Portmanteaus Two by Two

Up and down the muddy lanes come the sportsmen in little Japanese trucks. They are hunting deer with dogs. This is the last day of permit season.  At the moment, they’re trying to retrieve their deerhound. They’re driving back and forth hollering “Tattar, come boy! Here Tattar” Normally Tattar would drive the deer across the road and they’d get out of their trucks and shoot.  It’s a Southern tradition like pecan pie and grits. Tatter’s running loose in the woods. He don’t know that this is it or maybe he does. No more running free again until next year. The good ol’ boys will have to be more circumspect after today; it won’t stop ‘em, they get a kick putting something over on the law, especially the feds. These feds are not allowed to carry sidearms. “We’re not allowed to carry weapons,” the ranger says. They’re employed by the Army. The military (although they themselves are not military ) is prohibited from carrying weapons against civilians (or at least in this country they can’t yet). It’s still not safe to go out here in the woods without wearing orange. Although its probably safe as long as you stay in the woods; it’s crossing the road that’s the dangerous part. Drink whiskey and shoot anything that moves. It’s a southern tradition. Beware and be sure to wear orange. The sportsmen all wear orange over over their camouflage. And at night if they shine a light in your eyes, duck. Drop and lie flat and stay very still. Don’t stand there all goofy.

Sometimes it’s impossible to explain the really important things that have affected us most deeply, and keeping silent is all that saves us in difficult times because explanations almost always sound so lame with respect to the pain we have inflicted or others have inflicted on us. They tend not to match up to the evils suffered or caused and so they break down – Javier Marias – Fever and Spear, 2005  p94

Heavy TV viewers feel more anxiety when dealing with unstructured situations than do light TV viewers and even more so when they are alone. Heavy viewers are less likely to participate in social activities and they tend to be more obese than moderate viewers and non-viewers. But then maybe the asocial and the obese watch more TV anyway.

The urgency of the young to accumulate scars and to forge a past, it’s so odd that sense of urgency - Javier Marias – Fever and Spear, 2005 p99

The Firm is introducing its “Up or Out” program. It is being made available across the organization at all administrative levels. We all crowded into a tiny room for the launch, a lunch time meeting, a brown bagger, as they call it. The room was way too small for us all. Jeannie who is leading the presentation has a white board upon which the main points of the previous management meeting had been penned with multicolored inks. It is a work of art. She announces that at least 18 people in each of sections 6,7 and 9 were going to die if the  crowding in this room cannot be reduced. She asked for volunteers willing to take the package. She does not get any. “I don’t want to see people die,” she said, “I truly don’t.”  She sounds sincere.  She proceeds to her first talking point: a new business model. The higher education system might serve as a good analog, she suggests. “You came and are moved about to different places and fulfil a variety of functions. You get evaluated. Depending on the evaluation you may or may not be allowed to stay.” This was the second topic on the whiteboard.  I could see the connection with higher education. She was pointing at something written with a green marker that was too far away for me to read. The jest of the new “Up or Out” program was that you would only earn a salary after your evaluation. “How long would we have to work without compensation before we get evaluated,” someone wanted to know. “That all depends on the variety of assignments that you undertake.” “Can we volunteer for specific assignments,” someone else wanted to know. “There was no discussion of that option at the management meeting” Jeannie told us. “You have to trust that management has the best interest of the firm in mind when making these determinations,” she said. “At least we are not being asked to pay for the privilege of working here,” someone behind me muttered. “That’s only because those idiots upstairs haven’t thought of that yet,” someone next to me responded. “Don’t give them any ideas. Dump management is good management.”  “How are we to survive until we start getting paid,” someone asks Jeannie? “There will be a loan program put in place and after your evaluation repayment will be deducted from your salary.” “What if we  don’t get a good enough appraisal,” someone else asked? Jeannie didn’t have an answer but she made a note of the question. When there is no wining strategy, one’s best option is to adopt the least damaging failing strategy. I raised my hand. “Jeannie,” I said, “I would like to volunteer.” She said, “Thanks. And you’re free to go. Is there anyone else?” I had to elbow my way to the door. I squeezed out of the room. Outside, I was able to breath and I stood there contemplating my future. It was perhaps a horrible mistake to have volunteered, but it was too late now. I’m an outsider now. There was no turning back. Then the ambulances began to arrive and they rolled the old, the lame and dumb out on gurneys. I counted seventeen. Just like she had predicted.  I shrugged my shoulders and walked away. On FM104 they announced, “The trip to Hawaii coming up.” It felt good to be back in the US of A.  I heard later that senior management all took a package. I didn’t get a package. I got an e-mail reminding be to turn in my id. Well I would have gotten that e-mail if I’d still had access to their network.

There was the kitchen and there

            The pantry

There was the front door and

            This is the kitchen

There were bedrooms and there

            Had been the kitchen and

There in the bathroom a cast iron

            Tub on clawed feet and

                        A rusty streak

           

The grandfather clock bonked

            Out in the hall

The wood had beep split

            The wood box was full

It was in the kitchen that we all

            Gathered

When black ships sailed on

            The horizon and the snow

            Lay knee deep

Cherie the meter maid is warning a taxi driver that he should move his vehicle. “This is street sweeping day”, she says. But he wanted to bicker. “While you are in here getting you coffee, you can’t give me a ticket”, he tells her. “Well there is another one right behind me”, she replies. And he says, “well they will have to give you one too”. “That one probably would,” she replied. He finally gives in and moves his taxi. Kermit was waiting in the cab. He was not known to be a big tipper. The frog would have to go without his cup of coffee. Arguing with Cherie was fruitless. Cherie had been around the block, perhaps not once but three or four times. Kermit was late for Liberace’s party.

Iowa is full of white niggars

Ploughboys walking the rows

Behind their mules

It is no miracle

That they can toot

The blues too

I like Iowa

Ike liked Iowa too

And Khrushchev

            Took off his shoe

Kermit hoped that he would not be forgotten like Jiminy Cricket or Nick the Greek. He had started tagging pianos the night that he had attended that party at Liberace’s place.  The man in the sequined suit had himself suggested that the candelabra would be great for roasting frog legs. He was starting to run low on appetizers.  No one seemed to be aware that Jeno’s Stuffed Pizza Pockets were readily available in the frozen food section at the local supermarket. So many things are preventable with a little pre-planning and knowledge. And that is why the “Great Communicator” will be so sorely missed. It was on my history test: “name three famous frogs” I knew of Kermit. Then there was his nephew but I could not remember his name. And there was the one who turned into a prince when kissed by the princess. “Prince” was the name of a dog not a frog. Peabody was a dog too. He was not a frog. Sherman? No he was Mr Peabody’s boy.

Very few toads in this world are charming Princes in disguise – most are simply toads. And no matter how many magic maidens you kiss or rape they [the toads] are going to stay that way – Hunter S Thompson – Hells Angles

Many glossy advertisements

A sure sign of editorial dependence

The publications is taking a swing

On the corporate engineering hinge

Contributor’s bios worthy of attention:

            Judy Chang discovers a shared love of In-N-Out Burgers

            MNKE (pronounced Monkey) is a prototype project

            Mapping New Knowledge Ecologies

            Paul Makovsky is currently researching

            A revisionist history of green architecture

And then:

            Henry Petroski’s next book

            Will be Toothpick Technology and Culture

It’s verbatim right here in the table of contents

There are too many graduates

            Of creative writing courses

There is even a woman

Who travels the country

Swimming across rivers

All contributors to the magical

‘Metropolis’

And one guy

Lives in Brooklyn with his wife

            And two sets of twins

                        (She’s on fertility drugs –

                        He wears tighty whities)

                       

An entire publication

Devoted to bad taste

And the sad thing is

No irony is intended

I have been through here before – Boxley – back on 1972, I think. I had just bought a blue Chevy truck and was driving back to post. I had recently returned from Viet Nam. I had been in the hospital for the past two months.  I recognize the square. A fountain in the middle. Make a dog leg to the left. A store, a tavern on the east side; a gas station and post office on the north. The other two sides wooded. It hasn’t changed much in forty years. The price is right at Ozone - $1.50 a night, but there is no water. I’m the only camper. A local walked through. A group of hikers from Springdale set up camp at mid-afternoon. Its an old CCC camp. That was eighty years back –  as far back in time again as when I first passed through here after Viet Nam. Make sure you pay, the local had said. They come by and check, he reminded me. It’s only a buck and a half. It wouldn’t pay to try and skip out. They never did come by.  Another guy is out walking his dog. My dog gets all exited. He wants to check it out. The guy says be sure to go to the Burger Haven best burgers in the state. Locals always want to brag about the best burgers for miles around. I’ve seen them drive forty miles for a lunchtime burger. And they are usually right, but I  won’t drive forty miles, not even for good fuck. That’s still locally made. So are burgers. Not much else.

Most people forget how or from whom they learned what they know, and there are even people who believe that they were the first to discover whatever it might be – Javier Marias – Fever and Spear, 2005 p10

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

WHO DOES THE EARTH THINK IT IS?

One wants to believe that there is a justification for organized madness (or that it is not madness or if it be so, that it is not organized), something that is of a higher order passing over (above) one’s own understanding. It is so easy to misunderstand and one so seldom knows it. We’re always looking for excuses and we’ve been trained to forgive even what we can’t understand.

Point me out the happy man and I will point you out either egotism, selfishness, evil – or else an absolute ignorance – Graham Green – The Heart of the matter

Corn

Corn and soybeans

Corn, corn and soybeans

Corn, corn, soybeans and corn

Corn fed hogs

Ham

Spam

Spam and beans

Spam, spam and beans

Spam, spam, beans and spam

It takes 7,373  kcal of fossil fuel to produce 1 liter of ethanol that has an energy equivalent of 5,130 kcal – that would certainly make it ungreen. What a rip off. And people starve as the price of corn rises.

The truth is you really don’t have a choice; the world is designed to be a function of the automobile

For in order for people to be able to give up their cars, it won’t be enough to offer them more comfortable mass transportation. They will  have to be able to do without transportation altogether because they’ll feel at home in their neighborhoods – Andre Groz “The Social Ideology of the Motorcar”

No means of escape will ever compensate for living in an uninhabitable place

If you include the time it takes to earn the money to purchase and maintain an automobile, the average speed of a vehicle (hours worked earning expenses plus driving time divided by miles driven) in the United States is three and a half miles per hour – about the same speed as that of a pedestrian.

During the past 1,000 years agriculture has degraded more productive land than is currently being cropped. Most of this damage has occurred sine the onset of industrial agriculture. Since 1960 a third of the world’s farmland has been abandoned because it was degraded beyond use

To fulfill global transportation needs with biofuels would require all of the world’s present farmland

Cantaloupes killed twice as many American in 2011 as did terrorists. Does this mark a success in security or a failure in regulation? Americans are 110 times more likely to die from contaminated food then by terrorism. We spend $75 billion a year to fight terrorism while at the same time contaminated food cost $80 billion in health care and lost productivity. With the exception of 9/11, less than 500 Americans have been killed by terrorists in the last forty years. In other words spending on anti-terrorism has had no impact on terrorism as a factor of mortality. You are just as likely now to be killed or maimed by a terrorist as you were before 9/11 and our ‘war on terror’. You need a better excuse than security for justifying it. Lets have a ‘War on Cantaloupes” instead.

We live our little lives

Trying to make the right choices

At least trying to avoid wrong ones

But mostly we just live

Not having any choice

            That’s our excuse

I didn’t have a choice

And so we live it

Having a choice and not knowing it

Having a choice and not taking it

Having a choice and not seeing it

Having a choice and not wanting it

Having a choice and making it to late

Having a choice and taking it too soon

But that is too complicated

So we just say

I didn’t have a choice

It is easier that way

And it not my fault

Stephen is just being Stephen. How can he help himself, being the sweet little man that he is. But yet he does not have to over do it. It’s saccharine, that’s what it is, the way he goes about it. That’s exactly the way it is. I’m a poet, he says with all the syrupiness of  last night’s lover checking up on you the morning after. But he is not making time,… he’s just being Stephen. Selling chapbooks - $8 he says - Numbers five or three? Stephen talks on - sweetly blatters on - such a sweet little man Stephen is. He says that he writes in all genders just to keep his little mind stimulated (that’s what he said). And across from me to my right in the corner next to the counter is a tall slim woman with a big nose. On the way over here on the bus I had told myself - I’m over it – me and my big nose thing. And then I look up and there she sits - pale skin, long blond hair, a dangling silver piece around her slim white neck and all dressed up in black. I’m drooling. Pavlov has rung my bell – ding-a-ling. Ding-a-ling. That’s my editor Stephen tells his new friend. He will be publishing twenty of my new poems in July. And the sweet little old lady that he has cornered struggles to get away from him. Politely of course. You’d feel such a horrid person getting angry at suck a sweet little man.  They shake hands. “Nice talking to you…chit chat, chit chat… And they shake hands again and Stephen shakes hands with everyone he knows and then some before he leaves. Me, I was paying no attention to him at the time, I was in love. She is talking and she has this cute little accent. Maybe it’s a accent. Being foreign is exotic. She is too far away for me to overhear much of what she is saying. But I can’t help myself for I’m in love. And she has green eyes. I think that’s it more the green eyes than it is the nose today. Green eyes is fetish d’jour. I’m over this big nose thing. Now it’s the green eyes that I desire.

O’Rielly’s for a Murphy’s Red. They’re playing Willie Nelson – Goodnight Irene. And the barmaids all speak in a lilt – from the ol’ country no doubt.  I’ll see you in my dreams. Sometimes I live in the country and sometimes I live in the city. And sometimes I take a notion to jump in the river and drown. I’ll see you in my dreams. Sad songs and beer in an Irish bar. Ivy climbing the wall just makes you want to wail, pound your fist down and cry. Beat your head against the bar just to feel a little pain. It gets you into the mood. Another Guinness, lass with three tears for me if you please. Tears from your green green eyes dear.

You get people to swallow anything by intensifying the details – Ray Bradbury

Between a quarter and a half-million hospital patients die each year in the U.S. due to medical mistakes. The first such estimated was made in 1999 when it was conjectured that perhaps up to 100,000 such deaths were caused by medical mistakes. The estimates keep climbing as money becomes available to rectify the problem. It’s the way of the world  - problems pursue money and not the other way around. I’m not saying that half a million Americans don’t die each year as a result of medical mistakes. But I am saying that we would not know about it except that money has been made available to study this phenomena.

80% of the funding for ‘religious’ hospitals comes from public institutions and only 0.0015% from their parent religious institutions

It no longer amazes me the number of problems for which there is no information and the number of answers for which there are no problems.