30 March 2013
27 March 2013
on abandoning cars
Another Bucephalus has fallen victim to neglect, spendthrift, and procrastination. The car, a red Subaru Forester, the author's stout and loyal steed for the past 4 years, died in northern New Jersey on Saturday evening, something within it giving way with a sickening series of uncharacteristic crunching and groaning, screeching and banging. “At least $800 to repair what we think is wrong with it,” the woman at the repair shop told him once the mechanics had had a look at it on Monday morning. “But it could also be the water pump, or something else – we won't really know the total cost until we open it up and take a look inside.”
And so he consigned to the junk heap his faithful Sleipnir of night and fog, brave mount of a dark and fallen prince, choosing to wash his hands of it rather than invest more than the roughly $7000 already in. Bought out of necessity and a luxurious bauble stuck in the otherwise coarse and simple cloak of his life, his old friend will soon be torn apart, raided for parts, chopped, shopped, or simply put outside and left to rot. If he'd have had an extra $2000 lying around he might have had the recent ruptures repaired and a new serpentine belt installed; sacrifices must be made and expectations must be altered to reflect new realities, however, and, so, he'd signed the back of the car's title and put it in with the rest of Tuesday's mail. Requiescat in pacem, dear friend – you shall be missed.
His new mount, a gray and blue landshark-style bicycle that had sat under the front porch for nearly a decade, is once again working well: he has been riding it regularly for the past year. With new tires and brake pads fore and aft, fresh shifter cables, and rear spokes properly tuned, the velocipede allows him to go everywhere he needs to go around town and haul everything he might need to haul silently and without producing more exhaust than his own breath, more waste than that already gurgling in his guts. If he had but sold the car before it exploded, he might have recouped some of its value, but at least no one was injured when the automobile system failed, and he now has one less albatross dangling from his neck. At the end of the day, none can know what the Universe intends, and, so, the author accepts his new reality with a silent word of thanks to the shifting winds of Fortune for forcing him to make a difficult decision.
mentiri factorem fecit – 場黑麥
And so he consigned to the junk heap his faithful Sleipnir of night and fog, brave mount of a dark and fallen prince, choosing to wash his hands of it rather than invest more than the roughly $7000 already in. Bought out of necessity and a luxurious bauble stuck in the otherwise coarse and simple cloak of his life, his old friend will soon be torn apart, raided for parts, chopped, shopped, or simply put outside and left to rot. If he'd have had an extra $2000 lying around he might have had the recent ruptures repaired and a new serpentine belt installed; sacrifices must be made and expectations must be altered to reflect new realities, however, and, so, he'd signed the back of the car's title and put it in with the rest of Tuesday's mail. Requiescat in pacem, dear friend – you shall be missed.
His new mount, a gray and blue landshark-style bicycle that had sat under the front porch for nearly a decade, is once again working well: he has been riding it regularly for the past year. With new tires and brake pads fore and aft, fresh shifter cables, and rear spokes properly tuned, the velocipede allows him to go everywhere he needs to go around town and haul everything he might need to haul silently and without producing more exhaust than his own breath, more waste than that already gurgling in his guts. If he had but sold the car before it exploded, he might have recouped some of its value, but at least no one was injured when the automobile system failed, and he now has one less albatross dangling from his neck. At the end of the day, none can know what the Universe intends, and, so, the author accepts his new reality with a silent word of thanks to the shifting winds of Fortune for forcing him to make a difficult decision.
mentiri factorem fecit – 場黑麥
25 March 2013
OOS – OOM
In 1989, when the author was 12 years old, his family moved to Europe, to Germany, to Bavaria. Soon thereafter, the Berlin Wall fell, the Iron Curtain crumbled, and a people long divided was suddenly free to mingle, once more. He remembers seeing the East German cars known as the Trabant, or Trabbi, choking the Autobahn outside of the Upper Franconian town in which his father had become the local Lutheran pastor; he remembers the excitement of getting new school-books in geography class that showed Germany united, its border once more extending all the way east, to the river Oder; what he does not remember, however, are the names or faces of any of the classmates he had left Stateside.
So traumatic was the cultural shift, so monumental the changes he faced each day, so daunting the challenge of soaking up a new language and way of living, that he learned to first ignore and then cancel out the yearning and homesickness he felt for the people he had left behind. To this day, once a person is out of his sight, they are generally out of his mind, neither missed nor pined for, needed or necessary; he can just up and leave and live a contented life without ever having to see the people from his past, ever again.
The oos-oom state of mind is a defense mechanism common among people who jettison old cultures for new ones and create for themselves unique, personal, 3rd cultures along the way. It is both curse and blessing, beautiful and bad. On some level, the afflicted individual sacrifices the comfort of tight, reliable interpersonal relationships for freedom from some of the pain of losing loved-ones; he skirts the trap of humanity without giving up the inherent impartiality of his inner beast. Sometimes, the only way to hold on is by letting go.
mentiri factorem fecit – 場黑麥
So traumatic was the cultural shift, so monumental the changes he faced each day, so daunting the challenge of soaking up a new language and way of living, that he learned to first ignore and then cancel out the yearning and homesickness he felt for the people he had left behind. To this day, once a person is out of his sight, they are generally out of his mind, neither missed nor pined for, needed or necessary; he can just up and leave and live a contented life without ever having to see the people from his past, ever again.
The oos-oom state of mind is a defense mechanism common among people who jettison old cultures for new ones and create for themselves unique, personal, 3rd cultures along the way. It is both curse and blessing, beautiful and bad. On some level, the afflicted individual sacrifices the comfort of tight, reliable interpersonal relationships for freedom from some of the pain of losing loved-ones; he skirts the trap of humanity without giving up the inherent impartiality of his inner beast. Sometimes, the only way to hold on is by letting go.
mentiri factorem fecit – 場黑麥
22 March 2013
on smaller states
When the U.S. American states were created, their populations were far smaller than they are today. In the centuries since this nation's inception, it has acquired areas legally, annexed territories by force, bought a region or two, and stolen vast tracks of landscape from numerous First People tribes. Most often, these regions were first broken down into manageable sizes before being given names and assigned stars on the flag. If they had been incorporated at their original sizes, we would now have one state reaching from Baton Rouge to Bismark and another from San Diego to Seattle. Instead of one state legislature and one governor answering to a hundred million people, today's much smaller states allow more people to have a greater role in determining for themselves the course of their lives. In this instances, as in a number of others (think babes, booze, and brats), more is better, and more states would lead to better lives for everyone alive today as well as for the many generations yet unborn. (Immediately, the author objects to his own argument on the grounds that, in the long run, more babes or booze or brats rarely make a person's life better.)
If, for example, we were to split California into three different states (northern coastal, southern coastal, and inland), the populations living in these areas could more effectively band together for the protection and propagation of their own interests instead of being tethered to societal groups with whom they have little in common. Furthermore, a smaller state would allow for greater and more fruitful citizen participation in society: in his lifetime, a man could get to know most everyone in a smaller community and create bonds with the few hundred thousand people living therein, whereas the idea of casually meeting and mingling with everyone in a state of 30 million (plus) souls is unfeasible to the point of being absurd. Today's Californian who desires to become acquainted with all of the people whose driver's licenses resemble his faces a daunting and nearly insurmountable challenge; dispirited and perplexed, he retreats behind the all-too-penetrable defenses of his meager abode and purees his mind watching seven hours of television a day.
As to the preferred size for new states, we humans already self-segregate by moving to cities with greater frequency and in larger numbers. City-sized states would allow for more efficient use of a political representative's time: if his constituents numbered in the two hundred thousand, he might feasibly speak to each one of them at least once a year (by addressing large gatherings of them at public events), whereas, today, governors and legislators struggle constantly with the challenge of trying to speak to even a small fraction of the people whose lives they are supposed to be governing let alone for whom they are expected to draft legislation impartial and beneficial to all. In addition to allowing for a better allocation of resources, reducing the population sizes of states by splintering them into more and smaller entities would provide greater political power to people not living in cities; it would negate situations we currently face in which the voices of far-flung rural residents are drowned out by the opinions of massed and motivated urbanites. The author fears, however, that we U.S. Americans must crawl to the end of the rabbit hole we have already entered and continue to suffer in brazen exacerbation the current trend of Homogenization To Enhance Corporate Profits that piggybacks on the disenfranchisement of great masses of citizens until such time as we come to recognize it for its dangerous and inherent inhumanity, and rid ourselves of it peacefully, and for good. Mahalo.
mentiri factorem fecit – 場黑麥
If, for example, we were to split California into three different states (northern coastal, southern coastal, and inland), the populations living in these areas could more effectively band together for the protection and propagation of their own interests instead of being tethered to societal groups with whom they have little in common. Furthermore, a smaller state would allow for greater and more fruitful citizen participation in society: in his lifetime, a man could get to know most everyone in a smaller community and create bonds with the few hundred thousand people living therein, whereas the idea of casually meeting and mingling with everyone in a state of 30 million (plus) souls is unfeasible to the point of being absurd. Today's Californian who desires to become acquainted with all of the people whose driver's licenses resemble his faces a daunting and nearly insurmountable challenge; dispirited and perplexed, he retreats behind the all-too-penetrable defenses of his meager abode and purees his mind watching seven hours of television a day.
As to the preferred size for new states, we humans already self-segregate by moving to cities with greater frequency and in larger numbers. City-sized states would allow for more efficient use of a political representative's time: if his constituents numbered in the two hundred thousand, he might feasibly speak to each one of them at least once a year (by addressing large gatherings of them at public events), whereas, today, governors and legislators struggle constantly with the challenge of trying to speak to even a small fraction of the people whose lives they are supposed to be governing let alone for whom they are expected to draft legislation impartial and beneficial to all. In addition to allowing for a better allocation of resources, reducing the population sizes of states by splintering them into more and smaller entities would provide greater political power to people not living in cities; it would negate situations we currently face in which the voices of far-flung rural residents are drowned out by the opinions of massed and motivated urbanites. The author fears, however, that we U.S. Americans must crawl to the end of the rabbit hole we have already entered and continue to suffer in brazen exacerbation the current trend of Homogenization To Enhance Corporate Profits that piggybacks on the disenfranchisement of great masses of citizens until such time as we come to recognize it for its dangerous and inherent inhumanity, and rid ourselves of it peacefully, and for good. Mahalo.
mentiri factorem fecit – 場黑麥
20 March 2013
bare and spill
Having spent the past year experimenting on his friends and family (without their consent, of course) and probing just how far he could push an ego until it fought back, this liesmith finds that many Americans have grown accustomed to a person baring his soul and spilling his guts at the drop of a hat, and that baring and spilling is now so commonplace that it causes a stir if does not occur as expected. Instead of being a rare, cathartic event during which one party helps the other deal with or process a traumatic or important event, baring and spilling has become as routine as saying Thank You to a door held open out of politeness – if it does not occur, the person who refuses to bare and spill is looked upon with contempt, and treated with disdain. (This bad habit has an evil twin: that of saying “I Love You" 70 times a day to persons one doesn't really love quite enough to merit saying it to them constantly.) Taking his experiment one step further, the author has stopped baring and spilling to persons to whom he had previously talked unfettered about everything, which has lead to a variety of changes in a number of relationships.
In part, he blames daytime television shows for this overall shift in American habits; their tendency to thrust behavior previously reserved for the therapist's office before the eyes of emotionally-repressed Ynki housewives seems to have helped convince these women to search for the same kind of emotional release in their relationships with girlfriend and husband. (Rarely if ever do the daytime hosts warn of or outline the risks associated with undertaking psychological counseling on one's own.) Guests to these talk shows would routinely break down, releasing their pent-up angers and fears and joys and proclaiming how wonderfully purified they felt after having bared their souls. Housewives whose lives are often ruled by routine soon became addicted to the idea of release and emotional excitement without fully understanding the dangers associated with unassisted, amateur psychology. Some stones are best left unturned, and some secrets were never intended to leave the mental closets in which they reside, but the addiction to backyard pseudo-psychology grew, and spread; it has become so intricately enmeshed in our current society as to be one of its more common features. Today, we seldom accept statements at face value or respect the right of our counterpart to his modicum of privacy, preferring rather to keep prying and peeling back the layers until – for good or ill – we have peered into the tenderest folds of our victim's most dark and dismal core. (The author is guilty of this behavior, just like most other Americans.)
People who pry so incessantly rarely care about helping others lessen emotional turmoil or improve mental well-being; they care more about the power they feel watching a being just as fragile as they are flounder about before he descends into a spiritual malaise of his own making. How, though, might one avoid the trap of the pseudo-psychologist and maintain a pure and honest heart? By staying quiet, politely refusing to play along, and keeping one's business to oneself. We who understand the raw and awesome power of full disclosure, therefore, sparingly spill and barely bare; some beasts are simply best left chained.
mentiri factorem fecit – 場黑麥
In part, he blames daytime television shows for this overall shift in American habits; their tendency to thrust behavior previously reserved for the therapist's office before the eyes of emotionally-repressed Ynki housewives seems to have helped convince these women to search for the same kind of emotional release in their relationships with girlfriend and husband. (Rarely if ever do the daytime hosts warn of or outline the risks associated with undertaking psychological counseling on one's own.) Guests to these talk shows would routinely break down, releasing their pent-up angers and fears and joys and proclaiming how wonderfully purified they felt after having bared their souls. Housewives whose lives are often ruled by routine soon became addicted to the idea of release and emotional excitement without fully understanding the dangers associated with unassisted, amateur psychology. Some stones are best left unturned, and some secrets were never intended to leave the mental closets in which they reside, but the addiction to backyard pseudo-psychology grew, and spread; it has become so intricately enmeshed in our current society as to be one of its more common features. Today, we seldom accept statements at face value or respect the right of our counterpart to his modicum of privacy, preferring rather to keep prying and peeling back the layers until – for good or ill – we have peered into the tenderest folds of our victim's most dark and dismal core. (The author is guilty of this behavior, just like most other Americans.)
People who pry so incessantly rarely care about helping others lessen emotional turmoil or improve mental well-being; they care more about the power they feel watching a being just as fragile as they are flounder about before he descends into a spiritual malaise of his own making. How, though, might one avoid the trap of the pseudo-psychologist and maintain a pure and honest heart? By staying quiet, politely refusing to play along, and keeping one's business to oneself. We who understand the raw and awesome power of full disclosure, therefore, sparingly spill and barely bare; some beasts are simply best left chained.
mentiri factorem fecit – 場黑麥
18 March 2013
freedom to choose
Some time ago, NPR aired a debate about whether or not Pennsylvania should sell off the liquor stores it owns and operates. During this debate, a woman advocated for the rights of consumers to have access to the best possible selection of booze, saying that choice is freedom and that freedom is the American way. (The author is paraphrasing here). Since 1971, the federal government of the United States of America has waged war on the right of every person under its jurisdiction to choose for himself which drugs to introduce to his body; since passage of the Controlled Substances Act of 1971 (CSA), Liberty has been under constant and incessant attack from local, state, and federal government, the very agents who should have been protecting her, all along.
When the state makes some drugs illegal (weed, coke) while profiting from and promoting the sale of other drugs (alcohol, nicotine), it chooses sides, sending millions of non-violent persons to jail for wanting to do with their bodies as they saw best fit. The XIV amendment to the Constitution was designed to protect against just such governmental overreach, stating: “[no] State shall deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law[.]” If a person should demonstrate an inability to handle certain drugs without posing a threat to himself or others, he should be banned from consuming those drugs. Individuals, however, who have not been banned by a judge from smoking weed should feel free to do so as often as they wish; no aspect of the Constitution gives any branch of our government the right to infringe upon the common freedom of all individuals living in America by passing a law as destructive to our inalienable and immutable rights as is the tyrannical Controlled Substances Act of 1971.
In the 42 years since adoption of the CSA, the business of punishing and incarcerating non-violent Americans for consuming and possessing their drugs of choice has become big business. Lawyers, judges, parole and police officers, wardens, jail builders, and drug warlords all continue to profit from the ban on certain drugs. We the People must make the right to choose inalienable once more and strike down the prohibitions currently in place; then, the individuals just mentioned would have to go out and get jobs of actual usefulness instead of being allowed to game a system that punishes freedom-loving Americans for pursuing their Happiness as they see best fit. A person's body is the only piece of property he cannot live without; he may do with it as he pleases so long as he is not infringing demonstrably upon the right of any other person to life, liberty, or property. To lock someone up for changing his brain chemistry by smoking weed is no different from locking him up for changing his brain chemistry by eating a large bowl of sugary breakfast cereal. Let us realign ourselves with this nation's founding principles and legalize the freedom to choose by ending the madness that has brutalized Liberty every day for the past 15,330 days. Fight tyranny; act freely; defend Liberty. Mahalo.
mentiri factorem fecit – 場黑麥
When the state makes some drugs illegal (weed, coke) while profiting from and promoting the sale of other drugs (alcohol, nicotine), it chooses sides, sending millions of non-violent persons to jail for wanting to do with their bodies as they saw best fit. The XIV amendment to the Constitution was designed to protect against just such governmental overreach, stating: “[no] State shall deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law[.]” If a person should demonstrate an inability to handle certain drugs without posing a threat to himself or others, he should be banned from consuming those drugs. Individuals, however, who have not been banned by a judge from smoking weed should feel free to do so as often as they wish; no aspect of the Constitution gives any branch of our government the right to infringe upon the common freedom of all individuals living in America by passing a law as destructive to our inalienable and immutable rights as is the tyrannical Controlled Substances Act of 1971.
In the 42 years since adoption of the CSA, the business of punishing and incarcerating non-violent Americans for consuming and possessing their drugs of choice has become big business. Lawyers, judges, parole and police officers, wardens, jail builders, and drug warlords all continue to profit from the ban on certain drugs. We the People must make the right to choose inalienable once more and strike down the prohibitions currently in place; then, the individuals just mentioned would have to go out and get jobs of actual usefulness instead of being allowed to game a system that punishes freedom-loving Americans for pursuing their Happiness as they see best fit. A person's body is the only piece of property he cannot live without; he may do with it as he pleases so long as he is not infringing demonstrably upon the right of any other person to life, liberty, or property. To lock someone up for changing his brain chemistry by smoking weed is no different from locking him up for changing his brain chemistry by eating a large bowl of sugary breakfast cereal. Let us realign ourselves with this nation's founding principles and legalize the freedom to choose by ending the madness that has brutalized Liberty every day for the past 15,330 days. Fight tyranny; act freely; defend Liberty. Mahalo.
mentiri factorem fecit – 場黑麥
15 March 2013
interstate bicycle pathways
In the middle of the last century, American President Dwight D. Eisenhower envisioned a highway system ambitious in both scope and design. It pioneered new techniques (the clover-leaf interchange), spawned new ways of living (the suburb), and provided wanderlustig individuals with a relatively cheap method of traveling for both business and pleasure. But every silver lining has its cloud, and, today, Americans' dependence on petrol-carbohydrates is destroying the environment and helping to fund terrorism around the world. If we expect to keep breathing air and fitting into our jeans, we need to utilize a time-tested and reliable device largely ignored since the beginning of the automobile age: the bicycle.
Imagine ribbons of road stretching from Boston to Miami and from New York to Los Angeles, roads designed and built exclusively for bicycles. Imagine being able to bicycle to work each day without having to worry about getting sucked into the wake of a passing semi-truck. Imagine saving money and losing weight while pedaling a bicycle instead of spending money and getting fat while sitting in a car. The automobile isn't called the slave's chariot for nothing – it demands of its user ever and ever greater sacrifices without doing much to improve his financial or physical health or that of the environment. This author has been bicycling instead of driving for the past ten months in a town built around the car, and even though he contends daily with individuals who will pass him in the breakdown lane so that they can be the first in line at the next red light, he still feels sympathy for the poor fools who willingly trap themselves in mobile prisons of glass and steel.
Prosperity through sacrifice! Safety through knowledge! Happiness through exertion! These are the slogans that will drum up support for America's interstate bicycle pathways (IBP). Not only will the IBP create new manufacturing and service jobs in communities around the country (think of all those bikes breaking down and getting flat tires), it will cut this country's reliance on dirty, sadness-inducing oil and gas products. Furthermore, new developments in battery technology as well as cheaper and more efficient solar panels have prompted bike makers to equip velocipedes with electric motors for help on hills and super-efficient coasting. The author is not calling for the construction of an entirely new web of roads spanning from coast to coast, merely that the bike trails that already exist be linked to one another with dedicated, bicycle-only riding paths. In the Netherlands, roughly 27% of all trips are done on bicycle, whereas in the United States of America, less than 5% are. Difficulties of comparison aside, bicycling is a viable form of transportation even in places where the winters are harsh and the North Sea winds are strong. For the past year, the author has dreamed about being able to bicycle into Philadelphia from his house nearly a hundred miles away, but the most direct route – 30, the Lincoln Highway – is a traffic-choked road that was not designed to handle both driver and velocipedist. Adding insult to injury, the nearest commercial bus station lies more than twenty miles from his front door, and the most efficient method for reaching it is on a road even narrower and less bicycle-friendly than Route 30. Some day, fellow pedal-mashers, we will convince the slave's charioteers of the error of their ways, and get everyone back on the saddle. Until then, however, keep your clothes tight, your eyes and ears open, and your head on a swivel. Mahalo.
mentiri factorem fecit – 場黑麥
Imagine ribbons of road stretching from Boston to Miami and from New York to Los Angeles, roads designed and built exclusively for bicycles. Imagine being able to bicycle to work each day without having to worry about getting sucked into the wake of a passing semi-truck. Imagine saving money and losing weight while pedaling a bicycle instead of spending money and getting fat while sitting in a car. The automobile isn't called the slave's chariot for nothing – it demands of its user ever and ever greater sacrifices without doing much to improve his financial or physical health or that of the environment. This author has been bicycling instead of driving for the past ten months in a town built around the car, and even though he contends daily with individuals who will pass him in the breakdown lane so that they can be the first in line at the next red light, he still feels sympathy for the poor fools who willingly trap themselves in mobile prisons of glass and steel.
Prosperity through sacrifice! Safety through knowledge! Happiness through exertion! These are the slogans that will drum up support for America's interstate bicycle pathways (IBP). Not only will the IBP create new manufacturing and service jobs in communities around the country (think of all those bikes breaking down and getting flat tires), it will cut this country's reliance on dirty, sadness-inducing oil and gas products. Furthermore, new developments in battery technology as well as cheaper and more efficient solar panels have prompted bike makers to equip velocipedes with electric motors for help on hills and super-efficient coasting. The author is not calling for the construction of an entirely new web of roads spanning from coast to coast, merely that the bike trails that already exist be linked to one another with dedicated, bicycle-only riding paths. In the Netherlands, roughly 27% of all trips are done on bicycle, whereas in the United States of America, less than 5% are. Difficulties of comparison aside, bicycling is a viable form of transportation even in places where the winters are harsh and the North Sea winds are strong. For the past year, the author has dreamed about being able to bicycle into Philadelphia from his house nearly a hundred miles away, but the most direct route – 30, the Lincoln Highway – is a traffic-choked road that was not designed to handle both driver and velocipedist. Adding insult to injury, the nearest commercial bus station lies more than twenty miles from his front door, and the most efficient method for reaching it is on a road even narrower and less bicycle-friendly than Route 30. Some day, fellow pedal-mashers, we will convince the slave's charioteers of the error of their ways, and get everyone back on the saddle. Until then, however, keep your clothes tight, your eyes and ears open, and your head on a swivel. Mahalo.
mentiri factorem fecit – 場黑麥
13 March 2013
on modernizing marriage
As happens often in this land of shifting mores, America is stretching long-held notions of marriage to the breaking point. Rougly half of all marriages in this country end in divorce, and homosexual couples from coast to coast are demanding the same rights as their heterosexual fellow countrymen. Among the many reasons we are in this mess is because marriage was long ago contaminated by religion. Now, instead of functioning as a secular affair designed to protect offspring and safeguard common assets, it is all too often clothed in the coarse, restrictive mantle of one organized belief system or another.
In general, Americans have little patience for old and outdated things; in the last sixty years ours has become more a nation of shoppers than one of fixers, or menders. If a car stops working the way it should, the average Ynki gets a new one. If her computer isn't fast enough, she trades it in. And if her husband turns out to be someone other than the person she thought she was marrying, she divorces him. Armed with a better understanding of what she is and is not looking for, her chances at finding a new spouse more to her liking on the open market are greater than they were before she wed.
Marriage should be a beneficial affair, one rife with Happiness, trust, and love mutually enjoyed. Often, though, people remain in broken or abusive marriages out of fear that willfully terminating them will cause their souls to be cast down for all eternity into mythical pits of mythical hellfire. If we could but free divorce from it negative moral and religious associations and celebrate it for the positive effect it can have, suffering Susan might yet escape the clutches of combative, callous Cal; through education and an different attitude, her soul could soar once more. When marriage is freed from the shackles of religious conviction, all involved win (except, of course, pastors and religious zealots who scream regularly for this author's blood). Please help end state-sanctioned inequality by signing this petition, today. Huzzah.
mentiri factorem fecit – 場黑麥
In general, Americans have little patience for old and outdated things; in the last sixty years ours has become more a nation of shoppers than one of fixers, or menders. If a car stops working the way it should, the average Ynki gets a new one. If her computer isn't fast enough, she trades it in. And if her husband turns out to be someone other than the person she thought she was marrying, she divorces him. Armed with a better understanding of what she is and is not looking for, her chances at finding a new spouse more to her liking on the open market are greater than they were before she wed.
Marriage should be a beneficial affair, one rife with Happiness, trust, and love mutually enjoyed. Often, though, people remain in broken or abusive marriages out of fear that willfully terminating them will cause their souls to be cast down for all eternity into mythical pits of mythical hellfire. If we could but free divorce from it negative moral and religious associations and celebrate it for the positive effect it can have, suffering Susan might yet escape the clutches of combative, callous Cal; through education and an different attitude, her soul could soar once more. When marriage is freed from the shackles of religious conviction, all involved win (except, of course, pastors and religious zealots who scream regularly for this author's blood). Please help end state-sanctioned inequality by signing this petition, today. Huzzah.
mentiri factorem fecit – 場黑麥
11 March 2013
on media's bias
During the past year, the conglomerated media outlets that self-identify as National Public Radio (NPR) committed major errors. First, it participated in the blackout campaign waged against Gary Johnson and Jill Stein, the main third party candidates contending against Mitt Romney and Barack Obama for the presidency. (Regardless of the media's efforts to stifle the free flow of information, Johnson received more than a million votes, Stein roughly three hundred thousand.) In the weeks leading up to the election, NPR consistently and repeatedly referred to the Republican (Romney) and Democratic (Obama) candidates as the only two persons running for our highest executive office; not only did NPR not cover the two separate third party presidential debates hosted by the Free and Equal Elections Foundation, it didn't even mention that they took place. (Such is the complicity of today's media in maintaining and perpetuating our anti-American and undemocratic two party system that the second round of third party debates aired only on Russia Today, after aljazeera.com one of the most courageous and professional news organizations operating today.)
The second major error committed by NPR is that it reports in detail on most bombings and violent attacks carried out by non-military (insurgent) forces but ignores the daily assassination undertaken against innocent Somalians, Yemeni, and Pakistanis by Americans operating unmanned aerial systems. (Innocent in that the persons killed were never convicted in a court of law.) By tacitly supporting the absurd notion that the American government has a right to conduct and could ever win its War On Terror (terror is a state of mind, and nothing else), NPR perpetuates the lies and misinformation our government needs to keep its citizens ignorant of its regular and enthusiastic violation of international law and the Geneva Convention.
NPR will occasionally speak to a specialist or elected official who has knowledge of the American federal government's drone program, but it rarely airs reports critical of it. Not long ago, National Public Radio was a force to be reckoned with, an upstanding and self-respecting organization that provided the People with information from myriad sources that they could use to make well-rounded decisions. Now, however, NPR has lost much of its journalistic integrity as well as most of the respect it once deserved. Woe be unto us – veritas delenda est.
mentiri factorem fecit – 場黑麥
The second major error committed by NPR is that it reports in detail on most bombings and violent attacks carried out by non-military (insurgent) forces but ignores the daily assassination undertaken against innocent Somalians, Yemeni, and Pakistanis by Americans operating unmanned aerial systems. (Innocent in that the persons killed were never convicted in a court of law.) By tacitly supporting the absurd notion that the American government has a right to conduct and could ever win its War On Terror (terror is a state of mind, and nothing else), NPR perpetuates the lies and misinformation our government needs to keep its citizens ignorant of its regular and enthusiastic violation of international law and the Geneva Convention.
NPR will occasionally speak to a specialist or elected official who has knowledge of the American federal government's drone program, but it rarely airs reports critical of it. Not long ago, National Public Radio was a force to be reckoned with, an upstanding and self-respecting organization that provided the People with information from myriad sources that they could use to make well-rounded decisions. Now, however, NPR has lost much of its journalistic integrity as well as most of the respect it once deserved. Woe be unto us – veritas delenda est.
mentiri factorem fecit – 場黑麥
08 March 2013
on riding coach
Helen Keller, a famously blind and deaf woman, said: “A happy life consists not in the absence, but in the mastery of hardships.“ How happy, then, can today's rich people be? One percent (1%) of the U.S. population controls roughly sixty percent of this country's material wealth; the same one percent also wields political and economic power disastrously greater than ought be held by such a small cabal. With almost no hardship in their lives, and with few checks on their growing might, this group is helping to morally and spiritually bankrupt the nation while also condemning itself to a life devoid of joy, drained of color, and soured by the foul stink of cash. In the course of his own life, the author has closed his mind to certain ideas, including the notion that the goal of human existence is to make as much money as possible before dying; if a prosperous life is one devoid of struggle, sacrifice, and want, he will gladly stay poor, and ride coach.
A few ten thousand Americans are richer than a hundred and fifty million of their fellow countrymen, combined. With enough resources to hire good lawyers and weather long trials, they rarely receive full punishment for their crimes. Do we see Justice, here? We do not. Is this what our Founding Persons meant when they spoke of securing the Blessings of Liberty, forming a more perfect Union, or promoting the general Welfare? It is not. Instead, we see the theft of power by a small cluster of moneyed plutocrats who corrupt the halls of government and call for armed conflict while profiting financially from the wars they call for. The insatiably greedy few who caused the poor of France to storm the Bastille and the stubborn of America to toss tea into a bay are back in control; once more, we suffer the petty aristocracy.
The American republic was founded on a handful of simple principles, some of which are listed above. Today, millions of children in America regularly suffer from food insecurity, which occurs when they cannot be sure where their next meal will come from. Tens of millions more Americans wallow daily in wage slavery brought about by high levels of student debt, their hearts gripped by fear of increasingly militarized police forces. Poverty, hunger, and police brutality are hardships we could master, together, if our political leaders weren't constantly stroking the shafts of their financial backers and if deep-pocketed lobbying groups weren't incessantly plugging their own pet projects (and if a hundred million misguided Americans stopped paying to be brainwashed into abject docility by compelling television programming). Rich people experience monumental successes frequently; they have forgotten the abiding joy that comes with infrequent enjoyment of small successes. If we downtrodden masses could only convince the 1% to be happy with having completed a daily workout routine and remembering to floss before going to bed instead of standing idly by while they celebrate trillion-dollar federal bailouts of their failing banks, America might resemble her old, egalitarian self, once more. Heavy is the crown, but not heavy enough to dampen the avarice of they who wear it.
mentiri factorem fecit – 場黑麥
A few ten thousand Americans are richer than a hundred and fifty million of their fellow countrymen, combined. With enough resources to hire good lawyers and weather long trials, they rarely receive full punishment for their crimes. Do we see Justice, here? We do not. Is this what our Founding Persons meant when they spoke of securing the Blessings of Liberty, forming a more perfect Union, or promoting the general Welfare? It is not. Instead, we see the theft of power by a small cluster of moneyed plutocrats who corrupt the halls of government and call for armed conflict while profiting financially from the wars they call for. The insatiably greedy few who caused the poor of France to storm the Bastille and the stubborn of America to toss tea into a bay are back in control; once more, we suffer the petty aristocracy.
The American republic was founded on a handful of simple principles, some of which are listed above. Today, millions of children in America regularly suffer from food insecurity, which occurs when they cannot be sure where their next meal will come from. Tens of millions more Americans wallow daily in wage slavery brought about by high levels of student debt, their hearts gripped by fear of increasingly militarized police forces. Poverty, hunger, and police brutality are hardships we could master, together, if our political leaders weren't constantly stroking the shafts of their financial backers and if deep-pocketed lobbying groups weren't incessantly plugging their own pet projects (and if a hundred million misguided Americans stopped paying to be brainwashed into abject docility by compelling television programming). Rich people experience monumental successes frequently; they have forgotten the abiding joy that comes with infrequent enjoyment of small successes. If we downtrodden masses could only convince the 1% to be happy with having completed a daily workout routine and remembering to floss before going to bed instead of standing idly by while they celebrate trillion-dollar federal bailouts of their failing banks, America might resemble her old, egalitarian self, once more. Heavy is the crown, but not heavy enough to dampen the avarice of they who wear it.
mentiri factorem fecit – 場黑麥
06 March 2013
on shambles
Small were the stumbles that brought him to his knees, old the pitfalls that sent his card-house tumbling. Still chained he is to bells rung too soon, to sloppy routines that once helped but now harm. He won't explain his torment too openly, lest he appear pitiful and lacking in direction. Wise words and simple advice on deaf ears fall.
Caused less by the ever-present specter of failure, his torment is rooted instead in the potential for success, Happiness, and contentment. Part of his psyche is malicious and evil; as long as he is alive, it will never fully go away, nor will it ever stop being a part of him. (For him, this is a new and exciting revelation.) His hope for controlling and channeling the evil that lives inside him lies in showering it with love during yoga and remaining vigilant of its power for the rest of his life.
For some years now, he has scoffed at the saying, “fall down seven times, stand up eight.” He thought it a groovy way for people who had their shit together to gloat about being resilient, tough, and smart. Now, however, he realizes that this whole falling down and standing up business happens not at one particular fulcrum point but every day. By staying in the moment, taking nothing for granted, and learning to cherish those things he has for so long tried to destroy, he can find salvation as well as a way back to where he had strayed from the path. What good fortune that it always sits at at his feet, waiting.
mentiri factorem fecit – 場黑麥
Caused less by the ever-present specter of failure, his torment is rooted instead in the potential for success, Happiness, and contentment. Part of his psyche is malicious and evil; as long as he is alive, it will never fully go away, nor will it ever stop being a part of him. (For him, this is a new and exciting revelation.) His hope for controlling and channeling the evil that lives inside him lies in showering it with love during yoga and remaining vigilant of its power for the rest of his life.
For some years now, he has scoffed at the saying, “fall down seven times, stand up eight.” He thought it a groovy way for people who had their shit together to gloat about being resilient, tough, and smart. Now, however, he realizes that this whole falling down and standing up business happens not at one particular fulcrum point but every day. By staying in the moment, taking nothing for granted, and learning to cherish those things he has for so long tried to destroy, he can find salvation as well as a way back to where he had strayed from the path. What good fortune that it always sits at at his feet, waiting.
mentiri factorem fecit – 場黑麥
04 March 2013
01 March 2013
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