Let Them Eat Cough Cake

At times, it seems as if the whole world has become one giant furry-esque Disneyland. Denial is rampant and “turn the other cheek” often means looking the other way. The Internet is crawling with the failed, offering their poor experience as “life coaches” and hawking clichés they have gotten out of a one-dollar book of quotes. Why? Because the Internet is also filled with desperate dreamers—and all the snake-oil-selling sharks can smell blood in the water.

Today, professionalism, experience, initiative, productivity, and creativity mean very little in a dehumanized business climate that more so values the bottom line, politics, or follow-me aesthetics.

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Twas the Night before Apathy

Dada Krampus -Jay L. Schwartz - @jschwartz63
Dada Krampus

‘Twas the yawn before the holiday; you know of which I speak.
Not a punter was shopping, not even a post-Black-Friday peep.
The billboards were bright-shining on the streets below that glared,
In hope that no infrastructure would ever be spared.
The doomsayers were glued to the latest i-dreads,
While visions of paranoia droned in their heads.
And a cat with no whiskers, and I with my crap,
Had just drank our brains out, and man we were zapped!

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The Last Grasp for a Gasp

Dada Angstus by Jay Leonard Schwartz - @jschwartz63 - Collage Art

The Last Grasp for a Gasp

Deeply lost in the woods in the unsettling comfort of your grasp.
The misunderstood remain elusive, purposely so …
and, there but before ego, grace falls in serpentine gasps.

The window will turn seasons again in a few moments.
Stay tuned—the show is about to begin!
A cast of characters scatter the dreams, laid out like serpents.

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The Call Center for Existential Obscenities

Dada Obscenity - Jay Schwartz

You have reached the ‘Call Center for Existential Obscenities’.
Please hold.

When only the obscene can be seen, taboo fears require puritan counter-measures.
Indifference fuels the irrational and the self-absorbed.
The helpless mutates into a victim of necrotic tendencies and can no longer transmute.
– If you would like to ‘call for help’, please stay on the line. Continue reading

Apolitical Who Cares Activism

Dada Venduza
Dada Venduza – Jay Schwartz

Manisfesto: Apolitical ‘Who Cares Activism’ in support of apathy and passive anarchy.

With liberty and apathy for all! Stand united to support the right to get lost, do your own thing and not give a shit!

Human Dignity vs. Free Speech:

Free Speech is NOT a right or a privilege that needs to be granted by an authority. What are you stupid? People have mouths; they will talk anyway. We all have our opinions, so shut the fuck up. You have the right to remain silent.

The Pursuit of Happiness:

Life goes on anyway, so get on with it. Don’t confuse anarchy with tyranny. Don’t confuse civility with nationalism. Don’t confuse democracy with liberty. Nationalism and anarchy are not two sides of the same coin. Historically speaking, without ‘anarchy’ there would be no USA – and by the same token without ‘nationalism’ there would have been no Nazi Germany. Happiness does not come in a can. #Winning

Equality For All:

Stand united to champion individual differences. No grandstanding allowed. Yes, there may be no ‘I” in ‘we’, but there also ain’t no ‘us’ in it, either.

Apolitical Preamble:

Political elections have become little more than media circuses promoting ‘groupthink’ and featuring lots of people screaming and grandstanding using the excuse of ‘competition’ to win at all costs. This phenomenon also defines ‘civil war’.

The hallmark of good leaders is the ability to be responsible for and accountable to more than just their own constituents. Any preoccupation with defining political ‘free speech’ is just an excuse for sanctioning brainwashing, censorship and fascism. As such, most candidates for political office will fail in this respect since they don’t know when and how to keep their mouths shut.

Membership:

Power-mongers not welcome. Fear-mongers not welcome. Hypocrites not welcome. Politicians not welcome. Parrots not welcome. Lobbyists not welcome. Conformists not welcome. Dadaists must present identification. Loiterers ARE welcome!

Battle Cry & Mission Statement:

Take your politics and stick them up your ass. Leave us the fuck alone! Occupy nothing. Civil disobedience is both the poison and cure for social ills. Only you can abstain from hypocrisy.

Disclaimer:

This apolitical message approved by Jay Schwartz & Dada Bloq. Do not consult your physician, healthcare provider or a member of clergy. The disestablishment of the establishment will not be televised. Watch Dada Venduza; your freedom may depend on it!

Taking The Plunger: Is Dada Right For You?

 

'Lucky Dada' by Jay Schwartz“I speak only of myself since I do not wish to convince, I have no right to drag others into my river, I oblige no one to follow me and everybody practices his art in his own way.” – Tristan Tzara “Dada Manifesto 1918”

 

Thank you for reading this post. I’m not really sure why you did or what your expectations might be, but I sincerely thank you anyway. I feel it’s important to get that out of the way right from the start, before the confusion sets in. I may be a dadaist, but at the very least I’m also a humanist. Trust me, you can bank on that … just don’t bet the farm.

I tend to enter ‘dadaism’ on forms that request an entry for ‘religion’. Someone asked me the other day “what’s all this about dadaism?” I considered for a nanosecond how to respond before replying “oh you know, dadaismos … dada …” I received a curious albeit blank stare in return as I noticed the corners of his mouth begin to twitch ever so slightly. I SMiLEd and turned away, mouthing the words “have a narcissistic day”. My existence was justified.

Meanwhile, the aberrant logic of the times raged on all around me. In fact, it continues to do so to this day. I would tell you to ‘watch the 11 o’clock news’, but I don’t myself anymore and wouldn’t want to unintentionally to mislead you. Of course, it’s funny because I was breastfed on television, but I’ve weaned myself from it … and for the same reasons I don’t smoke; I refuse to be a slave.

And so I became a dadaist … and you can be one too, if you are inclined to take the plunger.

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Ask A Stupid Question

DunceSarcasm: the last refuge of modest and chaste-souled people when the privacy of their soul is coarsely and intrusively invaded.
– Fyodor Dostoevsky
 
A wise man can learn more from a foolish question than a fool can learn from a wise answer.
– Bruce Lee

 

The bewildered always have questions ‘after the fact’. Such questions usually offer profound testimony to these folks’ ignorance and lack of forethought, as well as to their inattention to ‘time’. Regret is expressed for the consequences, but responsibility is rarely taken for the circumstances leading up to an event. Blame may be apportioned in some cases … but lessons are rarely learned. Life goes on … and so does denial.

Does anyone really know what time it is? Many speak of the ‘investments in time’ they make or of their skills of time management … as if time were a commodity. To these aims, clocks were invented to keep track of time. Time keeping instruments are even worn on wrists … analogous to dog collars. Clinically speaking, regardless of the number of nanoseconds there are in a moment, each minute is seen as either being “too early” or “too late”.

Our movements are synchronized to our own creations. Yes, we are slaves to time. We relinquished our ‘freedom’ to our perception of time long ago. What’s worse is that for all our attention to time, we still have no clue about it.

“What time is it?”, you ask. “You’re asking the wrong question”, I say.

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Dadaism: Defeating The Overlords of Information Overload

'Dada Shutdown' by Jay Schwartz“Can the knowledge deriving from reason even begin to compare with knowledge perceptible by sense?”
– Louis Aragon
 
 “Expert, texpert, choking smoker, don’t you hear the joker laugh at you?”
– John Lennon

 

Wherever you go, you find information. Of course, I do recognize that we are, after all, living in the ‘information age’, but I still can’t help but wonder where all this ‘information’ came from? Who discovered it? How did it begin to spread? Who continues to disseminate it and for what reason? I mean, today we are obviously all full it, so I think these are important considerations.

At some point in history, someone must have come along and said, “Hey there! You! Yes, you! I have some information for you.” Perhaps it was God or a visiting extraterrestrial tourist. Perhaps it was a squirrel. I have no clue. And that my friends is the point of today’s post: I have no clue. Yet, there is one thing I know for certain: there is simply too much information out there!

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Down To Clown: Dadaism Meets Occupy Wall Street

'Dada Manisfestation' by Jay Schwartz“Every word that is spoken and sung here (the Cabaret Voltaire) represents at least this one thing: that this humiliating age has not succeeded in winning our respect.”
– Hugo Ball
 
“Apparently nothing will ever teach these people that the other 99 percent of the population exist.”
– George Orwell

 

It’s just another day on planet Earth. The warmongers are rattling their sabers. The power-mongers are scheming. Political pundits, regardless of their place in the political void, are preaching to their own choirs, and pseudo-intellectuals everywhere are mentally masturbating over whether or not the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement has faded away, even as its 2-year anniversary approaches.

Meanwhile, the rich (1%) are getting richer, the poor (99%) are getting poorer … and the ‘dadas’ are still creatively angst-ridden, at least this one is. Oh, and while we’re on the subject of existential angst, please note that I ‘might’ be facing deportation at sometime in the near future. Despite what my lawyer says, I reserve the right to be paranoid.

After all, having traded ‘standard of living’ for ‘quality of life’ about 18 years ago, I remain an American living in Greece, or so my pedigree and permanent resident papers claim, despite my personal non-conformity to either countries’ national norms.

Speaking of norms, I can’t help but draw a parallel between OWS and Dadaism, especially in regard to both movements’ anti-establishment stance on ‘the system’. In the faces of both personal and societal upheaval, both movements delight in rejecting the logic and reason of a fallacious zeitgeist that slavishly adheres to a system of personal slavery that’s been irrevocably broken for quite some time.

Of course, some people just don’t get it, claiming that it is human nature to bring order to what is perceived as chaos. Regardless of the fact that chaos may very well have its own brand of symmetry, hair-loss becomes rampant for some when presented with a square peg and a round hole.

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