Rare are those who know how to resist demoralization in defeat – Victor Serge
One tenth of one percent of the world’s population own a third of the world’s wealth and one thousandth of one percent own 12.5% of the global wealth. The per capita global wealth is $1,691. There are 10 million that own at least a million (excluding primary residence) and 95,000 who own at least $150m. The wealth of the rich grew by 19% last year in spite a contraction of the world GDP by 2%. The median wealth (meaning half the world’s population’s individual wealth) I would suspect is probably less than $100 (but this only a guess for this there is no data). And how much of this global wealth is controlled by non-individuals (governments, religions, foundations, NGOs, etc)? How much of all of this constitutues the meager lives of the poor - a place to lay a mat, some foul water and a little gruel perhaps?
It's worst than I thought, I just came across something from a World Bank Report that stated that the poorest half of the world population own less than 1% of the wealth and I plugged that into the model and computed that the per capita wealth of the bottom half is $22.33.
Any individual who judges the group… places himself outside the law – Victor Serge – The Unforgiving Years, 2007 p22
I dropped the truck off of a safety inspection – my red ink pen gave out at the bar last night and I don’t have a spare – Joe and Brian asked me to settle a bet for them – which of them owned the older home. Joe in Armour Hills and Brian in Greenway Fields. He can look it up on the Internet, Brian said. He knows how to do that. And indeed I did. Brian wins by seven years. Both of their houses are in J C Nicols developments. Brian’s is in the Country Club District that was acquired in 1917 and Joe's was purchased from the Kirkland Armour estate in 1922 (it had been a horse farm). Brian’s house was built in 1921 and Joe’s in 1928.
Should I take notes
Should I nod my head
Should I buy your book
You can acquire bookings
You can organize your office
You can market your inspirational tapes
Anyone can
There is money to be made
I was once “out of control”
But I found the Lord
And I bought my dream house
It has a wine cellar
My life is a success
The mechanic called back – brake hose is frayed (that is probably what has been causing the scraping noise). It must be replaced to pass inspection. Last year I ran around trying to get cheaper estimates on a muffler and finally gave up and had them do that too. But I don’t want to be bothered with all of the hassle and will let them do this too. It will not be ready until later this afternoon, provided that the calipers come off easily. I wouldn’t have been so complacent if I had not already known that there was a problem with the front left wheel. But in the end I would have given in and let them do it anyway even though I have a rule not to have the work done at the same place that does the inspection (it is an incentive for them the deliberately ‘find’ problems).
Historically the economic system has been a mere function of social organization – these roles have been reversed in the modern period
But if the unbelievable were not sometimes a reality, there would be no need of struggle – Victor Serge – Unforgiving Years, 2007 p8
The percentage of American women ending their child-bearing years without having borne a child has doubled in the last half century from 5% to 10%. Between the ages of 40 and 44 the more educated a woman is the more likely that she will be childless; 34% of women with PhD while only 17% of high school graduates. Between the years 1992 and 2008 the number of never married childless women fell from 71% to 56%.
Not in Spanish, not in Greek, not in Latin, not in shorthand; / but in plain American which cats and dogs can read – Marianne Moore
I dreamt of alien sex - was it a wet dream? I don’t know. If having sex in your dream puts it into that category - then yes. But it involved sex rather than being about sex, so maybe not.
Scene one – I have been picked up by a helicopter that is flying low over flat fields with green crops, their shoots just emerging from the brown earth. There is mile after mile of flat agricultural land and we are flying low, very low. We come to a line of trees. There is a break in the line. I am not flying any longer but in a truck following the helicopter. The truck drives through the break and up a low hill - the only hill that we yet have encountered. It becomes evident as we crest the hill that it was only the first of many hills. The terrain has become hilly. We arrive at a large farm. The farmer’s wife is awaiting us at a construction site. They are building a small residence and a barn at an outlying agricultural station. I am unsure about what my role is here. Am I the manager of the station? Am I here to oversee the construction? Probably the later.
Scene two - I am now a young lad riding with my family. My mother is behind the steering wheel. I am the man. There is no male parental figure in the car - just my mother, two sisters and I.. We enter a scrub oak covered area. We are on a paved road with many twists and turns. The road forks and we take the right tine. The earth is red as in Oklahoma or East Africa. Mother is uncertain about the route. She has not diven this road before. I have only seen it from the air. But wait what I had seen up there in the helicopter was flat fields, not a scrub oak forest. The hard surface gives way to dirt and then to a gully leading down into a valley. It’s getting dark and its difficult to see where we where we are driving. There is a house to the right with several people standing outside with their backs to us. It is a remote Indian Village, probably in South America. I suggest that we stop and ask for directions. Mother does not want to stop. This is a roadless area with large rocks which she is trying to dodge in the failing light of the day. How much futher can we get before it becomes to dark to go on? These Indians start muttering Delphic riddles. We decide (or at least I do) to stop. We’ll have to play by their rules. But what are those rules. Something obviously, about answering riddles. I feel like Oedipus.
Scene three – It is dark. Pick up trucks arrive with improvised tall gaunt structures constructed in their beds. These frames are covered entirely in canvas. They stop right in front of the veranda on which we are standing - the villagers, my family (mother and siblings) and I. It turns out that the canvas structures in back of the pick up concealed eleven foot high aliens (as from flying saucers)
Walter said that he had brought show and tell today. I said, let me tell first then you can show I have something to tell, I announced, I had sex with aliens last night. Walter gives me a thumbs up. He wants to know where it took place and what they looked like. I was only interested in telling him about the sex but indulged his whims anyway.
Linda, she has just left. Have a good day Fred, she had said. I promise that I will and I will leave the aliens alone tonight. After all I don’t want to get arrested for alien pedophilia - a universal sex criminal. . Or perhaps statutory rape of an alien she suggested. The law students all snickered.
No more ambulance chasing. I tell them that now they can chase after UFO’s - cash in on the fame of Fred, renown earthling sex criminal – what a goldmine. Walter had warned me that the cost of sending my alien offspring to the University of Andromida was going to be astronomical and then he broke down into a fit of giggles. Amused with yourself, aren’t we? I said to him.
Industrialization has been man’s grandest Utopian scheme to date next to the concept of a service economy.
Love, it seems to me is that condition in which one is most contentedly oneself – Tony Judt – New York Review of Books [March 11, 2010] p35
Exhaustive medicine: medically treating the incurable and dying until all options have been exhausted. 12% of cancer patients received chemo in the last two weeks of their lives
Sometimes we are asked / to get good at something we have / no talent for, / or we excel at something we will never / have the opportunity to prove. // Often we ask ourselves /to make absolute sense / out of what just happens, / and in this way what we are practicing // is suffering – Tony Hoagland – Donkey Gospel, 1998 p9
We can’t understand the nineteenth century because we are still apart of it
There is no peace for those who understand the mechanics of a world moving towards cataclysms, lurching from one cataclysm to the next – Victor Serge – The Unforgiving Years, 2007 p10
The place - oh South America, I say. Walter asks if there were any jungles or mountains. Neither I say and describe the local and sum up the evidence for South America rather than Oklahoma or East Africa.
Looks? Oh yes - as I was saying we (the women and children, there were no adult males present - and all of the alien adults were male - no women) were standing on the veranda which raised us to eye level with these tall strangers. Their anatomical form was not apparent as they had a cloth draped over their bodies except for their eyes – barukka like garments but with a metallic gleam. Their faces were masked, sort of an African mask like Picasso might paint. Their appearance was drab and they lacked any distinguishing hue. They proceeded to select some children and blood was drawn from them.
Scene Four - I am having sexual intercourse with one of their female adolescents. They have transported us back to their compound or perhaps it was their spaceship. She has red hair and no odor. It is not the red of Irish lasses; this is a cross between and purple and a ferric oxide. I find the sex enjoyable and was a willing participant. This Indian outpost appears to be a breeding station for aliens who have become infertile on their native planet. This is a last ditch effort to save their race. They do not seem to have any malevolent intentions. They efficiently and professionally carry out their assignments as quickly as possible. They did not seem to have any emotional involvement in this process. She was not unwilling but it was more her duty than a pleasure..
Walter asks what were their feet like? I don’t know. I can’t remember ever having seen their feet, I reply. They probably had twenty toes, Walter said. Most aliens do. Does life get any better than five pages of sex with aliens, I wonder. Do you want your sex wet or dry? With fluids, sir. With lots of squishy, slimy, viscous oozing fluids, in various shades on non-color if you please, I reply.
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