Speech is powerful
Enough to shape existence
One word at a time
[ americanifesto / 場黑麥 / jpr / urbanartopia / whorphan ]
Showing posts with label power. Show all posts
Showing posts with label power. Show all posts
22 August 2018
23 April 2018
haiku 23 Apr 2018
Great power lies in
Sitting still and being vast,
The mind cleared of dross
[ americanifesto / 場黑麥 / jpr / urbanartopia / whorphan ]
Sitting still and being vast,
The mind cleared of dross
[ americanifesto / 場黑麥 / jpr / urbanartopia / whorphan ]
06 January 2017
an impolite proposal
In her Guardian piece entitled America: don’t be polite in the face of demagoguery, Jessica Valenti makes a few solid points. The main thrust of her argument appears to be as follows: The best way for free-thinking and open-minded Ynki who disapprove of his damaging ways and dangerous proposals is to shame and ridicule their incoming president - a proto-fascistic, narcissistic, and greedy demagogue who seems hellbent on destroying the steps this country has taken in the last 100 odd years to share the wealth America creates among all Americans equally.
This author has for nearly a decade now heaped brimstone and vituperation upon the various public figures and institutions he feels are endangering the essence of the American experiment. What have these writings gotten him? Little more than the satisfaction of knowing that he has played a small role in speaking truth to power. America’s elected leaders must be forced to remember that they govern only by the consent of the governed. One way of doing this is by speaking aloud or publishing articles that ridicule and mock their poor and short-sighted decisions. Together, united behind the common causes of Safety and Happiness, we the People can accomplish much; divided as we are, however, in our insular homes, separated from one another by television and fear of the unknown, we will continue to be treated as pawns with little power.
Until balance is achieved in this land, until the government fears and respects the People (in whom all power rests), this whorphan will continue his efforts to shame and ridicule the forces of oppression that so tightly strangle our potential greatness.
JPR / whorphan / americanifesto / 場黑麥
This author has for nearly a decade now heaped brimstone and vituperation upon the various public figures and institutions he feels are endangering the essence of the American experiment. What have these writings gotten him? Little more than the satisfaction of knowing that he has played a small role in speaking truth to power. America’s elected leaders must be forced to remember that they govern only by the consent of the governed. One way of doing this is by speaking aloud or publishing articles that ridicule and mock their poor and short-sighted decisions. Together, united behind the common causes of Safety and Happiness, we the People can accomplish much; divided as we are, however, in our insular homes, separated from one another by television and fear of the unknown, we will continue to be treated as pawns with little power.
Until balance is achieved in this land, until the government fears and respects the People (in whom all power rests), this whorphan will continue his efforts to shame and ridicule the forces of oppression that so tightly strangle our potential greatness.
JPR / whorphan / americanifesto / 場黑麥
30 November 2016
our system’s sun
Native American activists in the Dakotas seeking to defend their lifeblood waters are being met by a militarized police force whose goal is to defend the short-term financial gains of a multinational corporate entity. This should not surprise anyone - since its inception, the American republic has abused, marginalized, and stolen from the indigenous tribespeople who originally inhabited Turtle Island (the North American continent). Previously, the Sioux tribe was forced violently from its ancestral lands by the U.S. military so that Americans of European Descent (i.e. white people) could take over the fields and valleys the tribe had for millennia groomed, tamed, and settled. Now, in the previously unwanted territories to which it was sent, the Sioux tribe is again under assault, this time so that an oil pipeline can be dug into its sacred soils and under its treasured rivers. Using technologies to capture and utilize solar power, America could run entirely on the nearly endless supply of fresh energy that arrives each morning from Sol, our system’s sun. Instead, America runs on old sunlight trapped by plants long ago in formations now buried deep below the earth - black, viscous old sunlight that must be pumped from deep underground before being moved often thousands of miles to refineries and storage dumps by pipeline, train, or truck. If each Ynki home or business were to collect its own solar electricity and use that self-generated power to cook food, make heat, or run electric automobiles, each Ynki home or business would become independent of (and by necessity take profits away from) the corporations that control this nation’s energy economy. These corporations want to make sure that American homes and businesses run on old and dirty rather than new and clean sunlight, since, this way, they get paid for each watt of energy used. Therefore, they spend untold millions of dollars lobbying against investment and research in solar-energy technologies; such technologies could upend their market dominance and disrupt their profit margins, and they will do nearly anything to maintain their stranglehold on consumer freedom. It bothers them not that the fluids containing old sunlight, if allowed to flow freely, tend to poison the land and pollute the waters - the only thing that matters to these corporations is that the Ynki simply can’t do without what they are selling and that he will pay a high price to maintain his addiction. If a person is concerned about the sad state of affairs in the Dakotas but cannot join the Standing Rock Sioux at their water protection sites, he ought consider reducing the amount of old sunlight he uses by heating less and driving fewer miles. Additionally, he ought contact his elected representatives and demand they work toward the adoption of solar energy initiatives instead of acquiescing to the demands of petroleum (old sunlight) producers. Stand strong, brave Sioux brothers and sisters rallying at Oceti Sakowin - this American author recognizes your sacrifice, and thanks you for it. Mahalo.
© JPR / whorphan / americanifesto / 場黑麥
© JPR / whorphan / americanifesto / 場黑麥
26 October 2016
words’ power - briefly
Similar to music, words have great power. In film, for example, certain styles of music are used to alter a person’s perception of a given scene - classical, say, for drama, hip-hop for action, country for nostalgia. Music can alter a person’s mood, improving or ruining it, depending on circumstance. Yet music, once heard, vanishes into nothingness; looking at a sheet of music and imagining what Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony sounds like is one thing, but hearing it played is a far more powerful and exciting experience.
Words also vanish into nothingness once spoken, unless they get stuck in an infinity loop inside the brain of person (A), in which case the words will continue to affect him, because he is repeating them to himself. In this manner, person (A) tends to build up resentment and anger against person (B), who had said the words previously, even though person (B) may no longer bear animosity toward or even remember what he’d said originally. This author finds himself engaging in subconscious conversation with persons who in the past got the upper hand over him. Apparently, this author thinks that by speaking the words that he failed to speak, he may regain some sort of power. Ah, what foolishness.
© JPR / whorphan / americanifesto / 場黑麥
Words also vanish into nothingness once spoken, unless they get stuck in an infinity loop inside the brain of person (A), in which case the words will continue to affect him, because he is repeating them to himself. In this manner, person (A) tends to build up resentment and anger against person (B), who had said the words previously, even though person (B) may no longer bear animosity toward or even remember what he’d said originally. This author finds himself engaging in subconscious conversation with persons who in the past got the upper hand over him. Apparently, this author thinks that by speaking the words that he failed to speak, he may regain some sort of power. Ah, what foolishness.
© JPR / whorphan / americanifesto / 場黑麥
10 August 2016
allow the yang
When I see an attractive woman who I get the feeling might find me attractive too, my chi tends to slam up into the 6th chakra from where it normally resides in the 2nd, 3rd, or 4th. Instead of approaching her and saying hello, as my lower nodes are telling me to do, a voyeuristic and deeply insecure part of me pulls inward and launches a furious attempt to calculate just how much she might like me as well as how best to get her to not like me. The bundled chi energies start heating up my physical flesh from the eyebrows on backward, the 3rd eye area, as I strain to think of something to say to her. Women pick up on this immediately, fleeing from sickly waves of needing, wanting, yearning energy that lash from the yet-shadowy depths of what, in short, is a pocket of pain. I’ve come to understand, with time and conscious effort, that in the left-rear quadrant of the 6th chakra lives my ego, or at least a fear-body that kicks in if when encountering women I allow these strong yin to overwhelm the yang of the 6th. This pocket, a largely Read Only Memory part of my consciousness, was in early youth hijacked by irrational forces, should my recollections hold true. If the hijacker was an outside party, it could have arrived during a spell of fever-dreams around age nine or ten. In one of these dreams, I became aware of a brilliantly white space of indeterminate size - the Great Vast Crushing Nothingness mentioned in earlier works. My sense of self was in extreme flux, shrinking and growing from infinitely large to impossibly small, sometimes both simultaneously; and into this space appeared a being not of my own design, a vaguely humanoid figure that appeared in front of me before rising up and to the left of my field of vision. This entity spoke to me not with words but feelings, a sense of tremendous and all-reaching power. (I have no strongly negative memories of this dream / visitation, rather ones of gut-wrenching and paralyzing awe.) If this pocket started as an autochthonous formation, however, I suspect it festered into existence in those first teenage years in Germany when the ‘rents were on poor terms; I was struggling with learning the language yet still going to school in it as well as learning to play the trumpet with my teeth in braces; and my few friends and I were on a collision course with catastrophe. I internalized a lot of loneliness and self-loathing during that time, venting it as my teens progressed in ever fool-hardier ventures. Whether by either of these two ways, or by another, the dominance of this pocket of pain is shrinking in direct correlation to a growing self-awareness helped along by spiritual and meditation work done on the Island of the Gods. Through impartial observance and daily practice, its strength will diminish further - if my good fortune holds, that is.
© americanifesto / 場黑麥
12 November 2015
by saying Wednesday
The blessings of Wotan are here for to stay since Westerners praise him by saying Wednesday. Some claim to be loyal to a single power and walk 'round with miens set in dark hateful glower yet always do give up to Wotan much fame by saying and speaking each week his true name. It isn't surprising that they keep on giving much glory and honor to forces yet living and thriving because of this one simple truth: to speak a god's name is to firm up his youth and firm up his force so that they endure, providing us humans with sadnesses' cure. The Allfather's knowing wise never aloof of which his longevity must stand as proof so open your doors to whomever should knock and never desire his entrance to block for when Wotan shows up we surely won't know but must to all beggars our kindnesses show. By proving our hearts are devoid of all fears we'll be granted many and bountiful years especially Christians who speak of Odin and teach selfsame speaking to children and kin for uttering gladly his name every week is the highest honor a human can speak.
© americanifesto / 場黑麥
© americanifesto / 場黑麥
21 October 2013
on exerting power
Yesterday, while playing disc golf with a few friends, I was granted a glimpse into the inner workings of my psyche. At about the 12th hole my spirits began to flag and I unconsciously decided to allow the innocent banality of the others' conversation bother me. Having said nothing during the first part of the game about people grunting approvingly and saying “Nice” every time someone else even touched a disc (regardless of how that disc actually flew), I finally explained the course etiquette to the new member. “When a person says 'Nice' while someone else's disc is still in the air, it's called nicing the disc,” I said. “And nicing a disc is a breach of course etiquette, especially when the disc does not in fact fly well and the person who niced the disc then retracts his initial statement and says something like 'Uh never mind' or 'Bummer dude'.” The man laughed dismissively and I noticed the two other men in our group stiffen slightly around the groin. As soon as I registered these reactions to my brief explanation about nicing discs, I realized that the only reason I had said anything was because I was trying to exert power over the other players, to make them stop grunting and moaning and cursing out loud whenever a bit of colorful plastic didn't fly exactly the way they had hoped it would. Thinking back I realized that most of what I had said that day had been in part intended to make others dance to a tune of my liking, to get them to see things the way I saw them, to coerce them into adopting a pattern of My choosing. This realization flooded me with awareness and as I traced my subsequent actions back to their source I found that most of them – from using my netbook instead of focusing fully on the other person in the room to the topics I brought up for conversation – were somehow related to the exertion of power within the dynamics of a group. The need to feel powerful pulls subtly but inexorably at the cockles of one's heart, and one of the best ways to keep it in check is to remain humble, speak little, and remember that each person is entitled to his or her own opinion, that each person walks a path of his or her own choosing. The power that comes from controlling others pales when compared to the might of self-control. Aho.
© americanifesto / 場黑麥
© americanifesto / 場黑麥
02 October 2013
on sponging anger
During my yoga teacher training, I discovered that I have powerful skills of empathy. When persons choose to direct their feelings and emotions at me, in my current condition I receive that power mostly intact and largely unfiltered. If others direct love at me I am learning to let it buoy my heart; if they thank me I am trying to wallow in gratitude for as long as I am able to; but if it is anger or disgust or discontentment that they feel toward me my heart grows cold, rage builds in my chest, and I become deeply irate. At some point in my life I learned that sponging anger in this way makes me feel powerful, that it is proper to answer like with like, hatred with hatred. My fellow Americans exhibit this type of behavior frequently, and over the years I have been wont to retreat into it much as my compatriots do. As however I study the ancient truths and leave behind the clouded and the confused path for that of the warrior I am beginning to understand that anger and hatred frighten Spirit and that our connection to the Divine is severed if instead of compassion and grace we cultivate in our hearts loathing, coldness, and fear. My path is for me alone to walk and I am not saying that other people are acting incorrectly, only that they seem to have abandoned action for reaction, consciousness for unconsciousness, beauty for ugliness, and that it shall take a lot of effort on the part of each individual, individually, for our the soul of our nation to become bright, once more. The greatest journeys of the world start with just one person stepping forward, and so I lift my foot. Mahalo.
© americanifesto / 場黑麥
© americanifesto / 場黑麥
30 September 2013
our enemy – television
Television is the creative person's bane, a threat greater than most others are. Watching TV feeds the human need for companionship without ever really satisfying it and crushes creative capacity by tricking the brain into thinking it is doing something and being productive when it is just sitting idle. Creativity, power, assuredness, and passion all reside in the 2nd and 3rd chakras, the lower half of the torso that extends from the breastbone to the genitals. Look down at your own belly for a moment. Can you see your belt-buckle or waistband as it sits atop the pelvic bone? Can you feel and move the abdominus erectus, that muscle that runs from the bottom of the breastbone to attach to the top of the pelvis? If you cannot, you are not alone – more than a third of all Americans are obese, and many of these individuals carry a large portion of this additional weight in the lower halves of their torsos. The decision to sit down and watch television has disastrous consequences on the 2nd and 3rd chakras – it numbs and dulls them, confusing and stifling the free flow of energy through the regions of the core, an area central to living the best of possible human lives. Man is a gullible animal; after seeing just a few commercials related to food he will get food from his kitchen and eat that food (without focusing on what he is eating) while staring longingly into the beautiful bright lights of his TV set. If he repeats this sequence often enough he will get fat, and his increased girth will further stifle the free flow of energy through the region of his core and exacerbate the unhealthiness that stems from a lack of regular exercise and from a preference for prepackaged foods ready to eat over meals carefully and consciously crafted. Persons who wish to lead lives full of creativity and passion avoid watching television; they know that there are more constructive ways to fill their time than by staring at an electric light-box; they paint, draw, dance, or write; they make educated and intelligent decisions about what to eat and what to put through their orifices of eye and mouth and ear instead of numbing out the intestines by shoveling in as much sugary and salty and fatty foods as the gut can handle without bursting; they lead happy lives untethered from groomed and glossy but ultimately vacuous material. Downtrodden and passionless masses of the world, awake! Turn off your television sets! Humanity, and Mother Nature, need you now more than ever. Aho.
© americanifesto / 場黑麥
© americanifesto / 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
12 October 2012
on words, briefly
As part of my daily self-betterment routine, I make an effort to spend some time each day studying the following books: The Guide to Self-Sufficiency by John Seymour, Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt, The Elements of Style by William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White, Dictionary of Word Origins by Joseph T. Shipley, Sallust as translated by John C. Rolfe, and an Universal-Sprachführer Neiderländisch (universal language guide for Netherlandish) by Langenscheidt. (I also read other books, mostly science-fiction and American classics, for leisure.) In the course of my studies, I am frequently reminded of the plasticity of language, noting the changing of words over time; studying in multiple different languages (German, Netherlandish, English) keeps my tongue nimble and my brain's speech centers primed.
For the most part, words change less than one might think; cat does not start meaning dog overnight, nor will the average user of language dream up new words or new meanings, pulling definitions from the misty aether. I have noticed, however, that society can change the weight of certain words profoundly, sometimes within a brief span of time. Take, for example, the word retard. While I was growing up, and until about a few years ago, this was a mostly soft slur flung at individuals displaying a comical lack of good judgment; persons casually using the word retard could expect to go about their business unmolested and without fear of being sat down and spoken to sharply about the damage they were causing to persons with disabilities. Today, however, even mentioning the word retard will cause any know-it-all soccer-mom or her snot-nosed spawn who happens to be in earshot to scold the offensive party with righteous indignation, the color rising in her face, the pulse quickening in her veins. Cocksucker is another word that works very nicely to describe someone who displays a distinctive lack of compassion and a propensity for ruining the fun for everyone else; the word has nothing to do with persons who actually suck cock, be they male, female, or something in-between. Today, however, other ugly words – nigger, chink, whore, slut, cunt, fag, or kike – stir up a forest of waggling fingers as soon as they leave someone's mouth, whereupon the grizzly-moms are at a body's throat, tearing into him with a passion all but lacking from the rest of their lives. (These busybodies are so hyped up about keeping everything nice that they judge every word coming from any and all suck-holes, leaping forth in the manner of steel traps within milliseconds of having detected an offensive remark.)
What I am at root trying to say is that words are only throaty grunts, nasal buzzes, chopped whistles, and blunt chirps; they have only as much power as we give them; they only mean what we think they mean because we agree – each and every day – to define them the same way as everyone else. I therefore urge the reader to remember that the next time someone else uses a word not to his liking, he can choose to understand it as something completely different, thinking cat for dog or green for orange; to allow other people to control our minds, to allow other people to dictate the conditions of our Happiness, is to blame the Universe for our sorrows and to hate other people for the contents of their minds, which is on some level just as bad as hating on other people for having been born with disabilities or with skin-tones slightly darker than our own. The world is not a nice place, and the sooner we understand and accept that, the sooner we can get on to minding our own business.
場黑麥 mentiri factorem fecit
For the most part, words change less than one might think; cat does not start meaning dog overnight, nor will the average user of language dream up new words or new meanings, pulling definitions from the misty aether. I have noticed, however, that society can change the weight of certain words profoundly, sometimes within a brief span of time. Take, for example, the word retard. While I was growing up, and until about a few years ago, this was a mostly soft slur flung at individuals displaying a comical lack of good judgment; persons casually using the word retard could expect to go about their business unmolested and without fear of being sat down and spoken to sharply about the damage they were causing to persons with disabilities. Today, however, even mentioning the word retard will cause any know-it-all soccer-mom or her snot-nosed spawn who happens to be in earshot to scold the offensive party with righteous indignation, the color rising in her face, the pulse quickening in her veins. Cocksucker is another word that works very nicely to describe someone who displays a distinctive lack of compassion and a propensity for ruining the fun for everyone else; the word has nothing to do with persons who actually suck cock, be they male, female, or something in-between. Today, however, other ugly words – nigger, chink, whore, slut, cunt, fag, or kike – stir up a forest of waggling fingers as soon as they leave someone's mouth, whereupon the grizzly-moms are at a body's throat, tearing into him with a passion all but lacking from the rest of their lives. (These busybodies are so hyped up about keeping everything nice that they judge every word coming from any and all suck-holes, leaping forth in the manner of steel traps within milliseconds of having detected an offensive remark.)
What I am at root trying to say is that words are only throaty grunts, nasal buzzes, chopped whistles, and blunt chirps; they have only as much power as we give them; they only mean what we think they mean because we agree – each and every day – to define them the same way as everyone else. I therefore urge the reader to remember that the next time someone else uses a word not to his liking, he can choose to understand it as something completely different, thinking cat for dog or green for orange; to allow other people to control our minds, to allow other people to dictate the conditions of our Happiness, is to blame the Universe for our sorrows and to hate other people for the contents of their minds, which is on some level just as bad as hating on other people for having been born with disabilities or with skin-tones slightly darker than our own. The world is not a nice place, and the sooner we understand and accept that, the sooner we can get on to minding our own business.
場黑麥 mentiri factorem fecit
03 August 2012
right of way
Recently, NPR aired a show which included mention of efforts undertaken during the first decades of the Twentieth Century to teach the American public to cowtow to the automobile, explaining that Americans had to be trained to think that roads were the domain of cars, the rightful place of automobiles, and that citizens not driving cars had no right to be on them. As a velocipedist – an avid and regular bicyclist – I suffer daily of the affects of this mis-education of my fellow upstanding Yankee, who now sees the car as an almost sacred thing, whereas persons not trapped within the stifling confines of these glass-and-metal prisons are seen as bothersome interlopers upon our tens of thousands of miles of commonly-owned bituminous track.
A car is nothing more than a hunk of steel and glass and plastic with a person or persons sitting on its plush seats and being moved around through space-time by the internal combustion of gasoline, a byproduct of oil, for which our brave brothers and sister pour out their blood and tears in distant and dusty places; oil is a poisonous thing that must be pulled from deep below the earth and refined before it can be used, whereas a bicycle is a few pounds of metal and rubber that allows a person to move himself around through space-time using little more than the muscles rippling beneath his taut and ruddy skin. And yet – daily – I am confronted by at least one person who considers his souped up, gasoline-guzzling shitbox, and his business, to be far more important than the car, conveyance, or business of anyone else.
Just two days ago, in fact, as I was approaching a blind intersection on my way to the local public library, I heard a motor behind me rev up, as if the vehicle's owner intended to pass me in the scant thirty feet that separated us from the stop sign. Putting myself squarely in the lane, I balanced for a moment, waiting for a gap in the approaching vehicles before shooting down a narrow side alley. Riding squarely in the center of the alley, the impatient driver approached to within a few feet of my bicycle's rear wheel, revving his engine and making as if to pass me where there was no room to pass. Flying into the next, two-landed road (the alley ends in a yield, not a stop, sign) and barely making it in front of an approaching car, I had moved to the far right side of the lane and was approaching my next right-hand turn when I heard that same engine rev up behind me. Turning around to see what was the matter, I made eye-contact with the impatient driver, whose vehicle – a black SUV – was so close to the silver Volvo behind me that I could see neither grill nor bumper. Passing the car in front of it, the truck screeched to a halt directly next to me, restricting all north-south traffic by completely Blocking The Box, the man within it staring at me menacingly.
Turning after having made the appropriate hand-signal (I signal all turns, and am loathe to ride at night without running-lights fore and aft), I glanced back again, laughing at the impatient man and giving him a little fare-thee-well hand flick. These egregious actions caused the man to reverse his vehicle very quickly (on a one-way street, into oncoming traffic), whereupon he, with squealing tires, raced down the road toward me, screeching to a halt next to me on the sidewalk where I had taken refuge near a tall brick building. “You're a real tough-guy, eh?” the man said, pushing his finger against some sort of box on his throat. Scrambling to keep moving, I bounced down the sidewalk and started to pedal onward, glancing back and noticing the black car had a Harley-Davidson front plate. The man pulled into a gravel lane, threw open his door, jumped out, and began to stalk toward me, chest puffed up and face fixed in the tortured rictus of a man whose heart is calcified with fearful hatred. Seeing that I had bruised his ego, and knowing the human ego to be one of the most terrifying and murderous of foul things ever to grace the planes of our fair Universe, I kept moving. “You're a real tough guy, eh?” the man said again, to which I responded with a shouted, “Slow down!” The man, of course, shouted back, “You slow down!”, touching a finger to his tracheal collar before speaking, each time.
A number of things became clear to me during yesterday's altercation. First, the man's business was so inconsequential (even though he seemed in a terrible hurry) that he could take time out of his schedule to run down and harass a bicyclist who had dared to retain right of way. Second, the man considered himself more important than anyone else on the road, riding everyone's ass and generally being a poor sport about things. Third, seeing that his belly resembled a beer keg and that his throat was perforated with a plastic speaking-collar, the man had ruined his health and body by eating too much, smoking too much, and drinking too much, which had obviously filled his heart with such frustration and self-loathing as to make him a Danger To Others. And, finally, he had allowed himself to be brainwashed into thinking that roads were made for cars (or, at least, for vehicles with gasoline-combustible engines), and that roads were the domain of nothing else, causing him to menace persons who happened to have left their own homes a few moments before he did, putting them, unwittingly, in his hateful path, riding, of all fucking things, bicycles.
To persons who insist on driving cars everywhere they go (even though, of course, buying gasoline puts cash in the pockets of Saudi Arabians, who use our money to fund terrorist groups such as al-Qaida), please remember that bicyclists are simply persons who have freed themselves from the prison-like confines of internally-combustible vehicles, flinging off the foul fat-folds of sloth and moving their bodies around using only muscle power. So, dear friends, please give other persons the right of way, even if they are not burning as much oil as you are burning while out-and-about; and, of course, please share generously of our common roadways, byways, highways, paths, alleys, lanes, and streets; but, most importantly, keep a smile on your face, a song in your heart, and your head on a fucking swivel. Mahalo.
場黑麥 mentiri manufactorem fecit
A car is nothing more than a hunk of steel and glass and plastic with a person or persons sitting on its plush seats and being moved around through space-time by the internal combustion of gasoline, a byproduct of oil, for which our brave brothers and sister pour out their blood and tears in distant and dusty places; oil is a poisonous thing that must be pulled from deep below the earth and refined before it can be used, whereas a bicycle is a few pounds of metal and rubber that allows a person to move himself around through space-time using little more than the muscles rippling beneath his taut and ruddy skin. And yet – daily – I am confronted by at least one person who considers his souped up, gasoline-guzzling shitbox, and his business, to be far more important than the car, conveyance, or business of anyone else.
Just two days ago, in fact, as I was approaching a blind intersection on my way to the local public library, I heard a motor behind me rev up, as if the vehicle's owner intended to pass me in the scant thirty feet that separated us from the stop sign. Putting myself squarely in the lane, I balanced for a moment, waiting for a gap in the approaching vehicles before shooting down a narrow side alley. Riding squarely in the center of the alley, the impatient driver approached to within a few feet of my bicycle's rear wheel, revving his engine and making as if to pass me where there was no room to pass. Flying into the next, two-landed road (the alley ends in a yield, not a stop, sign) and barely making it in front of an approaching car, I had moved to the far right side of the lane and was approaching my next right-hand turn when I heard that same engine rev up behind me. Turning around to see what was the matter, I made eye-contact with the impatient driver, whose vehicle – a black SUV – was so close to the silver Volvo behind me that I could see neither grill nor bumper. Passing the car in front of it, the truck screeched to a halt directly next to me, restricting all north-south traffic by completely Blocking The Box, the man within it staring at me menacingly.
Turning after having made the appropriate hand-signal (I signal all turns, and am loathe to ride at night without running-lights fore and aft), I glanced back again, laughing at the impatient man and giving him a little fare-thee-well hand flick. These egregious actions caused the man to reverse his vehicle very quickly (on a one-way street, into oncoming traffic), whereupon he, with squealing tires, raced down the road toward me, screeching to a halt next to me on the sidewalk where I had taken refuge near a tall brick building. “You're a real tough-guy, eh?” the man said, pushing his finger against some sort of box on his throat. Scrambling to keep moving, I bounced down the sidewalk and started to pedal onward, glancing back and noticing the black car had a Harley-Davidson front plate. The man pulled into a gravel lane, threw open his door, jumped out, and began to stalk toward me, chest puffed up and face fixed in the tortured rictus of a man whose heart is calcified with fearful hatred. Seeing that I had bruised his ego, and knowing the human ego to be one of the most terrifying and murderous of foul things ever to grace the planes of our fair Universe, I kept moving. “You're a real tough guy, eh?” the man said again, to which I responded with a shouted, “Slow down!” The man, of course, shouted back, “You slow down!”, touching a finger to his tracheal collar before speaking, each time.
A number of things became clear to me during yesterday's altercation. First, the man's business was so inconsequential (even though he seemed in a terrible hurry) that he could take time out of his schedule to run down and harass a bicyclist who had dared to retain right of way. Second, the man considered himself more important than anyone else on the road, riding everyone's ass and generally being a poor sport about things. Third, seeing that his belly resembled a beer keg and that his throat was perforated with a plastic speaking-collar, the man had ruined his health and body by eating too much, smoking too much, and drinking too much, which had obviously filled his heart with such frustration and self-loathing as to make him a Danger To Others. And, finally, he had allowed himself to be brainwashed into thinking that roads were made for cars (or, at least, for vehicles with gasoline-combustible engines), and that roads were the domain of nothing else, causing him to menace persons who happened to have left their own homes a few moments before he did, putting them, unwittingly, in his hateful path, riding, of all fucking things, bicycles.
To persons who insist on driving cars everywhere they go (even though, of course, buying gasoline puts cash in the pockets of Saudi Arabians, who use our money to fund terrorist groups such as al-Qaida), please remember that bicyclists are simply persons who have freed themselves from the prison-like confines of internally-combustible vehicles, flinging off the foul fat-folds of sloth and moving their bodies around using only muscle power. So, dear friends, please give other persons the right of way, even if they are not burning as much oil as you are burning while out-and-about; and, of course, please share generously of our common roadways, byways, highways, paths, alleys, lanes, and streets; but, most importantly, keep a smile on your face, a song in your heart, and your head on a fucking swivel. Mahalo.
場黑麥 mentiri manufactorem fecit
01 August 2012
first to go
As an inconsequential blogger with a limited readership and few people perusing my various sites (except, perhaps, those sites specific to street art), I am today still writing and kicking and living and breathing, but who knows for how long. The executive office of the United States – that run by President Barack Hussein Obama – violates regularly the rights of individuals, removing them to foreign locations and holding them prisoner without trial (in a process known as rendition), in clear violation of national and international laws (see here for a fantastic article re: the Charter of the Forest). The president and his equally-corrupt counterparts in the U.S. Congress and Senate allow large and well-financed companies – known as corporations because they have the same rights and privileges as actual persons but cannot be sent to jail for the crimes they commit – to rape the lands and seas of their vast resources, keeping the American people stupefied and misinformed via elaborate and ubiquitous advertising that allow these corporations to profit immensely from the sale of the Commons, those being things that belong to everyone equally, those being things such as the ore and metals in the ground, the chemical compounds dissolved in the air and in the soil, the clear and running water that each of us needs to stay alive, and living and growing things such as cotton, trees, soybeans, corn, oats, cows, pigs, peppers, wheat, chickens, etc.
Because I speak of these things, writing often about the overreaches and the abuses of our sitting president, his predecessors, and their well-heeled corporate cronies – they who shift from corporate officer to appointed official, and back again, in a never-ending cycle of sycophantic, avaricious nepotism – because I speak of these things, banging the dinner-gong to the tune of my own unraveling, for this reason, I will be among the first to go. When our leaders in Washington decide it is time to round up dissidents such as me and to put us in prisons and into labor and death camps for re-education and to keep the minds of the general population free of any doubt about the validity and sustainability of our current economic and political systems, then it will be clear that my bleating was not merely the bitter moaning of a spoiled little whorphan, but that my attempts to get the people of this land to think critically about their lives and about how much television they watch and about their lack of self-reliance and about their whole-scale adoption of conspicuous-consumption-oriented capitalism were more than self-righteous chest-beating.
The only problem about the previous sentence is that none of these here words will exist once I am black-bagged, detained, and murdered, because they will have been wiped away, removed from the world-wide-web, with a single mouse-click deleted from the annals of history, disappeared into the aetherless void with the swift aplomb of a South American dictator. Except, dear friends, we now have North American dictators, Enemies of Liberty such as all Congresspersons and Senators who were in office during July of the year 2012, and Mr. Obama, who signed NDAA 1540 into law, thus allowing the federal government to detain and hold indefinitely American citizens who defy marshal law. (This piece of legislation, ratified unanimously by the White House and Congress, violates the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution of the United States of America and international treaties, including the Geneva Convention.)
Yes, my brothers and sisters, because I speak out, because I write on americanifesto and liesmith about the downfall of our democracy and the erosion of our constitutional protections and the rape of the Commons, I shall be among the first casualties of the wave of injustice that is even now swamping this once-fair land. It has been my pleasure to be able to write; it has been my pleasure to be able to bang away for a while on the drums of civil discontentment; but, I think things will become much darker here in America after Obama is appointed to another four years, and I think that things will become worse for people such as me far sooner than they will become better. So, my brave, silent readership, if I suddenly stop posting to my eight separate blogs, and if I stay silent for more than a week's time, it means that I was taken by the federal government of the United States of America, tortured by the federal government of the United States of America, and killed by the federal government of the United States of America, and that my lifeless corpse is rotting at the bottom of some forgotten pit at some unnamed military base in the middle of bum-fuck nowhere. C'est la vie, though, and fuck 'em, since I shall gladly die defending the last few remnants of goddesses Liberty and Justice, and I wouldn't have it any other way. Mahalo.
場黑麥 mentiri factorem fecit
Because I speak of these things, writing often about the overreaches and the abuses of our sitting president, his predecessors, and their well-heeled corporate cronies – they who shift from corporate officer to appointed official, and back again, in a never-ending cycle of sycophantic, avaricious nepotism – because I speak of these things, banging the dinner-gong to the tune of my own unraveling, for this reason, I will be among the first to go. When our leaders in Washington decide it is time to round up dissidents such as me and to put us in prisons and into labor and death camps for re-education and to keep the minds of the general population free of any doubt about the validity and sustainability of our current economic and political systems, then it will be clear that my bleating was not merely the bitter moaning of a spoiled little whorphan, but that my attempts to get the people of this land to think critically about their lives and about how much television they watch and about their lack of self-reliance and about their whole-scale adoption of conspicuous-consumption-oriented capitalism were more than self-righteous chest-beating.
The only problem about the previous sentence is that none of these here words will exist once I am black-bagged, detained, and murdered, because they will have been wiped away, removed from the world-wide-web, with a single mouse-click deleted from the annals of history, disappeared into the aetherless void with the swift aplomb of a South American dictator. Except, dear friends, we now have North American dictators, Enemies of Liberty such as all Congresspersons and Senators who were in office during July of the year 2012, and Mr. Obama, who signed NDAA 1540 into law, thus allowing the federal government to detain and hold indefinitely American citizens who defy marshal law. (This piece of legislation, ratified unanimously by the White House and Congress, violates the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution of the United States of America and international treaties, including the Geneva Convention.)
Yes, my brothers and sisters, because I speak out, because I write on americanifesto and liesmith about the downfall of our democracy and the erosion of our constitutional protections and the rape of the Commons, I shall be among the first casualties of the wave of injustice that is even now swamping this once-fair land. It has been my pleasure to be able to write; it has been my pleasure to be able to bang away for a while on the drums of civil discontentment; but, I think things will become much darker here in America after Obama is appointed to another four years, and I think that things will become worse for people such as me far sooner than they will become better. So, my brave, silent readership, if I suddenly stop posting to my eight separate blogs, and if I stay silent for more than a week's time, it means that I was taken by the federal government of the United States of America, tortured by the federal government of the United States of America, and killed by the federal government of the United States of America, and that my lifeless corpse is rotting at the bottom of some forgotten pit at some unnamed military base in the middle of bum-fuck nowhere. C'est la vie, though, and fuck 'em, since I shall gladly die defending the last few remnants of goddesses Liberty and Justice, and I wouldn't have it any other way. Mahalo.
場黑麥 mentiri factorem fecit
27 June 2012
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
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
13 June 2012
on the society for securing the blessings of Liberty
In the wake of all federal, state, and local government's recent refusal to follow such guidelines as are clearly worded in the Constitution of the United States of America stating that one of the few roles of government is to secure the blessings of Liberty to us, the founding persons' Posterity, by granting us, the American People, full and unconditional rights to do with our bodies and our minds as we see best fit (be it by smoking, drinking, gaining or losing weight, or cutting our hair in strange and unusual ways), the most upstanding and forward-thinking citizens of this economically-ailing and morally-oppressive nation have banded together to form the American Society for Securing the Blessings of Liberty (ASSBL).
Open to any person who swears that he or she has actually studied the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution with a sober and open mind and who can prove that he or she is dedicated fully to the cause of keeping the People Safe and Happy (by staying out of everyone else's business until such time as intervention is requested by them in writing), the ASSBL seeks to guide our once-fine nation back onto the course from which it long ago strayed. Said Ebenezer Higgins IX (a direct descendant of one of the original Sons of Liberty), who was himself instrumental in the founding of ASSBL, “For too long have we granted our various governmental bodies the power to control our lives and to punish us for doing with our bodies things that do not directly infringe upon the Life, Liberty, or Property of any other person, or persons. Our brave ancestors fought and died to secure for us total freedom, which we sacrificed in 1970 with the Controlled Substances Act and then again shortly after the 9-11 attacks in order to gain a simulacrum of security against the chaotic and shifting winds of Fortune, against which there is no security that has ever or can ever be devised by humankind.”
The ASSBL was inspired by the short-lived Department for Securing the Blessings of Liberty, a government body founded by President Barack Obama that flourished for, oh, about five whole minutes before the prison, district attorney, and police lobbies had its funding revoked and arranged to have its appointed members lose their lands, to have their mouths sewn shut, and to live in constant fear of being physically and politically disappeared. Dedicated to the idea that the role of government is to protect the People from external and internal threats rather than to nitpick their every action or to put them in jail for consuming drugs other than the drug alcohol, the drug nicotine, or the drug caffeine, the Society requires of its members merely that they risk their Lives, their Fortunes, and their sacred Honor to protect the Life, Liberty, and Property of their fellow homo sapiens. To sign up for ASSBL, or to donate funds to help ensure its continued existence, please call 1.877.555.GFYS, or go to www.theblessingsoflibertydonotexist.com.
場黑麥 menterefecterem fecit
Open to any person who swears that he or she has actually studied the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution with a sober and open mind and who can prove that he or she is dedicated fully to the cause of keeping the People Safe and Happy (by staying out of everyone else's business until such time as intervention is requested by them in writing), the ASSBL seeks to guide our once-fine nation back onto the course from which it long ago strayed. Said Ebenezer Higgins IX (a direct descendant of one of the original Sons of Liberty), who was himself instrumental in the founding of ASSBL, “For too long have we granted our various governmental bodies the power to control our lives and to punish us for doing with our bodies things that do not directly infringe upon the Life, Liberty, or Property of any other person, or persons. Our brave ancestors fought and died to secure for us total freedom, which we sacrificed in 1970 with the Controlled Substances Act and then again shortly after the 9-11 attacks in order to gain a simulacrum of security against the chaotic and shifting winds of Fortune, against which there is no security that has ever or can ever be devised by humankind.”
The ASSBL was inspired by the short-lived Department for Securing the Blessings of Liberty, a government body founded by President Barack Obama that flourished for, oh, about five whole minutes before the prison, district attorney, and police lobbies had its funding revoked and arranged to have its appointed members lose their lands, to have their mouths sewn shut, and to live in constant fear of being physically and politically disappeared. Dedicated to the idea that the role of government is to protect the People from external and internal threats rather than to nitpick their every action or to put them in jail for consuming drugs other than the drug alcohol, the drug nicotine, or the drug caffeine, the Society requires of its members merely that they risk their Lives, their Fortunes, and their sacred Honor to protect the Life, Liberty, and Property of their fellow homo sapiens. To sign up for ASSBL, or to donate funds to help ensure its continued existence, please call 1.877.555.GFYS, or go to www.theblessingsoflibertydonotexist.com.
場黑麥 menterefecterem fecit
06 June 2012
on America's central problem
For nearly a century now Americans have remained universally addicted to one thing: the constant availability of alternating-current (AC) electrical power (as well as, of course, mankind's damnable propensity to take the path of least resistance). This addiction is responsible for nearly each of our nation's woes, among them our backslide into a convenience-oriented culture and our over-reliance on mechanical and electrical devices to do all of our work for us which in turn makes us lazy and prone to lie around all day watching television and being worthless pieces of shit. In order to fuel the dynamos that make this power, good, honest Americans risk their lives to drag coal out of deep tunnels, whereupon it is dumped into trains, moved vast distances, and burned by the ton, releasing large amounts of harmful by-products every step of the way. Then, instead of just using the direct current (DC) coming from the high-tension lines that zigzag across our abused and once-pristine land, power companies transform the direct current into alternating current, losing a large portion of the initial electrical charge in the process. Anyone who has ever charged a cellphone or laptop computer battery uses DC: most batteries used today employ the DC system – which is an effective and efficient method for storing and using electricity – but this means that the juice that keeps our handheld devices running is first transformed into AC before being piped back into the home, whereupon it is transformed (via the little box on one's electrical-charging-cable) back into DC so that it can charge said battery. Furthermore, in order for said battery to be charged in the first place, the various power companies must run their power-generating stations at certain levels all of the time, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and 365 days a year, even when no one is using that power, such as at night when most people are sleeping. And what is at the root of all of this wastefulness? Why do we still adhere to standards that have been proven over and over again to be inferior to other designs? One reason is Mr. Edison's (and his sinister cabal's) early 20th century efforts to replace the alternating current championed by Mr. Nikola Tesla with their system of direct current – a more complicated and more costly but no safer alternative to the Tesla design – so that he could sell the inventions he himself had designed and built; his short-sighted avarice, along with the acquiescence of the U.S. federal government, have put us – and kept us – in this mess.
Since the federal government of this country has kept us in this mess for so long, it is only fitting that it should get us back out of it. Please, release Mr. Tesla's documents, which became the property of you our tyrannical federal overlords immediately upon his death. We must start building and using the Wardenclyffe tower designs to provide no-cost-to-the-consumer wireless communications and no-cost-to-the-consumer wireless electrical power; anything less shall be seen as neglecting the general Welfare by keeping the People addicted to such power as seems to spring effortlessly from the nation's wall-sockets but that in reality wastes so many of our precious resources. Please, dear g-men down in Whorshanktin, rewrite the standards to allow us to conserve as much of the energy we generate as possible so that we might use the product of our nation's labor most efficiently, conserve our dwindling stock of natural resources, guide the People back along a path of intelligent sustainability, and reduce our fantastically high levels of pollution. Anything less, dear Senators, Congresspersons, and President, anything less shall be construed as spineless obedience to the pressures of lobbyists and to the power companies that pay for them (to whom you, in turn, routinely sell your souls).
場黑麥 menterefecterem fecit
Since the federal government of this country has kept us in this mess for so long, it is only fitting that it should get us back out of it. Please, release Mr. Tesla's documents, which became the property of you our tyrannical federal overlords immediately upon his death. We must start building and using the Wardenclyffe tower designs to provide no-cost-to-the-consumer wireless communications and no-cost-to-the-consumer wireless electrical power; anything less shall be seen as neglecting the general Welfare by keeping the People addicted to such power as seems to spring effortlessly from the nation's wall-sockets but that in reality wastes so many of our precious resources. Please, dear g-men down in Whorshanktin, rewrite the standards to allow us to conserve as much of the energy we generate as possible so that we might use the product of our nation's labor most efficiently, conserve our dwindling stock of natural resources, guide the People back along a path of intelligent sustainability, and reduce our fantastically high levels of pollution. Anything less, dear Senators, Congresspersons, and President, anything less shall be construed as spineless obedience to the pressures of lobbyists and to the power companies that pay for them (to whom you, in turn, routinely sell your souls).
場黑麥 menterefecterem fecit
23 April 2012
regarding victory gardens
Friends, citizens, patriots: Please join the nationwide movement for greater self-sufficiency and improved life satisfaction by planting a victory garden. In the past, during episodes of perpetual war and stagnant economic possibility, our parents and grandparents rolled up sleeves and sunk fingers deep into the cool and blessed soil. They did not moan, they did not wail, they did not complain – they planted victory gardens.
We – you, I, and all of us – currently endure wars on multiple fronts, wildly fluctuating food prices, foodstuffs genetically modified and contaminated with pesticides and petroleum-based fuels and chemicals, and environmental degradation caused by poor political policies and by short-sighted agricultural and business practices. With the global food-supply-chain growing ever less sustainable, and with food manufacturers seeking to maximize their profits at all cost by saturating their products with fillers such as salts, sugars, and fats, now is the time, and today is the day, to take fate into your own hands and to sew for yourself the seeds of a brighter and more independent future. (Solar, wind, or water generated electricity used to run a water pump or the like can be stored in 12 volt, direct-current batteries, which can themselves be tapped to heat water, to cook, and to recharge the batteries of cellphones, netbooks, headlamps, and tablets; renewable resources abound, coal or crude oil do not.)
Anyone, anywhere, of any age and activity level, has the capacity to plant a garden, and, thereby, to liberate her own little slice of America from self-imposed reliance on foreign food producers, corporate farms, and plasticized, processed foodstuffs. For persons living in urban areas: Research square-foot-gardening (or square-meter-gardening); for persons living anywhere: Research methods of gardening using raised-beds; for persons with available acreage: Research closed-cycle systems, hydro-culture, drip irrigation, and methods for feeding hydroponic crops from a Tilapia pond's runoff. Tips and strategies for planting a victory garden of your own can be found motherearthnews.com, freecycle.org, or at many other gardening, off-the-grid, and self-sufficiency websites.
We cannot wait any longer to free ourselves from our current slavery to petroleum products, corporate farms, corporate food processors, the idea that things are easy, or the idea that someone else must grow our food for us. We must act now, each one of us breaking a single chain in the ever-tightening, ever-restricting bonds of the capitalism-driven enslavement of hard-working, crop-producing people around the world; building a victory garden on your balcony or in your backyard is an easy and fun first step in the process. So join us, fellow Americans, join us, and celebrate increased food Safety and greater personal Happiness by living, and eating, well.
場黑麥 mentiri factorem fecit
We – you, I, and all of us – currently endure wars on multiple fronts, wildly fluctuating food prices, foodstuffs genetically modified and contaminated with pesticides and petroleum-based fuels and chemicals, and environmental degradation caused by poor political policies and by short-sighted agricultural and business practices. With the global food-supply-chain growing ever less sustainable, and with food manufacturers seeking to maximize their profits at all cost by saturating their products with fillers such as salts, sugars, and fats, now is the time, and today is the day, to take fate into your own hands and to sew for yourself the seeds of a brighter and more independent future. (Solar, wind, or water generated electricity used to run a water pump or the like can be stored in 12 volt, direct-current batteries, which can themselves be tapped to heat water, to cook, and to recharge the batteries of cellphones, netbooks, headlamps, and tablets; renewable resources abound, coal or crude oil do not.)
Anyone, anywhere, of any age and activity level, has the capacity to plant a garden, and, thereby, to liberate her own little slice of America from self-imposed reliance on foreign food producers, corporate farms, and plasticized, processed foodstuffs. For persons living in urban areas: Research square-foot-gardening (or square-meter-gardening); for persons living anywhere: Research methods of gardening using raised-beds; for persons with available acreage: Research closed-cycle systems, hydro-culture, drip irrigation, and methods for feeding hydroponic crops from a Tilapia pond's runoff. Tips and strategies for planting a victory garden of your own can be found motherearthnews.com, freecycle.org, or at many other gardening, off-the-grid, and self-sufficiency websites.
We cannot wait any longer to free ourselves from our current slavery to petroleum products, corporate farms, corporate food processors, the idea that things are easy, or the idea that someone else must grow our food for us. We must act now, each one of us breaking a single chain in the ever-tightening, ever-restricting bonds of the capitalism-driven enslavement of hard-working, crop-producing people around the world; building a victory garden on your balcony or in your backyard is an easy and fun first step in the process. So join us, fellow Americans, join us, and celebrate increased food Safety and greater personal Happiness by living, and eating, well.
場黑麥 mentiri factorem fecit
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