I try to stay out of the way. The boys are loading the big
stuff into the trailer, the stuff that is going into storage. I peel back the
end of the packing wrap and hand the roll to Jerry. It is not a big job but it
is my job. I hold the lose end and he wraps it around the blanket that protects
the dresser. Plastic adheres to plastic and I let go of my end. He goes around
three or four more times. And then the boys carry it into the trailer and I
prep for the next item that they bring out. It an assembly line and I am making
sure that the widget is there when it is needed. I am old and decrepit and have
bad knees. There are not many advantages to this condition but this is one. Not
much is expected from me and what little I can do is appreciated. But mostly,
they want you to stay out of the way.
More often than not, the Bible don’t tell folks; folks tell
the Bible. But what they say is that the Bible says…And they should be ashamed
of themselves for it’s a lie and that’s a sin.
Men do not demand genuine beauty, even in the most modest
doses; they are quite content with the mere appearance of beauty – H L Mencken
– In Defense of Women, p32
He didn’t have
That Ol’ Black Sambo
Cadence One-Two One-Two
Cake Walk punch
Then he said
I though I was through
With the blues
And he read two more
Of his
poems
Based on
Based on
He said it
twice
On those old songs
His own version
Of Walker & Williams
Cork faced he read
And he got
A standing ovation
At the Apollo
Singing in falsetto
Will make em’
Go wild
You can dance in feathers and loincloths
And boil missionaries
In big black pots
Only if you will sing to ‘em
In falsetto
Avoid the sheppard’s crook
When up in there in the limelight
Do what is expected of you
And do it
in double time
Just like the preachers do it
Martin
Luther jr did it
So did
Gandhi
But Jesus did it best
If democracy be defined as the enfranchisement of at least half
of a country’s adult population, then Finland (1905) was the world’s first
democratic country
Science is the worse nuisance and greatest calamity of our
days – Bronislav Malinowski
You can’t have economic equity without political equality
COLOR COMMENTARY
Gang violence is the least
Obscene and objectionable of the violences
That we exposed to
And like most
Only
vicariously
That’s what we’ve marginalized
Them folks
for anyway
At the other end of the scale
Is civilized warfare
Precision targeting
With munitions that have eyes
Aimed at
outsiders
For our
entertainment
And with or without collateral damage
It don’t make any difference
A misidentified target
Is just another drive by shooting
With more
powerful munitions
Little boys with pop guns should
Stand asides and let the professional
Have do it
To fill up the time on our wide-screens
Which otherwise would be blank
Either that
or re-runs of fifties sit-coms
Or high-lights of yesterday’s game
Bring on
the big guns
Then again violence may just be
Part of a
conditioning regime
Public exhibitions and executions in time for
The six
o’clock news
For the poor it is always different – David Graeber – Debt,
2001 p 379
Bacon is similar to spam but results from things that you
actually signed up for but don’t want to read. Some “Friends” send out a lot of
bacon.
Throw the lumber over, man! Let your boat of life be light,
packed with only what you need – a homely home and simple pleasures; one or two
friends, worth the name, someone to love and someone to love you, a cat, a dog
and a pipe or two, enough to eat and enough to wear, a a little more than
enough to drink; for thirst is a dangerous thing – Jerome K Jerome – Three Men
in a Boat, 1889
But I know how tall
I am and
like Alice he
Placed his hand on top of his head
I am this
tall
And the Caterpillar said
Three
inches is
Is a very good height indeed
Give to Plato or Aristotle the same fund of knowledge than
man to-day has access to, and Plato and Aristotle would reason as profoundly as
the man to-day and would achieve very similar conclusions – Jack London – The
Somnambulists, 1905
A game involves the creative application of fixed rules.
There is a means/ends rationality to it, but its objective has no
functionality.
A century ago there were no more than a dozen cities with a
population greater than one million, now there are as many as 500. The
twentieth century has been the century of urbanization
The same social structure that permits democracy also enables
totalitarianism. Bottom up or top down, its the same control mechanism. What
varies is the visibility of the information flow through the process and the
direction of that flow.
History is a dialogue with the past. Aspiration is a
dialogue with the future
We have to establish a new relation to the future, to stop
seeing it as an indefinite “progress” giving us more of the same – Cornelius
Castoriadis – Figures of the Thinkable
We’re off to the county youth fair – rabbits and pigs and
sheep and cows and goats, oh my! Lots of greasy food to be eaten. The kids take
Dakota on some rides. The roller coaster frightens her. She cries. They stand
in line for the Ferris wheel for a long long while, but it brakes down just as the
get to the head of the line. They won't give a refund, not even to little kids . Just wait there there until it
is fixed, they are told. How long will that be? There is no reply. They could stand there all night or go
take ride on the merry-go-round. The
Ferris Wheel was the first thing Dakota spotted as we got out of the car. But
she was happy as long as Dave and Heather rode with her. She went home with a smile and some cotton candy.
Flatteries addressed to God are called prayers… God’s
vanity, which is gigantic, [is] like himself - Elias Canetti – Auto de Fe, p444
SWAT teams are employed across the US 100 to 150 times a day
– about 50,000 times a year. This is up from only a few hundred times a year in
the 1970’s. Most of these deployments are for serving warrants for drug trafficking.
Part of our war on drugs. The last time war was use by the government as a metaphor
was Lyndon Johnson’s war on poverty. Has
the militarization of this country resulted from our “war on drugs” or was the
“war” merely an excuse for militarization. Our “war on terror” has allowed us to
export our war culture to Asia and Africa. With our “war on terror” the “war on
drugs” is no longer needed. Now there is talk of rethinking our drug policies.
So what will all those SWAT teams and those armored police vehicles be doing
then, now that we have become accustomed to them. How will prison contractors make a profit unless they can keep their beds occupied. For tax purposes they are all real estate companies.
Mobile phones use more electricity than the total world electrical
usage for 1985. Hourly Internet traffic now exceeds yearly traffic for 2000.
Men experiencing ‘resource insecurity’ (aka poor) prefer
women with large breasts, while men who are financially well off prefer women
with smaller breasts. Men interested in fatherhood prefer women with larger
breasts than do men who are not interested in fatherhood.
It is a “Big Mac” and not a “Good Mac”
My first suspicion of the dictionary was aroused. Prior to
this moment I had taken the dictionary for granted much as one does the Bible –
Henry Miller – The Book in my Life
