Month: March 2017

Martha in the End Times

Martha Stephens writes beautifully about important matters — at nearly 80, she is a gentle, kind and inspired source for all who raise candles in solidarity for the brutally exploited.
Before beginning my own blog I wrote to her about a theme I was considering. To a large extent mine is still a commonplace book — one that contains matters close to my being — in some way all weaving together.
Please enjoy this superb blog. I’ve met many kind and wonderful people here.
Read this nota bene from Martha —

       “NB: If you’ve read this far, my friends, please consider Following this blog.  You’d get a notice about new posts only every month or two — and I don’t always write this long!  Also happy to have your Comments little or big . . . .”

 

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ARE THESE the end times, my friends?  Have we fellows on Planet Earth just been waiting, ever since November 8, for the final chaos to overtake us?

I guess we figure, even so, that in the meantime we might as well go on with our lives.   See myself here with my Mexican-American friend Christina at the soup kitchen last month in Las Cruces, New Mexico.

We’d chopped vegetables together all morning, and talked and carried on, and now our guests were about to appear — 250 of our fellow citizens, mostly people without work or with work that does not pay them enough to live on.  All of them just carrying on, too, I suppose, in this richest of all countries in the world.

The Fist

BUT THESE END TIMES, my friends — is this the twilight of the gods?  The last cataclysm, perhaps, as predicted by the ancient writings?  Will we see, in the end, the…

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First Job: 1965 — Steampunked

Well, it’s time to steampunk the time machine again. The one over there. The one in the corner. That’s mine.

Yes. The time has arrived to set its calendar function to a May day in North America — its 1,965th iterations of C.E or A.D. (your choice). My machine, its vacuum tubes warm to the challenge. I click the counter to 2000 + 17. Dial needles slowly sway forward as the tubes warm. I click the destination counter to 1900 + 65.

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Was it…

OK it was McDonalds. My parents dropped me off so I could put in an application while they did journey upon an errand. I shall never disclose the nature of their journey-called-errand because both joined the deceased quite some years before I started writing this account you now read, that is, unless you have already departed from this post.

Dear readers, we are now in that very McDonald parking lot. Do you see the car leaving this lot? Do you see me walking in at the back door?

OK. There was this guy at a corner desk. Did he tilt his head sidelong in my direction? Yes he did. How did you know?

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That guy would utter something of portend the following day. You’ll read about that mere minutes from now. Allow me to repeat his very words, so that you may carefully note them:

“The uniforms are in the basement.”

By gosh there were uniforms in that nether room. And don them I did.

Bill, thank you for recalling the insignificant.

Upon donning the red and yellow vest, upon tilting the paper cap to a jaunty angle, I returned by the same set of stairs.

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And thus did I learn the milkshake-machine trade. A fellow tradesman was already at our shared station. Few customers demanded shakes that day. We simply stood there and took turns. My associate posed an inquiry:

“Why did they assign two tradesmen to this light-duty trade?”

“Why were we not assigned the task of squeezing mustard and ketchup for the grillsmen?”

Excuse our yawns, Bill. Uh, did you parents return from their quest?

Indeed. They returned. I do not think that they expected to find me in full uniform regalia, jaunty tilt and all. I do not.

steampunk.time.machineDay number two: co-shaker and I are on the job,  waiting for the ever infrequent shake order to arrive. In the mean while the manager and his assistant sat upon a picnic table outside. They watched us as we nervously stood, working hardly at faux cleaning.

Some short minutes thereafter the assistant manager of picnic-table note informed me that my application existed not, one person where only half-ass staffing sufficed.

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Fortunately I had a prepared response “uh, yeah. I haven’t done that part yet.” My second day was also my last — pink papers were drawn.

Next job to visit via steampunk: OS&D Clerk at Dance Freight Lines — connecting the north with the industrial south.

 

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Thanks for reading.

 

Pulp & Politics: Blake’s 7

Today I’m taking you on a field trip to the north and west of Italy, made possible by a friend and fellow blogger— Davide Mana is our host.

Apparently you had to be in Britannia between 1978 and 1981, or you missed the whole thing. So bring along a device that is YouTube capable. If your ears are as bad as mine you might also pack a voice-captioning device that mishears words as often as I do. Allow me to share one word match in the dictionary-database — the verb “trump” rendered as the (proper?) noun “Trump.”

Please bring your hands (or tentacle equivalent) together and welcome the guy who makes this all possible. Join me in welcoming Dr. Mana!

Davide Mana's avatarKaravansara

The joys of Youtube.
I’ve spent the last few nights watching old episodes of the BBC’s Blake’s 7, a space opera series that aired between 1978 and 1981, and that was never distributed in my country.
And I must say I’m positively impressed.

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Because it’s an old show, and produced on a very short and frail shoestring budget, but what the heck, it’s good fun and great storytelling.

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Veganarchism and Crows Head Soup

 

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Source

Peter Schreiner leads Crows Head Soup, a vegan touchstone. Peter brings strong vegan stew to the table  —  you’ll find poetry that skewers the skewering, photographs of hanging carcasses, the blood slurried into storage tanks for unspecified ends. Here is the post that inspired me to write this post: Lamentations of a Veganarchist.

That’s not very nice, Bill. Where are your manners? We don’t talk about hanging cows in polite company.

Sorry. I’ll get my mind right now.

Take the scenic route on your family vacation and remark on those grass-munching cows. Talk about the time a cow escaped from a truck and ended up on the highway. Remind all that it was adopted by a nice local family. Did you know that two turkeys are presidentially pardoned every year — that it adds up to a whole lot of birds over the years. Stop at a Dairy Queen to nod approvingly on its storied history.

Thank you for opting a little common decency, Bill.

Think death camps the size of Mordor behind the hills of rural America.

 

 

Each In-N-Out Burger consumed (or tossed) triggers a supply-chain decision. Breed another cow. How now.

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inventory = inventory minus one. When inventory reaches a certain level a replenishment order is issued.

Folly, arrogance and confusion gone long wrong.

Mr. Bill, do you have any idea how many blessed jobs depend on all those animal molecules you talk so long about? So long.

Do you know how many jobs are lost through extermination events of the planetary kind?

 

Family tours are never offered at “meat=processing facilities” but jobs are offered to the über marginalized in this economy.

The machinery grinds “resources” into hoppers for added value down the line. Marketplaces require workers’ willingness to press each shoulder to each wheel. From hopper to shopper — a lifestyle that assigns each party a horror, the insatiable appetite for more “resources”, more uses for each mighty molecule. 

What is the nature of evolution? Species developed over several billion years result in predators and prey surviving in a delicate balance, absent the actions of a single specie hellbent on tipping the scale. If you are not a human, or not a specie domesticated by humans, you thrive and perish at the razor edge. 

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Direct Subsidies for Animal Products and Feed

Enter the indifferent world of commerce — the scale-tippers. Tippers so cunningly successful that their own numbers increase by the billion and wild species are driven to extinction. Domesticated species are bred for extermination camps — the demands of the most insatiable homo sapiens require that the slaughter houses produce enough turnover in daily carcass units to make them economically viable processing centers in a modern society.

Thanks for reading.