haiku 2 Apr 2018

A failed republic
Run by wolves preying on sheep
Best to get out now

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

themed, useless crap

A cold war is being waged in this rural Pennsylvania town between the agents of two trumped-up organizations: the Steelers and the Ravens. From Pittsburgh and Baltimore respectively, the televised efforts of these two professional sports teams have so ensnared the imaginations – and, more importantly, the purse-strings – of the hard-working, blue-collar, middle-class denizens of this sad little place as to have hijacked the identities of people who spend what little free time they get eating potato chips, drinking cheap beer, and staring at self-illuminated boxes.

I imagine that the inner monologue of a fan of one of the many over-hyped national football league (NFL) teams goes something like this: “Do I donate to charity and help feed over three million starving American children or do I spend a hundred and fifty dollars on a ten-foot-high flag bearing the logo of my team? Do I perpetuate obesity and sloth within my family by stuffing cheese-doodles into my mouth as I sit on my financed couch with my eyes glued to an enormous television it will take me the next fifteen months to pay off? Do I send my check to an organization fighting poverty in this country's rust-belt or to a cluster of distant Chinamen cranking out solar-powered pathway lights emblazoned with an image of a highly stylized scavenger-bird designed by a wealthy corporation? You know what… fuck the poor, and fuck the kids – I need this overpriced bullshit so I can put it out in my yard and show my neighbor that I favor a different squad of men-in-tights than he does.”

I waste neither time nor money watching professional sports, preferring instead to read books on different and unrelated subjects, preferring instead to expand my mind by teaching myself languages and learning about organic gardening; I memorize neither statistics nor the success-rate of special trick plays, preferring instead to stay silent during useless NFL-related conversations, preferring instead to plumb the depths of my dark and twisted ego in order to bend it to my will, driving addiction and need from my life; I choose not to look on as angry fat dudes run into each other, preferring the freedom of a vigorous bicycle ride over sedentary slavery to a season of two minute warnings. I admit to puffing myself up here, to hoisting myself aloft in an attempt to differentiate myself from pig-skin-loving simpletons; as a Son of the American Revolution, however, and as a self-respecting and productive artist, I cannot afford to waste any more of my precious life on foolhardy pursuits than I have already wasted trying and failing to satisfy the root of mankind's evil, the ego. This, in my humble opinion, is part of the attraction of professional sports: they very often serve as proxy identities for persons too lazy or weak-of-will to do something unique with their lives worth talking about; they give pack-runners whose existence revolves around the act of consumption a topic to discuss that does not have to do with kids, jobs, or failing health. It is wrong of me to judge and to ridicule people for paying top dollar for jerseys or pennants or banners proclaiming that, “This Is Giants Country,” or something similarly absurd; the words I have written here are just as much driven by a darkly thrusting ego as are the shouted cries of thirty thousand star-struck fans. I am a worthless cunt for spending time crafting this article, but these thoughts well up inside me when I am shredding through town on my velocipede, and I know not where else to turn for release. On some level, I don't give a flying fuck (IDGAFF) what other people do, although I wish sometimes they wouldn't be so fucking flagrantly lame. Oh brother.

© mentiri factorem fecit (場黑麥)

declaring independence from...

This year, my proud fellow Americans, our goal is to turn ourselves into persons who live without want for things, who accept all adverse situations as gifts from the Universe, and who have learned to conquer such needs and desires as so often tend to hijack our lives. Among such negative influences as are working upon our lives are materialism as exhibited by our constant tendency to go shopping; sloth as exhibited by our insistence on driving cars everywhere we go; avarice as exhibited by the fact that money has become our One True god, the only thing for which we strive each and every day; dependence as exhibited by our nearly universal refusal to grow or raise our own foodstuffs; ignorance as exhibited by our watching of only one television channel or reading of only one newspaper or blog, which causes our minds to narrow and calcify; foolhardiness as exhibited by our having bought into the convenience culture and its tendency to trick us into thinking that life is or should be somehow easy, and that we deserve to be constantly treating ourselves to nice things; and stupidity as exhibited by our lack of proper flag etiquette, especially on such days upon which we seek to honor and celebrate the founding of our nation by displaying the flag for which it stands, under nothing but Liberty and Justice for all.

The negative realities listed above can be surmounted and counter-acted by ceasing to purchase anything but basic necessities (until such time as such necessities can be made at home or bartered for), by moving one's body around on foot or bicycle, by cultivating one's own person spiritual and emotional worth rather than grubbing after external worth such as cash, by making our communities and households food-independent, by getting our news from sources different from one another and unrelated, by making our own entertainment instead of watching television, by buying back out of the hollow culture of convenience, and by treating the flag of the United States of America as it should be treated, as if it were a human member of the family. To live in the manner that we live today is to go about our daily lives as dumb beasts tied to the yoke of distant corporate overlords, circumstances nearly identical to those of Americans living in the 18th century who toiled under the yoke of distant societal overlords. It appears that we in America have come full circle, changing from sheep to eagles, from eagles to swine, from swine to wolves, and from wolves back into sheep, soiling ourselves mightily along the way. There is another path, oh fellow patriots, a path, however, that does not involve merely stockpiling firearms, lying around watching TV, eating processed foods high in fat and sugar, and living under a perpetual Fear Of The Unknown.

Please, dear reader, cherished friend, declare independence from avaricious self-interest and small-minded laziness by throwing off the last, clinging vestiges of foul consumption-oriented capitalism; free your mind, excite your soul, and become a new Guard for our future Security, today.

場黑麥 mentiri manufactorem fecit