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I grew up in Dallas, Texas, a city built on oil, semiconductors, trucking, finance. Dallas is a quintessential product of post-War American urban expansion, centered around the automobile: a concrete prairie of highways, strip malls, and suburban sprawl. It is a city without a past, or without much of one at least, outside the odd assassination. It is a city of corporate conformity and deep racial division, masked by geography and the anomie of freeways. It is a city whose educational and political landscape has been shaped by white flight and the fear of desegregation. The men, like my father, who work in the great glass cubes, in what is left of downtown, swelter through the Texas summer in the costume of another climate. But that is why the good Lord gave us freon. They have built an opera house, and a famous Spaniard's bridge. No longer will the cowboys' arias go unheard.
It is a city which never needed any Baron Haussmann to sweep away the mess of history, no Mussolini to thrust his great highway through the ancient forum. It was born that way. And so, I sometimes feel, was I. The great postmodern metropolis makes itself a pastiche past – am I to do the same? My grandfathers were practical men. They drilled for oil and measured men with stopwatches. They flew airplanes, designed missiles, traded in stocks. I do not think they wore spurs.
My parents are lawyers, but not the kind like on TV. I do not understand what my father does, but it has something to do with contracts. My mother tries to stop them from building coal plants, but they build the coal plants anyway. In Dallas, the city council has different color days, for the air. When the color is red, that means you should not go outside, because of the pollution. You will know it is a red day, because that will be the color of the sun. When I was a child I suffered from asthma. It is too bad, of course, but a Hummer is still a very nice car. Conservation is a personal virtue.
I went to school with those who will one day rule the world. They wore expensive clothes and lived in great gauche houses. They did not read books. When their day comes, to be the deciders, what decisions will be made? What will be dreamed of, in their philosophies? What past will they carry on their shoulders, what future will they lead by the hand? I do not know, and I am afraid. But perhaps I can teach their children to love books.
  
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Nice blog man 
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Interesting blog. As you noted, Dallas has no past but knows the value of building monuments.
“I must study politics and war, that my sons may have the liberty to study mathematics and philosophy, natural history and naval architecture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, tapestry, and porcelain.”
-John Adams
By the way, nobody likes books. Some just window dress better. In any event. I prefer the honesty of Dallas to the degeneracy of New York and LA.
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On December 09 2012 15:15 Jerubaal wrote:
By the way, nobody likes books.
I like books 
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On December 09 2012 15:15 Jerubaal wrote:
Interesting blog. As you noted, Dallas has no past but knows the value of building monuments.
“I must study politics and war, that my sons may have the liberty to study mathematics and philosophy, natural history and naval architecture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, tapestry, and porcelain.”
-John Adams
By the way, nobody likes books. Some just window dress better. In any event. I prefer the honesty of Dallas to the degeneracy of New York and LA.
Hey, fuck you step on a lego buddy.
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Now, now, let's use our friendly words in samizdat's blog now, hear? 
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On December 09 2012 15:37 sam!zdat wrote:I like books
You (and I) are a nobody
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On December 09 2012 15:37 sam!zdat wrote:I like books
You misunderstand. You said 'they don't like books' as a description of a population. I'm telling you there's no utopian place that would satisfy your dissatisfaction.
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Baa?21245 Posts
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On December 09 2012 17:52 Jerubaal wrote:Show nested quote +On December 09 2012 15:37 sam!zdat wrote:On December 09 2012 15:15 Jerubaal wrote:
By the way, nobody likes books.
I like books You misunderstand. You said 'they don't like books' as a description of a population. I'm telling you there's no utopian place that would satisfy your dissatisfaction.
utopia is a desire
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Freeway anomie is my favorite kind of anomie.
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EPT
