise.

      Courtly love was a war of attrition; modern love is a blitzkrieg.

      Models of content: the blighted ovum, the gaping mouth, the car trunk, the freshly dug grave. From the womb to the tomb, we are so much more than absent-minded.

      Thanatos: Our first recourse on a windless sea.

      Happiness has been the subject of many sitcoms but no documentaries.

      There is such a thing as a lucky thought. Many thinkers make their careers off of betting the same number on every spin of the roulette wheel.

      If Jesus had turned bread into chocolate, Cana would be infamous for its flower girls—disciplettes of the Pimp of Peace.

      For a parched cheek, raindrops offer catharsis on loan. Those unable to weep can at least soak themselves in heaven’s sorrow.

      It’s hard to know God when his finger is on their button.

      Scientism is the thoughtful twin of Chaos. To balance annihilation, the “theory of everything” is constructed as a way to explain nothing.

      The choice between savagery and monotony largely depends on whether you focus on the shipwreck or the island paradise.

      But there is a royal road to geometry—defenestration. A square, space, a solid plane: knowledge easily accessible.

      The gift of technology will culminate with Prometheus escaping the raven and presenting moonshine to firefighter trainees.

      Less theatrical than “greatness of soul” is the pants-passion of Epicureanism. The first drama is all character, the second all plot.

      Pick a pocket or rob a convenience store: then you will know what it’s like to live as an artist.

      One suspects that certain people rely on fresh breath to help them speak well, when in truth they just like drinking their mouthwash.

      The closest proof that you experienced consciousness will be your novelization.

      The free marketplace of ideas: that invisible head which everywhere and nowhere contradicts itself for the sake of inclusiveness so that no idea is left standing against the wall of the cocktail party. A world of nondiscrimination where no thought is a falsehood—the sole judge is fashion.

      Derision of love is the cutter’s sense of release, the peace of mind obtained from ripping off one’s bandages and fingering the wound.

      Every forbidden realm of logic has its preferred fallacy-turned-virtue. In politics it is the argumentum ad temperantiam, among married couples the ad nauseam, at funerals the ad ignorantiam, in the delivery room petitio principii.

      Twinkling heavenly bodies go unmapped as stargazers point their telescopes towards the nebulas around the masterpiece.

      A theory of practice is a bird’s eye experience that lacks ground perspective. It sees the lines of paved streets but overlooks the back alley shortcuts.

      If you’re intent on speaking artfully, pay a scribe to follow you around and record your utterances; for no one else in the room will grasp the subtlety of your meaning. Don’t, however, pay a documentary filmmaker: those who watch your diary will attend only to the extraverbal superfluities, and dismiss what you say based on the shabbiness of your bearing.

      Outside every desire a lawyer and a doctor conspire to gain admission.

      An iconoclast lacerates idols with the shards from his own stained glass window.

      Felatious inferences: the swallowing of every strict logical consequence. A logician is often caught wide-eyed when his premises explode all over his face.

      Expediency rubs off on people the closer they chafe to the board chair; excellence does business near the throne, at the urinal.

      The rebel artist stands proudly as the centerpiece of the businessperson’s hors d’oeuvres platter.

      If Heraclitus were alive today he would recommend waterboarding his native Ephesians for the secrets of their ignorance—to protect them from the logos.

      Discarding the ladder once you climb it won’t rid you of your past, unless you’re standing on the top rung when it falls.

      A man with no name is free to identify himself with any symbol. When the tide is right he will salute even swimming flags and rescue aliases from shark victims.

      Much of what constitutes admiration is the wish that the admirer’s mistakes, too, will be fortuitous.

      Consumerism is the millenialization of venerable legalities. First the Magna Carta, then the Magna Mart—a cartful of tupperware crowns and produce sceptors available on discount.

      All the handbooks for princes could not prevent a merchant from opening one. Since then, the genre of leadership advice has been aimed at everyone but leaders—there are many handbooks for losers, none for presidents.

      The three estates: those who prey, those who cite, those who shirk.

      The problem of evil must fit, for a bureaucrat, within a memo; a scientist, the treatment group; an artist, the limits of talent.

      Too late to step on the garden snake . . . you have already fled into the jungle.

      To lie in a puddle all day and recommend your chiropractor to everyone who steps on your spine . . . with a chivalry that leaves the jacket at home, the chiropractor takes seriously the notion of putting his back into his work to achieve success.

      Heaping data on the most dubious hypothesis inundates it into a paradigm.

      Scientific progress has turned death into a procrastination interrupted by an accident. Backpedaling against a waterfall, we are hit by a thunderbolt.

      If only we would twist the butter knife, lipid revaccination wouldn’t need to wait for fat season.

      A people must train for centuries to endure a single generation of freedom. Against two generations nothing can discipline them.

      The liberator oppresses the under-trodden with promises their natures can’t deliver