Something is seriously strange here... Time has started to slow down; or compress; or encapsulate at this point. I don't understand exactly what is happening. I was just playing music over at my friend's... I was playing music with some friends; things were going really good. I was very happy; but then I was distraught. I don't know. Again – I don't know. It just went from bad to worse very quickly and then I did not understand what was going on. It was like a million things were all coming at me at once – all these points were beaming at me in a sort of unison. I don't know how to describe what happened. It was weird. I was suddenly surrounded by energy. I was no longer myself – or; I was fluctuating in between myself and nothingness. I could feel myself losing my id – or my ego? I'm not completely clear on which is which anyway.
Poor little people and dogs are crashed out all around me as I drink the last of the wine. I guess this isn't stuff you should joke about – and so I won't. I was stricken tonight. I was struck by a strange kind of feeling. I am unsure how to continue. It wasn't like anything else I ever felt.
The thing is, that, for a long time now – for awhile. For a long time I have felt... incomplete? I just haven't been able to come to grips with all these questions. There are all these questions floating around out there – and they beg answers! But I didn't have any answers – I only had the questions. And it was driving me crazy! Because I am a person who wants; no, I am a person who requires answers!
So tonight's conversion was good. It really relaxed me. There is such a comforting feeling in knowing that there is a reason and a rhyme for all of this. The idea of order is so beautiful.
I thought about a dozen stories tonight. A few anyway; a captain who ends up not going down with the ship. A pre-judge in a camel toe contest; a car that is rolled over and returned to the parking spot from which it was stolen: Four-wheel slides and epic backgammon contests; one hundred sixty five and one/half? pound tuna?!?
Music – always music behind all of this mayhem.
I am desperately trying to get to the point of all of this. It just isn't easy to describe this feeling of complete understanding – this underlying belief that everything is placed before us with purpose. When you think of a rapidly spinning cosmos and all of these planets and stars spinning around one another – through space – the idea of pre-destination just takes shape in there somewhere... It all just makes so much sense!
From Stephen Colbert to the drying carcass of a centipede; there is this sense of purpose. I feel it.
[that could end it but...]
It's pretty short so I could go on about the beautiful, intricate, and obvious purpose of the universe around us. I could use words to write about that feeling; but words don't really capture everything. I have to be careful – because a path has been chosen for me... and so now I must follow the path.
I've had enough of bashing drinking glasses into my teeth – now I want to feel the Light of the Lord! Now I have felt the Light of the Lord! God this is the beauty of writing. We are not constrained by the normal rules of time. The written word can be slowed or sped up; it can be warped or crinkled to make events seem more spontaneous, radical; or violent. Words can do the opposite.
Now that I believe – I understand. I don't pretend to know everything – but I am starting to understand. It feels good to know that there is an answer to every question. It feels safer – knowing everything is backed – by a plan...
But I am just spinning now; spinning through a Universe. Spinning through some time, and space. I like the straight lines – the spinning gets to be too much...
You've caught me on a weird night. I am feeling warmer than I expected to. I have to get this thing wrapped up! I wouldn't trust a single sentence. The words are just the words... today.
And so just as I am in the very depths of turmoil; my mind opens and awakens to the presence of the Lord! He is coming down for me! He is reaching out to me! He takes my hand in His; He beaming light from a fiery cross. We become One – He and I. I feel the Love at last!
madbob@madbob.com
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Fed Up!
Geniuses…
Well, in their infinite wisdom, the brainiacs that run the Democratic party have decided that it will be fun and productive to pick a fight with right-wing radio douche-bag, bloviator at large, and putzy ego-maniac Rush Limbaugh. Apparently the Democrats have made a conscious choice to cast Limbaugh as the “voice of the Republican party.” This seriously frustrates me. The only person this helps is Rush Limbaugh. The Democrats may believe that they make themselves look better by casting the Republican party as a party of shallow-minded hypocritical bigots who aren’t capable of critical thought – but they are just dead wrong!
The fact of the matter is that the Republicans and the Democrats make up our political system and it is the push and pull, the back and forth, the respectful disagreements, that make our system the great political system that it can be.
In other words – a team plays better when they face stronger opponents. It is in the interest of the Democrats, and all of us, for the Republicans to be presented as a vital, challenging, competent part of our political system.
I just, this, it’s the same crap we’ve been shoveling for the last who knows how many years? And it’s what I thought we were rejecting when the people got together and put the nation’s most unlikely candidate in the most powerful position in the world.
Stop with the Game Playing!
This really makes me spitting mad. Rahm Emmanuel and the Democratic leadership are just playing petty games; gotcha and grab-ass. It’s sickening. We are in the midst of war without end and financial ruin and our damned politicians are too caught up in the feeding of their own egos to care. What do they really know anyway? Do you know anyone who takes a damned limousine to work? I’ve had it with these people. They take our money and they play games with it – live in their estates and their ivory towers. We need leaders who give a damn about something other than their own personal power.
Don’t get me wrong – I’m in the Obama camp. I think if anyone can change the tone in Washington it is this man. I just don’t know if the tone can be changed. There are too many insiders and behind the scenesters who have become invaluable in navigating the corridors of power. They know the rules too well to be driven out.
The Real Power
I figure this has to be where the real power is – not in the Oval Office – but in those secret offices we don’t know about. It rests in the hands of the same people who have always wielded it. And they have been warped and mutated by their contiguous flow of power. This is the sharp double-edge of wielding power; beware to those who lust after it – it will twist you, mash you, give you the bends, Montezuma’s Revenge, and a nasty case of psychological rickets all rapped up in a neat little foil package. You think you hold the most delicious candy in your hand, but when you un-wrap it, it turns out what you have is a steaming little coin of dog-shit. Only by the it’s too late – you’ve become addicted to the shit. You look in the mirror and you don’t recognize the monstrous mask staring back at you, salivating onto your tailored suit, standing in your gilded office. Too late for you compadre – you sold your soul and now the devil wants his tax.
Whoa – I got a little carried away there. I probably ought to write about Saint Patrick’s Day. Trouble is brewing in Ireland again as a police officer was shot dead – a splinter IRA faction took credit for the assassination. In Afghanistan thousands of women gathered together to pray for peace. The women are tired of losing their brothers, sons, and husbands. They’ve been dealing with war for over thirty years now. War, death, brutality, endless misery. Our answer – more troops. More bullets, more bombs, more death, more suffering. More of the same.
Saint Patrick’s Day
Okay – Saint Patrick’s Day – my birthday. I’ll be at the Maltese playing some music so come by and buy me a beer or a whiskey! I promise my set won’t be as dreary as this week’s column has become.
This upcoming week also represents the first day of Spring! Hurray! Our tulips are days away from blooming and we’ve already been blasted with scent from exploding Narcissus. We’re coming into a period of renewal and growth – maybe we can leave some of this death behind us.
Madbob@madbob.com
Well, in their infinite wisdom, the brainiacs that run the Democratic party have decided that it will be fun and productive to pick a fight with right-wing radio douche-bag, bloviator at large, and putzy ego-maniac Rush Limbaugh. Apparently the Democrats have made a conscious choice to cast Limbaugh as the “voice of the Republican party.” This seriously frustrates me. The only person this helps is Rush Limbaugh. The Democrats may believe that they make themselves look better by casting the Republican party as a party of shallow-minded hypocritical bigots who aren’t capable of critical thought – but they are just dead wrong!
The fact of the matter is that the Republicans and the Democrats make up our political system and it is the push and pull, the back and forth, the respectful disagreements, that make our system the great political system that it can be.
In other words – a team plays better when they face stronger opponents. It is in the interest of the Democrats, and all of us, for the Republicans to be presented as a vital, challenging, competent part of our political system.
I just, this, it’s the same crap we’ve been shoveling for the last who knows how many years? And it’s what I thought we were rejecting when the people got together and put the nation’s most unlikely candidate in the most powerful position in the world.
Stop with the Game Playing!
This really makes me spitting mad. Rahm Emmanuel and the Democratic leadership are just playing petty games; gotcha and grab-ass. It’s sickening. We are in the midst of war without end and financial ruin and our damned politicians are too caught up in the feeding of their own egos to care. What do they really know anyway? Do you know anyone who takes a damned limousine to work? I’ve had it with these people. They take our money and they play games with it – live in their estates and their ivory towers. We need leaders who give a damn about something other than their own personal power.
Don’t get me wrong – I’m in the Obama camp. I think if anyone can change the tone in Washington it is this man. I just don’t know if the tone can be changed. There are too many insiders and behind the scenesters who have become invaluable in navigating the corridors of power. They know the rules too well to be driven out.
The Real Power
I figure this has to be where the real power is – not in the Oval Office – but in those secret offices we don’t know about. It rests in the hands of the same people who have always wielded it. And they have been warped and mutated by their contiguous flow of power. This is the sharp double-edge of wielding power; beware to those who lust after it – it will twist you, mash you, give you the bends, Montezuma’s Revenge, and a nasty case of psychological rickets all rapped up in a neat little foil package. You think you hold the most delicious candy in your hand, but when you un-wrap it, it turns out what you have is a steaming little coin of dog-shit. Only by the it’s too late – you’ve become addicted to the shit. You look in the mirror and you don’t recognize the monstrous mask staring back at you, salivating onto your tailored suit, standing in your gilded office. Too late for you compadre – you sold your soul and now the devil wants his tax.
Whoa – I got a little carried away there. I probably ought to write about Saint Patrick’s Day. Trouble is brewing in Ireland again as a police officer was shot dead – a splinter IRA faction took credit for the assassination. In Afghanistan thousands of women gathered together to pray for peace. The women are tired of losing their brothers, sons, and husbands. They’ve been dealing with war for over thirty years now. War, death, brutality, endless misery. Our answer – more troops. More bullets, more bombs, more death, more suffering. More of the same.
Saint Patrick’s Day
Okay – Saint Patrick’s Day – my birthday. I’ll be at the Maltese playing some music so come by and buy me a beer or a whiskey! I promise my set won’t be as dreary as this week’s column has become.
This upcoming week also represents the first day of Spring! Hurray! Our tulips are days away from blooming and we’ve already been blasted with scent from exploding Narcissus. We’re coming into a period of renewal and growth – maybe we can leave some of this death behind us.
Madbob@madbob.com
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
Some Thoughts on Capitalism...
Well you wouldn't know it from looking out the window this moment, but spring is officially only a few short weeks away. Spring is that magical changing of the seasons that the ancients looked forward to – the symbolic and literal re-birth of the natural world after the seasonal death that is winter. Make no mistake – this has been one tough winter. Ice on the east coast and rain on the west has been coupled with economic catastrophe and financial panic as banks slide into oblivion and the roles of the unemployed swell under the weight of this drenching hundred-year storm.
The Cause of All of This
Some people will tell you they know what caused this financial shit-storm; they'll tell you it was over-regulation, too much government. Or they'll look you straight in the eye and tell you it was de-regulation – a lack of government oversight that lead to this pickel. They'll point to the bankers, or the banking system. They'll signal the realtors, or the people who bought houses they couldn't afford, or the lenders who made the loans, or the banks who packaged the loans and sold them to other banks. It could be the politicians, or the Federal Reserve, Al Queada, or the Chinese. There is plenty of finger-pointing to go around but I will tell you right here and now what the cause of all this chaos is:
Dishonesty
That's it in a nutshell. I'm not specifically talking about the real dishonest brokers, the Bernie Madoffs or the Allen Stanfords of the world – though they are certainly worthy of plenty of scorn for their complete sleaziness. But they are only symptoms of a system that went haywire.
Capitalism...
Some people are saying all of this signals the death of capitalism. I think that's dumb. Capitalism can't die – it isn't a living thing. Capitalism is a theory – same as socialism or communism. Capitalism, socialism, and communism all work splendidly – on paper. The problem is that in the real world these systems are only as good as the people who ascribe to them. Communism failed in the Soviet Union because it is eminently corruptible and the greedy slime-merchants who care more about their own personal accumulation of power and wealth inevitably claw their way to the top. Well today it is pretty easy to argue the same thing of capitalism -it just took a little longer for the corruption to manifest itself.
In my eyes the problem is that we, as a nation ostensibly of capitalists, lost our way. For capitalism to work it has to be based on actual value of goods and services. Value is the key word in the equation and value has to be calculated honestly.
Greed took over. Our businesses, driven to always show increasing profit, took to hiding and deferring actual costs – thus creating an artificial and inaccurate representation of value. Personally I think so many of our goods are under-priced. If we took an honest accounting of the value of the goods we buy, an accounting that included the human and environmental costs of those goods, there is no way you would be eating three hamburgers a day. No way. There is no way our closets would be so full of clothes that we don't wear, or that we could actually throw food away at the end of each week.
Resurrection
I think we'll come out of our current hardships. I think we'll probably even come out stronger for them. But we've got to start being honest like we've never been honest before. As consumers we have to really educate ourselves. We have to understand where our food and our clothing and our luxuries come from – and it isn't going to be good enough to just close our eyes or put the blinders on and ignore the human catastrophe of the textile industry overseas, or the environmental catastrophe of the beef industry in the Amazon. And the time for justifying atrocity by siting profit are going to be long gone. Greed, pride, lust for wealth – these motivations need to go the way of the dodo bird – and the mutants who adhere to these misanthropic philosophies need to be shunned from a society that re-embraces ethical and moral business practice.
This does not mean wealth cannot be created – wealth is created as value is created. Any wealth that is not derived from actual value is unethical and possibly immoral in the world of tomorrow.
madbob@madbob.com
The Cause of All of This
Some people will tell you they know what caused this financial shit-storm; they'll tell you it was over-regulation, too much government. Or they'll look you straight in the eye and tell you it was de-regulation – a lack of government oversight that lead to this pickel. They'll point to the bankers, or the banking system. They'll signal the realtors, or the people who bought houses they couldn't afford, or the lenders who made the loans, or the banks who packaged the loans and sold them to other banks. It could be the politicians, or the Federal Reserve, Al Queada, or the Chinese. There is plenty of finger-pointing to go around but I will tell you right here and now what the cause of all this chaos is:
Dishonesty
That's it in a nutshell. I'm not specifically talking about the real dishonest brokers, the Bernie Madoffs or the Allen Stanfords of the world – though they are certainly worthy of plenty of scorn for their complete sleaziness. But they are only symptoms of a system that went haywire.
Capitalism...
Some people are saying all of this signals the death of capitalism. I think that's dumb. Capitalism can't die – it isn't a living thing. Capitalism is a theory – same as socialism or communism. Capitalism, socialism, and communism all work splendidly – on paper. The problem is that in the real world these systems are only as good as the people who ascribe to them. Communism failed in the Soviet Union because it is eminently corruptible and the greedy slime-merchants who care more about their own personal accumulation of power and wealth inevitably claw their way to the top. Well today it is pretty easy to argue the same thing of capitalism -it just took a little longer for the corruption to manifest itself.
In my eyes the problem is that we, as a nation ostensibly of capitalists, lost our way. For capitalism to work it has to be based on actual value of goods and services. Value is the key word in the equation and value has to be calculated honestly.
Greed took over. Our businesses, driven to always show increasing profit, took to hiding and deferring actual costs – thus creating an artificial and inaccurate representation of value. Personally I think so many of our goods are under-priced. If we took an honest accounting of the value of the goods we buy, an accounting that included the human and environmental costs of those goods, there is no way you would be eating three hamburgers a day. No way. There is no way our closets would be so full of clothes that we don't wear, or that we could actually throw food away at the end of each week.
Resurrection
I think we'll come out of our current hardships. I think we'll probably even come out stronger for them. But we've got to start being honest like we've never been honest before. As consumers we have to really educate ourselves. We have to understand where our food and our clothing and our luxuries come from – and it isn't going to be good enough to just close our eyes or put the blinders on and ignore the human catastrophe of the textile industry overseas, or the environmental catastrophe of the beef industry in the Amazon. And the time for justifying atrocity by siting profit are going to be long gone. Greed, pride, lust for wealth – these motivations need to go the way of the dodo bird – and the mutants who adhere to these misanthropic philosophies need to be shunned from a society that re-embraces ethical and moral business practice.
This does not mean wealth cannot be created – wealth is created as value is created. Any wealth that is not derived from actual value is unethical and possibly immoral in the world of tomorrow.
madbob@madbob.com
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)