Friday, August 31, 2007

On hearsay and dog fighting or: vick and the dogs and the dogs and vick.


someone said the man should be put in the pit.
someone said the man should not serve a jail sentence but be forced into a public relations frenzy and go to talk to school children.
someone said something must have happened to him as a child
someone said his brother makes him look like a saint
someone said he'll never play in the nfl again
someone said he'll be back next year and he'll have a lot of time to think about it
someone said he apologized and he said he had to grow up
someone said animal rights is a relatively new idea
someone said there are too many people on the face of this planet
someone said its bad to care more for animals than for people
someone said people like him should be tortured

someone said that men in the nfl use their bodies like weapons
someone said there are enough people on the face of the planet being tortured already
someone said if you feel like you're being abused there's nothing stopping you from becoming an abuser

someone said animals don't have souls
someone said who electrocutes dogs
someone said the price of his card has gone through the roof
someone said they're sending his jerseys to clean out kennels
someone said all dogs go to heaven
someone said we need to think hard about what to do about this

Wednesday, August 8, 2007

The stagger in heat and misplaced aggression of wind

You've thrown the worst fear
That can ever be hurled
Fear to bring children
Into the world

Today is a puddle, muy grande, my face. Say you like it like this and the slapping will commence. I've been living for the summer with no fans and no conditioned air in my home. You may call that obscene, but the occupation of sweating is a good one.

There seems to be a cycle of talk about sustainability among people I know and respect. I can address some things but fail at many...the global economy is cloaked in oil--this affects the cost of production of just about any consumer good--as almost all things need to be transported and produced. The relation of the cost of transport to the cost at the shop may not be one that's always figured in, but it's there and it alters the price of the goods we buy--from food to flat screen tv's. And what's most important to the issue of sustainability, straight away, (and convincing people that convenience isn't always the best option) is cost. The benefits of altering our means of production and consumption may not seem readily accessible to most folk. Hell, it's more money. Look Ma, my pockets are thin. It's less choice. Where'd that mango come from anyway? We'd have to change a bunch of shit in order to make it happen. You mean I can't grab some hormone-injected, cornfed chickin anymore? Nobody likes change. Especially if it means that people will be less reliant on the larger distributors of goods and services, since this will undercut company-wide earnings and throw a wrench straight at the market's ballooning numbers. Oh and where's my retirement going to come from then? And there's really no good way to switch up our energy sources (or our farming methods and means of obtaining food) if the right people aren't concerned with doing this because it's way more fun to swim in money and burn it afterwards.

I know there's a lot of legislation leaning toward greener energy but I know very little about that legislation. I do know that if we continue to rely on non-renewable resources, eventually they run out. That's their story and they're sticking to it. Ah, but it's not close to happening, right? Even though it may not be in our particular lifetime (though it may well be)--this collective stick-to-it-iveness and shrug of non-concern will widen the gap in the distribution of wealth, and quite possibly lead to an utter economic collapse. (Secretly, sometimes I hope for this but don't really know what in hell I'd do if it happened--I can't make fire with my hands and eventually all the lighters would run out...) Why do people keep waiting? Good ol' TJ with the help of a few friends came up with this: "all Experience hath shewn, that Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while Evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the Forms to which they are accustomed." And suffer we have and will continue to: complacency, pharmaceuticals (those fricking confusing Cialis commercials--what do 2 people do in separate tubs outside with no plumbing?), convenience, disgust, war, iniquity...

It's like there's a building burning above us--or better yet, like the whole damn sky's on fire and we're all walking around saying, "Will you look at that, huh?" Oh, chickin little, I'm not generally an alarmist and I'm lazy as the day is hot and long (especially this one), but something's got to give here and I don't want it to be the future. Our future. The future of the neighbor kids and possibly your own. I know that there's no more or less matter on this planet than when it was first globbed together and when we're all fouled up and gone it's still going to be spinning until it explodes but I've got a mind that lets me know it's alright to be alive most days and don't want the people from the future to look back and hate what they have because of us. I mean didn't you all see Terminator? Gawd!

And my prattling has gotten nowhere. Time to go wash my clothes in the river.
Wouldn't it be nice if we could sustain the ideals we carry instead of tarnishing them with counterproductive actions? O, Laundromat, sing me a clean song. One that means OK is better than OK.