February 13, 2009 - Coffee Break - Kansas City Missouri

I checked the weather on the Internet. It had been lightly raining – or at least drizzling. 38° and light show. I don’t believe it but then the glass doors are all fogged up and I can't see out. Someone enters and I see big fluffy flakes falling out there. Yes it is snowing and I had to lean from the Internet.  I come across a new term in the news: retention awsrds and I wondering is this the euphanism for an “executive bonuse?” Yes and no but beware.

Yet how difficult it is, once words have been betrayed, to take them seriously again – Susan Sontag

It is an honorable term when applied to military re-enlistment bonuses but when used as a tool to tunnel funds from already looted assets, well we begin to question even its legitimate usage. A simple apology is no longer sufficient. No indeedy doo, it is not!

In the middle of it – everyone is introducing themselves – it comes to me, but I have my face in my computer and refuse – and the State Senator whose constituent meeting this is – they have convened themselves around me – says – we apologize to those already here (in the Coffee Break) – and it was a statement that only applied to me – and she was really not rally sorry (meaning my presence was unfortunate but I had a choice and could leave – to apologize as a formality, a curiosity) - and we (the grand royal “WE”) welcome you to join in – which I had no intention doing, but listening would be ok as I continued my private project – she proceeded to give her legislative summary (what had happened in Jeff City since the had met a week ago) – "Dream" has passed of course – and she explained how she was trying to hold the regulatory line at the PUC – this is no time for gutting regulation to meet the financing needs for a nuclear plant that will probably never be built anyway – and the argument put forward was the number of construction jobs it would create – too risky for private financing – economic stimulation is the corporate mantra – how quickly everyone learns the language that will get the results they want – tis the way of politics – and then the meeting beaks up and everyone presses forward to introduce themselves, and have a few private words if only to say hello. She presses the flesh. A political wanker has cornered her. Well guys, I have to go. I’ve got a meeting at a homeless shelter.

It is as if
Reality is
What money
Invents
No, it really is

 She might fib a little to get out of a scrape, but she was thoroughly ashamed of herself afterwards. Perhaps she even took a perverse pleasure in her little lies because they made her feel how really bad she was… but she usually indulged herself only when she hoped to be able to turn the falsehood, secretly and quickly into a truth – Robert Musil]


In the end you find out
That you have painted yourself
Into the corner
You are trapped inside
What you’ve made of your life
Would it have been any better
To have made nothing of yourself
To devote your life implies
Something socially desirable
And not everyone is so good
And everyone dies
Both the good and the bad

 She’s the kindest soul in the world, in things she’s indifferent about – Dorthy L Sayers