This is NOT Over

Sunday Oct 22, 1989 Smoking and Other Good Decisions

Talked to Jen-O today and I am going to end up seeing some lecture with her and some POLS assholes on Friday. I was hangover smoking in the lobby with her and she convinced me attending this lecture would be a good thing to do. Our conversation was something like…

JO: “Do you know who Leo Strauss is?”
Me: “Sure, the jeans guy.”
JO: “No he’s not the jeans guy.”
Me: “Oh, the anthropologist. He wrote about nude dudes or something.”
JO: “That’s Levi-Strauss.”
Me: “Levi Strauss IS the jeans guy kid. I think you’ve got it all fucked up.”
JO: “The anthropologist is Claude Levi-Strauss with a hyphen.”
Me: “I didn’t hear you pronounce the hyphen.”
JO: “You are not even aware of how ignorant you are, are you?”
Me: “I think that’s probably a key part of ignorance. Unawareness, I mean.”

Then she talked about some heady shit, the details of which are difficult to remember. I’m only paid to remember the jokes people. Ok, no one is paying me, I just prefer to remember the jokes.

I actually do know something about her Leo Strauss. He’s this shitty little guy who flunked out of Martin Heidegger’s Nietzsche class and fled the Weimar Republic. See I know something about history. The history of political philosophy, that’s another thing.

To be honest, some of the more interesting folks around campus (and that is a very small number) care about this thing they call “the history of political philosophy.” Jen-O’s Professor Frisch is one of them. There are others in the POLS department, the theory guys that seem to be pushed off to the side of things at best, while being hated by others.

Being hated in a time and place like this seems to be a thing to be admired.

When Jen-O said the names of folks from here who were going to be there (at this lecture) I told her, “I’ll go, but don’t expect me to join anything. I’m no joiner.”

She laughed. She told me that no one wanted me and going would be for my own edification. I told her I was plenty “ed” already but I don’t think she believed me.

The talk is going to be at U of C. I’ve never been there. I don’t know much about Hyde Park except that parts of it are really fucking scary while other parts are “bookie”. Presumably this lecture will be in one of the “booklearnin” parts. The last thing I need to do is go to the big city, attend a public lecture and come back addicted to crack.

Sadly, it would not shock me if that is what actually happens.