Surely, a more beautiful sight/site can't even be imagined, surely!

To the embassy!

Got it from Getty Images

Ugh, I am sooo jealous. Guy in the back left doing the grunt face (and the police guy in the riot helmet is helping, no?), next to him, shoulders dropped, torso angled — clearly steering this Royal Coat of Arms, and the front left (handsome and laughing?) is clearly too excited to be anything other than the leader of the team. I hope these guys live to tell the grandbabies about this one... over, and over again.

Science, you are the worst, please go away

Here's a definition that, with a reading or two, reveals the pathology of SCIENCE!! Ready to define? (a very scientific activity, no?)

The intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behavior of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment.

Like a sadistic stalker, who can find no pleasure unless it "knows" its subject... SCIENCE!! I'm more than a little pissed that it's so hard to de-bug my system, for you — SCIENCE!! — have fucked me up good.


This is, as I recall, what happened to me:

4 days ago, I lamented that a green mug — nice for tea drinkin' — had gone missing. The powerful one and I looked around for it... didn't find it. That was that... who gives a shit? Just a mug. I think nothing of it.

I shower Thursday morning. When I'm dried and ready for clothes, I make my way to the pants drawer. In this drawer, I have maybe 8 pairs of folded pants. But this time, I have maybe 8 pairs of pants and... and And AND... the green mug — sitting, as if nothing were a bother, upon my pants pile.

This freaks me out a bit. I wake up the powerful one — not very subtly, I'll add — demanding to know: Did you find the green mug? Did you find the green mug? Groggy, the powerful one tells me she did not.

It's in my pants drawer! How did it get here? And it's not just in there... it's sitting on top!

I'll throw out a few possibilities:

1) I found the mug (which I don't remember doing) and I decided to place it in the pants drawer (don't remember doing) and then I went ahead and put it there (obviously).

This is surely not impossible, but I don't have a history (how would I know?) of doing things I don't remember doing (I know, I know)

2) The powerful one, or the roommate found it, put it in the drawer, and lied to me about it — as they're both humans, they're certainly liars... but they're terrible liars, and I can't put any faith in this possibility.

3) A human or animal put it there, without being noticed, or informing anyone that they're "into" sneaking into rooms, and putting mugs in drawers.

4) Magic? Spirits? Whatever, you want to call it. Note: I am not saying that the green mug mystery is inexplicable. Absolutely not. What I am saying: I lack the knowledge or wisdom to explain it.

Literally, I am incapable of understanding what happened. That's the explanation I prefer, and believe to be "correct". Something happened beyond my ability to know or comprehend.

Also, that this the conspicuous movement of the mug is a message, from someone or something that wanted to send me a message, saying, roughly:


Attention Jerkoff Cyborg: You know nothing. You don't know how to listen. If you learn to listen, you might be able to learn a thing or two, perhaps even develop a relationship with other things in this world... but as of right now, you're a fucking idiot. Enjoy, Mover-of-the-mug.

Game Over (or not). Is this a good game?

Sooo... it's Barry O's turn to roll the dice and move his pieces: shake shake shake click dick rest... a six! What will he do? Troops to Australia? Uh... okay... okay... let me think for a minute. Eureka!!

Nice move Barry O, nice move indeed, get the good boys a little closer to our precious Uranium — well done! Everybody who loves lots of energy cheer for Barry! (deafening fucking roar)

India gets their peaceful uranium, we sure as shit already have ours locked up, but now we can sleep a little easier knowing our precious uranium is safe... so safe. And since nobody gives a shit about Fuku... Fuku... ah, I can't remember, uranium prices have been spiking lately... and that's all well and good — probably a money-making-opportunity!

Afterward, I got a chance to chat with the good President Obama about his lucky six:


So tell me President/Viceroy, why Australia?

President Obama: Well, the Ruskies have fucked us pretty good on the natural gas ball field. Their God-less Team Gazprom are exceptionally well-coached, very disciplined, and hey... what can I say, they've got an ass ton of natural gas talent — between the Ruskies, the lil' Ruskies, and those evil Iranians, they've really got us over a pipeline, you know? (gets a little squirmy) The Nabucco pipeline was a Hail-Mary (crosses himself, awkwardly) and we fucked it up good... what good is a big ass pipeline if we don't have any gas to put in it? We're a little embarrassed to have overlooked that detail.

Anyway, so yeah... how bout that six I rolled? Australia! We're all really excited.

Mr. Viceroy, can you stay for one more question?


Viceroy Obama: As long as you don't ask me about the shit normal people whine and complain about... I have to talk about that bullshit all afternoon (rolls his eyes)

No, no, no... of course not. Our viewers aren't interested in any of that, rather, we want to know, what's the latest on Pipeline XL?


President Obama (fighting a big shit-eating grin): Oh, come on now (gives me a light punch on the shoulder) you know we're "reviewing" (actually makes air quotes) all those tough issues, I'm sure a well-intentioned meeting of the minds, get everyone around the same table, and we'll put any concerns about XL (makes a "raise the roof" gesture... dating himself) to rest. XL! EX L!


A comment on the above silliness:

The energy and resource game will continue. The wealthy ventriloquists will get their dummies to say exactly what they'd like, and another beer will be removed from the fridge.

A lack of imagination and motivation means — for now — everyone keeps going to work. The machine continues.

Will I let my job-self cannibalize my "real"-self (quotes note the absurdity of the dissonance) in exchange for a psychically numbed existence and life-sustaining-"resources"? My answer is: hopefully not for much longer... but YES. And I'm supposed to be a radical, or something? Bullshit.

Other than under it's own weight: clean water dirty or gone, healthy soil a memory no one has, and energy sources burned up (which is coming soon enough, and all the pain that comes with):

These systems will only collapse — ONLY (that's right, making a big claim) — when hundreds of millions (yep) people decide they no longer want to play. They no longer want to sell their time. They no longer want an utterly destructive job (teaching school, for example) to cannibalize their very existence in exchange for access to the resources which facilitate a refrigerated existence. Obviously, that breaking point could come quickly... but as of now... NOT EVEN FUCKING CLOSE! Am I wrong?

And with good reason: the system cares for us. It gives us our food, our water, our stuff, our identity (who is to say it's bad?). And it — very conveniently — makes it almost impossible (or at least foolish for a homo economicus) to go another route — the road less traveled is closed. The social hurdle is fucking enormous. The logistical-avoid-being-arrested-for-not-following-the-rules hurdle is nearly as high.

So shut the fuck up about all this bullshit, and expose yourself (that's right) and others to the fucking nightmare that is modern life. Smash a strangers phone and tell them, you're welcome. Stomp on Richard Dawkins toes. Do not vote for someone who is designed to represent you and millions of other people that will never come into contact with each other. The next time you hear someone ask a child, "what do you want to be when you grow up" (and the answer is obviously supposed to be a job... what job do you want TO BE), scream in that person's face: YOU. ARE. A. FUCKING. ZOMBIE. Leave that little human alone.

At the very least, it'll break the monotony.

The moldy torn rag is very valuable

I'm on a small field — modern lawn maintenance machines have been here before — three friends are along as well. The field is a fenced circle, two soccer goals face each other. The rules of our game: each pair is trying to score a goal... hands and feet are both allowed... and we're playing with one pleasingly new top-o-da-line ball. We play.

Before long two more balls — unfathomably fancy, they are, even better than our original ball — appear on the field. The 2 vs. 2 structure of the game unwinds... for now, 3 of the 4 players can blast shots into undefended goals. This goes on for some time. As the fourth ball-less player struggles to get hold of one, and mimic the others ferocity for "goals".

I become tired. I leave the field. I find a bathroom. While peeing, I notice a picture hanging on the adjacent bathroom mirror (it is hilariously fitting, that of all the images within this dream, who or what this picture captured escapes me, I have no memory at all, but I do know, whatever it was, the response was melting nostalgia. Knees buckled. I sit down).

Time passes. I sit.

I return to the field. Things have changed. Our small field is now full of players, perhaps a few hundred people, barely enough space to freely extend one's arms, and the delightful ostentatious soccer balls are gone. In their place: a small, wet, moldy rag. Reluctantly, I re-enter the field, the lone gate behind me vanishes... we are here to stay, and I want that rag.

IOZ will always be my favorite b/c he so damn funny... but

Like ya'll-most everything: "you gotta hear man... you had to hear their early stuff":

From ye-bout four years ego:

The Eleventh Commandment

Why do people obey? Out of habit, and out of fear. But since habit is often just a symptom of fear, it's really fear alone. Fear of opprobium; fear of ostracization; fear of economic hardship; fear of giving offense; fear of arrest; fear of reprimand; fear of imprisonment; fear of death; fear of loss; fear of appearing foolish; fear of being ignored; fear of drawing too much attention; fear of seeming abnormal; fear of turing out to have been wrong all along. Ad inf.

Obedience is the first learned behavior. No is the first learned language. Socialization and education don't only impart a body of discrete knowledge, but teach children who in their infancy deferred only to their most immediate caregivers to operate in a complex network of subordinations, deferences, and accessions. In school, we learn to navigate these networks of demand. We learn when a parent outranks a teacher and vice versa. We learn to answer to our peers, to our teachers, to the principal above that, to security guards, to police, to familiar adults and unfamiliar adults, to coaches, to other public officials, then to bosses, to coworkers of greater rank, to experts, to the opinions of public figures, to government at all its levels, to the decisions of economic institutions, to creditors, to critics. The list goes on. This education is subtler, more pervasive, and far, far more effective than the other education. It's as thoroughly learned as a first language. Because it's so internalized, we rarely consider how ubiquitous are its uses. At nearly every moment of our waking lives, our minds are involved in determining what is appropriate and what is allowable.

Obedience comes naturally between caregivers and children because of the motivating prospect of withdrawn care. This is a rarely acknowledged fact, for we're relentlessly romantic about childhood. As we age, though, we learn to think of obedience as an altruistic act: a sort of perversion of the principle of non-intervention in the lives of others. "Do unto others as you'd have done unto you." To fail to obey convention; to break the law; to break the rules; to speak out of turn; to commit any number of minor infractions of etiquette or accepted decency; is to act against others. So we're told. It will make them uncomfortable. It will make them late for work. It will make their lives less pleasant. It will cause their days pass less smoothly. It will deny them the pleasures of public accommodation. It's just a mean thing to do.

Thou shalt not slow traffic on the autobahn.

Mixing and matching to loosen the strangehold

If, as David Graeber has said, we already — and always — are communists (assuming people operate, quite often, on the idea: "each according to their ability, each according to their need)... and the gift based economy — as outlined by Mauss in The Gift (PDF), and explained in slides here by Dmitry Orlov — is also, to some degree, always present...

Then, how do we accentuate, what do we encourage? How do we bolster one piece of the ever-present whole, while minimizing the less desirable parts of the whole (for instance: the current dominant model of getting stuff you want and need: impersonal consumer capitalism).

Don't be afraid to mix n' match, right? If you can get a good deal from the impersonal capitalist system, take it, and spin it into supporting more exchanges based on reciprocal gifts. An example: I stroll into a bakery, and find a big pile of "day old" breads and muffins or whatever at 1/2 price. Maybe I just baked some bread, and don't feel like I really need it, but perhaps I consider a neighbor or friend who does (and it just so happens, I'll be walking past their place later). So I buy the loaf, I give the loaf away (obviously asking for no payment, and refusing an offer... I don't want this to be a complete transaction, right? It's better that other people owe you favors, just as you want to owe them favors).

Now, this is, quite obviously, not a "fix", or a way to eliminate impersonal consumer capitalism — because that will (probably) never completely go away. But it's a move. And a move I'd bet most of us already make... maybe we try to make it a little more often? Until reciprocal giving inches towards a more common practice. 

So yes: if all these systems of exchange are out there, feel no fear in mixing them together.

The beautiful knowing of dusty under-the-bed socks

After devouring Derrick Jensen's A Language Older than Words I picked a few titles from his bibliography. Findings: Neil Evernden is stunningly smart (this is, of course, based on what knocks my socks off and into a dusty corner under the bed... where those socks discover all kinds of cool ideas (as I type this, I can hear the chickens pecking away, scratching their claws into the grass, doing their thing... soothing sounds).

Anyway, I'm copying some thoughts from Evernden's The Social Creation of Nature. To simplify, the book asks: if we're tasked we "saving the planet", how come nothing seems to stick, and the same ole' shit keeps getting peddled under different names (Conservation, Sustainable Development, blah blah)? And his answer, simplified: when we the people of this culture talk about nature, well... we ain't speakin' the same language. We mean very very different things. And Evernden traces around for about 500 years of socially constructing the idea of what nature is (and, how humans are both involved in and distinctly different from what-we-call nature). I've found it to be a lovely read, and whenever I find myself discussing environmental issues, it's always so obvious that (with almost everything else) extremely diverse presuppositions about exactly what the fuck we're talking about makes discourse difficult. So this book will, I think, help people figure out how to talk about our unexamined assumptions. So here he is discussing nature, symbols and mythology, Roland Barthes:

But we also "speak" of nature through images. It is no accident that nature features prominently in the modern world of advertising, for that industry is largely concerned with effective communication, which inevitably means the effective use of signs. Since advertising requires a powerful means of conveying favorable impressions of the product in question, the possibility of juxtaposing emotionally positive images with those of the product is irresistible. It is not surprising then that nature is used in advertising much as it is in the promotion of a new morality or world-view: as a visible manifestation of normalcy and health.

Nature has become a powerful part of our vocabulary of persuasion. But even that puts it too mildly, for it is often treated as tehe very realm of the absolute. To be associated with nature is to be placed beyond human caprice or preference, beyond choice or debate. When something is "natural" it is "the norm," "the way," "the given." This use of "nature" affords us a means of inferring how people ought to behave—including what objects they ought to associate with, that is, buy. Yet the authority of that usage stems in part from its confusion with the other major use, nature the material given, nature as everything-but-us. In other words, the understanding of nature as the realm of external stuff, which is studied by science, lends an aura of objectivity and permanence to the understanding of nature as norm. The two mingle and interact so that we frequently lose sight of the distinction.

Indeed, one writer in the "communications" field, who has figured prominently in the emergence of the study now called semiotics, essentially equated nature with myth—not myth in the colloquial sense as superstitious or erroneous belief, or as primitive cosmology, but myth as an accepted story of the way the world is. Roland Barthes treats myth as something of a second-order sign, and a sign, in turn, as the useful outcome of the juxtaposition of a "signifier" and a "signified." If we combine a signifier, a rose, for example, with a signified, such as passion, we have the rose as a meaningful sign, as a "passionified rose." Once established, that sign has, as it were, a life of its own: it "means." Similarly,, on a second level we might take that sign as a new signifier which, in montage with a signified, creates a higher-order sign-system or "myth". And the danger of myth is that it will be taken not as a human creation but as an independent entity existing outside the realm of culture. It will be perceived, in other words, as nature, as a "factual system" when it is actually a "semiological system." And when we are able to remove the impression of human agency from our description of the world and insinuate a natural reality, we will appear to be dealing with indisputable facts.

But Barthes makes a surprising assertion in is discussion of mythology: he speaks of the need to "establish Nature is as historical." This seems contradictory, since we normally contrast the two as distinct and opposing realms. But he is speaking of the social use to which the concept nature is put, and the mixing of the two realms is a phenomenon of considerable importance. Barthes is especially sensitive to the creation of a "nature" myth, since mythmaking seems to him to be the way in which social ideals—and social injustices—become entrenched. They are immune from analysis or criticism once tehy cease to appear as human concepts and instead become perceived as eternal givens. In other words, once something is perceived as lying in the realm of nature rather than in the realm of society or history, it seems beyond criticism. By definition, it has nothing to do with us: we are not its architects. Why criticize a sunrise or a frog? That's just the way a frog or sunrise is, through nobodies fault. In fact, that is the way they were meant to be—an odd intuition, given that nature is no longer thought to have purposes or intentions. But this is the paradox: we resist the possibility of there being anything "human" in nature, including purpose and meaning, but then we proceed to use nature as a refugium for social ideals.


Back to me: useful, no? As it not unusual for me to stumble into a conversation in which  "that's just human nature..." kind of thinking and claims are bandied about, it's nice to have Evernden come through and clean up some of the rough edges... or, more exactly... he roughs up the smooth edges.

No smooth edges! That's where the bullshit is kept.

Enjoy

Incapable of Honesty: Everything needs to grow

Quite important, I'd say, to offer ourselves this occasional reminder:

An entity that is controlled by their stock price OR any entity that is driven by debt and interest — 1) stock price: any corporation 2) Debt: individuals, families, smaller businesses, governments — MUST GROW in order to survive financially. Industrial growth requires the destruction of the natural world on a large scale.

Is the path beaten? We're clear on this?

This is very bad, because growth isn't possible without intense destruction (and there is less left to destroy everyday), and the money we're using isn't real (by which I mean, it isn't directly connected to a debt, and there is no intention of ever repaying it) Side note: I recently saw a link to this: an asshole you might have heard of, Peter Schiff, laughing about how the American Debt can and will never be repaid. That is obviously true, but that idea is quite useful in getting your head wrapped around the idea that money isn't real.

Financial collapse has already taken place. It's just that the very powerful have a vested interest in pretending it didn't (creating more fake money, "qualitative easing" etc.), and they're going to consolidate their power, while using a bunch of misdirection and over-the-average-Joe's head nonsense about the nature of things.

Back to the point I'm attempting to hit: further growth (on a global scale) is impossible. Can't be done. Thanks. So when these assholes, like Barack Obama, talk about a Jobs Bill, let me translate:

Obama: We're going to take fake financial wealth (maybe... and just a little bit) from the rich, and then pay for the rest by creating fake money (the so-called American military and banks enforces the need for other countries to accept this money: see Hussein, Qaddafi) in order to get more people to work — often doing not at all useful things — so that they can have some of that fake money. And, so long as the fake money training keeps chugging, it can be used to get you a roof, food, a car, and whatever bullshit you deem "needed".

That is the plan. It is, needless to say, a very very very very very bad plan for the overall well-being of the planet.

Here's a plan worth working towards:

1) Dump property rights in the fucking trashcan. Over a million homes sit empty in this country. Most of these homes are shitty (not because they aren't "nice" but because they are designed with the accoutrements of industrial society) but they're better than camping outside in the winter. Idea: try to start sharing land in your neighborhood, if this is possible, for projects. Also, just start using city land as if it were everyone's to use. Do this with all unoccupied land, if you can think of something to do with it. In a minute, I'm going to pick-axe the grass in the unused parking strip across the way from the place I live, throw some cardboard over it, and add a few inches of compost (sheet-mulching) — in the spring it will be ready for seeds. A little less food that has to be trucked = preparing for the world we'll be living in.

If you're going to participate politically, focus your attention on property rights (I know, not easy)... because any talk about MORE JOBS and SHARING THE (financial) WEALTH is fucking insane. Work for money (jobs) is a shitty paradigm.

People are sick and dying because of stress and disgusting polluted food. Give everyone a home, and we'll take a little nick out of the stress factor... health just went up.

2) Stop thinking selling your time for money is a "good" thing (even if you like your job, in which case, that's great). I know it is currently necessary... I know I know I know. Unless you're willing to nomad (essentially illegal in itself in this place) you need to make money somehow — but stop thinking it is a good thing. It isn't. It is later than you think, you'll die soon, exchanging your time for money is a bad idea. What would you exchange your time for? Nothing! Which is not to say you don't do things... goodness no! Plenty of work to do. Obviously. But your life is not a fucking quid pro quo, damn it — especially one where the shitty end of the stick is exclusively yours to carry.

3) Turn off the fucking television. It is showing you the creatures of the corporations (media and the corporations who advertise there) who absolutely rely on their stock price. As we've already covered, they are inherently insane, and you'd be wise to get away from their message.

4) Use the computer to help you not need the computer. Habits are hard to break. Good luck. Use the machine to get yourself interested in growing food, building/modifying/repairing shelters, and then go do it. Oh, wait... plenty of other cool little hobbies can be picked up online, as you ween yourself away from the 'puter. I've recently taken to watching online drawing tutorials and practicing — fun!

Alright, I was going to ramble more, but the rain has stopped gushing, I'm getting out there.

Enjoy.