Chopping Wood - Carrying Water

John is the man. He has MS, he says.  Chopping wood, he says, keeps him out of the wheelchair. He is out here in his old red pick-up truck harvesting the tree that the rangers cut down. Ranger Todd says this guy is driving awful fast. Someone at the station had notified him that wood would be available here and he is rushing out here so as not to miss this opportunity. Ranger Todd had to borrow an assistant from another station to get the job done. They sliced up the fallen pine and chopped a dead one down. Well hones and oiled chain saws makes it look cutting butter (except for driving wedgs to keep the wood from pinching the sar bar).  Then thyer go out to take care of the ones on the trail. Some small stuff between the Nevins place and Dry Fork and some minor stuff on the Boy Scout trail. That is all, I told him. Umph, Ranger Todd said I’d been told by several people that the trail had been obstructed. Some equestrians carry their own saws for just such an occasion. There was a guy on muleback server campsites back who did. I guess someone did it for you. Thanks, Ranger Todd said. John was busy winching seven foots sections of pine into the back of his truck truck. John and I are the same age.

If  you have psychopathic tendencies and  are born in a rich family, you’re likely to go to business school - George Mandiot – The Guardian

Peanut butter

            Whole wheat crackers

                        Cheddar cheese – sharp

And red wine in a box

            Life goes on

On a cold night

            When young girls squeal

This is the kind of peanut butter

            That sticks to the roof

                        Of your mouth

            Roofiness

This night has that quality

                        Too and so

Do the young girls

Books speak less and less about the facts of the world or the intimate experiences of others and more and more about how to make the self transparent. We read in order to find out how to express ourselves, how to assert ourselves, how to communicate and  connect – William Ray Arney – Medicine and the Management of Living, 1984 p1

Occupy! Is occurant art. Politics and culture do mix or at least they should.

Aesthetic politics is an exploratory politics of invention, unbound, unsubordinated to external finalities – Brian Massumi – Simblance and Event, 2011 p53

Consumerism teaches us that only specific ‘drops’ of experience are worthy of out attention and it is marketing to which we must look to find out what we need to pay attention to.

Power produces, it produces reality – Michel Foucault – Discipline and Punish, 1977

24-7-365 – all the fucking time. All the Freaking Time, man – a life-time, man. Think about that. Up until the end, Amen. Oh God!

But the fact remains. My favorite dog has bitten the entire neighborhood. ‘Here boy’, I say, but he ignores me, intent on running down another frightened child or a bicycle. He’s mangy, too. His collar’s too tight, and there’s no quenching his thirst. Raw meat’s the answer, but I am too lazy to go to the store. This is the story of a boy and his dog. Though as far as I can tell, the dog ran off a long time ago – Christopher Kennedy – Ennui Prophet, 2011 p12

If there were fewer choices to be made, then there would be more choices that would be worth making: we don’t need ten different brands and sizes of white sandwich loafs, we need five different kinds of bread – fresh from the oven and with crisp cruts wrapped in brown paper to be carried home in the bicycle pannier. Say hello to the baker, the butcher and the candlestick maker. Ask the small boy standing on the corern whh he is not in school. Oh, its Saturday. Well OK then, enjoy your day.

Men without lively imaginations are needed to execute policies without imagination devised by an elite without imagination – C Wright Mills

Narco-trafficers corrupt government  and they are

            But the baby brothers of the corporate greedy

Ensuring their own big bonuses

            For incremental incompetence

Which the narco-trafficers rarely are

In the extreme, life is what is capable of error – Michel Foucault

The most radical solutions come from the most banal questions

We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them – Albert Einstein

William’s crazy – Mexican Mormans kidnapping young virgins to rear children so they can maintain their 99 year lease; and how his Indian friend refused to die until his skin turned red again (and it did all except for his lower legs); and how he died in a Mexican jail after hitting a Federale. I said, excuse me, but I have to take a shit and am on my way to the outshouse. I think social service agencies take that the cases that  they can’t cope with and drive out in the country and dump the off in the woods. It’s the updated version of Greyhound therapy, but not their budgets don’t permit them to buy tickets toa town in another state. Later William got electro-shock therapy. Litghting strikes his Winnebago. A big ball of fire like a bomb. It crackles. This is not the thunder. Then a second later the boom after the crackling and sizzeling. If it did’t kill him I’m quite sure he’s deaf. Anyway I won’t have to hear any more of his crazy stories.

Duty, religion, public service, liberty, equality, justice or aristocracy – all the cultural flesh that clothes the bones of money for those that possess it – all become suspect: only money, it seemed, was to be trusted – James Buchan – Frozen Desire: the meaning of money, 1997  p14