'unparalleled (im)material plenty with a low standard of living'

last night horsemouth dreamt he was squatting in north west london (when he went for a wander outside there were mountains and a pavement coffee shop). the flat was large and concrete-y but horsemouth couldn't seem to find all the doors because strangers kept wandering through. horsemouth had a lot of kipple - he should really think about reducing it down if he's going to cart it about with him in his dreams.

 hipster as hunter-gatherer

 'unparalleled material plenty with a low standard of living' says marshall sahlins of the lives of hunter-gatherers in the green reader horsemouth has (featuring eroded attica - plato on soil erosion). of course the compensation for our security-lite employment prospects is that we can download/ stream or otherwise consume tons of cultural product for free and even produce it ourselves (good morning horsemouth writing again I see). it is not (as jaron lanier argues against the share -and -share-alike pay nothing digital economy) that the top of maslow's pyramid becomes blocked to us because we can no longer make a living (or at least not yet) but that it becomes more availiable as compensation for the menial nature of our various employments - think of all the people you see fiddling about on their phones during downtimes at work these days (only the homeless have time to read books).

there's a definition (somewhere in the wikipedia hipster entry) of hipsters as being more interested in what money does than in money itself - horsemouth thinks it would be good if that relationship could be so simply renegotiated. horsemouth voluntarily opted for a life where he made less money than his parents where he did not have a career, where he worked part time - in general he subscribed to the artist critique of capital, and, for his sins, capitalism has responded creating entire generations in this image.

ah well the job at tescos awaits when horsemouth is old and arthritic.

yesterday horsemouth mostly slept -off and on - he went down to the riverside (east india dock) to watch the proud owners out dog walking (poodles have such horrible feet). he's been reading anton chekov's letters (one of a line of doctors who are after hours scribblers - bulgakov, leonid tsypkin). lillian hellman, in her introduction, almost spoils it by making him sound too sensible (this is not what we read russians for! think of gogol, dostoyevsky, we read them because they howl so well) but fortunately she's right chekov is an agreeable character. 

 'I do not like my little book at all. it is a hotch-potch, a disorderly ragbag of feeble essays written at the university, slashed by the sensors and editors of humorous publications... had I known that people were reading me.... I would not have had the book published.'