Green with Blackface Envy

I’m glad they caught up with me several months ago and not now when this artic vortex is at my doorstep knocking. Knock, knock – it's Rita the meter maid. Our records show that no one is living here, she says. Well obviously they’re wrong. You’ll have to take that up with gas company, she replies, or else we’ll cut you off on Wednesday. I was given a number or a green tag that she was about to hang on my door.  What the fuck, I said (to myself – It’s not Rita’s fault afterall, and it’s not my fault either - there never is anyone around to take you anger out on anymore. Good thing the dog was not under my foot just then. He usually races out the door whenever I open it). I looked up my records. She was right I hadn’t paid since May when I was had paid for having them turn the gas on. (stupid, stupid - but I'm not going to rant, I promised myself I wouldn't). I called the number on the green tag.  I get it straightened out. They even told me how to apply for assistance if the bill for the past six months was too much for me to pay. I did get them to admit that it wasn’t my fault. Then the bill finally arrived. It was hardly anything. I guess they did fuck up. At least they didn’t just make up a number. It could’t have been much, only the range, everything else is electric. It’s different now that the furnance is on half the time. They say that El Nino is kicking into effect and we won’t have any more Arctic Vortexs but what do they know with the climate in chaos. The ice from North Dakota is passing by on the river. Best wishes "Water Protectors" (you'll need it with our 45th). I'm picking sides (It wasn't a very difficult decision - I'm with Soule)

Money’s queer. It goes where it’s wanted – Agatha Christie – Endless Night, 1967

If criminal justice were a business it would long ago have gone bankrupt for lack of any financial data

When not persecuted, intellectuals tend to become part of the cultural and political apparatuses as technicians of knowledge… Despite their “love” of the people, intellectuals are congenitally distrustful of the masses. – Stanley Arnowitz – Taking it Big, 2012 p213

The best way to attract the attention of a government’s armed representative is to ignore that that government exists

The sharks I dodged / The tigers I slew / What ate me up / Was the bedbugs - – Bertolt Brecht – Poems p399

Creativity may be spurred on more by idle time and boredom than a desire for wealth

For at least five thousand years, popular movements have centered on struggles over debt… Debt is the most efficient means ever created to take relations that are fundamentally based on violence and violence inequality and to make them seem right and moral to everyone concerned. When the trick no longer works, everything explodes – David Graeber – Revolutions in Reverse, 2011 p38

Violence is a form of stupidity for which there is no intelligent response

When one is asked to be ‘realistic’ then, the reality one is normally being asked to recognize is not one of natural, material facts; neither is it really some supposed ugly truth about human nature. Normally it’s a recognition of the effect of the systematic threat of violence – David Graeber – Revolutions in Reverse, 2011 p45

Half the guns in America are owned by 3% of the population. Typical gun owners fit their stereotype: white, male, rural and politically conservative.

Nature is not that inventive when it comes to successful solutions. Once it works it tries it again and again – Antonio Damasio – Looking for Spinoza, 2003

The US is now proudly pioneering “first use” battlefield nuclear weapons

The postmodern epoch, however, renders obsolete the ideologies of the modern age—the orthodoxies of socialism and liberalism, both of which are predicated on the free individual. – Stanley Arnowitz – Taking it Big, 2012 p226

Roughly half of all people killed by law enforcement suffer from at least one mental disorder

So what makes cultural exchange different from cultural appropriation? As with most points of cultural contention, the difference is power. In particular, the power of the privileged to borrow and normalize a cultural element of another group, while the appropriated group is often demonized and excluded because of that very cultural element. - Kovie Biakolo

Healthy – (as used on a food label according to the FDA, I know, I Googled it) – means that the nutrient content of the food contributes to creating a healthy diet and that the label includes nutrition information. I think this means that any food with nutritional informaion on the label can be labled as ‘healthy’. This begs the questions as to whether having ‘healthy’ printed on the lable is itself ‘nutritional information’. And we already now that putting sugar, salt and fat into processed foods makes them taste better, thus contributing to your eating something (anything) in the list of ingredients that is actually ‘healthy’ thus contributing to creating a healthy diet. In other words unhealthy foods can be labled as healty according to the FDA so long as there is at least one ‘healthy’ ingredient listed on the label. Yes, I see. It all makes sense.

Would it not be easier / In that case for the government / To dissolve the people / And elect another? – Bertolt Brecht – Poems of 1913-1956, 1997 p440

The US government counts student loans as 30% of its net worth

Participation in the consumer culture requires wage work, time, and effort, often given without enthusiasm or interest. But this tradeoff seems natural today, an inevitable compromise between freedom and necessity – Gary S Cross – An All-Consuming Century, 2000 p5

Most Americans rarely or never discuss global warming with family or friends. The end of civilization has become boring. Or is it the we have accepted that we are not actually going to do anything about it anyway and have all become apathetic (just waiting around to die).

True, bureaucratic procedure operates as if it were a form of stupidity, in that it invariably means ignoring all the subtleties of real human existence and reducing everything to simple pre-established mechanical or statistical formulae – David Graeber – Revolutions in Reverse, 2011 p51

In ten states for every dollar of tax collected there is at least 5 cents collected in fines and forfeitures with Louisiana at almost 20 cents having the highest fines-to-tax ratio. Decreasing budgets have forced some police departments and local court systems to find creative ways for self-funding. Hence Ferguson.

Symbols focus experience; meanings organize knowledge – C Wright Mills – “The Cultural Apparatus”

The US national debt now exceeds the gross domestic product. It looks like the trend lines crossed in 2013 when the total amount of debt was $16.7 trillion but the GDP came in at $16.6 trillion. 

Can’t we just drone this guy [Julian Assange]?- Hillary Clinton

For-profit colleges and universities (FPCUs) spend on average only 17 percent of their budgets on instruction and 42 percent on marketing to new students and paying out existing investors.

“Possessive individualism,” that seventeenth-century “vice” of personal acquisition, was a substitute for the more disruptive passions of vengeance, glory, and domination – Gary S Cross – An All Consuming Century, 2000 p9

We must not assume that our public officials are as incompetent as they have lead us to believe – what appears as failure may have been intentional. What we see as failure, may be seen by the elite as a success.

Neither the hard-nosed economist nor the pandering politician nor the cynical intellectual may ultimately have grasped the complexity of popular will and desire. Americans still want more than mere shopping and more stuff. – Gary S Cross – An All Consuming Century, 2000 p12

Roughly 20 to 25 percent of our waking time is spent thinking thoughts that involve using language directed at ourselves. If one did not talk to one’s self how else would one be conscious of what one was thinking?

So Mr. Spoffard says his mother has to have him take care of her quite a lot. Because Mr. Spoffards mothers brains have never really been so strong. Because it seems his mother came from such a very fine old family that even when she was quite a small size child she had to be sent to a school that was a special school for people of very fine old familys who had to have things very easy on their brain. So she still has to have things very easy on her brain, so she has a girl who is called her companion who goes with her everywhere who is called Miss Chapman. Because Mr. Spoffard says that there is always something new going on in the world which they did not get a chance to tell her about at the school. So now Miss Chapman keeps telling her instead. Because how would she know what to think about such a new thing as a radio, for instance, if she did not have Miss Chapman to tell her what it was, for instance. So Dorothy spoke up and Dorothy said, “What a responsibility that girl has got on her shoulders. For instance, what if Miss Chapman told her a radio was something to build a fire in, and she would get cold some day and stuff it full of papers and light it.” But Mr. Spoffard told Dorothy that Miss Chapman would never make such a mistake. Because he said that Miss Chapman came from a very very fine old family herself and she really had a fine brain. So Dorothy said, “If she really has got such a fine brain I bet her fine old family once had an ice man who could not be trusted.” So Mr. Spoffard and I did not pay any more attention to Dorothy because Dorothy really does not know how to hold a conversation. – Anita Loos – Gentlemen Prefer Blonds, 1925