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