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So. Daily Dose. And this is it. And I’m gonna try to let it out, just a bit, just a little. And lay it all out there. Or maybe just a little bit. No story. No real story. No real view of everything: just a daily dose of the real.
My eyes are wide open. And running with clichés. Clichés I’d usually run from. Repelled by the potential criticism of compartmentalizing agents that serve only to stick me and you and us and themselves into particular categories, managing not-so-delicately the micro and the macro. But really these agents are just wingin’ it. Just getting by. Narrowly passing the grade, barely mindful of the necessity for social relations, gladly ignoring what to me was always the gigantic purple elephant trumpeting away in a very small room.
I’d point to the elephant and scream and yell and warn, “Watch out! There’s a gigantic friggin’ purple elephant in the room and you’re about to step in its s---“ But it’d be too late. I wouldn’t mind it so much except that these agents would wipe their shoe on my nice clean shirt. And it’s somehow my fault ‘cause I didn’t figure they’d do that. Who does that? Well…it was done, and that’s the point.
Is anyone awake out there? Or are we sleeping our way into extinction in one nightmarishly long dream that we can’t control?
I am part of the problem.
We are discovering our purpose: to destroy and obliterate all that we see for acquire some sense of worth or purpose. Everyone. Me included. I am part of the problem.
I asked a friend the other day, “If all your needs and wants were taken care of, would you still desire money?”
He said of course so immediately and without pause that I had to ask him again to make sure he heard the question.
“I heard you!” He snarled at me. This guy’s been known to throw down over anything. I backed down a bit. I just can’t get side-ways on the topic. I stuck to it and held focus. “Easy man. Easy. I’m just asking.”
“You’re never just asking” he blurted before pressing his lips to the bong top. I looked at the lighter. He was about to spark it. The small hammer would deform the quartz crystal that would discharge electricity igniting the invisible naphtha escaping undetected by human eyes. But he didn’t light it yet. And I knew what was there. A bunch of molecules rigged together in such an excited state that their range is far enough to enter my nostrils and travel through my nasal passage while being experienced by the nasal membrane. But to me it smells like gas.
“Light it already.” He was way too stoned he got mesmerized by some talking head on the television. It’s not that I wasn’t interested. I just felt like he was stalling on what I thought was a pretty coherent question that I presented, hypothetical or not – there was a point to be made and he was stalling or dodging. Either way, it wasn’t going to work. I was on to him.
“What?!” He took his lips off the bong and pointed the lighter at me. “Don’t give me shit! You’re asking me a ridiculous question. What do you mean needs and wants?”
I asked him again, “All your needs and wants are satisfied completely and assuredly. Would you still desire money?”
“You mean if I wanted a twenty-four unit building right here right now, I could have it?” He was really into real-estate, “It’s a buyers market my man. Get in while it’s hot.”
“I don’t have any money.” I said.
“Neither do I!” He laughed and sparked the lighter.
The flame shot across the diced dried marijuana seated atop the small funneled stem that was buried into the bong’s water. The marijuana crackled and that sequences bubbling followed by smoke climbing up the clear tube right up through his mouth gaping over the top of the bong. He stopped scorching and lifted the stem out of the bong and sucked the rest of the smoke into his lungs. I could get into a whole graphical explanation of the smoke; gaseous molecules with THC molecules (now heated) are taken into the lungs and absorbed into the body. But I’ll spare the details and I’d be going off the cuff anyhow.
“Yes. You can have your twenty-four-unit building. But I have to ask you—“ He interrupted me. “No asking nothing. I want it. You said wants and needs. That’s what I want. End of story. I don’t have to explain or justify shit to you. You gonna take my words twist them around, but I’m just answering your question motherf—“
“Easy” I calmed him. “I have no problem with your want. I’m just curious. What do you need twenty-three other units for?”
He just looked at me, refusing to answer. He finally restated his previous point. “You said needs and wants. That’s what I want.”
“I get it. But I’m just wondering why you want the other twenty-three units.” I persisted.
“It’s real-estate bro, it’s good income.” He handed me the packed bong. I sometimes get so involved in a conversation I don’t notice the little things.
He stood up and headed to the kitchen. “Sometimes you really ask stupid questions.” He opened the fridge. “You want a beer?”
“No” I shouted back and charred the dried leaves across the funnel’s lips and inhaled. I thought about it as he came back chugging the cheap domestic beer with one hand while wielding another unopened can in his other. “What the hell are you going to charge rent for? You have all your needs and wants. What do you need to charge other people rent?”
“That’s what I want. What’s wrong with that?” He looked like he was ready to throw me out of his apartment.
“Nothing.” I told him and just turned my head back to the television set and watched a local styled commercial trying to sell me lumber. The marketing geniuses don’t realize that I’m not their demographic. Well, more likely they just don’t care about me. But my friend wants to be the demographic and will do anything to get there.
“It’s so I can buy other properties. Alright?” He was getting pissed. He wasn’t letting it go.
So I decide to go ‘round the merry again. “You know, you could just give those units to your family and friends.”
“For nothing?” He looked at me like I was crazy. “You’re such a freeloader.” And with that, I was criticized. Checkmated. And had no come back.
Bad enough that cattle raising for consumption uses water and food that could otherwise go a longer distance distributing to humans. Bad enough that the destruction of South American rain-forests for the purpose of creating grazing land for high bovine demand emits CO2. Bad enough that somehow, someone felt somewhere that all downer cows need is a bit of encouragement to enter the slaughtering-ramp - by way of prodding, poking, kicking, and fork-lifting. And bad enough that the meat ended up in a bunch of SoCa unified school district lunches - majority consumed by the time the recall occurred.
Bad enough on all those fronts.
But wincing at the graphic nature of the footage and walking away from it certainly does not make the issue go away. I guess we're all a little Homer Simpson when running a red light in this regard. If I don't see it then it's not illegal.
But that goes for many things: amber alerts resolutions, crippling war footage, gross mistreatment of living things. We either wince and walk away blocking our view or are mesmerized by the strangeness of it all and are transfixed by the proof, but are too guarded, too blocked, too closed to let the reality sink.
This is a prime example of when a pizza man definitely should eat his own pizza (first). Then I'll eat.
The food should be distributed to the cattle abusers, all the way up the chain. Two, maybe three, will burn and go down for this, with possible criminal charges (while having the audacity to plead not-guilty). Where an impartial jury will be found is beyond me. I did jury duty a while back. I shaved my head and wore a shirt that read: 'Kill 'Em All And Let God Sort 'Em Out!' - I wasn't picked, but I wasn't excused either.
And that's what I'm getting at: we need to stop excusing ourselves. We need to sit and wail and watch the bedding that we've all helped make. We're lying in a bed of 300 million (approximate U.S. population as of July '07) or 24 million (approximate Southern California population).
Now, are we gonna wake up on the right side of the bed? Or the left?
This video contains very graphic images
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I'm suggesting that all this "change" is for naught. The issue is semantics. A need for a visual reference of the deity or non-deity or circle or karma or Vishnu or et cetera...et cetera. Does anyone really stay in any faith long enough to have open eyes without the cynicism? Can it be done? I presume the "change" is a result of dissatisfaction with one's own religious upbringing. But is it the religion or the upbringing that should be called to question?
We all know (at least I think we all know this) that the answers are everywhere, repeating themselves over and over again, under many different guises, repackaged to appeal to the masses, for every demographic, for every compartmentalized disposition, pathology, social-architecture, mindset, focus, discipline.
What hasn't been figured is how to appeal to the apathetic portion of the population that seems weary of the wishy-washy society that changes faster than the tide and without a reasonable cycle for stable predictability.
At least the religion of former generations offered that. Aside from the horrors and delights that its doctrine has pressed upon humanity, there was at least a steadiness in the pressure; an expected zeal (however blinded) in the pursuit of homogenizing the species.
We are after all just a bunch of homogenized cults. But when numbers flow upward into the millions, it loses it's cult-ish essence and perceived presence and begins to evolve into a further blind-sided passive discrimination that after many generations will transform and become culture.
What was it like with only 250 million humans on the planet? It wasn't that long ago; only about one millennium.
Why continue to change, pursuing a comforting answer that will just repeat itself in infinite variations - as long as human beings will be forever infinite in pathological variations. It's just trading in one for another.
And I have yet to see any lease agreement? And why lease? If not just to remain uncommitted to an object that serves more as a tax deduction over the years than the comforting answer to our souls.
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...it appears, off the cuff, as a strange non-profit organization standing as a front for fanatics running off with their minds preaching some gospel that no-one cares for, but that does not stop them from shoving it down innocent bystanders' throats...
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...but the video is the thing that gets me...
 clipped from usfoodpolicy.blogspot.com clipped from usfoodpolicy.blogspot.com
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