on the proxy identity

The American citizen is lost, floundering in a sea of substitute identities. It is not really his fault, however – he has learned it from his parents, from television, from his great aunts, step-uncles, and distant neighbors. We lack in this nation even a loose consensus on What It Means To Be An Upstanding And Self-Respecting Individual; no organization has stoop up and said, If you do this and that you will be different from everyone else and not walk around wearing the same shirt bought at the same giant discount retailer as everyone else. Our unique national character is being watered down by those goods as are sold at only a handful of retail locations that can be found in nearly every city, town, and village from coast to shining coast; our individual taste, our very ability to be one-in-a-million, has been substituted for faceless homogenization by corporate marketing committees who make hefty profits by paying overseas manufacturers to mass-produce cheap products featuring pictures of the hottest movies and books and then convincing us through a ceaseless avalanche of advertising to buy them (while lobbying to keep it illegal for the American people to ourselves make our own products printed with the same pictures).

Instead of delving into the nether-regions of our souls, and finding therein peace, or enlightenment, today's American busies himself with memorizing football statistics and with discussing those statistics with others; instead of making sketches or painting a picture of the bright and verdant out-of-doors, he watches hour upon hour of television while his latent artistic ability sits dormant, and unused; instead of educating and understanding himself to the extent that he can make intelligent, non-sports related conversation about a breadth of topics, he purchases – at a significant mark-up – a name-brand motorcycle and the name-brand clothing to go with it. But, it seems, people will choose the path of least resistance every time, doing whatever everyone else is doing and getting really, really mad when someone points out that they are acting as if they were sheep being led to the slaughter. And a slaughter it is – more like a sacrifice – with our best talents wasted on leisure, our best minds ruined by TV, our best personalities crushed by the petty demands of consumption-driven capitalism, our best bodies ridden to oblivion on the backs of terrorism-supporting motorcycles. We may have once been a proud and shining People, but, today, we are little more than clones bought and sold by our avaricious corporate slave-masters; America delenda est.

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gasoline: keeping the FUN in Funding Terrorism since 1938

We, the gasoline, kerosene, and crude oil sellers operating in the United States of America, would like to thank the consumers of this land for helping us to fund terrorism. A good portion of the gasoline and other crude-oil-based products we sell is pumped out of the ground by the government of Saudi Arabia, which uses the proceeds from the sale of this flammable black goo to finance terrorist training camps and to purchase weapons and matériel for terrorists cells all over the world. Ever since we first started doing business with the Saudis back in 1938, a hefty portion of every dollar given to us by good, honest, upstanding American citizens in exchange for the gasoline they use to move themselves around in automobiles we in turn have given to a state that sponsors or supports terrorism; therefore, each American who purchases gasoline in any form – be it diesel, jet-fuel, lamp oil, or regular old 87 octane – each of these supposedly patriotic Yankees is a ground-level, small-time fund-raiser for jihad-waging, freedom-hating, tower-toppling terrorist groups such as Al-Qaida and Al-Shabaab.

We here at Shell, Exxon-Mobil, BP, Amoco, Citgo, and Texaco are proud to assist the average American in perpetuating and funding terrorism around the world by continuing to do business with states that support the activities of cowardly, baby-killing mass murderers. So, dear American consumers, keep driving your cars – as much as you can and as far as you are able – and keep those dollars flowing, because the next Nine-Eleven attacks are not going to fucking fund themselves.

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on the Second Sons of Liberty

Attention, self-respecting Americans searching, perhaps in vain, for an organization attuned specifically to the concept of Liberty and all that It entails: The time has come for the founding of the Second Sons of Liberty. (See here for information on the original Sons of Liberty.) You are very welcome to comment on this article with suggestions for how best to organize a group of like-minded individuals bent on reestablishing the longstanding but now defunct notion that each free-born American citizen has the duty under not only the Declaration of Independence but also the U.S. Constitution to live her life in such a way as to satisfy her own wants and needs while not at any time, or in any way, infringing upon the Life, Liberty, or Property of any other person or persons.

For too long now have we allowed the aptly-named nanny state to dictate our actions and to try to protect us from ourselves; for too long have we called upon the state and federal governments to enforce prohibitions on the consumption of a great number of stimulating and mood-enhancing substances; for too long have we relied on outside forces to tell us what is good, acceptable, or patriotic, rather than heeding the tender inner voice of Liberty and deciding for ourselves how best to lead our own lives. The original Sons of Liberty, who labored a dozen years before their efforts culminated in a Revolutionary War that brought independence to this fine, broad land, these our brave and selfless predecessors risked their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred Honor to establish a nation conceived in Liberty; this idea of freedom, so harshly infringed upon by the passage of the Controlled Substances Act of 1970, was further eroded by the passage of the Patriot Act of 2001; this notion has all but died from the general American consciousness, replaced by rampant consumerism and its close cousin, unnecessary wastefulness, by automobile-induced sloth, fear-of-the-unknown, over-reliance on “convenience,” and hollow proclamations of this county's supposedly inherent exceptionalism.

It is time for us to retake control of our shared, common future by focusing the national dialogue once again on the power of individual responsibility and the need to respect our shared, common virtues such as frugality, self-sufficiency, minding one's own business, and preserving the environment for the following generations. Please, dear friends, brothers and sisters alike, please secure the Safety and Happiness of the American people by joining us in this effort to found and organize the Second Sons of Liberty (which shall of course be renamed so as not to exclude persons not born male). Our struggle will not be easy, nor will it see a swift or bloodless conclusion, but it is a struggle we must undertake. Let us make sure that our children, and our children's children, are raised in a nation dedicated to little else than making us its citizens Safe and Happy.

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on job-creating street art

In this year in which the president of the United States of America is once again appointed to his post by representatives who are themselves selected (not elected) by the individual States and sent off to the all-powerful electoral college, much is being said in public about Things That Create Jobs, and about Job-Creating Agencies, Legislation, Institutions, and Policies. Amid all of this hullabaloo, it is not surprising to this author that one major job-producing aspect of American culture has been left out, namely: Street Art.

Street art creates jobs in different ways. First of all, graffiti writers frequently purchase large quantities of name badges, shipping labels, poster-board, poster sheets, glue, and other such materials which they use as media for storing their art, for moving it around without too much fuss or unnecessary weight, and for applying their art to otherwise unadorned surfaces – if not for street artists, the persons making these products would likely be unemployed. Then, our favorite urban vandals buy markers, pens, chalk, ink, spray-cans filled with paint, colored pencils, regular pencils, cans of paint both acrylic and oil-based, and many other media with which they make marks upon the aforementioned paper products or deface public (and private) property directly – if not for street artists, the persons making these products would likely be unemployed. Beyond this, Self-Directed Urban Beautification Specialists (SDUBS) purchase face-masks, respirators, eye-protectors, and many other such materials required to shield their soft tissues from fumes and splatter caused by their many writing implements – if not for street artists, the persons making these products would likely be unemployed. (I would like to point out the major flaw in the argument I am making here: that the enormous, intricately-linked nature of our capitalist world markets means that the action of a few, specific individuals does not necessarily create jobs for any other specific individuals, even if the two parties Seem To Be Directly Linked; it is therefore impossible to attribute the Creation of Jobs to any one specific action (such as buying a packet of colored markers), person (such as Banksy), or group of persons (such as all American graffiti-writers put together), but the same can be said for the bullshit seeping from the mouths of our corrupted and re-election-obsessed politicians who claim that this specific thing or that specific policy Created Jobs.) Thirdly, graffiti writers create jobs by giving judges a means to punish juvenile delinquents and other such petty criminals by scrawling on and otherwise defacing property that needs to be subsequently scrubbed clean of said defacement, rehabilitated, and re-painted – if not for street artists, the persons making the cleaning products needed in said rehabilitation, and the persons catching, trying, and sentencing these law-breakers, would likely be out of work.

The above text is brief, but, I believe, powerful, justification for officially recognizing self-directed urban beautification as essential to a robust economy and a vibrant and lively national consciousness. So please, dear friends, write to your local street artist, and thank her for getting Americans back to work.

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on the fade of the recession

A certain coiffure has been sweeping the modern American hair landscape, or hairscape – the Fade of the Recession. Similar to that style favored by persons alive during the Great Depression, our Great Recession's preferred mode is cut very close to skull until perhaps eye-level, at which point it fades quickly into a most unruly patch of long top-hair kept in place with an arresting, spiking, or otherwise binding hair product.

Persons sporting the fade of the recession are more than likely frugal, upright, and self-loathing individuals who have finally come around to notion that their best hope for making it through such global wars as nearly always follow in the wake of world-wide economic turmoil is to start relying on as few people other than themselves to complete simple tasks such as hair-cutting, lawn-mowing, cooking, cleaning, transportation, and self-defense. By affecting such severe cuts to the head-bound chitinous offshoots, these people demonstrate a propensity for self-mockery and lightheartedness that is useful when facing impending physical, emotional, or financial ruin.

The author adopted this particular pompadour after seeing a wild-eyed, chain-smoking gentleman of Chinese ancestry who had exited from the dirt-caked side door of an otherwise nondescript, rundown building in one of America's more bustling cities. The man, himself having surpassed at least the age of forty-five, was wearing an ill-fitting overcoat and staring menacingly at everyone passing him by. The nape of his neck was shaved to the bone, and a wild patch of hair sprouted from the top of his head, but his Recession's Fade stood out because of the violent, severe, and apparently hastily-made cuts that defined the area of the fade itself.

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on why to velocipede

A half dozen times over the past couple of months, during the rain-filled and the dismal nights, upon announcing to my quasi-adoptive family my intentions to ride upon my bicycle the few scant miles back to my own home, I have been met with such statements as, “You are riding home in this weather?” or “Dude, are you sure? It's raining, you know, and dark.” Upon hearing such statements, or ones cautioning me to “Be safe out in this wet,” I think invariably two things. First, I say to myself, 'I am homo sapiens, a man made of flesh, blood, and bone; I am not made of sugar, and this light drizzle surely shall not melt me.' Secondly, I remember the gloveless woman of joyous mien, her cheeks flushed and ruddy, whom I saw riding her bicycle through a cold, wet Amsterdam winter a few years back, and I say to myself, 'If that woman who glanced at me can ride through the slush and driving rain, braving the North Sea winds with a smile on her face and three small children clinging precariously to the sides of her velocipede, then I, one person riding through the warm, tender mists of Sister Spring, have little occasion to heed my friends' warnings and to wait for a period of bone-dryness before pedaling off into the gloomy night.'

I velocipede not because it is easy, or because it is convenient, or because I wish to avoid at all cost getting wet. I velocipede because I wish to stop supporting terrorism by purchasing crude-oil-products pulled at tremendous expense from deep below the earth's surface by states that sponsor terrorism and that oppress and murder their own citizens (among these are Iran, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and their regional neighbors, states that supply most of the gasoline bought by everyday, supposedly patriotic Americans). I travel by bicycle whenever I feasibly can because I wish to stop burning petroleum in order to move my body around through space-time (as opposed to buying into the lie, so deeply rooted in the Yankee mentality, that I can simply get in my car and drive wherever I please without having any negative impact on my own personal health or on the health of the greater environment). I mash pedal because it is hard, and because it makes me more tough, and because it requires of me discipline and a certain amount of planning ahead, leaving early so as to arrive on time. I mount my vondrais because I have spent too long trapped inside glassed-walled, plastic-and-steel slave's chariots to know just how much they alienate the driver and cut her off from contact with the bright and beautiful world outside of her self-moving, exploding prison. And, for now, lastly, I mount my wire donkey out of a desire to keep my body in good shape by working its muscles out regularly, by dragging myself across the phaltscape using little more than my own brute strength, and by filling and emptying my lungs alike of the clean and of the soiled airs.

For all of these reasons, and more, I ride, joyously coasting throughout this little, driving-obsessed town, drawing the ire of persons late for work and incredulous stares from just about everyone else. To velocipede is among the methods for pursuing Happiness I enjoy most, one of those things I best like to do, burning not gasoline but the food in my guts in order to get around, my head held high, my chest thrust out, and, in memory of that tough, smiling mother in the fair Netherlands, my heart filled with a joyous song.

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on keeping limbs in cars

Among this worthless whorphan's many driving-related pet peeves – drivers who do not signal turns or lane-changes, who try to multi-task while at the wheel, who drift across double yellow lines, who allow passengers to put feet up on the dashboard – few, if any, trump his frustration with persons who endanger otherwise healthy body parts by hanging them out of car windows. (As pointed out in previous posts, since my personal Life, Liberty, & Property is not directly affected by such foolhardy decisions made by others, I should not have reason to be as upset as I apparently am; perhaps it is the sheer foolish audacity of it, however, that chaps my buns.) Moreover, this piece would not have been written if I had not, just the other day, seen a local high-school driving instructor dangling his hand casually in the breeze while in the company of a young, female student-driver. (I was of a mind to drag him out of the car and beat him senseless for teaching a minor such a bad and dangerous habit, but his charge was exceeding the speed limit in a 25 mile-per-hour zone, and I could not catch them up.)

Attention, good upstanding Americans: if you put hand, foot, head, elbow, knee, leg, or arm outside of a car's window while that car is in motion, the likelihood is greater than 50% that that hand, elbow, foot, head, arm, or leg will be ripped off (whereas if you keep all of your limbs inside the vehicle, the likelihood they will be ripped off approaches 0%). Any piece of flesh – human, canine, or otherwise – that sticks out of a car while that car is in motion can, and more than likely will, hit or get snagged on, and remain stuck to, stationary objects such as street-signs, bushes, mail boxes, fence posts, parked cars, dumpsters, self-service newspaper kiosks, telephone poles, and anything else that the car might happen to be passing at the time. When moving flesh hits resting metal at forty miles-per-hour, that flesh deforms and becomes a pulp-like substance that easily separates from the body proper and stays stuck to stationary objects, where it will dangle and dance in the passing breezes.

Please, people who value their hands, who like their feet, who desire to have five fingers for as long as possible, who wish to avoid trips to the emergency room, painful surgeries, long bouts of rehabilitation, the life-long stigma of being a cripple, and phantom-limb syndrome, please keep all parts of your body on the inside of a moving vehicle at all times. This article may sound alarmist, and I may come across as a curmudgeonly fuck-wad who refuses to mind his own business, but the Second Sons of Liberty need everyone to be whole, healthy, and physically fit who shall be participating in our rekindling of the white-hot flame that is the True American Dream. So please, dear friends, be smart, stay alert, and do not risk your limbs for nothing – save that sacrifice for when it will truly count.

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on NOMB

Are you tired of using the oh-so-2009 acronym TMI to tell others that they are sharing Too Much Information? Do you yearn for a new acronym, one capable of expressing your complete lack of interest in whatever your counterpart is saying? Do you find yourself searching in vain for the perfect set of letters that will best communicate your complete and total indifference to anything but whatever is going on in your own life?

If you have answered yes to any of these questions, the acronym NOMB is for you! This hot new buzzword – which stands for None Of My Business – is sweeping airwaves and cellular text-message transmission pathways alike. Get on board with the cool cats of the NOMB crowd and start telling everyone you know to go fuck themselves in the most tactful and nicest possible way – by stating that anything, and everything, is None Of My Business. Is your girlfriend having a rough menstrual cycle? NOMB. Did your dad just lose his job? NOMB. Has your second cousin just lost his home to a freakish spate of massive, killer tornadoes? NOMB.

It is just that simple to NOMB the balls off of just about anyone moaning like a gut-shot deer mule about how shitty his life is. Don't stay stuck in the dreary old Aughts – join the up-to-the-minute, Totally-Twenty-Twelve set by NOMBing (i.e. NOMB-bombing) everyone, everything, everywhere, and every time. Is your teacher in your face about that homework assignment? NOMB. Have you failed to cast a ballot in any of the last four presidential elections? NOMB. Did your dog just kill a toddler? NOMB. If you are as cool of a cat as you claim to be, you should be catching on to the awesome power of NOMB, so limber up your texting thumbs, and start carpet-NOMBing, today.

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on balls on cars

Living in rural south-central Pennsylvania, I see many different things. A number of these things are strange; others, unusual; and some, even, are downright sad. Among the most sad of the things I see are pairs of plastic (or metal) testicles hanging from the undercarriages of cars. When I see such a Ride With Balls, my first reaction is to assume that the testicles of the person driving the vehicle are so small, inadequate, and insignificant that he had little choice but to go out and attach fake balls to his vehicle in the invariably unsuccessful attempt to compensate for his glaring male deficiency. More often than not, such fake testicles are attached to the rear struts of modified, raised pickup-trucks, vehicles sure to be driven by men with massive inferiority complexes, insignificantly-sized balls, and length- or girth-challenged penises. Occasionally, however, I see fake balls attached to the bottoms of beat-up sedans driven by scruffy, thuggish-looking persons with poorly executed prison tattoos who, since they seem to be always slumped into their seats in the same awkward fashion, apparently suffer commonly from a certain type of spinal injury.

One reason for hanging artificial testicles from the back of one's car could be to signify to other persons that the car – possessing as it does of massive, brass-coated fake bull's balls – is so powerful, so souped up, and so very fast off the mark that to even dream of challenging it to a race would be to beg for swift defeat and assured disappointment. However, since serious racecar drivers work diligently to shave as much unnecessary weight off their vehicles as possible, this argument does not favor the person who feels the need to hang a four pound, cast-iron scrotum from his car. Perhaps the artificial-sack-danglers act in this fashion out of a deep, unconscious yearning for the Olden Days, back when conveyances ate straw, shit manure, and actually had balls that they used to inseminate their species' females, but, given that most of males I see overcompensating for their shriveled, tiny nuts in this way are under the age of thirty, they cannot possibly have been alive during the time of horse and buggy. A final reason for a person to hang with a bent coat-hanger from his automobile's bumper a lump of plastic shaped like a set of well-veined testicles could be that he is a funny-man, a laugh-riot, the kind of guy who comes into a room and has everyone in stitches with the first phrase out of his mouth. As I have spoken briefly with but a few persons who owned a Ride With Balls, I cannot speak to the extent of their comedic craft, to the well-honed delivery of their witty, sardonic comments, or to their overall side-splitting hilarity, but I doubt that anyone who would pay good money to have his truck jacked up so that it sticks up in the air and wastes precious fuel because of its horrible aerodynamics, I doubt that any such person would have much of a sense of humor, let alone humility, self-loathing, or tact.

Please, fine citizens of America, good readers of these posts, please try not to mock too badly persons who dangle fake nuts from their cars, for they appear to be simple-minded, foolish individuals whose own testicles are so awesomely small that they need to hang a Real Pair from, of all things, their cars. Perhaps we should all just mock them later on, quietly, and in private, together.

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what to do to help our war effort

Often over the past few months, while conversing with seemingly intelligent, apparently clear-thinking individuals, I have run into indifference and ignorance toward the fact that America is at war. For over a decade now, this nation has waged its wars in strange and distant places, battling fierce peoples in dusty villages, fighting a mysterious, shiver-inducing organization that, as would the hydra, grows new heads to replace any old heads that get lopped off, mozambiqued, or otherwise violently removed. During these conversations, my counterparts nearly always ask, “What is it that I can do, personally, to help our boys and girls win these wars that we have sent them off to wage?” To address this question, and to free my heart of much worry and consternation, here are two things that the person interested in helping America win the wars that she is waging can do: first, reduce the amount of gasoline consumed; and, second, plant a victory garden.

As to the first point, gasoline, a strategic national resource, is distilled from crude oil, which is pumped from the ground by states such as Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Yemen. These states not only promote and fund terrorist groups and terrorist activities, they also regularly violate their own citizens' human and civil rights. By burning gasoline in our own cars, we take it away from the cars, boats, and airplanes of the military; by burning gasoline, Americans fund terrorism, since the money we pay goes to the aforementioned states, which fund terrorism and violate basic human rights. The patriotic American wishing to avoid funding terrorism will stop driving his car.

As to the second point, ours is a fertile and rich land capable of producing great varieties of vegetables in abundant numbers. In the spirit of our forefathers, and of their father's fathers, the self-sufficient, self-respecting America will, wherever she is able to, erect and maintain a garden in which she grows anything and everything she can possibly grow. She does not purchase apples from New Zealand, cabbage from Brazil, or soybeans from the People's Republic of China – she grows these things herself, tending for her plants with loving care and patient foresight. It matters little if she maintains a single pot filled with herbs or a plot of raised beds running the entire length of her driveway; what does matter is that she honors our warriors' sacrifice by making a few sacrifices of her own.

These are but two, relatively simple things that persons can do to ween our country off of its addiction to foreign oil and artificially low prices and to free up logistical and manufacturing capacities for use in the general war effort. Perhaps we might later organize aluminum and steel drives, and set up Exchanges for Neighborhood Self-Sufficiency and Self-Reliance, but, for now, let us focus on these two primary objectives: to stop using so much damn oil, and to grow ourselves what food we ourselves consume. Please remember to spread the aloha, and to keep your heart light, and buoyant. Mahalo.

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on running on rock

A legend survives in the world of running: that asphalt is softer than concrete, and that it is better for one's knees to run in the street rather than on the sidewalk. Whoever first spread this myth was not an avid or longtime runner, nor did he or she physically test (as with a hammer or other solid object) the springiness or bounciness of asphalt (compared, for example, to dirt) in order to make sure what he or she was saying was actually true.

This myth – although it is widely popular – is not true. Please, runners seeking to avoid bodily injury, please do not run in the streets, for if you do, you risk being hit by passing cars, and you cause disruptions to the flow of vehicular traffic. Please, runners seeking to protect knees or hips, please do not run on concrete, pavement, asphalt, stone, macadam, or any other hard and unyielding surface; individuals seeking yielding, joint-friendly running trails would do well to run on grassy or earthen tracks.

I no longer run regularly, nor do I currently chair my local municipality's Department of Street Works; therefore, I do not know if a procedure for making joint-friendly asphalt has been invented, and whether or not every street in America has been repaved accordingly. A side note: I often see persons running on the edges of busy streets, with traffic. To run – or to walk – with traffic is to all but beg for bodily trauma, general physical paralysis, and a slow, painful death. When one walks or runs in the same direction as traffic, one cannot see cars coming from behind, and, therefore, one has no warning at all of an impending collision. Alternately, when one walks or runs in the direction opposite of traffic, one has at least a few milliseconds to jump out of the way should a car happen to veer outside of its lane. While the logic of moving against traffic seems sound, I am nonetheless dismayed that, unlike the illogic of running on rocks, it has fled from the minds of those evidently self-respecting, otherwise healthy individuals who strap on go-fasters and get out for a nice jog.

I shall, however, stop worrying about the poor life-choices made by other people, and start looking for a bright side in all of this: the self-removal of unthinking fools from the general breeding population. Please, dear friend, stay safe out there by staying smart, keeping your head on a swivel and a song in your heart. Mahalo.




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on street art's blooming goddess

For all of their differences in style, method, appearance, gait, and habit, street artists share one thing in common: A life-long love for dandelions (or, more specifically, for kicking off their white, fluffy, puff-ball-like heads). As individuals who spend their time defacing and destroying things that everyone else seems to be ignoring, graffiti-writers will – should the opportunity present itself – run wildly into a field of dandelions solely to decapitate as many of them as they can in as short an amount of time as possible. The dandelion requires just this sort of action to spread her seeds upon the Shifting Winds of Fortune, and because she gains benefit of the graffito's destructive tendencies, she is his goddess, his flower-patroness.

Beyond the symbiotic interdependency of dandelion with street artist, 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 art for its tendency to appear on most any imaginable surface regardless of perimeter fencing, guards, closed-circuit television cameras, or watchdogs. Both are loved by a shrinking, silent minority that keeps its opinions to itself in an effort to enjoy 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 appears in neglected, contaminated, and otherwise ignored places (alleyways, abandoned buildings, concrete highway embankments) where few persons would normally venture. Cities hire squads of individuals, outfitting them with brushes and buckets and sending them out to paint over great patches of well-executed works of art, thus providing the graffito with fresh canvas upon which to erect his new works, and encouraging him to pursue his Happiness in places hard or dangerous to reach; similarly, the dandelion – which is sprayed with poison, dug out of the soil, dug into the soil, weeded, treated, and burned, all to little avail – itself being a cheerful little blossom, is more than likely to re-appear during the next growing season in greater numbers than before and with deeper and more tenacious roots. It is just 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, whereas street art and dandelions improve the human condition freely and without ado, laying beauty at mankind's feet without seeking thanks or asking so much as a by-your-leave. And, perhaps finally, street art appears as if by magic, covering and enlivening large surfaces that just the day before had been blank, imposing concrete walls; and dandelions appear if by magic, their shining yellow faces covering and enlivening lawns that just the day before had been mono-cultured, sterile swaths of grass denuded of any traces of natural abundance.

We, the SDUBS* of America, would like to remind the inhabitants of this land to search for beauty in places it is rarely thought to inhabit, to pioneer ways to improve the urban and the natural environments (especially by blanketing each with bright and vibrant colors), to rejoice in the sudden – almost magical – appearance of beauty in places forgotten and forlorn, and to remember to honor Goddess Dandelion by kicking as many of her puffy balls as you possible can. Stay on your toes out there, dear friends, and may you be filled, always, with divine breath.

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(* self-directed urban beautification specialists)