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.
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