Demon Lords come from us.

Owners of corporations, CEO's, extremely wealthy corporate board members generally come from a stock of ivy league entrepreneurs, nepotistic bastards, and savvy investors with the means and know how to make a shit ton of money. I look around and that's what I see in these people, or most at least, trying to gain power to the degree their education, resource pedigree, and their faculties conspire. Corporations exist to serve the corporation, to defend the business they're doing, to defend the profits, to ensure the stock dividends. It makes sense does it not? It's efficient for making money, and people everywhere are interested in making money. It's in degree of course, some just want to make money to own a house, a car, and some other junk. Raise a family and so on. Others don't just want money, they want power, and they conspire to rise to the top of the corporate ladder. They become the CEO's, the owners, the fuckwits that lord themselves over the pyramid beneath them. They will do everything to hold that position, as the classes below do everything to hold there spots. Some few, like us, want out. Do we? Maybe we just want some lesser degree of power, some freedom to exploit a land base on our own terms, for our own needs. Owning land is what exactly? Are we not acting CEO's of the stead? Deciding what lives or dies, what grows and doesn't grow, what is cut and corded, who can and cannot walk across? Are we not armed in its defense? Animals we call livestock. Pretty corrupt and vain word is livestock, no? Are we more deserving of liberty than a goat? Are we not just a mammal like the rest? All of which is designed by necessity, a characteristic of the epoch.

Conjecturing more, what I don't believe is they, the rich and powerful, sit behind close doors conspiring to enslave the peasantry, forcing capitalism on everyone, and devising methods of manipulation that is anything more than finding a way to create wealth. They want to make money, and they want power, period. It's merely a symptom of the enclosure development theory.The corporate system is highly efficient in that endeavor, much moreso than mom and pop business of the 19th century pioneer town that some would defend, and even moreso than the medieval feudalism of the dark ages. Every new generation of people since all this craziness got started has been jockeying for a slice of that pie, that power, that accrual. Some succeed more than others, we are not all equal in ability or cleverness. Antonio Salieri, Mozart's nemesis, would agree with this.

Conjecturing more, I believe it all started when man first settled down to farm instead of wander and hunt. Some genius of man found a way to have more than the other and to lord it by force or by indoctrinating passive acceptance into the labor force. Those alpha monkey's took advantage of crop surplus and then the marketing began, the engineering of tools to sell; not just to use, and every other widget servicing the growing needs of a malignant settlement. I believe this psychopathy exists to some measure in any baby born, for we are learning more everyday that newborns are not born "tabula rasa," they have certain characteristics that potentiate on what plays out in their social environment. It's why the HG way of living was a powerful check on these undesirable characteristics. It taught by example that an individual should share instead of horde, and a natural communion with close quarter living creates a system apart from the pyramid mess that grew out of enclosures and farms. On the other hand, today's societies have no ethical check on capitalistic behavior, greediness, and usurious endeavors. Instead, it's encouraged and co-opted into a new ethos, a praise worthy proof of our abilities and intellect. You're rich, so you must be very clever, very industrious, a real go getter. The truth is you're really an exploiter, a miser, a boss at the slave pits, a demon lord of demons. This treasure is not in spirit, it's in flesh. However, let it be understood also, if you wish to comprehend my thinking in true, that we're all together in this thing called civilization, and we're all from those monkey's that first dared the savannah's. It is not fair in my view to label a corporate CEO a born villain, anymore then a hard hitting Crip gangster is born with tatoo's. It's a bad crop of men that Capitalism makes fertile. We are all caught up in this mix, and it serves a violent purpose to brand our man kin wicked and diabolical while presenting ourselves as clean from any such social filth. I thought the great guru's of old taught us to love everyone? If you can't do that, why not at least try to understand these powers, their motivations, their corrupted experiences instead of simplify the evil like the drama of a Saturday morning cartoon. Muhahahahahah, with the lightening bolt thundering in the background when thoughts of the PTB arise. I see it as a bit more complicated than that because these powers are monkey kin just like me in flesh. Not in perspective or vision perhaps, but steaders and bosses the same in larger degree than my own capacity. Do I not keep dogs leased, fenced, and obedient? How about those chickens and pigs perhaps. How about our children? Do we not demand obedience? Do we not train the next generation in the culture we choose, born to, or otherwise demonstrate? Consider the parents the PTB have.

I don't think TPTB see that what they're doing is morally wrong. They have a different perspective, different values fostered by their families, diverse sources of education, and widely different talents in controlling those around them. Subject to their own peculiar stereotypes and discriminatory vices. As we in our degree control our little worlds. A boiling pot of trouble that occasional spills over like so many wars.

So in conclusion, I say we to mean they come from the we, the people, the global family of man. All of which deserve to be understood as to understand. Also, to suggest the only solution, a totally miraculous event, would be the people, the mass of humanity, would open their eyes for once, to wake up in mass from the stupor of meaningless labors, and to do the total opposite of what's been done since Mesopotamia. Tribalize, meet their own needs without genocidally carving out their territory from brother bear and sister Salmon, and to develop the animus as much as the animal. To get along agreeably with only the occasional skirmish to weigh the warriors testes. That is what all the other animals do, and I propose might be the enlightened society so imagined by the great thinkers.

Weathering our Error

Hence, the error of our ways, our ways of living. It is an error that we can weather and persevere for only as long as a good constitution allows, but there's a point where it cannot, we cannot, and it will be that time. It is the penance of living when tied to the till. That which is taken must be given back.  This is not the ancient world anymore where humans lived as they should: together, close, and raised in communion with a singular vision. Sewn together with culture, song, and dance. Where work was play, and hunting was a ritual. Where man was a man, free from laws that did not originate from the universe within. As Euclid offered geometric proof, their life was the theorem in practice. It bore good fruit. The free whales swimming in our polluted oceans now and the few wolves still left hunting are all free thinkers, free creatures, and mans kin to the same. We have become something else from that which we originated.

So here we are, plop down in a world of ecocidal perdition, anachronistically mismatched for a life that is out of order with the animal. Watch a cycad unfold or a dragonfly maneuver over a dazzling field of daisy's is to understand the old ways. They are not out of order and their needs are met, so why do we fret?  "I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself. A bird will fall frozen dead from a bough without ever having felt sorry for itself." - DH Lawrence. Why? We are different now, we live in our futures, obsess over that which has not happened yet, that which may only happen but hasn't. We form a knot in our thinking, and cannot find our way back to the present. Right now you breathe....make note, for it is better than some. I know this, I live and weave a life in out of others disease and disability, and I cannot help but have lingering residues of their pain. I carry it around like so much mud and dirt placed in camouflage. I say what can only be said - live presently, the future does not exist, it is a fiction made in the human mind. Focus on your immediate constitution, and trouble not with tomorrow.

Now for the practicality of it, what can you do? If you have the means have plenty of stored food that would not necessitate heavy toil in procuring more. How much is what you expect or want in the life that is left. Unknowable for true, but not impossible to tempt. Take a stock of all family, friends, and neighbors that you have established trust and communion with and flame those bonds right on into the collapse. Do it now, and do it everyday hence. That means calling them regularly, sharing with them, and above all teaching those without any understanding of that which you currently do, and why you do it. This work may be more taxing than the till and milking, but equally important. The grace of old age naturally gives talent to this just as a tree sheds leaves in the fall for the benefit of the Earth below. The pattern is the same in all things - know it. Meditate daily, be alive now, and the rest will unfold without your worries.

This is nothing new, as "nothing is new under heaven." Wisdom is an echo of the seers calling out from everywhere.

A shutdown is long overdue

What, we can't us the people's credit card anymore?

16 trillion in debt, a 821 billion dollar deficit, and 125 trillion in unfunded liabilities. How long do we want to pretend that the US is solvent? Economic recovery? It's debt, and nothing but debt. Concrete real economic outcome is pathetic. Your buying power has been destroyed by federal reserve machinations and Wall st corruption that all political parties and presidents have been culpable to. It's time we realize the hocus pocus spell of nationalism and reap the whirlwind.

People are naturally upset and horrified at waking up to their governments inability to fund itself, but truth be told we haven't funded ourselves in decades. Not since Andrew Jackson in fact back in 1835! We have incessantly incurred more and more debt to spurn economic growth that it's now become a national pastime, a racket of convention. It's literally a Ponzi scheme that is setup to make a tiny percent prosper. A pyramid of haves, and have nots. A ideological machine that gobbles up finite resources in order to metastasize human productivity. We have our heads too buried in the virtual thought calabra of blogs and facebook to be taken seriously by those merrily robbing us. Those folks are the ones smiling every time the fed says they will continue to pump and ease interest rates, the same ones that are relieved when the debt ceiling is increased, the same ones that smile when the petrodollar is forced onto the Middle East oil barons. They are robbing farmers, mechanics, nurses, teachers, truck drivers, salesman, secretaries, and all the rest by subtly stealing their buying power and giving it to the ones with Lear jets and offshore bank accounts. Political power is fully vested with this national mafia. You don't pay, we destroy your life. You still don't pay, we destroy those that will.  

So you think the Republicans are awful for making demands, than I say where's the better leadership from their opposites, the Democrats? Where's a balanced budget that would begin to pay the debt (not just the deficit by way of reducing interest rates on said debt) and deal with this nations long term unfunded liabilities? Instead, we get more borrowing, more use of capitalized medicine to rape people when they are at their most vulnerable (Obamacare) - it does nothing about actual treatment and drug costs which is the root of what's impossible for people, more debt spending to falsely produce a positive GDP, and continued shenanigans from the Fed to continue 2% annualized inflation to pretend we have a real economy. Based on that why shouldn't this government shutdown? Why shouldn't the elected GOP (however repulsive they may be to some) - the people put them there by way of a vote - withdraw consent to incur more debt? Why shouldn't we realize that we're dependent on the petrodollar? Because the old will suffer? Because the gov proles, obedient to the nationalistic fervor that is unwarranted patriotism over illegal wars and global atrocities, won't get a paycheck? Yeah, I care about people, but I also care about a living world too. I care about peace and forgiveness. I care about communities who are instead acting like government two stepping serfs. A ugly painful default is exactly what we need to wake people up and stop the global engine that's melting our glaciers and ice caps, an engine that is sending us all straight to McCarthy's road. Enough is enough.
I have no illusions that the same political parties won't bargain before it's too late, and they will because they're too scared of the consequences. I'm too scared of the consequences if they do. We should all be too scared, but we're not. We're continuing to take sides politically by blaming one side or the other, and this right here shows who really wants to do what is necessary to stop the planetary genocide. It's definitely not the Republican ideology, and neither is it the Democrats hiding behind the poor, the minorities, and the old to justify the continued rape of the planet and the petrodollar murders.

You support this government, you are supporting hell on Earth for the whole. It's well past time we find a way to stop our support and withdraw consent. It's totally peaceful to do so. As Dignity said, it's a state of mind that we believe we need a functioning government to carry on. Carry on with what? Carry on with Capitalistic destruction so we can continue to be clowns and baffoons over trivial nonsense and shopping? The old don't need a government check, they need us. They need their people, the person next door to step up to the plate and honor them with compassion and service. That's the nationalistic campaign I'd like to see. That's the real pride of a nation when its people say "HELL NO," we won't support anymore bombings, anymore Wall st ensurient swinishness, anymore consumption for the sake of clean water and air, anymore spying of our citizens, anymore imprisonment of our distressed shut out people's, anymore desperately sad forays into our warp societies uncaring corpulence, anymore maddening incidences of mass shootings, child raping, shooting down innocents, gang banging glory hoping street thugs, and Takeisha's litter of twelve for the sake of this month's need for bling bling. It's time we say "no," we won't pay for that. We won't pay unless we are obeyed by the rich minority. It's we that have made them rich by our consent to be pilfered. It's we that have left our brother out in the cold needing a government check. It's we that have said, sure, go ahead, I'll pay. It's not enough to say, "well it wasn't me, I have no choice, I'm nobody, I'm the minority," that's the trick of the matrix, the trick of the tube, the programming, that vices our embroglio to do nothing.

Many people do exactly that, we withdraw consent and live below the radars. It's not enough though. We need to campaign it, to do everything possible to usurp the financial support that enslaves us, and most importantly we must support this shutdown. I support this shutdown. Not because of the GOP masquerading as being fiscally conservative, but because letting things continue is suicidal for all of us. For the entire world. Economic growth is murder.

Polls lose to the lies

When has a poll "really" stopped a dictator (in terms of the military) president, and don't kid yourself about Obama? I hear  We are going to attack Syria. We are going to conduct ourselves like we did in Libya - air support, missile attacks, CIA backed rebels. Our troops are war wary and tied up in Afghanistan, and Libya it - our national interests -can be achieved without significant ground forces.

On the way home from work this morning I heard on NPR that Britain, Canada, and the US; basically all the Western allies, are positioning their AF and Navy in and around Syria. They are saying over and over again, "all signs" point to Assad's regime who carried out a series of chemical attacks. I still don't know what these dubious signs might be because none of the media sources are telling us what they are. US officials are stating emphatically, "it's too late for Syria" it doesn't matter what the UN inspectors find, if they don't get shot in the process (several reports of them taking fire), because the site has been corrupted. I hear our "Intel" says Assad did it. Our Intel? Like the kind of Intel Colin Powell brought before the UN to state unequivocally and undeniably that Saddam Hussein had mobile chemical trucks, and huge stockpiles of WMD for which his regime posed a grave danger to the world by supplying the Axis of Evil with? See for yourself if you don't recall this lie, and it was before the whole world, the entire international community,

This one allegation was used to perpetrate an illegal war that ultimately put our young men and women into the meat grinder that was Iraq and led to a decade long sectarian holocaust. The number of dead is staggering.

http://www.nbcnews.com/id/7634313/ns/world_news-mideast_n_africa/t/cias-final-report-no-wmd-found-iraq/
No WMD were found in Iraq, and the US still got away with the illegal invasion, and no one held the US accountable except the list of nations we attacked and planned to attack in the years ahead. Did Americans rise up against their government after it was caught in a bold face lie? Nope. A few small protests that were largely persecuted by the media or shunned like the Dixie chicks. It seems blow jobs under the desk are more impeachable offenses than lying, criminality, and imperial invasion while also running into the ground the fiscal future of every last citizens so brokers, big banks, and their squiddies can live the high life. It's seems a simple, "I'm sorry, we were wrong" is good enough for us to bend over and take it.


So don't tell me that because of a poll we're going to keep Obama from following through with the geopolitical grand scheme that was orchestrated back on 9/11. The next 9/11 type event will happen. The first and last inflamed ME country on that list is Iran. Codename - Babylon.

I believe a series of diplomatic ties will be severed with Russia over Syria, and at some point there will be a ramp of both Russia and China's engagement with the West. Iran will be a nail in the coffin for providing the level of tension required for a confrontation between super power nations, and they are armed to the teeth with the real WMD. Suicidal, yes, but business as usual cannot be maintained, and the global players know this - just as we know this.


When you hear this kind of talk on a MSM source, you know what comes next. Historical pretext abounds. You heard the same spiel in the ramp up to every single invasion and air bombardment we've orchestrated in the last 12 years. It's not like we're reading about this on Above Top Secret or zerohedge.

Missile attacks against Assad's military installations more than likely will come in the next several days. I'm pretty confident of this. It will be illegal because Congress passed no declaration of war, but that has never stopped us, not with constitutional lawyers reworking executive powers. Then the CIA backed rebels will take Damascus. Other than condemnation, I not sure what Russia's response will be when it all goes down. However, Putin isn't afraid to use his military, and his tactics are pretty "fuck you" gutsy if you remember the whole Georgia incident. They may take other steps, like cutting off fuel this Winter, or waiting for further military buildup of their assets in the region as everything shifts to Iran. Things might move to Iran even quicker as Assad's regime folds. We're down to fewer pieces on Brzezinski's board, and all sides are looking for "checkmate." 

 

But never once did we - the people - step up and stop the government criminality beyond pathetic demonstrations that the media could easily marginalize and dismiss. There's not even a generalized withdrawal of consent. Legal and passive resistance - don't join the military, don't vote the same fuckers who were caught lying back in, and press for impeachment of all officials caught lying to the American people. We just didn't do it. However, we did sign up, we did vote the liars back in, and we didn't impeach Bush and it looks even less likely for Obama. Too much trouble I guess, and it seems most people really do believe the media spun stories meant to inspire patriotism, the good will of soldiers, and flag waving. Democrats watch CNN and Republicans watch Fox. Their eyes practically sparkle with apple pie.




A nation's pride should be earned, not bleated like a broken record.

Karmic interludes on a burning ship

When the ship is on fire you don't sit around and debate whether it is or not. You grab a hose and point. It's all hands on deck. It's not a time to practice the socratic method in determining how bad it is. Industrial civilization is the fuel for this fire. Purge the boat of fuel, use the fire hoses to suppress the fire - turn the lights off, shut down the power plants, decommission the nukes, stop the incessant slaughter houses, chicken mills, crop dusting, tractor dozing, car making, mining, damming, road building, refining, drilling, processing, manufacturing, printing, tree cutting, harpooning, commercial fishing, and stop making babies. Leave the grass, tree's, bee's, flowers, bugs, wolves, and fish alone for a while. Let go. Trust the planet because it knows how to give everything we need.



We could indeed put the fires out if we acknowledge the ship is on fire and come to attention. Look to your right, look to your left, and grab a fire hose. On command, point and work back and forth in a cone pattern working your way through the ship. The analogy is simple because it needs to be, we're really not that smart, more amygdala driven than anything.

Our pleasure seeking fat brain is largely governed by that little thing. The ship is our world, the Earth; which is not to mean it's "our" Earth because it's not, but rather we're the Earth's animal. We have started a fire that began deep down in the holds and has spread throughout the ship, that fire is civilization. It was one thing to have a fire out on the deck, controlled by ecological checks and balances (predation and natural diseases), but it's entirely different to let it burn everywhere. We are acting like yeast in vat of sugar, doomed to a yeast apocalypse. If we don't want the ship to be a floating burned out hull we better start stomping out the fires which are now burning everywhere. That fire is a 10,000 year old living arrangement we have been orchestrating from one spot of the ship to the other, and now it's everywhere. Stomping it out is merely snuffing out the fire's air - our consent to live that way. Once we do that, sit back, clean things up, and don't start anymore fires.  But we're not going to do this to any degree that matters, not willingly at any rate, and so we're going to have to embrace the mortality of the species. Homo Sapiens cannot live without the tree's, the water, the bee's, and all the stuff that really matters, the stuff of legend and natural power. Real power laugh's at our rough-necking and god want-a-be hubris, and that power is always ready to drop us to our knee's when the fancy arises. Just the mighty sun alone could slap mankind back to the stone age with one magnetic plasma belch pointed at us like a loaded shotgun. How beautiful the aurora's would be, no? The exploding transformers and substations would be like sparklers on the fourth of July, celebrated by the frogs and fireflies. Smile - I would. More likely though, our own fires will burn us. Consider if you would the Fukushima reactor cores, now melting deep below their once tidy but broken containment shells, flushing and hissing high energy matter capable of zapping DNA into malignant manifestations. See here The fire is racing out to the ocean seeding it with cancer causing death to be washed ashore on the tides and consumed by the animals feasting on the flesh. We did that, and have taken no lessen from it. No, we do the complete opposite and are busily making more of these suicidal sources of power. We have made a fine tool for seppuku, but it's a blade we stick in everything. You have to wonder about a specie so enamored with energy that it seeks it at all costs, that we will pay anything, even with our lives. If only we had the logic of  Star Trek's Vulcan species. I suspect some planet in the universe has a species that might. When I die, I hope my molecules dissolve and buzz out transcendentally to that planet. I'd like to be reconstituted somewhere where the intelligent animals know not to open Pandora's box because they know and understand where the power really is. They are content not to expand and grow like a rogue cancer cell.

We had a nice run I suppose, while taking out a bunch of dazzling creatures in the process, but our specie longevity is nothing like the cycad revolutus, Alligator mississippiensis, or Limulus polyphemus. Those species have proven their superiority over homo sapiens and they have small brains or none at all. Cyanobacteria even more so. Our dazzling display of fire welding and dominance will wane and ebb into something else entirely. Growing, climaxing, withering, and then dying - the real meaning of life. The only thing immortal is this cycle. The Buddhist call it the wheel of Samsara, the wheel of life. Birth, life, death, over and over again. Karmic interludes of creation and destruction, and we are in the destruction phase of that cycle. All the things we, as a species, have taken will by necessity be taken back. Our extinction will flip the energy see-saw back the other way. All the carbon, water, and light will dissolve out of us and back into the soil, the water, and the air. How long that takes is immaterial because time has no meaning to the universe. It is always just "now."

So grab a hose and spray away, but just remember, until your neighbor and his neighbor come to attention and start understanding what all this really means, you'll be using a garden hose against a raging firestorm. Humans are really only powerful when working together as a team, and that's what it will take to put these fires out. If we're lucky, and if they do come to attention I bet most of the ship will be toast. Can't you smell it? Siberia & Colorado

 

So if any of you survive could you not play with the matches again? This mother planet will give you everything you need to be content without the fires of civilization. Look around, the other animals get what they need without burning the ship down. "Stupid is as stupid does."

Back to Eden

 I do not see where agricultural based civilization (historically) is truly sustainable, healthy for us, or one that promotes egalitarian behavior in our species. Anthropological and archeological research on how hunter gatherer's live, their overall physical health (if they lived past 5 years of age), and their sustainability supports this (existed a 100 times longer than agricultural man and still exist). I see our culture today largely as a form of human domestication where our individual independence has been stripped, our bodies weakened, diseased (90% of diseases have their origin with animal domestication, city life, pollution, field toil, etc), and gone soft by too much food and lack of physical challenges that are true to our instinctive natures. We have a culture that does not fit our form and function as an animal. Land enclosure, property, and all the rest of crop growing requirements to meet the needs of civilization and the inevitable growth in population will always necessitate the formation of a managed organization that we call government, eventually causes wealth accrual and selfishness, and there is always the issue of land dominance over natural ecosystems and other groups of humans. For every acre of cropland we use is an acre taken away from the wild and every other creature that needs it to live. It also necessitates animal husbandry which is a known vector and reservoir for diseases that modern medicine must then seek vaccines and cures for. It's a fact that only a small amount of healthcare is actually necessary for illness and injury (trauma, environmental opportunistic infection, and the complications of child birth) outside the confines of civilization based on agriculture and human exploitation. I can think of no case where it did not go patriarchal either, instead of a egalitarian community where sexes are considered equal. In fact, some HG's were matriarchal because the woman was seen as the creator, something to be respected. Furthermore, agricultural civilization fosters rampant population growth and greater land exploitation to meet the needs for inevitable growth arising out of surplus yield and storage. Agriculture requires great labor without fossil fuels and necessitates for more offspring than is justified by a HG culture. The Kung for example, a hunter gatherer group in the Kalahari, generally have one child every 4 years vs. 1 every year with pre-fossil fuel agriculture. They achieve this by a system of shared breast-feeding beyond what is typical in agricultural culture. A farming woman does not have the time to feed her infant exactly every two hours with the frequency to maintain infertility with any degree of success. Numerous studies have shown this to be true even if modern women breast feed exclusively. It's about frequency and duration that count towards amenorrhea and subsequent infertility. Modern industrialization may in fact be reducing the need for more children as evidence by the number of average offspring in first world nations but the population is still growing because of this cultures need to extend lifespans well past their prime years, years that could have been spent loving, sharing, and socializing with each other instead of working at some cubicle or soulless occupation, to maintain the suffering convalescent through another decade of decrepidity. It also shifts true population needs onto developing nations where population is soaring, and nearly every baby survives today whether it really should or not. Either we all adopt a one child policy, a pipe dream and a oppressive government to try and enforce it, or tragic things just have to happen naturally. Nature is indifferent about such loss and moves on without shedding any tears. Also, exploitation has gone global in order to unequally distribute the planets wealth, resources, and food to a fraction that see's itself as superior to the rest.

I'm not saying HG is a utopia because utopia does not exist, and I'm not romanicitizing their way of life either - it's sometimes very hard and short, but if humans are going to survive in the long term, thrive with a higher quality of life (on average HG's work 2-3 hrs a day getting food), and maintain a living ecosystem here on this planet it is one we must learn to hybridize (using the knowledge that stems from western civilization and science) and re-establish hunting/gathering in the years ahead. Their way of life is better for our natural form and function, it is better than a agricultural way of life - this is just my opinion having studied history and done the "grow your own food" thing, and I'm fully aware I'm a hypocrite. Even a hypocrite can say what is true. Growing food necessitates control, the exclusion of wild living things - or at least most of them, unequal distribution of food (some fields are going to do better), the need to protect property, requires great toil without fossil fuels, is patriarchal,  requires government, surplus and efficiency creates the need for a unit of exchange that eventually becomes money, prisons are needed once laws are created to manage the unhealthy population densities, and then eventually it all leads to wars between covetous agricultural city states. The malignant efficiency and dominance over nature is absent with hunter-gatherers, and that's why I argue they are singularly sustainable and good for mother nature even if that means they lose more babies and necessitate life without a/c and deodorant. I believe there might be a way to take modern knowledge and improve on hunter-gatherers without philosophically altering their way of life or their methods of sustainability.

I'm a domestic modern human, born and raised in this malignant culture, and I have few skills, physical adaptations, or knowledge to fully return to a hunter gatherer way of life. Not to mention we have largely exploited and destroyed most, if not all, of the great hunter/gatherer resources that once existed, a world that when looking at the diversity and abundance of the past anyone would equate with a Eden. Proof enough we ate the wrong proverbial fruit. Forbidden knowledge indeed!

I'm not naïve, I see no way around a great dieoff in our species, quite possibly our extinction and 90% of all life on the planet, or any serious consideration by anyone with the power to do so in changing our culture of dominance, government, wealth, pathetic physical weakness, and war. We need civilization to collapse, be destroyed, whatever, and the wild Eden of the ancient world to return. Instead, what I see is a world full of domesticated humans steadfastly clinging to a way of life that is wholly not sustainable and horribly exploitive of each other and the planet. We understand or know nothing else. So be it, and may hell beckon.

 (New blog being created to record my quest to adopt a hunter-gather lifestyle and a return to being human even if totally futile)

Dancing in our Cage

I'm at work listening to 80's music. I'm looking at video's on ancient home building and wild living while munching on my wife's dehydrated apples dipped in local MS honey, honey that I bought from a local farmer trying to make ends meet at a roadside market in Popularville, MS. We didn't plant our watermelon in time for the 4th, but in another 2 weeks they'll be ready. Plenty of Zucchini's and squash though. They're good but my vision is a huge berry harvest, fruit tree's, and time to fish as I watch the world implode. Such wishful thinking inside my modernity cage. 

Meanwhile, my saltwater fishing grounds is now inundated with coastal tourists who are out celebrating on the beaches. Probably sticking sparklers in dead Redfish that litter the beach. Some kid, not knowing any better, is using a tar ball as part of his sand castle. The scavenging birds circle and strangely avoid the dead pickings, and the bloated corpses have but a few flies buzzing at the gills. Dead Crab, of all stages, float in the shallow tidal flats, while kids wearing arm inflatables wage war with their siblings using wet noodles bought at Walmart. The smell of sun tan lotion fills the air as the outer sheath of a tampon floats riding a incoming wave. Every now and then some whiff of degraded oil comes from somewhere unknown, and the momma's complain when their kids come running with a smelly festering fish they think is neat. A brown mucous that looks like a milkshake floats in stagnant low tide pools caught between the MS alluvial sand bars and the open Gulf. It stinks and is slimy. People report this and are told by public authorities, "oh, it's just sea foam, it's just a Summer time fish kill, just normal...." Please shop at our stores, wave a flag, support the troops!

People are talking about a person that died after swimming off Grande Isle's beaches and sickened a few others with flesh eating bacteria. http://www.fox8live.com/story/22747257/one-dies-three-other-louisiana-residents-afflicted-with-flesh-eating-virus  I have seen this, a HORRIBLE way to die. You rot and dissolve until your heart skips and quivers from so much toxemia and then stops, antibiotics do nothing. It has people's attention, some, and let's hope a few skip the whole "let's play in the water" thing. I perfectly natural thing to do, but not so much now, this age of freedoms and comfort - "isn't that what they told us?"

Tuesday, when I was free from my job's demands, demands of the sickly "comfortable" people, my wife and I went scavenging for oyster shells along the beach between Long Beach and Pass Christian. We were talking about native american basket weaving and how to learn to do it, and we were collecting mother of pearl covered shells to craft some jewelry made of native materials. The day was not uncomfortably hot as a Summer thunderstorm moved over the bay and cast a high shadow on the selected beach to scavenge. There was only a few people laid out with towel or chair watching their kids play. A sign with a list of 20 different things forbidden by the local law boards greeted us at the boardwalk where we parked. No dogs, no bikes, no bottles, yada, yada, yada. All legal back in my youth, and I can still remember taking my dogs there to watch them dive into the surf or share a path of footprints leading to no where. Their companionship was a heavy rapid breath as I mourned the memory. The loose dry sand was a nice challenge that got our hearts beating a little faster as we made our way to the waters edge. The Gulf waters swirled around my feet and were warm and at times surprisingly cool as I milled from pool to pool looking at dead fish, dead crab, dead bait fish, and scummy stuff. Then of course, feeling revulsed, I retreated to the shoreline to continue my conversation about hunter-gatherers with my wife. Doing our best to fantasize while the great sea rolled in its dead. I came upon a strange shell that I correctly surmised was part of a sea turtle...then another, and another, until just a empty skull and beak half buried in the sand laid strewn far from all the other bits and pieces. I had four turtle shell pieces, like bony shoulder blades with a joint for rib or arm. A pair of middle aged locals, looking as if they had spent too much time smoking and drinking, came strolling towards us fast. "Hey, did you guys see a turtle anywhere?" I showed him the shell pieces, asked if this was part of a turtle, I wasn't sure 100% since I had never dissected a sea turtle. "Yep, those are shell pieces." He said, "don't post any pic's of them online, you might get into a lot of trouble because they're endangered." We then got to talking, and he suggested I report our findngs of the tar ball patches, the dead turtle, and brown scum to the NRC. He said he was a local that was involved in the BP spill cleanup, and is now sick, and is part of a class action lawsuit. Showed me his flaky scale covered arms while talking about headaches and frequent illness. I told him that I too worked the spill, and we swapped stories of that horrible year. I've had more headaches than I once did, but I have always figured it was related to my age, sleep patterns from work, weight, the food I was eating, etc, all which could be the real reason for complaints totally unconnected with this huge spill. No scaly skin or breathing trouble, although I can honestly say that I get sick now twice a year instead of one, usually starting out as a sore throat or fever. BP related, who knows, but he encouraged me to go Waveland and have my blood tested. I knew about this local initiative being funded by some attorney in FL who was testing the blood of cleanup workers, but here's the thing, we live in a world of chemicals and everyone's blood and tissues is contaminated with synthetic chemicals from our soaps, makeup, food, drinks, air we breathe, pillows we sleep on, and the stuff we touch....it's a toxic soup that possibly leads to all sorts of bad effects which we further treat with more pharmaceuticals later in life. Making specific connections to any one chemical is near impossible. None of that matters to the locals who are rightfully angry with a company that still leaves oil on the beaches, who has fought paying money out at every opportunity, and essentially bribed the local politico stretching all the way back to Washington to essentially white wash the effect and move on to even more drilling. We know something's wrong with the waters....we can see it. In time there will be more spills, maybe one that's even worse, and no amount of government safety oversight can prevent it from happening. It's a known statistical risk that results in repeated small spills, leaks, and environmental assaults that are widely accepted as the price to pay for our modern civilization which continues to breed dependent, sick, and addled humans that pace the cages industrial civilization has built for them. We can complain and protest, but we can't get out.

Born and raised in them, we know and understand little else, because none were alive in a time when the waters were clean, the air free of pollutants, and the animals were in abundance. We grew up watching movies that show monkeys attacking each other with stones until a big obelisk makes them smarter. They then turn bone to club and go rampaging across the globe until we're wearing all white linen floating in space. You dare declare it wasn't like that, and people will say you're the one living in a fantasy world. If we can't keep our planet clean and alive, why even bother to go out into space? These memes and ideas seem floated everywhere caught in the collective consciousness of a race of man suffering from a shrinking neocortex (http://phys.org/news/2011-06-farming-blame-size-brains.html) and one that is assaulted by a million virtual images a day by the same system that is destroying everything. The bars are visible, the jailers with their guns, tazers, and pepper spray pacing our cages, and the cell TV's flashing mind numbing ideas (America, America, America, how great though are, for liberty...)at us unending. They're putting up camera's every where, and searching your cell for contraband. You're only reprieve is some outside time that is allowed between making something for the prison or servicing it, where you get but a small taste of what once was. There are rules though, and the outside is looking worse and worse with each visit. Riots are breaking out, shanks are being made, and the lights of your cell block are flickering. Cracks are forming everywhere and the outside Sun grows hotter. Will you live to breathe free air once more like your ancient ancestors, however polluted it may be? Independence day should mean something beyond what our prison TV says it means.

Halls of Blood in Tomorrow Land

Every now and then I get a good glimpse of what we might expect in tomorrows ER's because every now and then it is tomorrow. I have worked in cities like New Orleans and I am not unaccustomed to long delays, blood dripping from beds, and staff rushing from room to room after a surprise hit by multiple pt's, but all that pales to a third world war zone that will by its purpose, a self feeding blood orgy, will one day swoop in on our first world hospitals with its own shock and awe. We will either adapt quickly or exhaust ourselves under a flesh colored wave of carnage. I expect both, and I don't see the stamina for it for more than a few weeks. Coffee can only do so much and compassion has a fuel tank. Once depleted I see dusty corridors and rodents crawling in and out of the red hazardous marked bags lining the walls and corners. There will be echoes and emptiness that only the shades of the dying hear and see.

"Memorial, I'm bringing in a 49 year old female that is confused and restless after falling in the bathroom. She has a open fracture of the left tibia with the bone protruding through the skin, good pedal pulses distal to injury, swelling of the calf and tissue with blood and edema. Bleeding is under control and leg splinted. Pupils are equal and reactive to light, skin cool and clammy, and pt is vomiting enroute. I have been attempting to establish an IV without success. Blood sugar was 127 mg/dl. Oxygen saturation levels on 91% on room air, oxygen being administered via non-rebreather  facemask at 15 liters per minutes. ECG shows sinus tachycardia at 122 beats per minute. Respirations are 28 and labored," repeated to the charge nurse via hospital net. "Be advised we have no ICU beds available at this time, advise to divert to Shoring hospital" the nurse said. "We are less than thirty seconds from your ER and the other facility has no ortho capability tonight." I replied. The nurse in disgust hangs up. We pull up to the ER coming in hot *lights going* and rush the pt into the crammed ER. The hospital has 12 ER beds total, and only 7 acute beds, beds that are in rooms big enough for a small team of providers, all of which were occupied this evening. Additionally, two ambulance pt's were ahead of me waiting against the walls on their respective stretchers for a bed. One was an old man with a head injury and a blood pressure of 93/40 oozing blood from behind a wad of bandages. Pt was barely conscious. Nurses were paying no heed to the medics standing hopelessly by their gurneys. My woman began to projectile puke at the nurses threading their way from one room through the line of stretchers to another. One of them tossed a large emesis basin our way to give her something better to aim at. In true macob fascination I watched the corn kernels float in the sour puke filling the pink basin and counted the blood drops dripping off the end of our stretcher. "One, two, three, four...." A coping diversion for what was going to be a long wait. We could not leave our pt until a report had been given to a nurse and the pt moved to their ER bed. A tall Indian doctor (by Indian, I mean India), who I did not care for, came strolling up to the gang of stretchers for some playful teasing. The game was, which one of us could convince the doctor and nurse that our pt needed priority bed placement. We all spoke at once until it became an auction of blood pressure and morbid coefficients. I came in second with the head injury sliding into first. They had already been waiting 20 mins for a bed. The doctor laughed that I had "just" a open - now bleeding again - fracture of the leg with a woman doped on benzo's.

Minutes passed as I struggled to hold up our heavy fat woman from continuously shifting on the narrow stretcher. She nearly fell twice, and if not for my dedicated partner she would have surely suffered another injury. Our stretchers are four feet in the air when in push position. A commotion down in bed 2 caught our attention as a ring cutter flew through the door striking the crash cart across the way. A skinny cute nurse dodged the tool with skill before yelling for security, while others stood frozen in pale colored fear. More loud bangs and sheet tearing noises were heard coming from the exam room. Was someone shape shifting into a werewolf in there, I wondered? It was a full moon. I didn't dare leave the stretcher to assist since I left my silver at home, and American coin today has no silver at all. I was being funny of course, but that's a coping mechanism. It was a better technique than walking around in a "I don't give a fuck" bubble that some poor unsuspecting family member might accidentally pop, and thereby unleash a torrent of over-worked hysterics. You can guess which technique the hospital workers were using because none of them were laughing, except maybe that doctor.

A badged guard rush into the room looking too old to do much good but thankfully accompanied by a haldol welding nurse and a set of leather restraints. My woman's distal pulses were getting fainter as the blood swelled the foot and leg, but it was steady as we went on with our unperturbed lengthy wait watching our oxygen bottle trickle down to zero. Hospital registration wasted no time getting her insurance information, and the clerk almost got giddy upon seeing she had medicare AND medicaid. She acted like she was getting commission or something. By some coincidence we were shortly shown a trauma bed after only waiting 50 minutes. Our stretcher was out of oxygen by that point and my pt moaning that she had to shit. "Hun, do what you have to do." I told her. An aid began to dig for a bedpan while the red shirted vampires began their vain search for a vein. The whole time I help hold the woman down who is now uncooperative and fading in and out of consciousness. A woman doctor, who I did like, showed up to ask the pt questions. She was not as oriented as she once was, and the doctor was beginning to think her leg injury might be the least of her concerns. She was thinking a head bleed - confusion, nausea, slurred speech. She was setup for a scan but was in a long line to do so. God knows when. Probably another thirty minutes. More screaming and moaning heard in the rooms around us. The air was warm and muggy instead of the characteristic coolness that generally fills the halls of a hospital. Everyone was sweating, and my uniform felt too used long before the end of my 72 hr shift. Dispatch squawked a warning that our county needed us, and since coming into the ER I suffered a longing for the road. This would not be granted for another thirty minutes and seven IV attempts by the blood team.

Finally released I came out of the room to see two more stretchers wheeled in, one with a ten year old dripping skin from a grease burn to the hand and the other a foul smelling GI bleed. Their misery adding to the moaning orchestra and yelling instruments of the suffering. A big war in todays crowded immiserated world will be worse, and collapse of any sort will not be endured for long.

A glimpse into tomorrow, I thought, as I came out to our rig to wipe blood and puke up for another roll out. What will be my limits when that day comes?

Under the Knights Sword part 2

We made it to our selected pew near the front and were organized with EMS occupying the first 3 rows, then the police, and finally the fire personnel. The first thing I noticed right off the bat was that our pews were cushioned, both knee rest and the pew itself, built right in. I didn't think comfort and Catholicism went together. These pews were even more comfortable than they looked, and for my wife it was a relief to be lost in the loaded pews. The altar was open and expansive with this giant hand coming down reaching for a dove hanging down from the ceiling, the whole thing made with what looked to be brass and wire. The altar was post and lentil granite with a gold leafed tabernacle behind it. Quite a bit bigger than my old country church which I attended growing up as a teenager - St Joseph's, Pearlington, MS. For a town the size of Picayune this was pretty impressive. This church looked like it served a city with about 50,000 more people than it actually does, and the fact the county is predominantly Baptist is equally queer. Additionally, what stuck out for a church in the deep South, not only the deep South but in the state of Mississippi, was the races depicted in the dozen statues adorning the back wall rising up to the ceiling where two angels were decorated in 3D billowing tunics. Two of them were black, 1 oriental, 1 native American, and the rest Caucasian. When I was growing up pretty much every Catholic church I'd ever been to represented only white European statuary so this was a legitimate improvement. A small Madonna statue was near the front pew with a rosary hanging from its left hand and its base surrounded by small rocks. The retinue of clergy, altar boys, and prominent parishioners marched to the stage to put on their show.

There was a main priest, and older man in his 50's leading the group, an assistant priest maybe in his early 40's, and a Vietnamese priest newly ordained in his 20's. Three priests, 2 altar boys who wore white gloves which I have never seen altar boys around here wear, and half a dozen hyper-religious folk from the town carrying the implements of the upcoming mass. The familiar introductions and obligatory up, down, kneel rote ritual brought back all the memories of why I stop going to church a long time ago. I felt adversely steamy under the gaze of the crucified Christ hanging behind the altar. Some of the music and hymns gave me chills, others had me longing for that promised after mass dinner. Since hardly anyone within our EMS group were Catholic, except for one, there was hardly anyone singing or repeating the Catholic prayers. Course we all said the "the Lords prayer" when it was time to do so. All Christians know this. A few of us were atheist but even they recited the prayer. I pray because I might be wrong in my agnostic views, and if I'm right, that there is no divine being looking out for us then what did it hurt to pray in the first place? All of this filtered through my brain conditioned from childhood to believe in God and morality, or maybe it was psychic vibrations of the collective that I was picking up. The priest came to the part in the mass where he talks about whatever he's going to take about, and in this case the mass was for us - EMS, fire, and police - so it was not surprising that was the topic for the night. He talked about showing appreciation for us, how we tirelessly give of ourselves for the community, and how much we are needed for the common good and dignity of all of us. A lot of his focused seemed to be on the police more than EMS and fire since much of it pertained to justice and the law. Some of what he said resonated with me, mainly the common good and dignity stuff, but then he lead us into some kind of pseudo worship of the system that I abhor. How he did this was superbly and masterfully done that I almost didn't notice. "You crafty  trickster," I thought. He did say that cops are much maligned and hated by many, though he did not say specifically what might cause that, but went on to all the reasons why we need them to keep law and order. We do, I agree, but why do we? To ask this question brings up the nature of the system, a system that restricts our freedom to be productive units for the wealth and power of a few. He then had to bring drugs up, and how they were destroying our community, and how cops were doing their best to stop it. Drugs? Like Zoloft, Klonipin, Lithium, etc?? Oh, you mean weed, a natural substance that mellows people out and has led to some of best music ever. Forget about all those who killed themselves because of an antidepressant, or a system that traps and incarcerates people with addictions, while the worse addiction of all - greed - is honored with lofty titles of success. No, no, no, the law is rooting out the evils, and the churches job is to lubricate our minds to the painful and bloody process of dominionist justice. Right father? I so wanted to stand up and rebuke this man but the consequences would be unlivable.

Waiting for the mass to end was like watching a pot boil, and I could tell the Baptist in the group were uncomfortable but quietly polite. We all were. The Catholic among us, a EMT that cusses all the time and loves porn, went up for communion. He's a damn funny Frenchman who smokes all the time and refuses to believe it causes cancer. His grandmother is 94 and smokes too. You know the story - every smoker has a old family member that smoked all their life doing just fine. Never mind that she is hooked to oxygen and calls the ambulance once a week to get emergency CPAP and steroids. Ah well, that's an old argument. It's hard to win an argument with someone that doesn't understand statistics. The countless smokers we run emergencies on doesn't make an impression either. It's funny how we're all floating around in these little belief bubbles trying to pop each other into a wet mess of acrimony.

Finally, the mass was over - "go in peace" - we shuttled out to the rec hall for a good old fashion Catholic supper. Spaghetti of course, anything Catholic; food wise, is spaghetti. Rec hall tables filled with styrofoam bowls (salad), cakes, and big hot crock pots with various other home cooked viddles. It wasn't just spaghetti. There was lasagna, pot roast, stuffing, gumbo, baked macaroni, and everything else good under the grace of being Southern. I was hungry too, so my plate quickly became filled with a sampling of just about everything. I like it when the food all blends together into interesting and new tastes. Ever tried lasagna mixed a little with roast beef gravy and stuffing? It was culinary madness and heresy. Ice tea to wash it all down. It seemed odd to be dinning at a table with cops wearing their utility belts and uniforms. Their yellow tazers stood out the most. The extension batons stuck in between their 9mm and the tazer. It's easy to see why people would want to be cops, get to carry guns around openly and weld torture devices that can be used with impunity. Who wouldn't power trip a little? I haven't seen any of the deputies I work with use their tazers to their credit, or really in anyway treat people without some semblance of dignity and respect. Though sometimes I suspect things go on behind public eye, or my eyes, that does not get justice. One would expect this with so many testosterone driven lone rangers packing the tools of dominance. Carl, a black cop sitting across from me, sporting a bald head so shiny it could be used as a signaling mirror ate his roast beef and cornbread in quiet repose. Carl was the one that had raced ahead in the hurricane driven rain that night the tow trucker was killed to stop us from going any further down the street where the tree had fallen. He lead us to the man that was dying. I remember him blocking off the street where a 2 year old had drowned which allowed us to get in and out quickly with the baby.  He was chatting up a humorous conversation with Vincent, a cop that last week let a man go that had a 100,000 dollar bond out on his arrest because he was having chest pain. I remember him saying it would be too risky for the guy to be cuffed and brought to jail given his extensive and morbid cardiac problems. The man said it was for a DUI in which he hadn't shown up to court for. I don't believe they put out 100k bonds out for that, but what do I know? The guy really was faking his chest pain as he went AMA a few minutes after we arrived at the ER. There's no way a cop in New Orleans would've let him go, but things like that go on in this rural county I live in. I'm glad to see it too. It's not all good though. Nearly fifty men and women are sitting in the jail across town, mostly for drug possession and other petty crimes. There's a lot of thieves and drunks too. Unemployment is high in this community if you have no college level education, and the crime seems to be increasing because of it. Medicaid, welfare, unemployment - all of it is increasingly harder to get. People are depressed and become addicted to all kinds of stuff, sometimes even become suicidal.

While all this was running through my head the knights, a leading member of their order, was up on stage at the mic calling out ticket numbers. We had each grabbed a ticket when we were ushered in for a prize drawing. Local merchants, like the body detail shop, or some local restaurant were giving away gift certificates. The good food was enough for me so I pretty much ignored the bingo type atmosphere.

Under the Knights Sword, part 1

"Are you going to the Blue Mass ceremony?" my supervisor asked. "What's that?" I said. The local community Catholic church was honoring EMS, police, and fire with a special mass that would be followed with food, door prizes, and awards. If anything, the free food sounded good. It was a bit more than that from the perspective of our manager, she needed as many of us to attend as possible to represent the ambulance service. EMS is provided by a private ambulance service that serves ten counties in MS, and the county I work in is contractual, a deal that happens to come up for renewal next Spring. There are other ambulance services that will be bidding, they always do. Who gets to take care of people is auctioned to the highest bidder, but what it really amounts to is who gets to collect from all that insurance. Some of the bigger corporate services know full well what this county offers in South MS, mostly Medicare, Medicaid, or none at all. Medicare which is government managed, hasn't increased what their willing to pay for a ambulance run in twenty years, in fact they've made cuts under Obamacare. Now I think it'll pay 300 bucks. In that time period where they have not increased, the expenses incurred by ambulance services has doubled - fuel, worker salaries, equipment, and insurance. MS medicaid is one of the strictest payers of healthcare in the country. Some ambulance corporations have been forced to stop all raises, 401k offers, and cut costs by using sub-standard equipment and cheaper protocol medication interventions. The service I work for is no exception. My truck has over 300,000 miles on it and it shows. We use manual FERNO stretchers that have a high rate of back injuries vs. the new power stretchers that use hydraulics. They are pretty much standard in departments that are adequately funded. Private services, those in which are for profit, like the one I work for, are not adequately funded. The details of which I'm not privy to. How much "the man" is making that owns the company is unknown to me, so I'm asked to deal with the cut backs as best I can. If I don't like it, or raise such a cry, and it's buh-bye. I should mention that many tax-payer funded non-profit services are also feeling budget woes and running deficits, but there are grants from the federal stimulus money filling in the holes. Grants that private services cannot apply for.  If I had known civilization was going to be like this at birth, I would've choked myself on my umbilical cord.

So here I was being asked by my immediate manager to play politics and represent this for profit ambulance provider I find myself working for. I can't deny the benefit it has been for me since coming back from Vermont. 48 hrs on/48 hrs off, 72hr on, 48 off, 48 on, 72 off is the best scheduled there is for overtime. The company of course would love to dispense with this overtime generating shift at the earliest convience, but convience is not working out for them. There are not enough paramedics willing to work this kind of shift. Most are intimidated by the hourly rate, which is pretty low competitively; but it has to be because of the massive amount of overtime, and the chance occurrence of no sleep, no bath, and intubating someone under the foggy veil of drowsiness from being up the last thirty hours. The other counties the ambulance service operates have 24/48 hr shifts and the big city it serves has 12 hr shifts, and a special 12 hr pay rate to go with it. The 24 hr pay rate is about half what it is for a 12 hr shift. For instance, I make 14/hr working a 24hr shift vs a 20/hr working a 12 hr one. Overtime pays time and a half. So 14 becomes 21/hr and working a 48/72 shift gifts 88 hrs of 21/hr pay. That's really good money for a doomer like myself, and I have never made that much in the last twenty years doing this job. Granted, my pay rate is much higher than most, because this company pays for experience. So much for every year you have been a paramedic. Believe it or not most ambulance companies don't pay for experience, or if they do it's only if you worked for them all those years. What they are willing to pay for each year is also all very variable. Under this system paramedics are a commodity like the people they help. As a worker we don't like to think about the machine too much, instead choosing to see the job as a gem, a precious resource that gives the opportunity to shake the hand of death and ease the pain that afflicts our neighbor. Few understand us, addicted to drama and death, the macob and gross, blue lights and red lights, the wail of a siren, and the blast from the air horn. We do this from doing this for free to what I make now, we do this for love. Emergency work has some of the greatest numbers of people who will do it for free. FREE! I'm still a volunteer firefighter/medic. Free does not pay the bills though, it doesn't provide a home, food on the table, gas money, insurance, etc, all the vices of civilization. Free pays differently. Free doesn't make you a commodity, it makes you a blessing, it makes you a friend, it makes you a person and not a thing to be exploited by some person in a mansion living up on the hill. Money is essential in this corrupted world we were born into, but bestows nothing beyond what it was intended. Gifting is so much more powerful. We basically know this, but the machine is powerful, and the neuro imprinting well established by the age of 2 that we need money. So I told my manager, "sure, I'll go, and I'll try and get my wife to go." Our family's were invited too. She threw a bone to me, "you'll get 5 pts on your next eval." Whoopie, no one has received a raise in over three years. I was just thinking of the free food, and a chance to mingle with the neighborhood. These people I would meet tonight would be the zombies roaming the landscape tomorrow. It might help in my decision on who to take out on a zombie raid, and who to share my navel oranges with, or it might give me some impression on how quickly I would die.

My wife has social anxiety disorder, SAD, and she does not take medication for it. We choose to manage her condition with a firm hand grip and my reassurances. I don't understand the disorder, where it comes from, but only what the medical research says about it. Lack of Serotonin reuptake receptors in the brain and some developmental crisis in youth. Yeah, yeah, it's just a big pain in the ass. She wanted to meet my coworkers, and after two years of being at the company I think only one has ever met her. Plus, since hurricane Isaac and buying a house up here, she needed some local friends to share her passion for gardening, sewing, and scrap booking with. This would be a great opportunity for her. Little did she know what a big production this would turn out to be. The appreciation ceremony was being put on by the Knights of Columbus which was founded by father Michael McGivney in 1882, and named in honor of the navigator Christopher Columbus. Considering what Christopher Columbus did I can hardly see the honor in it, but other than this casual wikipedia search told me I knew very little about the organization except for associations with the local charities. I was raised Catholic and practiced the religion until the age of reason, or maybe it was just a crisis of soul searching, I don't know. I hadn't been to church in 8 years, not since I attended a mass in order to get free rakes, shovels, wheelbarrows, and other much needed tools in the weeks following hurricane Katrina. I think it was the only visible free relief the Catholic church provided for Pearlington in the recovery after Katrina. The richest religion in the world could only manage some yard tools. The Baptist, Presbyterians, Pentacostals, the Amish, etc were in there with huge mega-tent cities dispensing volunteer labor, construction material, food, water, and most importantly evangelical sermons. After helping you with the essentials they'd sneak in the question, "do you know Jesus?" or "have you been saved?" If you're not a Christian this was most uncomfortable given that the same people had done so much for you. It was like all that love had just been spoiled by a motivating mission to earn converts. I think most people just lied, "yes, I know Jesus." I know of Jesus, but I don't believe in all that middle eastern desert cult blood sacrifice stuff in which his blood is needed to appease Jehovah of our sins. My brain is still scarred with all that mumbo jumbo. The Catholics were of the least help, but at least they didn't bother with the evangelizing questions. I'll give them that. If you weren't Catholic, they'd just give you that "repent my son, for you are going to hell" look. A look is much easier to deal with than one that is paired with a direct question. 

The ceremony was at St. Charles Catholic Church in Picayune, MS. The church was near the now abandoned old Crosby hospital and where I had pronounced the first person to die in hurricane Isaac. When we arrived a crowd of well known deputies and Picayune police officers were gathered at the front of the church. It was 7 pm, and it was now dark and chilly. Most of my coworkers were mingling with the ambulance gang, and fire/police were doing the same with their respective groups. Humans migrate to those they know the best when in a crowd. It proves we are tribal by nature to me. I enjoyed introducing my pretty wife, the prettiest one there which was obviously very biased, to my manager, my EMT partners, and a few firefighters that I've run interesting calls with. Like the man who died while driving and then drove his car into a thick stand of tree's the other night. My wife was driving back from work and saw me with the firefighters pulling the mans lifeless body out over a palisade of spear like broken tree's and barb wire. The man was my age, 41, and died of a massive heart attack. Shocked him three times while he was still in the car and got nothing that was better than the fibrillatory beat his heart was in when I first hooked him to the ECG monitor. I introduced her to a bald headed black cop that helped me pull two kids from a burning house filled with smoke. He had cut his arm going through the window too. Another cop who was out with us on the guy killed by a fallen tree during Isaac was there. We talked about how scared we were that another tree was going to fall on us when the firefighters were chainsawing the tree in order to confirm the driver was indeed dead. It didn't matter we had rain suits on, the wind was driving the water to the bone that night, and the tree's were like an army of pole ax bearing executioners. 

Once it was 7pm sharp, the doors were opened and we were ushered in by departments. EMS lead the way, or just behind the robbed priests wearing microphones. My wife gripped my hand in a death grip and began rotating her fingers in stressful procession digging nails into my knuckles. A line of knights, knights of the Columbus, who were bearing swords raised up to their faces saluted us as we walked up to our pew. They were wearing big Napoleonic type hats, capes, and various metals and symbols of their order. Oh Lord, it was freaking my wife out, and I too felt uncomfortable as a sea of eyes blinked around me. A solo singer and guitarist were singing as the procession came in, and the back walls of the church were lit with a projector showing everyone the lyrics. Fancy, I thought. 

The Power of the Cyrstal

Dispatch squawks, "unit 101 respond priority one to Chiquaqua st for a signal 13." A signal 13 is a diabetic emergency. Usually these calls amount to showing up, checking their sugar, and if it's low we administer some oral glucose, or if its really low, we start an IV and give a big amp of 50% dextrose 25 grams of sugar IV push. The scenario has become routine; however, in this case her problem wasn't hypoglycemia, but instead simple vertigo. We in EMS get thrown curb balls all the time with being told one thing to then arrive and find another going on. Nothing serious in this case, just some simple chronic vertigo and she panicked. People do this from time to time. Blood sugar was fine, blood pressure too, and neuro check was excellent. I find myself in a upper middle class home in a nice neighborhood by a lake. The socioeconomic bracket was your typical suburban nuclear Caucasian family with two kids and a picket fence. A new mid sized SUV in the garage to take the kids to soccor practice and wait, mind you with the engine running, in the long line that is guaranteed to form out of today's neighborhood schools. For those that don't fit into this group there's the school buses too. I can remember my days riding the school bus, the spitballs, the name calling, the bully punches out of the blue, the driver cursing us, the mayhem on the last day of the school year where every kid ripped up their notes and the paper that encased the textbooks - sometimes the textbook too - then tossed it all as wadded balls at each other, or as paper airplanes which were then ceremoniously sent out the buses many sliding windows. Kids missed that if they ride with mommy, or do the kids still do that? I wonder with all the digital and electronic distractions the big corporations have successfully sold to the addicted masses.

 I'm thinking this as I listen to their mother whine about her minor symptoms. She was a bit of a hypochondriac. Her two kids were playing the X-box, and they sat transfixed to the images playing across the screen. Not once did they take their eyes off the screen to see what was wrong with mom, that there were two ambulance medics in the room, or whether she would be going to the hospital. It sorta just hit me that there was something wrong with this scene. I mean they were the age of reason, ten years old or so, two boys, and they were so engaged with the game (a meaningless mental adventure), that they were oblivious to what was going on around them. Worse, the parents didn't see anything wrong with this behavior. Both of them real estate agents. So what comes to mind as I observed this with sudden interest is the movie "the Dark Crystal." A movie that came out in the early 80's that tells the story of Jen, an elflike 'Gelfling' on a quest to restore balance to his alien world by returning a lost shard to a powerful but broken gem. One thousand years ago on "another world", a magical crystal cracked. At this time, two new races appeared: the Skeksis, vulture-like tyrants using the power of the "Dark Crystal" to continually replenish themselves, and hunchbacked natural wizards called Mystics.There's a scene in this movie where the evil Skeksis are using the crystal to mind rape an gelfling and it looked just like these two kids. I don't think they were even blinking. Here we were, two EMT's standing in the living room holding all kinds of emergency equipment, a cool ambulance parked outside with the lights on, their mother feeling sick, and both of them were completely numb to it. There was no interest outside that dark crystal. Briefly, I thought about being the hero gelfling and going over and turning their heads away, but then I thought better of it. Oh, the hysteria that would surely unfold from these snippidy shallow parents. Thinking more about this I thought about how right the movie was in portraying the Skeksis as rich elitist masterminds whose only interest was their greed and consumption. 

There's a great scene at the beginning of the movie where they're all eating at the dinner table jabbing forks at each other while gorging on a feast of flesh. They controlled the crystal, the crystal that was mind raping the gelfling and sucking their life force away to strengthen the Skeksis. Isn't that what we have today exactly? A group of rich industrial capitalist, bankers, and cartels that suck the life out of the rest of us to enshrine their iniquities and insatiable greed? We are like the drones that ran the Skeksis castle after being hallowed out by the rays of the dark crystal who dutifully serving the whims of these twisted things. That's exactly what's going on today. Our souls have been stolen from us after being subjected to the rays of the dark crystal - the TV/Xbox/radio/etc. Was Jim Hensen, the creator of the movie trying to tell us something? He even portrays the good guys, the mystics, as very similar to the native Americans who we know lived together with nature instead of turning it all into a profit generating commodity. Spot on sir, spot on. I saw the dark crystal, and thought about my own pale skin and hallowed out soul. I'm serving the Skeksis like most of us. My color might be returning but I'm still running around the castle fetching more wine for the Emperor. Where is the shard that will save us? 

Your Party, My Opinion

This latest battle, the one between anti-gun left wing proponents vs pro gun right wing proponents, has me strongly against the Democratic left position and constantly arguing with my friends. I find myself repeatedly for or against hot topic political issues on one side of the spectrum or the other, and it seems that behavior among my friends is absent or very rare. If you see yourself as a Democratic, the blue team, a liberal leftist, you're for gay marriage, abortion rights, welfare, social security, anti-war, regulated guns (or no guns at all), not necessarily religious, pro-environment, etc. If you live in America you know what I mean. On the other hand if you see yourself as a Republican, the red team, a conservative hawk, you're against gay marriage, against abortion, suspicious of the government, see welfare and social security as entitlements, pro-war, pro-guns, global warming is a hoax, religious, etc. The left sees, and divisively remarks on, the right as ignorant, stupid, religious zealots, racists, Capitalist (yet both are pro in reality), and unenlightened. Likewise, the right says the Democrats are hippies, trusting of the government, morally soft, irresponsible spenders, worshipers of global warming, against the troops, fags, and godless fetus killers. Just for starters. Whatever the issue if your chosen team is for it, that's where you stand, and you rally around it and its leader. That leader right now is Obama. Never mind that Obama has done nothing to stop the wars, reduced military spending, curbed environmental destruction, allowed marijuana to be legalized, or reigned in Wall st. NOTHING! Quite the opposite actually, yet people who consider themselves democrats are largely against these things. Talking about any of these things - war, drugs, gay marriage, global warming, guns, abortion, debt, Capitalism - has you defending your team over the other, and its quarterback. Can we not think for ourselves without becoming a color team and falling in line? Have we become the mentally vacuous cheerleader pom-poming the team on to victory?

For instance, you can't even argue the gun issue that is now going on in this country because whatever side of it you stand, you're labeled with the whole team and all its other opinions. I can only speak for myself, that on the issues that our world faces, I am my own thinker. It is my own opinion. I care not for the sport that we call politics. When it comes to these things I am not a team player, but it doesn't seem to keep people from pigeon holing me into various definitions - conservative, liberal, progressive, socialist, communist, and other countless political derivations. So let's clear it up so you know where I stand.

Guns - I think we should all be free to arm ourselves and carry on our person (without a permit, I see it as a inalienable right), except clearly defined mentally unstable pts and violent felons. I support a strong background check before any gun purchase which should include a mental history. I am strongly against banning assault weapons or high capacity magazines.

War - Strongly against. Unless our country is directly attacked by another country I see no justification. We are the worlds leader in possessing nuclear weapons, so I see no need to have a huge military.

Drugs - Drugs should be legal, all of them, and a national campaign funded to treat and inform people of the dangers. Smoking cigarettes is at a all time low because of similar measures.

Abortion - Morally, I see it as murder, but I don't support legislation that would force a woman to do anything or to regulate her body. It is her burden, one way or the other, to carry or forfeit to whatever moral consequence.

Government spending - I don't believe in deficit spending, printing to prosperity, or ignoring the debt. So bottom line we should not be spending more than we take in through taxation. This means, and neither party wishes to admit it, we are in a major depression right now because if you were to balance the budget the cut in government spending would be so severe that GDP would fall greater than -12%. That's a fact. We're pretending to be in a recovery by spending deficits and running up trillions in debt. There is no solution, thanks to the reckless budgets of the last dozen presidents and their political cohorts, that will fix the budget and make everyone happy. Actually, it won't make anyone happy because it means austerity the likes of which Greece hasn't even seen yet.

Environment - AGW is deadly serious, it's happening, and if we don't radically curb our fossil fuel emissions we are headed to extinction. I think it's a given by what I currently see, so its a horrible depressive subject for me personally. I see no indication that either party GETS IT. Population control, no more than 2 kids recommended (but not enforced). Similar to the campaign against smoking, just get the message out there that you are helping the planet by limiting yourself to two kids.

Gay marriage - none of the goddamn governments business. Also, whatever sexuality you were born with is your private business, and your rights should be equal to any other poor chap born into this world. It shouldn't even necessitate a debate over legislation. It's inalienable.

Healthcare - Available to all. Universally paid for by all working participants. Simplified and effective. Big Pharm should be highly regulated. Medical schools need to add seats, they haven't done so in over thirty years.   If doctors don't make 600k a year under this type of system....too bad. 100k to 150k is reasonable unless you're talking about major specialists doing cutting edge treatments. More general practitioners. Instead of buying bombs we should be funding the curing of cancer and paralysis.

Nuclear power - OMG no. Japan should be a lesson. Enough said. This stuff last for so long that god only knows what might happen in the future for humanity, but whatever it is it isn't anything human beings can predict. About the only safe place for it is in space.

Welfare - Difficult solution under a capitalistic system that is unfair and murderous to everyone and every living thing on the planet. I've seen it wholly abused everywhere I go. People become dependent on it. I don't support unemployment benefits. What inevitably happens is people hold out for a choice job in their field of specialty while living on unemployment instead of grabbing a lower paid job that is available. This does not mean disability. I strongly support funds for the truly disabled (not high blood pressure, diabetes, I'm depressed crap). I also support the food stamp program. All of these things though are cheaper than what we currently spend on Intel, spying, weapons, tanks, planes, ships, and military energy. Not to mention all the subsidies to the fossil fuel energy sector, and the loopholes big corporations capitalize off of to not pay a dime of taxes. Taking care of the poor is expensive, but far more important than the those who are prospering off their suffering.

Well, that's just a short list for starters. My stance on these things has changed as more information becomes available and I'm persuaded that my opinion is wrong.