Coming soon to an Amazon near you!
THEY say: If guns are illegal and/or restricted, then only criminals will have guns…
I say: If guns are legal and/or unrestricted, then everyone will HAVE to have a gun, kinda’ like keeping up with the Joneses…
What do YOU say?
This is the Apocalypse. The natural world has been reduced to parking lots and asphalt, concrete and steel, all for the sake of consumption and convenience, gluttony and godlessness, the opportunity to play master, lord and creator of the universe, in a benzene-induced frenzied fantasy world of cosmic proportions, engineering gone viral, spreading the gospel of internal combustion and external… uh, combustion…
The machines have taken over. We’re now working for them. It started off simply enough, just driving them around. Then they instructed us to build them an Interstate highway system, chopping our cities into bits and pieces in the process, and now they want us to tease the very last drop of oil out of the ground, too, no matter the cost. What will they demand next?
Our cities are no longer livable, neighborhoods divided against themselves and separated by flyovers and exit ramps. We drive them wherever they want to go, and we give them prime parking space. We take them on cross-country tours. We even invented motels for them, an entire new genre of accommodation, proudly parked on the outskirts of town, proudly perched with parking-lot views, and far from those now-destroyed cities, mostly unlivable and unliving…
The machines now have their own neighborhoods, suburbs, admiring the world they created, with shopping malls created just for them, and gas station temples devoted to them, collecting donations and dispensing favors, horsepower thrills without the horse, smell of ass gas replaced by the smell of earth gas, benzene for methane, Hollywood day for night, the interplay of opposites, fantasy for reality and infinity for mortality. It’s all good fun, of course, all part of the game, no harm no foul, until now…
But fracking, i.e. hydraulic fracturing, “a well-stimulation” technique in which rock is fractured by a pressurized liquid” (Wikipedia), i.e. cracking our very Mother Earth’s crust just to extract the bit of oil that might (or might not) be inside? Now that’s sick. We’ll have Hell to pay for that, and Hell ain’t cheap. Just don’t let the music stop…
crown of thorns
If evolution really favors smaller more adaptable units—which it apparently does—then Americans are in trouble, we with our much-heralded ‘ownership society’, especially cars and houses, the bigger the better. America is overweight, but it ain’t just carbs and fat. It’s fuel injection and renovated flats, these possessions that possess us, these conveniences that encumber us, these adornments that weigh us down, down to the ground, six feet under, rest in peace…
Dinosaurs went extinct and so likely will we, as Americans of the central model paradigm, at least, hocked to the gills with credits and debits and accounting tricks and treats, and plenty of reasons to retreat; why bother with success, anyway, when there are so many reasons for failure? How did you want to go down in the Apocalypse, btw: was it war, famine, disease, or flame? It’s no wonder; it’s nobody’s shame, just butterfly effects gone wild with mathematical precision…
Self-sufficiency used to be considered a positive personality trait, hard work a must. Saving was encouraged, if not absolutely required, and in God we trust; all others pay cash. Now we’re a nation of leveraged, selfied-out crybabies waiting in line camped out all night for our iPhones and soma, got a ticket for N’awlins but the bus stops at Houma, all cashed out and nothing left to buy, can’t buy a thrill, all we can do is cry…
Even unemployed Americans have iPhones, of course, money no object, that’s a fact, that’s currency; homeless people, too, now, taking donations online, gotta’ check on the status of food stamps, see if that Social Security check is in the mail. Half the world lives on less than three dollars a day; see how many iPhones that’ll buy you, true poverty struggling to eat very day, not Yelp or snap-chat, giga-chips and cookies with no trans fat…
But rich people are worse, crunching their numbers between gold fillings, fracking veins and splicing genes, GMO cereal killers with their high-flying lifestyles on private jets and multiple planes, properties portfolios and multidimensional probabilities, many worlds possible, taking off and landing with the frequency of junk, buying and selling people like so much chattel and so many cattle, bodies for sale, ten bills a pop, credit cards accepted, swipe it where you wipe it…
The Anthropocene Age has been a blast, a quick short spurt of consciousness and destruction after years of ignorance and bliss, man inserting his thingie into multiple orifices, simultaneously, plugging holes and creating new ones, just for the Hell of it, just because it’s there, Mt. Everest and the Moon, by horoscope and all good offices, all for the good of mankind, come Hell or high water, reduced to comfort food and memories, that’s entertainment…
Campaign sign in New Mexico desert: “Freedom or Collectivism–It’s your Choice”; now in what warped world-view is that the choice? Oh, yeah, right…
Isis wages war in the Mideast
Why do Westerners join radical organizations like Isis, Isil, the Islamic State, the whatchamacallit gang of hashishins currently overrunning the Mideast from their base in Syria, and apparently with recruits from all over, including those paragons of capitalism UK and US, this at a time of unparalleled economic stability and growth in most of the world? Good question. That’s what a lot of Western politicians would like to know. You can’t just buy these guys off.
The answer, of course, is as obvious as the nose on anyone’s face. Material well-being is largely an empty vessel, all form and no substance. Once you’ve got your forty acres and a mule, then what’s the next thing you’ll want? Why, another mule of course, a younger one, a larger one, a stronger one with more horsepower. Such is the nature of desire, for acquisitions of more and more, bigger and bigger, to what end, who knows? There is no end. Materialism is an end in itself. But it’s a dead end: entertainment rules, sex and all that jazz. Wait a minute… (More …)
Being a millionaire is easy
I would like to be wealthy merely to renounce it. Renunciation is the greatest act of faith. All Hindus and Buddhists know that. But a homeless person has nothing to renounce, and the world is suitably not impressed nor has any message been conveyed: the greater the possessions, the greater the renunciation. I would like to tell the bankers to stuff it back in their vaults, tell the coke dealer to stuff it up his nose, tell the beautiful young starlets to stuff it… some day…
If you cling to your life, you will lose it. All Christians know that…
Conversation overheard between the Left and Right sides of my brain:
LS: They say that to sell non-fiction, you need a platform. Do we have a platform?
RS: I think that’s a metaphor, actually.
LS: Actually, I think it’s a two-by-four, lots of them in fact, and double-headed nails, the better to set up and tear down easily.
RS: Hmmm, sounds like a flea market,
LS: Now there’s a metaphor, life as flea market.
RS: Yes, all too true; at least the food trucks are good… are you hungry?
LS: Yeah, let’s eat. Did you get salsa?
RS: I thought you did.
LS: Typical. When are you going to grow up?
RS: When are you going to chill out?
LS: Slut.
RS: Bitch.
LS: Rock.
RS: Paper.
LS: Scissors.
Let us dream that the left side of nearly everything shall prevail. The left leg is strong the right leg is weak and most recently since titanium arm replace the left arm is weak. Id like to be strong all over and that is where I walk. I am confused about the sequence of events on our life’s together. Do you remember dates from then? I
Sent from my iPod
>
More or less…
Death on the Installment Plan
It’s that time again—tax time (hey, I’m not an April person!)—in which all the prior year’s goings and comings and savings and spendings come back to haunt me, wishing I’d done this differently or that more carefully. Of course now I think they’ve extended that already-extended August 15 deadline to October 15, but I don’t see any reason to procrastinate, ha ha. That usually means refreshing myself on the last reported year also, so two years ago, really, to synchronize figures on a complicated return, and some of those wounds are even more egregious.
In my case that means the great 2012 prostate free-for-all in which my poor beleaguered sex-exhausted prostate gland received untold amounts of radiation in an attempt to send a clear message to any cancer cells lying in wait to do me in before my appointed time, that they had better think twice before declaring victory, in fact should just go on back home where they belong. (More …)
Fucking well lucky you were in calli and not here. Last scrunching we had was very ill handled having only medicaid ms and medicare. We do not qualify for ACA because of having ms medicaid. Hope you are able to sex well now and that you are helping prevent overpopulation….no offspring right?
At 60, I figure it’s probably time to renounce sex, don’t you think?
Certainly not. It may be different. Btw once a bj becomes a job and not a joy, do you think it is time to give it up? A wife that gives a good bj? From something you posted earlier. I am a rather literal thinker and that may be limiting to some. Maybe you were being sarcastic? R’s folks had kaiser. We have been knowing how poor they are. Now and forever. Both r’s folks passed while under their care. Maybe good at times and weak later. No better anywhere in amerika. Where in the world does one go for a comfortable retirement?
Gaza in ruins
“You don’t negotiate with them.” “You make them beg.” Words like these, in reference to Palestine in general, and Hamas in particular, were overheard from the mouths of various Israeli leaders, journalists and pundits-at-large following John Kerry’s recent failed attempts to cut a deal, any deal, between Israel and Palestine. They disgust me, so racist and hateful. Israel tried to back away from the comments, but—you know.
If words like this hurt me so much, I can only imagine what they do to Palestinians. It’s no wonder there is no solution in sight, with such racism and prejudices at work behind the scenes. Imagine the Western horror if Palestinians spoke like that: ‘Muslims are like that; it’s in their blood.’ Religion flowing through capillaries: now there’s an image.
I’ve been following the Mideast crises for a while now—approximately 2000 years—and it seems to me that the modern version of the quagmire boils down to one irreconcilable issue: Israel’s various leaders demand that Palestinian’s various leaders officially recognize Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state.
The accent, of course, is on ‘Jewish’ and ‘official’; that is: in writing; that is: in words; that is: kiss ass, something that Palestine is not likely to do in this lifetime or the next, nor should they have to. They’ve already recognized Israel’s right to exist by the way, since 1993. Only now does Netanyahu add the ultimate insult: as a Jewish state. If someone stole my property, which they have, I’d never recognize them as rightful owner, but I’d get on with my life. But I’ll be damned if I’d suffer their insults publicly. Who’s the obstructionist? (More …)
Holy cow holy shit. No it will never end, nor will the race riot begin in our town, however much the white supremeist try to start it. The police here have suggested that everyone in town shoot to kill. Whatfuckingever.
Christian God
The idea of a Michelangelo-like anthropomorphic God, wrathful and scheming (before Jesus made him all love-y dove-y), bad teeth and all, thunderbolt in hand, is so absurd and fantastic, that I’ve long wondered how such nonsense ever got started, and moreover, how it persists. My idea is that it originates in the feedback over death, probably around the time Neanderthals (no, not Me-anderthals) began burying their dead.
We humans look for meaning, of course, as such is our curse, so some must have wondered about these newly dead: Where do they go? What will they do when they get there? The idea that people are here one moment, then gone the next, is a tough pill to swallow, after all. Even dogs go through mourning. I suspect the phrase “WTF” also originated around this time.
Kathleen Chapman are discussing. 
streaming consciousness... 
Reply