haiku 16 Nov 2018

He gambles on life
Swinging for the far fences

Like a proper chap

[ americanifesto / 場黑麥 / jpr / urbanartopia / whorphan ]

haiku 24 Aug 2018

Eating little food  
Raked at night by cold, damp clouds 
Ascetics hang tough 

[ americanifesto / 場黑麥 / jpr / urbanartopia / whorphan ]

haiku 21 May 2018

Like grapes on the vine
Plump with juice and clustered close
Does man live life best

[ americanifesto / 場黑麥 / jpr / urbanartopia / whorphan ]

haiku 9 May 2018

That which can’t be had
Those forbidden fruits of life
Aim high or die hard

[ americanifesto / 場黑麥 / jpr / urbanartopia / whorphan ]

haiku 20 Apr 2018

Hot planks of poplar
A dark room filled with crisp steam
Sauna makes life good

[ americanifesto / 場黑麥 / jpr / urbanartopia / whorphan ]

haiku 6 Apr 2018

A midnight cavern
Boiling with acid, chewed food
The wellspring of life

[ americanifesto / 場黑麥 / jpr / urbanartopia / whorphan ]

haiku 26 Feb 2018

Once-hard ground now thaws
Spring is grasping, slick beauty
Life returns with speed

[ americanifesto / 場黑麥 / jpr / urbanartopia / whorphan ]

haiku 12 Feb 2018

Soft and beautiful
Bringing life to parched, dry lands
Rain is the gods’ tears

[ americanifesto / 場黑麥 / jpr / urbanartopia / whorphan ]

haiku 17 Jan 2018

An east-facing door
Cornmeal spread beneath deer-skins
White Wind breathes in life

[ americanifesto / 場黑麥 / jpr / urbanartopia / whorphan ]

haiku 25 Dec 2017

The early riser
Up before everyone else
Witnesses life first

[ americanifesto / 場黑麥 / jpr / urbanartopia / whorphan ] ​

this winding road

The vapor juice tasted good, so I bought a bitter one - and therefore stopped vaping.
The snacks tasted good, so I stopped buying ready-made foods - and therefore stopped snacking.
A trip to the barber shop every two weeks would have cost me many thousands of dollars, and so I spent forty dollars on a pair of clippers and learned to cut that shit myself.
The car got me to where I was going quickly but at significant financial and ecological cost; when it broke I fixed up a bicycle that gets me there less quickly but at a thousandth of the overall cost of driving.

In order to live simply and without spending much money, make life purposefully difficult. Then adapt, learning the skills necessary to live a fairly happy and healthy life, leaving the remaining bullshit and clutter on the side of this winding road.

americanifesto / 場黑麥 / jpr / urbanartopia / whorphan

on vegan killers

Over the weekend, I engaged with a staunchly vegan friend in heated debate about the taking of life. At root, my argument was that in order for us humans to stay alive, something else must die. Each living human sends tens of thousands of living bacteria to perish in a lake of his stomach acid every time he swallow. Each vegan takes the life of a broccoli plant when he lops its head off; he denies the soy plant the ability to live when he eats its beans instead of planting them; he kills countless bacteria every time he washes his hands with soap or spills a drop of vodka onto a wooden bar-top. Hence, the only thing a person can do to avoid killing other living things, every day, is to die.

In my experience, certain vegans rationalize their dietary and life choices according to the 'cute and cuddly' argument: since a cow can turn supposedly doleful eyes back at its butcher and certain emotions can be interpreted into its gaze, it should not be killed. Another is what I call the 'flight' argument: since a chicken can run away from a person trying to catch it (whereas an onion cannot), it wants to stay alive and must therefore not be killed. A third argument is 'it has eyes, and a mother, and should therefore not be killed.' My vegan friend made extensive use of the 'it has eyes' argument; indeed, it seemed to sit at the core of his very existence. That, and saying that since he can't see bacteria with his own eyes, I could not prove to him that they were alive, fled from danger, or even existed. Oh, and trying to shame me into admitting I would eat the liver of a human baby if one were served up to me mixed up in a bowl with the livers of other animals. (For myself, on the day-to-day, I choose to eat only plant products, but since I will eat whatever a host puts in front of me while a guest in his home, I without shame admitted that I would probably – but not willingly – eat a member of my own species...) When I made the point that potatoes have eyes, my counterpart argued that this was only a matter of definition, to which I countered with something like, “So, if we started calling the sight organs of animals something other than 'eyes,' would it be OK to eat them?” He responded by launching back into shaming mode and accusing me of wanting to eat babies. After nearly an hour of cyclical conversation and me admitting to being a monster and a (potential) cannibal, I brought things to a point, asking my vegan friend if he agreed that by eating a tomato, a soy bean, or an apple, he was a taker of life. A killer. He responded by saying that, according to what he referred to as the 'food chain,' it is natural for humans to eat not only plants but also the products of plants. That, for him, eating the seed of a plant is not killing. That, since plants cannot run away and he cannot hear their screams of agony (certain pine trees scream at frequencies inaudible to humans when they're dying of thirst), they're freely giving up their fruits, and their lives. At that point, we ended the conversation, agreeing to disagree.

In my opinion, since a chicken's egg can grow up to become a chicken, it contains life, or at least the potential for life. In my opinion, since a soy (or any other) bean can grow up to become a soy (or any other) plant, it contains life, or at least the potential for life. Therefore, for me, there's no difference between a chicken's egg and a soy bean. I am a vegetarian primarily because I like the way my body and mind feel when I'm vegetarian. Also, I do not wish to support an animal husbandry industry that causes undue suffering to the lives in its care, destroying Earth's environment, and overusing antibiotics. Plus. I find that eating a lot of meat causes my blood-chemistry to become unbalanced. Before each meal, whether it should contain meat or plant products, I try to take a moment to thank the food for sacrificing itself so that I might live. George Bernard Shaw once wrote: 'Animals are my friends... and I don't eat my friends.' Every time I hear Shaw's quote used by a vegan person to self-aggrandize his or her dietary and life decisions, however, I want to add this: 'But plants? Fuck plants – I'll kill and eat the shit out a fucking plant.' I will write more on this subject once my passions have subsided and my tone is more rational. Essentially, however, all life is precious, and we would do well to be thankful for everything that dies to keep us alive, no matter how stationary, unattractive, or small it may be. In this way, we can start to develop compassion for all things living, not just those we might want to cuddle.

© americanifesto / 場黑麥

on EBOS

Last year, I made up the acronym EBOS. It stands for Entire Battery Operating Session, or the amount of time I pledge to spend each day using my computer to manipulate words, images, and websites. During the couple of months before I bought a new and larger netbook battery, EBOS kept shrinking until I could barely get a solid hour in before the lights started flashing and my system began reminding me every few minutes to save any unsaved material and prepare for imminent shutdown. I read somewhere that batteries work best when they are drained to the last before being filled back up again, but I read somewhere else that such behavior damages lithium-ion batteries. (I have not noticed a significant or rapid decrease in battery life resulting from wringing the last electrons out of the battery before recharging it to its maximum.) Running Ubuntu – Precise Pangolin helps stretch battery life; I have installed a widget to manage CPU usage and learned that making backups to my 3 external drives sucks juice like a mugfug. So far, EBOS has been a success: I blog 6 days a week; my unique page-views (across 8 different sites, without using paid advertising of any sort) number in the hundreds each month; and I just launched a number of new, stand-alone sites based on what I have learned about how to use the Internets good. Huzzah. Blog-writers of the world, EBOS!

mentiri factorem fecit – 場黑麥

on Phyrgian caps

While the American republic was still being formed – that is, before it outgrew its britches and started pining for global full spectrum dominance – the concept of Liberty was vibrant, and alive. Today, however, as we approach the 9th month of the year 2013, the colors of Liberty have faded from her shores; preferring conformity and convenience to individuality and self-sufficiency, preferring television and nutritionism to simple pleasures and real food, the American people are in a sorry state. How do we shake them out of their stupor? How do we shock them back into passionate dialog and community-conscious living? One method for awakening them from their trance is to show them that most actions done with a car can be done on a bicycle. Another way to quicken their tepid fluids is to don a Phyrgian cap and prove to a candid world that we few who are mocked and ridiculed and looked upon with scorn have doffed the shackles of materialism and freed ourselves from greed and need and avarice by wearing a red and floppy hat. Look no further than the War Office Seal, which features a Liberty cap; find its collapsed contours in the symbols of the American Revolution's own Sons of Liberty. Perhaps we pampered modern Ynki would be able to pull this land out of its tyrannical tailspin if we emulated the men and women who risked Fortune and sacred Honor to create a nation dedicated to the principle that all persons are created equal, a republic founded on the notion that all choices and thoughts and decisions should be allow so long as they do not directly violate the Life, Liberty, or Property of another person. If, however, a majority of the public keeps pumping gasoline into slaves' chariots and numbing itself out to five hours of TV each day, the idea of Liberty will continue to sputter and wheeze, suffocating from lack of believers. Citizens of America, awake!

mentiri factorem fecit – 場黑麥

a bamboo still life; an adaptive weaver

(A day after I hung this basket, a spider adapted to its shape.)

(still life of frozen bamboo)

some of my America 2012

painted whores, praying

On Sundays, because the public library shuts its doors and turns off its wireless router, I buy a hot tea and blog from a chain eatery that provides Internet access at no additional cost. This week, while re-posting the shit out of tumblr and tweeting POTUS beseechingly, I got a real treat when a skinny girl with an attractively-muscled upper back and shapely legs who was wearing a low-cut halter top and skin-tight shortshorts sauntered past me on laced-up high heels to sit at a booth a few down from my own. While I frequent this eatery primarily to feast my eyes upon the tight bodies of such dolled-up professional women and attention-hungry milfs who regularly grace its nonslip tiled floors, this girl and her twenty-something companion seemed worthy of more than just a few perverted and sidelong glances. An equally skinny girl wearing a similarly revealing upper and shortshorts that left little to the imagination, the companion's eyes were made up a bright aquamarine blue to offset the relatively subdued paint-job on the rest of her face, with a clunky necklace and a pair of reflective metal discs shoved into her perforated lobes rounding out her ensemble.

Having observed whores at work in Berlin, Bangkok, and Tijuana, I have scrutinized done-up street walkers and down-and-out alley rats alike, and upon seeing these two young ladies, my first thoughts were, “Oh brother, these ladies-of-the-night are out during the day and not even trying to hide the nature of their business.' Regardless of my tendency to avoid buying sexual favors, I was mulling over the prospect of getting a Billy Joel in one of the bathroom's stalls, or paying for a Howard Johnson in the back of the one girl's car, when the girl facing me – the one with the painfully-bright, aquamarine-tinted eyelids – set a tray of food onto the table, distributed the various dishes, bowed her head, crossed her hands, and prayed for a good thirty seconds before digging in.

This is a religiously-conservative area, one in which the local Catholics stand out on the square in the center of town for five weeks at a time protesting abortion and birth-control and generally trying to revoke a woman's right to her own body. Therefore, I was not expecting – early on a Sunday afternoon at just about the time when churches here let out – to see two girls dressed in the manner of prostitutes praying over some hastily-constructed panini sandwiches and meager cups of chicken tortilla soup. I even feared for their safety, since the Old Testament of the Christian bible instructs true believers to kill or at the very least banish and persecute persons painted in the manner of whores (Psalm 51:4). I have seen Thai girls stop to pray at alters to their god, asking Buddha to send them a man who will support them financially; I have no problem with prostitution, even supporting its legalization here in America; I wonder, though, if those girls had dressed up in the manner of cheap sluts in order to make a statement, as a reflection of the latest trends in mainstream fashion, or out of a misguided effort to make themselves look pretty. However things shook out for them that day, though, at least they supplicated to their god in a socially acceptable way, praying quietly and otherwise keeping their opinions to themselves, unlike the anti-abortionists and their nuns and priests, who make a terrible stink any time anybody even looks like they might be going into Planned Parenthood.

場黑麥 mentiri factorem fecit

on Sallust

I have recently finished reading a Latin-to-English translation from 1920 of the War with Catiline, by Sallust. (I had purchased the book for one dollar during a visit to my alma mater's library.) Beyond the fact that the actual war which this work purports to cover consumed no more than the last few pages of the text (which is scores of pages long), the tale deals primarily with such political corruption, societal decay, and moral downfall as that seems to have set the stage for Catiline's failed rebellion. Moreover, the situations Sallust describes in this book – situations which Catiline appears to have tried to exploit to his own benefit – struck me as eerily similar to situations we face in America, today.

Sallust speaks of the founding of Rome, how the city came to wealth and great fortune, becoming the mother of an empire. But, soon enough, the principles upon which it was founded – industriousness, thriftiness, valor – were supplanted by avarice, sloth, and self-aggrandizement. And, soon enough, in its primary political body, the Senate, “instead of modesty, incorruptibility, and honesty, shamelessness, bribery, and rapacity held sway.” This, I believe, is the trap into which our own Congress and Senate have fallen. The politicians who fill these bodies, while campaigning for election or reelection, champion themselves as honest persons of incorruptible and modest moral fiber only to revert, once they have gained office, to shamelessly selling their time and influence to the highest bidder and to writing such laws as rape the very people they have sworn to protect of their Lives, Liberty, and Property. Sallust speaks that when Rome had grown “great through toil and the practice of justice… savage tribes and mighty people subdued by force of arms… and all the seas and lands were open, then Fortune began to grow cruel and to bring confusion into all our affairs.” This text almost perfectly describes the course America charted from its founding until now, in that this nation was born in perilous circumstances, becoming soon a country dedicated to the preservation of the rule of law, then wiping out whole populations of First People tribes, and finally conquering Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia to leave land and sea our disposal, only to discover, as if we had but recently come to our senses, that our internal affairs were seriously – and perhaps irrevocably – out of alignment.

I am not the first to draw comparisons between the Roman and the American empires, and I am not the first to suggest the inevitability of an empire such as our own to fail, but I am delighted to have found an ancient work that so well supports these points. While there is much solid wisdom to be learned from past writers (I should like to suggest to persons in the Occupy and the Indignados movements to read the aforementioned book, and to prepare for a total lack of positive change), the primary lessons I gleaned from this interesting and worthwhile text are that life seems to follow certain paths inexorably, that politics are intolerably messy and best left alone, that money and influence always corrupt, that people should be trusted about as far as they can be thrown, and that elected officials will only reluctantly and with much kicking and screaming give up such power as to which they have become accustomed. So please, dear reader, fellow Second Sons of Liberty, comrades of the New Guards for our Future Security, please do not despair, for no matter how dark our times may seem, they are sure to get worse before they get better. Mahalo.

場黑麥 mentiri manufactorem fecit

work cited: Sallust, page 14, J. C. Rolfe, London: Heinemann; New York: Putnam's Sons, 1920

on surviving major catastrophe

  Today's rugged man-beast, that brave individual who wishes to survive the upcoming zombie apocalypse, he (or, for the lady-beast, of course, she) will be self-reliant, self-sufficient, and capable of extreme action in dire circumstances.

  Whether you at some point see yourself making the post-apocalyptic wasteland your bitch, or if you merely desire to prove to yourself and to your species how rabidly you cherish life, your first step is to distance yourself from the mindless and continuously occurring buying-shit-for-the-sake-of-buying-shit ritual of consumption-oriented capitalism. Then, learn how to feed yourself cheaply. Reuse items that are in reusable shape. Cancel your contracts to receive broadcast television, and discover the excitement of story-telling. Become disciplined in your use of electricity and water. Learn how to read a map, to hunt, to make fire, to build shelter, and to do any other thing that might keep you alive when the lights go off and the undead come to bang upon ​your doors.

  In order to consider yourself even remotely ready to perform all the tasks necessary to make it through the impending breakdown of civilization, read books often, discipline your mind by delving always into its innermost depths (where you shall face reward and punishment both), and soothe and settle your mental state until its baseline is a serene quietude. As with the mind so you shall discipline the body, by exercising every single day from now until the day of your death. In order to stay alive while the other people around you are losing their heads and dying in stupid and unnecessary ways, you must be ready at any moment to commence with survival. Tens of thousands of city-dwellers have already abandoned their shiny condos and comfortable couches to live the shiftless life of the tough-and-rumble nomad way out at that spot where twilight turns to fog; they are waiting for you to join them.

  Before I commence, there are two more items to add to the never-ending Checklist-Of-Things-To-Do-Before-The-Global-Meltdown (the COTTDBTGM of yore). First is a readiness to abandon the persons you love the most to save your own life. Second is the willingness and audacity to stand tall in the face of grave danger to protect the persons you love the most. The decision which of these to choose will, of course, be up to you.

  Ultima Ratio Regum - 場黑麥 John Paul Roggenkamp

on Our forsaken Rights

  Citizens of America: We, the People of this land are at a crossroads, pausing now to decide whether to abandon our constitutional protections or to speak out against their destruction. Not long ago, an American named Anwar al-Awlaki was killed by his government without being first sentenced in a court of the United States. This latest action should not take us by surprise - the federal government (fed) has taken away our liberty by passing the Controlled Substances Act, legislation that robs us of the inalienable Right to live however we might decide to live; it has already violated our privacy and our properties via the Patriot Act, legislation that allows for unwarranted intrusions into previously protected domains.
  Now the fed has proven willing to take also our lives without so much as a by your leave. Life, liberty, and property are supposedly immutable rights supposedly protected under the 14th Amendment to the Constitution; they cannot be taken from the person individually, let alone from the People as a whole, without each individual facing the due and deliberate process of law, so that her liberty might be taken from her. (It can take years to revoke a man's right to life, with that man fighting every step to retain his sacred prize; the same process must take place, on an individual level, to revoke a person's liberty or property.) Now that the fed has proven a willingness to take freely our lives, let us honestly acknowledge that we no longer live in the country designed by the Constitution, that we can no longer expect reason from our overlords, that we sat back in quiet resignation and watched as our country was gutted from within.
  In truth, however, the American People have no protection from the overreaches of their federal government: while the 14th Amendment protects us from violations performed by the States, the Constitution does not protect our lives, our liberty, or our property, from violations done by federal hand.

  We witness with the death of al-Awlaki the unwarranted termination of American life. We witness with the Controlled Substances Act the unwarranted termination of American liberty. We witness with the Patriot Act the unwarranted termination of American privacy, and the unwarranted invasion of American property. Our inalienable Rights are being casually tossed out the window, and we sit here, helpless, smiling to hide the despair.
  Look not to Hope, for she has left these lands - with her she took Happiness, both laughing at our plans.

Ultima Ratio Regum - 場黑麥 John Paul Roggenkamp