I Don't Think This is Hinckley

I DON”T THINK WE”RE NOT IN HINKLEY ANYMORE  TOTO

What’s wrong with America (you say the glass is half full); I say what’s right (that the class is half empty). Everything’s right. That’s the problem. That’s why I left. We both can’t be right. Love it or leave it. I’ve got rights too you know.

All for me – Everything – Nothing for you – It’s the Capitalist version of “One for all – All for one.” Get it while you can. Get it while its hot. Poor Baby Bear – Poor BooBoo Bear. Smarter than the average picnic basket. Goldilocks. The Three Little Pigs. Peter and the Wolf.

My orange juice has fermented, turned to wine. How long has it been sitting here. Most people would throw it away – spoiled. Not me – I taste it. I’m very curious. My name is George. It’s been about a week, I think. There is no scum on top it or under the cap, at least nothing blue or green. I kind of like it. I perform some experiments – controlled environments. When all of the sugar is fermented it turns sour, but until then its very effervescent – tingling on the nose and to the tongue, it has a bit and a small kick. I haven’t gotten drunk on any yet so unless you drink a whole lot (and I only make a quart at a time) you won’t get shit faced. A wine is something that ferments naturally like palm wine.  Birds can get drunk on it eating berries, but you won’t, there is not enough of it there. Beer is something for which the starches have to be converted into sugars (if it has sugar it will ferment naturally, there is yeast in the air although not always the optimal type, unless it’s a Belgium stable). That’s why beer is brewed (heated) before fermenting. That’s what makes it beer and not wine. Back to my experiments – orange juice is ok (just ok). Avoid anything with cranberries they seem to inhibit the yeast. Drinks sweetened with HFCS take longer to ferment. Put that ingredient down there with cranberries on the shitlist. My favorites are frozen mixes of pomegranate juice ( with cherries or blueberries). They ferment fast (especially if contained in the bottle that had been used for the previous batch) – within a day if it is warm. Alcohol content? Probably about 2%. Unscrew the cap (I reuse old quart juice containers I got at the store) and listen to it fizz. No the bottle won’t explode, but you sure can tell when the yeasties have been busy. It seems to taste a lot better (a lot of trouble for something if it didn’t) and I like the tingle (nature’s soda pop). It is refreshing on a hot day even if without any ice. There are buzzards soaring overhead in the thermals. Them and the turkeys crash land in the trees when they come home to roost at night. You can hear off in the woods along the creek bank just after dusk.

A Poem about Bugs or Not

Maybe I had’t written any bug poems

Because I had’t read any bug books of late

            -Or-

Or maybe it was just

Because I hadn’t seen any bugs for a while

Maybe this is a bug poem

So actual bugs might not be necessary

Imagination is sufficient

            -Or-

Maybe this is not a bug poem

And imagination and inspiration

Are necessarty but not sufficient

The latest scheme to privatize – Lexus lanes. These are low traffic volume vehicular lanes for which a toll is charged. The larger the traffic volume becomes in such a lane the higher the toll becomes. Tolls on Washington’s Beltway Lexus Lane have no cap. They keep going up and up until the number of cars using the lane beomes fewer and fewer. And traffic speed resumes (at least in that lane). All the tolls on the Beltway Lexus Lane for the next seventy-five years will go to the firm which constructed it. The more slowly traffic moves in the regular lanes the more money they make. The worse our infrastructure becomes the more money there is to be made (in it being bad – not in improving it, although money could be made there too if there was funding). Bad performance in general is incentivized.  The states where the rich have made the greatest gains (with the highest levels of income inequity) during the last twenty-five years are also the states with have the lowest levels of infrastructure development. The rich always have options. The rich have all the options.

Middle Age – Virginia Woolf

A load of snow slipped and fell from a branch…

Later there was a mournful cry…

A motorcar came along the road shoving the dark before it…

The dark shut down behind it…

Space of complete immobility, separated each of these moments

“What is lost? What is ours?”

And “over and done with”

Solacing myself with words.

People noticed the vacuity of my face

And the aimlessness of my conversation.

The last words of my sentance tailed away.

And I buttoned on my coat to go home.

I said more dramatically, “I have lost my youth.”

‘Let us suppose that I make reason of it all –

One poem, one page, and then die.

I can assure you it will not be unwillingly...

Perhaps I shall never die,

Shall never attain

Even that continuity, and parlance

‘Time passed over me’, I thought,

Trying to collect myself,

‘This is the one come of middle age.

How strange it is!

Nothing is any longer one thing

“How do you spend your day?” he asked...

These divisions were absolutely rigid,

The contents of the day having to

Accommodate themselves within

The four rigid breaks...

‘Breakfast, nine;

Luncheon, one;

Tea, five;

Dinner, eight”, I said

As perhaps at midnight,

When all boundaries are lost,

The country reverts to its ancient shape,

As the Romans saw it,

Lying cloudy, when they landed,

And the hills had no names

And the rivers wound they knew not where

Everything was partly something else…

The wine glasses had flushed yellow and flushed crimson;

Had been emptied;

Had been filled

The kettle boils and its breath comes thicker

And thicker issuing in one jet from the spout –

So life fills my veins.

So life pours through my limbs.

So I am driven forward,

Till I could cry as I move

From dawn to dusk opening and shutting.

‘No more. I am glutted with natural happiness.”

Yet more will come,

More children;

More cradles,

More baskets in the kitchen

And hams ripening,

And onions glistening;

And more beds of lettuce and potatoes

To awaken us

From the depths of content and belief

One must pay back from this

Secret deposit of exquisite moments

Money is to the capitalist as words are to the poet. The principles of finance are the capitalist’s grammar.

First stage of institutional development: knowledge is applied towards the solution of a social problem and progress towards that solution is accomplished. Second stage: the resulting solution creates a process and the solution becomes the end in itself wherin pursuit if for the benefit of its practitioners rather than its clients occurs. If fact an institution in its second stage beings to create its own problems which it can then solve and create daughter institutions.

Each year about 100,000 Americans are shot by guns. Every day 87 die and 183 are injured. Since 1968 over one million Americans have died as a result of gun-shot wounds. The CDC estimates the gun violence cost this country about $100 billion a year. Solution – arm more people.

Give me a disease! Give me a disease, something that I won’t soon forget you by, please. She says, don’t whine. Make this a night for me, one I’ll long remember. Baby I want your disease! Oh yes, I have to have it. She said thanks but not thanks and I didn’t get my disease. Now its thigh high leather laces up boots that climb taut summer flesh. Baby I want your disease! Oh baby, I want your please. Stop whining, she repeated. I sit here with my chin in my right palm wandering what the hell am I doing and do I really care. What will tomorrow morning bring. Will it be any different (probably not).  Her white teeth glisten. I want to unntie those laces.  Unbuckle the straps. Slip off the silk. Then she laughs and bestows upon me those teeth that glow like  neon signage. Oh baby I want your disease. And oh those boots of Spanish leather from across the sea. I can’t help whinning.There’s only me.f