In the movie The Dark Knight starring Heath Ledger and Christian Bale, Michael Cane's character sums up the Joker's actions with a single, iconic sentence, saying, “Some men, Mr. Wayne, just want to watch the world burn.” To some degree, my desires mirror those of that green-haired maniac; on some level, I think that the most expedient and the simplest way for us to return balance to our world and to curtail mankind's dangerous over-expansion is to stop trying to control things that are wholly out of our control (such as human economic and moral behavior) and return to a state of blessed anarchy.
Hence, the title of this piece: foxtrot tango whiskey, or fuck the world, which is often abbreviated as FTW. Less a declaration of intent and more a general musing, the roots of this desire to foxtrot tango whiskey stretch all the way back to the anarchist who changed the world by blowing up Prince Franz Ferdinand while that pompous ass was being driven through Sarajevo. Beyond this bold act that tipped the West into its First World War and set the stage for today's Ynki supremacy, I look at the United States of America and our own early anarchism, a bygone state of total liberty that was first truly tested, and first truly crushed, under the jackboot of Northern aggression during the 1860s. Before that time, the federal government had operated as it was designed to operate – as an entity tasked with negotiating foreign trade agreements and with making sure no foreign power invaded our soil. Then, however, a dozen states decided that they wanted to pursue a course other than that of their neighbors to to the north, and they split off from the Union, forming their own nation on this continent's lower half.
Why not let the South split off and follow its own path? Why force it to stay in the Union? Why spill the blood of hundreds of thousands of strong and otherwise productive men in order to try to coerce a people into doing something they had decided they no longer wanted to do? As we saw in the most recent presidential election, the old schisms still exist, with the same exact states that once made up the Confederacy voting overwhelmingly for a religiously and socially conservative candidate who spoke of curtailing immigration and keeping America American (whatever that means) and the remaining states, those of the Northeast and the West, voting for a president who at least seems to be a bit more conscious of the reasons for why our Constitution was drafted in the first place, among them to secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity. I hear in the news talk of secession among a number of groups scattered across the South, and I say let them go, if that is what they wish to do. Why waste more blood and more treasure trying to force people to stay where they don't want to stay? If history is any sort of guide, we can deduce that people will forever yearn to be free, and that the sooner they are granted that freedom, the better off they and their neighbors will be. If we all just fucked the world a little bit each day, I hazard that we would get up in each others' business with less frequency and pass fewer laws to regulate personal and professional behavior, preferring to let inherent human forces work things out than to try and micromanage a nation from giant, gilded palaces built on swampland next to the Potomac. So today, if only for a moment, foxtrot tango whiskey, and help make things better for everyone. Mahalo.
mentiri factorem fecit © 場黑麥
30 November 2012
28 November 2012
men make moans
Recently, while out disc-golfing in a nearby state park, some friends and I came across a guy and his gal being professionally photographed. The couple would walk a few paces, fall into each others' arms, kiss, hug, and lean, generally acting in the manner of drunken fools with smiles plastered on their faces. Then, as we were kicking through the dry leaves trying to find our discs, the man got down on one knee, took the girl's left hand in his, and pretended to slide a ring onto her finger. I have never been married, I do not plan to ever get married, and I don't think much of the ordeal; therefore, I put my head down, kept walking, and ignored the love-fest going on up the hill. Two of my companions, however, an overweight man in his late thirties and his overweight son, upon seeing the man drop to one knee, began to moan and coo and aw, punctuating their girlish behavior by stopping in their tracks and applauding. The love-struck man then stood up and made it clear through a few brief words and hand gestures that he was not in the act of proposing and that he and his betrothed lass were merely having their pictures taken as if they were, which dampened my companions' spirits considerably. When, later, I asked the man and his son why they had applauded the lovers' actions, they said because they thought it was “Nice.”
At sometime in the past, I fell for the lie that I had to express my emotions out loud and show everyone my sensitive side, that my feelings were things that had to be expressed and talked about, that vulnerability was a masculine virtue. I have found the exact opposite to be true: the more I have tried to express my feelings, the less control I've had over them, and the more I've tried to show my sensitive side, the sooner my past girlfriends have left me. In part, I blame modern Western society's lack of manhood rituals for teaching boys how to become men, rituals in which their role in society is explained to them and the dos and don'ts of the self-respecting male are spelled out. I've had to try to figure these rules out for myself, stumbling blindly down one dead-end after the next; I wouldn't have minded being suspended from a tree by hooks looped under my pectoral muscles and beaten with buffalo femurs so long as, afterwards, my uncles had told me what was up. As far as why Western men have begun to act in the manner of women, research points, in part, to our increased exposure to plastics: we eat off them, heat them in microwaves, wear them, sleep in them, and add them to our soaps, poisoning our bodies in subtle yet powerful ways and causing our boy children's genitalia to shrink. In part I also blame our society's obesity rates, with expanding waistlines signaling men's bodies to increase estrogen production, Mother Nature cursing pear-shaped dudes to act as if they were women. (I have no problem with women, or with women acting womanly, only when men do the same.)
Whenever I see couples acting romantically and looking at each other with stars in their eyes, with hands tightly intertwined and cheeks flushing with excitement, I immediately think of Doug Stanhope's bit regarding the ultimate conclusion to every single such instance of foreplay, that being male ejaculation. All the chocolates in the world, and all the bunches of roses, all the time spent talking on the phone, and all the pronouncements such as “I miss you” and “I love you” lead to one thing: the man shooting his sperms into or onto the girl's body. (I am neither gay nor lesbian, and so I cannot really speak to homosexual liaisons.) Since getting in shape, simplifying my life, and putting myself through a number of manhood rituals, I have found it easier to reject the old ways and to replace them with ones that play to my inherent masculine strengths; next time, then, I'll skip the foreplay and go straight to sleep. Mahalo.
mentiri factorem fecit © 場黑麥
At sometime in the past, I fell for the lie that I had to express my emotions out loud and show everyone my sensitive side, that my feelings were things that had to be expressed and talked about, that vulnerability was a masculine virtue. I have found the exact opposite to be true: the more I have tried to express my feelings, the less control I've had over them, and the more I've tried to show my sensitive side, the sooner my past girlfriends have left me. In part, I blame modern Western society's lack of manhood rituals for teaching boys how to become men, rituals in which their role in society is explained to them and the dos and don'ts of the self-respecting male are spelled out. I've had to try to figure these rules out for myself, stumbling blindly down one dead-end after the next; I wouldn't have minded being suspended from a tree by hooks looped under my pectoral muscles and beaten with buffalo femurs so long as, afterwards, my uncles had told me what was up. As far as why Western men have begun to act in the manner of women, research points, in part, to our increased exposure to plastics: we eat off them, heat them in microwaves, wear them, sleep in them, and add them to our soaps, poisoning our bodies in subtle yet powerful ways and causing our boy children's genitalia to shrink. In part I also blame our society's obesity rates, with expanding waistlines signaling men's bodies to increase estrogen production, Mother Nature cursing pear-shaped dudes to act as if they were women. (I have no problem with women, or with women acting womanly, only when men do the same.)
Whenever I see couples acting romantically and looking at each other with stars in their eyes, with hands tightly intertwined and cheeks flushing with excitement, I immediately think of Doug Stanhope's bit regarding the ultimate conclusion to every single such instance of foreplay, that being male ejaculation. All the chocolates in the world, and all the bunches of roses, all the time spent talking on the phone, and all the pronouncements such as “I miss you” and “I love you” lead to one thing: the man shooting his sperms into or onto the girl's body. (I am neither gay nor lesbian, and so I cannot really speak to homosexual liaisons.) Since getting in shape, simplifying my life, and putting myself through a number of manhood rituals, I have found it easier to reject the old ways and to replace them with ones that play to my inherent masculine strengths; next time, then, I'll skip the foreplay and go straight to sleep. Mahalo.
mentiri factorem fecit © 場黑麥
26 November 2012
what I'm missing
Over Thanksgiving, I took time to watch some TV, something I rarely do. I did this in part because I was invited to by my host, who wanted to kill some time before our feast of turkey and gravy and butternut squash, and in part to see what life is like for the tens of millions of average Americans who make it their habit. As part of my efforts to make myself a better and wiser person, I have been reading books on a wide range of topics and generally avoiding wasteful and IQ-diminishing activities such as the mindless consumption of packaged content, so I was excited to run with the crowd for a moment and check out what TV had to offer. My host and I watched a show about tattoo artists competing to see who could perform best under pressure, best on camera, best before a panel of judges. Thankfully, the show had been taped, so we could fast-forward over the commercials; thankfully, dinner was served before any of us had to suffer through too much of it.
Since taking the first steps toward self-sufficiency by running most of my household from a bank of 4 deep-cycle marine batteries fed by 6 solar panels, I have restricted my personal viewing time to but a few hours a week – I hook up the 750 watt inverter to watch only one movie at a time, whereupon I detach it from the battery, thus shutting everything down. I do not veg regularly on the couch flipping through channels; I follow neither show nor series, episode nor finale, nor do I bring up watching TV in conversation or stick around if someone else does. In short, at the mere mention of television, I become a butt-hurt curmudgeon. And so I was shocked at how stressful watching the boob-tube has become, how stupid I felt afterward, and how many more commercials there seemed to be now than when I watched it regularly just a few years ago. It is as if producers, studios, and networks had baited the viewing public into watching compelling and interesting shows and then switched formats to reflect their ultimate goal, that being to trick the American people into thinking they were having fun when they were in actuality being force-fed one advertisement after the next in bewilderingly frequent intervals, minds rotting while waist-lines expanded, ambition draining away while creativity was crushed under the jack-boot of rerun content.
Before this thankfully brief exposure, I had begun to wonder if I was missing something important, if I had erred in canceling my cable TV service, if I were somehow worse off for swimming against the crowd by not succumbing to TV's mind-numbing allure. Today, however, my curiosity is stilled, my wonder has abated, and I am confident in one thing: I am better off for having avoided television these past few years. As a person who has glimpsed the eternal silence of the Great Vast Crushing Nothingness and lived to tell the tale, I have a decent understanding of the preciousness of human existence; therefore, my decision to try to better myself as a person, as a scholar, as a linguist, and as a writer rather than waste my short life glued to a self-illuminated, talking rectangle appears to be bearing fruit, if only slowly. By no amount of talking, warning, cajoling, begging, demanding, nagging, or urging will I ever convince anyone else whom I care about to join me in ceasing to watch TV, in preserving a shred of self-respect and personal dignity, or in saving the self by switching off the tube; all forms of salvation – even ones that are so simply accomplished – come from the realization that there are always better ways than the current path, that nothing worth its while is easy, and that the hardest things are the most rewarding. So, please, cancel your cable subscriptions, dust off a book, and start living well again. Mahalo.
mentiri factorem fecit © 場黑麥
Since taking the first steps toward self-sufficiency by running most of my household from a bank of 4 deep-cycle marine batteries fed by 6 solar panels, I have restricted my personal viewing time to but a few hours a week – I hook up the 750 watt inverter to watch only one movie at a time, whereupon I detach it from the battery, thus shutting everything down. I do not veg regularly on the couch flipping through channels; I follow neither show nor series, episode nor finale, nor do I bring up watching TV in conversation or stick around if someone else does. In short, at the mere mention of television, I become a butt-hurt curmudgeon. And so I was shocked at how stressful watching the boob-tube has become, how stupid I felt afterward, and how many more commercials there seemed to be now than when I watched it regularly just a few years ago. It is as if producers, studios, and networks had baited the viewing public into watching compelling and interesting shows and then switched formats to reflect their ultimate goal, that being to trick the American people into thinking they were having fun when they were in actuality being force-fed one advertisement after the next in bewilderingly frequent intervals, minds rotting while waist-lines expanded, ambition draining away while creativity was crushed under the jack-boot of rerun content.
Before this thankfully brief exposure, I had begun to wonder if I was missing something important, if I had erred in canceling my cable TV service, if I were somehow worse off for swimming against the crowd by not succumbing to TV's mind-numbing allure. Today, however, my curiosity is stilled, my wonder has abated, and I am confident in one thing: I am better off for having avoided television these past few years. As a person who has glimpsed the eternal silence of the Great Vast Crushing Nothingness and lived to tell the tale, I have a decent understanding of the preciousness of human existence; therefore, my decision to try to better myself as a person, as a scholar, as a linguist, and as a writer rather than waste my short life glued to a self-illuminated, talking rectangle appears to be bearing fruit, if only slowly. By no amount of talking, warning, cajoling, begging, demanding, nagging, or urging will I ever convince anyone else whom I care about to join me in ceasing to watch TV, in preserving a shred of self-respect and personal dignity, or in saving the self by switching off the tube; all forms of salvation – even ones that are so simply accomplished – come from the realization that there are always better ways than the current path, that nothing worth its while is easy, and that the hardest things are the most rewarding. So, please, cancel your cable subscriptions, dust off a book, and start living well again. Mahalo.
mentiri factorem fecit © 場黑麥
23 November 2012
prayers to Baal
By the millions this year, during the days immediately following Thanksgiving, otherwise self-respecting Americans of all religious backgrounds, socio-economic strata, and ethnic heritages will dutifully bow before god Baal, the ancient deity of wasteful excess. Featured prominently in the Christian bible's old testament, Baal seduced the children of Israel while they were waiting for Moses to return from the Mount Sinai; within a short time they went from considerate and caring individuals to rapacious, lustful, and greedy cunts hellbent on grabbing, stuffing, wanting, needing, taking. Intended to be taken more as a metaphor than as an historical event, the seduction of the faithful by Baal was so great, and so extensive, that it caused Moses to ruin the first copy of the ten commandments, whereupon he slunk back up the mountain to obtain – from his jealous and spiteful god YHWH – another set.
The seduction continues this year during the celebrations of excessive and unnecessary consumption referred to in the press as Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, and Cyber Monday. Once again, otherwise considerate individuals will shake off the cruel yoke of frugal moderation in order to buy slightly-newer copies of things they already have, purchase gifts for distant relatives who wanted something else entirely, and generally act as if they were total fucking jerks while racking up personal debt on their credit cards and mortgaging their children's future in order to buy television sets slightly wider than the ones they already have. Once again, tens of millions of self-proclaimed Christians will spit in the face of YHWH, he who demands that all praise be given to him and him alone, he who calls for the death and banishment of those who mock his name, his power, his glory, his and his alone, now and forever. (Failing to follow the clearly-stated directives of one's god amounts to mocking that god's very existence.)
Do these poor fools realize that they're perpetuating the culture of me-first consumerism that is surely and steadily dragging America down into sad oblivion? Do they see the hypocrisy of driving to their churches in gleaming cars while dressed in fancy and expensive clothes in order to scrape perfunctorily before Jesus – a god who urges them to give as much to the poor as they can bear to give and to live their lives in simplicity, humility, and moderation – when in reality they sit in their single-family homes hoarding greenbacks and coveting baubles? Last year's retail sales numbers and this year's sales projections indicate that millions of Americans believe in Baal above Jesus and in consumption above compassion, that they allow advertising firms to dictate their lives, and that they have succumbed fully to the hollow grasp of their black and twisted egos. No amount of talking about this foul erosion of our nation's erstwhile and honorable frugality will make things better; I rail on this blog against these excesses just as my father once railed against them from his pulpit, all but begging his parishioners to choose love for one another over love for self. But, just as his words fell mostly on dead ears, so I feel do mine, woeful warnings wantonly ignored. If people wish to violate the tenets of their religion in order to save a couple dollars, that is their choice; if they would rather give in to the siren-call of conspicuous consumption than nurture in their hearts a wondrous and peaceful tranquility, who am I to say that they are wrong to do so? And besides, when the savings are this good, it doesn't matter if a few more people get trampled this year than last – it just means less competition. Save sanity, serenity, and soul – boycott black Friday!
mentiri factorem fecit © 場黑麥
The seduction continues this year during the celebrations of excessive and unnecessary consumption referred to in the press as Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, and Cyber Monday. Once again, otherwise considerate individuals will shake off the cruel yoke of frugal moderation in order to buy slightly-newer copies of things they already have, purchase gifts for distant relatives who wanted something else entirely, and generally act as if they were total fucking jerks while racking up personal debt on their credit cards and mortgaging their children's future in order to buy television sets slightly wider than the ones they already have. Once again, tens of millions of self-proclaimed Christians will spit in the face of YHWH, he who demands that all praise be given to him and him alone, he who calls for the death and banishment of those who mock his name, his power, his glory, his and his alone, now and forever. (Failing to follow the clearly-stated directives of one's god amounts to mocking that god's very existence.)
Do these poor fools realize that they're perpetuating the culture of me-first consumerism that is surely and steadily dragging America down into sad oblivion? Do they see the hypocrisy of driving to their churches in gleaming cars while dressed in fancy and expensive clothes in order to scrape perfunctorily before Jesus – a god who urges them to give as much to the poor as they can bear to give and to live their lives in simplicity, humility, and moderation – when in reality they sit in their single-family homes hoarding greenbacks and coveting baubles? Last year's retail sales numbers and this year's sales projections indicate that millions of Americans believe in Baal above Jesus and in consumption above compassion, that they allow advertising firms to dictate their lives, and that they have succumbed fully to the hollow grasp of their black and twisted egos. No amount of talking about this foul erosion of our nation's erstwhile and honorable frugality will make things better; I rail on this blog against these excesses just as my father once railed against them from his pulpit, all but begging his parishioners to choose love for one another over love for self. But, just as his words fell mostly on dead ears, so I feel do mine, woeful warnings wantonly ignored. If people wish to violate the tenets of their religion in order to save a couple dollars, that is their choice; if they would rather give in to the siren-call of conspicuous consumption than nurture in their hearts a wondrous and peaceful tranquility, who am I to say that they are wrong to do so? And besides, when the savings are this good, it doesn't matter if a few more people get trampled this year than last – it just means less competition. Save sanity, serenity, and soul – boycott black Friday!
mentiri factorem fecit © 場黑麥
21 November 2012
on solar elevation
The swift onset of winter caught this whorphan woefully off guard – his solar panels no longer spend time in the sun. Instead of basking and gulping in full exposure, they sip spare photons while lounging in this little house's lengthening shade. While preparing and splitting piles of wood for the wood-stove, he neglected his solar setup; while raking and composing mounds of leaves for the garden, he overlooked the realities of diminished daylight. Oh, how quickly it occurred, how rapidly our planet tilted on its axis, the sun now rising a few compass-ticks south of due east and, after noon, avoiding fully the front yard's short run.
What is a lowly solar farmer to do? Does he relocate his 2 sets of 3 solar panels? In order to do that, he'd have to move the entire battery bank along with both inverters and run some new wire into the house; besides, positioning the panels closer to the drive would put them at greater risk of getting struck by a passing car. Does he raise the sets on bamboo poles clustered and woven together so that they share the weight? This has both advantages and disadvantages. Among the advantages are these: if the panels were raised to a height of eight feet and lashed firmly to bamboo poles, they would be exposed to direct sunlight for a longer period of time during each day (provided the sun were to shine); they would be completely out of the wet grass; they would be at lesser risk of being broken from thrown or falling debris; if run into accidentally by a vehicle, the poles would splinter and bend while the panels above them would remain safe (this is an assumption), whereas if the panels were to be struck by a vehicle directly, they would be ruined totally. Among the disadvantages are these: the panels would face only in one direction and could no longer be manually rotated to track the sun; the wire cables with which they feed electricity to the battery bank would have to be run through a tube or otherwise secured against tripping and entanglement; they would be lashed to bamboo poles, which disintegrate over time, with either rope or some form of metal bracket – either way, the poles and lashings would have to be replaced every few years.
The third option is, of course, to do nothing, to adjust to a diminished charge in the battery bank, and to resign myself to my panels only getting full sun between 0830 and 1030 in the morning. I do not like this third option because it forces me to choose between recharging all my electronics batteries and firing up the 750 watt inverter to watch a full-length movie (a luxury I plan to cut out of my life anyway, as I have seen too many movies of late, and read too few books); it sees me standing by the window each day hoping that the sun will shine when I want it to. Therefore, the third option is off the table; I will raise the panels to a great height, lash them firmly to their mounts, secure all loose cables, wash the mud off my tools, put them away, and go watch Caddyshack for the umpteenth time. Mahalo!
(p.s. Upon further consideration, I have changed my plans. I shall not raise my panels on platforms, and I shall not drag them up to the roof. Now, instead of risking the panels causing damaging to or being blown off of the platform or roof, I have decided to locate them closer to the lane and to cut down a large bush next to the house, so that now the panels are only in the house's shade for maybe an hour, and not all afternoon. Sometimes, the old mantras come in handy; in this instance, I remembered the Latin saying Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate, English for Keep it simple, you bleeping numskull.)
mentiri factorem fecit © 場黑麥
What is a lowly solar farmer to do? Does he relocate his 2 sets of 3 solar panels? In order to do that, he'd have to move the entire battery bank along with both inverters and run some new wire into the house; besides, positioning the panels closer to the drive would put them at greater risk of getting struck by a passing car. Does he raise the sets on bamboo poles clustered and woven together so that they share the weight? This has both advantages and disadvantages. Among the advantages are these: if the panels were raised to a height of eight feet and lashed firmly to bamboo poles, they would be exposed to direct sunlight for a longer period of time during each day (provided the sun were to shine); they would be completely out of the wet grass; they would be at lesser risk of being broken from thrown or falling debris; if run into accidentally by a vehicle, the poles would splinter and bend while the panels above them would remain safe (this is an assumption), whereas if the panels were to be struck by a vehicle directly, they would be ruined totally. Among the disadvantages are these: the panels would face only in one direction and could no longer be manually rotated to track the sun; the wire cables with which they feed electricity to the battery bank would have to be run through a tube or otherwise secured against tripping and entanglement; they would be lashed to bamboo poles, which disintegrate over time, with either rope or some form of metal bracket – either way, the poles and lashings would have to be replaced every few years.
The third option is, of course, to do nothing, to adjust to a diminished charge in the battery bank, and to resign myself to my panels only getting full sun between 0830 and 1030 in the morning. I do not like this third option because it forces me to choose between recharging all my electronics batteries and firing up the 750 watt inverter to watch a full-length movie (a luxury I plan to cut out of my life anyway, as I have seen too many movies of late, and read too few books); it sees me standing by the window each day hoping that the sun will shine when I want it to. Therefore, the third option is off the table; I will raise the panels to a great height, lash them firmly to their mounts, secure all loose cables, wash the mud off my tools, put them away, and go watch Caddyshack for the umpteenth time. Mahalo!
(p.s. Upon further consideration, I have changed my plans. I shall not raise my panels on platforms, and I shall not drag them up to the roof. Now, instead of risking the panels causing damaging to or being blown off of the platform or roof, I have decided to locate them closer to the lane and to cut down a large bush next to the house, so that now the panels are only in the house's shade for maybe an hour, and not all afternoon. Sometimes, the old mantras come in handy; in this instance, I remembered the Latin saying Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate, English for Keep it simple, you bleeping numskull.)
mentiri factorem fecit © 場黑麥
19 November 2012
on freedom's price
Ask most any motorcyclist sporting a leather vest, jacket, or chaps, and he'll say that “The freedom of it” is one of the primary reasons that he rides. Ah yes, seductive and elusive Liberty, she who beckons from near and far, always around us but forever just out of reach, always tantalizingly close yet frustratingly far away, how we love her! We think about freedom, yearn for it, love it, enjoy it, abuse it, and harp on it, speaking of it in hushed tones and genuflecting before that giant copper-clad statue of goddess Liberty standing in New York's harbor to welcome the poor and the huddled masses to these our bountiful shores. Some people among us – the aforementioned bikers first and foremost – seem to be trying to actively execute their right to freedom by riding around on big, motorized machines that pollute the air we all breathe and shatter the quiet we all enjoy.
Everything comes at a price, even Liberty, and the price we citizens pay for the bikers' freedom is higher than most: we arm our young men and women and fly them to sovereign nations in the Middle East and Central Asia where they kill and maim and bomb in order to secure a steady supply of gasoline for all of those in-line flathead v-twin noisemakers; we give Arabian oil sheiks American dollars to pay for gasoline to run all those hogs, perfectly content in the knowledge that some of our money will be used to fund terrorist organizations such as Al Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula and Hamas; we maintain diplomatic missions, puzzle over foreign trade policy, and arrange trade treaties so that bikers might wear t-shirts and vests made by foreign manufacturers emblazoned with the symbols of these United States, Old Glory printed on Bangladeshi cotton, the Stars and Stripes stitched into Vietnamese cowhide; we inhale the fumes of their idling engines and wince with every revving of their obnoxiously-loud tailpipes while wishing they would just all go home, read a book, and think about how downright lame their little scooters are.
Motorcyclists actively decrease their own amount of personal Liberty by relying on complicated machines to move them around; to maintain their little slices of freedom they are beholden to mechanics, parts manufacturers, tassel twisters, carburetors, regulators, and tow truck drivers. If motorcyclists would take a moment to examine the roots of the craze for two-wheelers, they would find the lowly wire donkey, the velocipede, the muscle-powered bicycle. Oh, if only these fools would throw off the chains of slavery to oil-pumping Arabs and wrench-chucking mechanics and return en mass to the device that grants its user nearly unbridled freedom, the crank-powered bicycle. Just think how quiet our world would be, how greatly motorcyclists could improved their health and fitness, and how much less gasoline we would have to kill and maim and bomb for if we could but free Liberty from the demands of endless warfare and disassociate her from mundane pettiness and wasteful sloth. When someone wears a vest upon which is printed a picture of a bald eagle wrapped in the American flag floating above a chopper-style motorbike while riding on a chopper-style motorbike, that person proves only his disrespect for the stars and stripes and his love for redundancy; when he relies on a combustion engine to move him across the face of the earth rather than letting his thigh and calf muscles drag him across that selfsame phaltscape, he puts nothing on display but his laziness and lack of vigor. Please, dear reader, if you love Liberty, value human health, and respect the lungs and eardrums of other people, sell your hog, buy a velocipede, and be free. Mahalo.
© mentiri factorem fecit (場黑麥)
Everything comes at a price, even Liberty, and the price we citizens pay for the bikers' freedom is higher than most: we arm our young men and women and fly them to sovereign nations in the Middle East and Central Asia where they kill and maim and bomb in order to secure a steady supply of gasoline for all of those in-line flathead v-twin noisemakers; we give Arabian oil sheiks American dollars to pay for gasoline to run all those hogs, perfectly content in the knowledge that some of our money will be used to fund terrorist organizations such as Al Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula and Hamas; we maintain diplomatic missions, puzzle over foreign trade policy, and arrange trade treaties so that bikers might wear t-shirts and vests made by foreign manufacturers emblazoned with the symbols of these United States, Old Glory printed on Bangladeshi cotton, the Stars and Stripes stitched into Vietnamese cowhide; we inhale the fumes of their idling engines and wince with every revving of their obnoxiously-loud tailpipes while wishing they would just all go home, read a book, and think about how downright lame their little scooters are.
Motorcyclists actively decrease their own amount of personal Liberty by relying on complicated machines to move them around; to maintain their little slices of freedom they are beholden to mechanics, parts manufacturers, tassel twisters, carburetors, regulators, and tow truck drivers. If motorcyclists would take a moment to examine the roots of the craze for two-wheelers, they would find the lowly wire donkey, the velocipede, the muscle-powered bicycle. Oh, if only these fools would throw off the chains of slavery to oil-pumping Arabs and wrench-chucking mechanics and return en mass to the device that grants its user nearly unbridled freedom, the crank-powered bicycle. Just think how quiet our world would be, how greatly motorcyclists could improved their health and fitness, and how much less gasoline we would have to kill and maim and bomb for if we could but free Liberty from the demands of endless warfare and disassociate her from mundane pettiness and wasteful sloth. When someone wears a vest upon which is printed a picture of a bald eagle wrapped in the American flag floating above a chopper-style motorbike while riding on a chopper-style motorbike, that person proves only his disrespect for the stars and stripes and his love for redundancy; when he relies on a combustion engine to move him across the face of the earth rather than letting his thigh and calf muscles drag him across that selfsame phaltscape, he puts nothing on display but his laziness and lack of vigor. Please, dear reader, if you love Liberty, value human health, and respect the lungs and eardrums of other people, sell your hog, buy a velocipede, and be free. Mahalo.
© mentiri factorem fecit (場黑麥)
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