I’m only guessing based on my perceptions of the neither
regions on my fifth-grade map. Aren’t we all victims of the limited
perspectives of the lowest rung employee of Rand McNally? That shade of pink
China was forced to wear reminded me of an upset stomach and it popular cure –
Christopher Kennedy – Ennui Prophet, 2011
p54
Small arms fire
Weapons qualification
Military preparedness
Operation Devocalization
But sometimes
Small arms
fire
Is just target practice
Having no connection
To target acquisition
Economics seemed to have fallen pray to the very social
mechanism it attempted to describe and authorize; and the various theories
merely confirmed or denied the privileges or fantasies of social classes –
James Buchan – Frozen Desire: the meaning of money, 1997 p10
Trees – mostly oak – now
In full
leaf
Exhausted and eroded
Farmland –
National
Parks Demonstration Project
Of the Roosevelt years
Eighty
years on
The concept was to provide
Urban
access to
National
preserves
The sun tops the nearest
Oak – The
sky is cloudless
Leaves
waver in a light breeze
Scattered oaks in a mown lawn
Encroached
upon by native
Thickets
Patrol the roads, mow the grass
Birds flutter about – branch
To
branch
Blue
jays
Mostly in the open areas
At this
hour, there are
Smaller
birds in the tickets
I have been unable to shake the conviction that when you
through open your arms to clasp life, you are caught up in the wind and blown
backwards into the future – Durs Grunbein – Bars of Atlantis, 2010 p3
31% of applicants for health insurance are either turned
down or quoted a higher rate due to
pre-existing conditions. 45% of applicants for health insurance cannot find a
plan that they can afford.
The patient does not pay the physician for health per se;
the patient pays an entry fee for admission to [a] relationship – William Ray
Arney – Medicine and the Management of Living, 1984 p93
A two-income family of today is 15% poorer than a one-income
family of 40 years ago. Using 2000 as the benchmark, in constant dollars the
average wage earner earned $20 per hour in 1970 and earns $8.50 per hour today.
Adjectives of quality applied to money – good, bad, sound,
cheap, dear, funny – are, nowadays, mere descriptions of quantity: they tell us
only how much money there is about – James Buchan – Frozen Desire: the meaning
of money, 1997 p18
To hell with getting “big government of the backs of private
industry” let’s get big business off the backs of the taxpayers instead.
For money is incarnate desire. Money takes wishes, however
vague or trivial or atrocious and broadcasts them to the world – James Buchan –
Frozen Desire: the meaning of money, 1997 p19
57% of physicians under of the age of 40 say they are
pessimistic about the future of the US healthcare system
I woke up behind the wheel and told my wife I’d been talking
to Good King Wenceslas. A giant red ant wearing a crown figures in this story,
as does the taillights of an eighteen-wheeler – Christopher Kennedy – Ennui
Prophet, 2011 p61
Space seems to be either tamer or
more inoffensive than time. We’re forever meeting people who have watches, very
seldom people who have compases – Georges Perec – Species of Spaces and Other
Pieces, 1997 p183 – But this was before the age of the ubiquitous GPS
locator – turn left in one-third of a mile. Recalculating directions.
Lobsters are the only thing people kill with their own hands
– Donald Barthelme – The King, 1990 p72
“This is a routine test of the giant voice system… giant
voice system” boomed into the woods –
eiiiiiiiii! GVS poles with two to four 400 to 1,600 watts speakers each of which
may be strategically selected for specific messages.
The thing about books is, there are quite a number you don’t
have to read – Donald Barthelme – The King, 1990 p35
One in seven US residents received food stamps last year
Contemporary society is so media-saturated that it is
literally impossible to see the exterior world except through the filter of the
media – Nicolas Abnercombie – Audiences, 1998 p113
This is hell
If there is anything
Else
It has to be heaven
The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the
mind of the oppressed – Steve Biko
The ideal classification table has blank squares (the
periodic table is an excellent example), for what has yet to be discovered –
even if nothing ever fits into the
square. Blank space raise important questions.
A visionary, even of one hundred percent blind, is capable
of penetrating to the very core of things precisely because he disregards all
imperfect appearances with their accidental properties as merely blurry
likeness. For him, the error-prone eye has been replaced by the soul as the
instrument of contemplation – Durs Grunbein – Bars of Atlantis, 2010 p49
Is there anything more intimate than smell? The scent of you
bores me. There was a peculiar smell to each love. It was their scent and not
any that they put on, although there was that to and it can be captured.
At some point in time the world I know either vanished or
withdrew, and another world came to take its place – Haruki Marakami – 1Q84
The wealth of all households headed by those younger than 35
is 68% lower today than it was in 1984
We have fed the heart on
fantasies, the heart has grown brutal from the fare – W B Yates
In totalitarian systems the violence is waged against the
body; in totalizing systems the violence is against the spirit.
Money sets standards and settles
issues – Durs Grunbein – Bars of Atlantis, 2010
p92
Billions of dollars wasted. The damn tree huggers and the
forest service, both worst than useless. Billions of dollars worth of burnt
dead Ponderosa left standing. Tree huggers wouldn’t allow it to be logged.
Lumber companies don’t want it after two years. Just wasted, billions of
dollars worth. He and his dog Elijah, a Jack Sprat. Came from Arizona. Now
lived in Caboo. He had just recently moved here. Lived in the mountains at six
thousand feet but his kids it was too remote for someone of his age. He asked
if I’d been fishing here. No, never been here before.. The sun is shining. I
don’t know what time it is, the battery in my cell phone is dead. Why do I need
to know the time? The coffee in the bottom of the pot froze solid overnight. I
got a roaring fire going. A scalding hot cup of coffee. My breath condenses. I
flap my arms together. Damn it was cold last night. Across the lake a bald
eagle is perched in a dead tree. It swoops down and talons a fish and flies off
to alight on a branch a couple of feet
above the water. Eerie Eerie. Knock knock, tap tap tap, three woodpeckers to my
right. A bluebird lands directly in front of me. Hammering continues on my
right and then stops and resumes somewhere behind me. I see the first flower of
the season – it is pale with a tinged of violet. The sun begins to feel nice on
the back of my neck.
The universe as known-unknown / has no discernible shape and
not much / in it, we give it the limits and shape we need it to have – William
Bronk – Life Supports: new and collected poems, 1997 p36
Yesterday’s article about printing messages in food coloring
on Pringels got Walter to thinking. What if they got rid of school and replaced
it with Pringles, he said. Then he says, that he had another great idea that
involved potato chips. It involves Kudzu, he said. Can you make potato chips
from Kudzu, I asked? No,he says, but you they could just Kudzu power. It makes
things crispy. They could dip the potato slices in Kudzu powder before they
fried them. Hey, Walter exclaims, I may have stumbled onto the Colonel’s secret
ingredient.
My sister lives in Jackson, TN, I tell him, were the make
Pringles. She could help us with this project, Walter say. She could contact
them for us, he adds. Do Pringles come in packages, he asks? No, they come in
cans – well actually canisters because they are made from cardboard. To be cans
they would have to be made of metal. Can’t canisters be made of metal, he asks?
Well yes, I suppose they could. The might be how the word ‘can’ was derived, a
abbreviation of canister. But the new Pringles, the ones with the messages,
would probably come in trays like ‘Lunchables’ Being as Pringles with separate
messages would have to come from separate production lines it probably won’t be
practical to stack them. And if they put them in bags like normal chips there
would be a lot of breakage and you couldn’t read them. Except to a jig saw
puzzle fanatic, Walter added. Perhaps there might be a niche market there, I
say. Walter says, that it would allow you to sell less for more. I see that you
are becoming market savvy, I tell him. And I add, they would monopolize more
shelf space, which is another marketing ploy.
Writing does not care where its jumps take it, as long as it
happily clutches the few crumbs its unknown consciousness leaves it – Durs
Grunbein – Bars of Atlantis, 2010 p60
12.2% of the earth’s land area and 5.9% of its territorial
waters are wildlife protected areas. There are 120,000 protected areas covering
8 million square miles.
We now find ourselves at a historic fork in the road we
traveled to understand the laws of nature – Steven Weinberg
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