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when asked about the nature of things in general [NOTIG]
Daniel A. Foss (DFOSS@CCVM.SUNYSB.EDU)
Sun, 27 Feb 1994 13:23:59 EST
comments respond. Withal, let me moan and groan a bit to the effect that
few things are more dauntingly aggravating to this writer than inchoate
queries as to the Nature Of Things In General [NOTIG, acronym goes back
many years ago, pronounced as with terminal NG, "NOTHING," reflective of
all-to-common intent reflected in preoccupations therewith]. For one thing,
those who follow and those who maintain discreetly ignorant distance from
my modus operandi must somehow realize that NOTIG affords precious few trivia
for memorization; notably too, it is lacking in my favorite trivialities, those
whose last names are Roman numerals.
Giggies aside, on this occasion the bringer of the query, Eva M. Armstrong,
has made what to me today, viscerally, is the incontrovertible statement that
NOTIG is screwed up if not terminally then to an extreme degree we have fatu-
ously failed to recognize, notwithstanding the nagging I have done on this
question. Not to say I was alone in this; merely that I'm self-dramatizing
so long as the going's good.
As one whose fun pastimes include fantasizing the selling of airtime for
round the clock coverage of the end of the world, I would welcome such a speedy
and overdramatized-type Apocalypse, were it possible or likely. But much more
likely types of impending doom are daily carried over the air by the Internat-
ional Political Economy list <IPE@csf.Colorado.Edu>; and I for one am scared
enow to forsake the Kiss A Serb For Breakfast liveandletlive coexistence with
genocidal fascists, if only due to highly personalized fear of nuclear war
between Russia and Ukraine over Crimea and other proliferation of mass blood-
shed which inaction heightens as to probability.
Incineration however yields to starvation in even more deprived-depraved
regions, and our comprehensive understanding of our collective goingtohell
in a handbasket leaves much to be desired; only the psychic devastation left
behind by the Knowledge Explosion may be praised to the highest. The occurrence
of generalized ruination, be its effects drastic and material, else fiendishly
intricate and generative of hyposemia, is something our social science scholar-
ship as constituted is *lousy* in handling.
Kibitzers will accuse me of seeking to profit by such a prevalence of
"scholarly dysfunctional organization/structure" should it be determined to
exist, as an avowed [perhaps principled] slob. Should personal salvation
materialize pursuant to generalized ruin elsewhere, I would of course seize
the opportunity. This is not however my Standard Operating Procedure. Those
whose misfortune it has been through the years to bear with the annoyance I
regularly supply will recognize that I am an inveterate moralistic nuisance,
guilt-tripping REPENT at sinners whilst critiquing the adequate-for-some
current level of system-failure with the possibilities of that system, or
its successor, were the macrosocial irrationalities to be mitigated or gotten
our of our hair. I say it again, by the very notion there's Something in our
hair, that this place is *lousy*, my fellow armenians, thank you and goodnight.
Daniel A. Foss
<dog of the internet>
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