The world is a funny place ... volume 2

Honestly, I am having the loveliest morning. Here's what I'm doing:

I'm sitting in a railway station; got a ticket for my destination. Unhuh.

That's not right.
What's not right?
That you're sitting in a railway station. That's a line from a Simon and Garfunkel song.
Maybe...
Well I can assure you it is. The next thing you'll be saying is that you're on a tour of one-night stands.
Okay. But isn't that what painting is, really? A tour of one-night stands?
Please.

Okay, fine. Here's what I'm doing. I'm sitting at my computer reading a draft of a thesis produced by a college student (she has asked for confidentiality, knowing full well my proclivity for republishing stuff people say or send to me). The topic is my Richard Fuld painting. And the coolest part, other than the obviously cool parts, is hunting down interesting citations that appear in the footnotes. Stuff that I had no idea existed. Witness this excerpt from Pambazuka News (a weekly forum for social justice in Africa):

“It is over” - a succinct way of informing the death of a dogma, the greed-driven neoliberal capitalism. On September 15, 2008, that is how one of stockbrokers in Wall Street described the fall of the Lehman Brothers. The fall of the Lehman was a visible signifier of the Tsunami that hit the base of a turbulent sea called the Wall street - the world of high pitched financial trade and investment. It was the story of a disaster foretold. The dogma is dead now under the debris of the famed investment banks. There is no more consensus in Washington. Karl Marx must be laughing in his grave, says John Samuel.

“It is over”, a succinct way of informing the death of a dogma, the greed, driven neoliberal capitalism. On September 15, 2008, that is how one of stockbrokers in Wall Street described the fall of the Lehman Brothers. The fall of the Lehman was a visible signifier of the Tsunami that hit the base of a turbulent sea called the Wall street , the world of high pitched financial trade and investment. It was the story of a disaster foretold.

That morning a painter called Geoffrey Raynold landed up in Manhattan and unveiled a large canvass painting, The Annotated Fuld , showing Richard Fuld , the beaten Chairman and CEO of the Lehman Brothers with sunken eyes. The painter invited the Lehman employees and others to scrawl their message on the canvass , someone scribbled, “This sucks”. The next day the painting was sold for a 100,000 dollars.

First, I love that the red line around the intro graph stayed put when I cut and pasted it. Second, I love just reading the very last sentence. Although incorrect by a factor of ten (the painting sold for a million--eat that, haters!), it feels like good karma.

There is also one extraordinarily pleasing line from the paper itself that I'd like to share with you, but I need to get permission to do so. I will tell you this: it contains the phrase "epideictic discourse."

Remain calm.