Seen In The Steam

Memo to The U.S. Senate: Impeach Bush Today. We have been shamed and humilated by our U.S. Supreme Court chosen President. Impeach the Bushtard, he was never rightly President to begin with. The Bushtard stole the U.S. presidency, the responsible Supremes should resign too. Impeach George Walker Bush NOW. Vote to skip the hearings and go straight to a floor vote. No one is going to stand up for sexual perversion, it will be 100% for impeachemnt. Signed Every Ashamed and Humilated American. P.S.: Don't forget to impeach Cheney first. P.S.S. Now we know what they have been doing in Guantanamo for the past two years, developing sexually sadistic interrogation techniques.

Panic Attack. It’s not that I don’t have anything to say, it’s that I have too much to say. TV advertising in this country has degenerated into mind control experiments for the benefit of Big Agriculture, read ADM, Archer Daniel Midlands. As in Midlands, Texas, Big Oil, Bush The I? U.S. Big Agriculture is turning out way more food than we can eat. So through TV advertising of fast foods and snack foods we are eating ourselves into obesity for the sake of Big Agriculture. Stop over producing, or pedal your food some where its needed, there are plenty of places. But Big Ag can’t do that because why? Why? Because we, the ever fucked over U.S. Taxpayer, are paying Big subsidies to Big Ag to create our Big Asses? Authorized by our duly elected officials, of course. THROW THE BUSH BUMS OUT! Now, they want another $25 BILLION. Do these men have no shame? How can they be so very greedy? Do they think we are so stupid, that they think, they can get away with this embezzlement of government funds for their own profit. Our government is run by war profiteers, Big Oil (Cheney, Bush The I), Big Arms Dealers(Carlyle Group, Bush The I). Big Ag is a willing coconspirator, for its own profit of course. What are they trying to do? Bankrupt us? Another Depression, and Fascism will be in control. The way things are going we might as well live under Louis the XVI as Bush the II. Are we stupid or what? What can we do? Stop those agricultural subsidies today, for one. The third world will stand up and cheer en mass. We will finally start to make friends again. John Kerry, Big Ag may have Big Money for advertising but if you start taking world friendly stands, good for us fat slobs and them starving populations, word will get around to people who care about this country’s long term values, of which “First Strike.” is not one. If Bush had been able to learn any history, he’d have known that. First Strike is a very UNAMERICAN Value. See where it has got us now, looking down Iraqi assholes, thanks to George Walker Bush and “First Strike.” First Strike is a Nazi aberration. It is what Hitler did. Think about it. Bush The II is acting just like Hitler did before WORLD WAR 2. What does that tell you here. Kind of scary too? Want to see your children go up in smoke like all those Good Germans finally had to do. Stop this madness now. It has already gotten out of hand. Defang Bush and Cheney now. Please, Elliott, find something to indict Bush and Cheney for NOW! Should these men be reelected for another term? NO! Vote for John Kerry. Get everyone you know to vote for John Kerry. For God sakes, sign up now for your absentee ballot. Especially in California. It is so easy to have it arrive with your mail, fill it out in the quiet of your easy chair, and then pop it with the bills into the mail. No sweat. Just register for an absentee ballot today and vote for John Kerry in November.

Can They Stop The WEB? Philosophy is the first science, in which we define the values by which we wish to live and die, and by which we judge all our own actions. There are many philosophic approaches, one ancient one is the Platonic approach in which Abstractions Rule. Humanity comes second. We some times call this fascism, Platonic Fascism in the sense that government rulers think they know best, and that they can do anything they damn well please, come hell or high water, good, bad or worse, that they chose, but the rest of us peons have to tow the line. Follow behind the party, Nazi or Republican, the leaders know best. In a fascist state that means that if we don’t follow, we are unpatriotic, traitors, subject to silencing by harassment, and ultimately, arrest, imprisonment and death.

The Republican party has been seduced by the megalomaniac delusions of Platonic Fascism and been taken over by the American Nazi Party of Big Business. The Nazis in Germany, Britain, and France had sympathizers in high places. The German Nazi party had big industrial backers like Krups Steel, think tanks and airplanes. The German Big Business guys were really stupid. Why couldn’t they bother to think up a marketing plan that didn’t require blowing up half of Europe? Then for Krups it was: We’re not selling enough steel, gang, let’s start a War! Now for Bush The I and the Carlyle Group it’s: We’re not selling enough tanks, Kid, go start a war.

Can They Stop The WEB? That is the big question. That will be the defining question of our age. Can they stop power to the people from really happening through the web. It is dangerous to speak out against President Bush. People’s lives get ruined who speak out. Look at that diplomat, our rulers outed his CIA operative wife. Our rulers outed not only her, but indirectly all her contacts, as well. Who is ever going to talk to a US operative again? They have silenced Howard Stern’s criticism of Bush The II through the FCC. And now our rulers are trying to stifle dissent by silencing Michael Moore. Disney has been threatened with a loss of tax breaks for Disney World in Florida, run by Bush The II ‘s brother, Prince Jeb, if Disney doesn’t prevent distribution of Moore’s new anti Bush The II movie, Fahrenheit 9/11.

I said rulers, because I’m not sure who was really appointed unconstitutionally by the US Supreme Court. Big Arms Dealers(The Carlyle Group-Bush The I)? Big Oil(Cheney & Bush The I)?

Where have we gone wrong that fascist runs this country? It is OUR fault. We have been lazy, and too preoccupied with ourselves. What can we do when the Supreme Court acts unconstitutionally? Did the Supreme Court rule in accord with its long declared legal principals, or did they rule like political moles long ago put in place for just this eventuality, some Manchurian Candidate kind of packed court? Where can we sue the U.S. Supreme Court for acting unconstitutionally?

The United Nations is the only association of people that tries to be planetarily inclusive. No wonder the people who run the US for years having been starving the UN of our fair contribution to its running. If we paid the taxes we would be recognizing their right to collect. We would be recognizing a sovereignty higher than that of the ole USofAs. What an antiquated concept, the USofA, the 19th century invention of THE NATION. Before that it was all royal families warring, with peasant cannon fodder, and whoring, rather too closely with each other, interbreeding themselves out of existence? Or were they just doomed to go sooner or later, overthrown by invention. Now, will our Fascist Bush Family Dynasty be able to be overthrown by invention, or will fascism overthrow the web?

So, who can help me sue in the World Court the U.S. Supreme Court on the part of the class of American citizens who voted for Al Gore in 2000 and whose election results were not determined by counting their votes but by the essential appointment, unconstitutional by its own rulings, of George Walker Bush to be president? This was president by fiat, not by election. The United Nations Court needs to be petitioned. Who can help? Where are all those idealistic, no irony, lawyers when you desperately need them? Or has society bred them out, and left only the sharks? You tell me law school graduates? Law school professors? Would any law professor be willing to help with a petition to the United Nations World Court for a nullification of the election results for the U.S. Presidential election of 2000? Or would they find their own positions in danger for even supporting such a petition?

Complaint: We the citizens of the United States of America, who voted for Al Gore, want the elections results for the U.S. Presidential Election of the year 2000 nullified because they were unconstitutionally arrived at. The U.S. Supreme Court made an unconstitutional ruling under the terms of its own declared principles of decision.

Let’s set a precedent that confirms the authority of the United Nations over the United States of America. We are the people of the Earth, not the people of the historical accidents known as nation x or y. We are the residents and citizens of one planet. Not America first, but The People of The Earth first. I propose the United Nations become the seed for the evolution of World Government. To make this happened, and to make the Ole USofA live up to its own founding values instead of let itself fall prey to Fascism, we need to set a precedent, even if after the damage has already been done. We need to sue the U.S. Supreme Court in the World Court for our Supreme Court’s own unconstitutional actions. It is time for the baby boomers to find themselves, in the streets again, protesting for a United Nations World Court Review of the results of the 2000 American Presidential Election. Or are we going to let them stop power devolving to the people? Can They Silence The WEB? With A Microsoft Virus? Is it hackers, is it terrorists, or is it our own rulers behind web viruses? What world do you want to live in? Step up to the plate before the game is all over, except the killing fields. They always come in the end, from Nazi Death Camps to Palestinian Refugee Camps. Fascism ends in tears. No, Bush The II, you puffed up little twerp, you are not better, brighter or even stronger then the rest of us. But worst of all you don’t have a clue about how to run this country for the benefit of its people instead of the benefit of your family’s vendettas and bank accounts, and those of your friends. Give America back now. Vote for John Kerry.

Just the factoids, ma'am, just the factoids. “MAY 2004 ART news”, with a small n, showing the publishers’ ultimate belief in the ephemeral, minor nature of its content. The previous statement was a little theoretical communication analysis based on the message of font pictures. I fear the editors probably think differently. And, of course, they are right. You can learn alot from ephemera, like magazines. If nothing else, the ads can be mines of information about cultural beliefs and trends.

“The 10 Most Expensive Living Artists”. Wow. ART is all about money. Not the ten BEST living artists, by whomever’s judgment. No Art, with a Capital A, is all about Money, with a Capital M, because, in New York, Money is their only Value, with a Capital V.

There it is, in bold print on the cover, “Special Money Issue”. Isn’t that a little misleading, as if every issue isn’t a money issue? But every issue is a money issue covering who sold what to whom when and for how much. They cover the art auctions all the time. Is not that about money and status? It is not about art, it is about the business of Art. And I’m not claiming Art is not a business, nor that it shouldn’t be. As Mark Twain pointed out, every one writes for money. But too, because they want to be heard. To be heard, you have to be sold. You have to be sold, to be heard. At least you used to have to be sold. I can be heard for free, any place on earth. With the right equipment at both ends, I am connected. No one is paying me, I am my own editor. This has it’s benefits and shortcomings as everything does. So I can be heard without getting paid. It’s not about the money. But Mark Twain is right, everyone writes for the money. I’m just writing on spec.

“What Makes A Painting Worth $60 Million”. What makes anything worth $60 Million. A war in Iraq. No, that was 60+ Fucking BILLION Down a Black Hole and Blow Them Up Dollars, remember? One luxury private jet? Yeh. So you could get a private jet or a van Gogh, I’m presuming, since I haven’t read the article yet. Or how about using that sixty million to set up an endowment for the college educations of the natives of Harlem, or the Bronx, or wherever these people who have sixty million to spent on a picture would only be caught dead. So is it, one, decaying as we speak, picture, or one luxury jet, or, 750 $80,00 college educations, which will go on giving for generations? But doesn’t the painting go on giving for generations? Well, actually, no. It doesn’t go on giving. It decays, while education propagates itself through the generations until our extinction. I guess the question becomes what do you think will last longer, Us or a van Gogh painting? I hope that when we go extinct, the van Gogh will already be long gone and not be anything more than a electronic photographic infinitely reproducible copy. Will an electronic copy of a van Gogh be worth what ever is the equivalent of $60 Million then. Why is a picture, or something similar, worth what is an obscenely large amount of money now? Because humans who play the Art Market are in it for the status. More Money, More Status. Money equals Status in a society like New York that is without any other Value than Money. I know there are those out there who are going to jump right on the egalitarian band wagon and say Money makes everyone Equal. No, Money does not make everyone Equal. Money makes everyone competitors. And for success Cooperation, which has almost no place in free market capitalism, makes for long term societal success rather than the competition for Money which makes for short term individual success.

“When to Stop Bidding”. Yeh, like their readers have sixty million to pony up on a regular basis. How about $600,000 or $60,000? How about even $6,000? Not that the information in this article might not give one insight into the mind of people. It may be very interesting. But to present the story as if their readership was in the habit of joining the less then one half of one percent of the population who regularly shop at art auctions is more than a little toadying.

“Getting the Most Out of Donations”. So even Charity is all about the money you can accrue from it. This clinches it, it really is all about Money in New York, even when you are suppose to be doing something unselfish, it’s about how much Money you can make. I despair at the mind set of the Art mafia.

Grammar Note: Alot is not a word in my Webster’s. There is “a lot”. But there is a difference between “saying”, the sound of “a(long a sound) lot” and of saying “a(short a sound slurred into the following l)lot. A lot is a load of goods or a place. Alot is a large quantity of some thing. He knows alot (of things), not he knows a lot, down the street which is vacant.

Where did this Nazi homeland crap come from anyway? If I hear Walker Bush mention the homeland one more time I'm going to start believing it's 1934 instead of 2004 and start packing my bags and move to Amsterdam, until Emperor Walker Bush decides that Dutch freedoms are a threat to our national security.

But what's really weird is that Walker Bush cannot see that it's going all so wrong right before our very eyes. Southwestern Asia is blowing up, we struck the match by invading Iraq. And, we've ignored for the last twenty years, or more, the weapons of mass destruction program of the most bellicose and paranoid nation in the region, Israel.

Israel is run by people with nothing to lose, and heaven on earth to gain, like religious fanatics everywhere, and they are convinced that they are surrounded by people who want to exterminate them. Their own actions have made this self-fulfilling prophecy. Why are they so paranoid? One, because the reality of the founders recent experience, they were almost wiped out by the European Nazi's who did try to exterminate them. You have a nation whose political philosophy was shaped by victims of extreme post traumatic distress. It would be as if Vietnam War Veterans who suffered severe post traumatic stress were asked to rewrite our political philosophy. Would it be paranoid, or would it be paranoid? Two, because in fact they are the last occupying European colonialists, so of course the indigenous inhabitants revolted against having their land stolen by invaders. The Palestinians do want them to leave, and have adopted a philosophy supporting the destruction of Israel. I have no doubt that there are Palestinians who would like to see a Nazi Final Solution for the Israelis. But their are Israelis who talk about a Nazi Final Solution for the Palestinians as well, using that phrase, Final Solution, no less. Paranoids can only make enemies, or enemies of enemies, paranoids can never make friends. The Israelis have forgotten what they swore to never forget, de-humanizing any one, including Palestinians, de-humanizes them.

Note the ground of being is not now, nor ever was, a real estate broker. Israeli claims to this southwest corner of Asia based on the self-serving, people-made stories in the Hebrew Book are bogus. The Hebrews were savage nomadic tribes, read Ruth if you can stomach it. They weren’t there first, they came in and stole what land they could, as Americans stole this country from the Indians. It doesn’t make it right. It doesn’t make it a claim that is good for 2,300 years, just because you say: God said it was ours. So God tells me you are full of self serving shit.

And what is this Bush War going to do for us? First, it is creating another generation of young Americans with post traumatic stress syndrome. Get the VA hospitals ready. Or do you think a young soldier who loses four of his friends in battle is going to come home whole and happy. This is another benefit of the Bush War we can thank Walker ”I ran away from battle to booze it up in the states.” Bush for.

How ironic we invade Iraq because of a nonexistent Weapons of Mass Destruction Program, while we literally bend over backwards, or forward like those poor blighted Iraqi’s had to do, to support a nation with a real rogue Nuclear Weapons Program, Israel.

Apparently Walker Bush didn't get it when Colin Powell told him: "If you break it, you own it." History will make him own it. It will be George Walker Bush that started World War 3, just as Adolph Hitler started World War 2. George Walker "We'll all be dead." Bush may not care about history. But I'll bet Barbara Bush cares, and now her idiot son has started World War 3. She should have stepped in and had him bypassed for monarchial selection. This is the problem with primogenitor, first takes all, it’s not only unfair, it’s a stupid rule. You end up with stupid people in charge. You end with a Walkerbush in charge.

Big Drug Companies are killing us. I’m sick of these international drug dealers clogging up the air waves with their drug pushing TV ads. Where is the FCC when you need them, silencing dissent instead of looking after the public interest. The big drug companies are killing us with their patent and expired patent drugs. Now they want us to become addicted to Prilosec, 1 pill, 24 hours, no heartburn. What else can the big drug companies be called but drug pushers when they push people to take a drug every day. Why is this even happening? Why an epidemic of heartburn? Is it the food we eat, or the way we eat. Fast food is the reason we need Prilosec. The food is fast both in preparation and consumption. We are rushed by work pressure to eat greasy, fat, empty calorie food, then naturally we get heart burn, which then leads us to taking drugs every day just to get by. Bad food followed by worse drugs, which we don’t know the long term effects of. We know the long term effects of fast food, heart attacks, diabetes, early death. What kind of a drug trial are we being made part of by addicting people to Prilosec? The long term effects of the drugs are always a surprise to the drug maker, Prosac and pregnancy problems, Ritalin and stunting growth, Prilosec and WHAT? The Food and Drug Administration is asleep at the switch.

What is the real problem here. The first real problem is the way work is structured in this country. Work should benefit the workers as well as the wealthy. Work should not harm the personal relationships of the worker. Family life, the daily 2 hour meal, that is what family life is all about, eating together, should be sacrosanct in the American arrangements for living. Work should come second to personal life, work should adjust to the needs of the worker’s personal life. Work is suppose to reward the worker, not harm them. But I want to address another systematic failing, another aspect of our system that should be changed.

How can we stop this epidemic of harmful but money making drugs being foisted on the American people? Abolish patented drugs. Ooooo, but nobody will do research? What age are we living in? We have a whole public infra structure of chemical research, they’re called universities and they are everywhere and their research is used for private gain by the drug companies, the drug companies are parasites of the university. All drug research should be done in public institutions. The production and selling of drugs can be done by private individuals based on publicly available research. There would be only generic drug producers.

Abolish patents for drugs. We’re not in Kansas anymore. We are no longer an agricultural society. We are a postindustrial idea society in a silicon age. Economic nostrums for an agricultural economy may no longer apply. In fact such agricultural nostrums may pervert the course of business development to the detriment of the larger public good. Take patent drugs, please, and abolish them.

When patents were instituted in an agricultural economy they were meant to increase research and invention. Now drug patents just pervert the course of scientific research. Drug companies look for drugs that will sell, for drugs not only that there is a market for, like Viagra, but for drugs that they can create a market for, like Ritalin. All drug research should be done in publicly supported universities in an atmosphere of academic freedom that encourages knowledge for knowledge’s sake. Research will be driven by the interests of the researchers, not to exploit people’s weaknesses. There will always be researchers who are intent on solving the most pressing problems of their day. All of society will benefit, not suffer, from this change. But what of royalties. The generic drug makers, the only kind left, would pay royalties back to the universities to use for salaries, scholarships, fellowships, equipment and facilities. The royalties would feed the system of public research itself. The results of all research, from individual data points to conclusions and discoveries, would be completely publicly available. Then any, and every, individual would have the opportunity to exploit this knowledge economically. No restrictions on use apply. Royalties to the universities. Equal access to knowledge means equal opportunity to exploit which means equal power. NO secret research. That makes tyrants. Power to the people. Abolish drug patents, convert private drug laboratories to centers for new public universities. Ooooo, but how?

Use eminent domain and take a phased approached. As for the drug patents themselves, we set one fixed drop dead date for all patents, say 2021, 17 years form now. Every drug patent issued in the next 17 years will expire on that date. After that no drug patents will be issued. As for the drug companies private research facility assets and staff, they will be taken by eminent domain, private property taken for the public good, the public’s long term good health, with just compensation. What’s the compensation, tax breaks, enormous probably, but in the end worth it. These private drug company facilities will be converted to center’s of new public university facilities. This will convert drug production to a level playing field in which companies will be competing on quality and price, not novelty, nor with the impetus to create diseases that can be cured with drugs.

America embraces the Deadlies, the seven deadly sins that is.

Gluttony of course is our favorite deadly. We are a nation of gluttons. We eat all day, every day, everywhere, at home, at work, at leisure. We never stop eating. We are a nation of obese gluttons. The new Cheez-it ad slogan proclaims this value without shame: “Get your own box.” Be a glutton.

Look at restaurants like Claim Jumper and Outback Steakhouse, they serve portions that quite literally only a glutton could stomach. Socially responsible corporate governance requires that products produced and services provided be healthful. Serving gluttonous portions of food is socially irresponsible behavior because it is anti good public health. It doesn’t matter if we eat at these feeding troughs, restaurant is a misnomer, once a day, once a week, or once a month, it is not healthful to stuff your face. No exceptions. These restaurants should be made to change their corrupt corporate behavior. I’d like to see some religious groups put their congregations where their collective mouths are and start a campaign to picket restaurants and protest the gluttonous portions they serve. They are making us fat, they are making us sick, they are symbols of decade, of the falling away from American democratic values into the decadent values of Empire, in this case, the decadent value of conspicuous waste.

These feeding trough’s gigantic portions are a symbol of decadence, because it is decadent to waste food when others are starving. Yes, it does make a difference to starving children wherever they are, not if we clean our plates, but that we put so much on our own plates in the first place. The planet Earth has limited resources. The energy and resources we eat up to over produce food for ourselves, means those resources can not be used to produce food somewhere else, for someone else. It takes technology and natural resources to produce food in an industrial economy, tractors require gasoline. If we steal raw resources cheaply from resource rich countries then the resources are not going to be there for the locals to use to support themselves, to buy and fuel tractors for themselves.

Americans are gluttons. We pig out on things that aren’t even nutritional. We devour chips, cakes, candies, sodas. We pig out on things that are in fact anti-nutritional, like high fructose corn syrup that turns the other calories we eat with it into fat. We’ve even created synthetic comestibles to pig out on, things like fluorescent blue “juices”. Why? We are gluttons. Do we want cheaper health cost? The we have to straighten up and fly right nutritionally and stop being gluttons.

Still wondering why we’re overweight? Let’s try putting less food in our mouths, eat only at meal times, and see if that doesn’t make a difference. And if we can’t do that, if we can’t even for one day have nothing but a glass of water at our desks, then we know we are gluttons, because we can’t stop eating. Then we will have to ask ourselves what in our society promotes gluttony so much that we are addicted to having food in our mouths at all times. Why do we need this pacifier? How wrong have we gone that we need this pacifier?

How do we eat? How much time do we spend at meals? Are meals rushed and harried? Why can’t we have one leisurely, relationship friendly, two hour meal each day, every day? What kind of society do we live in that we have been convinced we must abandon this simple and sanity inducing pleasure for stress, frustration and loneliness? What is the greater good for which we abandon this everyday pleasure that makes live worth living? Is there any greater good for the worker caste? Or is it only for the greater good of the wealthy caste that the worker caste is enslaved daily and isolated from their families and friends? Why do we consent to enslavement? So we can become isolated gluttons and eat junk all the time to soothe the pain of the absence of real companionship provided by a leisurely, shared meal? Stop being a glutton. Share a meal slowly. Demand two hour lunch brakes. Do it for our long term health and sanity. All Americans, all people, are entitled to the simple pleasures of living a healthful life. Let us abandon our devotion to at least one of the deadlies.

I’ve been walkerbushed to death. John Kerry us to peace. Please. How can we make this right when we’ve got it so wrong? First, we apologize. I want the President of the United States to go to the United Nations and stand up and say:

“I and the people of the United States are sorry we did not abide by international law and invaded Iraq without the agreement and support of the United Nations. It was a serious mistake, an abuse of our power, a failure of our system and ourselves that we allowed our government to fall into the hands of mercenary men. We repent and regret our arrogance of power. We now submit to the rule of international law. To prove our good faith and affirmation of shared principles, we now submit to the justice of the Permanent International Criminal Court. Please do not make the people of Iraq suffer because of our mendacity. The people of Iraq need an international force to help them stabilize their society and help them ultimately to prosper. We are willing to help in any capacity the United Nations chooses to use our resources. Please accept our apology, we are as human as others and were corrupted by power. Power must be shared equally if fair play and substantial justice are to prevail for all.”

Or something to that effect. Will this ever happen? My daughter says, “No.” She says no one ever apologizes for at least two hundred years. She says people don’t like to acknowledge their mistakes in their private life, why would they do it in their public one.

Why indeed? There is no pressure from any part of our society to look at ourselves honestly. “Examine Your Conscious.”, as my sister tells her high school students. I think she’s probably the only one who has ever intimated to them that they might have something called a conscious. Do you have a conscious? A conscious part that sees clearly, and without self congratulating, self-serving or fear mongering hype, the consequences of our actions. This Bush War has done no good for any one. I stand corrected. It has filled the pockets of the Arms Dealers, the Death Dealers who run this country, The Cheney-Bush Gang. Who else? Not the Iraqis, they look in for a long time of semi turmoil. Not us. The cost of this Bush War will bankrupt not only this generation but the next. Why? Because we will not be able to invest in our children’s future. But, what the hey, take the Walker Bush view, what does he care, he’ll be dead, screw OUR grandchildren, of course his will be forever cared for from the proceeds of a war profiteering that bankrupted the rest of US and OUR grandchildren.

You know what guru syndrome is? Guru syndrome happens when some one is surrounded by yes-men. Pop star Michael Jackson suffers from guru syndrome. No one tells him when he has gone too far, everything he does is great. Just like no one here is telling us we have gone to far. Well, I’m telling you now. You have to be a brainwashed, frightened, little drone to be in support of Walker Bush. Invading Iraq without United Nations support was flat out, unavoidably Wrong. We broke international law. There is no way around it. We are the international outlaws, we are the bullies. American Bullies, a new reality TV show, formerly called the nightly news.

Only 7 countries voted against a Permanent International Criminal Court for the United Nations. The United States voted against it. Want to know who was in America’s company of seven, in OUR company? China, Israel and Iraq, other model bullies. Want to know why we voted against it? We didn’t want our soldiers to be subject to international law. Why not? Are our soldiers so brutal, undisciplined, vicious and cruel that their actions couldn’t stand the scrutiny of international criminal justice. Well, we have a pretty big problem here, folks, if our military forces can’t take the heat of criminal justice. We are Bullies, no doubt about it if we can’t stand up and defend what we do in a CRIMINAL COURT. That makes us criminals, those without a conscious.

Smushed by accident. I killed a crane fly. Didn’t even know it was there. I could have missed it’s demise entirely if I hadn’t thumbed it to death. I squished it between those two fingers as I was reaching between my legs to pull a cushion forward as I sat down. Maybe we are all already on the way to being smushed to extinction and don’t even know it. The next big meteor hit could be just over our event horizon, speeding, without malice of forethought, towards our own accidental demise.

We have all smushed other people by accident. That is the horrifying tragedy of life. The most harm we do is unintentional, accidental, and most frightening, unrecognized.

A childhood friend told me a story about her aunt and her cousin. Mother and daughter were discussing the daughter’s childhood. The mother wanted to apologize for a particular incident. She knew she was unfair at the time, but everyone has bad days, especially stressed parents, and she always regretted her actions, was sure it had scarred her daughter for life. The daughter had no conscious memory of the incident, it made no impression. But she did have an incident, which she recounted, that she felt had scarred her for life. The mother had no conscious memory of the events related, it meant nothing to her. Such is life. We are all living on the same planet, but in parallel universes.

This brings to mind the gnostic story. A person is walking on a fence like a tight rope walker. There is a group of people on one side. They yell to their neighbor, “Who is that person in black walking on the fence?” The neighbor replies, “I don’t know, but that person is not in black, that person is dressed all in white.” They proceed to argue. Of course, the fence walker is dressed in clothes black on one side, white on the other. The people on either side of the fence are viewing only one aspect of the fence walker’s reality.

This is the story of everyone’ s life. The tragedy of everyone’s life. We have limited views. We can’t read minds. We are all operating from our own hurts, prejudices, limited experiences. We look out of slits in our mental boxes and interpret life how we’ve been taught to interpret it. People who look into a mirror don’t see themselves objectively, they see what they’ve been taught to see. If they have been taught to see ugly, they see ugly. If they have been taught to see stupid, they see stupid. There is no escape from misunderstanding. It’s is inevitable, it is the bane of people’s existent. No one is going to understand you. Every one will get it wrong. Every one is an accidental smusher.

No way, Corbusier. The Architects Gang is just not with the program. Why do they keep trying to stuff cages and chicken coops of Modernism down our collective throats. Do they think we are stupid, or what? Don’t they think we know our evolutionary preference is for trees. What are they trying to brain wash us into? Thinking we like cages of concrete and steel? No, I do not want to work in a chicken coop, or live in a concrete and steel cage. I want to live in my own garden under a tree. And I don’t want to have to hear other people’s dogs, or kids. And I don’t want them to have to hear me or mine, either. I want peace, quiet and accessible solitude. I do not want to live in a concrete box. I am not a cabbage you can store in there for future exploitation.

But how can I have accessible solitude when I need to be near a centralized food distribution point(grocery store). So, when are we going to get Fed-Ex-Food? So those who choose can live in less densely populated places, but with access to centralized food distribution. If I can’t go to the tree, I want the tree to come to me, as a seed. Because we can’t do Fed-Ex-Food with fruits and vegetables, they’re just too bulky, and they spoil too fast. We can do Fed-Ex-Food with seeds.

Where’s my fooderator. My Zaby ordered one almost 10 years ago now, I’m sure. You know a fooderator? Like the ones they use on Mars to grow fresh food. Now, there’s a Mars project I could get behind. Fooderators on earth providing home grown fruits and vegetables from dirt cubes received through Fed-Ex-Food. Those little shrink wrapped packets of seeded nutrient rich dirt would arrive at my door. I would rip them open as needed and pop them into the back of a fooderator tray. And shut the door. The fooderator would provide the ideal home for the little dirt-seed packets with solar and artificial light & heat, filtered water and filtered air. And in a few weeks you have fruits and vegetables fresh off the vine, both on Earth and on Mars. Just keep rotating new seed packages into the back of your fooderator, and recycling your waste back to the seed packet makers.

You can’t grow a walnut tree in a fooderator you say. But you may be able to grow a walnut. With a detailed knowledge about the genetic structure and processes of plants we should be able to breed dwarf varieties of many plants foods even with just improved conventional breeding techniques.

And just think what a favor we will doing for the future. The mass distribution of fooderators on Earth will mean not only improving our current health, it will mean the fooderator will be mass tested here, in a place where it does not mean life or extinction, if your fooderator brakes down. Online Medical Care should be looming on the home front too if we really want to send people to Mars. Or do you think they will call 911. Solar power must be improved too. No oil wells on Mars, at least at first.

But fooderator research and development will never get funded by “OUR” government. Know why? Big Agricultural owns “OUR” government and it would be just too disruptive to “THEIR” business, “THEIR” profits, “THEIR” source of “THEIR” wealth and power. Our long term, and even short term, interests mean shit to “OUR” government. Besides Big Oil is running this country, folks, quite literally, and they have no interest in improving any thing for any one now, tomorrow, or ever, particularly solar energy. They only care about their own power and wealth. Period. Not ours, “THEIRS”. Face it.

What have we come to when Big Oil and Big Arms Dealers are running the American people in to death and destruction for the sake of their own personal arms dealing vendettas and for the sake of their personal obscene enrichment? At the end of his term of office, Dick Cheney should give all the money in his blind trust BACK to the taxpayers of the United States from whom it came. In fact, I want to know everything about his trust, assets and transactions, from the day he took office to the day he leaves. How much money did he make? What percent return? What percent war profiteering by Halliburton? I want to know now. Before the election. So he knows now. I don’t care if it influences him as a lame duck. The damage is already done. But I want to know what his minions did when he thought he was home free. And before he tries to get reelected for another four years of taxpayer plundering.

And some final questions for the Art crowd. Did Picasso’s ‘Guernica’ in any way slow down or impede the coming of World War 2? Did Modern Art ever improve the lives of the lower castes of 20th century consumer society? Or has it always just benefited the Art Caste, the Art Mafia and the Plutocracy?

The Art Mafia sucks. And it looks like it intends to suck itself into extinction. This would be a disaster for us all, and not ironic in the least, because it is the result of the Art caste’s mindless adherence to the philosophy of Modernism which now quite plainly can be seen to ultimately abolish the concept of Art. So, do we even need Art?

Dwell magazine has an item on the Art Basel Miami Beach Show and artist Rodney McMillian’s 'Chair'. I quote: “McMillian found the piece of furniture, which looks as if it had been sat in by several generations of Archie Bunkers, on the streets of Los Angeles and turned it into a still-life meditation on the fate of every object designed to be used day in and day out by humans.” And how did he accomplish this awe inspiring act of art making, and all for under $5,000? By moving a chair from the street into a gallery. Hey, all trash removers, we’ve just been moving the trash in the wrong direction, if we learn to dump our trash into a gallery, we all can become artists. I can see the works now: 'Orange Peel', a meditation on color; 'Barbie', a meditation on longing; 'Weeds', a meditation on discrimination. If this chair is Art, then everything is Art. What happens when everything is Art?

Of course, McMillian’s action is nothing new. In 1917 Marcel Duchamp tried to exhibit a urinal he titled 'Fountain', now an icon of Modern art. Only everyone seems to have missed the real message of this kind of “art”. The point is NOT that these actions turn trash into an Art treasure. The point is that Modern art is what the Art Mafia chooses to bless as art. Modern art is all about the authority of an elite making up the rules as they go. The Art caste has sucked itself into meaninglessness, irrelevance and slavery to wealth by pursing this narcissistic philosophy of self-expression. They have prostrated themselves to the ultimately authoritarian lie of Modernism, that self expression in art is the road to freedom. It’s not. It’s the road to political slavery.

Modernist art practice is narcissistic. Art is not about exhibitionism or self exposure, that is art therapy for the individual psyche and has its place in personal growth and can be of value to others in their quest for personal growth. But personal growth is NOT the primary purpose of Art. ART IS NOT ABOUT SELF EXPRESSION. Only a narcissist or a tyrant would hope any one would think that. A narcissist because it’s always about them, and a tyrant because if it’s always about you it won’t ever really be about us.

So what is the primary purpose of Art? It is, what it has always been. The primary purpose of Art is to express SHARED values. It is about forming and communicating common values, not exposing individual personality or individual values, individual expression is only a footnote. The Art Mafia has cease to do be concerned with expressing common values. Why?

Modernism despises narrative and glorifies irony. Narrative is the primary vehicle for expressing shared values. Narrative is the nexus for collective action. Without the narrative of shared values people are isolated individuals. People without shared values, without narrative, are easier to manipulate, they have no center but their own expression of self, they cannot be rallied to a common cause, because there is no common cause, no common narrative around which to rally. Modernism works to disenfranchise people’s voice by silencing narrative. It isolates individuals in a cool ironic stance that allows them to watch the world but not participate in it for fear of being ridiculed by the authoritarian task masters of Modernist Irony. It divides individuals into unconnected units who care only for themselves and their own pleasure and have no sense of the larger community of which they are a part. Denigrating narrative and glorifying irony is a political tactic to manipulate people into a more vulnerable isolation in a consumer economy.

Artists have isolated themselves on islands of incomprehensibility, all for the sake of stroking their own egos. They are artists, they know more and better, that’s why people don’t get their work, it’s just too far above the common head to be heard. It hasn’t occurred to them they actually may be incomprehensible, as esoteric as other self-involved crackpots, because they have bought into an authoritarian Modernist system that works to isolate artists from other people, and which eventually will silence both artist and other people.

McMillian’s 'Chair' is not a meditation on anything. It is an old chair moved into a gallery, that is now priced for under $5,000 because some credulous dupe believes in the authoritarian scam called Modernism that abolished the enunciation of shared values in the interest of more easily manipulating people by isolating them with ironic distance. It’s not ART, it’s a scam.

What happens when everything is Art? What happens when every thing any individual does is art? We don’t need artists. And when there is no need for artists, there is no need for Art either. Then there are no common voices, there are only individual cries of anguish that go unheeded in a world made insensitive to pain by irony. So, why do we even need Art? To to speak in our shared voice. Without a shared voice we are defenseless against the tyranny of the powerful. We need Art to speak to and for all of us. We need Art to speak to each other. We need Art to empower us against the onslaughts of the greedy, selfish, and heartless. Art is not about you, or me, it’s about us. ART tries to speak to as many people as possible. Artists don’t just talk to each other and their patrons, artists speak to as many people as possible. Hacks, flatterers and flunkies, just speak to their patrons.

No, there is no Santa Klaus god. There is no white headed, stern faced, old man waiting for us in the sky to spank or caress us. That is a bogey man tale for mental children who are not emotionally mature enough to accept the reality of the indifference of the ground of being to our fate. We now have an inkling of how vast and complex the cosmos is, and how insignificant we really are. We are not the center of the universe, we are not even fringe detail, we are not even as substantial as dust motes. We are barely flashes of a spark of being. There is no god-human out there, who hangs on our every breathe. How childish to think the ground of being cares if we wear dreadlocks, forelocks, turbans or veils. The ground of being is not a member of the fashion police. We are the fashion police, and in our own interest to wield power over others, to be top of the heap.

Moses was wrong, no one has a “special relationship” with the ground of being, we are all of equal insignificance to the ground of being, and of maximum significance to ourselves. Buddha was wrong, life is what you make of it, we can work to see the limits of our own cultural boxes, but there is no escape hatch from existence. Confucius was wrong, the family is not a good model for adult social organizations. Plato was wrong, abstractions are only useful lies, and no one is ever going to know best. Christ was wrong, look bullies in the eye because no one is coming to save us but ourselves. Mohammed was wrong, evolution is continuing, no one of us is ever going to have the last word.

Institutional religion is not central to a spiritual life. Institutional religion, like all institutions, can be a tool for concerted action. But a spiritual life is lived through every day actions with fellow creatures. Adult spiritual life is not dependent on any particular belief or behavior. Adult spiritual life is dependent on individual choice about how we treat others, with or without respect for their unique existence.

We’ve been WalkerBushed by mistake. The U.S. Supreme Court made a mistake, which they should own up to individually and collectively. George Walker Bush was not elected president, he was anointed “President” of the United States by the U.S. Supreme Court.

The first prerequisite of a good judge is humility, a quality never known to exist in any American judge up to now. I don't know why I think that suddenly it should be exhibited by the almighty justices of the almighty U.S. Supreme Court at this moment in history. But it should. They all know their election ruling was totally out of keeping with their previous rulings on states rights. This is no secret. They made a blatant politically motivated judgment, not a legally motivated one. They think history will forget. It won’t. They will be judged not by their best ruling but by their worse. It will color their histories, individually and collectively. It will not be a footnote, it will be a wound to the whole Court’s reputation and credibility. This ruling will be the deciding issue in their reputations. Because when it came to the most important legal event in their careers they stopped being judges and started being partisan political hacks. The votes of the U.S. Supreme Court elected George Walker Bush president, not the votes of the American people. Those U.S. Supreme Court justices will have to live with the knowledge that history will show that they themselves, in a time of media manufactured hysteria, lost their heads and abandoned their most cherished principles about the rule of law and turned this country from a democracy to an oligarchy. George Walker Bush stole the presidency with his political connections. The U.S. Supreme Court was a coconspirator. It is time for those judges to apologize. They owe the American people an apology. They owe the whole world an apology. When are we going to get that apology. I think we should turn a little Japanese here. I want them to stand up before a joint session of Congress and apologize to us for giving away the presidency for the sake of their own political preferences. Then I want them to resign.

So now, we’ve been walkerbushed by Bush’s oligarchy, that small group ruling only in their own selfish interest. The Bush oligarchy has decimated environmental management policies when the evidence of global climate change is on every weather forecast and all for the sake of their own selfish monetary interests. Hey, they all have second, third and fourth homes to escape to. The Bush oligarchy has sent other people’s daughters off to die in a war prompted by a Bush family vendetta while the Bush daughters stay home and party. The Bush oligarchy has decimated our political rights in the name of capturing a man who they themselves purposely didn’t pursue in Afghanistan, because they wanted to leave that festering wound so they’d have an excuse to make money pursing a war in Iraq. Halliburton-Cheney and the Carlisle Group have made a bloody fortune. My grandmother lived through more than five wars. She said some one always makes money off war. We know who they are. Just look at the books. Or are they a matter of national security in order to protect the guilty and greedy. Who took what? Act now, avoid the rush, start the investigation into war profiteering before it all disappears. Stop being walkerbushed by mistake.

America is a collective hallucination. Abandon the notion of nation. I don’t care what your race, religion, creed, ethnic origin, or sexual orientation is, everyone has a right to live anywhere they want on this planet. Only a childish and primitive mind would subscribe to the belief that the ground of being ever was, or still is, a real estate broker. The planet earth, every inch of it, belongs to all of us. That goes for Mecca as well as Jerusalem, Washington as well as Beijing. Every one has the right to live any where on earth they want. Every one has the right to move to another place on earth if they want. Prudhomme said property is theft. He is right, but people build more prosperous societies when parcels of real estate are recorded, individual ownership is recognized, and can be transferred. But there is a difference between a system of individual ownership of real estate and civil authorities enforcing exclusion polices based on their own prior occupation. It doesn’t matter if you were there, or here, first. That is the argument of a child. I know my big sister used to use it all the time. It’s not a matter of coming first, second, or last. It’s a matter of the equal rights of all people to live where ever they choose.

Nations are recent constructs that can be deconstructed if we so choose. Nations and states aren’t actual objects, they are abstractions, they are lies. They are symbolic categories. They are marks drawn on pieces of paper. They are brain washed loyalties, they are cultural prejudice. Their only reality is in our belief in them. Ask any animal that lives on any national border. Nations are all in OUR heads. It’s a collective hallucination that nations exist. We can abandon this hallucination for the reality of a single interconnected planet.

We do need a system of civilian organization that respond to people’s needs. Centralized structures are by nature unresponsive to local conditions. But the need for local civil authority and governance does not mean that coordination on common matters should be abandoned. Local management can coexist and be coordinate with regional and global civilian management. The regions would reflect the realities of common interests, particularly in relation to ecological, economic and cultural systems and should not be based on historical accidents of power. We need to make up new categories of regional organization. Face it, Northern California has more common ecological interests with Oregon, and Southern California has more common ecological interests with Northern Mexico. This is the kind of global reorganization that needs to be done. Abandon the outmoded and counter productive idea of the U.S. Abandon the idea of Mexico. Abandon the idea of nations. Think in terms of one people on one planet, Earth. Reorganize civilian authorities along lines of common interest rather than the accidents of history.

Who stopped thinking at Jet Dry? Who decided to court disaster with their Jet Dry TV ad in which a cartoon dishwasher says yum, yum, yum and glub glub glub as it “drinks” with an unmistakable “mouth” opening the Jet Dry liquid. What planet are these people living on? Don’t they know blue drinks are all the rage with youngsters. This is an tragic accident inducing advertisement if there ever was one. Toddler watches TV. Toddler given blue drinks by Mom. Toddler watches cartoon mouth drink Jet Dry blue drink. Toddler sees Jet Dry under sink. Toddler drinks Jet Dry. Toddler gets horribly ill. How long do you think it will take for this scenario to be realized. You know food is color coded for a reason. It is so youngsters, oldsters and midsters can easily discern what’s eatable and what’s not. I think the color fluorescent blue should NOT be used in eatable products and be reserved for the chemical industry. Do our kids a favor instead of sucking them for every penny you can extort from their parents, ban fluorescent blue food.

Furthermore, I wish the choosy mothers who choose Jif Peanut Butter would get even more choosy. I’m speaking first about the ad where a little girl offers a peanut butter sandwich to her uneasy friend on their first sleep over. They are both already in pajamas ready for bed. No child should be eating in their bedroom just before bedtime. Why? First, because a tolerance of eating anywhere anytime promotes the epidemic of obesity that is plaguing our youngsters. Secondly, this is the worse kind of lesson to teach, food as emotional comfort. That is exactly the problem that overeaters have. Food is a part of reassuring community rituals, but it should not be promoted as an aid to allay individual emotional distress, this is the way to obesity as so many women will tell you. If the visitor is uncomfortable, the mother, the presumable adult in this scenario, should be in there reading them a story, not expecting her tiny daughter to herself be “mother”. Choosy mothers should be choosing to be more involved in their children's lives rather abandoning them to their own inadequate devices. If you want to HAVE children, forget it. We have more then enough people already. If you want to RAISE children, then go ahead. Be choosy, choose to know your own limits.

Fathers should get more choosy too. Making a sandwich in the family room is a bad example for eating too. It sends the same message that eating anywhere any time is ok. It’s not. This is the path to obesity. People wonder why they are overweight. The first rule of losing weight is eat less. (The second is exercise more.) Eating less doesn’t mean changing your diet. It means eating less of what you eat already, smaller portions. But the first eating less you can do is not to eat in between meals. Both these Jif Ads promote in between meal snacking by children in an obese population. Be choosy, choose to eat less, and not at all between meals.

Grammar Note on “No child should be eating in their bedroom just before bedtime. ” I’m changing the grammar rules in the interest of a constructing a more gender neutral language. Singular subjects can take plural possessive adjectives. It sounds okay to me, and it’s a matter of cultural policy to change the language rules, which people are making up anyway. I’m changing it. Don’t complain to me. If you don’t like it, don’t do it. But I am going to.

Wireless is wonderful. With wireless technology we can live our lives outside again, instead of in a cage, rooms inevitably isolate us. Oh, for the outdoor life, for living wireless in a garden. I can easily envision the pleasures of writing in the inspiring solitude of the shade of a tree but connected to the whole world. We can be alone together.

Now the downside, and there is always a downside, or rather several downsides, but I’ll just look at one of the most obvious. We did not evolve in dense people-made fields of radio, or other frequencies, of electromagnetic radiation. There will be repercussions, we may not see them for generations, but there will be detrimental effects. We can be sure of that from Chaos Theory and the observation that small changes in initial conditions can have big effects, and these are NOT small changes in conditions. These are big changes because although they may be low level fields they extend over the life of the organism. It’s the fact of the long term exposure that will make the big difference.

No matter what we do, our choices will have long term detrimental effects. If we outlawed wireless there would be detriment effects. It is ridiculous to try to stem the tide of change. The point is to recognize every situation for what it always is, a two edge sword, and try to keep ourselves apprised of changing conditions. How can we do that here?

Well, first, stop thinking short term. We aren’t going to be able to foresee the long term consequences, ever. What we can do is start compiling that base of information that will allow our children, grand children or great grand children to see what the effects are. Not only for this change but for all the other interacting evolutionary changes that are going on as I write. Think evolution has stopped for us? Well give it another think. Wake up! We are just passing flotsam coursing along in the flood tide of evolution. We are evolving too.

What can we do now, that will have present, as well as future, value? We can start a government funded public health project that takes samples of every resident’s blood and saliva. The blood and saliva will be tested for present nutritional deficiencies and known disease markers. This information is returned to the donors giving then present value. The data is available to medical researchers now and in the future. Sample residue is stored for future researchers. How hard is this and how much will it cost? The biggest long term expense will be the storage of samples. The data storage is cheap and getting cheaper as I breathe. What about the analysis? The chip and sensor technology to do cheap salvia and blood analysis is in sight. We just have to stop spending money on things which sole purpose is to blow somebody up when they’re finished and start allocating money for the public good, like government is suppose to do.

We are on an evolutionary track now that we can’t see the direction of because we’re just too damn close to it, our field of visions is too myopic, we can never see all the factors affecting us. It will only be in hindsight that our future will know where we’ve been. We must give our future as much information as we can about the present so they can make more informed choices. We will need to collect not only an individual’s relatively static genetic data but also snapshots of actual physical conditions through current blood and saliva samples. It is only this way that we as a species will be able to detect the direction of our evolution. Wouldn’t it be great if a presidential candidate took up this cause and proposed a health initiative that will help us now, and every generation in the future. Support the For Our Grandchildren Public Health Initiative, Build a Bench Mark Database for Evolutionary Research.

Other cultures have sexual initiation rituals, why don’t we? Prom Night just doesn’t cut it, never did. I think most of us can skip adopting or even adapting the custom of cutting penises up the back of the shaft from balls to tip. Sounds bloody painful to me, and likewise we can forget the cutting off of females clitorises, or the initiation where the community literally drops the log roof on the last young couple to have sex for the first time that year. Sounds pretty awful, two people who don’t know what they are doing, and then they die. Or does it sound all too familiar.

When constructing a sexual initiation program for our culture, I would like to see reviewed the informational traditions of previous cultures, things like Asian Pillow Books, Indian, Chinese and Japanese Illustrated Sexual Manuals, European Erotic, Asian Tantra, etc. Once we have digested the past we can get started on constructing our future. How lucky we are that we have moving pictures, instead of just static ones, sounds, instead of just words, and life like computer animation, instead of requiring real people to teach and have sex at the same time. We could devise instructional videos in which computer animated people discuss the what, where, why, how and pleasures--emotional, psychological and physical--of having sex while they are doing it. In fact with the wonders of computer animated graphics we could change the size and shape of bodies to suit people’s personal physiques. People could see the different problems and solutions for people of different sizes and capabilities.

Of course you’d want instructional tapes for homosexual, lesbian and heterosexual sex that every one watched. This would demystify sex for people of all persuasions and give each individual a chance to see what attracted them.

Remember these are instructional videos. People talking, explaining and warning as these go, including teaching people how to check their partners for signs of pleasure or discomfort. But not only how to periodically read responses but also how to ask directly how things are going. So each can give and get pleasure mutually. These are some things the videos could do. Instruction is the first step in any initiation and people interested in the advancement of sexual education should be able to make these kinds of videos now for adults, knowing that in the future the videos would be used for the initiation of adolescents.

Silly me, they do it for the money. I was puzzling why the adult editors of the London based Wallpaper* magazine would chose to present themselves to the world as arrogant, adolescent idiots. But they’re hucksters, selling a snake oil product to a vulnerable audience, the chronically adolescently insecure. I guess they figured, and rightly I might add, that sadistic contempt sells, it actually can be reassuring, when you’re aiming at a frightened and bewildered audience.

I’ve seldom seen a magazine so aptly named as Wallpaper*. Needless to say everything in it is of no interest and can be safely ignored. The content is completely ephemeral. You can’t tell the ads from the copy. This is the high school magazine that would be written by all the cool kids. It is really depressing to think so many young middle class people worldwide are still so pathetically obsessed with what other people think of them. Because that’s what being cool is all about, appearing cool to others. It makes the working class obsession with People and Celebrity look like a positive first step on a spiritual quest, while these middle class wanna-be-riche are still wallowing in an idolization of things, and the false sense of superiority for the inferiority-complex-impaired that things, like teddy bears, impart.

There is a corbis ad, double page, full bleed, in the front of the April 2004 issue. It shows five birds on a perch, only the center bird faces away from the camera. The text reads: Keyword Rebel Search. Well you wouldn’t find any matches in Wallpaper*. Rebellion is the last thing on these readers mind. It is strict conformity all around. Buy this. Wear that. Go Here. Don’t ever buck the latest fashion tread. Or somebody might think you’re not cool. It seemed appropriate that the one “rebel” bird facing the wrong way was lost in the center fold. You know there is something about “being cool” that is ultimately authoritarian.

Don’t the readers get that this is all about some one else sucking their money anyway from them for over priced goods. Branding is frequently just an advertising scam to get you to pay more for less. The editors treat their readers like slavish fools, who can’t think for themselves. There is a editorial Fashion spread taken on their “seasonal trip to the private island in the Philippines.” I don’t know what they were on, but they obviously forgot what they were suppose to be about. The biggest insult and howler is the swimming suit picture in which the model is in the water up to her neck, one fuzzy inch of strap showing. The editors have the gall to have text detailing the cost and maker of the suit. I’ve never seen a magazine before where the editors openly show such masses of contempt for their audience.

I’m sure the editors would tell me it’s not about a particular suit. That’s true in a branding ad. But this was suppose to be editorial copy where information is imparted. Why even mentioned an item not shown? Or was the trip paid for by the fashion houses who expected, required, a plug? Just how stupid do you think your readers are? Maybe it’s not the magazine that’s wallpaper that can be ignored, maybe the editors think the readers are their own personal wallpaper.

BAD DESIGN MAKES GOOD! One of the most uncomfortable chairs in the history of people has become an icon of Modern design. The Le Corbusier Lounger should always be labeled: SCULPTURE. Please Do Not Sit. The piece is useless as a chair, unless you are a thalidomide survivor. That is not a misguided joke, but a fact. The chair has no support for your arms, either you hug them across your chest like you’re caught in a cold draft, or you let them hang to the floor like a fallen sweater on either side of the chair. IT knows I’ve tried just about every domestic activity on this piece of furniture, but it’s without use, without function. You can’t read in it. There are no chair arms to support your arms AND the weight of your book. You can’t even just sit in it for any extended period of time to do anything like watch TV for the same reason, unless you like to sit with your hands dragging down beside you like you’re passed out, or, you like to give yourself extended hugs. The Lounger exemplifies the real Modernist obsession with appearance over content, and the true smug fascist nature of the twentieth century avant garde: ”We know better, we’re the avant-garde, we know what’s good for the masses better than the masses do.” It’s this smug I-Know-Better attitude that leads to an inability for modernist to see the essential unattractiveness of their program. If you know better, than every one else is stupider, so why should you listen to them. People have valid complaints not only about the coldness of modern design but also, and even more, about the real form follows ego attitude towards the design process which disregards any requirement that interferes with the sleek, shiny fashions of Modernism. Things don’t actually have to function in the end. Too bad there are no random blind tests to determine the actual effectiveness of modern designs. It is an irony of Modernism that out of the dictum “Form follows function.” should arise the idealization of functionless forms. Have any doubts about this? See celebrity designer Karim Rashid’s defense of his own functionless forms in I.D. Magazine March/April 2004.

Save our Skins. Depopulate. Why are we so pretentious? We’re not “SAVING THE EARTH.” If we ALL died overnight, the next day the sun would rise, the birds would sing, and the squirrel would continue hiding its nuts, as we all rotted away in our beds. The earth doesn’t need us. It doesn’t need us to save it, even if we annihilated ourselves in a nuclear winter causing war. The earth could say, “Been there, done that, still evolved.” And the cockroaches would be quite happy. It’s our own selfish skins that need saving.

Of course we can take quite a few species with us when we go, not if, but when we go. The fate of all species, including us, is extinction. And you know what? Life and evolution will continue on long after we’ve licked our last ice cream cone. In fact, we are just a gloss on a footnote in the vast encyclopedic volumes of time. We are NOT the most important thing that ever happened. The ground of being is not any more or less interested in our fate then it is interested in the fate of the whole galaxy in which we are infinitesimal parasites or in the fate of that poetic blade of grass. It is childish, primitive and self-serving to think that our fate, or the fate of any group of us, or any one of us, matters, makes a difference to the ground of being.

We could aim to go out quietly with the least amount of bother for other species. It’s up to us, unless a meteor or other global disaster, not of our making, decides to provide a relatively clean slate for further evolution. But the fate of the universe in no way depends upon us either as a group or as individuals. It’s all about us saving our own skins. Stop being such puffed up, self-involved little children. Save our Skins. Depopulate.

If we don’t depopulate, the ground of being provides. It provides war, starvation, disease and pestilence. Those are the population controls provided by the ground of being. Want to take that route? Want the ground of being to provide for our grand children the way it provides for us? If not then we must depopulate. How? Educate women. Every society where women are given equal, and not separate(the U.S. proved that doesn’t work), access to education has a falling reproduction rate. Stop dropping bombs in female’s laps and start dropping books, electronic books, solar powered laptops. Books not Bombs, that’s the humane way to depopulate and save out skins.

Eat or Die. Death is not a sin. There is no humane reason to keep people alive indefinitely in long term nursing care, who can’t eat for themselves. So when are we going to make total parental nutrition, intravenous feeding solutions, controlled substances? Think it’s cruel to let people starve to death? How much crueler it is to keep people alive in a vegetative state. You worried about suffering, then every one should be entitle to morphine to ease them to their exit.? Who wouldn’t like this? The burgeoning nursing care, or should I say zombie care, industry, that makes a ton of public money keeping the almost dead half alive, ever growing the legions of 21st century undead. We can become a nation of zombies, and if you think it’s bad now wait until the baby boomers hit the beds. You really want to spent years as a plant life, sucking up the resources of your children, grand children and even great grand children. You don’t think the medical profession will be able to keep us alive that long. They will, as vegetables.

Do you want health care costs to plummet? Do you want your grand children to have a future? Do you want to go out swiftly and peacefully or agonizingly slowly? Write your representative today. Make total parental nutrition a controlled substance available only for short term hospital care or for people with medical problems like Crohn’s disease who are still otherwise functioning. Medicare should no longer cover total parental nutrition, or even peripheral parental nutrition, in any long term nursing care facility. In fact intravenous feeding should not be allowed in any long term nursing care. You shouldn’t be able to buy your way to immortality, even if it’s only vegetative. Morphine should be covered.

Where and when did the the medical profession begin to lose it way and start to think life extension was their goal. It’s not. This is the belief of the mad scientist that the brain in a vat is a life worth living, even if the brain is half dead and the vat happens to be your own body. The goal of the medical profession is to heal. If they can’t do that then they should get out of the way and let life take its usual course to death.

It’s your choice. I chose a death free of pain over the dishonor and inhumanity of being a plant life watered each day by intravenous feeding solution. People eat, plants get watered. Eat or die.

I support sin in the home. I support S.I.N. in the home.

My heart aches at the stupidity, cruelty and shear brutality of our culture. What is this abstinence crap for adolescents? What an ignorant, arrogant, paternalistic century we live in? Don’t we have enough knowledge of history, biology and anthropology to know that it is normal for adolescents to have sex. Nobody, and I mean nobody of adult intellect, although childish intellects may still feel dreadfully insecure on this point, no adult intellect thinks sex among sexually mature animals is any thing but normal. People of adult intellect know that, according to biology, animals go through various growth stages in their lives, one of the most well known being puberty. Puberty is the time when an animal, like people-animals, become sexually mature, that’s is, the animal becomes capable of reproduction.

THEN THEY HAVE SEX. What is the problem here. Animals have sex when they become sexually mature. People are animals. People-animals have sex when they become sexually mature. Sexual maturity in people occurs between the ages of ten and twenty. It’s the way of our biology. It’s been the way of biology for the last X billion of years. What is our problem with this? Now say again why sexually mature people shouldn’t have sex?

But don’t give me pregnancy fears in this day and age of various and sundry birth control methods. And for disease protection there are always condoms. And please don’t give me that stupid person’s argument that they're not 100 % sure. Nothing in life is one hundred percent sure. Existing is inherently risky. Celibacy will not protect any one from the vagaries of life. You have to look at the risk, low for both disease and pregnancy if you use condoms AND if you have stable sexual relations with a limited number of partners who care. Against what gain? Not certainty of anything, except that you will be foregoing the joys of sex at a time when it would probably, with the right education and initiation, be one of the most happy times of anyone’s life.

And don’t even start with me about emotional maturity, that obfuscating bullshit. People are as emotionally mature as you educate them to be. I will remind you I support both sin in the home, and S.I.N. in the home. I support the sexual initiation of young adults in a loving, caring and joyful atmosphere that would promote emotional growth. A culture that forces young adults to first experience sex in circumstance possibly threatening, frightening and dangerous, for female and male, is despicably cruel to its own children. The culture of sexual cruelty in which we dwell starts with our culture’s failure to provide experiential sexual initiation for its own young adults.

What is this abstinence crap? Why do people want to steal happiness away from young people? Why don’t people do everything in their power to ensure that bourgeoning sexual feelings are allowed to a unfold in a joyous, loving, caring, accepting atmosphere. Why call it sin? Why are people so stupid. Why can’t they learn. Sex is fun and natural and there for us to respect and enjoy, just like the rest of the existence. I am sick and tired of this childish, fearful, authoritarian celibacy crap and all the stupid people’s rhetoric about young adults shouldn’t have sex. Grow up. If sex is a sin, it is one only because you get some perverted, masochistic pleasure out of seeing young adults suffer, not because it inherently is. You are making it up that sex is a sin. WE MAKE CULTURE UP. We are ALL, including every authority figure you can think of, just making it all up as we go along. It is a cultural delusion that sex is a sin and should be suppressed among young adults. Get over it. Sex is good, all you know-it-alls. And I say lets remake OUR culture; Support SIN.

I support S.I.N., I support Sexual Initiation Now. I want to turn sin into a loving and joyful moment of initiation into adulthood in each persons life. The moment when they first experience intimate sexual contact. And don’t talk celibacy and waiting for marriage at me. Marriage is far too serious a commitment to wait to have sexual relations. Sexual compatibility is part of the foundation of a stable and satisfying relationship. To wait to find out until after the binding contract is made whether or not you are compatible in bed every single fucking time of your lives, is pure madness. Children born of a sexually fulfilling and caring relationship, have to be happier, healthier and more loving people themselves, than ones born of duty, guilt and necessity.

I support SIN in the home. I think every child should first SIN themselves into young adulthood in the bosom of their own loving and caring homes. Now isn’t it terrible to call sex a sin. I think it’s a form of psychological child abuse, to put people off the joys of sexual activity. Imagine growing up thinking sex is a sin, then getting to be that totally insecure age, the transition between child and young adult with this cultural lie that sex is a sin hanging around your neck like a proverbial millstone. You become a sexual creature, a young adult and society ignores your sexual needs in all but the most exploitive, crass and commercial ways. Sex is for Sale everywhere, but it is not for Joy. If sex is sin, then we have the mind set of demented monsters. Only a demented monster would ruin the joys of sex for its own children.

Adolescents unite, you know who you are, those who want to engage in sex, not forced to, but want to, some where between the ages of 10 and 20. Start agitating for real sexual education and initiation devised by physicians, anthropologists, biologists, psychologists, sociologists. Start agitating for a culture that provides sexual initiation in a caring atmosphere. Support S.I.N.! And any caring adult who went through the hell of an uninitiated adolescence can join too in supporting SIN.

So Julie Lasky, editor of ID Magazine, thinks a cash register office building is the best memorial for a mass grave. Maybe she’d like to see a shopping mall built over Auschwitz? If this building goes up then the whole world will not doubt that New Yorkers have a dollar sign not only for a heart, but for a soul as well. If New Yorkers were really moved by this tragedy they would use their power of eminent domain to send a different message. But no, the almighty buck reigns supreme in New York, which is why it got targeted in the first place. New Yorkers have learned nothing from this barbarous attack. I imagine the Romans, when they were the center of the world, and after sucking the wealth of the known world to themselves for almost 500 years to the impoverishment of the rest, were as much in denial as New Yorkers are now, although things move ten times faster now and New York has been sucking for only 50. If you boast that you live in the center of power and wealth in the known universe, how can you be ingenuously surprised to find the barbarians at the gates attacking you. Wake up, and change your greedy, self centered ways. Why aren’t 9/11 photographer Joel Meyerowitz's 3,000 trees being planted on site? Because some already obscenely wealthy people are going to lose a whole lot of rental income and the city a whole lot of tax revenue. Obviously, in New York, it’s all about money, there's only one shared value: greed. I know in New York nobody wants to take any responsibility for anything that’s happened to them, especially the cowardly artistic community which is a parasite on the greedy elite who precipitated this disaster. If they did take responsibility, then this office building, NOT memorial, would never be built.

The source of existence is the ground of being, or possibly it is the grounds of being. Singularity is not necessarily more elegant than multiplicity, only simple minded authoritarian prejudice insists on that. No one knows the ground/s of being.

It is childish and primitive to think that the ground of being is anything like people, has the concerns of status and power that people have. It is childish and primitive to think the ground of being is even concerned with, let alone needs, our praise or obedience like people do. It is childish and primitive to think that the ground of being is now, or ever was, a real estate broker, a member of the fashion police, or a food Fascist. The ground of being is not concerned with our status, power, hairdo, head protection, lunch menu or real estate address. It is childish and primitive to think IT is. These are the concerns of fearful and ignorant people projected out on to a universe that is ultimately indifferent to our fate. It is hard for children to accept the indifference of the ground of being. Adults see IT is indifferent, and that the difference making is left up to us. Adults see that our irreligious fights over real estate, fashion, food, cultural trappings are the fights of self aggrandizing, self important, talking chimpanzees. We are the ones that care about real estate, fashion, food, culture. The ground of being does not care.

Serious spiritual practitioners, mystics of every institutional religion, say the dos, don’ts and dogmas of institutional religion are not a prerequisite to the spiritual life. What matters spiritually is our personal relationship to the cosmos, near and far. This is because the ground of being is the cosmos near and far. Our relationship to the ground of being is our relationship to the cosmos. Our relationship to the cosmos is our relationship to the ground of being. If we are at odds with the cosmos, near or far, we are at odds with the ground of being. If we are at odds with our neighbor, we are at odds with the ground of being. And we are acting and thinking like ignorant chimpanzees only concerned with our own status and power. If other people are lobbing bombs at us, whether we have chosen to call ourselves an Israeli , a Palestinian, or a New Yorker, the ground of being is not on our side. We must look to our own behavior. We are not innocent of all our suffering. Our own behavior is inescapably part of every problem we have. And the ground of being does not care. We do.

It is Time. It is time we stopped thinking and acting like talking chimpanzees. It is time we grew up and stopped being frightened and ignorant children. It is time we evolved, evolved into the next species we will become. How do we get there from here? It is our choice. It should be a thoughtful one.

Premises that will underlie a thoughtful evolution:

1. NO ONE KNOWS. No one knows the meaning or purpose of existence. And we never will. We do not know how existence works. We are in the dark, and always will be. Why? Because as a puny animal species not one of us has the physical-mental capacity to grasp the full complexity of existence. We make up stories. We make up explanations. We are generators of self aggrandizing and comforting delusions we call culture. We make up culture. Culture is our own arbitrary construction that must be able to function within the limits of physical reality in order for it and us to survive. But as with the physical world, in culture every aspect is open to change, and without notice. It is childish insecurity that make us want to believe, not think, but believe that some one in our own culture KNOWS. It is frightening for some people to realize that NO ONE KNOWS. Many people want the false security that belief brings. Adults live in the real world of chaos, ambiguity and unfathomable existence. Adults realize that no one knows and that it is only our animal fear of the unknown and our animal desire for safety that leads us to put our faith in the ancient fairy tales that soothed the minds of our talking chimpanzee ancestors. Time to move on. Time to grow up. NO ONE KNOWS.

2. EXISTENCE IS CHANGE. No change is not existence. No thing existing can be sustain in a fixed state. Existence is change, and change is existence. Any childish, false and soothing notions that any part of existence, from social systems to solar systems, is fixed and unchanging has long since been discredited by our common experience of this universe. In our universe, existence is change.

Principals that can guide us toward a thoughtful evolution:

1. FLEXIBILITY IS OUR PRIMARY VALUE. Because we don’t know, and never will, and because change is the only characteristic of existence we can count on, the only sensible course, if we want to survive and evolve, is to be flexible: mentally, culturally and physically. Aiming for any goal less than flexibility will make us more vulnerable to the ever imminent unexpected. Sustainability is a futile goal because existence is ever changing and unpredictable. The quickest road to extinction is to try to aim for any fixed state of being. Hoping to put our collective finger in the dike of existence to hold back the unrelenting march of change, whether social or geological, is misguided and ultimately a childish and fearful response to the inevitable change that is the reality of existence. Flexibility is our primary value.

2. WISDOM IS OUR PRIMARY GOAL. There are facts, there is knowledge, then there is wisdom. Wisdom is knowing when it is time to die, not only as an individual but as a species. Wisdom is recognizing that what ever you do it will always be helpful and always be harmful. Wisdom is knowing you can never give help without doing harm and that you can never do harm without giving help. Wisdom accepts our inevitable ignorance and strives to learn as much as possible. Wisdom accepts the ambiguity of existence and takes the responsibility of making choices. Sorrow is the price of wisdom. Joy is it’s reward.

3. NO SECRETS. Because we are ignorant, and always will be to the actualities of our own existence, it is necessary that all information be shared with all people in order that the most people can give thought to each challenge that confronts us. Secrets are a chimpanzee way of thinking. Secrets are the basis of unequal distribution of power in a social system. Secrets promote inflexibility and ignorance. No Secrets.

23 Feb. 2004 10:00 pm PST Scifi Channel Stargate SG-1 “The Serpent’s Venom”. The Politics of Stargate: A “blasphemous Rebellion” in Chulak, or is it Iran, against the “current” antiquated self-anointed gods who rule by fear and force for their own selfish interests. You know, just like America. WE are the Evil Empire now.

Abstractions are always and everywhere lies. Purity is a weakness or a delusion. Order is a virtue only in kindergartens, prisons and platoons. Reality is chaotic, ambiguous and unfathomable.