Friday, November 18, 2011
Think You Know a F*cking Thing About Desperation?
Tomorrow, November 19, 2011, my husband and I will have been married for 21 years. We hate each other more every day. And since we lost our sweet daughter, Jordan, a little over four years ago--September 4, 2007--we don't even try to pretend any differently. Yet, here I remain, another year of my life... Yeah babe, that's desperation.
Friday, January 28, 2011
Monday, December 20, 2010
DHS Implementing No Work List: Citizens Must Get Government Approval to Work in Private Sector Jobs
*
"You’ve heard of no fly and no buy lists – get ready for no work lists. Millions of workers now must apply to the DHS and prove they are not terrorists in order to be granted permission by the government to work." ~BEFORE IT'S NEWS
According to information posted on a union website for ironworkers, the Department of Homeland Security has plans to implement [a] "NO WORK LIST(S)." This means that citizens will be required to obtain government approval to work in private sector jobs. The Iron Workers Local 361 website spells out the details of the Department of Homeland Security’s TWIC and SWAC programs. The information below was taken directly from the IWL 361 website. /LL
TRANSPORTATION WORKER IDENTIFICATION CREDENTIAL (TWIC)
This site has been created in an effort to keep the membership of Ironworkers Local 40 & 361 aware and informed about recent changes within our jurisdiction.
The Department of Homeland Security along with The Transportation Security Administration has issued a directive titled: Transportation Worker Identification Credential or "TWIC."
It is a biometric credential that ensures only vetted workers are eligible to enter a secure construction site, unescorted. It is believed that several very large upcoming projects within Local 40 & 361's jurisdiction will be requiring workers on these projects to have TWIC credentials. Before issuing a TWIC, TSA must conduct a security threat assessment on the TWIC applicant. An applicant who, as a result of the assessment, is determined to not pose a security threat, will be issued a TWIC card.
The fee for a TWIC card will be $132.50 and the credential is valid for five years. Click the following link for more information about the TWIC credential. Below are several websites which contain a tremendous amount of information regarding the TWIC card and how you go about obtaining one. Local 361 will be providing updated information with regard to the TWIC credential on this web site, so continue to check back for any updates.
SECURE WORKER ACCESS CONSORTIUM (S.W.A.C.)
Secure Worker Access Consortium (S.W.A.C.), a large-scale collaborative effort among public and private authorities, facility owners, contractors, and labor organizations who are partnering to prevent terrorist activity by creating a trusted contractor community. Over 500 organizations, including the Port Authority of NY and NJ, which manages and maintains the bridges, tunnels, bus terminals, airports, PATH, and seaports that are essential to the bi-state region’s trade and transportation capabilities, have joined this effort.
The Secure Worker Access Consortium is very similar to the Federal TWIC program. At present it is now used by The New York and New Jersey Port Authority for all of their upcoming projects. The background investigation is similar to the TWIC program. By acquiring the TWIC credential first the process for the SWAC credential is greatly reduced.
The cost for the SWAC credential is approximatly $200.00 Local 361 will be providing updated information with regard to the SWAC credential on this web site, so continue to check back for any updates. [sic]
Source (Quote):
| BEFORE IT'S NEWS
"You’ve heard of no fly and no buy lists – get ready for no work lists. Millions of workers now must apply to the DHS and prove they are not terrorists in order to be granted permission by the government to work." ~BEFORE IT'S NEWS
According to information posted on a union website for ironworkers, the Department of Homeland Security has plans to implement [a] "NO WORK LIST(S)." This means that citizens will be required to obtain government approval to work in private sector jobs. The Iron Workers Local 361 website spells out the details of the Department of Homeland Security’s TWIC and SWAC programs. The information below was taken directly from the IWL 361 website. /LL
TRANSPORTATION WORKER IDENTIFICATION CREDENTIAL (TWIC)
This site has been created in an effort to keep the membership of Ironworkers Local 40 & 361 aware and informed about recent changes within our jurisdiction.
The Department of Homeland Security along with The Transportation Security Administration has issued a directive titled: Transportation Worker Identification Credential or "TWIC."
It is a biometric credential that ensures only vetted workers are eligible to enter a secure construction site, unescorted. It is believed that several very large upcoming projects within Local 40 & 361's jurisdiction will be requiring workers on these projects to have TWIC credentials. Before issuing a TWIC, TSA must conduct a security threat assessment on the TWIC applicant. An applicant who, as a result of the assessment, is determined to not pose a security threat, will be issued a TWIC card.
The fee for a TWIC card will be $132.50 and the credential is valid for five years. Click the following link for more information about the TWIC credential. Below are several websites which contain a tremendous amount of information regarding the TWIC card and how you go about obtaining one. Local 361 will be providing updated information with regard to the TWIC credential on this web site, so continue to check back for any updates.
SECURE WORKER ACCESS CONSORTIUM (S.W.A.C.)
Secure Worker Access Consortium (S.W.A.C.), a large-scale collaborative effort among public and private authorities, facility owners, contractors, and labor organizations who are partnering to prevent terrorist activity by creating a trusted contractor community. Over 500 organizations, including the Port Authority of NY and NJ, which manages and maintains the bridges, tunnels, bus terminals, airports, PATH, and seaports that are essential to the bi-state region’s trade and transportation capabilities, have joined this effort.
The Secure Worker Access Consortium is very similar to the Federal TWIC program. At present it is now used by The New York and New Jersey Port Authority for all of their upcoming projects. The background investigation is similar to the TWIC program. By acquiring the TWIC credential first the process for the SWAC credential is greatly reduced.
The cost for the SWAC credential is approximatly $200.00 Local 361 will be providing updated information with regard to the SWAC credential on this web site, so continue to check back for any updates. [sic]
Source (Quote):
Uncle Sam: His Mouth Ain't No Prayer Book
"I think Randy and Evi Quaid should hire Julian Assange (using his skills as a 'former' hacker--among others) to investigate the 'Hollywood Star Whackers.'" /giggle/ ~leilei
I was reading an article recently that questioned the legitimacy of Wikileaks' latest release of documents. The author mentioned that there are quite a few who believe the U.S. was/is behind Wikileaks and Julian Assange. Typically, the people commenting acted as if they had lost their minds (Lost they damn minds! Honey, please!) in their rush to find new and interesting ways to mock, malign and disparage another for simply stating an opinion that differed from their own. However, I found one comment (the following comment in its entirety) quite interesting.
Of course, I think I've seen this person's posts and comments at a "conspiracy" site, a spin-off of an Alex Jones site. He'd be banned--posthaste--if anyone knew that, I imagine. /grin/
The U.S. government--our good ol' Uncle Sam--has tentacles that reach into every area of our lives and all over the world; the "mouth-pieces" have fed us an obscene amount of misinformation, disinformation and outright lies through the years. The official (not O-FFICIAL) position of the U.S. concerning the Wikileaks document release is horror, outrage and promise to prosecute Julian Assange. I hope Julian Assange is legitimate, he's a fucking hero if so.
Growing up in the South, I heard many colorful sayings used to describe just about every aspect of life. One saying--used quite often--was one we'd all do well to remember about our ol' Uncle Sam: His mouth ain't no prayer book. That's the God's honest truth. And like my grandmother always says, "The Truth Will Stand when the World is on Fire." The only problem is, a lot of us will be calling it a "damn lie" and believing the exact opposite. /LL
I was reading an article recently that questioned the legitimacy of Wikileaks' latest release of documents. The author mentioned that there are quite a few who believe the U.S. was/is behind Wikileaks and Julian Assange. Typically, the people commenting acted as if they had lost their minds (Lost they damn minds! Honey, please!) in their rush to find new and interesting ways to mock, malign and disparage another for simply stating an opinion that differed from their own. However, I found one comment (the following comment in its entirety) quite interesting.
"Just a few tidbits on Julian Assange and Wikileaks: “I’m constantly annoyed that people are distracted by false conspiracies such as 9/11, when all around we provide evidence of real conspiracies, for war or mass financial fraud.” -Julian Assange, Belfast Telegraph, July 19, 2010
What happens to real whistle-blowers?
"The fate of whistle-blowers and tellers of dangerous truth is rarely rock-star celebrity. Count them. Mordechai Vanunu, who exposed Israel’s nuclear program – imprisoned for nearly 20 years. Gary Webb, who exposed the CIA connection to the distribution of crack cocaine in the US - probably murdered. Russian journalist, Anna Politkovskaya, who criticized Putin’s policies in Chechnya – assassinated. Lebanese journalists Samir Qassir and Gebran Tueni, who criticized the Syrian government – killed in car bombings.
In 90% of such cases, says the Committee to Protect Journalists, the killers are never brought to justice. Yet, Assange, “the most dangerous man in Cyberspace,” according to the faux-alternative magazine Rolling Stone, lives to tell the tale of his persecution from the cover of Time magazine and the podium of TED conferences, weighted down with awards and honors from such establishment worthies as The Economist, The New Statesman, and Amnesty International."
Note: This writer left out a few notable whistle-blowers such as Benazir Bhutto (told us bin Laden was dead), William Cooper (predicted 9/11 attacks would be staged; said they would blame bin Laden), David Cole (Holocaust revisionist; Jewish mafia don Irv Rubin put a hit on his life), Sibel Edmonds (former FBI translator; 9/11 Commission blocked testimony from report, also knew about gov't officials involved in heroin and weapons smuggling) the DC Madam (threatened to reveal which gov't officials visited whorehouse), and WTC 7 survivor Barry Jennings (eye witness accounts told of bombs and dead bodies in WTC 7). These people were either killed, gagged died mysteriously or had their lives otherwise threatened for leaking uncomfortable facts. You don't get the world's leader's knickers in a knot and at the same time get handed awards plus get your face plastered all over their approved media outlets. C'mon people use your head!" ~maasanova
Of course, I think I've seen this person's posts and comments at a "conspiracy" site, a spin-off of an Alex Jones site. He'd be banned--posthaste--if anyone knew that, I imagine. /grin/
The U.S. government--our good ol' Uncle Sam--has tentacles that reach into every area of our lives and all over the world; the "mouth-pieces" have fed us an obscene amount of misinformation, disinformation and outright lies through the years. The official (not O-FFICIAL) position of the U.S. concerning the Wikileaks document release is horror, outrage and promise to prosecute Julian Assange. I hope Julian Assange is legitimate, he's a fucking hero if so.
Growing up in the South, I heard many colorful sayings used to describe just about every aspect of life. One saying--used quite often--was one we'd all do well to remember about our ol' Uncle Sam: His mouth ain't no prayer book. That's the God's honest truth. And like my grandmother always says, "The Truth Will Stand when the World is on Fire." The only problem is, a lot of us will be calling it a "damn lie" and believing the exact opposite. /LL
"Never believe anything until it has been officially denied." ~Claud Cockburn
*
Source(s): quote [maasanova]-current.com
photo/image-Google Images
*
Back to reading Rainbow Pie: A Redneck Memoir, Joe Bageant's latest book. As usual, I got sidetracked by the 'life and times of Dead Mom Walking.' Review coming (promises, promises).
/LLThursday, December 16, 2010
Watching Fox News Makes You Stupid?
*
A recent poll conducted by World Public Opinion, a project managed by the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland, finds that the viewers of Fox News are significantly more misinformed than consumers of news from other sources. [Source: AlterNet]
It seems that Fox News viewers suffer from the same malady as the subjects of a lament that has been attributed to Artemus Ward, Mark Twain and Will Rogers, “It ain’t so much the things we don’t know that get us in trouble. It’s the things we know that ain’t so.” It seems that the author of this particular quote is one of the things "we know that ain't so." /grin/
A similar quote, "The trouble with most folks ain't so much their ignorance as knowing so many things that ain't so" has been/is Widely attributed to Josh Billings. But, who the heck knows? These words DO get around. /grin/ /LL
A recent poll conducted by World Public Opinion, a project managed by the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland, finds that the viewers of Fox News are significantly more misinformed than consumers of news from other sources. [Source: AlterNet]
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
It seems that Fox News viewers suffer from the same malady as the subjects of a lament that has been attributed to Artemus Ward, Mark Twain and Will Rogers, “It ain’t so much the things we don’t know that get us in trouble. It’s the things we know that ain’t so.” It seems that the author of this particular quote is one of the things "we know that ain't so." /grin/
A similar quote, "The trouble with most folks ain't so much their ignorance as knowing so many things that ain't so" has been/is Widely attributed to Josh Billings. But, who the heck knows? These words DO get around. /grin/ /LL
Rainbow Pie: A Redneck Memoir
I'm just now reading Joe Bageant's most recent book, Rainbow Pie: A Redneck Memoir. It seems that I'm always a bit behind the curve. Never fear, a review will be posted forthwith (as soon as I finish reading /grin/). Naturally, it will be filled with slobbering praise for my hero, Joe Bageant. Ciao for now. /LL
Monday, August 23, 2010
Sunday, June 27, 2010
Live from Planet Norte ~ Part II /Joe Bageant!/
The uniformity on Planet Norte is striking. Each person is a unit, installed in life support boxes in the suburbs and cities; all are fed, clothed by the same closed-loop corporate industrial system. Everywhere you look, inhabitants are plugged in at the brainstem to screens downloading their state approved daily consciousness updates. iPods, Blackberries, notebook computers, monitors in cubicles, and the ubiquitous TV screens in lobbies, bars, waiting rooms, even in taxicabs, mentally knead the public brain and condition its reactions to non-Americaness. Which may be defined as anything that does not come from of Washington, DC, Microsoft or Wal-Mart.
For such a big country, the "American experience" is extremely narrow and provincial, leaving its people with approximately the same comprehension of the outside world as an oyster bed. Yet there is that relentless busyness of Nortenians. That sort of constant movement that indicates all parties are busy-busy-busy, but offers no clue as to just what they are busy at.
Click "yes" to read more (I have no I idea why "yes" appears)
Live from Planet Norte
Now a word (or two or ten) from our (my) favorite 'Heathen Commie'
America's totalitarian democracy and the politics of plunder, or, life is a titty tuck and a Dodge truck
Joe Bageant, Winchester, Virginia
Starting with the Homeland Security probe at Washington's Reagan Airport, arrival back in the United States resembles an alien abduction to a planet of bright lights, strange beings and incomprehensible behavior. The featureless mysophobic landscape of DC's Virginia suburbs seems to indicate that homogeneity and sterility are the native religions. Especially after spending eight months in Mexico's pungent atmosphere of funky, sensual open air markets, rotting vegetation, smoking street food grills, sweat, agave nectar and ghost orchids.
Continued: Part II
America's totalitarian democracy and the politics of plunder, or, life is a titty tuck and a Dodge truck
Joe Bageant, Winchester, Virginia
Starting with the Homeland Security probe at Washington's Reagan Airport, arrival back in the United States resembles an alien abduction to a planet of bright lights, strange beings and incomprehensible behavior. The featureless mysophobic landscape of DC's Virginia suburbs seems to indicate that homogeneity and sterility are the native religions. Especially after spending eight months in Mexico's pungent atmosphere of funky, sensual open air markets, rotting vegetation, smoking street food grills, sweat, agave nectar and ghost orchids.
Continued: Part II
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
Hope is for Little Kids and Tooth Fairies
*
A letter from a reader:
Joe,
Reading you is like drinking those bottles full of clear liquids the night before a colonoscopy. The next day I survive the test and am told that I do not have colon cancer -- yet. Still, I am getting the test in spite of the fact that I know that my pack a day cigarette habit coupled with 12 fancy beers a day is probably gonna kill me first. I've been working for a very large corporation for the last 20 years as a print advertising designer. I am on the Endangered Species list at 58. I have been playing the consumer game for the past 45 years. I've known that the whole thing was a lie since I was 13 -- before that I lived in a world that was so monochromatic that when I heard the Beatles I thought that heaven had come to earth.
I wanted to tell you my whole story, but have decided to spare you that. I have one simple question: seeing what you see, knowing what you know, what are your recommendations for how to proceed? Because I am seeing that just drinking hard enough to not think about it is no way to live. Or is it? When the best hopes being offered are simply the offerings of another corporate lackey, how does one live?
Do trips to Mexico help?
I realize as I write this that you are not pretending to be a self-help guru for baby boomers with a guilt complex. Still, I cannot help but hope that you have some thoughts for a one-time proud hippie (I marched against the war in Vietnam in Detroit in 1968 and again against the war in Iraq in 2003) who longs to extricate himself from the accumulated bullshit of years of consumerism.
I write letters to congressmen and senators and get form letter responses -- personalized, no less. So I would like you to write me back, tell me you read what I wrote, that you got this e-mail. That's all. I will be satisfied.
Yours in hopelessness,
Brad
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Brad,
Yeah, we are on the endangered species list all right. But the rest of America, and maybe even mankind, is not far behind. Not that it's any consolation, of course. I have to smile at your mention of the Beatles being like heaven coming to earth. Me too!
In reply to your query, all I can do is tell you my experience. I don't know shit really. Certainly not the answers to other people's questions, especially those of such a serious nature. However, I do know my own experience. Sort of. So all I can do is share that.
You ask if "trips to Mexico help?" Because Mexico is my home for the time being, (I spend most of my time here now, and have obtained legal residency status) and only go back to the US when necessary, I'm not sure if "trip" is the right word. I rather feel that the world is my home now. Consequently, I do not know if "help" is the right word either. I no longer have any geographical goals, per se, other than I seem to be a better person in some locales than in others. I hope I am not running, because at this age running, physically or metaphorically, takes too much effort. I'd rather walk, with periodic rest stops -- such as this one in Mexico.
It took me over fifty years to figure out there is no running away, or finding some perfect life. We just exchange one set of problems for another. I ran away to the US Navy to escape a small redneck town. I ran away to the West Coast to become a hippie. I ran to homestead in Idaho on an Indian reservation, I later ran back into the straight world, mostly out of fear for financial security. And when it became personally undeniable that America had become a lonely totalistic empire, whose heart is a bank vault, and that I would not survive its enforced loneliness, masked by gunpoint cheer and state authorized messages of "hope," and loudspeakers above the workhouse extolling the "work ethic," well, it was either be somewhere else or die inside. Get a different set of problems. Some nights even sickness or hunger looked acceptable, compared to the screaming, yet silent anxiety I was experiencing. I swear it was fucking unbearable. By 2005, I was in Central America for I did not know how long.
Personally, I found that the problems I encountered every day in places like Belize (and now Mexico) somehow suited my own innate sensibilities better. I had no expectations really. Which is good because both paces would have been extremely disappointing if I had. Mainly I just wanted to give up any "advantage" I supposedly had as a citizen of the "greatest nation on earth," which was, as I said, quite literally, killing me, much as it seems to be killing you.
Beyond that, I wanted to spend the remaining 10 or 15 percent of my life doing stuff with human beings, face-to-face, asshole to belly button -- babies being born, people dying, getting drunk, worshiping their gods, experiencing joy. And I wanted to do so without any mediation by soul killing American corporate culture. I did not want "security" as Americans and Europeans perceive it, and still don't. The only way to do that is to intentionally stay pretty broke. Money is a rigged game -- you cannot win by trying to buy security. Oh, you can have the illusion of it, but the price is your soul. The entire world architecture of money, beyond basic sustenance, is a horribly corrupted -- especially since the advent of the "virtual world economy," a paper and digital racket that sucks away the people's hard earned wealth before they ever see it.
Well, I say, fuck their offerings. And screw childish "hope." Hope is for little kids and tooth fairies. The world we awaken to each morning is the only real thing there is. And if we are spiritually, morally and philosophically intact, and humble enough to feel it and love it each day, we don't need to hope some unseen force or bunch of politicos, or an "economy" or so-called leaders are gonna make it better for us. The orchids outside my doorway are blooming and my wife still loves me after all these years. A real gypsy taught me a song yesterday and Easter is in the air in Mexico. I guess that as a burned out old hippie and a writer, I cannot imagine anything else to hope for.
I truly do understand what you are saying about consumerism. I lived it too. I still have a house full of stuff in Virginia that is the biggest bane on my life. Tons of stuff -- old paintings, family documents, guitars, stuff my kids made while growing up, art and artifacts gathered from around the world in the course of a life, file cabinets full of articles I wrote for magazines and newspapers over the past 40 years. My wife and I are paralyzed over what to do with the stuff. She retires in a year or so and so still lives up there in the middle of it all. When I am there, we sip wine and savor the memories connected with acquiring those things together, the 18th Century drawings we bought together at Covent Garden in London, the love we felt in Venice. And when I am in Mexico, I understand that the freedom of my austere life here is of greater value than any of those things. Which does not keep me from missing them from time to time. But in my heart I know that, for the most part, I have beaten American consumerism (though I'll always be a sucker for good imported booze). The other thing I know for sure is that the only way for a man to "extricate himself from the accumulated bullshit" is to extricate himself. Walk away. There is no plan one can make to do so while living in the belly of the beast. The beast of American capitalism will not let you, but will encourage the belief that you can. As my webmaster Ken, who left America over a decade ago say, "The only way to do it is to just get up and do it."
Also, I believe it can still be done while remaining in America, once one rises above the "learned helplessness" that comes with being a captive of the empire. But it still entails giving up most of what you know, and more importantly, what the society around you believes is reality. It means becoming a renunciate. Giving up everything in a society that believes the very things that are destroying it are necessities. No car, no processed foods, no cell phone, few clothes, little or no technology, no media entertainments, refusal to own investments, no more than five or six hundred square feet of living space, dedicated hours each day for reflection on the little things one does to maintain one's self, such as cooking or bathing, or gardening -- but especially renunciation of technology. Technology not only carries the disease, but is its most virulent aberrator of human consciousness. In fact, even at its best, it colonizes and mutates human consciousness, just as this laptop stands between you and me, distorting our communication as much as it facilitates it. Is an exchange of digital packets between two human beings, each isolated at the end of a cybernetic node, really human communication? Of course not. (Yes, I know how much shit I'm going to get for that statement.)
Anyway, I try to limit myself to owning only one piece of high technology -- this laptop. I don't own a camera phone, or a cell phone (much to the ire of publishers, friends and some family members). To my shame, I do have a television in my little casita. I missed my wife so much at first, that I bought it just so I'd have distraction in the lonely evenings, which of course, did not work. It was a stupid American thing, an ignorant knee-jerk consumer reflex, as if the voice of Larry King were going to substitute for the words "I love you" when night falls. I'm learning all the time to beware of what is available around us.
Regarding writing congressmen, I never bother. It's just part maintaining the appearance of democracy. Everybody writes their congressmen on both sides of an intractable, polarized and deadlocked system dedicated to preserving iron fisted capitalism, no matter what happens. No matter how the vote on a piece of legislation goes down. I have absolutely no faith in the American political system. Or ultimately, in any political system for that matter. Ain't no saviors of the people up there on Capitol Hill. Just powerful men and women who don't have a clue but have plenty of ambition and ego and avenues to feed both -- with a few exceptions like Dennis Kucinich.
I am convinced we all have to find our own way, and find it alone, most likely at great cost -- that great cost being the loss of all that we thought we knew about the world. I am coming to understand that as Americans, we were born into a powerfully induced mass illusion. An infantile consciousness of "I-want-I want," which drives the machinery of war, waste and profits, and which colonizes our minds and souls from birth like a progressive disease. I say "coming to understand," because, as an American I can never truly understand. My consciousness and neurosystem are far too mutated to ever understand. But I find great relief in the effort.
And also pain. Some nights I drink, and cry inside for both the world as I have known it -- youth tasted so good -- and for the kingdom of mankind that might have been, but really never could have been. Because the kingdom is truly within each of us, never in the clamorous throng.
But in the morning the roosters crow, and wood smoke stirs in the air, and this village wakes up, and does all those ancient things decent people do in so much of the rest of the world. Old women sweep the street in front of their doorways, men uncomplainingly go in search of a day's labor, and young mothers nurse babies in the courtyards, full knowing that what they see around them is all there will ever be for them, and that the Virgin of Guadeloupe blesses each morning. Just as their mothers and grandmothers knew it. Already they are tired for the world. But not joyless.
And neither am I.
Lately, I've had a spate of emails saying how bleak and hopeless some of my writing has become, in the estimation of many readers. This comes not so much as criticism, but as observation. I am no longer taken aback by it. To me, it's simply a kind of reporting on the world as best I can.
Others ask me the best way to escape America to Belize or Mexico. How to plan a breakout from the empire to these places as I have described them. Once in a while I reply, even though I know better. Each person's conditioning and perceptions are different. And surely their experience would be different, were they to do what I have done. That's a given. In the end, all I can tell you is that you will have to act according to your own inner lights then be willing to live with the results. And even then, I'm not sure that's true. But it seems true at this day and hour, in this little stone courtyard on a hillside under a spring sky.
Podemos ver el mundo con ojos de frÃa y un corazón caliente.
In art and labor,
Joe
[image added]
More from the 'heathen commie' (or 'too cool for the room'), Joe Bageant. Live from Jalisco, Mexico (or Winchester, Virginia or somewhere in Belize)
A letter from a reader:
Joe,
Reading you is like drinking those bottles full of clear liquids the night before a colonoscopy. The next day I survive the test and am told that I do not have colon cancer -- yet. Still, I am getting the test in spite of the fact that I know that my pack a day cigarette habit coupled with 12 fancy beers a day is probably gonna kill me first. I've been working for a very large corporation for the last 20 years as a print advertising designer. I am on the Endangered Species list at 58. I have been playing the consumer game for the past 45 years. I've known that the whole thing was a lie since I was 13 -- before that I lived in a world that was so monochromatic that when I heard the Beatles I thought that heaven had come to earth.
I wanted to tell you my whole story, but have decided to spare you that. I have one simple question: seeing what you see, knowing what you know, what are your recommendations for how to proceed? Because I am seeing that just drinking hard enough to not think about it is no way to live. Or is it? When the best hopes being offered are simply the offerings of another corporate lackey, how does one live?
Do trips to Mexico help?
I realize as I write this that you are not pretending to be a self-help guru for baby boomers with a guilt complex. Still, I cannot help but hope that you have some thoughts for a one-time proud hippie (I marched against the war in Vietnam in Detroit in 1968 and again against the war in Iraq in 2003) who longs to extricate himself from the accumulated bullshit of years of consumerism.
I write letters to congressmen and senators and get form letter responses -- personalized, no less. So I would like you to write me back, tell me you read what I wrote, that you got this e-mail. That's all. I will be satisfied.
Yours in hopelessness,
Brad
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Brad,
Yeah, we are on the endangered species list all right. But the rest of America, and maybe even mankind, is not far behind. Not that it's any consolation, of course. I have to smile at your mention of the Beatles being like heaven coming to earth. Me too!
In reply to your query, all I can do is tell you my experience. I don't know shit really. Certainly not the answers to other people's questions, especially those of such a serious nature. However, I do know my own experience. Sort of. So all I can do is share that.
You ask if "trips to Mexico help?" Because Mexico is my home for the time being, (I spend most of my time here now, and have obtained legal residency status) and only go back to the US when necessary, I'm not sure if "trip" is the right word. I rather feel that the world is my home now. Consequently, I do not know if "help" is the right word either. I no longer have any geographical goals, per se, other than I seem to be a better person in some locales than in others. I hope I am not running, because at this age running, physically or metaphorically, takes too much effort. I'd rather walk, with periodic rest stops -- such as this one in Mexico.
It took me over fifty years to figure out there is no running away, or finding some perfect life. We just exchange one set of problems for another. I ran away to the US Navy to escape a small redneck town. I ran away to the West Coast to become a hippie. I ran to homestead in Idaho on an Indian reservation, I later ran back into the straight world, mostly out of fear for financial security. And when it became personally undeniable that America had become a lonely totalistic empire, whose heart is a bank vault, and that I would not survive its enforced loneliness, masked by gunpoint cheer and state authorized messages of "hope," and loudspeakers above the workhouse extolling the "work ethic," well, it was either be somewhere else or die inside. Get a different set of problems. Some nights even sickness or hunger looked acceptable, compared to the screaming, yet silent anxiety I was experiencing. I swear it was fucking unbearable. By 2005, I was in Central America for I did not know how long.
Personally, I found that the problems I encountered every day in places like Belize (and now Mexico) somehow suited my own innate sensibilities better. I had no expectations really. Which is good because both paces would have been extremely disappointing if I had. Mainly I just wanted to give up any "advantage" I supposedly had as a citizen of the "greatest nation on earth," which was, as I said, quite literally, killing me, much as it seems to be killing you.
Beyond that, I wanted to spend the remaining 10 or 15 percent of my life doing stuff with human beings, face-to-face, asshole to belly button -- babies being born, people dying, getting drunk, worshiping their gods, experiencing joy. And I wanted to do so without any mediation by soul killing American corporate culture. I did not want "security" as Americans and Europeans perceive it, and still don't. The only way to do that is to intentionally stay pretty broke. Money is a rigged game -- you cannot win by trying to buy security. Oh, you can have the illusion of it, but the price is your soul. The entire world architecture of money, beyond basic sustenance, is a horribly corrupted -- especially since the advent of the "virtual world economy," a paper and digital racket that sucks away the people's hard earned wealth before they ever see it.
Well, I say, fuck their offerings. And screw childish "hope." Hope is for little kids and tooth fairies. The world we awaken to each morning is the only real thing there is. And if we are spiritually, morally and philosophically intact, and humble enough to feel it and love it each day, we don't need to hope some unseen force or bunch of politicos, or an "economy" or so-called leaders are gonna make it better for us. The orchids outside my doorway are blooming and my wife still loves me after all these years. A real gypsy taught me a song yesterday and Easter is in the air in Mexico. I guess that as a burned out old hippie and a writer, I cannot imagine anything else to hope for.
I truly do understand what you are saying about consumerism. I lived it too. I still have a house full of stuff in Virginia that is the biggest bane on my life. Tons of stuff -- old paintings, family documents, guitars, stuff my kids made while growing up, art and artifacts gathered from around the world in the course of a life, file cabinets full of articles I wrote for magazines and newspapers over the past 40 years. My wife and I are paralyzed over what to do with the stuff. She retires in a year or so and so still lives up there in the middle of it all. When I am there, we sip wine and savor the memories connected with acquiring those things together, the 18th Century drawings we bought together at Covent Garden in London, the love we felt in Venice. And when I am in Mexico, I understand that the freedom of my austere life here is of greater value than any of those things. Which does not keep me from missing them from time to time. But in my heart I know that, for the most part, I have beaten American consumerism (though I'll always be a sucker for good imported booze). The other thing I know for sure is that the only way for a man to "extricate himself from the accumulated bullshit" is to extricate himself. Walk away. There is no plan one can make to do so while living in the belly of the beast. The beast of American capitalism will not let you, but will encourage the belief that you can. As my webmaster Ken, who left America over a decade ago say, "The only way to do it is to just get up and do it."
Also, I believe it can still be done while remaining in America, once one rises above the "learned helplessness" that comes with being a captive of the empire. But it still entails giving up most of what you know, and more importantly, what the society around you believes is reality. It means becoming a renunciate. Giving up everything in a society that believes the very things that are destroying it are necessities. No car, no processed foods, no cell phone, few clothes, little or no technology, no media entertainments, refusal to own investments, no more than five or six hundred square feet of living space, dedicated hours each day for reflection on the little things one does to maintain one's self, such as cooking or bathing, or gardening -- but especially renunciation of technology. Technology not only carries the disease, but is its most virulent aberrator of human consciousness. In fact, even at its best, it colonizes and mutates human consciousness, just as this laptop stands between you and me, distorting our communication as much as it facilitates it. Is an exchange of digital packets between two human beings, each isolated at the end of a cybernetic node, really human communication? Of course not. (Yes, I know how much shit I'm going to get for that statement.)
Anyway, I try to limit myself to owning only one piece of high technology -- this laptop. I don't own a camera phone, or a cell phone (much to the ire of publishers, friends and some family members). To my shame, I do have a television in my little casita. I missed my wife so much at first, that I bought it just so I'd have distraction in the lonely evenings, which of course, did not work. It was a stupid American thing, an ignorant knee-jerk consumer reflex, as if the voice of Larry King were going to substitute for the words "I love you" when night falls. I'm learning all the time to beware of what is available around us.
Regarding writing congressmen, I never bother. It's just part maintaining the appearance of democracy. Everybody writes their congressmen on both sides of an intractable, polarized and deadlocked system dedicated to preserving iron fisted capitalism, no matter what happens. No matter how the vote on a piece of legislation goes down. I have absolutely no faith in the American political system. Or ultimately, in any political system for that matter. Ain't no saviors of the people up there on Capitol Hill. Just powerful men and women who don't have a clue but have plenty of ambition and ego and avenues to feed both -- with a few exceptions like Dennis Kucinich.
I am convinced we all have to find our own way, and find it alone, most likely at great cost -- that great cost being the loss of all that we thought we knew about the world. I am coming to understand that as Americans, we were born into a powerfully induced mass illusion. An infantile consciousness of "I-want-I want," which drives the machinery of war, waste and profits, and which colonizes our minds and souls from birth like a progressive disease. I say "coming to understand," because, as an American I can never truly understand. My consciousness and neurosystem are far too mutated to ever understand. But I find great relief in the effort.
And also pain. Some nights I drink, and cry inside for both the world as I have known it -- youth tasted so good -- and for the kingdom of mankind that might have been, but really never could have been. Because the kingdom is truly within each of us, never in the clamorous throng.
But in the morning the roosters crow, and wood smoke stirs in the air, and this village wakes up, and does all those ancient things decent people do in so much of the rest of the world. Old women sweep the street in front of their doorways, men uncomplainingly go in search of a day's labor, and young mothers nurse babies in the courtyards, full knowing that what they see around them is all there will ever be for them, and that the Virgin of Guadeloupe blesses each morning. Just as their mothers and grandmothers knew it. Already they are tired for the world. But not joyless.
And neither am I.
Lately, I've had a spate of emails saying how bleak and hopeless some of my writing has become, in the estimation of many readers. This comes not so much as criticism, but as observation. I am no longer taken aback by it. To me, it's simply a kind of reporting on the world as best I can.
Others ask me the best way to escape America to Belize or Mexico. How to plan a breakout from the empire to these places as I have described them. Once in a while I reply, even though I know better. Each person's conditioning and perceptions are different. And surely their experience would be different, were they to do what I have done. That's a given. In the end, all I can tell you is that you will have to act according to your own inner lights then be willing to live with the results. And even then, I'm not sure that's true. But it seems true at this day and hour, in this little stone courtyard on a hillside under a spring sky.
Podemos ver el mundo con ojos de frÃa y un corazón caliente.
In art and labor,
Joe
[image added]
Thursday, April 8, 2010
New York
*
"I am sometimes persuaded that life in New York is a constant struggle to die of natural causes." ~Detective Neil Hockaday~
"If New York was a movie, nobody under eighteen would be allowed in." ~ "If the world made any sense at all, it would be men riding sidesaddle." ~Ruby Flagg~
(via Thomas Adcock, Dark Maze)
"I am sometimes persuaded that life in New York is a constant struggle to die of natural causes." ~Detective Neil Hockaday~
"If New York was a movie, nobody under eighteen would be allowed in." ~ "If the world made any sense at all, it would be men riding sidesaddle." ~Ruby Flagg~
(via Thomas Adcock, Dark Maze)
Friday, April 2, 2010
Via Salon: A Hipster on Food Stamps Responds
Via:
A hipster on food stamps responds
"Readers attacked me for being spoiled, but the real travesty is our shaky economy and skewed values"
By Gerry Mak
This is a response to the Salon story "Hipsters on Food Stamps."
I am one of the subjects of Jennifer Bleyer's recent article about hipsters on food stamps. I am writing to address the particular sort of ire that this article drew toward people like me -- educated, unemployed, 20- to 30-somethings who work in creative industries. Much of this vitriol is based on certain assumptions that I would like to address.
While organic and local foods seem like luxury items to many, it's important to understand that cheap food is the result of government subsidies while local farmers get little to no assistance. Cheap food is the real extravagance. My interest in food stems from my having to care for a diabetic father, and good food is the only form of healthcare I have access to. Even when I was working full time for a publishing company, I received no benefits, and paid an average of $2,500 to Uncle Sam every tax season despite wages that were meager by any American standard. Ultimately, though, this debate isn't about my personal story, it's about the shifting class boundaries in this country. The comments both attacking and defending people like me reflect the insecurities and fears we all harbor in a nation where, in a time of corporate bailouts and "Too Big To Fail," even upper-middle-class people struggle to put food on the table.
A hipster on food stamps responds
"Readers attacked me for being spoiled, but the real travesty is our shaky economy and skewed values"
By Gerry Mak
This is a response to the Salon story "Hipsters on Food Stamps."
I am one of the subjects of Jennifer Bleyer's recent article about hipsters on food stamps. I am writing to address the particular sort of ire that this article drew toward people like me -- educated, unemployed, 20- to 30-somethings who work in creative industries. Much of this vitriol is based on certain assumptions that I would like to address.
While organic and local foods seem like luxury items to many, it's important to understand that cheap food is the result of government subsidies while local farmers get little to no assistance. Cheap food is the real extravagance. My interest in food stems from my having to care for a diabetic father, and good food is the only form of healthcare I have access to. Even when I was working full time for a publishing company, I received no benefits, and paid an average of $2,500 to Uncle Sam every tax season despite wages that were meager by any American standard. Ultimately, though, this debate isn't about my personal story, it's about the shifting class boundaries in this country. The comments both attacking and defending people like me reflect the insecurities and fears we all harbor in a nation where, in a time of corporate bailouts and "Too Big To Fail," even upper-middle-class people struggle to put food on the table.
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
are you familiar with hedweb.org? "The Hedonistic Imperative outlines how genetic engineering and nanotechnology will abolish suffering in all sentient life." Maybe you should look at some of these concepts.
Merci for the heads-up on "The Hedonistic Imperative." Very interesting--still reading.
Friday, March 26, 2010
Monday, March 22, 2010
Who's the coolest person you know?
My cat. Yes, she qualifies as a person--she rules our home. She could rule the world if I'd let her out of the house. /grin/
If you could have been the author of any book, what would it have been?
All Quiet on the Western Front /LL
From: My LIfe Requires Mind Altering Drugs
*Reblogged robertdowneyjr : the insurance agent i was just talking to sounded exactly like adam lambert when speaking
robertdowneyjr-:
[image added]
Per T.'s PM: I DID get arrested. I sat in a holding cell for two hours waiting on my dad to come and get me--my husband was in the hospital, he'd had a stroke the week before. But that's not even the worst part. The reason the ticket didn't get paid in the first place was because it came due right around the time my daughter died. And paying a fcuking traffic ticket was the LAST on my mind, at the time!
my dad thought it was a woman.
i lol'd.
myliferequires...:
I've been on the phone with an insurance rep/agent most of the afternoon trying to get info to clear up a failure to appear warrant on a ticket I forgot to pay. I'm pretty sure it was a woman though. /grin/
[image added]
Per T.'s PM: I DID get arrested. I sat in a holding cell for two hours waiting on my dad to come and get me--my husband was in the hospital, he'd had a stroke the week before. But that's not even the worst part. The reason the ticket didn't get paid in the first place was because it came due right around the time my daughter died. And paying a fcuking traffic ticket was the LAST on my mind, at the time!
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