The things around us are not what they appear to be. Whether carpet or furniture, socks or fingernails, the items we touch and feel and use every daily are, at root, merely stardust. Things such as skin and bones are useful to us – without them, we would get sick easily and die quickly; things such as shoes and coats are also useful – they allow us to inhabit regions and climates we otherwise couldn't; at root, however, everything in existence today, on this Earth, is made up of solar energy and solar material trapped and stored by plants, animals, and our little world's gravity well.
It is boring to think about this type of thing, about how blood and hair, brains and tendons, are all made up of ashes and dust. Sometimes, however, when I feel the pull of pride, I remind myself of this body's simple, basic components. This helps me to stay humble. In the end, everything reverts to its natural state. In the end, the worthwhile efforts are those that result in love. Change is good – it keeps things from running afoul of time's indifference. Change points of view with me, then; let us seek wavelengths of thought different from those to which we have become accustomed, and free ourselves from the needs and wants we think necessary. Mahalo.
mentiri factorem fecit © 場黑麥
31 December 2012
28 December 2012
ravens & NOTW
Recently, while riding my bicycle into town, I was passed by a pickup-truck driven by a lone individual. Affixed to the back of this man's vehicle were two stickers, one reading, “Ravens – Relentless,” the other, “NOTW.” It will not shock this blog's regular readers that I am lamenting the idiocy of the loose affiliation of non-Earth-bound religious fanatics who see themselves as being Not Of This World (NOTW), but so many of them live here that I find it hard to resist.
Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary from 1961 defines relentless as, “Mercilessly harsh, stern.” If one can glean anything from the teachings of Yeshua (also known as Iesu, or Jesus, the Christians' primary god), it is that one should be – always, and without fail – compassionate, honorable, and loving toward others, and that one should treat them as one would like to be treated. This ancient wise man encouraged his followers to be merciful and generous persons whose only wish it was to serve the lowly, to assist the meek, and to give aid to the disenfranchised. In the Christians' bible, one of the only times that Yeshua acted in a truly harsh or stern fashion was when he drove the money-changers out of temple by whipping them with chains in a brazen (but unsuccessful) attempt to rid faith of the sickness of finance. The compassionate individual cares for the Earth and for Nature; he wishes to shelter and to promote the growing and the teeming things, no matter their size, shape, or color; the last thing that the true believer in the message of Yeshua would do would be to drive himself around the countryside in a two-ton vehicle at high speed (burning crude oil and mowing crushing clouds of insects against the front of his car), or to live in such as way as to be dependent on driving. The last thing he would do would be to allow himself to become so enamored of a simple game that he would go out and purchase a sticker for his car instead of using that money to support a starving neighbor or save a dying species. A true believer in Yeshua's message would not to spend his time watching, discussing, or thinking about the intricate details of such a decidedly earth-bound and petty thing as American football – the true believer would spend his time musing about how best to uplift the poor, help the needy, promote the downtrodden, and live in such a way as to cause as little negative impact as possible to the health of this our only planet.
To attempt to love Iesu, football, and pickup-trucks at the same time is akin to trying to walk while sitting and standing. Please, dear friend, remember Yeshua's lessons of humility and mercy, and cast aside the creeping doubt that hides within relentless and unbridled passion.
mentiri factorem fecit © 場黑麥
Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary from 1961 defines relentless as, “Mercilessly harsh, stern.” If one can glean anything from the teachings of Yeshua (also known as Iesu, or Jesus, the Christians' primary god), it is that one should be – always, and without fail – compassionate, honorable, and loving toward others, and that one should treat them as one would like to be treated. This ancient wise man encouraged his followers to be merciful and generous persons whose only wish it was to serve the lowly, to assist the meek, and to give aid to the disenfranchised. In the Christians' bible, one of the only times that Yeshua acted in a truly harsh or stern fashion was when he drove the money-changers out of temple by whipping them with chains in a brazen (but unsuccessful) attempt to rid faith of the sickness of finance. The compassionate individual cares for the Earth and for Nature; he wishes to shelter and to promote the growing and the teeming things, no matter their size, shape, or color; the last thing that the true believer in the message of Yeshua would do would be to drive himself around the countryside in a two-ton vehicle at high speed (burning crude oil and mowing crushing clouds of insects against the front of his car), or to live in such as way as to be dependent on driving. The last thing he would do would be to allow himself to become so enamored of a simple game that he would go out and purchase a sticker for his car instead of using that money to support a starving neighbor or save a dying species. A true believer in Yeshua's message would not to spend his time watching, discussing, or thinking about the intricate details of such a decidedly earth-bound and petty thing as American football – the true believer would spend his time musing about how best to uplift the poor, help the needy, promote the downtrodden, and live in such a way as to cause as little negative impact as possible to the health of this our only planet.
To attempt to love Iesu, football, and pickup-trucks at the same time is akin to trying to walk while sitting and standing. Please, dear friend, remember Yeshua's lessons of humility and mercy, and cast aside the creeping doubt that hides within relentless and unbridled passion.
mentiri factorem fecit © 場黑麥
26 December 2012
on the sickness
As the year 2012 draws to a close and flurries of snow fall fitfully from the darkened skies, the sickness that plagued me this past week now infects a half-dozen others. I cannot help but blame myself, in part, for getting them sick: my self inflicted quarantine was too short, and my desire to be in their company was too strong, for me to have effectively denied the disease access to additional hosts. It has been years since I felt so ill that I had to skip work; I shall remember this sickness fondly.
The character of the disease included infection of the sinuses and bronchial tubes, which then produced steady amounts of thick, tenacious mucus. I also suffered from weariness, confusion, and decreased appetite. Such was my inability to think clearly that I resorted to editing and posting old texts instead of writing new ones. (I was not surprised to find that many of my previous blogposts were riddled with grammatical and contextual errors, which has lowered my already low opinion of my abilities.)
As the malaise abates and my faculties begin to spin back up to speed, I welcome the opportunity to reappraise the routines and habits I formed this past year. With a bit of foresight and a lot of luck, I may just change them for the better. Mahalo.
mentiri factorem fecit © 場黑麥
The character of the disease included infection of the sinuses and bronchial tubes, which then produced steady amounts of thick, tenacious mucus. I also suffered from weariness, confusion, and decreased appetite. Such was my inability to think clearly that I resorted to editing and posting old texts instead of writing new ones. (I was not surprised to find that many of my previous blogposts were riddled with grammatical and contextual errors, which has lowered my already low opinion of my abilities.)
As the malaise abates and my faculties begin to spin back up to speed, I welcome the opportunity to reappraise the routines and habits I formed this past year. With a bit of foresight and a lot of luck, I may just change them for the better. Mahalo.
mentiri factorem fecit © 場黑麥
25 December 2012
in Herodotus's footsteps
Many thousands of years ago, at the dawn of mankind, a man traveled to the far corners of his world, talking to people and writing down what he heard. He spoke with paupers and kings, with priestesses and butchers, with generals and prisoners of war, taking note of their tales in a book he would call, simply, the Histories. We know not exactly why he did these things, but Herodotus, by leaving his comfortable and familiar surroundings and striking off for places spoken of only of myth, began a tradition that continues to this day. Sometimes, we travel for leisure; other times, we travel in hopes of experiencing things new and exciting; and, often, we travel in order to enrich our own lives and the lives of others. Regardless, however, of why we travel, the fact remains that we seem to enjoy traveling, and that, when we do it, we do it with hearts filled with radiant and bursting joy.
Whether it is by foot, sail, or swiftly-speeding airship, humans are always on the move. It matters little if the journey is for work or play – every time we strike off for points distant and unknown, we walk in the footsteps of Herodotus, the vagabond's spiritual father (and the modern travel-writer's humble, knowing patron). Often, our experiences abroad – the ride on that ramshackle ferry in muggy Thailand, the taxi driver in wintry Basel who returned our lost wallet, the week-long search for fine rooibos in sunny South African – enrich our lives with memory-glimpses of color, sound, and smells that have the power to transport us body and mind back in time to these, our private, special moments.
The world is a vastly shrinking place, no more full yet no less exciting than during the time of old man Herodotus, he who wandered so famously. So strike out, dear friend, on a journey of your own, and remember to keep track of your experiences, because maybe, just maybe, somebody will want to read them some day.
mentiri factorem fecit © 場黑麥
Whether it is by foot, sail, or swiftly-speeding airship, humans are always on the move. It matters little if the journey is for work or play – every time we strike off for points distant and unknown, we walk in the footsteps of Herodotus, the vagabond's spiritual father (and the modern travel-writer's humble, knowing patron). Often, our experiences abroad – the ride on that ramshackle ferry in muggy Thailand, the taxi driver in wintry Basel who returned our lost wallet, the week-long search for fine rooibos in sunny South African – enrich our lives with memory-glimpses of color, sound, and smells that have the power to transport us body and mind back in time to these, our private, special moments.
The world is a vastly shrinking place, no more full yet no less exciting than during the time of old man Herodotus, he who wandered so famously. So strike out, dear friend, on a journey of your own, and remember to keep track of your experiences, because maybe, just maybe, somebody will want to read them some day.
mentiri factorem fecit © 場黑麥
21 December 2012
dollar store commies
As of these last few months of 2012, millions of American citizens are directly supporting the People's Republic of China, our country's primary economic competitor and one of the sole remaining bastions of the socialistic world-view. Every day, Americans support communism in the People's Republic of China; by demanding rock-bottom prices in cities great and small – from the rolling central plains to the rugged western coastline – countless numbers of red-blooded, patriotic Ynki contribute directly to the ascending might of the Middle Kingdom.
Dollar stores, which sell products ranging from shower curtains to miniature cast-resin busts of zebras, stand at the forefront of the Chinese invasion of, and its dominance over, the American economy. Purchasing an item that reads “Made In China” funnels funds directly into the rapidly growing Chinese economy (where most of the consumer items sold in dollar stores are made) rather than into the pockets of producers based in these United States. From the 1980s onward, the capitalistic oligarchy has taken for itself great portions of America's wealth saw an opportunity to further line their pockets, destroying the manufacturing economy in this country by shifting manufacturing capacity to foreign countries. As hundreds of thousands of our fellow citizens lost their manufacturing jobs, they had few options than to buy the cheapest products in order to survive; they turned to dollar stores, thereby supporting the very system that had swallowed up their jobs in the first place. The capitalistic oligarchy effectively enslaved the American consumer to the whims of foreign nations by shifting production overseas to special economic zones that are, in everything but name, slave camps.
I welcome our Chinese masters, and greet them cordially by saying Ni-Hao-Ma. As a Son of the American Revolution and a descendant of the Mayflower Pilgrims, my blood runs deep in this land. However, I am not blindly patriotic, nor am I inextricably tied to our prevailing economic model, Me-First Capitalism. In fact, I find our prevailing economic model – in which the fruits of the labor of an entire people are re-directed into the a pockets of but a few corporate officers – deeply and intrinsically un-American. I am personally boycotting dollar stores (and, by extension, Walmart, Target, and the rest of the big-box stores), not to harm the Chinese economy but in quiet mourning for our lost manufacturing economy. Join me if you wish, but know that this choice requires paying a bit more money for everyday goods, a sacrifice that rewards itself with feelings of pride and patriotic fervor. Remember – if you aren't buying products made exclusively in the U.S.A, you are party responsible for the gutting of the American manufacturing economy, for the demise of our middle class, for our slipping military hegemony, and for the Chinese government continuing to purchase significant portions of our national debt. In the long run, shopping at dollar stores will not have a positive economic impact on your personal finances, but it will certainly boost the profits of the plutocrats who sold us out to the commies. Mahalo.
mentiri factorem fecit © 場黑麥
Dollar stores, which sell products ranging from shower curtains to miniature cast-resin busts of zebras, stand at the forefront of the Chinese invasion of, and its dominance over, the American economy. Purchasing an item that reads “Made In China” funnels funds directly into the rapidly growing Chinese economy (where most of the consumer items sold in dollar stores are made) rather than into the pockets of producers based in these United States. From the 1980s onward, the capitalistic oligarchy has taken for itself great portions of America's wealth saw an opportunity to further line their pockets, destroying the manufacturing economy in this country by shifting manufacturing capacity to foreign countries. As hundreds of thousands of our fellow citizens lost their manufacturing jobs, they had few options than to buy the cheapest products in order to survive; they turned to dollar stores, thereby supporting the very system that had swallowed up their jobs in the first place. The capitalistic oligarchy effectively enslaved the American consumer to the whims of foreign nations by shifting production overseas to special economic zones that are, in everything but name, slave camps.
I welcome our Chinese masters, and greet them cordially by saying Ni-Hao-Ma. As a Son of the American Revolution and a descendant of the Mayflower Pilgrims, my blood runs deep in this land. However, I am not blindly patriotic, nor am I inextricably tied to our prevailing economic model, Me-First Capitalism. In fact, I find our prevailing economic model – in which the fruits of the labor of an entire people are re-directed into the a pockets of but a few corporate officers – deeply and intrinsically un-American. I am personally boycotting dollar stores (and, by extension, Walmart, Target, and the rest of the big-box stores), not to harm the Chinese economy but in quiet mourning for our lost manufacturing economy. Join me if you wish, but know that this choice requires paying a bit more money for everyday goods, a sacrifice that rewards itself with feelings of pride and patriotic fervor. Remember – if you aren't buying products made exclusively in the U.S.A, you are party responsible for the gutting of the American manufacturing economy, for the demise of our middle class, for our slipping military hegemony, and for the Chinese government continuing to purchase significant portions of our national debt. In the long run, shopping at dollar stores will not have a positive economic impact on your personal finances, but it will certainly boost the profits of the plutocrats who sold us out to the commies. Mahalo.
mentiri factorem fecit © 場黑麥
19 December 2012
on graffitos' patroness
For all of their differences in style of clothing, method of address, performance under fire, gait while walking, and ability to tolerate bullshit, street artists share one thing in common: a life-long love for the dandelion (and for kicking off their white, fluffy, puff-ball-like heads). As an individual who spends his time altering the appearance of things that everyone else seems to be ignoring, the graffiti-writer will – should the opportunity present itself – run wildly into a field of dandelions just to decapitate as many of them as he can, as quickly as possible. The dandelion requires just this sort of action to deliver her seeds to the Shifting Winds of Fortune; she gains of the graffito's destructive tendencies; thus, she is his goddess, his flower-patroness.
場黑麥 mentiri factorem fecit
Beyond the symbiotic interdependency of dandelion with graffito, the two also share other traits, albeit ones perhaps less obvious to the casual observer. Both are loathed by the population in general, the flower for its tendency to grow nearly anywhere regardless of efforts to keep it out, the artist for his tendency to access most any imaginable surface – regardless of perimeter fencing, guard, closed-circuit television camera, or watchdog. Both are loved by a small but growing group that keeps its opinions to itself and enjoys beauty wherever beauty should arise. Dandelions grow in neglected, contaminated, and otherwise ignored places (gutters, trash heaps, empty lots) where little else can gain foothold; street art is applied to neglected, contaminated, and otherwise ignored places (alleyways, abandoned buildings, concrete highway embankments) where few people venture. Cities hire squads of individuals, outfit them with brushes and paint-buckets, and send them out to paint over great patches of well-executed works of art, thus providing the graffito with fresh canvas upon which to erect new works and encouraging him to pursue his Happiness upon surfaces always harder and as a rule more dangerous to reach. Cities treat the dandelion similarly: it is sprayed with poison, assaulted with shovels, dug under the soil, weeded, treated, and burned, all to little avail - a cheerful and resilient little blossom, it will re-appear during the next growing season in larger numbers and with deeper and more tenacious roots.
It is as hard to catch a vandal in the act of applying his craft as it is to catch a dandelion in the act of colonizing new terrain. Both street art and dandelions improve the human condition freely and without ado, bringing beauty to the world without seeking thanks or a by-your-leave. Street art covers and enlivens surfaces that just a day before had been blank concrete walls, and dandelions appear just as suddenly, shining yellow faces enlivening lawns that just a day before had been mono-cultured swaths of grass devoid of Nature's abundance. We, the Self Directed Urban Beautification Specialists (SDUBS) of America, ask the inhabitants of Terra to search for beauty in all places, to pursue Happiness with us by blanketing the urban and the natural environments with bright and vibrant colors, to rejoice in the sudden appearance of beauty in places forgotten and forlorn, and to remember to honor our common goddess, the dandelion, by kicking as many of her puff-balls as we possible can. Stay on your toes out there, dear friend, and may you be filled always with divine breath.
It is as hard to catch a vandal in the act of applying his craft as it is to catch a dandelion in the act of colonizing new terrain. Both street art and dandelions improve the human condition freely and without ado, bringing beauty to the world without seeking thanks or a by-your-leave. Street art covers and enlivens surfaces that just a day before had been blank concrete walls, and dandelions appear just as suddenly, shining yellow faces enlivening lawns that just a day before had been mono-cultured swaths of grass devoid of Nature's abundance. We, the Self Directed Urban Beautification Specialists (SDUBS) of America, ask the inhabitants of Terra to search for beauty in all places, to pursue Happiness with us by blanketing the urban and the natural environments with bright and vibrant colors, to rejoice in the sudden appearance of beauty in places forgotten and forlorn, and to remember to honor our common goddess, the dandelion, by kicking as many of her puff-balls as we possible can. Stay on your toes out there, dear friend, and may you be filled always with divine breath.
場黑麥 mentiri factorem fecit
17 December 2012
on breaking routine II
As with most things in life, one's daily routines become boring and nasty if allowed to calcify due to too much repetition and too little critical self-examination. Let us take, for example, writing, which this poor whorphan has been doing six mornings a week for the past six months, a routine which, due to extenuating circumstance, was shattered last week. Instead of writing in the mornings after having worked for an hour in the yard and eaten a light breakfast, this worthless author spent that time performing yard work at someone else's house, whereupon he would bicycle over to his seasonal job and work there until evening.
After returning home from his paying job well after dark, he would feed himself again, stoke a wood-fire, and spin up his netbook, finally getting around to his daily EBOS, or Entire Battery Operating Session, nearly twelve hours late. (EBOS generally lasts two hours.) Creativity, however, is a different animal at night than it is in the morning – the brain's chemistry does not work the same after a full day's work as it does after an hour out in the pre-dawn cold sawing wood with an authentic Swedish military handsaw.
And now, the same persons who were paying this mendicant to do their yard work have decided to skip town for a few days and have him watch their dog, a neurotic bitch whose primary redeeming factor is that she likes to go for long walks. Walking the dog is no problem; doing yard work is no problem; but staying at their house for five days while they go on a cat-sitting staycation at their son's house an hour away puts him, this author, within arm's reach of all the sweets and other goodies that elderly persons like to keep on hand. And so this greedy fucker's stomach is in knots because he ate a pound of York peppermint patties last night while lying on the couch and drinking one can of ginger ale after the next, to excess. Such behavior concerns the responsible part of whorphan's soul because eating massive quantities of sugar bodes ill for the digestive tract, for the kidneys and liver, and for his ability to lead a life devoid of the sugar disease. He likes to stay at home – even though it is cold enough there that he must at times don a pair of long-johns – because, at home, his food stores are limited and he does not have quick access to nearly limitless quantities of candies, sweets, snacks, or pre-made foodstuffs. Discipline is not his strong suite, and so he keeps himself on track by avoiding temptation altogether and sticking to routine, which, of late, has been far easier said than done. Sigh.
mentiri factorem fecit © 場黑麥
After returning home from his paying job well after dark, he would feed himself again, stoke a wood-fire, and spin up his netbook, finally getting around to his daily EBOS, or Entire Battery Operating Session, nearly twelve hours late. (EBOS generally lasts two hours.) Creativity, however, is a different animal at night than it is in the morning – the brain's chemistry does not work the same after a full day's work as it does after an hour out in the pre-dawn cold sawing wood with an authentic Swedish military handsaw.
And now, the same persons who were paying this mendicant to do their yard work have decided to skip town for a few days and have him watch their dog, a neurotic bitch whose primary redeeming factor is that she likes to go for long walks. Walking the dog is no problem; doing yard work is no problem; but staying at their house for five days while they go on a cat-sitting staycation at their son's house an hour away puts him, this author, within arm's reach of all the sweets and other goodies that elderly persons like to keep on hand. And so this greedy fucker's stomach is in knots because he ate a pound of York peppermint patties last night while lying on the couch and drinking one can of ginger ale after the next, to excess. Such behavior concerns the responsible part of whorphan's soul because eating massive quantities of sugar bodes ill for the digestive tract, for the kidneys and liver, and for his ability to lead a life devoid of the sugar disease. He likes to stay at home – even though it is cold enough there that he must at times don a pair of long-johns – because, at home, his food stores are limited and he does not have quick access to nearly limitless quantities of candies, sweets, snacks, or pre-made foodstuffs. Discipline is not his strong suite, and so he keeps himself on track by avoiding temptation altogether and sticking to routine, which, of late, has been far easier said than done. Sigh.
mentiri factorem fecit © 場黑麥
14 December 2012
the accusative you
A specter is haunting the tongue of the modern English speaker – that shadowy, pervasive, accusative You! Upon listening closely to how people speak – especially to persons who are inebriated, or speaking passionately – one will soon understand I am talking about. And if one should find oneself being interviewed or facing the opportunity of speaking on a topic with which one is familiar, the first thing one is likely to do is to begin using You in the accusative form. (I do not even know if the usage to which I refer is called the accusative, but I think it sounds best.) What the deuce am I talking about? Well, here goes.
Imagine a friend is talking about a driver who cut him off while he had been driving home from work. “Why the fuck did you do that!” he will likely scream, his hands thrusting forward in supplicating fashion, his shoulders hunched and his eyebrows climbing. “How could you be so stupid as to pull out in front of me when I clearly had the right of way and too much momentum to stop within a safe distance?” In all likelihood, he will be making eye-contact with and pointing to the person to whom he is speaking, even though that person neither cut him off nor compelled the offender – the third party – to pull out in front of him. More likely than not, this agitated friend will proceed to draw analogies to other instances in the recent past when he felt slighted, offended, overlooked, or wronged; he will begin to whine about this policy decision or that stupid regulation, saying things such as “Why would you build a road here when over there is better” or “You're not going to get those guys to end their uranium enrichment program using sanctions alone.” And all this time, there will be a tiny little voice sounding in the head of the person listening patiently to his friend – less a voice, actually, than a deep, subconscious Knowing – that wants to grab the friend by the scruff of his neck, shake him, and say to him, “You fucking asshole! I didn't do these things – I didn't cut you off or enrich that uranium or pass that bill or tell that girl to dump you! Yes, yes, I know that you – and I'm talking to you directly, not to a fictitious third party who cannot hear you speaking – I know that you are talking about someone else, and I know that I'm supposed to understand this and not take your accusative tone and pointing fingers and rising anger personally, that I am supposed to remember that you use You when talking about Them even though you should be using They, Them, of Those Guys. Deep down, I know these things, but still, bro, come on, be disciplined when speaking.”
Yes, discipline – discipline is what is lacking in our society, as well as the patience to choose our words carefully and to think before we speak. It is not hard to acquire these things: all it takes is a bit less time spent watching television and a bit more time – starting with fifteen minutes each day – spent reading something such as The Elements of Style by William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White. (This book is available in any public library worth its salt.) I am convinced that the surest way to mend the tattered remnants of fair Liberty's cloak, that the quickest way to regain mutual respect for one other, is to stop using the accusative You when we are speaking about people who are not present. For too long have we unwittingly taken responsibility for the actions of other people; for too long have we unknowingly allowed ourselves to be blamed for the shortcomings, failures, and mistakes of people we have likely never met. Speech is one of our most powerful weapons; words are weightier than the sharpest sword; and the sooner we learn to use these tools wisely, the better off we all shall be. Check your tongue and mark my writing, or all too soon we're back to fighting. Mahalo.
mentiri factorem fecit © 場黑麥
Imagine a friend is talking about a driver who cut him off while he had been driving home from work. “Why the fuck did you do that!” he will likely scream, his hands thrusting forward in supplicating fashion, his shoulders hunched and his eyebrows climbing. “How could you be so stupid as to pull out in front of me when I clearly had the right of way and too much momentum to stop within a safe distance?” In all likelihood, he will be making eye-contact with and pointing to the person to whom he is speaking, even though that person neither cut him off nor compelled the offender – the third party – to pull out in front of him. More likely than not, this agitated friend will proceed to draw analogies to other instances in the recent past when he felt slighted, offended, overlooked, or wronged; he will begin to whine about this policy decision or that stupid regulation, saying things such as “Why would you build a road here when over there is better” or “You're not going to get those guys to end their uranium enrichment program using sanctions alone.” And all this time, there will be a tiny little voice sounding in the head of the person listening patiently to his friend – less a voice, actually, than a deep, subconscious Knowing – that wants to grab the friend by the scruff of his neck, shake him, and say to him, “You fucking asshole! I didn't do these things – I didn't cut you off or enrich that uranium or pass that bill or tell that girl to dump you! Yes, yes, I know that you – and I'm talking to you directly, not to a fictitious third party who cannot hear you speaking – I know that you are talking about someone else, and I know that I'm supposed to understand this and not take your accusative tone and pointing fingers and rising anger personally, that I am supposed to remember that you use You when talking about Them even though you should be using They, Them, of Those Guys. Deep down, I know these things, but still, bro, come on, be disciplined when speaking.”
Yes, discipline – discipline is what is lacking in our society, as well as the patience to choose our words carefully and to think before we speak. It is not hard to acquire these things: all it takes is a bit less time spent watching television and a bit more time – starting with fifteen minutes each day – spent reading something such as The Elements of Style by William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White. (This book is available in any public library worth its salt.) I am convinced that the surest way to mend the tattered remnants of fair Liberty's cloak, that the quickest way to regain mutual respect for one other, is to stop using the accusative You when we are speaking about people who are not present. For too long have we unwittingly taken responsibility for the actions of other people; for too long have we unknowingly allowed ourselves to be blamed for the shortcomings, failures, and mistakes of people we have likely never met. Speech is one of our most powerful weapons; words are weightier than the sharpest sword; and the sooner we learn to use these tools wisely, the better off we all shall be. Check your tongue and mark my writing, or all too soon we're back to fighting. Mahalo.
mentiri factorem fecit © 場黑麥
12 December 2012
on self education
The modus operandi of many Americans I meet seems to be one of prideful ignorance. Rather than keeping their mouths shut on topics about which they know nothing, they will loudly proclaim their lack of knowledge and attempt to reduce their self-inflicted embarrassment by making eye contact with everyone present while laughing too hard and for too long. On the one hand, this destroys the flow of conversation amongst people-in-the-know; on the other hand, though, in some cases the ignorant party can learn something so that next time he might be a bit less clueless. (I believe that the 24-hour news cycle and its endless array of body-less blabbermouths has helped to convince people in this society that constant talking is a good thing; it is not, as it all too often keeps the mind from figuring things out, on its own, in peaceful contemplation.)
And yet here I sit, in this cold but sunny room, contributing to society's messiness by lamenting the fact that other people lament their lack of knowledge. What a confused mind I have, and what a high horse I ride. No amount of writing or blogging will change peoples' behavior; they do what they think is best for themselves because that is what everyone else is doing and if they don't, they feel like they might be missing out. And what, really, is the harm in someone voicing their curiosity and showing interest in things foreign to them, and strange? Perhaps they do it to stroke the egos of the people who have already taken the time to educate themselves about topics not directly related to their daily doings.
A few days ago, some graffiti came through on the tumblrbot, an image of a saying sprayed neatly onto a wall, which was: silence is better than bullshit. This is a simple yet powerful lesson. Over the last few months, I have attempted often to stick to this rule, only to fail in my effort to mind my own affairs when asked by other people what it is I do for a living, how my siblings are, or why I tie one of my pants-legs back with an reflective elastic cuff. Sometimes, I manage to keep quiet, but other times I let the words flow only to find myself saying more than I wanted to say and wishing that I were not expected to reveal the details of my personal business. In contemporary American society, individuals who sit quietly while in the company of others, who avoid constantly spilling their guts or gleefully joining in the boorish fun of tearing apart anything that anyone else says or does or implies, these persons are viewed as strange; they are soon avoided, mocked, and ostracized; they are, however, the very individuals who understand the crucial importance of inner peace and spiritual contentedness, who are continuously jettisoning extraneous belongings, feelings of honor or pride, and letting go of the last vestiges of this passings world. With that, I shall, for now, merge back into silence, and cease with this bullshit. Mahalo.
mentiri factorem fecit © 場黑麥
And yet here I sit, in this cold but sunny room, contributing to society's messiness by lamenting the fact that other people lament their lack of knowledge. What a confused mind I have, and what a high horse I ride. No amount of writing or blogging will change peoples' behavior; they do what they think is best for themselves because that is what everyone else is doing and if they don't, they feel like they might be missing out. And what, really, is the harm in someone voicing their curiosity and showing interest in things foreign to them, and strange? Perhaps they do it to stroke the egos of the people who have already taken the time to educate themselves about topics not directly related to their daily doings.
A few days ago, some graffiti came through on the tumblrbot, an image of a saying sprayed neatly onto a wall, which was: silence is better than bullshit. This is a simple yet powerful lesson. Over the last few months, I have attempted often to stick to this rule, only to fail in my effort to mind my own affairs when asked by other people what it is I do for a living, how my siblings are, or why I tie one of my pants-legs back with an reflective elastic cuff. Sometimes, I manage to keep quiet, but other times I let the words flow only to find myself saying more than I wanted to say and wishing that I were not expected to reveal the details of my personal business. In contemporary American society, individuals who sit quietly while in the company of others, who avoid constantly spilling their guts or gleefully joining in the boorish fun of tearing apart anything that anyone else says or does or implies, these persons are viewed as strange; they are soon avoided, mocked, and ostracized; they are, however, the very individuals who understand the crucial importance of inner peace and spiritual contentedness, who are continuously jettisoning extraneous belongings, feelings of honor or pride, and letting go of the last vestiges of this passings world. With that, I shall, for now, merge back into silence, and cease with this bullshit. Mahalo.
mentiri factorem fecit © 場黑麥
10 December 2012
on slaying buffers
In my experience, among the most surefire ways to ruin something is to speak about it. Over the past several months, I have been instituting certain changes to my long-standing routines, adjusting quantities and methods of food intake, modes of transportation, views on sleep, frequency of spending time with others, and attitudes toward small-talk and similar forms of casual conversation. Along the way, I keep running into brick walls put up – I suspect – by the various strata of my ego. To a degree, I recognize these buffers as screens I had erected in the past to try to protect myself from or provide treatment for emotional damage. (True to the nature of such things, these buffers now cause more harm than good, instead of lessening past hurt increasing present confusion and frustration.) Curiously enough, I can sometimes remember vividly the reason and justification for having erected a barrier, the moment it went up solidly embedded in deep memory, tactile, olfactory, and auditory sensations flooding back to transport me all but bodily to the situation in which I had been injured originally.
At times, these sensations are so strong that I find myself re-justifying the buffers' existence, convincing myself anew that they must stay in place, that the potential for additional damage resulting from their removal would be greater than the benefits gained from taking them down. Sometimes, I allow the ego that rules a given buffer to keep it in place; other times, I am able to widen the cracks that have been made in my emotional Maginot Line by time and shifting circumstance and sidestep the now-superfluous protections or even break them down fully, states of mind long kept dormant coming quickly back to life in the sudden brilliance of unbuffered exposure to life's perpetual risks. As far as examples of these barriers go, my often excessive and usually compulsive consumption of food is more serious and frequent than the rest. If I am not careful, I will overeat, become too full to think clearly, and punish myself for hours – silently and continuously – for not only consuming more than my allotted daily ration of, say, oatmeal, but also for giving in to the urge to do so. The very act of over-consuming seems to serve as a buffer against subtle, massive emotional states that then tend to recede back into the shadows once I surrender to the urge to feed
What all of this building up and tearing down of buffers comes down to, I think, is a propensity for self-abuse that more often than not originates in the act of consuming substances in hopes that they will change the modes and frequencies of my thinking: imagining that things will be better after a few beers, alcohol only makes me sad and robs me of the ability to control my destiny; hoping that the tricky leaf will change the contours of my soul forever, it instead tethers me for but a few hours to an artificial view of things, after which I find myself justifying bad behaviors such as overeating and sloth with greater ease and less consternation. In all, I find that my recent attempts to lead a more productive and healthy life have been bearing fruit, although I'm not quite sure how long this period of fluctuation normally lasts. As it goes with most such things, I suspect my ability to control my own actions will wax and wane as my behaviors settle into their new channels and I – at some point, somehow – dedicate myself fully to a happy life devoid of selfishness, discontentment, and desire. Until then I shall try to adhere to the lessons of Ana Forrest, who urges us to replace admonition with acceptance, self-loathing with self-love, and the damaging behaviors with ones that bring us comfort, and joy. Onward, then, and tally-ho. Mahalo.
mentiri factorem fecit © 場黑麥
At times, these sensations are so strong that I find myself re-justifying the buffers' existence, convincing myself anew that they must stay in place, that the potential for additional damage resulting from their removal would be greater than the benefits gained from taking them down. Sometimes, I allow the ego that rules a given buffer to keep it in place; other times, I am able to widen the cracks that have been made in my emotional Maginot Line by time and shifting circumstance and sidestep the now-superfluous protections or even break them down fully, states of mind long kept dormant coming quickly back to life in the sudden brilliance of unbuffered exposure to life's perpetual risks. As far as examples of these barriers go, my often excessive and usually compulsive consumption of food is more serious and frequent than the rest. If I am not careful, I will overeat, become too full to think clearly, and punish myself for hours – silently and continuously – for not only consuming more than my allotted daily ration of, say, oatmeal, but also for giving in to the urge to do so. The very act of over-consuming seems to serve as a buffer against subtle, massive emotional states that then tend to recede back into the shadows once I surrender to the urge to feed
What all of this building up and tearing down of buffers comes down to, I think, is a propensity for self-abuse that more often than not originates in the act of consuming substances in hopes that they will change the modes and frequencies of my thinking: imagining that things will be better after a few beers, alcohol only makes me sad and robs me of the ability to control my destiny; hoping that the tricky leaf will change the contours of my soul forever, it instead tethers me for but a few hours to an artificial view of things, after which I find myself justifying bad behaviors such as overeating and sloth with greater ease and less consternation. In all, I find that my recent attempts to lead a more productive and healthy life have been bearing fruit, although I'm not quite sure how long this period of fluctuation normally lasts. As it goes with most such things, I suspect my ability to control my own actions will wax and wane as my behaviors settle into their new channels and I – at some point, somehow – dedicate myself fully to a happy life devoid of selfishness, discontentment, and desire. Until then I shall try to adhere to the lessons of Ana Forrest, who urges us to replace admonition with acceptance, self-loathing with self-love, and the damaging behaviors with ones that bring us comfort, and joy. Onward, then, and tally-ho. Mahalo.
mentiri factorem fecit © 場黑麥
07 December 2012
front yard manger
As soon as my neighbors had taken down their cheap, little Chinese-made flag sets showing pumpkins and corn, scarecrows and bounty, mangers began to appear. Some were outlines of figures cut from plywood and painted a uniform color, mostly white; others were elaborate scenes with electric lighting, hovering angels, quality clothes on life-like figures, and real hay strewn about. As I am no longer a Christian but was raised by a pair of them, one of whom was clergy, I know that there are at least four different tellings of Jesus' birth myth, each one wholly different from the next, each one with different players, places, and progressions. I also know that some of the stories don't mention a manger at all and that others don't speak of beasts of burden, that, in general, there is in fact little uniformity and therefore much room for interpretation most everywhere one might care to look in the Christians' bible.
What I struggle to understand is why people feel the need to haul a bunch of props out of storage and hammer them into their lawns, year after year, time and time again, and why they then read the same stories over and over, boredom and mischief spreading like wildfire amongst any assembled youth, the lack of personal progress or group ingenuity glaring and obvious to anyone who might care to see it. We Americans go to market and buy fresh fruits and vegetables to eat, not old and stale ones; we overhaul and streamline our business processes constantly, allowing exhausted methods and worn-out ideas to fade into obscurity so that better ones might take their place; and yet we cling to highly stylized and professionally-commercialized versions of a religion that – due to its inherent absurdity and tendency to promote mistrust for and violence against All Things Strange or Unusual – should have been jettisoned from the annals of history during our all-too-short Age Of Enlightenment. The lessons of that age, however, appear to have been fallen before the idea that we are to search for salvation in the mouths of our preachers rather than in the stillness that comes when the animal and the human spirits are unified within.
The people who erect elaborate mangers depicting mythical scenes from the brutal past (young Mary and her husband Joseph were, after all, fleeing systematic infanticide) probably think of themselves as good Christians. In reality, however they rely heavily on the magic of modern technology for much of their comfort and success, on telephones and motor-vehicles, on paved roads and postal services, on well-pumps and central heating, on electrical lighting and printed books, on Constitutions and charters, and on no one else reminding them of the hypocrisy of their living fat and happy lives in air- and rain-tight houses with a car for each inhabitant parked in the driveway while most people on Earth shiver and starve. At least some neighbors merely staple yard upon blinking yard of seizure-inducing lights to their homes' gables and window-frames without making any sort of religious statement, wasting the output of coal-fired electrical plants on garish light-shows, pouring out our precious fossil resources merely on secular, non-partisan attempts to celebrate this, the Season of Excess. I, for one, shall refrain from celebrating an unassisted birth held in a grimy sty, and stick to bitching about those persons who do. Oh, brother, how stupid can I be. Mahalo.
mentiri factorem fecit © 場黑麥
What I struggle to understand is why people feel the need to haul a bunch of props out of storage and hammer them into their lawns, year after year, time and time again, and why they then read the same stories over and over, boredom and mischief spreading like wildfire amongst any assembled youth, the lack of personal progress or group ingenuity glaring and obvious to anyone who might care to see it. We Americans go to market and buy fresh fruits and vegetables to eat, not old and stale ones; we overhaul and streamline our business processes constantly, allowing exhausted methods and worn-out ideas to fade into obscurity so that better ones might take their place; and yet we cling to highly stylized and professionally-commercialized versions of a religion that – due to its inherent absurdity and tendency to promote mistrust for and violence against All Things Strange or Unusual – should have been jettisoned from the annals of history during our all-too-short Age Of Enlightenment. The lessons of that age, however, appear to have been fallen before the idea that we are to search for salvation in the mouths of our preachers rather than in the stillness that comes when the animal and the human spirits are unified within.
The people who erect elaborate mangers depicting mythical scenes from the brutal past (young Mary and her husband Joseph were, after all, fleeing systematic infanticide) probably think of themselves as good Christians. In reality, however they rely heavily on the magic of modern technology for much of their comfort and success, on telephones and motor-vehicles, on paved roads and postal services, on well-pumps and central heating, on electrical lighting and printed books, on Constitutions and charters, and on no one else reminding them of the hypocrisy of their living fat and happy lives in air- and rain-tight houses with a car for each inhabitant parked in the driveway while most people on Earth shiver and starve. At least some neighbors merely staple yard upon blinking yard of seizure-inducing lights to their homes' gables and window-frames without making any sort of religious statement, wasting the output of coal-fired electrical plants on garish light-shows, pouring out our precious fossil resources merely on secular, non-partisan attempts to celebrate this, the Season of Excess. I, for one, shall refrain from celebrating an unassisted birth held in a grimy sty, and stick to bitching about those persons who do. Oh, brother, how stupid can I be. Mahalo.
mentiri factorem fecit © 場黑麥
05 December 2012
on cleaning clothes
I no longer use a washing-machine powered by electricity. Instead, I have developed a series of buckets in which I clean my clothes, a system that works fairly well. To start, I fill up an old cat litter bucket – one that is clean, squat, and wider than the average contractor's bucket – with the clothes I wish to wash, a dollop of detergent, and water. Usually, I allow this brew to sit for many hours out on the deck so that the soap and water can impregnate the fibers and make cleaning easier. Such long soakings (which make up phase 1) work fine in summer; in winter, however, they find me cleaning my clothes in the evenings, the cold and the dark conspiring with the dirty, frigid water in which my garments have been sitting to make for a miserable task. Now, I process a load in one go, the wash and the rinse cycles following one another closely rather than being spaced out over an entire day.
I agitate the clothes in the squat bucket by poking one side down with a long bamboo pole (a broomstick will also work during this, phase 2), forcing the items down on one side, which pushes them up on the other and allows me to mash the garments thoroughly. After I see a particular shirt or item for the third or fourth time, I put aside my stick and drop a skinnier bucket into the squat one (skinnier in that its bottom goes all the way down to the bottom of the wider bucket), this one with many holes drilled into its bottom and sides. I sit on the top of the skinner bucket, thus forcing the water from the clothes using my own weight. Once I am satisfied with this rudimentary straining, I take the skinnier bucket back out and resume poking at the clothes with my poker, rotating them around and around until they seem well agitated. (The water at this point will be oily, brownish, and filled with tiny particles of sweat, skin, and dirt.) I usually agitate and strain at least three times before dumping out what water I can and moving on to phase 3.
Phase 3 involves putting the skinnier bucket back into the squat bucket but then flipping both over together so that the water runs out. Then, I sit on the bottom of the squat bucket, using my own weight to strain the clothes against the skinnier bucket (which, again, has holes drilled into its bottom and sides). This forces much of the remaining water out of the clothes; I get even more out by rocking back and forth and by shifting position on the bottom of the squat bucket, which allows trapped pockets of water to escape onto the wooden deck, which must be swept off afterward to keep it from rotting quite so quickly. I generally give the clothes a visual check at this point, and a close smelling, to see if they need a third rinse or if the are clean enough to move on to phase 4. This last phase involves taking the wet items from the squat bucket and hanging them up to dry on my clothes-spider, a retractable hanger that perches at the edge of the deck far enough from the house so that the water dripping from the clothes does not seep into the foundation or moisten the siding. I usually leave the clothes there to drip their remaining moisture onto the grass; if I am lucky, they get an additional from the rain. Once the clothes are mostly dry, I move them to lines under the roof of the upper, front porch, where they are allowed to dry fully before being taken in, folded, and put away.
Cleaning clothes in the manner described above takes more time than with an electrical washing-machine; it uses virtually no electricity, however, it is all but silent, and it provides the washer with a good upper-body workout. The cost for the buckets, soap, and poker is less than $20, but the ability to wash one's clothes – without electricity or undue physical strain – is nearly priceless. Regain a slice of independence through honest effort! Mahalo.
mentiri factorem fecit © 場黑麥
I agitate the clothes in the squat bucket by poking one side down with a long bamboo pole (a broomstick will also work during this, phase 2), forcing the items down on one side, which pushes them up on the other and allows me to mash the garments thoroughly. After I see a particular shirt or item for the third or fourth time, I put aside my stick and drop a skinnier bucket into the squat one (skinnier in that its bottom goes all the way down to the bottom of the wider bucket), this one with many holes drilled into its bottom and sides. I sit on the top of the skinner bucket, thus forcing the water from the clothes using my own weight. Once I am satisfied with this rudimentary straining, I take the skinnier bucket back out and resume poking at the clothes with my poker, rotating them around and around until they seem well agitated. (The water at this point will be oily, brownish, and filled with tiny particles of sweat, skin, and dirt.) I usually agitate and strain at least three times before dumping out what water I can and moving on to phase 3.
Phase 3 involves putting the skinnier bucket back into the squat bucket but then flipping both over together so that the water runs out. Then, I sit on the bottom of the squat bucket, using my own weight to strain the clothes against the skinnier bucket (which, again, has holes drilled into its bottom and sides). This forces much of the remaining water out of the clothes; I get even more out by rocking back and forth and by shifting position on the bottom of the squat bucket, which allows trapped pockets of water to escape onto the wooden deck, which must be swept off afterward to keep it from rotting quite so quickly. I generally give the clothes a visual check at this point, and a close smelling, to see if they need a third rinse or if the are clean enough to move on to phase 4. This last phase involves taking the wet items from the squat bucket and hanging them up to dry on my clothes-spider, a retractable hanger that perches at the edge of the deck far enough from the house so that the water dripping from the clothes does not seep into the foundation or moisten the siding. I usually leave the clothes there to drip their remaining moisture onto the grass; if I am lucky, they get an additional from the rain. Once the clothes are mostly dry, I move them to lines under the roof of the upper, front porch, where they are allowed to dry fully before being taken in, folded, and put away.
Cleaning clothes in the manner described above takes more time than with an electrical washing-machine; it uses virtually no electricity, however, it is all but silent, and it provides the washer with a good upper-body workout. The cost for the buckets, soap, and poker is less than $20, but the ability to wash one's clothes – without electricity or undue physical strain – is nearly priceless. Regain a slice of independence through honest effort! Mahalo.
mentiri factorem fecit © 場黑麥
03 December 2012
a bodily apology
I apologize to my body for the harm I caused it last night. Ignoring the consequences of swilling whiskey directly from a plastic bottle and sacrificing an entire Sunday's productivity and happiness for a few short hours of booze-addled fun, I sit here now, today, in a cold but sunny room, trying to write through a cloudy mind and a thumping heart. My dear kidneys, my beloved liver, my darling lymphatic system, I am sorry for what I have done; I shall not drink to excess again anytime soon.
It was only a few years ago that I did this regularly, that I would spend a majority of nights swimming in a bottle and a majority of days lost among the consequences. How did I manage to have survived that time? How did I allow myself to surrender so fully to the tractor-beam of that foul tincture that is the Sauce? Such is my confusion today that I cannot even think of something worthwhile to write about; such is my worthlessness that I have resorted to musing about a hangover instead of addressing a tougher and meatier issue. On an average day, my writing casts few ripples; instead of having an impact, it sits ignored and passed over on a poorly-named and foolish blog, the fruits of my labor unremunerated, unseen, unimportant. Today, however, I am happy that only a handful of people read these words; this time, my prose is so useless that I debate even soiling my already-tarnished image with this short and fault-ridden content.
Fortunately, however, it is now Monday, and this mortal coil has had a change to rest and recuperate. The ill effects of Saturday night's debauchery have fled before the combined onslaught of a thick fall stew, copious amounts of fluids, and an early bedtime. Oh, if my friends' drug of choice were something other than booze, and if I had but the willpower to say No, sooner, who knows – I might have actually done some good on my one, free day. Oh well; mahalo.
mentiri factorem fecit © 場黑麥
It was only a few years ago that I did this regularly, that I would spend a majority of nights swimming in a bottle and a majority of days lost among the consequences. How did I manage to have survived that time? How did I allow myself to surrender so fully to the tractor-beam of that foul tincture that is the Sauce? Such is my confusion today that I cannot even think of something worthwhile to write about; such is my worthlessness that I have resorted to musing about a hangover instead of addressing a tougher and meatier issue. On an average day, my writing casts few ripples; instead of having an impact, it sits ignored and passed over on a poorly-named and foolish blog, the fruits of my labor unremunerated, unseen, unimportant. Today, however, I am happy that only a handful of people read these words; this time, my prose is so useless that I debate even soiling my already-tarnished image with this short and fault-ridden content.
Fortunately, however, it is now Monday, and this mortal coil has had a change to rest and recuperate. The ill effects of Saturday night's debauchery have fled before the combined onslaught of a thick fall stew, copious amounts of fluids, and an early bedtime. Oh, if my friends' drug of choice were something other than booze, and if I had but the willpower to say No, sooner, who knows – I might have actually done some good on my one, free day. Oh well; mahalo.
mentiri factorem fecit © 場黑麥
30 November 2012
foxtrot tango whiskey
In the movie The Dark Knight starring Heath Ledger and Christian Bale, Michael Cane's character sums up the Joker's actions with a single, iconic sentence, saying, “Some men, Mr. Wayne, just want to watch the world burn.” To some degree, my desires mirror those of that green-haired maniac; on some level, I think that the most expedient and the simplest way for us to return balance to our world and to curtail mankind's dangerous over-expansion is to stop trying to control things that are wholly out of our control (such as human economic and moral behavior) and return to a state of blessed anarchy.
Hence, the title of this piece: foxtrot tango whiskey, or fuck the world, which is often abbreviated as FTW. Less a declaration of intent and more a general musing, the roots of this desire to foxtrot tango whiskey stretch all the way back to the anarchist who changed the world by blowing up Prince Franz Ferdinand while that pompous ass was being driven through Sarajevo. Beyond this bold act that tipped the West into its First World War and set the stage for today's Ynki supremacy, I look at the United States of America and our own early anarchism, a bygone state of total liberty that was first truly tested, and first truly crushed, under the jackboot of Northern aggression during the 1860s. Before that time, the federal government had operated as it was designed to operate – as an entity tasked with negotiating foreign trade agreements and with making sure no foreign power invaded our soil. Then, however, a dozen states decided that they wanted to pursue a course other than that of their neighbors to to the north, and they split off from the Union, forming their own nation on this continent's lower half.
Why not let the South split off and follow its own path? Why force it to stay in the Union? Why spill the blood of hundreds of thousands of strong and otherwise productive men in order to try to coerce a people into doing something they had decided they no longer wanted to do? As we saw in the most recent presidential election, the old schisms still exist, with the same exact states that once made up the Confederacy voting overwhelmingly for a religiously and socially conservative candidate who spoke of curtailing immigration and keeping America American (whatever that means) and the remaining states, those of the Northeast and the West, voting for a president who at least seems to be a bit more conscious of the reasons for why our Constitution was drafted in the first place, among them to secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity. I hear in the news talk of secession among a number of groups scattered across the South, and I say let them go, if that is what they wish to do. Why waste more blood and more treasure trying to force people to stay where they don't want to stay? If history is any sort of guide, we can deduce that people will forever yearn to be free, and that the sooner they are granted that freedom, the better off they and their neighbors will be. If we all just fucked the world a little bit each day, I hazard that we would get up in each others' business with less frequency and pass fewer laws to regulate personal and professional behavior, preferring to let inherent human forces work things out than to try and micromanage a nation from giant, gilded palaces built on swampland next to the Potomac. So today, if only for a moment, foxtrot tango whiskey, and help make things better for everyone. Mahalo.
mentiri factorem fecit © 場黑麥
Hence, the title of this piece: foxtrot tango whiskey, or fuck the world, which is often abbreviated as FTW. Less a declaration of intent and more a general musing, the roots of this desire to foxtrot tango whiskey stretch all the way back to the anarchist who changed the world by blowing up Prince Franz Ferdinand while that pompous ass was being driven through Sarajevo. Beyond this bold act that tipped the West into its First World War and set the stage for today's Ynki supremacy, I look at the United States of America and our own early anarchism, a bygone state of total liberty that was first truly tested, and first truly crushed, under the jackboot of Northern aggression during the 1860s. Before that time, the federal government had operated as it was designed to operate – as an entity tasked with negotiating foreign trade agreements and with making sure no foreign power invaded our soil. Then, however, a dozen states decided that they wanted to pursue a course other than that of their neighbors to to the north, and they split off from the Union, forming their own nation on this continent's lower half.
Why not let the South split off and follow its own path? Why force it to stay in the Union? Why spill the blood of hundreds of thousands of strong and otherwise productive men in order to try to coerce a people into doing something they had decided they no longer wanted to do? As we saw in the most recent presidential election, the old schisms still exist, with the same exact states that once made up the Confederacy voting overwhelmingly for a religiously and socially conservative candidate who spoke of curtailing immigration and keeping America American (whatever that means) and the remaining states, those of the Northeast and the West, voting for a president who at least seems to be a bit more conscious of the reasons for why our Constitution was drafted in the first place, among them to secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity. I hear in the news talk of secession among a number of groups scattered across the South, and I say let them go, if that is what they wish to do. Why waste more blood and more treasure trying to force people to stay where they don't want to stay? If history is any sort of guide, we can deduce that people will forever yearn to be free, and that the sooner they are granted that freedom, the better off they and their neighbors will be. If we all just fucked the world a little bit each day, I hazard that we would get up in each others' business with less frequency and pass fewer laws to regulate personal and professional behavior, preferring to let inherent human forces work things out than to try and micromanage a nation from giant, gilded palaces built on swampland next to the Potomac. So today, if only for a moment, foxtrot tango whiskey, and help make things better for everyone. Mahalo.
mentiri factorem fecit © 場黑麥
28 November 2012
men make moans
Recently, while out disc-golfing in a nearby state park, some friends and I came across a guy and his gal being professionally photographed. The couple would walk a few paces, fall into each others' arms, kiss, hug, and lean, generally acting in the manner of drunken fools with smiles plastered on their faces. Then, as we were kicking through the dry leaves trying to find our discs, the man got down on one knee, took the girl's left hand in his, and pretended to slide a ring onto her finger. I have never been married, I do not plan to ever get married, and I don't think much of the ordeal; therefore, I put my head down, kept walking, and ignored the love-fest going on up the hill. Two of my companions, however, an overweight man in his late thirties and his overweight son, upon seeing the man drop to one knee, began to moan and coo and aw, punctuating their girlish behavior by stopping in their tracks and applauding. The love-struck man then stood up and made it clear through a few brief words and hand gestures that he was not in the act of proposing and that he and his betrothed lass were merely having their pictures taken as if they were, which dampened my companions' spirits considerably. When, later, I asked the man and his son why they had applauded the lovers' actions, they said because they thought it was “Nice.”
At sometime in the past, I fell for the lie that I had to express my emotions out loud and show everyone my sensitive side, that my feelings were things that had to be expressed and talked about, that vulnerability was a masculine virtue. I have found the exact opposite to be true: the more I have tried to express my feelings, the less control I've had over them, and the more I've tried to show my sensitive side, the sooner my past girlfriends have left me. In part, I blame modern Western society's lack of manhood rituals for teaching boys how to become men, rituals in which their role in society is explained to them and the dos and don'ts of the self-respecting male are spelled out. I've had to try to figure these rules out for myself, stumbling blindly down one dead-end after the next; I wouldn't have minded being suspended from a tree by hooks looped under my pectoral muscles and beaten with buffalo femurs so long as, afterwards, my uncles had told me what was up. As far as why Western men have begun to act in the manner of women, research points, in part, to our increased exposure to plastics: we eat off them, heat them in microwaves, wear them, sleep in them, and add them to our soaps, poisoning our bodies in subtle yet powerful ways and causing our boy children's genitalia to shrink. In part I also blame our society's obesity rates, with expanding waistlines signaling men's bodies to increase estrogen production, Mother Nature cursing pear-shaped dudes to act as if they were women. (I have no problem with women, or with women acting womanly, only when men do the same.)
Whenever I see couples acting romantically and looking at each other with stars in their eyes, with hands tightly intertwined and cheeks flushing with excitement, I immediately think of Doug Stanhope's bit regarding the ultimate conclusion to every single such instance of foreplay, that being male ejaculation. All the chocolates in the world, and all the bunches of roses, all the time spent talking on the phone, and all the pronouncements such as “I miss you” and “I love you” lead to one thing: the man shooting his sperms into or onto the girl's body. (I am neither gay nor lesbian, and so I cannot really speak to homosexual liaisons.) Since getting in shape, simplifying my life, and putting myself through a number of manhood rituals, I have found it easier to reject the old ways and to replace them with ones that play to my inherent masculine strengths; next time, then, I'll skip the foreplay and go straight to sleep. Mahalo.
mentiri factorem fecit © 場黑麥
At sometime in the past, I fell for the lie that I had to express my emotions out loud and show everyone my sensitive side, that my feelings were things that had to be expressed and talked about, that vulnerability was a masculine virtue. I have found the exact opposite to be true: the more I have tried to express my feelings, the less control I've had over them, and the more I've tried to show my sensitive side, the sooner my past girlfriends have left me. In part, I blame modern Western society's lack of manhood rituals for teaching boys how to become men, rituals in which their role in society is explained to them and the dos and don'ts of the self-respecting male are spelled out. I've had to try to figure these rules out for myself, stumbling blindly down one dead-end after the next; I wouldn't have minded being suspended from a tree by hooks looped under my pectoral muscles and beaten with buffalo femurs so long as, afterwards, my uncles had told me what was up. As far as why Western men have begun to act in the manner of women, research points, in part, to our increased exposure to plastics: we eat off them, heat them in microwaves, wear them, sleep in them, and add them to our soaps, poisoning our bodies in subtle yet powerful ways and causing our boy children's genitalia to shrink. In part I also blame our society's obesity rates, with expanding waistlines signaling men's bodies to increase estrogen production, Mother Nature cursing pear-shaped dudes to act as if they were women. (I have no problem with women, or with women acting womanly, only when men do the same.)
Whenever I see couples acting romantically and looking at each other with stars in their eyes, with hands tightly intertwined and cheeks flushing with excitement, I immediately think of Doug Stanhope's bit regarding the ultimate conclusion to every single such instance of foreplay, that being male ejaculation. All the chocolates in the world, and all the bunches of roses, all the time spent talking on the phone, and all the pronouncements such as “I miss you” and “I love you” lead to one thing: the man shooting his sperms into or onto the girl's body. (I am neither gay nor lesbian, and so I cannot really speak to homosexual liaisons.) Since getting in shape, simplifying my life, and putting myself through a number of manhood rituals, I have found it easier to reject the old ways and to replace them with ones that play to my inherent masculine strengths; next time, then, I'll skip the foreplay and go straight to sleep. Mahalo.
mentiri factorem fecit © 場黑麥
26 November 2012
what I'm missing
Over Thanksgiving, I took time to watch some TV, something I rarely do. I did this in part because I was invited to by my host, who wanted to kill some time before our feast of turkey and gravy and butternut squash, and in part to see what life is like for the tens of millions of average Americans who make it their habit. As part of my efforts to make myself a better and wiser person, I have been reading books on a wide range of topics and generally avoiding wasteful and IQ-diminishing activities such as the mindless consumption of packaged content, so I was excited to run with the crowd for a moment and check out what TV had to offer. My host and I watched a show about tattoo artists competing to see who could perform best under pressure, best on camera, best before a panel of judges. Thankfully, the show had been taped, so we could fast-forward over the commercials; thankfully, dinner was served before any of us had to suffer through too much of it.
Since taking the first steps toward self-sufficiency by running most of my household from a bank of 4 deep-cycle marine batteries fed by 6 solar panels, I have restricted my personal viewing time to but a few hours a week – I hook up the 750 watt inverter to watch only one movie at a time, whereupon I detach it from the battery, thus shutting everything down. I do not veg regularly on the couch flipping through channels; I follow neither show nor series, episode nor finale, nor do I bring up watching TV in conversation or stick around if someone else does. In short, at the mere mention of television, I become a butt-hurt curmudgeon. And so I was shocked at how stressful watching the boob-tube has become, how stupid I felt afterward, and how many more commercials there seemed to be now than when I watched it regularly just a few years ago. It is as if producers, studios, and networks had baited the viewing public into watching compelling and interesting shows and then switched formats to reflect their ultimate goal, that being to trick the American people into thinking they were having fun when they were in actuality being force-fed one advertisement after the next in bewilderingly frequent intervals, minds rotting while waist-lines expanded, ambition draining away while creativity was crushed under the jack-boot of rerun content.
Before this thankfully brief exposure, I had begun to wonder if I was missing something important, if I had erred in canceling my cable TV service, if I were somehow worse off for swimming against the crowd by not succumbing to TV's mind-numbing allure. Today, however, my curiosity is stilled, my wonder has abated, and I am confident in one thing: I am better off for having avoided television these past few years. As a person who has glimpsed the eternal silence of the Great Vast Crushing Nothingness and lived to tell the tale, I have a decent understanding of the preciousness of human existence; therefore, my decision to try to better myself as a person, as a scholar, as a linguist, and as a writer rather than waste my short life glued to a self-illuminated, talking rectangle appears to be bearing fruit, if only slowly. By no amount of talking, warning, cajoling, begging, demanding, nagging, or urging will I ever convince anyone else whom I care about to join me in ceasing to watch TV, in preserving a shred of self-respect and personal dignity, or in saving the self by switching off the tube; all forms of salvation – even ones that are so simply accomplished – come from the realization that there are always better ways than the current path, that nothing worth its while is easy, and that the hardest things are the most rewarding. So, please, cancel your cable subscriptions, dust off a book, and start living well again. Mahalo.
mentiri factorem fecit © 場黑麥
Since taking the first steps toward self-sufficiency by running most of my household from a bank of 4 deep-cycle marine batteries fed by 6 solar panels, I have restricted my personal viewing time to but a few hours a week – I hook up the 750 watt inverter to watch only one movie at a time, whereupon I detach it from the battery, thus shutting everything down. I do not veg regularly on the couch flipping through channels; I follow neither show nor series, episode nor finale, nor do I bring up watching TV in conversation or stick around if someone else does. In short, at the mere mention of television, I become a butt-hurt curmudgeon. And so I was shocked at how stressful watching the boob-tube has become, how stupid I felt afterward, and how many more commercials there seemed to be now than when I watched it regularly just a few years ago. It is as if producers, studios, and networks had baited the viewing public into watching compelling and interesting shows and then switched formats to reflect their ultimate goal, that being to trick the American people into thinking they were having fun when they were in actuality being force-fed one advertisement after the next in bewilderingly frequent intervals, minds rotting while waist-lines expanded, ambition draining away while creativity was crushed under the jack-boot of rerun content.
Before this thankfully brief exposure, I had begun to wonder if I was missing something important, if I had erred in canceling my cable TV service, if I were somehow worse off for swimming against the crowd by not succumbing to TV's mind-numbing allure. Today, however, my curiosity is stilled, my wonder has abated, and I am confident in one thing: I am better off for having avoided television these past few years. As a person who has glimpsed the eternal silence of the Great Vast Crushing Nothingness and lived to tell the tale, I have a decent understanding of the preciousness of human existence; therefore, my decision to try to better myself as a person, as a scholar, as a linguist, and as a writer rather than waste my short life glued to a self-illuminated, talking rectangle appears to be bearing fruit, if only slowly. By no amount of talking, warning, cajoling, begging, demanding, nagging, or urging will I ever convince anyone else whom I care about to join me in ceasing to watch TV, in preserving a shred of self-respect and personal dignity, or in saving the self by switching off the tube; all forms of salvation – even ones that are so simply accomplished – come from the realization that there are always better ways than the current path, that nothing worth its while is easy, and that the hardest things are the most rewarding. So, please, cancel your cable subscriptions, dust off a book, and start living well again. Mahalo.
mentiri factorem fecit © 場黑麥
23 November 2012
prayers to Baal
By the millions this year, during the days immediately following Thanksgiving, otherwise self-respecting Americans of all religious backgrounds, socio-economic strata, and ethnic heritages will dutifully bow before god Baal, the ancient deity of wasteful excess. Featured prominently in the Christian bible's old testament, Baal seduced the children of Israel while they were waiting for Moses to return from the Mount Sinai; within a short time they went from considerate and caring individuals to rapacious, lustful, and greedy cunts hellbent on grabbing, stuffing, wanting, needing, taking. Intended to be taken more as a metaphor than as an historical event, the seduction of the faithful by Baal was so great, and so extensive, that it caused Moses to ruin the first copy of the ten commandments, whereupon he slunk back up the mountain to obtain – from his jealous and spiteful god YHWH – another set.
The seduction continues this year during the celebrations of excessive and unnecessary consumption referred to in the press as Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, and Cyber Monday. Once again, otherwise considerate individuals will shake off the cruel yoke of frugal moderation in order to buy slightly-newer copies of things they already have, purchase gifts for distant relatives who wanted something else entirely, and generally act as if they were total fucking jerks while racking up personal debt on their credit cards and mortgaging their children's future in order to buy television sets slightly wider than the ones they already have. Once again, tens of millions of self-proclaimed Christians will spit in the face of YHWH, he who demands that all praise be given to him and him alone, he who calls for the death and banishment of those who mock his name, his power, his glory, his and his alone, now and forever. (Failing to follow the clearly-stated directives of one's god amounts to mocking that god's very existence.)
Do these poor fools realize that they're perpetuating the culture of me-first consumerism that is surely and steadily dragging America down into sad oblivion? Do they see the hypocrisy of driving to their churches in gleaming cars while dressed in fancy and expensive clothes in order to scrape perfunctorily before Jesus – a god who urges them to give as much to the poor as they can bear to give and to live their lives in simplicity, humility, and moderation – when in reality they sit in their single-family homes hoarding greenbacks and coveting baubles? Last year's retail sales numbers and this year's sales projections indicate that millions of Americans believe in Baal above Jesus and in consumption above compassion, that they allow advertising firms to dictate their lives, and that they have succumbed fully to the hollow grasp of their black and twisted egos. No amount of talking about this foul erosion of our nation's erstwhile and honorable frugality will make things better; I rail on this blog against these excesses just as my father once railed against them from his pulpit, all but begging his parishioners to choose love for one another over love for self. But, just as his words fell mostly on dead ears, so I feel do mine, woeful warnings wantonly ignored. If people wish to violate the tenets of their religion in order to save a couple dollars, that is their choice; if they would rather give in to the siren-call of conspicuous consumption than nurture in their hearts a wondrous and peaceful tranquility, who am I to say that they are wrong to do so? And besides, when the savings are this good, it doesn't matter if a few more people get trampled this year than last – it just means less competition. Save sanity, serenity, and soul – boycott black Friday!
mentiri factorem fecit © 場黑麥
The seduction continues this year during the celebrations of excessive and unnecessary consumption referred to in the press as Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, and Cyber Monday. Once again, otherwise considerate individuals will shake off the cruel yoke of frugal moderation in order to buy slightly-newer copies of things they already have, purchase gifts for distant relatives who wanted something else entirely, and generally act as if they were total fucking jerks while racking up personal debt on their credit cards and mortgaging their children's future in order to buy television sets slightly wider than the ones they already have. Once again, tens of millions of self-proclaimed Christians will spit in the face of YHWH, he who demands that all praise be given to him and him alone, he who calls for the death and banishment of those who mock his name, his power, his glory, his and his alone, now and forever. (Failing to follow the clearly-stated directives of one's god amounts to mocking that god's very existence.)
Do these poor fools realize that they're perpetuating the culture of me-first consumerism that is surely and steadily dragging America down into sad oblivion? Do they see the hypocrisy of driving to their churches in gleaming cars while dressed in fancy and expensive clothes in order to scrape perfunctorily before Jesus – a god who urges them to give as much to the poor as they can bear to give and to live their lives in simplicity, humility, and moderation – when in reality they sit in their single-family homes hoarding greenbacks and coveting baubles? Last year's retail sales numbers and this year's sales projections indicate that millions of Americans believe in Baal above Jesus and in consumption above compassion, that they allow advertising firms to dictate their lives, and that they have succumbed fully to the hollow grasp of their black and twisted egos. No amount of talking about this foul erosion of our nation's erstwhile and honorable frugality will make things better; I rail on this blog against these excesses just as my father once railed against them from his pulpit, all but begging his parishioners to choose love for one another over love for self. But, just as his words fell mostly on dead ears, so I feel do mine, woeful warnings wantonly ignored. If people wish to violate the tenets of their religion in order to save a couple dollars, that is their choice; if they would rather give in to the siren-call of conspicuous consumption than nurture in their hearts a wondrous and peaceful tranquility, who am I to say that they are wrong to do so? And besides, when the savings are this good, it doesn't matter if a few more people get trampled this year than last – it just means less competition. Save sanity, serenity, and soul – boycott black Friday!
mentiri factorem fecit © 場黑麥
21 November 2012
on solar elevation
The swift onset of winter caught this whorphan woefully off guard – his solar panels no longer spend time in the sun. Instead of basking and gulping in full exposure, they sip spare photons while lounging in this little house's lengthening shade. While preparing and splitting piles of wood for the wood-stove, he neglected his solar setup; while raking and composing mounds of leaves for the garden, he overlooked the realities of diminished daylight. Oh, how quickly it occurred, how rapidly our planet tilted on its axis, the sun now rising a few compass-ticks south of due east and, after noon, avoiding fully the front yard's short run.
What is a lowly solar farmer to do? Does he relocate his 2 sets of 3 solar panels? In order to do that, he'd have to move the entire battery bank along with both inverters and run some new wire into the house; besides, positioning the panels closer to the drive would put them at greater risk of getting struck by a passing car. Does he raise the sets on bamboo poles clustered and woven together so that they share the weight? This has both advantages and disadvantages. Among the advantages are these: if the panels were raised to a height of eight feet and lashed firmly to bamboo poles, they would be exposed to direct sunlight for a longer period of time during each day (provided the sun were to shine); they would be completely out of the wet grass; they would be at lesser risk of being broken from thrown or falling debris; if run into accidentally by a vehicle, the poles would splinter and bend while the panels above them would remain safe (this is an assumption), whereas if the panels were to be struck by a vehicle directly, they would be ruined totally. Among the disadvantages are these: the panels would face only in one direction and could no longer be manually rotated to track the sun; the wire cables with which they feed electricity to the battery bank would have to be run through a tube or otherwise secured against tripping and entanglement; they would be lashed to bamboo poles, which disintegrate over time, with either rope or some form of metal bracket – either way, the poles and lashings would have to be replaced every few years.
The third option is, of course, to do nothing, to adjust to a diminished charge in the battery bank, and to resign myself to my panels only getting full sun between 0830 and 1030 in the morning. I do not like this third option because it forces me to choose between recharging all my electronics batteries and firing up the 750 watt inverter to watch a full-length movie (a luxury I plan to cut out of my life anyway, as I have seen too many movies of late, and read too few books); it sees me standing by the window each day hoping that the sun will shine when I want it to. Therefore, the third option is off the table; I will raise the panels to a great height, lash them firmly to their mounts, secure all loose cables, wash the mud off my tools, put them away, and go watch Caddyshack for the umpteenth time. Mahalo!
(p.s. Upon further consideration, I have changed my plans. I shall not raise my panels on platforms, and I shall not drag them up to the roof. Now, instead of risking the panels causing damaging to or being blown off of the platform or roof, I have decided to locate them closer to the lane and to cut down a large bush next to the house, so that now the panels are only in the house's shade for maybe an hour, and not all afternoon. Sometimes, the old mantras come in handy; in this instance, I remembered the Latin saying Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate, English for Keep it simple, you bleeping numskull.)
mentiri factorem fecit © 場黑麥
What is a lowly solar farmer to do? Does he relocate his 2 sets of 3 solar panels? In order to do that, he'd have to move the entire battery bank along with both inverters and run some new wire into the house; besides, positioning the panels closer to the drive would put them at greater risk of getting struck by a passing car. Does he raise the sets on bamboo poles clustered and woven together so that they share the weight? This has both advantages and disadvantages. Among the advantages are these: if the panels were raised to a height of eight feet and lashed firmly to bamboo poles, they would be exposed to direct sunlight for a longer period of time during each day (provided the sun were to shine); they would be completely out of the wet grass; they would be at lesser risk of being broken from thrown or falling debris; if run into accidentally by a vehicle, the poles would splinter and bend while the panels above them would remain safe (this is an assumption), whereas if the panels were to be struck by a vehicle directly, they would be ruined totally. Among the disadvantages are these: the panels would face only in one direction and could no longer be manually rotated to track the sun; the wire cables with which they feed electricity to the battery bank would have to be run through a tube or otherwise secured against tripping and entanglement; they would be lashed to bamboo poles, which disintegrate over time, with either rope or some form of metal bracket – either way, the poles and lashings would have to be replaced every few years.
The third option is, of course, to do nothing, to adjust to a diminished charge in the battery bank, and to resign myself to my panels only getting full sun between 0830 and 1030 in the morning. I do not like this third option because it forces me to choose between recharging all my electronics batteries and firing up the 750 watt inverter to watch a full-length movie (a luxury I plan to cut out of my life anyway, as I have seen too many movies of late, and read too few books); it sees me standing by the window each day hoping that the sun will shine when I want it to. Therefore, the third option is off the table; I will raise the panels to a great height, lash them firmly to their mounts, secure all loose cables, wash the mud off my tools, put them away, and go watch Caddyshack for the umpteenth time. Mahalo!
(p.s. Upon further consideration, I have changed my plans. I shall not raise my panels on platforms, and I shall not drag them up to the roof. Now, instead of risking the panels causing damaging to or being blown off of the platform or roof, I have decided to locate them closer to the lane and to cut down a large bush next to the house, so that now the panels are only in the house's shade for maybe an hour, and not all afternoon. Sometimes, the old mantras come in handy; in this instance, I remembered the Latin saying Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate, English for Keep it simple, you bleeping numskull.)
mentiri factorem fecit © 場黑麥
19 November 2012
on freedom's price
Ask most any motorcyclist sporting a leather vest, jacket, or chaps, and he'll say that “The freedom of it” is one of the primary reasons that he rides. Ah yes, seductive and elusive Liberty, she who beckons from near and far, always around us but forever just out of reach, always tantalizingly close yet frustratingly far away, how we love her! We think about freedom, yearn for it, love it, enjoy it, abuse it, and harp on it, speaking of it in hushed tones and genuflecting before that giant copper-clad statue of goddess Liberty standing in New York's harbor to welcome the poor and the huddled masses to these our bountiful shores. Some people among us – the aforementioned bikers first and foremost – seem to be trying to actively execute their right to freedom by riding around on big, motorized machines that pollute the air we all breathe and shatter the quiet we all enjoy.
Everything comes at a price, even Liberty, and the price we citizens pay for the bikers' freedom is higher than most: we arm our young men and women and fly them to sovereign nations in the Middle East and Central Asia where they kill and maim and bomb in order to secure a steady supply of gasoline for all of those in-line flathead v-twin noisemakers; we give Arabian oil sheiks American dollars to pay for gasoline to run all those hogs, perfectly content in the knowledge that some of our money will be used to fund terrorist organizations such as Al Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula and Hamas; we maintain diplomatic missions, puzzle over foreign trade policy, and arrange trade treaties so that bikers might wear t-shirts and vests made by foreign manufacturers emblazoned with the symbols of these United States, Old Glory printed on Bangladeshi cotton, the Stars and Stripes stitched into Vietnamese cowhide; we inhale the fumes of their idling engines and wince with every revving of their obnoxiously-loud tailpipes while wishing they would just all go home, read a book, and think about how downright lame their little scooters are.
Motorcyclists actively decrease their own amount of personal Liberty by relying on complicated machines to move them around; to maintain their little slices of freedom they are beholden to mechanics, parts manufacturers, tassel twisters, carburetors, regulators, and tow truck drivers. If motorcyclists would take a moment to examine the roots of the craze for two-wheelers, they would find the lowly wire donkey, the velocipede, the muscle-powered bicycle. Oh, if only these fools would throw off the chains of slavery to oil-pumping Arabs and wrench-chucking mechanics and return en mass to the device that grants its user nearly unbridled freedom, the crank-powered bicycle. Just think how quiet our world would be, how greatly motorcyclists could improved their health and fitness, and how much less gasoline we would have to kill and maim and bomb for if we could but free Liberty from the demands of endless warfare and disassociate her from mundane pettiness and wasteful sloth. When someone wears a vest upon which is printed a picture of a bald eagle wrapped in the American flag floating above a chopper-style motorbike while riding on a chopper-style motorbike, that person proves only his disrespect for the stars and stripes and his love for redundancy; when he relies on a combustion engine to move him across the face of the earth rather than letting his thigh and calf muscles drag him across that selfsame phaltscape, he puts nothing on display but his laziness and lack of vigor. Please, dear reader, if you love Liberty, value human health, and respect the lungs and eardrums of other people, sell your hog, buy a velocipede, and be free. Mahalo.
© mentiri factorem fecit (場黑麥)
Everything comes at a price, even Liberty, and the price we citizens pay for the bikers' freedom is higher than most: we arm our young men and women and fly them to sovereign nations in the Middle East and Central Asia where they kill and maim and bomb in order to secure a steady supply of gasoline for all of those in-line flathead v-twin noisemakers; we give Arabian oil sheiks American dollars to pay for gasoline to run all those hogs, perfectly content in the knowledge that some of our money will be used to fund terrorist organizations such as Al Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula and Hamas; we maintain diplomatic missions, puzzle over foreign trade policy, and arrange trade treaties so that bikers might wear t-shirts and vests made by foreign manufacturers emblazoned with the symbols of these United States, Old Glory printed on Bangladeshi cotton, the Stars and Stripes stitched into Vietnamese cowhide; we inhale the fumes of their idling engines and wince with every revving of their obnoxiously-loud tailpipes while wishing they would just all go home, read a book, and think about how downright lame their little scooters are.
Motorcyclists actively decrease their own amount of personal Liberty by relying on complicated machines to move them around; to maintain their little slices of freedom they are beholden to mechanics, parts manufacturers, tassel twisters, carburetors, regulators, and tow truck drivers. If motorcyclists would take a moment to examine the roots of the craze for two-wheelers, they would find the lowly wire donkey, the velocipede, the muscle-powered bicycle. Oh, if only these fools would throw off the chains of slavery to oil-pumping Arabs and wrench-chucking mechanics and return en mass to the device that grants its user nearly unbridled freedom, the crank-powered bicycle. Just think how quiet our world would be, how greatly motorcyclists could improved their health and fitness, and how much less gasoline we would have to kill and maim and bomb for if we could but free Liberty from the demands of endless warfare and disassociate her from mundane pettiness and wasteful sloth. When someone wears a vest upon which is printed a picture of a bald eagle wrapped in the American flag floating above a chopper-style motorbike while riding on a chopper-style motorbike, that person proves only his disrespect for the stars and stripes and his love for redundancy; when he relies on a combustion engine to move him across the face of the earth rather than letting his thigh and calf muscles drag him across that selfsame phaltscape, he puts nothing on display but his laziness and lack of vigor. Please, dear reader, if you love Liberty, value human health, and respect the lungs and eardrums of other people, sell your hog, buy a velocipede, and be free. Mahalo.
© mentiri factorem fecit (場黑麥)
16 November 2012
figuring things out
A few weeks ago, after finally accepting the reality of a Mid-Atlantic winter, I dug out my long underwear from the back of the closet. Long had they sat there, unused and forgotten, for last year's winter was mild, cool but not freezing, breezy but not wind-swept. This year, however, things are different: the first freeze came in late October, the winds have been strong and out of the north-west, and temperatures have sunk below freezing every night for the past week – long john weather, to be certain.
Starting in 2002 I spent seven years in California, hunkering last winter in Los Angeles. Therefore, I now ask myself: How do I use the long john? When do I don it, and when doff it? I started out by just wearing it all the time, which worked out great at my job, where I spend a lot of time sitting in the cold because I am too stubborn to turn on the heat; but, being a regular and avid cyclist, I found that the extra layer of insulation caused me to sweat too much, especially when climbing the hills south of town back to my home, from work. And so I put the undergarment back into storage and had forgotten about it until yesterday morning, when I was preparing to do my yoga in a cold, ground-floor room (I do yoga pant-less, for ease-of-movement), and I thought: I need to keep my legs warm during my asana, and, since I write in the same cold room after making my stretching exercises, an extra layer of insulation might mean the difference between frozen toes and a buoyant spirit. Now, after some trial and error, I proceed as follows. I awake at dawn in the warm cocoon of a German down comforter, put on my sweatshirt and pants, go downstairs, take my pants back off, put on my long johns, do my yoga, put on jeans, and do my hour of labor in the yard before breakfast, changing back into regular clothes before breaking my fast, after which I write until my netbook's battery dies. Then, I do more yoga (sun salutations with some core-strengthening exercises thrown in), take the long johns back off, eat a lunch of a half a cup of rice and a few dollops of peanut butter and honey, and gather up my things in preparation for bicycling down into town, for work. If I return in the evening and the house is still cold, I put the long johns back on before doing my asana, leaving them on during the rest of my nocturnal activities and taking them back off again mere moments before crawling back into my nest of blankets on the floor in one of the upstairs rooms.
If one were to have asked me three years ago how and when to use long johns, I would likely have responded off-handedly with a snide remark about donning them when one's legs get cold; today, though, I would say that the use of this undergarment depends on a number of factors, including one's level of physical exertion, the average temperature of one's home, one's ability to withstand cold, and one's usual pants-changing rhythm. Things have been going similarly with many things in my life – I find that the more I think I know about a given subject, process, or procedure the less I am in a position to actually pass judgment on it, to talk about it, or to give my opinion about it, and the more damage is done by my talking and opining and judging. Perhaps the central lesson I have learned from this adventure with the long john is to check things out first before dismissing them offhand, and, as always, to keep an open mind. Some day, I'll remember this simple mantra. Until then, mahalo.
© mentiri factorem fecit (場黑麥)
Starting in 2002 I spent seven years in California, hunkering last winter in Los Angeles. Therefore, I now ask myself: How do I use the long john? When do I don it, and when doff it? I started out by just wearing it all the time, which worked out great at my job, where I spend a lot of time sitting in the cold because I am too stubborn to turn on the heat; but, being a regular and avid cyclist, I found that the extra layer of insulation caused me to sweat too much, especially when climbing the hills south of town back to my home, from work. And so I put the undergarment back into storage and had forgotten about it until yesterday morning, when I was preparing to do my yoga in a cold, ground-floor room (I do yoga pant-less, for ease-of-movement), and I thought: I need to keep my legs warm during my asana, and, since I write in the same cold room after making my stretching exercises, an extra layer of insulation might mean the difference between frozen toes and a buoyant spirit. Now, after some trial and error, I proceed as follows. I awake at dawn in the warm cocoon of a German down comforter, put on my sweatshirt and pants, go downstairs, take my pants back off, put on my long johns, do my yoga, put on jeans, and do my hour of labor in the yard before breakfast, changing back into regular clothes before breaking my fast, after which I write until my netbook's battery dies. Then, I do more yoga (sun salutations with some core-strengthening exercises thrown in), take the long johns back off, eat a lunch of a half a cup of rice and a few dollops of peanut butter and honey, and gather up my things in preparation for bicycling down into town, for work. If I return in the evening and the house is still cold, I put the long johns back on before doing my asana, leaving them on during the rest of my nocturnal activities and taking them back off again mere moments before crawling back into my nest of blankets on the floor in one of the upstairs rooms.
If one were to have asked me three years ago how and when to use long johns, I would likely have responded off-handedly with a snide remark about donning them when one's legs get cold; today, though, I would say that the use of this undergarment depends on a number of factors, including one's level of physical exertion, the average temperature of one's home, one's ability to withstand cold, and one's usual pants-changing rhythm. Things have been going similarly with many things in my life – I find that the more I think I know about a given subject, process, or procedure the less I am in a position to actually pass judgment on it, to talk about it, or to give my opinion about it, and the more damage is done by my talking and opining and judging. Perhaps the central lesson I have learned from this adventure with the long john is to check things out first before dismissing them offhand, and, as always, to keep an open mind. Some day, I'll remember this simple mantra. Until then, mahalo.
© mentiri factorem fecit (場黑麥)
14 November 2012
on repeating stories
A phenomenon has caught my interest: that of repeating stories. I was reminded of it recently while having some after-work beers with a friend, when in order to back up a point he was making he began to recount a story from his past, one I had heard from him more than once before. He told the story in nearly the exact manner he had told it the first and second times, pausing for emphasis at the same spots and drawing the same conclusions he'd drawn during its initial recounting.
This vague example, however, is tame compared to the seemingly endless loop-cycle that some stories seem to enjoy. Following an unscientific and completely subjective analysis of such stories as I hear repeated by friends and family, I have concluded that people use narrative repetition to convince themselves of the validity of certain statements or memories, and that they tell certain stories over and over again in order to blur within their own minds the distinctions between fact and fiction. Some stories, I surmise, are repeated in order to protect the ego from feeling as if it were anything less than stellar; others, I take, are repeated to remember past wrongs and to keep hatred for and discontentment with the wrong-doer alive; and still others, it appears, are repeated in order to travel back in time – if only briefly – to exciting scenes long since passed, to tender loves long since lost, to sudden glory long since faded. Among the persons most likely to repeat a particular tale are middle-aged housewives so obsessed with the details of their own lives that they have forgotten about the great flourishing of danger and excitement that occurs beyond their comfortable walls; I have found it counter-productive, however, to point out to a woman that she is repeating herself, for she will with near certainty become deeply offended and spend the rest of the day sniping and backstabbing.
Upon examining this phenomenon of narrative repetition, I find myself engaging in it fairly regularly, at least when it comes to certain stories told at certain times: upon making a platonic acquaintance, I'll give a prepared summary of my life, the words bubbling out nearly subconsciously; upon meeting a potential mate, I'll present a different set of stories tailored to the young lady's apparent interests in hopes of piquing her fancy; and when discussing politics or issues of similar weight I find myself resorting to a specific cache of stories in order to back myself up, stories I use to convince myself of the validity of my own opinions or to cast doubt upon the opinions held by others. I will often not remember having previously told a story until I am halfway through it and my listeners start showing signs of restlessness (because they have obviously heard me tell it before). It is becoming clear to me that my experiences are so few that they can be summed up using only a handful of worn, old tales, yawn-inducing stories best kept quiet; I am becoming resigned to the fact that my brains so poorly remember the past that they cannot even keep track of the most simple of things, such as the worthlessness of my personal opinions and whether or not I have breached a certain topic with a certain individual. It is strange, and beautiful, sometimes, being alive and so forgetful. Mahalo.
© mentiri factorem fecit (場黑麥)
This vague example, however, is tame compared to the seemingly endless loop-cycle that some stories seem to enjoy. Following an unscientific and completely subjective analysis of such stories as I hear repeated by friends and family, I have concluded that people use narrative repetition to convince themselves of the validity of certain statements or memories, and that they tell certain stories over and over again in order to blur within their own minds the distinctions between fact and fiction. Some stories, I surmise, are repeated in order to protect the ego from feeling as if it were anything less than stellar; others, I take, are repeated to remember past wrongs and to keep hatred for and discontentment with the wrong-doer alive; and still others, it appears, are repeated in order to travel back in time – if only briefly – to exciting scenes long since passed, to tender loves long since lost, to sudden glory long since faded. Among the persons most likely to repeat a particular tale are middle-aged housewives so obsessed with the details of their own lives that they have forgotten about the great flourishing of danger and excitement that occurs beyond their comfortable walls; I have found it counter-productive, however, to point out to a woman that she is repeating herself, for she will with near certainty become deeply offended and spend the rest of the day sniping and backstabbing.
Upon examining this phenomenon of narrative repetition, I find myself engaging in it fairly regularly, at least when it comes to certain stories told at certain times: upon making a platonic acquaintance, I'll give a prepared summary of my life, the words bubbling out nearly subconsciously; upon meeting a potential mate, I'll present a different set of stories tailored to the young lady's apparent interests in hopes of piquing her fancy; and when discussing politics or issues of similar weight I find myself resorting to a specific cache of stories in order to back myself up, stories I use to convince myself of the validity of my own opinions or to cast doubt upon the opinions held by others. I will often not remember having previously told a story until I am halfway through it and my listeners start showing signs of restlessness (because they have obviously heard me tell it before). It is becoming clear to me that my experiences are so few that they can be summed up using only a handful of worn, old tales, yawn-inducing stories best kept quiet; I am becoming resigned to the fact that my brains so poorly remember the past that they cannot even keep track of the most simple of things, such as the worthlessness of my personal opinions and whether or not I have breached a certain topic with a certain individual. It is strange, and beautiful, sometimes, being alive and so forgetful. Mahalo.
© mentiri factorem fecit (場黑麥)
12 November 2012
on wood's worth
The other day, out of curiosity, I walked up into the grove of trees south of this rundown little house. As soon as I had secured my footing I started pulling out nicely-weathered and naturally-dried fallen poplar branches and throwing them down onto the lawn. Once I had collected a good number of limbs, I gathered them up by the armful and dragged them over to the barn for further processing. During the last few mornings' work sessions I have sawed these limbs down to usable lengths and stacked them on the previously-looted pile directly under the barn's overhang, rebuilding my stock of stove-burning wood that I will soon cover with a tarpaulin in order to protect it from errant rainfall and casual theft.
Just a few years ago I would have looked upon these poplar limbs as nuisances, things to be thrown deeper into the woods and ignored until they had rotted themselves down to long, low mounds of earth. Now, however, with my newfound understanding of wood as a most efficient and portable vehicle for storing solar energy, and considering my growing appreciation for the many acres of forest that cover this little valley of ours, I look upon these limbs as blessings from the universe. While exploring the southern slope I also came across a number of dead trees that I had hastily and sloppily sawed down a few years ago (using – gasp – a gasoline-burning chainsaw), lumber I shall now move and cut and stack and split, the dense walnut a preferred burning wood because of its density and weight. I am fascinated about how much I have learned from the few organic gardening magazines and self-sufficiency guides I have read over the summer, and just how perfectly-suited this land is for making a go at off-the-grid living.
The next step in my lumber-processing career is to decide whether I should make it my business to sell the wood on this property for cash or if I should just use the wood myself and convert larger portions of the grounds into arable land fit for the cultivation of crops. Given the amount of wood on the property and a glaring lack of industrial wood-processing machinery I think I shall just cut lumber for my own use and grow as much of my sustenance as I can in the cleared spaces. There is something fulfilling about getting out the bow saw and crashing through the underbrush in search of burnable wood; the more I do it, the more I enjoy it. It is also the perfect fitness, since it targets the body's primary muscle-groups while working out the stabilizer muscles in the calves and the gripping muscles in the forearms, combining the acquisition of one form of energy with the expenditure of another. Now is the time to do these things – when the leaves are falling and the morning frosts sting the cheeks – and with any luck I shall have enough fuel to see me through to springtime. I gather wood today for next winter and the winter after that, hard labor that pays off in the end. Mahalo.
© mentiri factorem fecit (場黑麥)
Just a few years ago I would have looked upon these poplar limbs as nuisances, things to be thrown deeper into the woods and ignored until they had rotted themselves down to long, low mounds of earth. Now, however, with my newfound understanding of wood as a most efficient and portable vehicle for storing solar energy, and considering my growing appreciation for the many acres of forest that cover this little valley of ours, I look upon these limbs as blessings from the universe. While exploring the southern slope I also came across a number of dead trees that I had hastily and sloppily sawed down a few years ago (using – gasp – a gasoline-burning chainsaw), lumber I shall now move and cut and stack and split, the dense walnut a preferred burning wood because of its density and weight. I am fascinated about how much I have learned from the few organic gardening magazines and self-sufficiency guides I have read over the summer, and just how perfectly-suited this land is for making a go at off-the-grid living.
The next step in my lumber-processing career is to decide whether I should make it my business to sell the wood on this property for cash or if I should just use the wood myself and convert larger portions of the grounds into arable land fit for the cultivation of crops. Given the amount of wood on the property and a glaring lack of industrial wood-processing machinery I think I shall just cut lumber for my own use and grow as much of my sustenance as I can in the cleared spaces. There is something fulfilling about getting out the bow saw and crashing through the underbrush in search of burnable wood; the more I do it, the more I enjoy it. It is also the perfect fitness, since it targets the body's primary muscle-groups while working out the stabilizer muscles in the calves and the gripping muscles in the forearms, combining the acquisition of one form of energy with the expenditure of another. Now is the time to do these things – when the leaves are falling and the morning frosts sting the cheeks – and with any luck I shall have enough fuel to see me through to springtime. I gather wood today for next winter and the winter after that, hard labor that pays off in the end. Mahalo.
© mentiri factorem fecit (場黑麥)
09 November 2012
on replacement parts
I've just replaced all 4 brake pads on my bicycle. Fortunately, my locally-owned neighborhood bicycle shop had parts that fit the outdated hardware on my nearly 2-decade-old velocipede, which was my father's until he'd gotten too old to ride it. With the pull of a cable and the twist of a wrench, the new pieces were in place, and now my whip no longer squeaks when it stops. This simple procedure came none too soon: upon closer inspection I discovered that the old pads had worn down to the metal in places, digging into the rims, reducing the power and speed of braking, and weakening the smog-sled's crucial elements.
Strangely enough, while I was deciding whether to pair up the 2 still-serviceable pads or just buy a new set, I came across a snippet of text – whether it was in a magazine or on one of the news website I read, I cannot remember – that reminded me of the body's own replacement schedule. The text said that the human body completely replaces the skin every 3 years, the liver every 5 (or vice-versa). Having studied biology extensively while preparing for the Abitur, I was able to picture my body slowly but continuously swapping out cell after cell, cluster after cluster, until these two important organs had been fully reformed. I find it fascinating that our bodies do this without outside input and using only the foodstuffs we shove into our gaping suck-holes; I am always amazed anew at just how good this meat-sack is at keeping me healthy and my systems up and running. While sitting here in the cold and writing this, I just remembered that the body replaces the entire skeleton roughly once every 30 years, which means that few if any of the cells that make up my current body are those with which I was born. How strange it is to think that I am an altogether different person than who I was during childhood – let alone at birth – and that these differences go beyond my train-wrecked emotional state or the cruelly-stunted development of my pitiable moral tableau; as a totally different person, I find that the neuroses and hangups that seem to so strongly define many important parts of my psyche continue to exist, regardless of the fact that most of me is new – probably because some part of me wants or needs them to exist in order for it to exist.
Compared to the body's automatic replacement process, the mind tends to remain subject to the destructive and short-sighted will of the ego far longer than is normally necessary, which compels us to defend our honor, to cling to material possessions, and to do most anything in our power to win arguments so that we can pat ourselves on the back and tell ourselves that we were Right All Along. How nice it would be if we could all learn to wrangle our egos and subject them to the will of nothingness, to the doctrine of non-existence (Wu), something that rarely happens in our modern capitalist society, an artificial construct that thrives only when our egos rule our every move, always tipping the scales in their favor, forever keeping us in self-imposed slavery to petty external needs. The person seeking to shed the ego for something greater, for something worthwhile, might well find relief in the ancient books and teachings; that person is advised to steer clear of organized religion, however, which will prey ferociously upon his ego and try to kindle within his bosom the fires of fearful discontentment so as to bind him forever to the notion of Salvation From Without. As we have seen, however, and as science continues to show us, salvation from death and renewal to life begins and ends within us, and few external forces beyond a bit of food and drink can speed them up or slow them down. (Consuming drugs, including alcohol, by the way, and mistreating the body by smoking cigarettes and denying it exercise will dramatically infringe upon its ability to heal itself.) Be safe, be well, and mahalo.
© mentiri factorem fecit (場黑麥)
Strangely enough, while I was deciding whether to pair up the 2 still-serviceable pads or just buy a new set, I came across a snippet of text – whether it was in a magazine or on one of the news website I read, I cannot remember – that reminded me of the body's own replacement schedule. The text said that the human body completely replaces the skin every 3 years, the liver every 5 (or vice-versa). Having studied biology extensively while preparing for the Abitur, I was able to picture my body slowly but continuously swapping out cell after cell, cluster after cluster, until these two important organs had been fully reformed. I find it fascinating that our bodies do this without outside input and using only the foodstuffs we shove into our gaping suck-holes; I am always amazed anew at just how good this meat-sack is at keeping me healthy and my systems up and running. While sitting here in the cold and writing this, I just remembered that the body replaces the entire skeleton roughly once every 30 years, which means that few if any of the cells that make up my current body are those with which I was born. How strange it is to think that I am an altogether different person than who I was during childhood – let alone at birth – and that these differences go beyond my train-wrecked emotional state or the cruelly-stunted development of my pitiable moral tableau; as a totally different person, I find that the neuroses and hangups that seem to so strongly define many important parts of my psyche continue to exist, regardless of the fact that most of me is new – probably because some part of me wants or needs them to exist in order for it to exist.
Compared to the body's automatic replacement process, the mind tends to remain subject to the destructive and short-sighted will of the ego far longer than is normally necessary, which compels us to defend our honor, to cling to material possessions, and to do most anything in our power to win arguments so that we can pat ourselves on the back and tell ourselves that we were Right All Along. How nice it would be if we could all learn to wrangle our egos and subject them to the will of nothingness, to the doctrine of non-existence (Wu), something that rarely happens in our modern capitalist society, an artificial construct that thrives only when our egos rule our every move, always tipping the scales in their favor, forever keeping us in self-imposed slavery to petty external needs. The person seeking to shed the ego for something greater, for something worthwhile, might well find relief in the ancient books and teachings; that person is advised to steer clear of organized religion, however, which will prey ferociously upon his ego and try to kindle within his bosom the fires of fearful discontentment so as to bind him forever to the notion of Salvation From Without. As we have seen, however, and as science continues to show us, salvation from death and renewal to life begins and ends within us, and few external forces beyond a bit of food and drink can speed them up or slow them down. (Consuming drugs, including alcohol, by the way, and mistreating the body by smoking cigarettes and denying it exercise will dramatically infringe upon its ability to heal itself.) Be safe, be well, and mahalo.
© mentiri factorem fecit (場黑麥)
07 November 2012
America fails, again
America's media outlets fail her People. So widespread is their deceit, and so brazen is their obfuscation, that the 3rd party presidential candidates' debate of 05 November 2012 streamed live only on rt.com, the website for Russia Today. No indigenous source for news – not FOX, ABC, NBC, not even fucking NPR! – has mentioned the name of a 3rd party presidential candidate in the last few weeks, and none of them – not even fucking NPR! – agreed to air Monday night's debate, let alone to acknowledge the existence of candidates besides Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, person such as governor Gary Johnson or Dr. Jill Stein. So deeply entrenched are these media giants – even fucking NPR! – and so fully have they been bought and paid for by the faceless corporations that now control the hearts and minds of millions of once-free ynki, that it is safe to say that this grand experiment of ours has failed. Now, we are following a trajectory similar to that of the Weimar Republic (see truthout.org: “History's Magic Mirror: America’s Economic Crisis and the Weimar Republic of Pre-Nazi Germany”) or the French Third Republic (see truthout.org: “How democracies die”); now, our down-spiral into widespread fascism and state-sanctioned religious extremism is not merely food for thought – it is as certain as death from an Obama drone-strike.
For most of my adult life I have been told that this land's news media is the fourth pillar of government, after, of course, the legislative, judicial, and executive branches; we have seen over the last weeks, however, the true extent of the news-media's sinister power, standing by in silent and docile witness as it corrupted democracy and deliberately destroyed equality and free speech, the very essence of this fragile republic. In that sense, the title of this piece is wrong – it is not America that has failed us, rather we the People who have failed her. I have tried to write about these matters, and I have tried to sound the warning klaxons repeatedly and with growing vigor, but, according to my new slogan: “I write because no one listens.” I could, perhaps, stand out in the cold again holding a sign in protest of or support for this idea or that policy, this notion or that cause, but my efforts would be for naught; just as one can lead a horse to water but not make it drink, so one can lead one's fellow citizens to knowledge but not make them think.
Where does this path we have chosen lead? To the jackbooted and willful destruction of diversity, life, honor, and Truth. This same path is the path taken in the early part of the last century by the people of Germany, who signed away their consciouses for the fleeting security of a chicken in every pot. So vast has our failure become, so readily have we given up our most precious ideals in pursuit of an artificial peace-of-mind and self-enslavement to our material possessions, that we no longer deserve to call ourselves patriots, let alone Americans; real Americans would fight for liberty and not give an inch to petty tyrants ruling from behind the black gates of White Houses; real Americans would demand that all voices be given equal air-time, that all candidates for the presidency be thrown into a room together without make up or polish, prepping or preening, polling or punditry; real Americans would take to the streets in the thousands in order to defend the rights of gays and women instead of shutting off their minds with a click of the television remote. Dear reader, we might have saved a bit of skin by not electing Mitt Romney to the presidency, but our struggle is far from over; indeed, it has just begun. Mahalo.
© mentiri factorem fecit (場黑麥)
For most of my adult life I have been told that this land's news media is the fourth pillar of government, after, of course, the legislative, judicial, and executive branches; we have seen over the last weeks, however, the true extent of the news-media's sinister power, standing by in silent and docile witness as it corrupted democracy and deliberately destroyed equality and free speech, the very essence of this fragile republic. In that sense, the title of this piece is wrong – it is not America that has failed us, rather we the People who have failed her. I have tried to write about these matters, and I have tried to sound the warning klaxons repeatedly and with growing vigor, but, according to my new slogan: “I write because no one listens.” I could, perhaps, stand out in the cold again holding a sign in protest of or support for this idea or that policy, this notion or that cause, but my efforts would be for naught; just as one can lead a horse to water but not make it drink, so one can lead one's fellow citizens to knowledge but not make them think.
Where does this path we have chosen lead? To the jackbooted and willful destruction of diversity, life, honor, and Truth. This same path is the path taken in the early part of the last century by the people of Germany, who signed away their consciouses for the fleeting security of a chicken in every pot. So vast has our failure become, so readily have we given up our most precious ideals in pursuit of an artificial peace-of-mind and self-enslavement to our material possessions, that we no longer deserve to call ourselves patriots, let alone Americans; real Americans would fight for liberty and not give an inch to petty tyrants ruling from behind the black gates of White Houses; real Americans would demand that all voices be given equal air-time, that all candidates for the presidency be thrown into a room together without make up or polish, prepping or preening, polling or punditry; real Americans would take to the streets in the thousands in order to defend the rights of gays and women instead of shutting off their minds with a click of the television remote. Dear reader, we might have saved a bit of skin by not electing Mitt Romney to the presidency, but our struggle is far from over; indeed, it has just begun. Mahalo.
© mentiri factorem fecit (場黑麥)
05 November 2012
protect economic Safety
Persons who respect and read the Declaration of Independence will recognize that the role of government is to serve one main purpose: to bring about our Safety and Happiness. Keeping this in our minds, we look at the banks in this country that continue to steal billions of dollars from the American people, banks that starting in 2008 C.E. (common era) were given hundreds of billions of tax-paper dollars so that their larcenous and short-sighted practices would not drag this country into total ruin, banks that to this day are removing the families of active-duty military personnel from their homes and evicting old and sick persons with the the full support and active participation of armed and role-crazy police officers.
These are not victim-less crimes: We the People are the victims. The very things our government is supposed to do for us – to protect our Safety and provide for our Happiness – it is not doing; the very purpose it is supposed to serve has been supplanted by the practice of protecting those persons who have rigged the system in their favor and ensnared millions of people around the globe in the swollen tendrils of their me-first capitalism. Tomorrow, friends, we go to the polls to elect a new president. Despite the media blackout being perpetrated by nearly all media outlets, including CNN, FOX, NPR, MSNBC, ABC, and their foul ilk, we have more choices that just one or the other, more candidates to select between than just Mitt and Barack: we also have Dr. Jill Stein and governor Gary Johnson to consider, two candidates who are not part of the Democrat or Republican parties, that massive duopoly that has wrapped up our liberties in a strangle-hold so tight that we might soon see freedom snuffed out forever.
In order to rein in our government and help it to actively create our Safety and Happiness; in order to stop the greed-based actions of giant banks and tax-payer funded bailouts; out of an honest belief in the idea that liberty thrives only when the adult citizen is entrusted with the enormous responsibility of being able to decide to live a life free of ill health, wage-slavery, and police oppression; for these reasons and out of abiding love for the generations yet to come, please vote for a third party candidate this Tuesday, ignoring the ill informed fear-mongers among us warning us to choose between the lesser of two evils. Perhaps one day we might all be as brave as Gary Johnson, who said he would rather die than vote for ass or pachyderm, or as fearless as Dr. Jill Stein, who was just last week arrested for trying to bring food to a group of persons using their bodies to stop environmental degradation in Texas; perhaps one day we might realize that by voting for establishment-sanctioned candidates we dishonor the covenant established by the Declaration and violate the sanctity of our most precious document, proclaiming boldly to a candid world: ”We deserve neither Safety nor Happiness because we have sacrificed the latter in hopes of getting the former.” The only path that leads to true Happiness runs along the violently-rushing brook of full and total liberty; the only candidate courageous enough to take us down this path – and who will gladly get his or her feet wet in the process – belongs to a third party. Demand Safety, create Happiness, and say no to politics as usual! Mahalo.
© mentiri factorem fecit (場黑麥)
These are not victim-less crimes: We the People are the victims. The very things our government is supposed to do for us – to protect our Safety and provide for our Happiness – it is not doing; the very purpose it is supposed to serve has been supplanted by the practice of protecting those persons who have rigged the system in their favor and ensnared millions of people around the globe in the swollen tendrils of their me-first capitalism. Tomorrow, friends, we go to the polls to elect a new president. Despite the media blackout being perpetrated by nearly all media outlets, including CNN, FOX, NPR, MSNBC, ABC, and their foul ilk, we have more choices that just one or the other, more candidates to select between than just Mitt and Barack: we also have Dr. Jill Stein and governor Gary Johnson to consider, two candidates who are not part of the Democrat or Republican parties, that massive duopoly that has wrapped up our liberties in a strangle-hold so tight that we might soon see freedom snuffed out forever.
In order to rein in our government and help it to actively create our Safety and Happiness; in order to stop the greed-based actions of giant banks and tax-payer funded bailouts; out of an honest belief in the idea that liberty thrives only when the adult citizen is entrusted with the enormous responsibility of being able to decide to live a life free of ill health, wage-slavery, and police oppression; for these reasons and out of abiding love for the generations yet to come, please vote for a third party candidate this Tuesday, ignoring the ill informed fear-mongers among us warning us to choose between the lesser of two evils. Perhaps one day we might all be as brave as Gary Johnson, who said he would rather die than vote for ass or pachyderm, or as fearless as Dr. Jill Stein, who was just last week arrested for trying to bring food to a group of persons using their bodies to stop environmental degradation in Texas; perhaps one day we might realize that by voting for establishment-sanctioned candidates we dishonor the covenant established by the Declaration and violate the sanctity of our most precious document, proclaiming boldly to a candid world: ”We deserve neither Safety nor Happiness because we have sacrificed the latter in hopes of getting the former.” The only path that leads to true Happiness runs along the violently-rushing brook of full and total liberty; the only candidate courageous enough to take us down this path – and who will gladly get his or her feet wet in the process – belongs to a third party. Demand Safety, create Happiness, and say no to politics as usual! Mahalo.
© mentiri factorem fecit (場黑麥)
02 November 2012
tenacious Republican terrorism
Western newscasters are quick to call any Arab suspected of committing acts of violence a terrorist, a practice that appears to have blinded them to the true extent of terrorism right here in America. He calls himself Mitt, and his last name is Romney, and he and his party are pushing a terrorist agenda. Hidden in plain view in the Republican party's presidential platform is a plan to terrorize the homosexual humans living in America, a plan that would turn them into citizens with fewer rights than their heterosexual neighbors, a plan that can have as its only consequence a surge of state-sanctioned violence and hatred against these our same-sex-loving brothers and sisters. Governor Romney has stated openly that if he should become president he would amend our secular Constitution for the first time in nearly a century, adding to it rules found only in the old testament of the Christian bible (see Leviticus 20) that mandate among many other horrible things the murder of gays and the killing of young women who lose their virginity before they are married; the only purpose such an amendment serves is to strike fear in the hearts of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Trans-gender (LGBT) community and to cause these peace-loving and innocent persons to live their lives in constant fear of reproach, disenfranchisement, and assault.
There is another group in the world that encroaches upon the rights of its citizens (be they Women, Gay, Colored, or otherwise), that disenfranchises them, that assaults them, that stands by as their rights are stripped away and they are raped, beaten, and murdered – the Taliban. The Republican party's plan to strip away the rights of homosexuals and to encroach upon the equality guaranteed them in our Declaration of Independence puts the Republican Party in American (RePIA, pronounced “rape-ya”) on equal footing with the Taliban; it exposes the RePIA as a threat to the Safety and Happiness of the American people equal to or greater than the threat posed by other terror-promoting organizations around the world, be they al-Qaida, Hamas, or the Haqqani Network (which continues to hold an American serviceman hostage, see here.)
To vote for RePIA this November 6th is to elect terror; to support Mitt Romney in his drive for our nation's highest office is to spit in the face of lady Liberty, to shit on the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, and to declare oneself so ignorant of the ideals of equality and freedom that our ancestors once fought and died for as to be unworthy of calling oneself an upstanding member of society, let alone a patriot. To effect true change, to protect our own dreams and aspirations and those of the many generations to come, to take this country back from greased-up bankers and fat-backed politicians, vote for a third-party candidate such as Dr. Jill Stein or governor Gary Johnson. The newscasters won't stop calling votes for third-party candidates wasted votes, so let's all waste our votes on a person who will stop federal oppression and end the wars on drugs and in Afghanistan, a person who will ensure freedom and equality for all citizens regardless of their race, belief, sex, or sexual orientation. Vote green, or vote yellow, and help us liberate America from the cruel lash of mindless hatred, from the heavy yoke of unchecked greed, and from the rusty chains of perpetual strife. Be well, and mahalo.
© mentiri factorem fecit (場黑麥)
There is another group in the world that encroaches upon the rights of its citizens (be they Women, Gay, Colored, or otherwise), that disenfranchises them, that assaults them, that stands by as their rights are stripped away and they are raped, beaten, and murdered – the Taliban. The Republican party's plan to strip away the rights of homosexuals and to encroach upon the equality guaranteed them in our Declaration of Independence puts the Republican Party in American (RePIA, pronounced “rape-ya”) on equal footing with the Taliban; it exposes the RePIA as a threat to the Safety and Happiness of the American people equal to or greater than the threat posed by other terror-promoting organizations around the world, be they al-Qaida, Hamas, or the Haqqani Network (which continues to hold an American serviceman hostage, see here.)
To vote for RePIA this November 6th is to elect terror; to support Mitt Romney in his drive for our nation's highest office is to spit in the face of lady Liberty, to shit on the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, and to declare oneself so ignorant of the ideals of equality and freedom that our ancestors once fought and died for as to be unworthy of calling oneself an upstanding member of society, let alone a patriot. To effect true change, to protect our own dreams and aspirations and those of the many generations to come, to take this country back from greased-up bankers and fat-backed politicians, vote for a third-party candidate such as Dr. Jill Stein or governor Gary Johnson. The newscasters won't stop calling votes for third-party candidates wasted votes, so let's all waste our votes on a person who will stop federal oppression and end the wars on drugs and in Afghanistan, a person who will ensure freedom and equality for all citizens regardless of their race, belief, sex, or sexual orientation. Vote green, or vote yellow, and help us liberate America from the cruel lash of mindless hatred, from the heavy yoke of unchecked greed, and from the rusty chains of perpetual strife. Be well, and mahalo.
© mentiri factorem fecit (場黑麥)
31 October 2012
Sandy boon or bust
Without doubt, both major-party political candidates will try to use the devastation and damage caused by erstwhile hurricane Sandy to their advantage. The incumbent Barack Obama will likely point to the rapid response time and widespread preparedness of thousands of emergency personnel as proof of his competency, as an indication of the methods by which he will tackle the nation's less immediate issues such as high unemployment, growing national debt, and our crumbling infrastructure. The challenger Mitt Romney will likely point to the sluggish federal response and lack of adequate leadership by the current administration as proof that our sitting president must be replaced, that he has a tendency to sit around lackadaisically while America drifts rudderless through the shoals of catastrophe, that his policies have failed, and that he is the greatest threat to the Safety of the People since redcoat placed boot on our soil.
I listened to NPR and checked the news regularly in the days and hours before Sandy made landfall, and, to my knowledge, Mr. Obama analyzed and calculated and fact-checked the storm as much and as thoroughly as he did his primary opponent in their third debate together. (Glaringly omitted from this debate were a couple of the other persons contending for the presidency, among them Dr. Jill Stein and former governor Gary Johnson, who were barred from attending the event and from sparring with their super-slick counterparts by the sinister and undemocratic machinations of the Commission on Electoral Debates a freedom-hating organization controlled jointly by the Democrat and Republican parties.) In all likelihood, Mr. Romney will blame his foe for failing to have prevented every tree from falling and every transistor from shorting out, for not acting quickly enough in his efforts to warn us sodden souls hardest hit by this frankenstorm of its exact path and true destructiveness, for worrying more about controlling the narrative and looking good on camera than visiting shelters and keeping hope alive. Hopefully, however, this time around, Mitt won't blame the few score deaths on the president (as he did following the tragic events in Benghazi) or insinuate that they would not have occurred under his watch, although if were to make such claims, he might alienate a few more swing voters and put himself out of the race altogether, which, in the long run, would work out just fine for liberty and equality here in America.
There is a chance that while he is out smiling condescendingly and surveying the shattered hovels of commoners the Republican challenger will fall into a ditch filled with sewage-mixed seawater and catch such a nasty cold that he will be bedridden for these last few days before the election, sparing us the torture of listening to his pitying smarm and of having to puzzle through the mounting mysteries of his constantly-shifting viewpoints. We shall see how things shake out once the storm of the century has passed. If you are interested in avoiding such disasters in the future, vote Green Party! Mahalo.
© mentiri factorem fecit (場黑麥)
I listened to NPR and checked the news regularly in the days and hours before Sandy made landfall, and, to my knowledge, Mr. Obama analyzed and calculated and fact-checked the storm as much and as thoroughly as he did his primary opponent in their third debate together. (Glaringly omitted from this debate were a couple of the other persons contending for the presidency, among them Dr. Jill Stein and former governor Gary Johnson, who were barred from attending the event and from sparring with their super-slick counterparts by the sinister and undemocratic machinations of the Commission on Electoral Debates a freedom-hating organization controlled jointly by the Democrat and Republican parties.) In all likelihood, Mr. Romney will blame his foe for failing to have prevented every tree from falling and every transistor from shorting out, for not acting quickly enough in his efforts to warn us sodden souls hardest hit by this frankenstorm of its exact path and true destructiveness, for worrying more about controlling the narrative and looking good on camera than visiting shelters and keeping hope alive. Hopefully, however, this time around, Mitt won't blame the few score deaths on the president (as he did following the tragic events in Benghazi) or insinuate that they would not have occurred under his watch, although if were to make such claims, he might alienate a few more swing voters and put himself out of the race altogether, which, in the long run, would work out just fine for liberty and equality here in America.
There is a chance that while he is out smiling condescendingly and surveying the shattered hovels of commoners the Republican challenger will fall into a ditch filled with sewage-mixed seawater and catch such a nasty cold that he will be bedridden for these last few days before the election, sparing us the torture of listening to his pitying smarm and of having to puzzle through the mounting mysteries of his constantly-shifting viewpoints. We shall see how things shake out once the storm of the century has passed. If you are interested in avoiding such disasters in the future, vote Green Party! Mahalo.
© mentiri factorem fecit (場黑麥)
29 October 2012
no superior state
America's system of elections is broken. Instead of all citizens of voting age sharing equal responsibility and enjoying equal privilege in the selection of their president, certain battleground states have emerged (Ohio and Florida are two examples), states in which political parties and their candidates spend disproportionately large amounts of time and treasure, states that have been granted greater power than their neighbors and fellow members of this oh-so-precious Union. If we elect to the presidency a person willing and able to fix this system, we might all be once again be treated equally; if we elect to the presidency a person with a proven track-record of beating back the ever-creeping tendrils of government, one who will veto unnecessary and wasteful laws and fight the influence of deep-pocketed corporations, we might once again look at ourselves in our mirrors with pride, basking in the knowledge that we are all equal under the law, that not ass nor pachyderm meddles in the Peoples' affairs, that the opinions of not Buckeye nor Cornhusker are valued greater than the political views of Blue Mountaineer or Big Skywatcher. We need a president who will make things better, not worse. We need a president who will sacrifice his chances of re-election so as to battle entrenched corruption and the stranglehold of the war-mongering lobbyist.
For the aforementioned reasons, in hopes of breaking the gridlock of power in Washington D.C., and desiring to throw off the mantle of federal oppression, I endorse governor Gary Johnson for president. For too long have we considered votes for third-party candidates wasted votes; for too long have we tried to choose between the lesser of two evils instead of casting our ballots for that person who we know will reinstate the Constitution's tender grasp, who we know will end our illegal wars of aggression, who we know will restore the Liberty granted us by the Declaration of Independence. Please, dear reader, fight the choke hold of business-as-usual, smash your television-set to bits, and vote for the only man who will revoke both the Patriot Act and NDAA 2012, pieces of legislation passed by both Republican and Democrat that continue to desecrate the Constitution and destroy the freedom and equality for which this nation was once known. No state is more important than the next, no segment of the population more valuable than its neighbor. Only by fighting for Liberty can we secure for ourselves her Blessings; only by joining together as twigs in a bundle can we guarantee for ourselves the peace and happiness upon which our country was founded. Stand up – speak out – vanquish injustice – vote Libertarian!
© mentiri factorem fecit (場黑麥)
For the aforementioned reasons, in hopes of breaking the gridlock of power in Washington D.C., and desiring to throw off the mantle of federal oppression, I endorse governor Gary Johnson for president. For too long have we considered votes for third-party candidates wasted votes; for too long have we tried to choose between the lesser of two evils instead of casting our ballots for that person who we know will reinstate the Constitution's tender grasp, who we know will end our illegal wars of aggression, who we know will restore the Liberty granted us by the Declaration of Independence. Please, dear reader, fight the choke hold of business-as-usual, smash your television-set to bits, and vote for the only man who will revoke both the Patriot Act and NDAA 2012, pieces of legislation passed by both Republican and Democrat that continue to desecrate the Constitution and destroy the freedom and equality for which this nation was once known. No state is more important than the next, no segment of the population more valuable than its neighbor. Only by fighting for Liberty can we secure for ourselves her Blessings; only by joining together as twigs in a bundle can we guarantee for ourselves the peace and happiness upon which our country was founded. Stand up – speak out – vanquish injustice – vote Libertarian!
© mentiri factorem fecit (場黑麥)
26 October 2012
themed, useless crap
A cold war is being waged in this rural Pennsylvania town between the agents of two trumped-up organizations: the Steelers and the Ravens. From Pittsburgh and Baltimore respectively, the televised efforts of these two professional sports teams have so ensnared the imaginations – and, more importantly, the purse-strings – of the hard-working, blue-collar, middle-class denizens of this sad little place as to have hijacked the identities of people who spend what little free time they get eating potato chips, drinking cheap beer, and staring at self-illuminated boxes.
I imagine that the inner monologue of a fan of one of the many over-hyped national football league (NFL) teams goes something like this: “Do I donate to charity and help feed over three million starving American children or do I spend a hundred and fifty dollars on a ten-foot-high flag bearing the logo of my team? Do I perpetuate obesity and sloth within my family by stuffing cheese-doodles into my mouth as I sit on my financed couch with my eyes glued to an enormous television it will take me the next fifteen months to pay off? Do I send my check to an organization fighting poverty in this country's rust-belt or to a cluster of distant Chinamen cranking out solar-powered pathway lights emblazoned with an image of a highly stylized scavenger-bird designed by a wealthy corporation? You know what… fuck the poor, and fuck the kids – I need this overpriced bullshit so I can put it out in my yard and show my neighbor that I favor a different squad of men-in-tights than he does.”
I waste neither time nor money watching professional sports, preferring instead to read books on different and unrelated subjects, preferring instead to expand my mind by teaching myself languages and learning about organic gardening; I memorize neither statistics nor the success-rate of special trick plays, preferring instead to stay silent during useless NFL-related conversations, preferring instead to plumb the depths of my dark and twisted ego in order to bend it to my will, driving addiction and need from my life; I choose not to look on as angry fat dudes run into each other, preferring the freedom of a vigorous bicycle ride over sedentary slavery to a season of two minute warnings. I admit to puffing myself up here, to hoisting myself aloft in an attempt to differentiate myself from pig-skin-loving simpletons; as a Son of the American Revolution, however, and as a self-respecting and productive artist, I cannot afford to waste any more of my precious life on foolhardy pursuits than I have already wasted trying and failing to satisfy the root of mankind's evil, the ego. This, in my humble opinion, is part of the attraction of professional sports: they very often serve as proxy identities for persons too lazy or weak-of-will to do something unique with their lives worth talking about; they give pack-runners whose existence revolves around the act of consumption a topic to discuss that does not have to do with kids, jobs, or failing health. It is wrong of me to judge and to ridicule people for paying top dollar for jerseys or pennants or banners proclaiming that, “This Is Giants Country,” or something similarly absurd; the words I have written here are just as much driven by a darkly thrusting ego as are the shouted cries of thirty thousand star-struck fans. I am a worthless cunt for spending time crafting this article, but these thoughts well up inside me when I am shredding through town on my velocipede, and I know not where else to turn for release. On some level, I don't give a flying fuck (IDGAFF) what other people do, although I wish sometimes they wouldn't be so fucking flagrantly lame. Oh brother.
© mentiri factorem fecit (場黑麥)
I imagine that the inner monologue of a fan of one of the many over-hyped national football league (NFL) teams goes something like this: “Do I donate to charity and help feed over three million starving American children or do I spend a hundred and fifty dollars on a ten-foot-high flag bearing the logo of my team? Do I perpetuate obesity and sloth within my family by stuffing cheese-doodles into my mouth as I sit on my financed couch with my eyes glued to an enormous television it will take me the next fifteen months to pay off? Do I send my check to an organization fighting poverty in this country's rust-belt or to a cluster of distant Chinamen cranking out solar-powered pathway lights emblazoned with an image of a highly stylized scavenger-bird designed by a wealthy corporation? You know what… fuck the poor, and fuck the kids – I need this overpriced bullshit so I can put it out in my yard and show my neighbor that I favor a different squad of men-in-tights than he does.”
I waste neither time nor money watching professional sports, preferring instead to read books on different and unrelated subjects, preferring instead to expand my mind by teaching myself languages and learning about organic gardening; I memorize neither statistics nor the success-rate of special trick plays, preferring instead to stay silent during useless NFL-related conversations, preferring instead to plumb the depths of my dark and twisted ego in order to bend it to my will, driving addiction and need from my life; I choose not to look on as angry fat dudes run into each other, preferring the freedom of a vigorous bicycle ride over sedentary slavery to a season of two minute warnings. I admit to puffing myself up here, to hoisting myself aloft in an attempt to differentiate myself from pig-skin-loving simpletons; as a Son of the American Revolution, however, and as a self-respecting and productive artist, I cannot afford to waste any more of my precious life on foolhardy pursuits than I have already wasted trying and failing to satisfy the root of mankind's evil, the ego. This, in my humble opinion, is part of the attraction of professional sports: they very often serve as proxy identities for persons too lazy or weak-of-will to do something unique with their lives worth talking about; they give pack-runners whose existence revolves around the act of consumption a topic to discuss that does not have to do with kids, jobs, or failing health. It is wrong of me to judge and to ridicule people for paying top dollar for jerseys or pennants or banners proclaiming that, “This Is Giants Country,” or something similarly absurd; the words I have written here are just as much driven by a darkly thrusting ego as are the shouted cries of thirty thousand star-struck fans. I am a worthless cunt for spending time crafting this article, but these thoughts well up inside me when I am shredding through town on my velocipede, and I know not where else to turn for release. On some level, I don't give a flying fuck (IDGAFF) what other people do, although I wish sometimes they wouldn't be so fucking flagrantly lame. Oh brother.
© mentiri factorem fecit (場黑麥)
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