Banksy: "Fuck the Advertizers"

Beware: Tainted Products (Containing GMOs)

I'm PRETTY sure this list is inaccurate, or at least incorrectly labeled.
Monsanto doesn't "own" either Coke of Pepsi, afaik (though there is NO reason to consume ANY of their empty, worthless, shit products. and you'd be much healthier if you didn't).
Also, ConAgra is a COMPETING Big Ag corpoRat. It may share some board embers wit Monsanto, but they maintain at least the semblence of difference. Aunt Jemima is a brand owned by Quaker Oats which also is NOT "owned" by Monsanto, though Quaker buys grains and other stuff from Monsanto...
Still, this looks like a pretty complete list of products in which you might find Monsanto-engineered GM foods.
So while it's true that there is probably Monsanto product in these brands, it is inaccurate to claim Monsanto "OWNS" them...

I don't use ANY of this shit, and you shouldn't, either.

The paradox of technology!

Just over 50 years ago, the French film-maker Jacques Tati released his antic masterpiece, "Mon Oncle," the entirety of which is linked here.

The film is the post-surrealist auteur's gentle comic and diverting effort to observe the fascinations of technology, via his character, the "bumbling naif," M. Hulot, (Tati himself) in his second film.

Here's a scene:


We "invent" technology to assist us with particular problems.

But 'technology' always does MUCH more, applies to much more, affects much more than what we "designed" it for.

And eventually the (immanent) bug that ALWAYS lies at the heart of such beasts emerges to overtake and threaten us.

So we invent ANOTHER 'technology" to stem the consequences of the first (or previous) one.

Which in turn grows into more than we had imagined and threatens to consume us, so we invent another...I think you can see where this is going.

Heidegger was one of the first guys to figure this out, formally...

Santorum in a Jar?

This fucknozzle would gag an orc!

Separation of Church & State makes him nauseous?

Really?

Remember: He keeps a pickled fetus on his mantelpiece, like a fucking trophy!

EWWWWWWW! Newwwwwwt...

Classic!

MoDo, the dowdy drone of the NYTimes Op-Ed page made the suggestion on Sunday.

Woody loves the idea of going all Lysistrata on the GOPhux: it's a great idea, but it won't work.

Why?

No, I'm not just being generally "negative." It won't work because the GOPhux aren't GETTING any now, from anyone.

C'mon? Ask yourself? Can you imagine Neut with a lil stiffy swinging under his obese paunch?

Would YOU have sex with ANY of them, at ALL, for ANY reason? Would ANYONE?

Of course not. Of COURSE not!

They're slack-bodied, droopy-fleshed, bejowled, dewlapped drooling FUCKTARDS who stink of uncleansed assholes!

Which means, unfortunately, that the Lysistrata tactic is doomed....

Food for Thought

(Photo: Venus, Luna & Neptune in Ecliptic, by Mike Lord)
The moon and a couple of planets (Jupiter & Venus) are performing the most exquisitely balletic, celestial pirouette in the heavens above us here tonight.

The sky taught us to think.
Animals taught us to observe and to reason.
That, at least, is the theory of Paul Shepard, the brilliant, eclectic, naturalist/biologist and philosopher who more or less invented the 'department' of human ecology, in the late 60s...


Our blood-stream is our own private ocean, in miniature, replicating and perfecting within ourselves all the functions which the sea provided when we were less distinctly us, the far simpler creatures adrift in the warm, murky, rich waters of our ancestral, geological baptismal font. It is THOSE seas which are source of the roaring waves we hear amplified when we tuck a shell against our ears. Our blood is OF the sea, it is our mighty current, our transport, our food supply, our cleanser.

And life's a beach!

Moyers' Straw and Hollow Men

In a recent program, the now/again-returned-to-TV icon of "liberal punditry," Bill Moyers," opined broadly on the matter of the practibility of those who advocate for a Constitutional Amendment to rectify the wrongs ratified by the OPUS DEIsts on the SCROTUS in the "Citizens United Decision.

"Don’t worry," Moyers encouraged the advocates of this procedure, "if you’re called naíve. Don't worry about cynics who mock you or fatalists who declare that a constitutional amendment is impossible. That’s nonsense. We’ve amended the constitution 27 times in our history. Back in 1971, the amendment to lower the voting age to 18 was the quickest to be ratified in U.S history, four months following its passage by Congress. And after 13 years without a drink, in 1933, Americans okayed the amendment to repeal prohibition faster than a saloon’s swinging door."

I like and admire Bill Moyers, mostly. But Bill, like it or not, is "one of them." He's sucked his whole lifetime off the corpoRat teat. He's internalized their interests. He's drunk too deeply of the Kool-Aid of the Status Quo.

What Bill conveniently neglects to mention in his account of successful amendments is that nearly a THOUSAND Amendments have been proposed, since the first ten, and that only SEVENTEEN have succeeded.

Another thing is that there are really astonishing differences between the amendments he cite as successes and the one that his arguement is designed to buttress. For example, in the case of the 18-year-old vote, there was a war going on in which 18-year-olds were doing a disproportionate share of the dying. The Oners/Owners accepted it as a necessary part of legitimating/legitimizing the war. There was almost NO opposition to it, to go along with the general popular support.

And it had no deleterious repercussions for the Owners. Eighteen-year-olds are, if anything, easier to baffle with bullshit than their more mature counterparts (think "popular music?!"); they're immersed in the propaganda and schooled to accept it without much resistance. (Is there REALLY any difference between Bud and Coors? See what I mean?).

Also, predictably, it only temporarily and marginally enlarged the voting pool, as indolence, ignorance, indulgence and apathy sooner or later overwhelmed the attraction of the franchise. What percentage of 18-21 year-olds actually VOTE? It was about 45% in '08; 18-22 million in raw numbers. Who votes doesn't matter; who counts the votes matters.

And the repeal of prohibition? C'mon, Bill. That's an OBVIOUS strawman. Citizens suffered OBVIOUS consequences from Prohibition, and repealing it was HUGELY popular. Plus, far from OPPOSING it, the Oners/Owners enthusiastically and visibly SUPPORTED repeal.

And NEITHER had the consolidated and determined MIGHT of the ENTIRE industrial-corpoRat-financial-capital-military-ownership establishment arrayed against them.

The best counterexample to Moyers' and others' wishful thinking on the amendment proceess is the ERA. After 40 years, it STILL couldn't pass. It fell two or three STATES short of ratification, and it faced only token, marginal, wackloon/fucktard opposition.

Against ANY attempt to "amend" CU out of existence will be ALL THE MONEY that is already involved in buying and maintaining Congress and the Executive Office in the order and sympathies they now exemplify, serving the interests they NOW supinely serve.

The ONLY way to avoid the Congress is to go individually through the states and get THIRTY-EIGHT state legislatures to ratify it. In case you didn't know it already, state legislatures are EVERY BIT as corrupt as the Feds are, and can be bought cheaper. You'd only need to BLOCK it in 13 states.

Col. Cathcart? Paging Col. Cathcart...

Has ANYONE in the civilized world NOT yet read "Catch-22?"

The central premise of the book is that war is such a terrible, terrifying, dreadful, horrible, brutal, unimaginable thing to do that no sane person wants to be any part of it, and so pretending to be insane to avoid having to continue is a demonstration of the opposite. Klinger, in MASH, was a later expression of the same meme.

PTSD is a clinical diagnosis which accords the status of an actual injury to the altogether human revulsion to what war does and is, to the psyche of the soldiers. But the military mind cannot divorce the symptoms of PTSD from the institutional abhorrence of "malingering," or "goldbricking." So survivors of PTSD are held--unofficially, by the brass--to have pulled a fast one, and such claims are routinely impeded. The Purple Heart will not be awarded to PTSD survivors, because to do so would honor what the brass STILL consider "weakness."

Here's some of what happens until the Cathcarts of the world are overthrown. Meet Col. (Big D) Dallas Homas:

Col. Dallas Homas was administratively removed from his position as head of the Army’s Madigan Healthcare System near Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington state, Army officials announced Feb. 20. Col. Homas, a West Point graduate, had headed the medical center since March 2011

Col. Homas was removed during an Army inquiry into the practice of intentionally not diagnosing Post Traumatic Stress Disorder in soldiers. Such a diagnosis entitles one to certain rights, benefits and compensation.

Col. Homas, the commander in charge of making sure soldiers on base are being cared for, denied soldiers their right to medical treatment and other rights to “save taxpayer money”—an absurd statement considering the multi-million dollar defense budget that has unlimited funds for corporate defense contractors, but suddenly “not enough money” when we’re entitled to compensation for legitimate psychological wounds.

Here endeth today's lesson in the oxymoronicity of any notion of military ethics, honor, or respect for the "wounded warriors."

The ODD Man: Oppositional Defiance Disorder

RETIRED...

AFBP: Always LESS Than Meets the Eye

With Brave Sir Barry, there is ALWAYS far LESS than meets the eye.

Here's a recent, (increasingly) desperate attempt by the O'bots to paint more, glossier hagiographic lipstick on the CorpoRat (St.) Pig.

Now, let's compare and contrast with an account that is NOT desperately trying to create/perpetuate the illusion of Hopery/Changery.

Notice anything?

He's getting nearly a half-million fucking dollars a year. So you'd expect him to have done SOMETHING in the first 1000 days; You figure he'd have done SOMETHING in three fucking years.

How about STRENGTHENING the Patriot Act? Happy 'bout that?

How about killing american citizens without a warrant? You okay, cully?

And don't forget to add "fucking the Unions."

Oh, yeah, and scapegoating teachers for "school failure." That's great, too, innit?

Them O'bots sher set the bar low for their sainted. mocha Messiah.

The Bradley Manning Death Watch

Woody reckons the BIGGEST (most significant) difference between Manning and Ellsberg is that Manning is in uniform, and Ellsworth was a civilian. If Ellsworth had been in uniform, he'd STILL be in jail (or dead).

Manning is toast. He's history, a dead man walking.

The CiC has already decided and declared he "broke the law." The drooling drones of the DoD won't buck the boss on this, I gay-ron-TEE you, chers. He'll get life...

Yes, it will be a violation of basic standards of justice, when a murderous NCO can supervise the execution of TWENTY-SEVEN civilians, women and children included, and get a deduction in rank and a fine, while a man who simply REVEALED another grotesque, pre-meditated murder is condemned to prison.

Thank yer "hopery-changery" fella, who has ALREADY determined the guilt of the accused.

This is the same "honorable" mother-fucker who pledged transparency and then who ordered the extra-judicial murder of American citizens abroad.

Sir Barry (tracitly) declares: "We don't need no STEENKEEN TRIALS!"

Don't Ask; Don't Tell!

You wanna remove religion from politics?

Here's how you do it: Stop asking folks what religion they practice.

Really.

That'd fix it. The act of ASKING actually GIVES the fuckers power.

It's irrelevant, anyway, in a secular state.

Just don't ask, don't tell. It's none of my--or anybody's--business.

Hello, Labor? AFBP's Just NOT That Into You

Attention, US workers!

America's First Black President (AFBP) has--and I choose the term advisedly--sold your asses down the river, again.

No, really!

"(Last week) President Obama signed a bill that will make it harder for workers to form a union. This bill, the FAA Reauthorization Act, passed Congress last week despite an outcry from major unions. Dozens of House Democrats voted for it, as did most Democratic senators.

"To appreciate what that means, try to imagine a Republican president and Republican Senate majority leader signing off on a bill with pro-union language despite thundering objections from most big businesses. Your imagination may not be good enough to picture that, which tells you everything you need to know about the asymmetry between Democrats and Republicans when it comes to labor."

They'll fuck you without a second thought.

They're really just NOT THAT INTO you.
Sorry 'bou'dat...

"The Black Man In the White House Sings the Blues"

Woody'd rather go blind than watch the skeevy, gutless, sold-out tool Sir Barry cave in to the GOPhux again...

Barry's such a handsome, talented fellow, it is just too fucking bad he's such a fucking tool and so weak a president...

BTW: I vote. Always. School board, munis, everything. You cannot STOP me from casting my ballot, as much like a brick as I can manage.

I will NOT vote for either major party candidate for "president," however; though I will vote. Last time, it was for Cynthia McKinney. This time, I may write-in "Budreaux, the Dog."

It's the act that matters, not the intended beneficiary. Contrary to the mythology, your vote doesn't actually "count." I am encouraging EVERYONE to vote AWAY from the "duopoly."

Dead Cert

The SCROTUS has announced it will hear arguments in a contentious, affirmative action case, probably sometime during the last stages of the Fall Campaign. It's a case from Texas, in which a white girl claimed she was denied a place in the U T freshman class her year because it went to a black person who was "less qualified."

This is a common complaint in the community of affronted, embittered, frustrated would-be white scholars who are denied their rightful places in the freshman classes of America's elite universities.

The decision can be safely predicted, as of today, from the names of the Justices who voted to hear the case. The Court votes on the cases to which it grands "certiorari," that is, which cases it will consider. It needs the assent of four Justices to bring a case before the Court. SO:

Look, if you can find it, and it should be public record, for the names of the Justices who signed the "writ." If, as I am morally certain, they are "Roberts, Scalia, Alito, and Thomas," then I think it is entirely likely that Affirmative Action will be dealt yet another blow. Especially since, because of her involvement in the case as Solicitor General, the KAGAN will likely recuse herself. Kennedy will be the swing, again. Kennedy has a long history of antipathy toward it.

Decision: 5-3, reversing the lower court rejection of the litigant's claims.

$$$ Bettabuck $$$

The LONG Coup d'Etat--1958-2000, et seq...

The coup's complete. "Business" is installed as the winner. The CorpoRat state Has triumphed, in the USofA.

It was nearly 40 years in the conduct, another 30 in the making.

It's nearly to 60 years--John Birch, the namesake, a Christian "missionary" and CIA spy in China, was killed by Maoist partisans in ' 45, iirc--and you can trace the fundamental elements of the ideology back to the American "red-scare" sympathizers and the anti-FDR plots in the 20s and 30s...The Society bearing his name was founded in '58 by the father of the infamous Koch Bros.

Most Americans don’t realize that the right wing’s main ideas have been pushed for 50 years by the John Birch Society (JBS), a group Barry Goldwater and William F. Buckley Jr. once thought too extreme, but which has since become the intellectual seed bank of the right.

Among other things, the JBS has been active in creating and training the Tea Party, and the sons of a JBS founder, David and Charles Koch, have been a major force within it (they say they’re not JBS members).

Here's a pretty comprehensive list, with links, of the literature on the outfit. They were spotted early, but not really taken seriously.

Big mistake.

The Dough-Re-Them...

It'd be nice if this actually MEANT anything--other than more lavishly fellating press for Ben & Jerry.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Well intentioned, of course. BUT:

No legislative solution can be accomplished without campaign finance reform and campaign finance reform cannot be accomplished without legislative action, which cannot/won't happen without campaign finance reform, which cannot/won't happen without legislative action which...well you get the picture, doncha Hippies?

That's the plain truth of the matter.

Two Thirds Correct

Today is the anniversary of Malcolm X's assassination, in 1965.

Yestiddy, I saw some sort of propaganda poster which featured Sir Barry's profile juxtaposed with those of MLK and Malcolm. The apparent intention was to conflate in a complimentary fashion Sir Barry, whose image was the foremost, with these other two, iconic, liberating, activist presences from the Movement.

I thought about it, and to me, anyway: Other than their all three being (mixed race) "black" males (and two of them having been murdered for their liberatory principles), try as I might--despite NUMEROUS, difficult and exhausting intellectual and historical gymnastics--I could find--and could think of--NO OTHER similarities between them.

Let 'Em Eat (King) Cake!

Mardi Gras is next week, unless I dozed off and missed it.

The confection in the illustration is called a "King cake," and it is a staple of the celebration.

There is a small plastic "baby" (formerly a bean) baked into the cake. If you get the baby in your slice, YOU have to have the next King cake party.

In the old (medieval) days, when only the MEN of a village ate the cake, he who got the "bean" (the "baby") was privileged for the next month to partake of ALL the pleasures the place afforded--the women, the food, the booze, everything--but was destined to be killed at the end of the time.

Tom Robbins explained it all in "Jitterbug Perfume."

Any of my Burque buddies wanna get King Cake and Cafe au lait next Tuesday morning? The ABC Bakery on San Pedro makes 'em...

Laissez le bon Temps roullez!

Who WRITES this Dreck?

Who writes this runny, reeking shit, this feculent, fantastical codswallop, this mire of propaganda, half-truth and mis-information?

So here's another regurgitation from the O'bots, tolling the accomplishments of brave St. Barry, the Capitulator. The thing that truly annoys me is that they expect me to FALL for it! We have not world enough nor time, but:

That deficit reduction was accomplished in no small part on the backs of the poor and the workers' future Social Security benefits.

What "health care reform?" The health insurance INDUSTRY bail-out? The number of people who have so far seen any BENEFITS from this reform is miniscule, and for the rest, well, it's a LONG time til 2014. And the 40 THOUSAND who were dying in 2009 from lack of insurance? Most of 'em are still dying.

How can all the bail-outs have been repaid when the Banksters are still receiving them, in the form of preferential treatment in the law.

Why is REDUCING the number of federal employees in the teeth of a De-Cession and putting ADDITIONAL people out of work, a GOOD thing?

Free trade agreements? You're bragging about free-trade agreements which take USer's jobs and USer plant OUT OF THE COUNTRY? Thanks, Mitt...er, Barry...

Who SAID Ghadaffi could/should be "toppled?" The regime that replaced him made its reputation slaughtering sub-Saharan Africans as soon as it came to power. Is this tacit admission that the USofA should STILL be intervening in the affairs of nations which have done us no harm, and even AFBP ("America's First Black President") subscribes to this gloating fantasy?

Wall Street reform? That's risible. The Dodd-Franks Act. It's a fuuking JOKE.

Why is it deemed an "accomplishment" to have "unified the world against Iran." I mean, apart from the fact that it's just not true. If anything, it's unified the non-western world behind Iran's resistance to US aggression. BOTH Russia and China have supported Iran and will continue to do so. Shamwow does little more than continue the bullying posture that won the Chimperator such "honor" aborad.

Why is DECREASING regulation a good thing? Especially when the regulations he decreased included those protectiung clean air?

No tax dollars may have been spent on the BP clean-up in the Gulf, but no BP or Halliburton, nor any OTHER of the culprits have even been fingerprinted, much less prosecuted for their criminal, murderous malfeasance.

Shall I continue? Jeezus FUCK!

And the drooling dullards just LAP IT THE FUCK UP!

They "Hate" Barry, But They HATE "We, the People" More

That's the EXCUSE they tell ya. But, really? Destroying the middle class to unseat one man? Really? C'mon. Be serious

It's a cover. Get it? A camouflage, a blind, a decoy.

The GOPhux/Rightard/Wackloon attacks on brave Sir Barry (financed entirely by the "Oners" like the Kochs) are the distraction, the covering tactics, while the Oners are actually strategically pursuing their long-term ends of finally and utterly undermining and destroying the conditions of possibility for the survival of anything remotely resembling "democratic self-government." That is the plain, unvarnished truth of the matter. The evidence is everywhere.

"They" GET AWAY with this treachery, this treason, this out-right attack on the very possibility of 'people power,' by aiming their barbs at Sir Barry, the "First Black American President." They vilify him, they malign him, they "denigrate" him. But they need him there.

He--"Black/Kenyan/Muslim/Socialist/anti-Caatholic," etc, almost LITERALLY the "Boogie-man"--provides the irresistible pretext whereby the "Oners" may so plainly and openly incite the drooling dullards against the "BKMSaC" PRESIDENT, that the continuing effects, the entirely predictable eventualities of their fervor are hidden from the very people who generate the most heat, now; the loudest woe, later.

(On Facebook where an earlier version of this rant first appeared, one "MadamKerri Lewis" added: Oners, pronounced Owners, and as in Onerous. They are heavy, they're the oners.) Yes. I do SO like smart people; also in honor of their status at the pinnacle of the power ladder, atop the "1%." I'm trying to get to go "viral" as a meme.)

And on a related topic:

A note to the Hons. John Kasich, Scott Walker, Mitch Daniels, Rick Scott, Chris Christie, y nuestra chingada-puta-Tejana concha, Susana (and all the rest of you fucking union-busting asswholes):

People--OUR (maybe even YOUR) progenitors, our ancestors--gave their lives and limbs, their health and their futures to WIN the labor rights which YOU FUUKING RIGHTARDS are now placidly eviscerating.

It only seems fair to me that a few of THEM--the Oners--ought to pay the same price to rescind those rights that the workers of that earlier age paid to win them!

Humans Are Basically Simple Creatures; "Saps," Really

It's just about conclusively been demonstrated now, that 'homo sapiens' ancestors mingled genetically with other, coextant, contemporary sub-species of homonids when and wherever they found them. There having been no labs around or available then, wherein those genetic materials could have been spliced under surgically sterile conditions, there was basically only one way that might have occurred.

After extracting ancient DNA from the 40,000-year-old bones of Neanderthals, scientists have obtained a draft sequence of the Neanderthal genome, yielding important new insights into the evolution of modern humans.

Among the findings, published in the May 7 (2010) issue of Science, is evidence that shortly after early modern humans migrated out of Africa, some of them interbred with Neanderthals, leaving bits of Neanderthal DNA sequences scattered through the genomes of present-day non-Africans.
"We can now say that, in all probability, there was gene flow from Neanderthals to modern humans," said the paper's first author, Richard E. (Ed) Green of the University of California, Santa Cruz.
Green, now an assistant professor of biomolecular engineering in the Baskin School of Engineering at UC Santa Cruz, began working on the Neanderthal genome as a postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. Svante Pääbo, director of the institute's genetics department, leads the Neanderthal Genome Project, which involves an international consortium of researchers. David Reich, a population geneticist at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, also played a leading role in the new study and the ongoing investigation of the Neanderthal genome.

"The Neanderthal genome sequence allows us to begin to define all those features in our genome where we differ from all other organisms on the planet, including our closest evolutionary relative, the Neanderthals," Pääbo said.
The researchers identified a catalog of genetic features unique to modern humans by comparing the Neanderthal, human, and chimpanzee genomes. Genes involved in cognitive development, skull structure, energy metabolism, and skin morphology and physiology are among those highlighted in the study as likely to have undergone important changes in recent human evolution.
"With this paper, we are just scratching the surface," Green said. "The Neanderthal genome is a goldmine of information about recent human evolution, and it will be put to use for years to come."

As the accompanying/linked illustration/article suggests, neanderthalers were NOT the only sub-species with whom the rapacious 'sapiens' interbred.

Indeed, since reading Paul Shepard's foundational books and essays on human ecology, and other influences, as well, I have come to the conclusion (which Shephard never asserted, that I know of) that we 'sapiens' (we could abbreviate it to "saps"), we saps have basically only two, pretty much unnuanced approaches to other animal life forms--in no particular order, we fuck them and/or we kill and eat them.

BTW: While on the subject of interspecies congress, I want to recommend the novel by John Gardner, "Grendel." It is a retelling of the Beowulf saga from the "monster's" point of view, in which there are hints that the saga is an epic recording the final struggle between "sapiens" and "neanderthaler" cultures, not too different from the struggles of Greece against Troy, really. It's a GREAT book...disturbing and unsettling. It's in the curriculum of schools in some, generally more enlightened locales, where somehow it survives the ascription of 'satanism.' It has also been banned in many places, and annually makes it onto the ALA's list of demonized and forbidden texts, where it is joined by Vonnegut's masterpiece, Slaughterhouse 5, and a host of other classic and classical texts..

Bill Moyers: "Who Was Saul Alinsky? An American Hero!"

The Last Mountain ~~ Trailer: Fuck Massey Energetically

The fight for the last great mountain in America's Appalachian heartland pits the mining giant that wants to explode it to extract the coal within, against the community fighting to preserve the mountain and build a wind farm on its ridges instead. THE LAST MOUNTAIN highlights a battle for the future of energy that affects us all.

"Occupy" Will Have Succeeded When It Draws Crowds THIS Size...

In Woody's, ever-humble opinion (iWho), the OCCUPY movement, here, in the USofA, has a CHANCE to succeed when this many people throng into a public "square" despite (or because) the Oners have killed scores of them and they KNOW more will die.

Moscow, on February, 4th, 2012. Temperature in the street a minus of 18-20 degrees of Celsius. The people against Putin. -Share!

"Up to 120,000 Russian anti-government protesters demand political reform as Putin supporters stage counter-rally"

Personals

A friend recently noted that I do not reveal a LOT about my "personal life" in a self-conscious way on my blogs. Rather, she told me, "you interject your own experiences as a kind of evidence in support of a view-point or a political point or a debating tally."

I had to concur. I recently talked about a particularly painful period in my adolescence--I was 12-13--when I was systematically and continually beaten and bullied by students, and ignored or further abused by the fucking nuns when I complained of it, in a Catholic school in suburban Cleveland. But I mentioned it just to illustrate a point, because I was explaining my empathy for Jessica Ahlquist, the atheist, 16-year-old girl whose complaint forced a Rhode Island PUBLIC school to remove a banner bearing a CATHOLIC prayer, and who was enduring obloquy and threats from fellow students, faculty and the community at large--an old, RC/Portuguese enclave incongruously named Cranston.

But, in fact I was the victim (it's hard NOT to use the word) of relentless physical abuse and attacks from 5th grade through my FIRST go at 9th grade, inclusive; from the autumn of 1956 through the spring of 1960. I was skipped 3rd to 5th by my inept, obsessive, 'exceptionalist'--"They fuck you up, your mum and dad..."-- parents, even though I had been bed ridden most of th receding year with first polio and then rheumatic fever--or maybe it was the other way around. Whereas I had been accepted and befriended by my age-mates, I was the injured bird among the 5th grade boys. And the 6th grade boys, and the 7th grade boys...These fucking incestuous, violent, grim, repressed and repressive sectarian/cult schools, run by bi-polar nuns and preyed upon (one now learns) by pederastic priests. Good times!

(I was an aspirant altar-boy for a while, but I never learned The (in those days Latin ("Confiteor Dei omnipotens?") )Mass sufficiently well to have been permitted to serve any, better-attended, services. I did a fair number of 615 a.m., Cleveland-mid-Winter, grandmother masses, then dropped out. I never achieved the absolute apogee of altar-boy attainment, which was to be selected to serve at Weddings.

Altar-boys who served weddings ALWAYS got tipped, really good money. Twenty, 25 bucks, easy. Each. And EACH ceremony. On a good Saturday at St. Mark's, circa 1955, there might be two or three weddings: Noon, 3, and 6 pm, in spring and summer... It was better money than shoveling lake-effect snow. Easier, too.

So they said.

I never got to do a wedding. Or a funeral, either. They also tipped altar-boys at funerals; and at baptismal masses. But if you worked the Bishop's visit, for Consecrations, there were no tips. It all went straight back to the Diocesan treasury. I've always believed the seminary-educated Mussolini modeled his Fascismo on the structures, both ideological and hierarchical, of the Roman Church.)

I was "large" but clumsy kid, and an easy mark. I was--per force--a loner among those older kids. I think now the illnesses short-circuited some essential step in my physical development, especially where agility and coordination was concerned. Though I loved sports, I was never very accomplished at any of them. I missed lay-ups. I struck-out with the bases loaded. I dropped easy passes. I muffed easy grounders. I don't do "routines" well at ALL. (That just reminded me I need to gobble my meds.)

I made it through Air Force boot camp in one try, in '64. That may be my crowning physical achievement. Even surfing, which I dearly loved: It took me a couple of WEEKS to "get" the trick of standing up. I was not EVER what you'd called "skilled," or "adept." At the TOP of my game, mostly I could avoid hurting others.

Now, with words, on the other hand...

Unrest In Indianapolis Over RTW Legislation Signing

Thousands of union members took to the Super Bowl Village and downtown Indianapolis to protest the state senate’s passage of the controversial right to work bill Wednesday.

Video from Chopper 8 showed the massive crowd pouring out of the statehouse as they took their protest outside. The group rallied on the statehouse steps before leaving for a march through the Super Bowl Village.

At the statehouse, union members, chanting and singing, demanded the names of the Senators who voted for the bill saying the will become targets in the November elections.

Senator Vi Simpson spoke on the Statehouse steps saying “We lost this battle, but the next battle is November of 2012.”

Other Democrats stepped outside to encourage the protesters to continue their fight against the bill.

The crowd then made its way to Georgia Street and marched, chanting, through the Super Bowl Village.

Y/Our forefathers and mothers, sisters and brothers, died in their THOUSANDS to win the gains the Rightard FUCKTWITZ like Daniels, Kasich, Walker, Christie, Scott, and others are reversing.
It seems only fair to me that a few of THEM ought to pay the same price to repeal those gains, won with the blood of protest and dissent, as the original workers who died to win them.

The Republican Governor Mitch Daniels claims that he will sign the state right to work law as soon as it comes to him. A vote in the Indiana Senate could happen on Wednesday. On Monday a Senate committee voted 6 to 1 to approve the bill and send it to the Senate.
Although such legislation is always termed "right to work" legislation it really has nothing to do with a right to work. A better term would be a "free rider"bill since it allows employees to work without paying any union dues. The costs faced by a union in negotiating a contract and defending workers cannot be recouped by forcing employees covered by a contract to pay dues.
Democrats presented amendments but Republicans refused to let them even be debated. When the bill passes into law Indiana will become the 23rd state to have right to work legislation.
Democrats say that the governor wants the legislation passed before a Super Bowl game next weekend. At protests on Monday some protesters had chanted: "Super Bowl, Super Rally" However many labor leaders fear that a protest at the Super Bowl festivities would be counter productive. For more see this article.

The skeevy fux in the NFLPA are NOT going to boycott the Super Bowl in protest of that good Aryan, Mitch Daniels, signing, and their KKKlannis legislarture passing "Right-to-Work" legislation in the state, making the Hoosiers the TWENTY-THIRD state to capitulate to the CorpoRat agenda and willfully roll back the hard-won gains of Labor over the last 150 years.

Rob Parsons, a steelworker from Merrillville, Ind., screams during a union workers protest on the steps of the Statehouse after the Senate voted to pass the right-to-work bill in Indianapolis. (AP)

IOf all you can do is to BOYCOTT the TELEVISED game, and the advertizers who profit from it, then DO IT.

FUCK'EM ALL!

Rocky Mountain Institute: "Re-Inventing Fire!"

Building off of the "Reinventing Fire: Change Energy Use Forever" video, this is the first of four presentations that dig deeper. Stay tuned for more video's, and be the first to know by subscribing to our Youtube channel, following RMI on Twitter or joining our facebook page.



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Re-Inventing "Cars"