SNARK ATTACK

Rumbling in the west. Rain is coming. Kids slide by on push scooters. Men walk the little dogs while their women watch from their screen doors. Another rumble. Another scooter – clickity clackity, rumble tumble. Big storms come from off the prairrie. That is the direction from which the rumbling is coming. The sky between the trees is deep blue. It is getting dark. The wind is picking up. The leaves of the tall trees rustle and some flutter down. Autumn is coming. The kids have been told to come inside. Mothers call them by their full names. Richard Michael you get in here right this minute. I turn on a light and shut the front door. It starts with a slow steady pitter patter. Then it really comes down. A frog was creaking – yerka, yerka. There is a lull – no rain, no frog. Everything is quiet. Someone runs across the green holding a coat over his head. Again visibility diminishes. It begins to rain again. It is raining steadily now.

The smaller the item of production, the greater the wastage of materials in its manufacture – a computer-chip for instances requires up to a thousand times its own weight in processing materials that mostly become wastage

The CDC (Center for Disease Control) links at least 23,000 deaths per year in the U.S. to the use of antibiotics in industrial animal husbandry. That overuse of antibiotics has led to the development of immune pathogens. This situation has been know for over half a century but Congress has consistently blocked the FDA from making the linkage between its use in agriculture and our health. Now they are saying that this alone can wipe out all the medical progress of the last hundred years. But I don’t believe in progress, except when on the road and not even always then.

No it hasn’t turned violent. It has not spawned a tornado. It has become after the last outburst, a steady light rain that may last all day. There is rumbling in the east now. The front has passed over. There are no more flashes of light. There is no more crackling of electricity. It had never gotten bad enough to have had to close the windows. There is a fresh smell in the air. There is a light breeze. There is steady dripping of rain from the leaves of the trees. The frog has begun to crock again. There is no more rumbling, not even in the distance. The kids are on their scooters again. They hate to be locked up inside when there is no Internet service. If there were Internet, that would make a world of difference. There is no need for both scooters and the Internet.

And where can a dishonest person make an honest buck?

To claim to be ethically neutral and ideology free is itself an ideological claim – David Harvey – “Populations, Resources and the Ideology of Science”, 1974

Most pharmaceutical companies have now closed or have curtailed  their drug discovery programs for mental and neurological disorders. The lack of genuine innovation since the 1950s have made the outlook for future sales bleak

As a practical matter SAC’s (US Air Force Strategic Air Command) target list expanded consistent with the nation’s nuclear weapons production capacity. In the early 1950s, the Command’s air offensive called for striking some 70 targets in the Soviet Union. By 1956 with the age of nuclear plenty now at hand, the target list jumped to 2997. A year later it grew to 3261. Two years later, SAC was estimating that  it needed to destroy 8400 targets by 1963 and 10,400 by 1970 – Andrew Becvich – “Elusive Bergin”, 2005

If big people bred big people

And dumb people bred dump people

And the rich beget the rich

            (Assuming the death tax is repealed)

And old people would bred old people

            If they could

Then some day we shall all enter ourselves

In the American Kennel Show

And who will take ‘Best of Show’

Depends on who’s in bed with the judges

            It’s just the same as its ever been

But dogs don’t get to the casting couch

Some big people are just big

Others are just tall

But no short person is big

Regardless of how balloon like

            They become

There is not a store

For the short and plump

            The small can always

            Wear children’s sizes

Just as there is not a store

            For the deaf and the dumb

            Although occasionally one can

                        Find one for the left-handed

The big and the tall

            And the rich and the fair

Can all be au couture

            But to us mutts

The judge’s rear-end stinks

The cake eating problem: we are not just borrowing from them (the future generations) but we are using what we barrow to eat their cake. We are getting sick eating all this cake. The poor are starving. Bread is getting expensive. Let them eat cake, Marie says. There is cake in the dumpster but it’s locked. Health regulations and insurance risks prohibit gleaning. Wastes must be properly disposed of, but that’s another economic issue – the materials dispersal problem (a matter increasing exergy for any future extraction – all future material resources shall be more dispersed than present material resources). The cake eating problem relates to discounting while exergy is a problem of sustainability. It’s too complicated. Shut up and eat your cake. We’ll just wait for the technological fix to be in. Sit back and watch the game. Care for a piece of cake?

The Twin Towers were America’s Reichstag fire

There is no where there – there is no what when – there is no how now. It makes no difference that there is a tiger behind every door

Gratuitous and motiveless curiosity (which is what afflicts the erudite) turns us into puppets, shakes us up and hurls us about, weakens our will and worse, divides and disperses us, makes us wish that we had four eyes and two heads – or, rather, several existences, each of them with four eyes and two heads - Javier Marias – Fever and Spear, 2005 p124

That’s Gary’s Balloon

The children – now young adults

Their father showed up

I said look there goes Gary’s balloon

            That silver one all by itself

How did I know – you are too literal

            I say

Its metaphorical

It was their mother’s funeral

            No time for illusions

And she wasn’t here to laugh

            At his life’s balloon

It got caught in a tree

And all the others had soared

            Straight up and disappeared

But not Gary’s balloon

I desired this road: adventure, boredom, terror. I imagine that I do with darkness and malice. Yes, I admit it, I am addicted. I do not care. I had already cast my fate to this journey. There was no going back now. It had all looked so good in the gloom. It was a grand plan when it was still tomorrow. Oh sad songs, sad songs they make me so happy. Play on your pennywhistle and on your drums. Sing me a sad song and make the world go away and make me want to stay right here until I have no more money. Oh so sad, oh so sad. The saddest music in the world. A man is singing the blues on the street holding onto a light post in order not to fall down. Now blues, that’s not the saddest music of all. I have yet to head the saddest music in when world. There is always a sadder story down the road she had said.  She had shinny bleached white teeth. If she had had a big nose or green eyes I would have jumped her on the spot. But she didn’t. And I was too drunk to care. Sad music makes you want to shit tears and piss happiness away.

Justice is not cheap in this country, and people who insist on it are usually either desperate or possessed by some private determination bordering on monomania – Hunter S Thompson – Hell’s Angels

The rule of the exception becomes the norm (what you do unto the least you do unto me)

[From] opinions come persuasion and not truth – Plato – Phaedrus

Metaphysician, heal thyself

WHO DOES THE EARTH THINK IT IS?

One wants to believe that there is a justification for organized madness (or that it is not madness or if it be so, that it is not organized), something that is of a higher order passing over (above) one’s own understanding. It is so easy to misunderstand and one so seldom knows it. We’re always looking for excuses and we’ve been trained to forgive even what we can’t understand.

Point me out the happy man and I will point you out either egotism, selfishness, evil – or else an absolute ignorance – Graham Green – The Heart of the matter

Corn

Corn and soybeans

Corn, corn and soybeans

Corn, corn, soybeans and corn

Corn fed hogs

Ham

Spam

Spam and beans

Spam, spam and beans

Spam, spam, beans and spam

It takes 7,373  kcal of fossil fuel to produce 1 liter of ethanol that has an energy equivalent of 5,130 kcal – that would certainly make it ungreen. What a rip off. And people starve as the price of corn rises.

The truth is you really don’t have a choice; the world is designed to be a function of the automobile

For in order for people to be able to give up their cars, it won’t be enough to offer them more comfortable mass transportation. They will  have to be able to do without transportation altogether because they’ll feel at home in their neighborhoods – Andre Groz “The Social Ideology of the Motorcar”

No means of escape will ever compensate for living in an uninhabitable place

If you include the time it takes to earn the money to purchase and maintain an automobile, the average speed of a vehicle (hours worked earning expenses plus driving time divided by miles driven) in the United States is three and a half miles per hour – about the same speed as that of a pedestrian.

During the past 1,000 years agriculture has degraded more productive land than is currently being cropped. Most of this damage has occurred sine the onset of industrial agriculture. Since 1960 a third of the world’s farmland has been abandoned because it was degraded beyond use

To fulfill global transportation needs with biofuels would require all of the world’s present farmland

Cantaloupes killed twice as many American in 2011 as did terrorists. Does this mark a success in security or a failure in regulation? Americans are 110 times more likely to die from contaminated food then by terrorism. We spend $75 billion a year to fight terrorism while at the same time contaminated food cost $80 billion in health care and lost productivity. With the exception of 9/11, less than 500 Americans have been killed by terrorists in the last forty years. In other words spending on anti-terrorism has had no impact on terrorism as a factor of mortality. You are just as likely now to be killed or maimed by a terrorist as you were before 9/11 and our ‘war on terror’. You need a better excuse than security for justifying it. Lets have a ‘War on Cantaloupes” instead.

We live our little lives

Trying to make the right choices

At least trying to avoid wrong ones

But mostly we just live

Not having any choice

            That’s our excuse

I didn’t have a choice

And so we live it

Having a choice and not knowing it

Having a choice and not taking it

Having a choice and not seeing it

Having a choice and not wanting it

Having a choice and making it to late

Having a choice and taking it too soon

But that is too complicated

So we just say

I didn’t have a choice

It is easier that way

And it not my fault

Stephen is just being Stephen. How can he help himself, being the sweet little man that he is. But yet he does not have to over do it. It’s saccharine, that’s what it is, the way he goes about it. That’s exactly the way it is. I’m a poet, he says with all the syrupiness of  last night’s lover checking up on you the morning after. But he is not making time,… he’s just being Stephen. Selling chapbooks - $8 he says - Numbers five or three? Stephen talks on - sweetly blatters on - such a sweet little man Stephen is. He says that he writes in all genders just to keep his little mind stimulated (that’s what he said). And across from me to my right in the corner next to the counter is a tall slim woman with a big nose. On the way over here on the bus I had told myself - I’m over it – me and my big nose thing. And then I look up and there she sits - pale skin, long blond hair, a dangling silver piece around her slim white neck and all dressed up in black. I’m drooling. Pavlov has rung my bell – ding-a-ling. Ding-a-ling. That’s my editor Stephen tells his new friend. He will be publishing twenty of my new poems in July. And the sweet little old lady that he has cornered struggles to get away from him. Politely of course. You’d feel such a horrid person getting angry at suck a sweet little man.  They shake hands. “Nice talking to you…chit chat, chit chat… And they shake hands again and Stephen shakes hands with everyone he knows and then some before he leaves. Me, I was paying no attention to him at the time, I was in love. She is talking and she has this cute little accent. Maybe it’s a accent. Being foreign is exotic. She is too far away for me to overhear much of what she is saying. But I can’t help myself for I’m in love. And she has green eyes. I think that’s it more the green eyes than it is the nose today. Green eyes is fetish d’jour. I’m over this big nose thing. Now it’s the green eyes that I desire.

O’Rielly’s for a Murphy’s Red. They’re playing Willie Nelson – Goodnight Irene. And the barmaids all speak in a lilt – from the ol’ country no doubt.  I’ll see you in my dreams. Sometimes I live in the country and sometimes I live in the city. And sometimes I take a notion to jump in the river and drown. I’ll see you in my dreams. Sad songs and beer in an Irish bar. Ivy climbing the wall just makes you want to wail, pound your fist down and cry. Beat your head against the bar just to feel a little pain. It gets you into the mood. Another Guinness, lass with three tears for me if you please. Tears from your green green eyes dear.

You get people to swallow anything by intensifying the details – Ray Bradbury

Between a quarter and a half-million hospital patients die each year in the U.S. due to medical mistakes. The first such estimated was made in 1999 when it was conjectured that perhaps up to 100,000 such deaths were caused by medical mistakes. The estimates keep climbing as money becomes available to rectify the problem. It’s the way of the world  - problems pursue money and not the other way around. I’m not saying that half a million Americans don’t die each year as a result of medical mistakes. But I am saying that we would not know about it except that money has been made available to study this phenomena.

80% of the funding for ‘religious’ hospitals comes from public institutions and only 0.0015% from their parent religious institutions

It no longer amazes me the number of problems for which there is no information and the number of answers for which there are no problems.