Good Ol' Brazil

What I don’t understand is this idea by the Right that a functioning government takes away freedom. What on earth would they want to do with your freedom?

Surely, the government wants to tax you, since you are doing business on their soil, and this is pesky. But this is not a freedom killer.

If I have to choose between corporations making most decisions for me, who only have shareholders’ interest at heart, and a messy government, which actually does have the populace’s interest at heart, because a successful, functioning populace fuels that very same government, well, I’ll take the government.

I once sat at a dinner and this violent prepper-conservative went on and on about how Obama is a socialist who truly hates America and wants to see it destroyed. It was a scary display of loathing and righteous attack. I could only see his thumping as the projection of pure paranoia. Something must have happened to him that was so traumatizing, he had to place it upon a man, a party, something that scares him.

This terror of government, the folks who bring you water, highways, regulate your cheap electricity, try-as-they-might to give you affordable healthcare throughout your life, protect you as best they can from terrorists, wage all sorts of negotiations with hundreds of countries around the globe in your best interest, why would you want to dismantle that? So you can pay less taxes and spend that extra money on pizza pockets and corn syrup based soft drinks? (Two representative examples of what corporations want to give you.)

Friends, there is a cult of greed in this country. And it causes inflation, greater and greater class divisions and uneven distribution of education and health care. This is the formula Brazil used to live by.  But even Brazil has given it up.  Can we not, at least, be as forward thinking as Brazil?

It is easy to acknowledge that lazy people do not do their fair share and this can make one wince at anything collective. But if you really look at the numbers, there really aren’t that many lazy people. My fair shake to the Right Wingers---I am all for gathering up the lazy people and sterilizing them or forcing them into compulsory homosexuality with no possibility of parole. Why continue the generational malaise? But starving them to death by feeding them poisonous corporate foods, killing them with your corporate prisons, your lack of health care (because corporations want to make money off the sick more than they want to help them) and horrendous schools that teach nothing but test taking skills (because corporations only believe in math and knowable processes), wouldn’t it truly be more humane to just snip out their gonads? And the government can pay for it.

A vote for Romney-Ryan is a vote for 1950s Brazil.

The economy still isn’t great. But maybe that’s what happens when you hit a certain density of population and you run out of the best stolen land.

How to Write Good

The Problem with Wealth: Oh to Renew

The problem with wealth is it is so often self-protecting and self-serving.

Though, without it, there would be no capital for great works.

So…what do we do with the wealthy people? We must encourage them to take risks. Measured risks, but risks nevertheless. Go on hunches. Strong good hunches.

And they will lose sometimes. And they do. And losing sucks.

If I were extremely wealthy, I do not know exactly what I would do with the money. I don’t think about it too much.  I probably would keep making things, but at a higher level in its material expression. And I would buy a little apartment in Paris. I do not know if I would be drawn to helping others. Maybe. But probably more with my time than with my cash. Or maybe I would set up a foundation….but somehow streamline it so foundation seekers could apply in just five minutes.

Money.

Money does not stop death.

It does not create real love.

It can shield and give joy…to a point.

I tend not to organize the cash in my wallet by denominations. I like to feel like it’s all loose and you just sort of pick and grab at it as you need to.

There was a time when people thought lots of money was a sign of great spiritual advancement. Now, that fad has faded. And dust bowls are forming. And people aren’t working. (But the Occupy Wall Street people have seemed to move on, too. Why?) Nothing changes much. People push cash upward…it’s the engine that keeps us all moving. And while we push upward, we hope to land in an upward position.

I guess if I had a ton of money…I would put it all down on renewables. Yes. That’s what I would do. And my time. Maybe I should simply do that now. Photovoltaic batteries. Think outside the box for it.

The Corn is Green

In Connecticut.

Do What You Are

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bm-Jjvqu3U4&feature=plcp

Movie Advice

See Magic Mike for Matthew McConaughey

See Bellflower (Netflix it) for the filmmaking, all around.

See Josh Mix Sound

It's lovely.

Color Correct

http://boxthemovie.wordpress.com/2012/07/24/color-correction/

Public Declaration

Must get back to my book. Finish it up. It’s been in my drawer for a few years.

Rain Makes Corn

Oh that song:

“Rain makes corn

Corn makes whiskey

Whiskey makes my girl just a little bit frisky.”

Got a lot of prickly girls in Indiana right now?

Sorry about the dry ears.

Maybe it’s time to face the global weather problem?

People change when?  During extreme pain or threat of death or when the sex dries up.

Maybe all these crinkly brown corn stalks are just what we needed.

Pain=transformation.   I wish this were not true…  But I didn’t design it.

Go ahead, guys. Figure out how to get your corn wet again…

A Buncha Shit on Monsoon Wednesday

Today there was a monsoon.

I am covered with flea bites and I don’t know why.

Apartment hunting. To buy. Lots of paperwork. Give me trees.

Small children are so small.

If people would stop wanting so much, well… I guess I would not finish typing this sentence…

Yoga is necessary if you want to stop all this aging nonsense. It’s the tight muscles that yank you into wretched tired deformity.

Fresh Oregano growing on the window sill.

I am all for money. I am all against money that just sits there.

Fat pens really are the way to go.

Merry Christmas….somewhere in the universe.

My parents are young. In their early seventies. They have been around since I was born.

Tennessee Williams wrote so many plays. He always went for it. I prefer him to our sober moralist logician, Arthur Miller.

I sometimes piss people off. But then they like me because I wasn’t afraid to do just that. Fuck it.

I am all about hanging out in natural dog areas. Maybe that’s why I have flea bites.

All my old friends are beautiful. Allah be praised.

I prefer coffee ice cream on my waffles, in general.

Sex is overrated, unless it’s really good.

People are really fat for a reason. Because the first caucus every four years is in a corn state.

Three Newsies

1. By 2015, 20% of GDP will be medicine. This must become a utility…so it can be lowered. Utilities are highly regulated. Medicare for all, please.

2. Fuck the Boy Scouts. In the ass.  (They set up their own jokes.)

3. Mitt Romney is silly. Doesn’t he realize that Obama is Christ? Okay, Christ yet-to-be-realized?

I Love Mitt's Peevishness

Oh how Romney wants to be The Decider!

The guy is so upset that Obama is telling the truth (mostly) about him. The Democrats have learned the filthy rules from the Republicans: attack at all times. And now the Dog-tied-to-the-roof guy wants to engage in a gentleman’s game only?

I love when the super entitled can’t believe that someone is looking right in their face and telling them what they are.

I have no problem with people being super rich. Go ahead. Be super rich. But don’t lie about how you did it. And don’t get so peeved when someone points out how you did it.

It’s a global economy and maybe what Romney has done has all been legal. But so once was slavery, women not having the right to vote, child labor…and those turned out to be bad ideas.  When you do something that is legal, but it’s a bad idea---you simply end up paying the piper.

It’s legal for me to go to Thailand to have sex with children, but you don’t see me doing that. It’s simply against my nature and not the right thing to do, either. So I will not do it. I will not send my money offshore. I will not outsource any jobs I create to other countries. I will do the best I can and I know there will be limits to how it all turns out.

People don’t need that much in order to be happy. Apparently, an income of 75K/person is the line where anything more is not necessary for joy. Let’s find some proportion, friends.

Mitt: You can’t have everything. And probably not the presidency. 

Two Things to Get Crazily Happy About

Choose A or B or both for a good weekend:   

      A. The major farming on rooftops in New York.

      B. The inevitable repeal of DOMA this autumn as unconstitutional.

Thank you, New York Times, for keeping me up to date.

And than you, New York, for a perfect 73 degree evening.

Undiagnosed and Alive

I wonder why people so often want a diagnosis when experience is so much more interesting.

Imagine, yes, having a bi-polar relative or knowing a good friend who suffers from severe depression.  These are problems best treated. I talk not of them. I wish them well.

But those of us who are sort manic at times or fall into despair at times or are impulsive or compulsive---we just need to keep ourselves busy and not think about what these behaviors might all mean. There is no real logic to them anyway. Plus, we need these wacky energy flows to actually get things done. The self motivated man? Nah, he just has impulses that have to be acted upon. Irrational stirring. And this is fine.

There are people who want everything to be a problem and to have each one defined as such.  But remember during medieval times? There was the town lunatic, the local witch, the fool, the eternally sad, the forever lovelorn, the filthy guys, almost all of them who would not bathe, the lothario.  These people went about their lives, energetically in pursuit to express their “dysfunctions,” and so they carried on. 

Society would have you punch a clock, sleep normal hours, have some laughs but almost never any sadness, not get too worked up, unless it’s for lusting after consumer items or wheat packed foods, remain married, solidly raise children with little to no divergence and only take risks when you are certain that what you are doing isn’t really a risk, but a well planned  something-or-other that someone has already tested that worked out mediumly okay.

Isn’t that insane?

Bring it On

I wish the Libertarians would get stronger so the Socialists would get stronger in response.

And why not a government that allows for all types?  Why can’t we separate out, even while living with each other?

Why can’t Socialists simply have a Socialist life, a Socialist web amid the hubbub?

Why can’t you just join a group and then live that way? With a fire wall between your group and the other one?

Could be an interesting social experiment. Of course, commerce between groups would be problematic.  Different pay scales. Different rates of taxation. But it could be worth it.

It would take a mountain of discipline.

I’m ready to try it.

And then the Heat Broke...

And it was beautiful...

I always like when it is very hot or very cold, in a way...you then definitely have something to look forward to. Something more pleasing.

Box is Cut

http://boxthemovie.wordpress.com/2012/07/06/final-cutspotting-session/

Never Have Seen Kiki and Herb

But I did see Mx. Justin Vivian Bond at Under 54...

http://justinbond.com/

Completely worth seeing. (S)he sings Joni's Lesson in Survival.

The best song of the night is Weil's Alabama Song.

(S)he's extremely smart and humorous.

One more Monday night. Go.

It was a wee long tonight...but (s)he was riffing sublimely.

Greetings from Jeffersonville NY

This picture was actually taken during the modern era: Today.

Notice the absence of video games, consoles, electronic screens of any kind.

Kind of makes you feel a little bit more human...