haiku 25 Sep 2017

Saudi gasoline
Funds violence and terror;
Don’t buy that bullshit

americanifesto / 場黑麥 / jpr / urbanartopia / whorphan

on idling enemies

From oil – as in crude oil, sweet crude, oil wells, and the British Petroleum / Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill of 2011 – we make gasoline. From oil we also get plastics, which are used to make water bottles, baby toys, toothbrushes, car seats, laptop cases, lampshades, bottle-caps, pens, linoleum flooring, clothing, and shoes, to name a few examples. Oil is a precious, strategic national resource of the United States of America, one every citizen is duty-bound to protect and conserve. Therefore, the patriotic citizen rarely allows his gasoline-powered automobile to idle for longer than 30 seconds, since idling past 30 seconds compared to turning off and later restarting the vehicle wastes gasoline (according to new information), and gasoline, as it is a derivative of oil, is a strategic national resource that must be protected and conserved. (Idling while stuck in traffic may seem unavoidable until one remembers the existence of gasoline-electric hybrid engines and sees bicyclists riding by freely and exuberantly.)

The patriotic citizen educates himself about his use of this precious national resource – he does not waste oil, because wasting it would require us to send America's brave men and women to fight more wars of aggression against more oil-rich nations (such as Iran). If a person wanted to harm the United States of America and to make her less able to provide for the common defense and the general Welfare, that person would drive an unnecessarily large, gas-guzzling vehicle. The person who drives a vehicle disproportionate to his supposed need to get around (such as an unaccompanied person driving a king-sized pickup truck) is effectively an enemy of the state: he burns more gas moving himself around than he might if he were to make a minor personal sacrifice and drive a smaller car with a smaller engine. (Today's Ynki accepts readily the lie that he might drive his car to work, drive his car to the store, drive his car to the gym, and drive his car to school, all without consequence; we Americans, however, can no longer afford to be lazy, worthless people who fucking drive everywhere.) In order to protect his nation's future (and to make sure the troopers fighting this nation's wars have enough gasoline for their military vehicles), the true American patriot bicycles whenever possible.

Life requires water; without water, there is no life; without water, humans die. Because it is a component essential to maintaining the general Welfare, and since it is needed to effect the Safety and Happiness of the American citizen (which, according to the Declaration of Independence, is the primary purpose of government), water is one of this nation's precious national resources. Businesses that waste water are enemies of the state, companies that deliberately poison aquifers are enemies of the state, and persons who throw water away are enemies of the state. Persons who allow the faucet to run while they brush their teeth; who run the tap while shaving; who let a shower fun for twenty minutes for it to warm up; who hose down a driveway instead of sweeping it with a fucking broom; who maintain lawns in the desert (instead of planting drought-resistant, native species); who toss cigarette butts into lakes; these persons are all enemies of the state. Please, dear reader, if you consider yourself a patriot, please examine your use of Earth's precious resources, and adjust your habits so as to reduce the risk of future suffering. He who sacrifices for the common good can rightly call himself a patriot, unlike the person who desecrates the American flag by gluing it to his clothing or pasting it to the door of his car. Liberty frowns upon they who idle wastefully.

場黑麥 ioanni elymucampus fecit

people in motion

On a velocipede, or bicycle, a person is a largely independent entity beholden to few others. The velocipedist drags himself across the phaltscape (or asphalt landscape) by pumping a crank with his legs in order to move a thin chain across a series of skinny gear wheels. Beyond the maker of his smog-sled, he interacts only occasionally with replacement parts manufacturers. In order to commute across the face of the Earth, he requires neither filling station nor foreign oil; he has use for neither computer diagnostic tool nor power-train warranty; he spends his money on things other than monthly finance charges, oil changes, state inspections, and car washes; he is one person in motion whose mobility hinges on his ability to balance on a pair of rubber tires and to keep his head on a swivel.

Let us briefly consider, however, the operator of a motor-vehicle, or car. In order for her to move herself across the phaltscape, she needs prospectors, wildcatters, pipeline inspectors, ship captains and crews, deep-bore drill operators, indigenous security forces, foreign policy wonks, navies, supply-chain logistics specialists, fueling-station clerks, unleaded-gasoline delivery drivers, brake-line hose manufacturers, industrial robot maintenance engineers, TIG welding specialists, and many others; in order for her to stay in motion, a thousand other people need to be in motion; her mobility hinges upon all elements of a ridiculously complex system working together in perfect harmony, a thousand different people all doing their job with precision, care, and diligence.

On the one hand, the driver who fills up her car with gasoline keeps the money flowing to a thousand different persons working in a hundred different places; her actions grease the wheels of the global economy and tighten the bonds between peoples; her dependency on the pump, her slavery to the self-propelled chariot, fills the pockets of armies of workers around the globe. On the other hand, however, oil and its derivatives are a dirty business that relies on the burning of a useful and valuable resource; their production and removal taint the groundwater and the soil of any region where they are found; their sale has made the autocratic leaders of oppressive regimes – persons who support and finance terrorism – fantastically rich. The driver's mode of transportation leads to war and pollution, while that of the cyclist promotes self-sufficiency, healthful living, and peaceful interaction with both Nature and neighbor. Free yourself from that self-propelled glass and steel prison; mount a velocipede, today.

mentiri factorem fecit © 場黑麥

science & faith

People today who self-proclaim as faithful seem to be hypocrites. Instead of relying on their god to provide them with nourishment, for example, they go shopping at grocery stores and fill their larders with food; instead of trusting in their god's ability to heal them of sickness, they go to doctors and wash their hands with soap; instead of allowing themselves to waste away so as to reach their promised land that much sooner, they brush their teeth and go for walks and care for their own health. If these people were truly faithful, they would not even think of gathering food for themselves but would only eat what happened to fall dead within earshot, trusting that the Great Magnet would fell enough for their bodies to keep on living; if they truly believed, they would let their physical shells rot, caring not for tooth-ache nor for compound fracture nor for the deepest laceration, in the knowledge that all healing comes from that mystical power that cannot ever be named; if they were wholly pure of heart, they would sit quietly with neither attachment nor aversion as the leaves piled up around their feet and the stars wheeled by, high overhead, upon the vast and inky firmament.

I am among the greatest of offenders in these matters, a humble and worthless whorphan too full of ego and malice to still his soul of greed, too wrapped up in life's shiny trappings to focus on the gentle spirit bursting within his loins, blinded to the subtle majesty of the Universe by desire, selfishness, and discontentment. Some day, I hope to shed myself of this peripheral clutter and bask in the glowing rays of god's own pulsating sphincter, but not today, old boy, and certainly not anytime soon, for my faith is too weak, my ambition is too strong, and my adherence to the false parameters of life and death is greater than my capacity for Total Emptiness, known to the Chinese as wu.

Returning to my original point: To live in a house and to drive a car is to rely on science; a car runs on a liquid called gasoline, which burns at a certain rate if the pressure in an engine's combustion chamber is just right; a house keeps the pounding rain and the slanting sleet of off one's head because it has a sloped roof and see-through windows made of glass and wood. To bathe regularly with soap and to refrigerate food is to believe that science works, that its lessons and warnings are true; soap cleans because it is a mildly caustic mixture of animal fats and lye, and food spoils less quickly when it is stored within an air-tight box and blasted with frigid winds. To wear a coat in winter, moreover, is proof of doubt in the Supreme Deity's ability to keep a body from freezing to death, irrefutable evidence that a down-filled covering trumps the warming knowledge of a personal savior, any day. Therefore, the next time you see someone mount a high horse and start squawking about how pure and righteous is his god, remind him that his house, his cellphone, his car, and his clothes, are all proof of the failure of his personal faith; but beware, for religious fanatics – regardless of their faith, be they Christian, Muslim, or Hindu – are dangerous people best avoided. Mahalo.

© mentiri factorem fecit (場黑麥)

on individual ownership

Bicycling everywhere I go in this little town gives me certain glimpses into the private lives of the people living here that simply cannot be obtained by driving around in a car. For one, I approach people nearly silently, with only the occasional creaking gear or rattling chain to betray my presence, allowing me to observe them candidly until I am all but upon them (or at least until their peripheral vision picks up my whirling feet). Secondly, whereas when driving in a car one is prone to choose the most direct and well-paved path to get to one's destination so as to maintain a good fuel economy and to spend as little time as possible stuck in traffic, when riding a bicycle I take a variety of routes paved and unpaved, direct and circuitous, back-alley and broad-way, as I see fit and as my schedule allows.

By avoiding the beaten and asphalted paths, and by keeping my head on a swivel and looking into everyone's yards, I have made a number of judgments and come to a number of conclusions. The first of all these unbearably smug and better-than-though-art observations is that people living in close proximity to one another own items in such redundancy as to nearly boggle the mind. No matter how large or small a person's yard should be, it will be cut using a full-sized, gas-powered lawn mower. No matter how few obstructions and other solid objects that cannot simply be mowed over, they will be trimmed using a gasoline-powered weed-whip or edge-trimmer. Every yard – even the postage-stamp-sized ones – will have a shed of sorts for storing gardening tools; every home-owner – even the ones with more time than money on their hands – will rush outside and pay good money to have machines to do such work as they could easily do themselves at the cost of some sweat and a few minutes of precious television-watching time. Oh, if communities but had a central storage-and-loan shed for tools, a type of tool lending-library, a place where persons not interested in always buying such things as they might need to keep their property up to code could go and borrow a pair of hedge trimmers or a ladder. Imagine the volume of extra cash that would be floating around! Imagine the richness such a facility would bring to communities across America, people coming out of their homes and mingling with one another on a regular basis while queuing for tools, discussing methods of lawn-care and sharing freely of hard-won secrets, second-hand tips, and local advice.

The second observation I should like to make is that far too few people seem to be growing victory gardens, accepting rather the luxury of being able to buy their food at grocery-stores as some sort of Eternal Truth and wasting their time sitting around in air-conditioned houses eating cheesy-poofs and watching reruns on TV instead of mucking about in gardens where they might – oh cruel and terrible thought – stumble into conversation with a neighbor or passer-by. Square miles of good growing space sit wasted on grass; endless expanses of fertile soil stand planted with little more, perhaps, than a handful of ornamental flowers. Sew grain, not just grasses! Plant food, not just flowers!

Dear friends, I am coming to see the widespread use of television as the root-of-all-evil in America, that one main factor that has sent this once-fine land into a tailspin of societal and communal decline, that one primary thing without which ours would be a better, stronger, and more closely-knit nation. Without TV, people would not be constantly told to Buy More Shit, and without TV, they might get off their fat fucking asses and go outside for a nice, healthy walk now and again. Woe is unto us, sisters and brothers, fellow Lovers Of Liberty, we who reject the tenets of conspicuous consumerism, we who seek to be self-sufficient and self-reliant; our siblings have stumbled down the path of convenience and leisure, seduced into personal debt by the candy-sweet promise of touch-screen-equipped tablets and one-click-ordering, lost in a land of false and hollow hope, ensnared in the web of ubiquitous advertising, bled dry of honor and self-respect. Which way leads back out again, friends? To whom do we turn for salvation? The answer, in short, is that we must turn now to ourselves, setting such good and positive examples as might show our fellow Americans that there are other methods besides their ruinous ways. Mahalo, friends, and keep fighting.

場黑麥 mentiri manufactorem fecit

gasoline: keeping the FUN in Funding Terrorism since 1938

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

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

場黑麥 mentiri factorem fecit

on trashing Mother

Please, patriotic citizens of America, please take a moment, at some point during the day today, to consider just how much we litter in this land. For all of the bluster and fuss about everyone being patriotic and waving flags and hanging them from cars and homes and businesses, we show great disrespect, even outright hatred, for the motherland – she who is fair Columbia – by disposing of our trash in inappropriate places. Fast food cups fill meadows and ditches; plastic take-home containers tumble in breezes; and our parks and forests are strewn with waste large and small, tin cans and candy wrappers and all sorts of other items discarded carelessly and without a moment's humble consideration. To claim patriotism is a poor and hollow substitute for acting in such a way as to cause as little harm, and as little disruption, to the natural condition of the many wild areas with which we as a People are blessed. (It is a unbearably shameful that we stole these lands from the First People tribes who lived here first, and that we murdered them gleefully and treated them as if they were worth less than beasts, but that is beside the point of this article.)

Beyond the more visible forms of litter, the byproducts created by the explosion of gasoline inside a car's engine – particulate matters, soots, and noxious gases – are all forms of litter; therefore, it is important for everyone who is capable to ride a bicycle and to avoid driving as much as possible. The true patriot does everything in her power to minimize the harm her actions cause the motherland; just as she would not stuff handfuls of empty candy-bar wrappers into her biological mother's vagina, so she does not toss them heedlessly into her local rivers. Just as she would not douse her birth-mom with a gallon of spent engine-oil, so she avoids dumping any fluids other than water directly into the curb-side drainage pipe.

It would seem, perhaps, that this article covers things that people already know, that it would be unthinkable to imagine that there are individuals in this land who are such tremendous assholes that they would pour our their waste, discard their trash, and flick their cigarettes butts onto the first available natural surface, but it is true. We are a nation of individuals seduced by the notion of a false convenience, tricked by advertisers, pastors, and politicians into thinking that our daily actions do not amount to much, that things shall soon get better. America is great because of industrious, positive individual effort, but our negative, careless individual efforts are costing her dearly, and leaving her stained, tainted, and diseased. So, please, dear friends, please pack out anything you pack in, leave your surroundings better than they were when you found them, and nourish a love for Mother earth as vast as is the love you feel for yourself.

場黑麥 mentiri factorem fecit