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  hardie karges 7:45 am on August 7, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Family ( 6 ), history, Thailand ( 75 )   

  Asians love the past 

  and the things they have no control over, like family, DNA. Asia loves the past, and so tries to bury it under fresh concrete. The things you love are a heavy burden; they hold you back. Westerners love the future, freedom, and choice. So we preserve the past in art and architecture; otherwise we’d have none. Our families are scattered and strewn, battered and blown, by dare and design, by work and quirk. The reasons don’t always rhyme. My wife Tang doesn’t understand that we don’t have ‘homelands’, a place of birth with an extensive nuclear family radiating outward. Hell, we don’t even have a word for it. It took me ten minutes to think of ‘homeland’ and now I feel like an apartheid sympathizer. The only thing radiating outward from our nuclear families is fallout. The only part of the US that’s similar is the Deep South, with its second and third cousins twice removed. In Thailand it’s not just feudal; it’s Biblical. A few years ago before Thailand got fully off its butt and on to its computerized system, everyone had to go back ‘home’ to vote, that is, back to from where they came, like Joseph and Mary going home for Christmas, riding a donkey, carrying somebody else’s baby.

   

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  hardie karges 11:28 am on July 12, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: America ( 59 ), history, migration ( 3 )   

  America is the happy hunting ground of myth and legend, 

  milk and honey on the mind’s tongue, horses and camels for the taking, more than that for the leaving. For millennia, the smart money went north and east, following mountains, following seacoasts, following herds, trekking Siberia. The farther they went, the bigger the payoff. When they went as far as they could go, they went even farther. That’s where the big payoff was, on the other side, mammoth and mastodon, bear and deer, buffalo and cows as far as the eye can see. There’s only one problem: you might not get back. That water level’s a bit finicky. On the other hand, you might not want to go back. Happy hunting grounds are nice, if you’re the hunter, not the hunted. The stupid animals act like they’ve never seen a spear before, just standing there, waiting to take it in the gut. Just wait until the summer and wait until the tide’s out and you can walk right across. Then one summer the men had to wade across to get to the animals, since they wouldn’t come across on their own anymore. Then it just kept getting deeper and deeper. On both sides the animals just headed south for the winter and didn’t go back, so the people did the same. They just followed the animals. Domestication of animals was probably accidental. Once big game was cut off from its endless source, the extant stock was probably selectively corralled for future use. One surprising result of this was likely the realization that the animals became tame in captivity. You could even put reins on some of them. The rest is history.
   
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  hardie karges 11:35 am on May 26, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: history, religion ( 160 )   

  AND THE MEEK WILL INHERIT THE EARTH 

  Will the meek inherit the Earth? Forced to take sides in a war they don’t want, they’re left to their own devices when it comes time to take up arms. Most would rather busy their hands working the fields of Abraham, but the powers that be reject simple solutions. Individual egotism becomes group solidarity becomes national pride becomes racial superiority, religion holding the hand that feeds as it follows. Conspiracy rules, a conspiracy of ignorance. Half the world consumes what the other half produces, as if nothing could be more natural, peasants plowing fields becoming poorer and poorer while hunters become herders become warriors become corporate raiders with habits as large as their bellies to feed from the fields of peasants. Everybody gets in on the deal, women holding down the fort while men do the hunting, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.

   
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  hardie karges 10:08 am on May 6, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: CLONING, history, jihad ( 8 ), OIL ( 6 )   

  STATUS QUO 

  Al Qaeda may have saved us all when they invaded our playground, took our toys, and used them to bloody our noses. They didn’t intend to save us at all, of course, any more than native Africans ever intended to protect wild species, but the end result may be the same. Whatever humans may do in their history, the Earth will survive, and so will Life, I feel sure. It is the human race itself that is most at stake. Nature’s most precious and precocious creation likes to play with fire, and that’s dangerous. When we create nuclear bombs and splice genes, the genie is out of the bottle, and may not go back in. If the human race goes extinct, it won’t ever come back. By the same token, if culture degenerates, it may never come back either. When western culture degenerated previously in the Dark Ages, there were others to pick up the slack and make it their own. This time around, the stakes are much higher and the world much more integrated. Frankly, I’ll be glad when all the oil is gone and we can get on with our lives either with something else or nothing at all. Oil is bad politics, reminiscent of the lust for gold five hundred years ago, reminiscent of the lust for lust that we struggle with every day. Maybe we should just slow things down a bit and see if our lives aren’t just as good at a slower speed. Unfortunately we can’t ask others to accept a status quo which leaves them at a permanent disadvantage. I guess we’re on this roller coaster until some unseen hand decides to put on the brakes. At least maybe we could agree to stop molecular biology short of cloning. After all, everybody likes sex, right?

   
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  hardie karges 4:28 pm on May 4, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: history   

  PROGRESS 

  Everything is the opposite of what it seems. In their pure unadulterated love of Allah and hatred of life, the jihadis may save us all from our own excesses. In their impure totally adulterated love of theory and hatred of life, the Communists inspired many of these excesses. Space flight is an offshoot of the cold war between the US and the USSR, a war of initials and slogans, CIA vs. KGB, DMZ on LSD, Marxist theory vs. domino theory, sputniks and beatniks, nuclear fallout and college dropouts. It was their Germans versus our Germans, those who managed to escape the wrath of Adolph’s meat tenderizer. Policies of mutual deterrence and massive retaliation and mutually assured destruction meant that missiles needed to be launched and systems needed to be developed. There wasn’t much time, but fortunately there was plenty of Space, so we blasted our rockets into it, jerking off in each other’s faces, in an ancient adolescent masturbation contest. Like pandas pissing on trees, whoever shoots highest gets the girls, all of them, sexy Latinas and Asian hotties, out-call only, twenty-four hour service, satisfaction guaranteed, clean and discreet. Allah can have Africa; he deserves it.

   
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  hardie karges 1:17 pm on May 2, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: DEMOCRACY ( 10 ), history, religion ( 160 ), SLAVERY ( 6 )   

  PIDGIN RELIDGIN 

  It’s time for a new religion, preferably one of love, as universally aimed as it is themed, based on science as a guide without being tied to transient precepts and hopeless missions in rundown slums in nameless cities, one that unites politics and economics under its storm-proof umbrella. Democracy and Christianity have been the apologetic lapdogs of capitalism far too long, walking hand in hand down Byzantine cul-de-sacs and Roman highways, just like Islam and jihad, Buddhism and prostitution, Judaism and finance, Communism and alcohol, covering for each other and hiding from the truth. Feed your people physically and spiritually or make way for those who can. Shit or get off the pot; share the wealth or lose it. Create the wealth or think of something better. Democracy has always been borne on the backs of slaves, lofty goals held up by whipped backs and hungry mouths, Greece and Rome and the deep deep South. Two out of three are good enough for me. Colonialism had a prettier face, but the end result was still the same and it had little to do with race. Scar tissue is ugly whatever the circumstance; a little white powder can’t hurt. So slaves became Slavs, Mongols became Moguls, blacks became blokes, and the rest became history.

  Napha_moo is discussing. Toggle Comments

   
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    Napha_moo 6:28 am on May 3, 2008 Permalink | Reply

    Thank you for this post.

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  hardie karges 7:59 am on April 28, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: FUTURE ( 8 ), history   

  BROKE FUTURE 

  Future archaeologists will have fun with the CERN super collider particle accelerator. It’ll be the enigma of the millennia, trying to unravel the twists and turns of nuclear physics. Somehow I can’t see how anyone would ever figure out how somebody would build a massive underground structure tens of miles long and miles in diameter for the purpose of smashing subatomic particles into each other just to see what they’ll do. That presupposes that there will be a break in the historical record, as before, when one historical age has lost track of what happened previously. By extension one could assume that technological advancement will have stalled and progress regressed. Should history proceed smoothly, by some miracle, all will not be lost and we will likely be far more advanced then than now. For that to happen, we’ll have to find a suitable substitute for oil BEFORE it runs out, and make a seamless transition to a new phase of energy consumption.

   
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  hardie karges 4:30 pm on April 26, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: history, politics ( 32 )   

  The past is a pool of blood. 

  Internecine squabbles continue between former camel-shit caravan drivers turned oil princes and former horse shit cowboys turned capitalists. When planes slammed into the World Trade Towers like two over-extended penises caught in a lie, a warm radiation spread over my body like an afterglow to knee-jerk fear. Many of us took a hit when the twin towers fell, psychologically if not physically, conspiracies sprouting like mushrooms from fertile imaginations, unable to accept the fact that not everyone loves us anymore. So that must be our fault, the rejected lover accepting responsibility for imagined crimes against an unfaithful spouse that he didn’t want anymore anyway but didn’t have the heart to tell. But not me, I know suicidal despair when I see it. I know that suicide bombings are suicides first and politics second. We’re on my turf now; this is the world I know, the world of opposites. In martial arts like marital arts, use the aggressor’s weight to his disadvantage. The bad guys might just save us all despite themselves, slow down run-away capitalism before we all die from the heat of our own fires, accomplish what a gaggle of rich-daddy environmentalists driving $30K hybrids could never accomplish in a thousand years. What happens when one billion Chinese all have cars? Whose air will we breathe then?

   
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  hardie karges 1:07 pm on April 23, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: history, MONEY ( 7 )   

  BIG BANGS FOR BUCKS 

  Money is dirty. Money is addictive. Keep it under wraps. Keep it in your pants. Use it but don’t show it. Do your dirty deals down dark alleys. Money invariably leads to the hard stuff, oil and guns. Money is a medium that leads to extremes. In the hands of humans any extra is inevitably gambled on a fixed outcome with a fixed income. The dealer always wins. The house never loses. Like any good virus, its only purpose is to reproduce itself. If left to its own devices, money reproduces itself faster than bacteria, the black magic of numbers come to life and spreading like kudzu. Money lay there for years inert and lifeless until someone discovered that powers of ten and numerical place notation could make someone wealthy. Like sound amplifying through reverberation, money gets larger every time it changes hands, every time it shows up in someone’s books. All parties with interest get a piece of the action, a blip on the screen where two particles collided and something was given off. The squiggle on the screen is our only proof of the entity’s existence. Money is the measure of motion. If you hold it, then it evaporates with inflation. The thing itself only has worth during a depression, but that’s too depressing. Suspension of disbelief is essential; confidence is the foundation upon which a house of cards is built. Suspension of disbelief is the crucial test of any good movie. It also applies to ‘real life’. If you’re aware of the fact that those are actors acting, then the movie’s a failure. If you think they’re just making it all up, then the story’s already riddled with more holes than can be filled.

   
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  hardie karges 3:26 pm on April 19, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Europe ( 19 ), history   

  EURO SHUFFLE 

  Europe has multiplied and divided until there’s no cards left to shuffle, so time to deal. If Europe can indeed unite, they’ll be pulling off the greatest political turnaround in history, from World Wars to world government with a stroke of the pen and a shrug of the shoulders. The fruits of capitalism can overcome a multitude of sins, but it’s first come first served. The guy who owns the stadium definitely has the home court advantage. India is like Europe without the money, so an easy target for cheap shots. Is there something in Indo-European language that lends itself to divisiveness, individuality, and caste systems? Loosely divided into two major races and more strictly divided into two major religions, India has as many languages derived from Sanskrit as Europe has from Latin, and ends up relying on English to get by. Ditto for Europe. Go fig.