jobs now offline

The grand American experiment in shifting to the Internet the system for finding, evaluating, and hiring employees seems to have failed. According to an ABC news report, 80% of all available jobs in America are to be had only for that special person-in-the-know, not merely to the first schlub with an Internet connection. This author is not the least bit surprised to hear that companies have stopped hiring off the Web; each job at which I have worked in the last decade I got through a personal contact, a temporary-employment agency, a physical visit, or a similarly old-fashioned method, and only a few of the hundreds of resumes and job-specific cover letters I have ever emailed, posted, or uploaded garnered even a brief response.

Thousands of templates exist on dozens of sites that job-seekers can use to craft for themselves slick-looking resumes, and the World-Wide-Web abounds with page upon page of detailed instructions on how to puff up or expand one's job-history, on how to use bullet-points to the greatest effect, on what the placement of those bullet-points says about the applicant's character, on the varying importance of a snail-mailed thank-you note, and on just the right thing to say in the subject line in order to catch a downtrodden recruiter's eye; I can only imagine the difficulty of doing the job of a human-resources officer sifting through mountains of documents that all look the same, that all sound the same, that all employ the same tricks. The Online resume, it seems, has faded into oblivion almost as quickly as it hurtled to the forefront of our commonly-shared dream of finally doing something satisfying or worthwhile with our lives. (Whether or not we are misguided fools for seeking fulfillment and reward outside of ourselves – in stilted and stifling job-environments – rather than within the crowded recesses of our own souls, is not in question here, although it probably should be.)

Some of us still have a bit of spunk left in our gullets, however, such as the young man who posted a fake hiring-bulletin on craigslist.com in order to spy on his competition for personal-assistant jobs, receiving over four hundred responses before the end of the first day. (He now has the names and addresses of hundreds of different people, data he can sell – to advertisers, political campaigns, or Kenyan scammers – for good money.) One idea is to get all of the people looking for jobs to come together at a physical location where they can network and figure out which businesses to start with each other, or get paid to assemble widgets, thingamajigs, or whatnots – for a few hours a day while getting paid the federal minimum wage. (With just a sliver of the hundreds of billions of dollars that the United States of America spends waging war on foreign peoples, we could employ every single job-seeking man, woman, and teenager in this country for a whole decade, in the spirit of the CCC, the Civilian Conservation Corps.) Another idea is to pay these unemployed masses to stand out in the streets to watch the watchers, to keep an eye on corruption-prone and law-breaking police officers. Our ultimate purpose as a nation, however, is to create methods by which our citizens can discover their true passions and abilities, so that they might Pursue their Happiness independent of outside pressure, outside influence, and outside coercion rather than sitting around all day staring at television screens and computer monitors and eating junk food; but, with our state and federal governments filled with persons who have sold their souls to corporate scumbags from agribusiness (Monsanto) and to banks awash with debt-payments (BofA, TD Ameritrade, etc.), we, the American people, will keep on suffering, all the good jobs having been shifted to South-East Asia. But, hey, someone has to restock these t-shirts, and man the deep-fryers. Mahalo.

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on providing Welfare

For this author, the main reason that we cannot allow Mitt Romney to gain our nation's highest office is that he has never read the Constitution of the United States of America. If the former governor of Massachusetts had at one time read even the preamble to this our second-most sacred document after the Declaration of Independence, he might have retained at least a distant memory that the role of government in this land is to provide for the general Welfare and to secure the Blessings of Liberty to us and to our Posterity. (Perhaps his and his Republican Party's openly-declared plans to amend the Constitution in order to define marriage as between 1 (one) man and 1 (one) woman include secret plans to edit out this embarrassing preamble, this handful of words that contradict Mr. Romney's apparent core beliefs by clearly stating that government in America is supposed to help and uplift as many people as possible, not make as few as possible fabulously rich.)

It is better, perhaps, for Mr. Romeny and the Republican Party in America (or RePIA, pronounced “rape-ya”) to remain ignorant of both the Declaration and the Constitution; if they were to take a closer look at either of these our precious documents, or to do any background investigations into the deeper meanings inherent to these two texts, they may find therein more passages aimed at spreading Liberty and equality amongst the peoples of the world that they would want to remove, amend, excise, cut out, and destroy. Curious to me is that Mitt-the-Governor-of-Massachusetts seemed to understand the role of our government far better than does Mitt-the-Candidate-for-President, he who appears to be catering to – openly and without shame – that billionaire lunatic-fringe that continues to profit from the Great Recession, from this nation's spreading of war across the globe, and from the purposeful and planned destruction of economic equality in America. I watch with consternation while riding my bicycle through this little blue-collar town as more and more banners appear on the lawns of modest homes that support Romney and Ryan; after talking with an Obama-hating neighbor, however, I am gaining some insight into his and the other Romney-supporters' views and methodology.

As far as I can tell, these people passionately hate Obama and timidly support Romney because they expose themselves to the narrow views of but a few political pundits, TV fear-mongers, and syndicated radio talk-show-hosts; they have allowed hatred to fester in their hearts by avoiding any opinions other than those that stoke their ire, preferring cocoons of self-righteous indignation to the rage-stilling effect of a careful and rational analysis of many different sources, news outlets, and opinions (my neighbor mentioned that he despised Obama not for his race but for being an idiot, even though we had not even come close to discussing the tone of our sitting President's skin). Dear reader, please understand that in the past I have been guilty of this same sort of behavior, passionately hating George W. Bush and mocking his every word and deed; now, however, seeing things from the Other Side, I recognize the danger that lurks in such narrow-minded and puffed-up views of the members of political parties. Hatred of this type obscures the true danger that is facing democracy and equality in America, which comes from people thinking that there is a difference between the Democratic and Republican Parties, that one is better than the other, that one has all of the answers and the other, none. Both of these Parties regularly mock the notion of representative government, both cater to fantastically-rich corporate and private donors to the detriment of tens of millions of hard-working average Americans, both are farcical shadows of their former selves, and both long ago sacrificed sacred Honor for the shallow reward of fleeting political power. Woe is unto us, friend – America delenda est; only through dastardly and destructive effort might we change the status-quo, and regain for ourselves all that we have lost. Mahalo, though, and keep fighting.

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on naming conventions

Every state in America's South has destroyed the concept that “All men are created equal” by adding to its state constitution portions of the Christian bible's old testament. Proving themselves wholly ignorant of the fact that none of the persons who founded this American Republic saw fit to restrict the rights of free-thinking Americans of legal age who happen to be homosexuals to enter into contractual agreements with other free-thinking Americans of legal age who happen to be homosexuals, tens of millions of freedom-hating voters in Alabama, Texas, Mississippi, Georgia, Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virgina, Tennessee, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Kentucky decided to embed the hateful opinions of their god Jehovah, or YHWH, into their states' constitutions (for an example of these dastardly and cruel opinions, read Leviticus 20, specifically verse 13). Instead of actually coming out of their hate-closets and confessing their disdain for the notion that democracy can flourish amongst the peoples of the earth only when church is kept separate from state, these misguided voters casually forgot to mention which religious text they drew upon when drafting their laws, laws that ended hundreds of years of equality amongst the various peoples of America.

In keeping with this new tradition of doing crazy things without calling them crazy things and actually getting away with it, we Lovers of Liberty shall no longer refer to smoking weed as smoking weed, but as grimble-dinks (or something similar), and our spraying of graffiti and applying of street-art will henceforth be called huddel-fugg (or something similar). Since neither grimble-dinks nor huddel-fugg have been classified as crimes by any judge known to mankind, we shall do them to our hearts' content and without even the slightest effort to hide these our preferred methods for Pursuing our Happiness as we see best fit.

The accused war-criminal former President George Walker Bush authorized the use of torture by referring to it as “enhanced interrogation techniques,”and the accused war-criminal President Barack Hussein Obama continues to violate the right of individuals not to be transported across vast distances in order to be imprisoned without trial or access to legal counsel by referring to it as “renditioning.” By committing these crimes against humanity, our highest officers have proven to mankind that we Americans are but loathsome jackasses who long ago sacrificed our sacred Honor by violating a half-dozen national and international laws in order to end the lives of persons merely suspected of having done us harm (see the slaying of the Saudi Arabian citizen known as Usama bin Laden and the killing of the American citizen known as Anwar al-Awliki). These our accused war-criminal Presidents have shown us Lovers of Liberty a way, however, of doing whatever we please without fear of punishment, retribution, or the application of clearly-worded federal, state, local, national, and international laws and statutes – we have but to do what we wish to do when we decide is best to do it and to ignore the cries and condemnation of any and all persons who demand that we stop. Unlike our accused war-criminal presidents, however, we just want to Pursue our Happiness in accordance with the Declaration of Independence and the XIV Amendment to the Constitution when, where, and how we as individuals decide is best; we shall continue to respect the Liberty of others even as we are imprisoned and abused by the various layers of American government for living lives full of Liberty and devoid of harm to other persons. What a fucking crock of bullshit we have allowed this country to become. Hrm, though, and mahalo.

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corporate rule falters

As a self-appointed bane of America's corporate ruling-class, I speak often of the risks posed by these quasi-humans and their propensity to homogenize and sterilize any and every process and action they undertake. I have been encouraged, however, in recent months, by what appears to me to be a slipping of the corporate hand. Contrary to the image they work so hard to portray in countless and persistent television advertisements, in home-improvement centers such as Lowe's and Home Depot, for example, I wander the aisles for long periods of time without being approached or spoken to by those stores' employees; if I am approached (by anyone other than poorly-disguised undercover police officers who shadow my every move, all but begging me to steal something), I am called such things as, “Guy,” “Bro,” “Man,” or “Dude,” and only rarely, “Sir.” Such is the laxity of these corporations' wage-slaves that they stand around frequently in clusters talking to one another about anything but work, about kids or sports or how much their lives such, in earshot of paying customers who might need help finding something; such is the impotence of their bosses in middle-management that mandatory training-sessions aimed at fostering within their hearts a sense of decorum or self-pride appear to be wasted effort.

Whereas I initially placed the blame for such unprofessional behavior squarely on the shoulders of the under-educated and fiscally-misguided employees who live in this area of South-Central Pennsylvania, in my recent travels I have noticed similar behavior exhibited by employees stemming from other regions, as well. Therefore, I suspect that the once-iron grip of corporate rule – a grip that for many decades has relied on employees' fear of retribution or job-loss, their honest desire to serve the customer, and pride in their small-but-important contribution to goals clearly defined in their corporations' mission statement – that such inherent and priceless values have been steam-rolled into oblivion by incessant demands to increase profits and the need to keep stock-values rising, to the detriment of service to the customer. I have noticed the grip of corporate rule slipping in states such as Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut, at stores such as those mentioned above and at Sam's Club, Auto Zone, and at branches of different grocery-store chains.

Could my mind be so filled with vitriol for undemocratic, greedy corporations that I am seeing something that is not there, or could my observations contain a hint of the Truth? Am I so fed up with the way that corporations are destroying the fabric of American society that I nitpick even their slightest professional errors, making mountains out of mole-hills? While I admit to longing for a time when the Commons belonged to all persons equally and when we Yanki were self-reliant and self-respecting individuals who cherished things of intrinsic value and who contributed willingly to communal success instead of just looking out of ourselves all the time, I recognize the futility of my struggle to resurrect such lost values and my resemblance to a fool tilting at windmills; if, however, I do not fight to free the American Dream from the stifling grasp of materialism and conspicuous consumption, who will? If I do not sit here in this cold room every morning banging away at this netbook with a pot full of hot, green tea at my side championing the rights of gays and lesbians and hurling barbs at the creeping menace of homegrown religious extremism, who will? Few Americans are as stupid as I am to stake Life, Fortune, and sacred Honor on the notion that we as a people have a duty to defend Liberty at all cost, to work tirelessly to ensure that all of our fellow humans are treated equally, and to fight governmental over-reach with such foolish brashness as I tend to do; I blame this behavior in part on Silas Nickerson, my 18th Century ancestor, who took up arms in our War for Independence, joining a rag-tag band of homegrown terrorists who were fighting with a distant tyrant for their right to decide for themselves how best to make themselves Safe and Happy. I wonder if old man Silas would applaud my efforts, or if he would succumb to the siren-song of Me-First capitalism, signing away his hard-won freedom for 60 months of interest-free financing. Hrm.

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dangerous self-seclusion

During the period when America's news outlets still reported on this country's ongoing occupation of the sovereign Republic of Afghanistan, they often spoke about the dangerous seclusion of much of the Afghani population. Living in rugged valleys so inaccessible that neighboring villages are sometimes wholly ignorant of one another, even though they live but a few miles apart, the television's talking-heads spoke long ago of the risks to Liberty, justice, and the rights of women that arise when people live in such seclusion, arguing that it granted their religious and societal leaders absolute power over their minds and bodies.

As things stand in America today, however, religious extremism similar to that practiced by close-minded, militant, and misogynistic Islamic leaders in al-Qaida and Hezbollah has infected the minds of even highly-placed officials in the Republican party, rotting the souls of America's Christian extremists, persons who call themselves dominionists. Just as the threat of religious terrorism that we once thought came from without now comes from within, the American people are secluding ourselves into walled-off little worlds whose borders are defined by the edges of our flat-screen television sets, the rims of our hand-held tablet computers, and the invisibly-reaching tendrils of our Wi-Fi transceivers. This home-grown technological self-seclusion is as great a threat to democracy and freedom as the threat posed by Afghani mullahs instilling hatred-of-all-things-unknown in the minds of children living in distant and dusty valleys. Whereas in Afghanistan many villagers only hear and see and are exposed to a limited and selective view of the world – one they receive from often poorly-educated and ill-informed religious leaders – we in America who choose to spend our lives riveted to self-illuminated talking boxes expose ourselves to a limited and selective view of the world, one we receive from often ill-informed religious and societal leaders who exploit fear-of-the-unknown and the power of oft-repeated lies (as per Goebbels) to corrupt the minds of erstwhile free-thinking and self-respecting citizens.

Many other authors and I have rung the warning-bell previously, altering others to the brainwashing and heart-hardening upon which America's mass-media preys, which it perpetuates at all cost, and which it does with such pervasive effectiveness that its methods were copied by the Nazis themselves – all no no avail; it seems that a majority of us Americans do not care that we have become docile sheep, that our minds are owned by vulture-capitalist billionaires, that our hearts are weighted down by pettiness and greed, or that we allow our views to be shaped by small-minded idiots who squawk at cameras with make-up-caked faces. It is not hard, however, to free our minds from enslavement to television or to allow our opinions to grow out of hubris and humility; the healing begins when we turn off our TVs, toss aside our tablets, switch off our radios, and leave our houses to have a nice walk, driving Fear from our minds with gradual surety and loving effort. President Franklin D. Roosevelt got it right when, in 1933, he said, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” Fear festers in the minds of people who shut their ears to differing opinions, who close their hearts to the shades of truth found in dissenting voices, who allow themselves to be caught up in religious fervor and nationalistic self-righteousness. Please, friend, remember to doubt everything that you hear, to question all that you are told, and to fight the urge to live in the manner of a secluded villager who believes everything his mullah tells him. Mahalo.

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laws to obey

Roughly a hundred and forty years ago, the persons who founded this American republic staked their Lives, their Fortunes, and their sacred Honor on a simple yet profound document. Calling it the Declaration of Independence, these people wrote a text that is as powerful today as it was then, shaping our minds, our hearts, our common desires and destinies. The Declaration defines not just the rights of the entirety of humankind to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness, but also the expectations we have for government, in clear and unequivocal language, cementing in the minds of millions of downtrodden persons across the globe the notion that they have the right to be ruled as they see best fit by an entity whose sole purpose it is to make them Safe and Happy.

And, yet, the federal government of the United States of America considers the Declaration to be a dead and useless document, one that We the people of this land cannot use to correct our systems' failures or to turn to for protection from our leaders' overreaches. The federal government justifies this position by claiming that the Declaration only applied to the thirteen original signatory States, and, since we have more than thirteen States today, it no longer grants us the right to shake off the stifling grip of corrupt rule or to free ourselves from the smothering grasp of tyranny. Such an opinion is indeed estimable to tyrants only, not to the democratically-elected leadership of a free and honest people. Not only would such a stance – if applied equally to all legislation passed to date by our houses of Congress – negate all laws but those issuing anew from our legislature each and every year, it would require lawmakers to continuously redefine, on a regular basis, this nation's entire legal framework. Let us take the feds at their word, though, and look at the world for a moment through their cruel and twisted eyes.

The Declaration was ratified unanimously by the Congress of the United States of America; it has been passed down from mother to son and from father to daughter, inspiring countless acts of courageous defiance and helping to lift entire generations out of the stifling sewer of poverty and oppression. In line with federal contempt for the Declaration of Independence, however, let us commonly ignore the Controlled Substances Act of 1970 – which was passed by a Congress other than the one sitting currently – and take any drugs we wish to take. Let us also ignore the provisions of the Patriot Act – which was passed by a Congress other than the one sitting currently – and regain the rights and freedoms that it took from us. Let us ignore the cruel and unusual provisions of the Defense of Marriage Act – which was passed by a Congress other than the one sitting currently – and marry whom we please, be that person man, woman, or something in-between. Is it lunacy to assume that laws only apply while the legislature that passed them is in session, and that they fall by the wayside once it convenes? If this were so, our police forces might actually serve and protect the citizenry rather than abuse us and seek to revoke our personal, human freedoms; if this were so, persons among us – such as Mitt Romney – who exploit loopholes in the tax code for personal financial gain and to the detriment of our nation's treasuries, damaging the welfare of those of us who cannot afford to hire the best tax attorneys money can buy, such persons would be punished for their evil and un-American ways and forced to play nice like everyone else. Even trying to think in such a way chaps my buns to no end; even trying to rewire my brain to see the Declaration of Independence as anything but mankind's ultimate living document drives me to the brink of tears. But, dear friend, this is the land in which we live; our federal and state overlords treat us how we allow them to treat us, in the manner of docile livestock. Perhaps we deserve not Life nor Liberty nor to Pursue our Happiness, only to live as corporate wage-slaves desperately clinging to dim memories of justice and equality for all. There is another way, however, a way for us to live in complete Liberty while looking out for each others' Lives and Fortunes, but we shall never live such a life unless we stand as one, right now, and create for ourselves the type of country that the Declaration of Independence once envisioned, wresting freedom from the corrupt individuals who make up our tyrannical and oppressive government. So stand up, speak out, and demand the right to Pursue your Happiness as you decide is best. Mahalo.

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do unto others

I do not hate the bible, nor do I hate Christians or their religion, but I cannot stand people who gloss over its parts that talk about loving one another and who focus instead on their faith's sinister aspects, such as those demanding that gays be killed (Leviticus 20:13 NAB) and prostitutes be banished (Leviticus 21:9 NAB), persecuted and murdered in the name of god YHWH, Christianity's supreme deity, greater even than Mary, or Yeshua. Matthew, a man who wrote long after the death of Yeshua (if he existed at all), says in the Christian bible's new testament, basically, that what people do to each other, they do to YHWH, their god. Put a different way, Matt is trying to tell people to do unto others as they would have done unto themselves.

Oh what a peaceful and happy world this would be if professed Christians would but hew to this code, treat others as they themselves would prefer to be treated, understand that America was not founded on their faith, mind their own business, and stop trying to ban gay marriage and a woman's right to the contents of her stomach. If we lived in such a world, we would have fewer doctors being killed by Christian extremists, fewer politicians currying the favor (Defense of Marriage) of homegrown Taliban-style Christians (dominionists), and, perhaps, lower levels of industrial pollution, self-neglect, laziness, and materialism. (I am merely speculating that an interpretation of the Christian bible based on a love for the natural world and a respect for the tender fragility of the human spirit, one rooted in humility and moderation and founded on the notion that the godhead resides within each and every one of us and not in a mythical palace in the clouds, that such an interpretation would trump the many of the current interpretations, those being very similar to the hard-line and murderous views espoused by Islamic terrorists who deny women's rights and destroy anything that violates their strict religious codes.) As things stand, however, today's more prominent Christian leaders – similar to their counterparts in al-Qaida and Hezbollah – preach hatred for the unusual, fear of all things strange, unwavering obedience to codes designed for a nomadic Bronze Age desert-people, and discrimination against anyone living a life other than one of gasoline-guzzling, television-watching, Jesus-praising lethargy. How do we convince the Christians to stop their assault on the Liberty of the rest of us Americans? How do we show them just how anti-American are their efforts to restrict the freedoms of women and gays? For a religion that prides itself on its dozens of so-called saints – persons discriminated against and killed because of their faith – Christianity has made a remarkable and shocking about-face; now, it is the Christians who discriminate against and persecute others for their beliefs; now, it is the Christians calling for our nation to be smothered by religious laws similar to those that might exist under a globe-spanning Islamic Caliphate.

If the efforts of today's Christians to force the rest of us to live by the rules of their god YWHW are what they see as doing unto others as they would have done unto themselves, perhaps we who do not share their faith should give them a taste of their own medicine and drive them bodily into the sea, fighting fire with fire; perhaps we should ban their rituals and costumes and force them to live in constant fear of repression, hatred, ridicule, and physical battery, much as they do to our homosexual fellow Americans. We non-Christians, though, are Liberty-loving individuals who mind our own business and who don't care if two men want to marry one another; having fought for centuries to bring about equality and justice, we shall not allow a few thousand bible-thumping lunatics to ruin the fun for everyone else – not on this whorphan's watch, at least. No, friend, we champions of freedom would never infringe upon the inalienable rights of other adults to enter into contracts or agreements that are to their liking. We keep our minds free and our heads on swivels, fighting religious oppression wherever it should rear its ugly head. Mahalo.

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a Declarational pledge

In the second sentence of the Declaration of Independence, that legal document that lies at the heart of this American nation, our founding persons – and, by extension, all American citizens living or dead – declare that, “[A]ll Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness[.]” (Since starting this piece, I have read that the federal government does not consider the Declaration an active legal document because it was ratified before the Constitution by merely thirteen states, not after this republic's official establishment by the number of states we have now; so long as even a single American yearns for Liberty and the right to Pursue his Happiness as he sees best fit, however, the Declaration grants him – and us all – the right to alter and abolish our government until it creates Safety and Happiness for all, equally.) Long have our political and social leaders hewn to this pledge, laboring tirelessly to ensure that we are all blessed with freedom and justice; now, however, the Republican Party plans to destroy the essence of the Declaration of Independence by amending its sister-text, the Constitution, with a sentence defining marriage according to the Christian bible, just one of hundreds of different religious texts we turn to in this country, each and every day.

To restrict a person's right to marry whomever he should please is to rob him of his ability to Pursue Happiness; it says to him that he is worth less than others, that he was created less than equal, that his Liberty is less important than the Liberty of persons with a taste for heterosexual liaisons. Anyone with even the slightest shred of intelligence will look at the quote given above and immediately join our ranks as we fight the Republican Party's plans to abolish the rule of law and to supplant it with the rule of the church. (Which church or which faith is irrelevant; organized religion, with its fear-based indoctrination tactics, brainwashing of young people, and rigid, unyielding structure, poses among the greatest of conceivable threats to the Safety and Happiness of free-thinking, Liberty-loving individuals everywhere.)

This author finds it curious that Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan prefer lies and hatred to Honor and Truth, and that they care so little for the opinions of the American people that they dare to stand up and say, Fuck everyone who isn't a hardcore Christian, fuck everyone who likes to sleep with persons of the same sex, and fuck everyone poorer than our corporate cronies and slave-masters. More shocking, however, is that roughly half of the American voting population – some seventy million (70,000,000) people – seem to agree with the vile nonsense spewing from the Republican Party, its members and representatives; when tens of millions of people abandon critical thinking and stop doubting the bullshit that is being shoveled down their throats we get things such as the Nazi's Holocaust, the Soviets' gulags, and Bush's Patriot Act; when tens of millions of people sit idly by as their leaders rack up record debts and wage wars of aggression against sovereign foreign nations, we can honestly say that America has fallen from grace, that the pledge of equality once made in the Declaration of Independence is null and void, and that our attempt to create a just and peaceful society comprised of self-reliant and self-respecting individuals who mind their own business has been trampled under the jackboots of mindless, Me-First automatons blindly adhering to poorly-formed notions and vacuous party-lines.

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things glossed over

When releasing in its platform for the Romeny and Ryan presidential ticket an assault on the liberty of gays and lesbians to get married, the Republican Party in America has proven itself fully ignorant of our founding persons' intent. Since none of our founding persons – not George Washington, Abigail Adams, or Thomas Jefferson – saw fit to speak about gay marriage or to define marriage according to the dustier and more embarrassing sections of the Christian's bible, we can only wonder how the Republicans came up with the fantastical and farcical notion that government should regulate marriage between same-sex individuals but not the amount of pollution emitted by industry.

In the Treaty of Tripoli, George Washington and John Adams wrote: “America was not in any way founded upon the Christian faith,” words that were ratified unanimously by their contemporaries in Congress. Keeping this quote in our minds, we cannot dare to allow the rules of Christianity to become the laws of our land, or stand by as they infect the halls of our secular government with narrow-mindedness and hatred; to do so would reduce us to the level of such murderous tyrants as we struggle to overthrow, the Taliban and al Qaida. Perhaps it is because our troopers by the hundreds of thousands have been battling religious-based terrorism in foreign lands, and that we as a nation have focused most of our attention and a lot of our treasure on making things better for non-American foreigners, that religious-based terrorism is now threatening to take hold of this nation's highest office. Since turning the rules of one religion into the law of the land would subject portions of our population to biblically-justified oppression, theocratic rule is a form of terrorism; if we allow someone such as Mitt Romney to pass a Constitutional amendment defining marriage as between one man and one woman (which is spoken of only in the Christian bible's old testament and not at all mentioned by Jesus), we would establish theocratic rule, thus terrorizing innocent queers and non-combatant fags, neighbors and citizens alike.

It appears to me that the Republicans are banking all their hopes and aspirations on a voting block made up of religiously-conservative, born-again-Christian fringe-types, affluent Caucasians prone to shitting themselves with fear upon seeing men in turbans or drag. I admit that the asses' move was a genius stroke of propaganda, using the term Defense of Marriage to define their assault on the rights of homosexual Americans to marry one another; defense, however, implies that something is being attacked, whereas no one is trying to restrict heterosexuals' ability to get married, merely to grant homosexuals rights equal to those granted to heterosexuals. I have mentioned it before, and far better persons have said it before me, but I believe that we are now in the part of this country's life-cycle where things get worse before they get better; I can hardly imagine something worse than being forced to live by the rules of a religion not of my choosing, to have to kill unruly children (Deuteronomy 12:18-21), to have to kill non-virgin brides (Deuteronomy 22:13-21) – to have to kill anybody, for that matter, in order to satisfy the vain and petty blood-lust of YHWH, the Christians' god. If, friend, you feel the same way, if you would like to control your own life, if you mind your own business and could care less whom other people marry, please say NO to religious rule, fight Mitt Romney's and the Republican Party's plans for religious terrorism in America, and help defend fragile, tender Liberty. Mahalo, then, to you, oh brave and selfless warrior.

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lazy organic gardening

(Most of the knowledge passed on in this article comes from a few dozen Organic Gardening magazines I found in a dust-and-cobweb-covered stack in the barn. While printed in the late 1970s and early '80s, they contain timeless wisdom and much good advice.)

Throughout the spring and summer of 2012, this author has been conducting an experiment in lazy organic gardening (LOG). Among the benefits of LOG are a decreased workload, a drastic reduction in gardening-related stress, and three gardening plots nearly indistinguishable from their neighbors, wildflower-filled fallow fields. The inspiration for this method came in part from the Tao Teh Ching, specifically verse 7, in which Lao Tzu (via Jonathan Star, who provides the best translation of the text I have yet found) asks what an individual could do that the universe has not already accomplished for him, or her. Liking the sound of this notion and attempting to put it into practice, I started by digging out the plots to sixteen inches before setting in a three-inch-thick layer of composted leaves and grass, to which I added generous handfuls of bio-charred bamboo (wood-charcoal works just as well) before piling the dug-out soil back on. When planting, I applied thick layers of mulch around each newly-transplanted seedling (mulch was mostly cut grass with some leaves and twigs mixed in). (Next year, I shall raise my seedlings in a cold frame in hopes of a greater success rate, which this year was a dismal 15%). Then, I stepped away and waited, watering the plots (partly via small-scale drip irrigation) only when the first six inches of soil dried out.

Among the benefits of thick and early mulching include almost no weed growth and preservation of the soil's inherent, natural moisture balance. Bio-charring contributed to the vigorous and healthy growth of those few plants that survived my poor seedling-raising protocols, among them crook-neck squash, potatoes, cherry tomatoes, string beans, and green peppers. Pollination occurred quickly at both plot sites (two near the house, the other across the stream), given their proximity to large growths of jewel-weed, native and healing grasses (plantago lanceolata, p. major, taraxacum offinale, oxalis acetosella), and patches of wild blackberries that attract legions of industrious honey-bees which have made this little valley their home. At no point in the plants' life-cycles did this whorphan pull weeds, pick bugs, or apply chemical agents; the plants were left at the mercy of Mother Nature, who was fair in her attentions, sending pest-eating paper wasps to patrol the crops but also blighting a number of plantings, among them the cabbage and broccoli, which were completely destroyed. (This was an attempt to put the Taoist verse referenced above into practice by allowing the universe to grow the plants and to keep them healthy.)

For next year's growing seasons, I plan to take things further by trying a no-till method in which seedlings are transplanted directly into small, watered, composted holes in the lawn itself. Furthermore, I shall plant directly into the plot I made by dropping a four-layer-thick pad of cardboard (pizza boxes) onto the lawn and covering it with twelve inches of grass and leaves. (The original foot of material has composted itself down to just few inches, which I have covered with another foot of the same.) I aim to find (and perpetuate) varieties that grow well both in this clay-filled soil and in the local atmospheric variances, which include high summer heat, soggy springs and falls, and windy, cold winters. The ultimate coup for this lazy organic gardener would be to make tame crop species wild again so that they would offer their bounty to anyone passing by, blessing the bodies of persons-in-the-know with organic roughage and healthful trace minerals and strengthening the immune systems of persons brave enough to eat unwashed produce straight from the ground. Such is the life of the organic whorphan, he who would rather watch his plants get eaten alive than break out noxious chemicals; but to pump complex compounds into the soil and the air would be to try to do for myself what the universe has already accomplished, which, for now, is an abundance of fresh, organic vegetables. Huzzah, and, mahalo.

場黑麥 mentiri factorem fecit

Liberty, at stake

Liberty, at stake

This picture was created on 25 March 2011, well before the Republic Party in America released the Defense Of Marriage provision in its Romney/Ryan presidential platform, which is a brazen assault on the rights of gay, lesbian, transgender, and bisexual Americans to get married. Fight theocratic rule! Fight injustice! Maintain the separation of church and state! Mahalo. X

pirates, parties, September

In honor of Septembarrrr, that mooncycle dedicated to All Things Pirate, let us turn our gazes to the Federal Republic of Germany, where the voice of the common man still has power. While in America people upset with Me-First capitalism, Beltway corruption, and an ever-more-menacing police state must resort to standing out in the street getting pepper-sprayed and handcuffed for expressing their political views, Deutschlanders upset with the status-quo may now look for representation from that nation's newest political party, die Piraten (the Pirates). When discussing America's two-party system and the lunacy of having just two organs to represent and address the concerns of over one-hundred-and-fifty-millions of unique voices, people often tell me that our population is simply too large, and that its members have simply too many different opinions, for there to be more than two political parties, an argument which has never made sense to me.

Can just a couple of parties represent the opinions of our massive voting base better than many different parties tailored to each region individually and to its special and unique demands and abilities? They cannot. In fact, the Democratic and the Republican parties in America do such a poor job not just of promoting the general Welfare but also of securing the Blessings of Liberty to all persons equally that it is a wonder our society has not sooner descended into civil war. Such is the failure of our massive, ineffective, easily-corruptible one-party system (because Dems and Reps are basically two sides of the same coin) that, with the efforts undertaken recently by President Obama to enact in this land a police state, our republic hardly resembles the nation it was just a dozen years ago, in the good old days before we threw up our hands in fearful defeat, rescinding our rights (Patriot Act) and allowing President Bush and his puppetmaster Dick Cheney to violate this nation's two-hundred-year-long refusal to torture or mishandle our prisoners of war (see here for link to page involving U.S. torture cells at Abu Gharib prison) and letting them violate due process, personal privacy, the Geneva Convention, and the notion that every human being – American or not, combatant or not – has the right to a swift trial by his or her peers.

Arrrr! I have fallen into a tirade against old man bushes and his triggerhappy boss, losing myself in vile and vituperative rebuke against the forces of bygone evil. Regarding the links posted above, at least the Germans can now vote instead of hurling paving-bricks and fighting small armies to secure their rights; in America, though, we have come to see police officers as persons with ultimate power, as nearly god-like individulas whom we dare not touch, spite, or trust. We have forsaken personal Liberty and self-determination for a state of questionable Safety in which the only reason the cops exist is to punish us for not following the tens of thousands of different laws that we our political leaders have passed. To whom can we turn in this our time of woe? On whom do we rely to secure for us the Blessings of Liberty and to represent the interests of the Commons and of the common man alike? Our two national political parties do not do these things; Republicans and Democrats sit on Capitol hill in plush, tax-payer-financed office suites receiving visits from lobbyists and corporate donors who hand over envelopes stuffed cash. Oh, if we but lived in a democracy; oh, if our supposed representatives would but give up their fat paychecks, cushy pensions, and comprehensive coverage and try living on minimum wage for a while without access to decent health-care. Then, dear friend, then we would see some positive change in this country. I fear, however, that we may have to wait a few years until a person from the Pirate Party of America takes the presidency. Ho hum teedle-dum and a bottle of mahalo.

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on the audacity

Attention, liberty-loving, self-respecting Americans who mind their own business: the forces of greed, deceit, and religious oppression are running for president. Anyone supporting the notion of equality amongst humans ought help to combat this threat. Long have we winced when our leader spoke of ruling us according to the rules found in Christian bible, which is just one of the countless different religious books that we Americans turn to every day. Messieurs Romney and Ryan just announced that if they should be appointed by the electoral college to the presidency that they would add to our secular Constitution a line defining marriage as between one man and one woman. Not only would such an amendment violate the rights of gay and lesbian Americans of sound mind and legal age to wed whomever they should wish to wed, it would contaminate a pure and honest document with the hateful directive of YHWH, the Christian's jealous (Exodus 20:3) and genocidal (Joshua 6:17) godhead. This, however, is not the gravest threat facing our nation at this time; the greater threat comes from the Republican Party itself, and from its mindless, lie-spewing, line-toeing members, light-skinned and well-to-do individuals, puppets marching in jackbooted lock-step with tears of joy in their eyes as their leaders gut the welfare state and destroy the last remaining remnants of fragile, precious Liberty.

Millions march across the globe to protest the greed of vulture capitalists, the avarice of our corporate overlords, and the cruelty of consumption-oriented capitalism, and yet the members of the Republican Party in America chose as their candidate for our nation's highest office a 1%er, a silver-spoon-sucking, income-tax-evading, private-jet-flying, local-job-destroying douchebag whose first name rhymes with shit. And why shouldn't they? They long ago sold their souls to the first corporate bidder to dangle an envelope stuffed with greenbacks in front of their milky gazes, forfeiting sacred Honor for cash, a paltry exchange. This author is not trying to say that only the Republican Party is a donation-addled behemoth that cannot possibly represent the varied interest of one hundred and sixty millions of American voters; the Democratic Party is just as deaf to the cries of the poor, as blind to the whites of its lies, and as polluted with the foul stink of corporate funding as are its donkey-sucking counterparts across the aisle. It is shocking, though, that the Republicans would prove so disconnected from reality, so stultified in what passes with them for thinking, so bedazzled by the righteous fury of religious conservatism that they would even seriously consider openly releasing the platform they drafted for Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan. It appears, however, that my hope for the future of this land was little more than cruel and short-lived fancy, that my belief that we Americans were still a compassionate people bent on uplifting those without means and on perpetuating the notion of personal Liberty was little more than foolhardy delusion.

Beyond this author's whining and my dislike for theocratic rule, the audacity of the 2012 Republican presidential platform is what really chaps my buns, that a party that once included Abraham Lincoln and Theodor Roosevelt could forget that our founding persons conceived this nation as one of Liberty, equality, Safety, and Happiness for all, not as a piggy-bank for brainwashed, super-rich, goose-stepping religious extremists. (America's native religious extremist groups are just as dangerous to our common Safety and Happiness as are foreign religious extremist groups such as al-Qaida or Hezbollah.) A Constitutional ban on gay marriage would destroy the right of each American to choose whom to spend his or her life with, be that person black, white, yellow, tall, short, fat, skinny, hirsute, balding, sick, healthy, gay, straight, whole, crippled, or born without hands. Ultimately, it is not the Republican Party's business, nor is it the business of the federal, state, or local government, nor it is not the business of heterosexual individuals to tell homosexual or transsexual individuals how they should live their lives. So let's all start minding our own business, and focus on making our own lives long, and happy. Stand up, speak out, fight injustice, and keep America free of morally-justified terrorism. Mahalo.

場黑麥 mentiri factorem fecit