Autumn in the desert is a subtle season, not as garishly over-the-top as autumn on the east coast. Back east, the fall colors explode over the landscape and in your face, literally demanding that you pay attention to them. Fall is everywhere you look, and that is not a bad thing at all. One of the most memorable autumns I ever experienced was many years ago on a vacation in Maine and eastern Canada. I flew to Boston and got a rental car, and headed up the coast. I was blessed with a week of the most perfectly clear, warm weather I could ever have asked for, and the autumn colors were at their height. Along the coast of Maine I came across countless picture-postcard scenes of white clapboard churches nestled in groves of brilliantly-colored trees, under a deep blue sky with wispy, delicate cirrus clouds. My mind became completely saturated with color and beauty, and my visit to New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and especially the serene, pastoral Prince Edward Island still provide some of the most intense and pleasurable memories of any vacation in my life.
But as I said, this time of year in the desert kind of sneaks up on you on little mouse toes. You start to notice small things, like the deep chill in the morning, and the light shining through the trees takes on a more golden or orange hue. The sun rises a little further south each day and as the solstice approaches, I have my own little version of Stonehenge in my home. For a couple of weeks before and after the winter solstice, the sun sends a strip of light shining through my kitchen and on to the closet door next to the front door, and illuminates the entry foyer with a glow that only happens during this time of year, and only for a short time. Strangely enough I've come to look forward to seeing this little display of light every winter, and the incongruous, fortuitous alignment of morning sun and windows in my home that creates this miraculous little apparition.
Up in the nighttime sky things are changing, too. Orion the Hunter has cleared the neighbor's mammoth pine tree and is slowly righting himself in the eastern sky, his arm raised, his knife hanging below his belt. Hidden in his belt is the Horsehead Nebula, a cloud of dark gas and dust which appears as the silhouette of a horse's head against the dim glow of heated hydrogen gas behind it. Running ahead of Orion is Taurus the Bull, and ahead of him are the Seven Sisters, the Pleiades. Taurus is also famous for having had one of the brightest supernovas visible to the naked eye. Back in the year 1054, Chinese astronomers were shocked and surprised to note the appearance of a brand new star in the sky, which for a couple of months shone brighter than any other star, and was actually visible in the daytime. This brilliant exploding star gradually dimmed and disappeared back into the blackness of the sky, but left behind an enormous, expanding cloud of gas and dust, which has formed a complex, dense network of streamers, filaments and debris, along with a pulsar at the center - the dead, destroyed remnant of the stellar core - spinning rapidly and sending out pulses of radiation at extremely precise, regular intervals, just like the ticking of a cosmic clock. Under Orion, Lepus the Hare is slowly, cautiously becoming visible and behind Orion is his faithful hunting dog, Canis Major. Also making an appearance low in the east is Gemini, with the twin stars Castor and Pollux making an unmistakable pairing.
Autumn here doesn't last very long and neither does winter. Half of November, December, January and part of February make up the lifespan of the two seasons, and by Valentine's Day the trees will be blooming again, the days will be noticeably longer, the weather will be warming up and hopefully the desert will be green again after a good dosing of winter rains. The fleeting nature of the desert seasons make it all the more important to savor and appreciate them while they are here, because they bring a color and a tenor and a feeling to this beautiful land which is very subtle, very lovely, and very enjoyable.
Sunday, November 22, 2009
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
November Madness
Here we are in mid-November, and we're getting some of the best weather of the year in Phoenix. The days are sunny and clear, with temps in the mid- to high-seventies and the nights get delightfully chilly. Most evenings you can go outside and smell the aroma of fireplaces in the still air. Everyone is gearing up for the imminent holiday season, the time when a bit of childish silliness is permitted and our inner child is encouraged to come out and have fun. But instead of gentle, good-spirited playfulness we get wave after wave of batshit-craziness, as we have had all year long. It seems that even the approaching Christmas season can't flush out all the entrenched idiots in Congress and beyond.
The remnants of the health care reform bill limp tragically along through Congress, with everyone and their mother taking pot shots at it, hoping to put it out of its misery. The Republicans, as they always do, are goose-stepping along in perfect lockstep with each other, united in their mindless addiction to the lobbying money of the health care industry. And the Democrats, as they always do, are proving to be their own worst enemy with the "Blue Dog" Democrats siding with the Republicans in critical votes. And to no one's surprise, abortion - which by the way still happens to be a right guaranteed by the Supreme Court - has to be dragged into the fray as a cultural wedge issue. The only surprise was that a vile, loathsome amendment blocking ANY coverage for abortion under truly outrageous, restrictive conditions was introduced by a Democrat, Rep. Bart Stupak from Michigan. You would never see a Republican representative defying their leadership like that - slavish, robotic devotion to an ideology does have its advantages.
And what are we to do with Sarah Palin, who continues to be a giant infected pimple on the butt of America? Now she is getting on a big bus, not for the one-way trip to Oblivion that she so richly deserves, but for a cross-country March of Stupidity to flog her ridiculous book. Amazingly, the book is something like 413 pages long. Palin has not had 413 pages of coherent thoughts in her whole life. What did she do, document every single trip she made to the Wasilla Walmart? The only thing more incomprehensible than her writing this colossal waste of paper is anyone spending money on it and God forbid, actually reading it. There is absolutely nothing Palin could say in her book that would interest me in the slightest, although there were some unintentional moments of comedy as excerpts trickled out. In the campaign last year, Palin got a lot of flak from the $150,000 spent on her wardrobe. Her book documents that she got upset because in her mind, it made her family "look like a herd of hillbillies that were living high off the hog!" HAHAHA! She actually said that! In another stunning example of her total lack of self-awareness, she doesn't realize that her family LOOKS like a herd of hillbillies because they ARE a herd of hillbillies! They come from Wasilla, Alaska for God's sake! They can't help but look like a herd of hillbillies! That was such a hilarious thing for her to say, I can't tell you how much that made me laugh. I really believe that anyone who reads her book will suffer a loss of at least 10 I.Q. points, and the vast majority of conservatives in this country simply cannot sustain such a huge drop in their brainpower.
As another example of the dumbing of America I submit the recent premiere of a movie called 2012, a high-budget, special-effects laden disaster movie. Movie-goers love their disaster flicks, maybe because after watching the destruction of the planet their own weirdly pathetic lives don't look so bad after all. And there's all kinds of ways that humanity can meet its end, whether through ecological disasters such as The Day After Tomorrow, or alien invasions as in Independence Day or War of the Worlds, but this latest shake-and-bake epic is triggered by the ending of the Mayan calendar, which runs out on December 21, 2012. What they don't bother to tell you is that the Mayan calendar is made up of a series of epochs called "long counts," and what is going to happen on 12/21/2012 is that the current long count will end and the NEXT ONE WILL START right after it! It's just like when your current calendar runs out on December 31. The world doesn't come to an end, does it? Of course not, you just start a new year with a new calendar! Well that's what's going to happen with the Mayan calendar. Anyhow the movie says that neutrinos from solar flares microwave the Earth's core and cause massive seismic disruption. These flares come from the Sun lining up with the center of the galaxy as it does EVERY DAMNED YEAR in December when the Sun moves through the constellation Sagittarius!! The movie shows crustal buckling in Los Angeles and part of California falling into the ocean. Such things do happen, but in geological time scales involving millions of years, not twenty minutes of movie time. There are just so many things preposterously wrong with this movie that I can't even start, so I'm just going to go along with it and treat it like the escapist fantasy diversion it really is, much like Congress would be if it wasn't so stupifyingly evil and destructive in real life.
After all, the complete annihilation of the planet would be a day at Disneyland compared to the Palins living in the White House.
The remnants of the health care reform bill limp tragically along through Congress, with everyone and their mother taking pot shots at it, hoping to put it out of its misery. The Republicans, as they always do, are goose-stepping along in perfect lockstep with each other, united in their mindless addiction to the lobbying money of the health care industry. And the Democrats, as they always do, are proving to be their own worst enemy with the "Blue Dog" Democrats siding with the Republicans in critical votes. And to no one's surprise, abortion - which by the way still happens to be a right guaranteed by the Supreme Court - has to be dragged into the fray as a cultural wedge issue. The only surprise was that a vile, loathsome amendment blocking ANY coverage for abortion under truly outrageous, restrictive conditions was introduced by a Democrat, Rep. Bart Stupak from Michigan. You would never see a Republican representative defying their leadership like that - slavish, robotic devotion to an ideology does have its advantages.
And what are we to do with Sarah Palin, who continues to be a giant infected pimple on the butt of America? Now she is getting on a big bus, not for the one-way trip to Oblivion that she so richly deserves, but for a cross-country March of Stupidity to flog her ridiculous book. Amazingly, the book is something like 413 pages long. Palin has not had 413 pages of coherent thoughts in her whole life. What did she do, document every single trip she made to the Wasilla Walmart? The only thing more incomprehensible than her writing this colossal waste of paper is anyone spending money on it and God forbid, actually reading it. There is absolutely nothing Palin could say in her book that would interest me in the slightest, although there were some unintentional moments of comedy as excerpts trickled out. In the campaign last year, Palin got a lot of flak from the $150,000 spent on her wardrobe. Her book documents that she got upset because in her mind, it made her family "look like a herd of hillbillies that were living high off the hog!" HAHAHA! She actually said that! In another stunning example of her total lack of self-awareness, she doesn't realize that her family LOOKS like a herd of hillbillies because they ARE a herd of hillbillies! They come from Wasilla, Alaska for God's sake! They can't help but look like a herd of hillbillies! That was such a hilarious thing for her to say, I can't tell you how much that made me laugh. I really believe that anyone who reads her book will suffer a loss of at least 10 I.Q. points, and the vast majority of conservatives in this country simply cannot sustain such a huge drop in their brainpower.
As another example of the dumbing of America I submit the recent premiere of a movie called 2012, a high-budget, special-effects laden disaster movie. Movie-goers love their disaster flicks, maybe because after watching the destruction of the planet their own weirdly pathetic lives don't look so bad after all. And there's all kinds of ways that humanity can meet its end, whether through ecological disasters such as The Day After Tomorrow, or alien invasions as in Independence Day or War of the Worlds, but this latest shake-and-bake epic is triggered by the ending of the Mayan calendar, which runs out on December 21, 2012. What they don't bother to tell you is that the Mayan calendar is made up of a series of epochs called "long counts," and what is going to happen on 12/21/2012 is that the current long count will end and the NEXT ONE WILL START right after it! It's just like when your current calendar runs out on December 31. The world doesn't come to an end, does it? Of course not, you just start a new year with a new calendar! Well that's what's going to happen with the Mayan calendar. Anyhow the movie says that neutrinos from solar flares microwave the Earth's core and cause massive seismic disruption. These flares come from the Sun lining up with the center of the galaxy as it does EVERY DAMNED YEAR in December when the Sun moves through the constellation Sagittarius!! The movie shows crustal buckling in Los Angeles and part of California falling into the ocean. Such things do happen, but in geological time scales involving millions of years, not twenty minutes of movie time. There are just so many things preposterously wrong with this movie that I can't even start, so I'm just going to go along with it and treat it like the escapist fantasy diversion it really is, much like Congress would be if it wasn't so stupifyingly evil and destructive in real life.
After all, the complete annihilation of the planet would be a day at Disneyland compared to the Palins living in the White House.
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
Boycott Christma$$$
As the year barrels to a close and the second decade of the twenty-first century rears its ugly head above the horizon, everyone should become dimly aware of the approaching holidays. Thanksgiving is a little more than three weeks away, and Christmas a bit more than seven weeks off. So, we should be hearing more about Thanksgiving, right? Not so fast, because I just saw my first television commercial for the Christmas holiday, and I haven't heard squat about Thanksgiving.
Walgreen's and Costco have had some of their Christmas merchandise out on display for weeks now, and I can't tell you how jolting and disorienting it is to see fully decorated Christmas trees right after coming in from near 100-degree temps outside. But I voluntarily walked into both of those fine establishments and I can walk back out again if I want to. When advertisers start showing their Christmas commercials on television, that is more of an invasion of privacy. By bringing their sales harangues uninvited into my living room and dumping them in my lap, they are showing an aggressiveness and pushiness that does not go unchallenged.
And I really wouldn't care if they started in with the Yuletide commercials right after Thanksgiving, the usual start of the holiday shopping madness, because that's when I really curtail my television viewing. I seriously get aggravated when I see the same damned annoying commercial 50 times in the space of a half-hour. And Christmas music can be very nice when it's not used as background music for hordes of greed-crazed children going into grand-mal seizures if they don't get whatever overpriced piece-of-crap gift the advertisers tell them they have to have this year, or their Christmas will be a complete failure.
There are plenty of things about Christmas that I like, such as the cooler weather, the house decorations (although that can get really out of control), going to Christmas parties with friends, and the aforementioned Christmas music. XM Radio in particular has a wonderful audio channel called "Classical Christmas" that they broadcast only during the holidays, and it showcases incredible holiday music that you rarely hear anywhere. There are some really enjoyable holiday movies on TV, and one of my favorites is "White Christmas" starring Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye (more about it in a future blog). I love the Mormon Tabernacle Choir Christmas concert, strange as that may sound. And there's just something so damned reassuring and comforting about "A Charlie Brown Christmas." It's like a big warm blanket made up of your childhood memories that just wraps around you and makes you feel like a kid again. That kind of stuff is priceless.
I've started my own Christmas traditions, and one of them is to boycott the store who shows the first Christmas commercial on TV. Last year that honor went to Wal-Mart, and this year it goes to Kohl's department stores. So, suck it Kohl's, Merry Damned Christmas to you. Because of your greediness and self-serving rush to shove your name into everyone's face so early on in the season, you won't be seeing me or my money in any of your stores. It's called voting with your wallet, and my wallet does not vote for Kohl's.
Obviously the kind of money-grubbing Christmas season the advertisers are trying to force us into experiencing comes from a place of greed and avarice. We're going to hear so much of the upcoming shopping season being a barometer of the success or failure of all the economic stimulus efforts that have been and are being done. And it's really a shame to cast Christmas in that light, because it just turns the holidays into more of a mad, delirious shopping spree/death march than usual, leaving everyone tired, demoralized and deeper in debt. But it doesn't have to be that way.
The choice really comes down to whether you will sit back and passively accept the edicts and demands of the business world when it comes to celebrating Christmas the way they want you to, or actively reject the stifling consumerism that chokes all the joy out of the season. I choose the latter, and this year as last year I'm backing away from the shopping and spending and gift-giving hysteria that used to make me fear this time of year. It's really simple and easy - all the power is in your hands. I'm going to start by telling my friends to please not buy me anything. I love my friends and appreciate their generosity, but I am very fortunate to have more "stuff" than I need. I would really love it if they kept their money and either spent it on themselves or their pets, or donate it to a charity of their choice, and Brambley Hedge Rabbit Rescue is always my first choice when it comes to worthy charities. For me, what I want the most is to spend time with my friends, enjoy their company and their good humor with a wonderful meal or a bottle of wine, and just get back to the way Christmas should be celebrated - as a time for gathering-together in friendship and holiday spirit.
Walgreen's and Costco have had some of their Christmas merchandise out on display for weeks now, and I can't tell you how jolting and disorienting it is to see fully decorated Christmas trees right after coming in from near 100-degree temps outside. But I voluntarily walked into both of those fine establishments and I can walk back out again if I want to. When advertisers start showing their Christmas commercials on television, that is more of an invasion of privacy. By bringing their sales harangues uninvited into my living room and dumping them in my lap, they are showing an aggressiveness and pushiness that does not go unchallenged.
And I really wouldn't care if they started in with the Yuletide commercials right after Thanksgiving, the usual start of the holiday shopping madness, because that's when I really curtail my television viewing. I seriously get aggravated when I see the same damned annoying commercial 50 times in the space of a half-hour. And Christmas music can be very nice when it's not used as background music for hordes of greed-crazed children going into grand-mal seizures if they don't get whatever overpriced piece-of-crap gift the advertisers tell them they have to have this year, or their Christmas will be a complete failure.
There are plenty of things about Christmas that I like, such as the cooler weather, the house decorations (although that can get really out of control), going to Christmas parties with friends, and the aforementioned Christmas music. XM Radio in particular has a wonderful audio channel called "Classical Christmas" that they broadcast only during the holidays, and it showcases incredible holiday music that you rarely hear anywhere. There are some really enjoyable holiday movies on TV, and one of my favorites is "White Christmas" starring Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye (more about it in a future blog). I love the Mormon Tabernacle Choir Christmas concert, strange as that may sound. And there's just something so damned reassuring and comforting about "A Charlie Brown Christmas." It's like a big warm blanket made up of your childhood memories that just wraps around you and makes you feel like a kid again. That kind of stuff is priceless.
I've started my own Christmas traditions, and one of them is to boycott the store who shows the first Christmas commercial on TV. Last year that honor went to Wal-Mart, and this year it goes to Kohl's department stores. So, suck it Kohl's, Merry Damned Christmas to you. Because of your greediness and self-serving rush to shove your name into everyone's face so early on in the season, you won't be seeing me or my money in any of your stores. It's called voting with your wallet, and my wallet does not vote for Kohl's.
Obviously the kind of money-grubbing Christmas season the advertisers are trying to force us into experiencing comes from a place of greed and avarice. We're going to hear so much of the upcoming shopping season being a barometer of the success or failure of all the economic stimulus efforts that have been and are being done. And it's really a shame to cast Christmas in that light, because it just turns the holidays into more of a mad, delirious shopping spree/death march than usual, leaving everyone tired, demoralized and deeper in debt. But it doesn't have to be that way.
The choice really comes down to whether you will sit back and passively accept the edicts and demands of the business world when it comes to celebrating Christmas the way they want you to, or actively reject the stifling consumerism that chokes all the joy out of the season. I choose the latter, and this year as last year I'm backing away from the shopping and spending and gift-giving hysteria that used to make me fear this time of year. It's really simple and easy - all the power is in your hands. I'm going to start by telling my friends to please not buy me anything. I love my friends and appreciate their generosity, but I am very fortunate to have more "stuff" than I need. I would really love it if they kept their money and either spent it on themselves or their pets, or donate it to a charity of their choice, and Brambley Hedge Rabbit Rescue is always my first choice when it comes to worthy charities. For me, what I want the most is to spend time with my friends, enjoy their company and their good humor with a wonderful meal or a bottle of wine, and just get back to the way Christmas should be celebrated - as a time for gathering-together in friendship and holiday spirit.
Friday, October 30, 2009
All Hallows' E'en
Tomorrow is Halloween, just about the most fun and interesting holiday of the year. Halloween is sheer craziness, with people dropping their usual self-absorption and letting their inner child run free.
Derived from an ancient Celtic/pagan holiday, Halloween doesn't seem to have as much baggage as other holidays. It doesn't quite have the uncontrollable, crass commercialism and vulgar greediness of Christmas (although the trick-or-treat candy marketing does get to be a bit much), nor the food-and-football obsession of Thanksgiving. There is not the overwhelming guilt that seems to strangle Valentine's Day and Mother's Day, nor the obligatory, knee-jerk patriotism of Independence Day, nor the schizophrenic, multiple-personality vibe of Easter. Halloween is all about letting go and having fun, and if you're willing to ignore the hordes of grubby children parading up your driveway and demanding protection money in the form of stale candy corn, rock-hard popcorn balls and little tiny Snickers bars, it can be a very liberating experience.
I have some great childhood memories of Halloween, but one in particular stands out. I don't remember how old I was, but I'm thinking maybe 5 or 6 years old, and it might not have been on the actual Halloween night, but very close to it. One evening just at sunset my mother and I left the house to go on some errand. The wind was swirling all around making the fallen leaves spin and twirl in a fanciful little danse macabre. The orange light of sunset flooded everything and made the autumn leaves on the trees glow with a fiery light that seemed to come from within. But there was some kind of major electricity in the atmosphere, some kind of palpable spirit in the air that I picked up on and just made me run and dance and jump around like I was possessed. I have never figured out exactly what was going on, but I will never forget the irresistible, breath-taking feeling that evening, of the wind and the golden-orange light of sunset gilding everything with fire, and the unmistakable impression that for this one night, spirits of the dead were truly walking the earth.
So even though Halloween is all about letting go and releasing your inhibitions, there are still plenty of priggish old wet blankets who will try to put a damper on everybody's party. A couple of days ago at lunch I was looking through the local newspaper, the Arizona Republic (yeah, I know, just work with me on this), and someone had written a letter to the editor decrying the pagan, anti-Christian tenor of Halloween. They recommended to parents instead of dressing their little hooligans up as ghouls, ghosts and goblins and letting them run amok in the neighborhood shaking down senior citizens for overpriced treats, they should just throw a party at home and have the kids dress up as biblical characters. I kid you not, this was actually in the newspaper, and the only thing more blatantly idiotic than someone writing such tripe is the AZ Republic printing it. Hoo boy, what a fun party THAT would be! I mean, could that writer BE any more prudish or more of a stick-in-the-mud? They sound like the pathetic twit in Catholic school who would remind the nun just before dismissal on Friday afternoon that she forgot to give the homework assignments for the weekend. I guess that's the kind of adult you become after getting beat up every single school day for twelve years. Jeez, get a freaking grip already, it's only Halloween.
If I wasn't so lazy and boring, I would get dressed up as Sarah Palin or Sister Mary Flatulence the Nun From Hell or Spock from Star Trek and go out and have some fun. But since every day to me is a costume drama filled with freaks, scary people and creepy, mentally-ill Republicans, it tends to dull the unique aspect of Halloween. But I will be celebrating the night in my own way, looking up at the nearly-full moon in the sky and in the back of my mind will be feeling the electric wind swirl around me and sense the spirits of the dead visiting our world again.
Derived from an ancient Celtic/pagan holiday, Halloween doesn't seem to have as much baggage as other holidays. It doesn't quite have the uncontrollable, crass commercialism and vulgar greediness of Christmas (although the trick-or-treat candy marketing does get to be a bit much), nor the food-and-football obsession of Thanksgiving. There is not the overwhelming guilt that seems to strangle Valentine's Day and Mother's Day, nor the obligatory, knee-jerk patriotism of Independence Day, nor the schizophrenic, multiple-personality vibe of Easter. Halloween is all about letting go and having fun, and if you're willing to ignore the hordes of grubby children parading up your driveway and demanding protection money in the form of stale candy corn, rock-hard popcorn balls and little tiny Snickers bars, it can be a very liberating experience.
I have some great childhood memories of Halloween, but one in particular stands out. I don't remember how old I was, but I'm thinking maybe 5 or 6 years old, and it might not have been on the actual Halloween night, but very close to it. One evening just at sunset my mother and I left the house to go on some errand. The wind was swirling all around making the fallen leaves spin and twirl in a fanciful little danse macabre. The orange light of sunset flooded everything and made the autumn leaves on the trees glow with a fiery light that seemed to come from within. But there was some kind of major electricity in the atmosphere, some kind of palpable spirit in the air that I picked up on and just made me run and dance and jump around like I was possessed. I have never figured out exactly what was going on, but I will never forget the irresistible, breath-taking feeling that evening, of the wind and the golden-orange light of sunset gilding everything with fire, and the unmistakable impression that for this one night, spirits of the dead were truly walking the earth.
So even though Halloween is all about letting go and releasing your inhibitions, there are still plenty of priggish old wet blankets who will try to put a damper on everybody's party. A couple of days ago at lunch I was looking through the local newspaper, the Arizona Republic (yeah, I know, just work with me on this), and someone had written a letter to the editor decrying the pagan, anti-Christian tenor of Halloween. They recommended to parents instead of dressing their little hooligans up as ghouls, ghosts and goblins and letting them run amok in the neighborhood shaking down senior citizens for overpriced treats, they should just throw a party at home and have the kids dress up as biblical characters. I kid you not, this was actually in the newspaper, and the only thing more blatantly idiotic than someone writing such tripe is the AZ Republic printing it. Hoo boy, what a fun party THAT would be! I mean, could that writer BE any more prudish or more of a stick-in-the-mud? They sound like the pathetic twit in Catholic school who would remind the nun just before dismissal on Friday afternoon that she forgot to give the homework assignments for the weekend. I guess that's the kind of adult you become after getting beat up every single school day for twelve years. Jeez, get a freaking grip already, it's only Halloween.
If I wasn't so lazy and boring, I would get dressed up as Sarah Palin or Sister Mary Flatulence the Nun From Hell or Spock from Star Trek and go out and have some fun. But since every day to me is a costume drama filled with freaks, scary people and creepy, mentally-ill Republicans, it tends to dull the unique aspect of Halloween. But I will be celebrating the night in my own way, looking up at the nearly-full moon in the sky and in the back of my mind will be feeling the electric wind swirl around me and sense the spirits of the dead visiting our world again.
Thursday, October 29, 2009
Media Circus, Alaska Style
Has anyone gotten more media mileage from knocking up their girlfriend than Levi Johnston? Ever since he was barfed up on the national stage by the cynical media-meisters of the Republican party in an ill-advised and ultimately disastrous ploy for cultural relevancy (how they could even think about cultural relevancy with an obsolete dinosaur like John McCain was their first mistake), Johnston has been brilliant in somehow maintaining his place on the pop-culture radar. An astonishing feat for a dimwitted redneck from a white-trash backwater garbage dump - a.k.a. Wasilla, Alaska - Johnston has managed to keep the media's attention with a veneer of aw-shucks country-boy dopiness which covers up an almost unnatural ease in dealing with national news outlets.
Johnston's trip through the underbelly of the American psyche continues, this time with a two-pronged approach. Seeking to appeal to both highbrow and lowbrow culture, he has managed to titillate a segment of the population by threatening to pose naked in Playgirl magazine, a very risky gambit at best because if he doesn't deliver the goods to the level of expectation being generated, he will find himself knocked off his high-level perch. But like every pop-culture media whore, he has a Plan B. He is threatening to write a book and drop all manner of dirt on his baby's gramma, Sarah Palin. Having been nearly submerged in the dysfunctional morass of the Palin clan, Johnston certainly had a ring-side seat to the icky, sticky-sweet facade of Sarah Palin, whose Republican handlers constantly try to portray her as an all-American, girl-next-door type, something that a lot of ignorant, uneducated Americans willingly fall for.
It was hugely hilarious recently on CBS' The Early Show when Johnston was on mumbling about some embarrassing information he has about the former Alaska governor. Palin herself jumped in front of the nearest microphone and hissed out this astonishingly self-referential response:
"CBS should be ashamed for continually providing a forum to propagate lies. Consider the source of the most recent attention-getting lies - those who would sell their body for money reflect a desperate need for attention and are likely to say and do anything for even more attention."
HAHAHA! WHAT??? Pot, meet Kettle. The funniest thing is that her statement applies to her own self even more than it applies to Johnston. Except for maybe the "sell their body" part (and I really wouldn't put that past her if it meant getting more publicity), if there is anyone who has a "desperate need for attention" and is "likely to say and do anything for even more attention," it has to be Palin, and she's been doing it for a hell of a lot longer than Johnston. That quote could not be funnier.
Now, anyone who knows me or has read my blog knows that I am very much in favor of anything and everything that causes embarrassment to the Republican party or to Sarah Palin in particular. To me, everything about the Palins reeks of insincerity and phoniness. Her attempt to portray herself as just a "regular person" who wants to be president resonates with millions of Americans who somehow think it is a good idea to have an idiot in the White House, as if eight years of George W. Bush didn't prove beyond a shadow of a doubt what a horrible idea that is. But also beyond a shadow of a doubt is the fact that every single thing she does, says or writes is scripted down to the last comma and supplied to her by the Republican puppet-masters, who are the undisputed experts when it comes to appealing to the fears, bigotry and prejudices of the American voter.
So what are we to make of this Johnston kid, who got caught up in a wave of teenage lust and somehow has managed to ride it to the heights of notoriety? I have written in a previous blog entry about "schadenfreude," which is taking pleasure from the misfortune of others. I heartily endorse and support anything that makes Sarah Palin and the Republican party uncomfortable or puts them on the defensive. I don't include anything that would make the GOP feel ashamed, because they continue to prove over and over again that they have no shame. No tactic or strategy is too underhanded, pathetic or divisive for them, and they show themselves to be morality- and integrity-free at every opportunity. So I will put up with Levi Johnston's imbecilic blathering and posturing if it means he will continue being a thorn in Sarah Palin's side, and I will be very interested in reading anything that points out what a phony media whore she really is.
Johnston's trip through the underbelly of the American psyche continues, this time with a two-pronged approach. Seeking to appeal to both highbrow and lowbrow culture, he has managed to titillate a segment of the population by threatening to pose naked in Playgirl magazine, a very risky gambit at best because if he doesn't deliver the goods to the level of expectation being generated, he will find himself knocked off his high-level perch. But like every pop-culture media whore, he has a Plan B. He is threatening to write a book and drop all manner of dirt on his baby's gramma, Sarah Palin. Having been nearly submerged in the dysfunctional morass of the Palin clan, Johnston certainly had a ring-side seat to the icky, sticky-sweet facade of Sarah Palin, whose Republican handlers constantly try to portray her as an all-American, girl-next-door type, something that a lot of ignorant, uneducated Americans willingly fall for.
It was hugely hilarious recently on CBS' The Early Show when Johnston was on mumbling about some embarrassing information he has about the former Alaska governor. Palin herself jumped in front of the nearest microphone and hissed out this astonishingly self-referential response:
"CBS should be ashamed for continually providing a forum to propagate lies. Consider the source of the most recent attention-getting lies - those who would sell their body for money reflect a desperate need for attention and are likely to say and do anything for even more attention."
HAHAHA! WHAT??? Pot, meet Kettle. The funniest thing is that her statement applies to her own self even more than it applies to Johnston. Except for maybe the "sell their body" part (and I really wouldn't put that past her if it meant getting more publicity), if there is anyone who has a "desperate need for attention" and is "likely to say and do anything for even more attention," it has to be Palin, and she's been doing it for a hell of a lot longer than Johnston. That quote could not be funnier.
Now, anyone who knows me or has read my blog knows that I am very much in favor of anything and everything that causes embarrassment to the Republican party or to Sarah Palin in particular. To me, everything about the Palins reeks of insincerity and phoniness. Her attempt to portray herself as just a "regular person" who wants to be president resonates with millions of Americans who somehow think it is a good idea to have an idiot in the White House, as if eight years of George W. Bush didn't prove beyond a shadow of a doubt what a horrible idea that is. But also beyond a shadow of a doubt is the fact that every single thing she does, says or writes is scripted down to the last comma and supplied to her by the Republican puppet-masters, who are the undisputed experts when it comes to appealing to the fears, bigotry and prejudices of the American voter.
So what are we to make of this Johnston kid, who got caught up in a wave of teenage lust and somehow has managed to ride it to the heights of notoriety? I have written in a previous blog entry about "schadenfreude," which is taking pleasure from the misfortune of others. I heartily endorse and support anything that makes Sarah Palin and the Republican party uncomfortable or puts them on the defensive. I don't include anything that would make the GOP feel ashamed, because they continue to prove over and over again that they have no shame. No tactic or strategy is too underhanded, pathetic or divisive for them, and they show themselves to be morality- and integrity-free at every opportunity. So I will put up with Levi Johnston's imbecilic blathering and posturing if it means he will continue being a thorn in Sarah Palin's side, and I will be very interested in reading anything that points out what a phony media whore she really is.
Sunday, October 18, 2009
The More Things Change....
My 50th blog post! WOOHOO!
Everyone's heard the old phrase, "the more things change the more they stay the same." That seems to be the case with the financial disaster out of which this country is still trying to find its way.
Last week "Bill Moyer's Journal" on PBS had an eye-opening discussion on this topic. Bill's guests were Representative Marcy Kaptur (D-OH) and Simon Johnston, former Chief Economist with the IMF and currently at MIT Sloan School. They gave a very reasoned, intelligent assessment on the state of this country's economy. There was no screaming or jumping up and down, and no one tried to shout the other down. They didn't carry around misspelled, incomprehensible or outrageously stupid signs. It was just two thoughtful, articulate people stating some obvious and not-so-obvious facts about the economy, and what they had to say was chilling. Some of the salient points:
>> There is a massive revolving door between Washington and Wall Street that allows financial executives to rise to the highest levels of government and enjoy unprecedented access to the centers of power. Henry Paulson, formerly of Goldman Sachs and Timothy Geither, former head of the NY Federal Reserve, are the former and current Treasury Secretaries.
>> Lack of meaningful regulation left Wall Street with virtual free reign when it came to concocting exotic, high-risk financial instruments. The lure of extreme profits enticed them to take extreme risks. When the mortgage crisis brought many of them tumbling down, the taxpayers had to step in and bail them out. This resulted in the privatization of profits and the socialization of loss; that is, Wall Street kept the immense profits but unloaded the immense debt on us.
>> Bankruptcies and consolidations have reduced the number of huge powerful banks from 12 down to 4 super-banks, all of whom are lined up against any kind of financial reform.
>> Both of the guests on "Journal" agreed that the window of opportunity for meaningful financial reform in this country has passed. Nothing will be done at this point to change how Wall Street does business. In fact, they have become more entrenched in their ways. So what is going to prevent another financial melt-down from occurring in the future? Absolutely nothing.
>> The financial crisis for big banks is over. Their profits are huge again, and growing bigger all the time. They are getting ready to dole out their usual outrageous array of bonuses. It's the taxpayers, the people that gave the banks a way to save themselves and get out of near-total ruin, who are suffering in a bleak, tepid and jobless recovery, and will continue to do so for a very long time.
>> Banks have no respect for the President, and their lackeys in Congress preoccupy themselves with trivial, arcane and meaningless matters, instead of tackling the real problems behind the financial crisis. Congress should be holding hearings on the new architecture of the financial system, prudent lending, increasing savings and limited debt. They are not, nor will they anytime soon.
>> The same bankers who precipitated this financial mess on everyone, amazingly are the ones in charge of fixing it! That's like if you own a building and you hire someone to be fire marshall, and through their stupidity they burn the building down. So what do you do? You hire the same person to be fire marshall in your new building and give them a huge raise! How much sense does that make? None? Well that is exactly what is going on right now.
>> You can bet your next mortgage payment that the people who caused the mess and are now charged with cleaning it up, are covering up their own tracks and making sure they are not held responsible for anything. The FBI has only a very small number of agents investigating financial fraud and are for the most part disinterested in bringing anyone to justice.
>> There was a much smaller, but very similar situation in the savings and loan debacle of the 1980s. We, that taxpayers, are STILL making payments on the debt we assumed in that mess, and will continue to do so until the year 2013. How long are we going to be paying for this recent, much larger catastrophe? I'm guessing long after all of us are gone.
This episode of "Bill Moyer's Journal" was one of the most sobering and disheartening half-hours of television reporting I've seen in a long time. I think everyone in this country should have to watch it. The American people need to wake up to what is going on in their own country. Otherwise, their ruination will be assured.
Everyone's heard the old phrase, "the more things change the more they stay the same." That seems to be the case with the financial disaster out of which this country is still trying to find its way.
Last week "Bill Moyer's Journal" on PBS had an eye-opening discussion on this topic. Bill's guests were Representative Marcy Kaptur (D-OH) and Simon Johnston, former Chief Economist with the IMF and currently at MIT Sloan School. They gave a very reasoned, intelligent assessment on the state of this country's economy. There was no screaming or jumping up and down, and no one tried to shout the other down. They didn't carry around misspelled, incomprehensible or outrageously stupid signs. It was just two thoughtful, articulate people stating some obvious and not-so-obvious facts about the economy, and what they had to say was chilling. Some of the salient points:
>> There is a massive revolving door between Washington and Wall Street that allows financial executives to rise to the highest levels of government and enjoy unprecedented access to the centers of power. Henry Paulson, formerly of Goldman Sachs and Timothy Geither, former head of the NY Federal Reserve, are the former and current Treasury Secretaries.
>> Lack of meaningful regulation left Wall Street with virtual free reign when it came to concocting exotic, high-risk financial instruments. The lure of extreme profits enticed them to take extreme risks. When the mortgage crisis brought many of them tumbling down, the taxpayers had to step in and bail them out. This resulted in the privatization of profits and the socialization of loss; that is, Wall Street kept the immense profits but unloaded the immense debt on us.
>> Bankruptcies and consolidations have reduced the number of huge powerful banks from 12 down to 4 super-banks, all of whom are lined up against any kind of financial reform.
>> Both of the guests on "Journal" agreed that the window of opportunity for meaningful financial reform in this country has passed. Nothing will be done at this point to change how Wall Street does business. In fact, they have become more entrenched in their ways. So what is going to prevent another financial melt-down from occurring in the future? Absolutely nothing.
>> The financial crisis for big banks is over. Their profits are huge again, and growing bigger all the time. They are getting ready to dole out their usual outrageous array of bonuses. It's the taxpayers, the people that gave the banks a way to save themselves and get out of near-total ruin, who are suffering in a bleak, tepid and jobless recovery, and will continue to do so for a very long time.
>> Banks have no respect for the President, and their lackeys in Congress preoccupy themselves with trivial, arcane and meaningless matters, instead of tackling the real problems behind the financial crisis. Congress should be holding hearings on the new architecture of the financial system, prudent lending, increasing savings and limited debt. They are not, nor will they anytime soon.
>> The same bankers who precipitated this financial mess on everyone, amazingly are the ones in charge of fixing it! That's like if you own a building and you hire someone to be fire marshall, and through their stupidity they burn the building down. So what do you do? You hire the same person to be fire marshall in your new building and give them a huge raise! How much sense does that make? None? Well that is exactly what is going on right now.
>> You can bet your next mortgage payment that the people who caused the mess and are now charged with cleaning it up, are covering up their own tracks and making sure they are not held responsible for anything. The FBI has only a very small number of agents investigating financial fraud and are for the most part disinterested in bringing anyone to justice.
>> There was a much smaller, but very similar situation in the savings and loan debacle of the 1980s. We, that taxpayers, are STILL making payments on the debt we assumed in that mess, and will continue to do so until the year 2013. How long are we going to be paying for this recent, much larger catastrophe? I'm guessing long after all of us are gone.
This episode of "Bill Moyer's Journal" was one of the most sobering and disheartening half-hours of television reporting I've seen in a long time. I think everyone in this country should have to watch it. The American people need to wake up to what is going on in their own country. Otherwise, their ruination will be assured.
Monday, October 5, 2009
7 Things We Did Wrong
As threatened earlier, here is my list of some things mankind has done in his unending quest to reshape the world to his liking, which did not turn out quite as well as intended. Along with some possible silver-lining upsides that resulted:
1) Organized Religion. Probably the biggest and most spectacular failure of all, organized religion is likely the most destructive and crippling pestilence mankind ever inflicted on itself. An incalculable amount of damage, misery and suffering has been wreaked in its name. How many billions of people have been enslaved by it, how many lives ruined, how many bright promising futures stifled because of it? How many native cultures were exterminated by missionaries imposing their beliefs? Organized religion's lust for money and power have supplanted any good intentions it might have had in the beginning, and nowadays it appears to be more of a political force than a spiritual force.
UPSIDE: As much as I hate to admit it, during the Dark Ages most of the world's knowledge and intellectual activity were preserved by monks and clerics in abbeys and monasteries.
2) Democracy. Probably the best form of government we've ever come up with, democracy as a concept sure has a lot going for it. Imagine a system where the people being governed are actually in charge and making decisions that affect them. Jeffersonian democracy - a government "of the people, by the people and for the people" - is stunning in its simplicity and its genius. Too bad it didn't turn out that way. In order for democracy to work as intended, a critically important component is an informed, engaged population. Those being governed need to be intelligent enough to understand the problems they face and willing to participate in the solutions, even if personally uncomfortable sacrifices are needed. Unfortunately being a responsible citizen takes time and effort and far too many people are just too lazy to do the work.
UPSIDE: Makes it easy to see how ridiculous communism and Marxism are.
3) Capitalism. Again, like democracy, great on paper but not so easy to implement in real time. It seems like a good thing - the success you have in life should depend on the market for your goods or services and how hard you are willing to work. Somewhere along the way things go off the rails and market inequities take over. Then you get really valuable, worthwhile occupations like teachers, nurses, firefighters and police being extremely undervalued and under-compensated, and worthless scumbag entertainers, politicians and sports figures being paid astronomical salaries far out of proportion to their societal worth, to the point of obscenity. Capitalism invariably generates a have/have-not society distributed through an upper/middle/lower class system, with subclasses and extremes on both ends. The result is a world where extreme wealth and extreme poverty co-exist side by side.
UPSIDE: Motivates people to reach higher, if only to get more money.
4) The Art of Medicine. Medicine and the healing arts are one of man's greatest triumphs, to be sure. The number of lives that have been saved by the accumulated medical knowledge over the millennia has to be in the billions. All but a very few of us are alive today, I believe, because of some sort of medical intervention in the past, and that includes me. But in modern times, greed has taken over the nobler ambitions and when making a profit depends on a steady supply of sick people, then more sick people mean more profit, right? Health insurance companies, drug manufacturers and for-profit medicine have come together in a huge medical-industrial complex. If drug companies in particular would take a fraction of the money they spend developing and marketing drugs and use it to educate people in making sensible, healthy choices in their lives then maybe we wouldn't need all those expensive drugs. But that's not where the money is, is it? When sick people are no longer profitable and healthy people are, then we will get medicine back to being the best it can be.
UPSIDE: People are living longer! Unfortunately some of them are Republicans.
5) Nuclear Energy. Boy, did this sound like a great thing or what? Harnessing one of nature's basic forces and turning it into a nearly limitless amount of energy, to inexpensively supply the world's ever-growing power demands. And didn't it turn into a really bad idea when the military got a hold of it and changed it into the most destructive force ever unleashed on this planet? Today, enough nuclear weapons exist to destroy the earth something like 30 times over, and a small but worrisome number of these weapons are either unaccounted for or not-too-closely guarded. Why, some crazy bunch of religious fundamentalists could conceivably get a hold of a couple of them and ... well, that's kind of too scary to consider. We should have known the idea of extremely cheap, unlimited energy would be too good to be true, and it is.
UPSIDE: Really cool but really scary atomic explosions.
6) Freedom of Speech. Being able to say whatever you want is a relatively new concept in human history, with totalitarianism having been the rule rather than the exception in the past, and tyrants and despots have always taken a dim view of the enslaved masses getting uppity. But once people started backing away from monarchies and dictatorships and education became more widespread, the idea of speaking your mind without fear of dire consequences began to take favor. This of course has achieved its highest expression in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, but it also has its drawbacks. Hate speech and bigotry which really need to be controlled are in fact protected, and many people are unable to recognize them when they are all gussied up with patriotism and nationalism. Modern-day blights such as telemarketing and pornography are also considered protected forms of speech, although it's pretty difficult to see any benefit coming from their continued existence. So, we take the good with the bad, even if sometimes the bad gets pretty bad.
UPSIDE: Funny truth-tellers like Bill Maher, Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert and Joan Rivers. HA! I made that last one up.
7) Internet. Yes indeed I did list the Internet in my previous post about things mankind has done right. But the Internet is such a vast and powerful entity that we need to look at the other side of the coin. I believe the Internet critically needs to be open and free and pretty much unregulated - that is perhaps its greatest strength. But when we open the doors to the world like that, bad things can sneak in, just like if I left my patio doors open and hordes of repulsive vermin like scorpions and spiders would stampede each other to get in. With just a couple of mouse clicks you can, if you are so inclined, wallow in huge amounts of extremely graphic pornography, learn how to build bombs and engage in terrorist activities, be exposed to the most virulent, loathsome hate-speech and bigotry, and fall victim to a whole galaxy of identity-theft schemes. Spam is a vile, cancerous plague that threatens to bring the Internet to a grinding halt. Does all the good that comes from the Internet outweigh the bad? I think it does, but just barely.
UPSIDE: Online bill-paying, emails from good friends, belch videos on YouTube.
Well, that's all I got. I'm getting depressed thinking about this stuff. It's been such a beautiful, cool autumn morning as I sit on my back patio, with a happy little rabbit playing in the outdoor playpen and another lounging contentedly behind a bougainvillea bush. The world can be a beautiful place, it is too bad humans always have to screw it up.
1) Organized Religion. Probably the biggest and most spectacular failure of all, organized religion is likely the most destructive and crippling pestilence mankind ever inflicted on itself. An incalculable amount of damage, misery and suffering has been wreaked in its name. How many billions of people have been enslaved by it, how many lives ruined, how many bright promising futures stifled because of it? How many native cultures were exterminated by missionaries imposing their beliefs? Organized religion's lust for money and power have supplanted any good intentions it might have had in the beginning, and nowadays it appears to be more of a political force than a spiritual force.
UPSIDE: As much as I hate to admit it, during the Dark Ages most of the world's knowledge and intellectual activity were preserved by monks and clerics in abbeys and monasteries.
2) Democracy. Probably the best form of government we've ever come up with, democracy as a concept sure has a lot going for it. Imagine a system where the people being governed are actually in charge and making decisions that affect them. Jeffersonian democracy - a government "of the people, by the people and for the people" - is stunning in its simplicity and its genius. Too bad it didn't turn out that way. In order for democracy to work as intended, a critically important component is an informed, engaged population. Those being governed need to be intelligent enough to understand the problems they face and willing to participate in the solutions, even if personally uncomfortable sacrifices are needed. Unfortunately being a responsible citizen takes time and effort and far too many people are just too lazy to do the work.
UPSIDE: Makes it easy to see how ridiculous communism and Marxism are.
3) Capitalism. Again, like democracy, great on paper but not so easy to implement in real time. It seems like a good thing - the success you have in life should depend on the market for your goods or services and how hard you are willing to work. Somewhere along the way things go off the rails and market inequities take over. Then you get really valuable, worthwhile occupations like teachers, nurses, firefighters and police being extremely undervalued and under-compensated, and worthless scumbag entertainers, politicians and sports figures being paid astronomical salaries far out of proportion to their societal worth, to the point of obscenity. Capitalism invariably generates a have/have-not society distributed through an upper/middle/lower class system, with subclasses and extremes on both ends. The result is a world where extreme wealth and extreme poverty co-exist side by side.
UPSIDE: Motivates people to reach higher, if only to get more money.
4) The Art of Medicine. Medicine and the healing arts are one of man's greatest triumphs, to be sure. The number of lives that have been saved by the accumulated medical knowledge over the millennia has to be in the billions. All but a very few of us are alive today, I believe, because of some sort of medical intervention in the past, and that includes me. But in modern times, greed has taken over the nobler ambitions and when making a profit depends on a steady supply of sick people, then more sick people mean more profit, right? Health insurance companies, drug manufacturers and for-profit medicine have come together in a huge medical-industrial complex. If drug companies in particular would take a fraction of the money they spend developing and marketing drugs and use it to educate people in making sensible, healthy choices in their lives then maybe we wouldn't need all those expensive drugs. But that's not where the money is, is it? When sick people are no longer profitable and healthy people are, then we will get medicine back to being the best it can be.
UPSIDE: People are living longer! Unfortunately some of them are Republicans.
5) Nuclear Energy. Boy, did this sound like a great thing or what? Harnessing one of nature's basic forces and turning it into a nearly limitless amount of energy, to inexpensively supply the world's ever-growing power demands. And didn't it turn into a really bad idea when the military got a hold of it and changed it into the most destructive force ever unleashed on this planet? Today, enough nuclear weapons exist to destroy the earth something like 30 times over, and a small but worrisome number of these weapons are either unaccounted for or not-too-closely guarded. Why, some crazy bunch of religious fundamentalists could conceivably get a hold of a couple of them and ... well, that's kind of too scary to consider. We should have known the idea of extremely cheap, unlimited energy would be too good to be true, and it is.
UPSIDE: Really cool but really scary atomic explosions.
6) Freedom of Speech. Being able to say whatever you want is a relatively new concept in human history, with totalitarianism having been the rule rather than the exception in the past, and tyrants and despots have always taken a dim view of the enslaved masses getting uppity. But once people started backing away from monarchies and dictatorships and education became more widespread, the idea of speaking your mind without fear of dire consequences began to take favor. This of course has achieved its highest expression in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, but it also has its drawbacks. Hate speech and bigotry which really need to be controlled are in fact protected, and many people are unable to recognize them when they are all gussied up with patriotism and nationalism. Modern-day blights such as telemarketing and pornography are also considered protected forms of speech, although it's pretty difficult to see any benefit coming from their continued existence. So, we take the good with the bad, even if sometimes the bad gets pretty bad.
UPSIDE: Funny truth-tellers like Bill Maher, Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert and Joan Rivers. HA! I made that last one up.
7) Internet. Yes indeed I did list the Internet in my previous post about things mankind has done right. But the Internet is such a vast and powerful entity that we need to look at the other side of the coin. I believe the Internet critically needs to be open and free and pretty much unregulated - that is perhaps its greatest strength. But when we open the doors to the world like that, bad things can sneak in, just like if I left my patio doors open and hordes of repulsive vermin like scorpions and spiders would stampede each other to get in. With just a couple of mouse clicks you can, if you are so inclined, wallow in huge amounts of extremely graphic pornography, learn how to build bombs and engage in terrorist activities, be exposed to the most virulent, loathsome hate-speech and bigotry, and fall victim to a whole galaxy of identity-theft schemes. Spam is a vile, cancerous plague that threatens to bring the Internet to a grinding halt. Does all the good that comes from the Internet outweigh the bad? I think it does, but just barely.
UPSIDE: Online bill-paying, emails from good friends, belch videos on YouTube.
Well, that's all I got. I'm getting depressed thinking about this stuff. It's been such a beautiful, cool autumn morning as I sit on my back patio, with a happy little rabbit playing in the outdoor playpen and another lounging contentedly behind a bougainvillea bush. The world can be a beautiful place, it is too bad humans always have to screw it up.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
