~ What do you say to a paper tiger?

My personal favorite was the Hudson.  My favorite car, big thing; wide.  The grill was like an open mouth with teeth.  It was a friendly enough car; but everyone could see the car meant business.  I guess that’s why Hudson failed; it was a business car, appealed to businessmen in a world that saw cars as fun, as pleasure, as family things for children and the dogs.  That’s where GM came in; killed Hudson and De Soto and Flint cars made in Flint and Ramblers (even if they were American).  GM made tanks during the war and aircraft and watercraft, not so much cars.

My Dad could take a boat to work.  Other Dads took boats to work; landing craft really; war work is work just the same - blowing things up or down, not building anything (but peace) when the war is over.  The first nuclear bomb went to work on a boat; Albuquerque to SFO by DC-3, Port of San Francisco to Tinian on the Indianapolis on its last trip before the sharks (ate the sailors that carried the bomb that blew the Korean slaves and servants to kingdom come in a mushroom cloud).  Who says history is without its irony and mystery?

To Boomers GM was always there.  It was the one thing constant and inevitable in American daily life.  GM was like life in a world where “bankruptcy” was akin to death.  Bankruptcy was ruin; name destroyed, identity with loser as in “who lost the last war”, “who was strung up on meat hooks”, “who shot themselves in a bunker because they didn’t have the guts to surrender and face trial”.  There was a real stigma to bankruptcy and loser and loser companies that went bankrupt.  There was no return from death in those days, the fifties, the days when America and GM were great.

The message of “Duck and Cover” was that nuclear war was survivable.  Nuclear War was not like the bankruptcy of a company or a nation.  You could fight and win a war with nukes; people and industry could come back; a Boomer kid could be radiated or irradiated and still grow up to buy a GM car.  In fact the Interstate Highway System was built so that America could drive to safety; drive in GM cars mostly; as the sirens wailed and the bombers winged their course across the DEW line and the ICBM’s left Chemtrails from Yakutsk to Yuma, Arizona (and various city-points in between).  There were drive-in restaurants so you could get a hamburger and fries on your way to some happy camp-ground where radiation was the only worry - not heat and blast and falling buildings and a firestorm from hell.  What was good for GM was obviously so very good for America.  Or so everyone thought.

So is BANKRUPTCY good for America?  Is that the message here?  Is “full faith and credit” still real when all you get is a nickel for a sawbuck?  Who would of believed that America would run out of cars before it ran out of gas?  Well, its happened folks.  The end is no longer near, its tomorrow.  More unthinkable than nuclear war - GM is bankrupt; the bailouts didn’t work, the money’s gone, the government once again was wrong.

You can buy a car from Chrysler brand new for 40% or more off; the secret is that Chrysler is bankrupt, dealers almost bankrupt; American confidence bankrupt.  Are you upside-down on your Chevy now that the levy is really dry?  Will rain mean highways or just mud?  Or is it a “hard” rain that’s gonna fall?

The real topic today is paper tigers.  China always said that the USA was one.  China said the US was all bluff and bluster; implied it blew its wad somewhere in the past, couldn’t keep current with the present, could not or would not pay its bills; honor its alliances; use nukes to keep others from going nuclear.  China proved the point by going nuclear.  A few years later the US was begging China to take over all its industry and jobs.  India went nuclear; same deal, take the jobs we may have left.  Israel went nuclear and the US has paid billions per year tribute ever since.  The bottom line is that the US is afraid of nukes and nuclear powers.  North Korea and Iran know this.  They want the US jobs, the money, the foreign trade, not aid.

Only three Americans have ever died because of nukes gone wrong; died near Arco, Idaho; died in reactions in reactors that were experimental at best.  Sure there are reports from southern Utah; from the Bikini Island fleets; from army guys walking toward ground zero in Nevada.  These are just anecdotes from (unreliable) witnesses - there is no scientific physical evidence.  Case and cases closed.  The bottom line is that America would go ballistic (excuse the pun) if so much as 100 Americans were to ever die from the radiation from a bomb.  America is a wuss.  America is that full of itself and is that scared.  Radiation is fine for others as long as no American can ever get hurt.

The same is true for Israel.  There is the same hubris; the same idea of being better than everyone else, and different, and protected.  Iran can hurt Israel.  North Korea can nuke 28,000 US GI’s; or at least 100.  If either happened it would be over, the tiger would have no clothes, it would take another million deaths (US deaths) to put everything back in place, but by then everything would be broken and nothing would matter.  The concept is “MAD” - mutual assured destruction.  The point is that it doesn’t take nuclear symmetry; it just takes one bomb, or two reactors, or three centrifuges and then you and they are “gone”.

So the world looks a lot better going into the first of June.  The car thing is mostly over, peak oil has a new meaning, production peak (that’s all); now just declining cars and profits; why fix the roads?  Roads are just for GM and cars and all that’s over except for the shouting.  No worry about Israel; they can’t fly off to nuke Iran or anybody else really; they’re a paper tiger (grrrr, but no big bite) - Tony type; Tonystein maybe, it’s just Grrreat.  And our Dear Leader is a dear leader.  He’s led us away from war.  A few more months and all the GM assembly plants will be his and his alone; Wal-Mart will be run from offices in Pyongyang; the Boeing 757’s will be made just north of the DMZ.  I think Iran will settle for a trillion dollars a year in tribute, nothing much to add to US debt but the Iranians will be able to dress well, eat well, and have the life-style that their Jewish neighbors now have (subsidized and all).

In every post I leave at least one fact that’s wrong.  This is the Moslem way.  Only God is perfect; I know that and I let you know that.  Maybe Bill Gates is Moslem.  There’s so much about Windows and Windows Vista that is wrong.  The theory makes sense I suppose and now we can move on to banks and bankers.  We live in an imperfect world.  That’s the rub.  That is also the hope if you get my drift.  I think you get my drift.

[2009.05.31 / Sunday - The Last Car]

~ Howard Kunstler revisited; or, there’s always something missing.

I’ve posted at other times about “The Long Emergency”, the book.  I’ve looked at it again in light of the recent developments; in light of the “Age of Fiat Finance”.  The age of fiat finance has been with us for about sixteen months now; ages come faster and are shorter than they once were; an “ice age” took so long, was so slow moving.  It doesn’t fit our modern times.  But back we go to the Age of Fiat Finance - we must understand the age before we can move on to something new.  That’s the theory; that’s the academic approach - name it, learn about it, integrate it - move on to a better academics, a better understanding.  I jest; but then, I do not jest.

Fiat Finance is based on the theory that everything that “is” is “money”.  Fiat Finance maintains that money can come from nothing with nothing behind it because of the belief that everyone believes in money and nothing else; will do anything to get money; can’t do anything without money.  According to this theory money begets money by means of “credit” which is another name for “debt”.  According to theory there is no need for savings as savings is just money set aside and with Fiat Finance there is no need for money “set aside” (another name for “bad money”) when the government can “print” as much “good money” as anyone ever needs instantly and can instantly give it to the banks, the insurance companies, the brokers, the stock market, the car companies, or any other companies or corporations that are “too big to fail”.

James Kunstler has a classic education and a classic way of seeing things.  He is caught off guard by the Fiat Age, not John Law at all; but a new Law that died rich because the Sun King printed endless money and nobody demanded gold (pages 196 - 198).  Kunstler still seems to see “bags of gold” as bad, likes fiat, likes the idea of money because without money how can you make money with a book?  I digress.  What got me going this day was on page 217 when he summarized the “hippies” with a castigation of stereo music players and 200 mile per gallon per person cars.  “Fat off the land” was how he sees it.  Well, let’s see.

I myself don’t listen to much music anymore.  Music is more personal now; not shared.  It is consumed through headphones, individual stereos in every room, “My Music” (not yours, not public - you see my point, or maybe you don’t).  In the sixties your record was my record; your stereo was my stereo.  Music circulated and was shared, one stereo per house, one record loaned throughout a neighborhood of friends.  At two bucks (chuck) per track (album rates wholesale) inflation equivalent for today how else could anyone afford the tunes?  Now music is so cheap; three cents a tune or free on downloads, pirate radio, pirate pirate, China made CD or MP3 or flash drive that holds 1,000 albums (20,000 tracks) and nothing less.

Nobody owned a thousand albums in the sixties.  Not even Gracie Slick, not Anita Bryant (Coke Queen), not John Lennon, not even Elvis.  Check the records at Graceland - you’ll see.  So the fat of the land comes down to an hours worth of working and a cup of chemical earth; Kunstler clearly doesn’t get it.  “Hippie Cars”, the same.  Shared bugs and busses.  Four aboard or six aboard (the bus); moving down the highway with an air cooled 4 cylinder engine.  Not much metal, not much gas.  Hitch hiking everywhere made for cheaper travel, filled any empty seat; the issue was “kinder, gentler, and a lot of trust”.  Forty years later and it’s all gone; but there is point in history.  Fat it wasn’t; fat is what is now.

But the real reason for this post is “Space”.  Space is what in Kunstler is missing.  He saw the forest, saw the trees; he does not see the space between.  What the Revolution of the Sixties (Hippies and Weathermen alike) was all about was space; space redefined; space freed.  America or capitalism or the dogma of a thousand years had led to space (every place) always owned and defined.  Even in Russia each space-place was owned and defined.  Every home, every Kibbutz, every cane field in Cuba, every hovel in the slums came with a set of expectations, required behavior, expectations of what to wear and how to act and how to stand and walk and sit (and sleep).

Every auditorium had its rules, every public park “keep off the grass”, every school hallway had its monitors (I was one), every crosswalk its guard (I was one).  In every home change came slowly or never.  The same pictures stayed on every wall, the same off-white or pastel colors, the same rugs stayed on the floor (or same carpets or shag carpets).  No shagging on the carpets was ever allowed, no sitting on beds, one foot on the floor if you do.  Someone was always watching, door opened six inches if one had guests; the rules went on and on.  Who can remember?

Every space-place had its price.  Space cost money.  Six bucks for a motel room; five hours work.  20% down for every house, payments for 20 years.  Theaters cost money, auditorium seats cost money, only sitting in a park (on a bench) was free (sit up, wait your turn, move on if its in use).  Everything not owned was rented; had a ticket price and a social price in money.  Everything was conformity, uniformity, watch what you say and do and what you wear.  New York (fashion) will tell you what to do.  Kunstler is from New York; he doesn’t see it because it came so naturally, it was so close - the strictures.

With the Haight-Ashbury came the crash pad; free room in a freed house that was a free home.  Walls were purple, posters maybe, changed every week maybe.  Faces came and went.  People sat and slept in beds, shagged on the floors, stayed up all night - left the lights on or turned them off and burned candles.  Candles are your friend.  The auditoriums lost their chairs; people sat on the floors, shared music and a toke.  Fashion came from the thrift stores, not New York.  Cars were wired together like during the last war.  People planted gardens, set up Hoovervilles now called communes; both were much the same.

At the parks people sat on the grass, ignored the signs.  The sun was free and so were flowers; not just picked but planted.  Not all seeds were grass; flowers were the bigger thing before the capitalists invaded and took over.  Head shops came, “hippie fashions” soon emerged; beads became di rigor and necessary and “buy those hippie sandals” and soon it was Earth Shoes and the seventies and everything was lost - Lost in Space; as space went back to being monetized, not free; socialized, not free; uniform, not free.

So now we pay our rent in Cappuccinos, pay mortgages that don’t pay us back, buy tickets that cost a Kings ransom because the concerts are never free.  Its not Kansas or the sixties anymore; but Kansas is not “fat”; hippies were not “fat” (except for Mama Cass).  And now all we have is money.  There is no space.

Space will make you free.

[2009.05.30 / Saturday - Space Race]

~ One is the only number you’ll ever do, or “Why I like Kansas”.

Three dog night was a musical group.  It was named after Three Dog Night which was a reference for something that nobody remembered what; but that was what the sixties were about mostly.  Like now.  Like Defcon didn’t exist during the Cuban Missile Crisis so nobody knew how soon the SAC (Strategic Air Command) bombers would obliterate Moscow and Havana and Hanoi.  Actually the plan was not for “SAC” bombers to obliterate Hanoi; that was the mission for “SAC”, which meant Seoul Area Command which was the number one US Military Command in South Korea which was the spear point for the attack on North Korea if war came.

I spent a lot of my time in the teletype rooms of AFKN (“GI radio”) during the October of 1962 “thingy”.  Defcon One is best regarded as a “thingy” because most people are too busy buying stocks and buying dogs and watching Fox news talk about Hollywood News to care too much about reality.  Unless you’re on the front lines of Korea, that is; 35 seconds from the border by Mig, that is.  Two hours away from a North Korean tank moving at maybe 50 miles an hour down dirt roads that are supposed to “lead north” (not south), “that is” (what was and what is).

North Korea of course was not planning to “go south” in 1962.  The north had no beef with South Korea at the time other than the usual beefs that come from fifty or so nuclear warheads parked across the border in South Korea ready to “take out” 100,000 or so Korean army guys in about ten flashes of a dirty bomb.  The North wanted the Korean Peninsula nuke free then.  No way was the US willing.  The US wanted a nuclear strike force to attack North Korea whenever necessary or expedient.

The Cuban thing made for a US attack on North Korea expedient.  All the Deathcon plans were in place.  We stop a ship on the high seas (an enemy ship) - Russia was an “enemy” just as North Korea is now.  The captain objects and moves on; ships go rub in the night, sparks fly, a machine gun goes rat-a-tat-tat.  SAC bombers wing away and SAC (Korea) moves north to Hanoi.  That WAS the plan.  The US has always planned to invade and attack North Korea; first shot or no first shot.  North Korea knows this.

GI’s about to go north and die and that are locked down in their barracks until the go north to die have a lot of time to talk.  Not a lot of time; but time enough.  They worry about the trip up, backs in Army trucks or walking maybe, running north while dodging nukes (US nukes) taking out the enemy in front on the front lines which are where the US Army trucks are taking “you” as you march toward Hanoi, symbolic capital of the north, rename it Samsung City when you get there; or maybe Port MacArthur like the Russian place but inland.  An AIR port.  Place for troops not planes.  The mind rambles toward the little things in times like these.  “what did you eat for breakfast, who was on the box of the last box of Cheerios that you ate?  Real war is not like a John Wayne movie.  No way.

MINA says the US is at Defcon Two; an attack is near but not imminent.  Who in their right mind would believe a report from the Balkans (unless of course they knew a bit about history)?  One shot (one report as the sound of a shot once was called).  One bullet, one - one time and Defcon One around the world as the world invented world war; later called “One” as in WWI.  Is Afghanistan at Defcon 1?  What about Iraq?  Is their really a global strike force and warning system now?  Not really.  There are really maybe 50 different systems, different ratings, different warning systems in use across the world and the land.

What is better?  Try Red on Homeland Security on Defcon Five; or Defcon One and an all-clear Green at airports?  Iran can be being nuked by Israel while it’s an all clear to fly to Damascus or Babylon.  High Alert in Korea, Redcon 1, Alertcon 1, Jefferson Clinton(con) 1; but as long as Fox(network) 1 is still OK, then I’m OK and you’re OK.  Maybe we need a “Con One” site; since you’re being conned set up a site (web) to crunch the numbers and the colors and factor in when Russia’s Red, Israel is Green (with envy), Buluchistan is Black with patriotic spirit and Ceylon (Sri Lanka) is Orange like in their flag.

We could call it the worry index.  Worry dot con dot com.  Who needs Fox when one site can crunch all the sound bites to One Bite and convert it to a number-color; “Green Six” like a pool ball; side pocket and in the corner - just a game; takes balls and a big stick and quiet walking until you scratch.

Defcon One does not mean war.  War is nothing.  War is the Zero; as in sum zero game.  War is about the money when the counting of money no longer counts.  The “con” is gone at Def Zero; it’s just war for whatever war is worth.  In Korea it’s not about the nukes; the US put them there first; killed 30,000 Koreans with the bomb at Hiroshima; did not care, called them Japanese.  North Korea knows this.  Thought you should know.

Wrote a post the other day about a daisy.  The LBJ commercial that nuked the Goldwater presidency was about a girl and daisy and a big bang, flash of light; it’s over.  My life has been lived in a constant atmosphere of fear imposed by My Media and My Government like My Microsoft; Bill Gates in charge.  Why not just blame Bill?  It’s just about the money.  Do you have a better explanation?  Soundbite “Bill”, enough said, makes sense.

There’s no time or need for reason (anymore).  It’s not a value of the state; nor the military; nor the masses.  What makes sense?  Where is the rhyme or reason?  Just do it; isn’t that what they say, “just do it”?  Maybe the Dear Leader will just do it; maybe it will be Obama; maybe it will be Barak; maybe Paris Hilton (backpack with a bomb).  Defcon will not help you to see it’s coming;  Defcon 4 (like today) on 911.  Do you remember?  Defcon 4; a 2 might have been better but no such luck.  We always sleep at dawn.

And this is why I like Kansas.  Aren’t you glad YOU live in Kansas?

[2009.05.29 / Friday - Defcon One]

~ The search for normalcy.

Who am I?  Why am I here?  One might remember, if one is old enough, the words of Spiro T. Agnew as he ran for Vice-President on the ticket headed by Ross Perot.  That is the point I think.  Was it really Spiro T. Agnew who said that?  Who was it that said what?  Did you ever see a Ross Perot birth certificate; his ID card; any real evidence that it was “he” and that he existed?  Identity is like that.  There is a person and one knows that person (maybe) if one sees them everyday, talks to them; knows they haven’t “changed”.

Much of the world as we know it is based on false identity.  It starts with real people being false; pretending to be who they’re not; taking on airs or heirs or ancestry that is really not their own.  At birth there is a name, or an assumed name, or a something name that is based on “something” that may or may not be real; something made or made-up; assumptions or convenient lies.  Like Bobby Darin in the movie Beyond The Sea; Bobby Darin doesn’t really exist even though he seems so real, his birth name (something else) is also a total fraud, his father never knew who he really is.  How can the government pretend to know?

Most of Hollywood has no real face; just made-up names; false identities.  Is it fair to the real Marilyn Monroes, the real Gabby Hayes, the real Ronald Reagan?  Was it Adolph Hitler, or just a face?  Did he at first hurt or help the Hitler name?  Are all Hitlers bad; all George Bushes; all Dick Cheneys like I just wrote about?  Does Dick Cheney really exist or is he just another name for someone else less famous?  We think we know.  We do not really know; nor does the government.  No, this is not about the Obama birth certificate, but that makes a point.  He is just a face, a name.  There is no real identity behind it all, forged papers, convenient lies, just believing what we want to believe.

There are 665,000 hits or something for “Donald Clayton”.  I’m really not that famous.  But when I write I’m just a composite of them all.  I’m just a composite of the 100,000 or more (or less) Donald Clayton’s that live out there or don’t, or wished they did; or wished they don’t.  Then there are the “Don Clayton’s” of which I may be one or maybe not.  I have no right to assume “their” identity; to create confusion; mix up metaphors of my life with theirs.  “They” in turn have no right to mix up mine; to use my name for something else like bank fraud, nuclear weapons research, killing time or people in Afghanistan.  They did it; not me - or is it also me when I use the name; when they use the name?  Are we all the same?

Of course too there is the question of if I am the one that I seem.  Is Donald Clayton just a name or just a pseudonym for someone else?  Is it all about politics and the movies; unknown soldiers in their graves; no known method of “identity” even when you’ve got the body - dog tags are for the dogs when it’s modern war that counts.  This post is not about a nuclear North Korea, North and South Israel, East Iran, West Pakistan.  But nuclear weapons leave only such little pieces; atoms in the air as people or is it just “identities” that are vaporized?  The USA has vaporized so much.

Maybe we make too much of names and numbers.  Maybe if I used the mean, mode or moniker of Huffington Post I would have more readers.  I could do that.  I could call myself Tom Hanks; trademark my identity, be like Walt Disney as if he ever did exist.  He never created anything.  Read the legal notifications; it’s just a corporation that created and lives on - Walt (the real Walt if there ever was one) is dead and (legally) never did anything.  We live with these legal fictions that are just the “facts”.

Donald Clayton has a passport; but do I?  He has a driver license; but is it really “she”?  DC has an SS number, not tattooed on the arm, but almost as indelible none the less.  But is DC the District of Columbia, is the number real, or is the number just one I stole one day or one that someone else stole and just gave to me?  How much did that number cost me?  Does it cost me still?  I needed almost nothing to get it; just filled out an application, no ID.  They mailed me a card - so easy.  I would pay almost anything to get rid of it.

Identity is just getting all the names and numbers right; make a match based on no bio-rhythmic reason; no blood at birth; no genealogical history based on bio-scans and iris scans and Cat-scans to see how much your brain has changed or even if you have one.  ID’s and identity are only about one thing.  It’s all about the money.  The passport is just a money card; your driver license just a card for money too to make you pay insurance and make you pay your tickets.  Social Security and college transcripts recorded in your name - just about the money, tax it away; the longer you’ve been programmed the better money you will make - it’s very simple - Please!

So I guess I will come clean.  My name is David.  My name is Horowittz (two “t’s”).  My name is Lee and Wong and Wisteria.  My name is John T. Melody, Elvis Pressley, maybe Michele Obama (but that’s just my married name, depending on who and if I‘m married).  This name thing is so simple because you can’t really see my soul.

It will be so very nice when we’re all free of money.  The numbers will be gone.  We won’t have to learn to count to a billion, a trillion, a quad-rillion more or less.  We will be free to be ourselves.  We can be like strangers on a train; start talking; smiles, no shaking hands - no perspiration off the brow as someone says “get your ID’s out, we’ll be asking questions”.  “What is your real name?”  And all I can focus on is what is “real”; what is really real?  The government and their ways just doesn’t seem real to me.  I have a right to my opinion - look into my very soul.

Sincerely, Marty Best (and Mary Best is my sister).  And now Marty Best is me.

[2009.05.26 / Tuesday - Identity Theft]

~ Do you do politics?

Zoo Doo is another name for filth, for fertilizer, for that which keeps the grass green and makes things grow.  To day is about the animals; birds and bees and bears and things with wings and things that do not fly.  Dick Cheney does not fly; he is the fly in the ointment, stuck and sticky; he is impossible to move and a mess to get out.  He’ll die right where he is; slow and painful struggling against the salve that will always hold him, glued to his spot in space and time, never free.  Does water-boarding come to mind?  This is “ointment boarding”.

The Republican Party is out of ideas, out of leadership, out of a next generation to get them out of the mess they’re in.  The Grand Old Party is stuck in the middle of it’s name, “Old”.  It is just the old old party, not much fun, nothing left to dance with or about; there is no party going “on”.  And that’s the Grand part; the party is over, dieing, dead, ash heap of history like some old airport named after some old Whig (once a party once).

I was raised to believe in the two-party system; raised Republican, distributed the leaflets door to door.  I was a child then; and in time it becomes time to turn away from childish things.  I did.  But Cheney and the other dick (Nixon) and the Reagan boys often spelled “Regan” and the Bush (Whackos) and all the others that followed them stopped believing in the two-party system and contrived to kill both the democrats and the country.  They wanted a GOP Nation-state; GOP uber alles; they wanted the GOP to rule the world; which is how they lost their soul.  Hubris is what they call it; have called it from time immemorial.  It’s Memorial Day; let us remember and let us not forget.

If Dick Cheney did not speak the party would not have a voice; no one else is left.  He is the last man standing; veteran of all the wars; hero of Mars and war; champion of the bad fight and all fights lost and the lost battle and every single long lost war.  Dick Cheney died a long, long time ago; but his death masque lives on, we see the face.  It is the face of ruin.  We honor the dead only when they have really died, are gone, are the chords of mystic memory.  Cheney is not dead; he is the undead, walking Zombie in the night; pretending partisan, doing no good for either the rows on rows or the living or the light.

THE Republican Party deserved better.  It deserved to just gracefully get old and die.  It deserved a hallowed place in history, in American history; a place of honor and respect; a burial in the ground.  But Cheney has elevated the body corpus to a table up on high; they pour the water over it; we watch as the buzzards come.  He has brought to “his own” what he wished for his own enemies - disgrace, disrespect, an unseemly torturous demise and death; buzzards circling in the air.  His wax wings melt, he has flown too high, the Gods now are really angry.  Dick Cheney who would be God is thrown down to ash and ruin and those with him take the fall.  All good people look away.  Road kill is not a pleasant sight.

So now it’s time to write about the bears.  Bears are big (in the news) this week.  The NRA bumper sticker always said, “Defend Your Right to Keep and Arm Bears”.  It was a sixties thing, a parody of responsibilities and rights.  Most of us didn’t believe it would really happen.  It was a bumper sticker; just a joke.  But now it has really happened.  The bears in Yellowstone (and other Parks) can move around fully armed, can have their guns, maybe shoot them and use them too.  I guess they have a right to reload too.  A right to buy ammunition in the gift store of every park, gun oil next to Oreos and postcards of the geysers; it’s all there and theirs.  Aren’t parks fun?  Six armed men with weapons; big scopes, big bore rifles, double-barrel this and that’s posed in front of the buffalo (bison really) at the big ’Y’ turnout.  “Looks to kill”, but can’t.  It’s the posture that counts; Little Big Horn, Buffalo Bill, “it’s ALL the West to me.”

So since all National Parks are not parks but “Monuments” is there a technical distinction.  Can you now carry your arms and rifles up the Washington Monument with your freedom on display; take bead down on the White House, adjust your weapon and your scope.  It’s your right, I do believe it is your right; Congress told me so.  And up the head of Liberty (the Statute); a perfect assassins perch; guns and ammo at Fort Stevens; in the Everglades, at Fort McKinley, at Bull Run.  On Memorial Day it is something to think about, perhaps to celebrate - the guns and ammo have come back, there can be more killing and another battle or another war.  So we now know Congress is really crazy; put down in writing; certified; signed by the President (a nut himself, White House residence and all, is he even thinking?).

So YES, there will be caveats and conditions (in time, maybe in time).  The NRA will have lost more than it gained.  Permits will be checked and inspected, ammo seized, calibers restricted.  There will be so many separate regulations for each separate spot that it will be like gun control really passed in such a big way that the whole nation will seem like one big park; stop and check and seize; it’s what they wanted all the time.  If you own a gun the NRA is not your friend.  You’ve been conned and double-crossed.  Thought you should know.

But meanwhile you might stay away from the Monuments and the Parks.  Cancel your vacations.  Things have changed since you made your plans and reservations.  Reservations might be good; keep children and yourself out of harms way.  Leave it to the bears and ex-military to fight it out; nice natural and patriotic settings; civilian casualties; in war what else is it that you want?  Maybe there can be a special “Parks and Recreation” section at the National Cemetery for those killed inside the parks; by act of Congress; death will not make you free.

So in Alaska there is this guy that feeds the real bears.  He’s been arrested.  The bears might be hungry, made friends and now there is a fight.  “Don’t feed the bears?”  Why not?  Everything is up for review and reconsideration.  The old rules, the old ways are gone.  Political correct is dead (like politics); like hedge funds and interest groups and lobbying and public lobbies in the parks.  It’s now all open season.  If it moves why not take a shot; pretend you got it even if it’s not really not yet dead; real guns (or ideas) real or not real if you really use them; if you don’t - it doesn’t matter.  Maybe it’s a good time to just stay home.  Confusion is such a bad thing and simplicity is Oh, so good.

[2009.05.24 / Sunday - Cheney is Republican]

~ An American business model.

I once had a friend.  She worked in a shop, a small business.  It might have been a chain, an entrepreneurial endeavor, a corporation or a partnership.  It might have just been owned by a rich man and his wife.  It’s hard to say now; it’s been so many years.  It was a cute shop, had it’s appeal.  It sold nice product; nothing in terms of “necessary”, but it sold the things that get one by or gets one to buy or gets one rich while the buyers let their money go in exchange for useless products, services or junk.

Junk is such a hard word.  What does it mean?  I guess it means the sale of services bought because of fear (like insurance) or greed (like the belief that you might have a loss and not be a victim, but that someone else should pay for your carelessness or stupidity - like insurance).  Or “junk” is what you buy when what you buy could have been hand-made with heart by someone that you know or met but it isn’t because you bought furniture from Stickley, toys from “R-Us”, or manufactured dishes from a big machine that never knew a potter or a potters wheel (and there you go).  Buy into factories and factory jobs and impersonal industrialization and mindless industry and what you “buy” will soon be all the world.

The stuff that Happy Daisy sold was like that stuff.  It was sold based on the fear of not “having”, not being covered when it rains, not being pretty and cool and pretty cool even if it meant that Japan got all the money; someone worked at a machine they hated; some shipping magnate got rich for doing nothing but inheriting all that wealth (but of course he rose from rags to riches - was Horatio Algier himself - never had a dime - and you do so much want to believe the lies, so that you can believe that it too can happen to you).

Happy Daisy was probably started by such a guy.  He saw easy pickings among the flowers; hippy stuff, front for capitalism at it’s worst.  I’m losing you; but just think of capitalism as “hearts and flowers”, so seemingly lovely and pretty up front - so very ugly underneath.  Wasn’t it Babylon that was the capitalist power and the Jewish tribes that wanted just a simple life?  I guess Babylon won and the Jewish culture lost, lets turn back the hands of time.  It is so easy to be co-opted; just live somewhere for awhile.

I drift (or do I?).  Anyway, in time the Happy Daisy shop began to fail.  Paychecks bounced.  Staff was reduced.  Sales fell further.  It was not a pretty sight, the pretty site, as inventory grew and the stores shelves and aisles were packed with merchandise bought on borrowed money.  This story is really true, not just a metaphor.  Finally only two were left, paid from the till, until.  No workmen’s wages, no medical, no unemployment compensation benefits, just keep working even though it’s all against the law.  Then the manager started stealing.  He cleared the aisles by putting things into his car; better for sales is what he said; more room for customers and not just stuff.  “We need customers”, he said.

He was a fine example.  My friend copied him.  It was leadership at its best.  The factory steals from the workers; the owner steals from the factory; the manager steals from the owner.  The employee is free to take what’s left.  The shop closes and the customer is freed from a life of deceit and debt.  Who’s hurt by this?   It was a madness that got it started and it is not madness when it ends - its sanity and freedom.  Sanity will make you free.

Of course real leadership is not a criminal conspiracy.  Real leadership does not seek to enslave or ruin.  Real leadership is not a football game; violent encounters, tackling, blood sport when you’re down and all the coliseum roars in approval and the gladiators will get laid by the servant girls in their midst.  Be a gladiator or act just like one; insurance and a life as a stockbroker are your future.  Maybe a shop off Second Street; call it Happy Daisy if you must, if you will.  It’s all been done before.

Life can be like a circle.  The wheel turns until it stops.  Then it goes back the other way.  The first become the last.  It can all start with just a customer.  He or she walks in not to buy, but to sell.  The customer offers ideas not product.  Pretty soon the employees listen.  They have no leadership as they have not been led (except down a garden path that led to nowhere).  So first slowly, then with momentum faster still the wheel changes; things work up instead of down.  The power of the cabal is broken.  Good people invade the broken system like a virus invades the earth.  There is no place left to hide.  It’s not top down anymore; it’s bottoms up and oh the spirits high.

You may say that I’m a dreamer.  But I’m not the only one.  No false God above us; just reality and truth before you die.  John Lennon got it half-right; served his time; was shot.  I guess he owned Apple Records, took the bite, paid the price.  Who really remembers now, or cares?  He was wrong, he’ll soon be forgotten; its John Hinckley that has the fame.

So is swine flue just a panacea or a movement or a scare?  Maybe it’s more the metaphor.  Catch it before you die.  The old world and its ways will kill you.  The New World is not an Order; it’s more an odor.  You can tell it if it stinks.  The daisy has no odor.  A garden smells so nice.  It’s up to you which way the wind blows.  Just walk into any store.  Are you a buyer or a seller?  I think the salesmen may turn; real sales persons returning as customers at their best, changing the world now.

[2009.05.23 / Saturday - Happy Daisy]

~ The curious case of Rubina Ali and Azharuddin Mohammed Ismail

It’s not nice to call people names.  It’s not nice to trash someone’s neighborhood.  It’s not nice to discriminate on the basis of which side of the tracks one may live on or how close to the tracks.  Trains are not supposed to be the dividing lines of life; they’re supposed to be about transportation.

I think that the basic point is, “what is it about capitalism and empire that inherently, inevitably produces slums?”  Slums of course are the end product of “the industrial revolution”.  Everybody knows that.  Cheap goods are dependent upon cheap labor and cheap labor is dependent upon making life itself “cheap” as in low value, low self-esteem, poor quality; meaninglessness.  Anyone with any pride or sense of self-worth or cosmic place would never work as a pre-programmed worker-bee in the public filth that is identified as private factories and private office buildings.  It’s demeaning to the public spirit of cosmic citizenship.

It is Hollywood that makes the movies that bring despair; bring people up from despair; entertain them.  It is Hollywood that takes the mind off the pain that otherwise might cause revolt at a revolting situation.  One day the message of the movies is that life is not so bad (after all); everybody else is happy and OK and you too can be happy and OK if you just do it the Hollywood Way which is the way everybody is doing it.  Really “not”, but who’s to know when you’re so busy and have so little time to check things out.

The other message is that things are really bad and pointless.  There are “killers everywhere on the road”.  Don’t hitchhike, build walls along the freeways, make jokes about “road kill” on the deathstrips that are what cars are all about.  Call them “high” ways and “free” ways and confuse the public about the real reasons for the corridors of death and economic servitude that the private automobile really represents.  How much of your life has been spent inside a metal box, a cage the size used at Guantanamo with nothing more than a better view?  How many hours do you work to make the payments to the bank, the insurance companies, the government that subsidizes the economic madness of it all.  Each day the walls get higher, the death strips wider, the slums become more isolated from the rich man’s fare.

Along train tracks things are different.  There are no “sound” walls to keep the kids at bay.  Both sides of every track are “bad” so there’s no need to make life better; to separate the bad from bad.  The only point is to keep the tracks clear, keep the freight and human freight moving; keep the factories and offices humming and the rest of everything will stay in place.  The rich and robber barons and overlords of bloodlines and inherited privilege will stay in place.  “They” control everything.  The planet earth is their sovereign domain.  You’ve seen the movies; money makes the world go ‘round, life is just a Cabaret.

Rubina Ali and Azharuddin Mohammed Ismail probably don’t think that life is so much the Cabaret.  They live on or near the tracks in India.  But, their life is different.  Which brings us to the next big movie theme of Hollywood and life; the idea that life is not a cabaret, but more the lottery.  Life is a gamble.  Risk it all for the big bucks.  Take a plunge in the stock market, in bonds, at the casino, maybe at the Preakness or Belmont, try the numbers, spin the wheel, Queen for a day - pick your poison; it’s in the cards.  Maybe rob a bank.  How many times has that one been a Hollywood theme?  It’s not a romp any longer, bad acting and no talent, I’m truly bored.

But for those that want life to be a gamble Slumdog Millionaire was a second chance.  Keep working at the bottom, your day could come, there’s Obama’s Hope.  The idea is that the media is all; the need for fame - the biggest deadly sin.  The movie plays on the conceit that “everybody’s” watching (and cares).  Not the case at all.  500 channels and 1,000 radio stations and video games and home movies and a conversation now and then - there’s only a one in two-thousand chance that anyone else really cares.  Do the math, think about it, there is no rating and just a little share.

So is it plan or chance that the real slumdog kids are losing?  Have you seen the movie on DVD or was it something else that you were watching.  No money in, no money for the stars or other two bit players; no royalties, no money back for living not just acting.  So if 50 million people saw the story of the Slumdogs star getting wasted, his father getting beaten, his co-star then getting hers where is the outrage and the help?  One Madonna that likes India not just Africa, one daughter of Ms. Garland, one Tom Hanks who could read acting to save ones own.  Or is it more about the bloodlines?  Help those of royal birth?  Build walls and get out the bulldozers for all the rest.  It all makes sense to me.  The rich and the royals do not care.

Or maybe it’s just about the ratings and the share.  There is no share.  Nobody is watching, only me.  Nobody else sees the story, newspapers are dead and the minds of many are so filled with drugs and poisons that they can’t connect the dots.  How many Hollywood movies promote the idea of drugs?  And the media.  Do you get it now?  Are you listening?  What is it that you really hear?

I heard a song the other day on alternative radio.  It was the Cosmic Patriot, quite moving.  I love my universe, not just planet earth and the way things are.  No nation is really sovereign.  And earth is not sovereign too.  Look up; there’s no walls to divide us.  Even science says we’re not alone.  There is something higher than flying saucers, cast down demons, a big bang as the central source.  Jesus never married, get that straight, he was on the side of the little guys and dolls, the slumdogs (not the millionaires).  He had no desire to start (or to continue) an epoch of inherited wealth and power.  Hollywood always gets it wrong - Hollywood still thinks it’s all about the money.  The real God does not dole out the money, not a banker, doesn’t do hedge funds - get a life.

There’s always time between a conviction and execution.  It takes time to set things straight.  Rome was not built in just one day and it took time to make it fall.  Even bad guys might make a change, give them a chance, but at some point the movie has to end, no more reels; you would think the film guys would know.  There are better things on the horizon.  Stand up, stand down or just stand by.  You will see.

[2009.05.21 / Thursday - Hollywood Slumdogs]

~ Being at the business end of a blackbox z2z.

I was raised different than today’s kids.  My officers wore a smile, had a whistle in their mouth, a cap upon their head, wore white gloves, black shoes and an all blue uniform.  They had a second whistle too; one with a lanyard worn around the neck.  The officers directed traffic; guided people across the street; stopped cars with the wave of a hand (not just to give a ticket).  They were traffic cops that helped (not shot) kids and patrolled a beat on foot, not in cars or on bicycles even - hoofed it at work and were hoofers too on Saturday night when they cut the rug.

Of course this was what the school drawings said, the illustrated reports of teachers, the illustrative narratives of various good neighbors and the press.  We had local newspapers then; every city of a couple thousand; one editor, one newsman or woman, a paperboy or girl or two.  Of course there always was the dark side; film noir cops who hustled prostitutes for a living, took down bookies, stole into peoples homes and even stole their cars.  I had my run-in with the bully boys type when I was three months old, in Reno; I’ve told and told and re-told the story once or twice before.  Nobody ever forgets a bad cop wearing black, out for blood or riches, crossed eyes and crossed stars.

The closest I ever got to Officer Friendly was in Korea, military base, hired Koreans walking every beat by every house in every neighborhood on the base.  They wore a whistle, not a gun.  The supervisors wore a gun; holster size, small and compact and always covered by a flap of leather.  You had to think before a draw, unsnap the leather and lift it up before you lifted up the gun and aimed and shot.  It all took time.  And it took so much time it never really happened.  The neighborhoods were safe.  No “slicky boys” snuck in to peoples homes; the prostitutes were kept at bay (or Coulter’s Statute).  Life was good even if these cops wore army boots shined very black and wore a badge of only silver, not true gold.  They were the good cops of the world, I knew them once.

Now the “cops” aren’t like that.  Cops are the men in black.  They have all black uniforms like in the SS movies except without the silver or the somewhat stylish cut.  The cops wear helmets and visors and have communications thingies in their ear.  They have an appendage like a gun in front, but it’s not a gun.  It’s a weapon more powerful than an Uzi or a World War I full infantry brigade.  More death on duty with just one cop than a whole battalion of bad guys.  These new cops can and will kill you quick or just make you wish that you wanted to die.  If they wear a badge it’s busted; hidden in a pocket or up a sleeve - it’s the super-gun that tells you it’s a cop; big thing and black, a gun guy could tell you all the numbers.

A z2z is my best bet.  If it doesn’t work today it will work tomorrow.  Each day brings bigger weapons and weaponry and a lot more of it.  The bullet proof vests are better.  The plastic visors can spray out light to blind you in a wink.  The back-up is not another cop, but a robot cop hovering in air; baseball thing but far more deadly, fast pitch will blow your home away not just the door.  So now you see them coming.  They march two next to two down the street in columns; two left, two right, two baseball “bots” at the ready.  “May I see your ID mam.”  “Yours sir.”  “Now please just get inside the truck.”

I don’t know why these things are in my world.  I was raised in a world of Officer Friendly.  I was raised to respect the law, not break it.  Not watch officers trash the Constitution and peoples lives and peoples homes while helicopters hover overhead.  I would not believe it was real outside the movies.  But I see the pictures in the news.  These entities exist.  They are not just grotesque images in my mind.  Call them SWAT teams if you will; they’re just cops to me.  There’s nothing “special” about this intimidating parade of force.  All officers are now trained in SWAT; but you already knew that.  Swat Valley is your street, your community and your neighborhood too.  And it’s not Al Quaida or the Taliban that I’m talking about - it’s people on the run.

At every hour there are somewhere people sleeping.  At every hour there are somewhere people that are awake.  Most of the time it’s better to be awake.  There’s no crime in following orders when loyalty to the people and the Constitution’s gone.  To disobey an order is a crime.  That’s why good people used to be as careful about hiring cops as they were hunting with a gun.  In either case and one mistake and one can kill or do damage beyond belief.  There’s no gun safety anymore.  The hiring freeze is off.  The cops are real cops or rent-a-cops and I see little difference - it’s all ex or extra-military that I see.  Strike early or not at all or is it “strike out early” that I really mean?  Good people stay within the law; it’s not a social contract thing.  That has long been broken.

I would rather write about hearts and flowers.  Maybe Penny Lane and Strawberry Fields (forever) would be nice.  Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds really was about LSD; not really just a pretty picture from a child.  You have to know and trust your source.  Timothy Leary really is dead and psychedelics really will rot your mind.  Stay sane.  Stay real.  Count the lights on the subway cars, keep your mind focused on something else.  You really can get through this tunnel of discontent.  There really is no other way.

So take me back (or forward) to Sunday concerts in the park; to a time when people left their doors unlocked; to officers on the beat with white gloves and whistles.  I’ve seen it all before.  It could come again.  Fear is what you make it.  But be realistic just the same.  When Lemmings run they don’t know the cliff is there.  But, people are not lemmings; this cliff is really there; there are other ways down the cliff than jumping.  This is such a mystery post.  Time will set it free.  Free will set you free.

Officer Friendly will not make you free (you’ll see).  The black shirts are not your friends.

[2009.05.19 / Tuesday - Officer Friendly]

~ Was the door at the top or the bottom of the 39 steps?

We’ve talked about how a flight of steps is 13 in number; 39 steps are three flights, it’s very simple.  What we haven’t talked too much about is 2012 or whatever that date translates to in the Hebrew calendar or the Korean calendar or the Hindu calendar or even the Moslem system of arranging dates.  I’m sure it is all on the web, somewhere on the web, it all is now isn’t it?  Nobody on this planet is on the same page about much of anything anymore.  Which may be good; and if it isn’t good it still makes life interesting.

One interesting thing that I discovered is that there is a Countdown Clock to the year 2012; a one page website that considers the end of the year the whole year, but maybe that’s a reasonable way to think.  It lists the countdown in day and hours and minutes and seconds - as if you’re going to make every second count between now and then.  I think you’ll waste all your time just deciding whether it’s real or when is just too late; or you’ll waste away your precious days as if there were no countdown clock, no end of the world, no chance to begin things new.  I think the clock says 1311 days left (or is it days right) and then a few hours, a few minutes more.

Does the world end at Greenwich Mean Time?  That might explain why the 2012 Summer Olympics will be held in London; last chance for a run, or football (which is soccer), or a tennis match perhaps.  There are countdown clocks for the Olympics too; 2012 Countdown clocks as they are also called.  I was saying about “same page”; no we’re not - maybe “yes we can”; but, “no we’re not” (for sure).  Under the websites divined by the moniker “2012” and “countdown” there is an amazing mix.  Many good graphics are going to waste; 20 point type often seems the norm; and “Oh, such color”, haven’t seen the likes of it since Dorothy met Oz (and I don’t mean Australia).  Maybe 2012 is a bit like Frank Baum and Oz; witches, flying robots, poppy fields, mechanical men and straw ones, a wizard and a curtain and a door.  Do come in.

So there was a war for Oz.  Why not a war for Kansas; a second Kansas War, this time not over slavery and segregation and amalgamation (or maybe again over slavery, and segregation, and amalgamation; just not so black and white this time).  A lot of the “Countdown 2012” seems about the DNA sites and references and theories.  DNA mapping has gone far; is a DNA map racial profiling, if not, then what the fuss?  Did you get a blood test to get married?  Then I guess you’re set; “they” know everything they need to know and did you know that the IRS has every home telephone number linked to your Social Security number (the legal account name): “The number you entered is incorrect.” How did they know?

Oz of course was about the shoes; ruby slippers are the ones as I recall.  Rainbows too, and don’t forget that Dorothy grew up to be Shirley Temple Black, ambassador to Kenya, Tanganyika, or was it Israel or just “Oz” as in Australia (or oz as in Topeka, Topeka is a foreign capital too) after a better singer got the part.  Follow (follow) FOLLOW the yellow brick road.  Is it gold, or is it money and what is the metaphor for all the images involved in getting there?  Who really are the Munchkins.  Are tornadoes really bad?  Why were there no cars in Oz, no banks, no insurance companies to insure the loss of straw and life and the melting down of people (or was the witch really “people” in the sense of human and inhuman and inhuman acts?  I don’t know?

So Oz was about the last depression and this depression we have “2012”; just as entertaining, a pocket full of stars, lots of exotic scenery plots and sub-plots.  And, “Oh, the color”.  A thousand websites are all about the ruby slippers - how to, how where, how to wear and what to wear; how to send the money.  I’m bored (already).  The Mayan calendar was such a trip - taught Mick Jagger and the boys how to stick out their tongue.  Nothing new; thought you knew back in the sixties.  So now he knows his days will soon be over; left speechless, close the mouth for one last time.  Just Om and silence and then just one word.  In the beginning was THE word.

There will be no shagging tongue out in the middle of the next Mayan disk.  It will be a different epoch, a different time, different leaders and different values.  London will not be the center of it all.  Maybe just a desert; or in the tropics; 4,000 miles from the pole (a new pole always warming); a new axis, a whole new universal orientation for the planet as soon as things are over.  You might like it, like it better; like the way things really ought to be.  It won’t be heaven; but it will be a whole lot closer than you thought you would ever get.  Fade to out, old man muttering gibberish; roll to credits and still of ruby shoes.  Cheesecake girl holds up sign about red shoes for sale at the Candy Stand in the lobby (next to the Hershey chocolate).  Play newsreels about the war - ones with arms up and dialogue “Zeig, zeig, zeig or something better.  Ruby shoes, war, and chocolate - what could be better?

The bad guys own the banks.  The bad guys keep the memory of Hitler alive on their big “H” Channel and through their supposedly anti-Hitler movies (I don’t buy any other reason; let the guy die in the dustbin of forgotten despots).  We don’t need a “devil” to make life good.  Dead, gone, forgotten; best that way if you ask me.  Others see it differently.  They will push the planet to the brink of oblivion if they don’t get their way.  So stupid, so pointless, so unnecessary.  Get a life (not just death).

There are those that know.  There are those that only hope.  There are those in the way that are only clueless.  Humility will make you free.  There is no certain outcome; it’s up to you to decide, to take a side, to get out of the doorway; stand aside or help.  If I knew the ending I would not tell.  That would miss the point.  One changes because they do not know, they reach inside; they make decisions and find things that they didn’t know they got.  It’s the same with you, the same with me.  Nobody said it would be easy.

[2009.05.18 / Monday - Countdown to the door]

~ Like Exxon says, “there’s a tiger in your tank”.

We’re going to cover a lot of territory today; in time, in space.  We’ll bounce around a bit and tie things together that may not at first seem related (but they are).  It’s called “thought” and not English 101; the old rules just don’t work no more; that is why we accumulate experience.  I think you’re with me now.

The recent unpleasantness in Ceylon (not so much Sri Lanka) is really about a religious war.  You didn’t know.  You probably don’t know whether “the tigers” are the Buddhists or the Hindus.  You’re right, they are one (or the other).  If in Ireland you thought of the Brits as “the lions” then you would be for the “Christians” maybe (or maybe against them).  Religion is like that.  Change the image to an animal and you are left with sacred cows, pigs, sheep, goats, elephants, and monkeys.  What religion is the cobra, (Shelby Cobra) - what religion is the mongoose?  Which one should really win?

Exxon liked “the tiger”, put it in your tank.  The company gave out foot-long tiger tails, cool if you’re Tamil, maybe too much the “cool” of too much advertising.  Where is the Metrical for our diets, the Tang from NASA for our breakfasts; is Hubble really being fixed by Tang (drinkers)?  Is it really time to move on?  How I loved my Flicks (chocolate) in the movie theaters; big round drops of chocolate, so much better than the Hershey bars; more expensive than the Hershey bars and that made them better even more.  But now the flicks are gone; you get my message and my drift.

The President of Sri Lanka has been shelling the civilian population; killing Tamils and tigers on the beach; killing Hindus or is it Buddhists (maybe both).  I think both.  Piles of bodies are everywhere.  Do you incinerate (cremate) the Buddhists or the Hindus?  Or is it just the Jews you burn; the Gypsies (tramps and thieves - and Cher too maybe).  I like Cher; she’s better old than young.  She should live to be a hundred.  Then for once she might be good.

The US incinerated several million at Dresden, Tokyo, Nagasaki, and Hiroshima.  Truman was, “Oh, so dumb”.  He should have been like the President of Sri Lanka and said it was, “an unprecedented humanitarian operation.”  Hitler could have said the same.  Stalin did not have Gulags; he just had “humanitarian operations” like a tiger in your tank, it’s just advertising and advertising is just so cool.

I’ve been long concerned about the impact that the message from “them” has had upon my life.  There is the advertising for just products; the propaganda of the state; the “we and thee” competition between the Jones, communities, and states.  I think that all three messages are the same.  Tang is just military propaganda; the bombs are about the Arabs and the Jews not the holocaust at all; the Jones thing is about putting Tamils in the tank and then letting Exxon go.  It is all just such a sick thing.  It warps your body and your mind.  Tang is just sugar; Metrical just like Xcylon ‘B’, no better.  You’re no better if you’re too thin than too fat.  You should know.

So now the banks are roaring; or is it the tigers that just purr?  The purr song is that bankings back; good time for a new mortgage; good time for a new loan or two.  “Buy a house”.  They said it, not I.  They say it in ads, in articles, in commentaries everywhere; the truth is that it’s lies.  It’s double-speak, double-sprecht, double-vision.  Maybe renting is really better.  Embed the thought.  There’s really not a tiger on any road.  The tigers have all been “humanitarianly cleansed”; there’s not a tiger left.  Thought you should know.

So now I get to the nitty gritty.  The “facts” that no Realtor really knows; or that they won’t tell you; but something to think about just the same?  Was it the Jews that “owned” their houses or the ones that “rented” that were the first to leave Nazi Germany?  Were there more dwelling renters or dwelling owners that died in all the camps?  Were they “home owners” that were in the majority at the Trade Towers when they went down (the dead)?  How many renters really died?  Get the records on the case of Nagasaki; renters more or renters less?  Who were the people that have left before the hour was too late?  Were the Gulags filled with owners or renters?  I think that even Soltzenitzen owned a house.  I think you get my drift.

So killing off the opposition is just a “humanitarian” affair.  So renters have a better chance of moving, of living, of staying out of harms (or the humanitarians) way.  So is it true what the “advertisers” have always said, “advertising always lowers the cost of things”?  I remember that line from the fifties, the sixties, the seventies even.  Maybe it’s still true today.  But it’s still just such a chilling thought.

There was something in the air last night.  It was something bad, not good; something very bad.  You might have noticed it where you lived; but maybe not.  There is something bad in the airwaves today, and in the press, and on the web, and elsewhere too.  Constant Vigilance is the price of freedom, it’s not an easy task, at Wilson’s Creek the Union soldiers bayoneted the Confederates while still in their beds and bedrolls.  It has always been the way of war, of peace, of advertising too.

I could say you don’t need that house.  I could say when the message comes don’t listen.  I could say a lot of things and in time maybe I just might.  But today the sun is shining, the birds still sing, there is still a little spring in the gait if not spring upon the air.  It was the same way on 9-1-1; in Buckenwald; in Berlin when it was still the spring.  It was once that way in Sri Lanka when the country was still Ceylon.  It hadn’t rained yet that morning in Hiroshima; the clouds were sparse in Tokyo, in Dresden - you get the drill.  Don’t wait for the weather plane or the warning.  By then it is too late.  Plan ahead.  Be early.  Be the first (not last) on your block.  The news from Sri Lanka says they’re coming; and they’re just an ocean or two away.  Six days to cross an ocean; eight days for two at the most.  Aren’t you so glad you’re global?

Can I have your “rent check” please (to coin a new phrase - if you get my drift).

[2009.05.17 / Sunday - Maybe renting is better]