She was shot full of Novocain. The muscles of her lower back were giving her trouble. She wanted to explain it: how painful these shoots really were. God, she said, it hurts. I asked her if she could tell me every excruciating detail. I was being cynical. What she really wanted to do was to complain. She declined to give me the details. She asked to hear about my experience in the court room today. I was on jury duty today. She wanted me to help her in naming her line of hand-made soaps. One had blood orange, lemon and other citrus essences. I suggested Carrivra. She said that she thought that blood oranges grew in the Sierra foothills and was thinking about “Sierra Citrus”. I told her that that would work too. She said that there was someone up in Washington State who was selling 10,000 bars a month to just one distributor in Japan. She had names for her soaps like “Fish Off” (for removing the smell of fish from your hands).
The rich need the poor much more than the poor need the rich
The County Poorhouse
Had stood in the woods
A few scattered sticks
Bricks that once constituted
A communal fireplace
Made to feel different
Wearing shinny trousers
Gathered up and mended
By the church ladies’
Sewing circles
No time to lounge
Must be about sloping
The hogs
On a working farm
A marginalized existence
With no place else to go
When the corn stalks froze
In the field
But into a fresh hand dug
Grave
Just another chore that
One performed for his keep
Fed and housed by the lowest
Bidder
God doesn’t need an objective yardstick to warn him of the consequences of our sins. Her handmade soaps will not wash them from our hands – “Cynbegon”. Risk is either urgent, threatening and real or it is negligible and unreal. It is up to us. Our particular perceptions and evaluations are the determinate. How do you feel today, I asked her? We had done our duty, a jury nullification, I told her without waiting to hear how she felt. What does that mean? We refused to convict even thought we believed he was guilty, I replied. Several jurors felt that if the police had arrested him then he must be guilty. It was impossible to acquit him. The DA thought we should go back and try harder after all it was eleven to one. But you don’t understand, I said. It was only the one who was for conviction. I hear indignation form otherwise liberal people that we could avoid a trial where someone is obviously guilty – like when it was done on TV. They’ve been watching too many NFL play reviews. The Arena is God’s House, is it not? And who shall make the determination and how shall we draw the line? I tried to explain that there was a philosophical difference between “factual guilt” and “legal guilt”. If you are to maintain an adversarial system you can’t be arbitrary. He’s obviously guilty. Yes, I agreed, but legally innocent. It's a matter of defining our duty. Is it to dispense justice or is it to punish? God, God, oh God, she exclaimed during an organism. Others made other ejaculations – Oh Shit, was one. Harder, harder, faster, faster, Oh Superman!
Guilt is there because, the body casts a shadow on the person’s inner freedom, his ‘real-self’ that – through the act of sex – is being forced into a standardized , mechanical, biological role – Ernst Becker – The Denial of Death, 1973 p42
Factoid: Each death penalty trail resulting in an actual execution is conducted at a cost to taxpayers three million dollars more than a non-death penalty murder trial would have cost (this does not include any - and there are many - post trial litigation).
With such self-assurance
He is dangerous
He’s explaining God’s
Plan
With such self-presence
Everyone is opening out
Their Bibles
And reading the passage
For themselves
Darwin is Dead
God is Alive
He don’t like to joke
People misunderstand
He says
And take what he says
For a Meme of God
He walks in trepidation
Afraid of
His own power
God himself couldn’t
Have done it any better
God is Alive
In this Bible
God doesn’t have
A sense of humor
He says
And neither do I
The continual political appetite for a global war on terror has led to a commodification of “actionable intelligence”, which is a product chiefly of human prisoners – Peter Bartogiewicz – The Intelligence Factory (Harper – Nov 2009). That we can even talk about torturing human beings in such an unemotional and technical language is indicative of how acceptable torture has become to us. Translation – trading in human beings and extorting information from them through torture is now a routine business arrangement justified by our desire to feel secure. We have met the enemy and it is we.
You struggle to become Gods and yet you die!
Time for a Dress Rehearsal
Prepare
Preparing to
Preparedness is next
To Godliness
The prepared shall
Inherit the earth
Having prepared nothing
To do but wait
Are you prepared
I think so
The assumption is always that normality will return – disruptions are both temporary and amendable. Continuity will prevail – the future shall be a continuation of the past.
And Robert wanted to know if coprophagia would cause death in humans (he though it did – having read Pynchon – and I don’t think that Pynchon is an expert on the topic, I told him) – I could not find any specific health problems documented but most health experts seem to believe it leads to number of bacterial infections (E coligest of his interest – didn’t he know that Darwin is dead?).
Someone has a plan
A man a plan a canal
God has a plan for you
Obama has a plan
For this nation
Everyone has a plan
Is it a plan – Oh Superman
Oh oh oh – Superman
Faster than a speeding bullet
More powerful than a locomotive
It is not acts of terrorism that are destroying our institutions of freedom and democracy but the anticipation of acts of terrorism. Our response to the possibility is not due to fear per se but the inability of our institutions to deal with the unknowable – the free flow of capital requires a knowable unknown. Ultimately the security state cannot ensure security but only claim to be the cause of what has not yet happened. The state has no option but to respond even if ineffectively (and heavy handedly) because not to would be an abandonment of its primary raison d'etra. The reaction of the state has greater consequences for us than do the acts that it responds to.
“Sir, step back. "Take off your glasses and try again” the deputy says. I try again - beep - I step back remove my wallet, ID badges and change. Again - beep. I step back and remove my coat. My entry is beep free. I fumble around for all of my belongings lying on the table. I knock my glasses and coins onto the floor. Finally I get it all retrieved and by the time I make back to Judge Stewarts Court Room they have seated three perspective jurors. I am number twelve. Unless pre-empted I will have to serve on this jury.
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