This thread will be published as a book

[sweetheart]

Whatever you write in this thread, by the end of june,
i will compose and short-run print a book with each essay
one after the other, and send as many copies of the book to
skinner at the DU address, 1 for each book-contributor and
some extra. I will do this for free, no obligations on your
part except to write your composition.

The book is titled "Messages from the Underground"
and you are invited to contribute your essay as a post below.
If you don't like what you wrote, re-submit, and i'll use
the final work.

Closing is the end of june.

At the end of your essay, please write
"I give permission for this to be printed in the book above
referenced." If you do not write this, i will not include it.
This keeps it clean with Skinner and any legals.

This is not a for-profit thing, if skinner wants to charge you
to ship you your book, fair enough.

I presume the author reserves all other rights outside of what
is specifically said above.

[Warpy]

1. Most of the world's work is boring, irritating, and hard on body and

spirit, and were we all to choose what we most wanted to do, we'd likely have a world full of artists and sports players and no carpenters or cooks. There would certainly be no laundresses or bus drivers.

The work of the world is often dull and irritating. People who don't benefit directly from the work they do have been led to believe they'll benefit in terms of being supported and being able to raise families and generally achieving the American dream on their wages.

That's the part of the social contract that has broken down. Work is now supposed to be an end in itself and wages a privilege. Earning enough to support one's family is now considered a luxury, a privilege for doing the type of work whose result is directly felt by the wealthy.

Workers are no longer even seen as necessary cogs in the corporate machine. They're actively seen as drains on the corporate funds, to be eliminated if at all possible.

THIS is what we're fighting. Few of us will have the luxury of choosing work that delights us, and even those who do will find that work turning into a JOB from time to time. What we're fighting is the lack of dignity, respect, and support that doing someone else's dirty job used to confer and would confer still in the absence of the cheap labor conservatism that relies on offshoring and importation of illegal immigrants to keep pushing wages down.

Our system has become one of offshoring the paychecks while importing the bills. It is simply unsustainable. The only question is whether or not we'll have the will to deal with it before it breaks down completely.

_______

Respectfully submitted, "I give permission for this to be printed in the book above referenced." It originally appeared in the Economics forum and was slightly altered here.

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

2. Take your pick or take them all

Tom Yossarian Joad's Journal - Archives
It's a small war after all. What if your baby was the one killed?
Posted by Tom Yossarian Joad in General Discussion
Sun Mar 19th 2006, 10:10 AM
By an American bomb.

What if it were your husband, wife, father son or daughter?

How would you feel about the vendor of destruction?

America has become the largest manufacturer of hate and violence in the world today simply by its actions.

Remember the weeks after 9-11? The entire world wanted to help us.

Now they want to destroy us.

We cannot allow the present course of action to continue.

This administration may be doing more damage than we can recover from.
Read entry | Discuss (20 comments) | Remove from Journal | Add/Edit intro
Poetry From Another Dimension Where Sylvia and Adrienne Have Testes
Posted by Tom Yossarian Joad in Writing Group
Wed Mar 15th 2006, 05:27 PM
Tongue-in-cheek, a literary rebuff to Sylvia Plath's and Ms. Rich's poetry disdaining thier fathers. (Google Plath's Daddy and Rich's Wreckage)
Poetry From Another Dimension Where Sylvia and Adrienne Have Testes

Like the Hindenburg you float
about my psyche, waiting for saint Elmo
to ignite your hydrogen temper.
"Oh my God! I can't believe it! Oh my God!
She's Burning...They're fallinq from the sky."

Oh, Mother Earth your teat was sweet,
and filled for just a year.
Then quickly sagged as I filled up,
taking away the nourishments of love
you spat about in faerie tales.

She dog, she dog. You
loathsome Delilah, snipping at my hair.
Sphinx-like smugness in your rigor.
Morte, morte, morte.
You bleed me cause you do.

You know you hold your candles well,
you're brass to wax and string
which burns brightly
if not briefly. But you know there's other candles.
You make them all yourself.

I am pliable like beeswax,
inspired by a queen,
to stand and show red hourglass
waiting yet to mate...
devoured when the act is done.

Down, down, down,
the wilted carcass slips,
to lie among the wreckage,
to die among the wreckage,
as mantis-like, you prey for more

Holding scissors, lower still.
Teasing in your voice, making up
for when the boys tied June bugs
to the strings of springtimes past.
"Vasectomy is vengeance, Dear, hold your breath
Don't scream."

You genetic Judas goat of silk-
lined wetness to entice,
your pheromone scent and lotus petals...
You're Medea with a knife.
And I'm drawn like a fly to sugared glue

To land and eat a final meal
of sugared glue.
Of sugared glue.
You are Hitler,
I am Jew.
Without Judea.

Oh, but you still blow me
away. Though I've mandrake root and
belladonna, your witchcraft still gets through
like winter wind, it catches up my pant-leg.
Chilling to the bone.

You stand about, a loaded gun,
with a chambered bullet, me.
waiting to discharge that load,
into my heart goes me. Powered
by your powder. Your rouge, your oils, your cream,

You say that I'm a vampire,
feeding on your blood. But blood is bait,
and bait is blood, waiting to congeal
and crust...over the festering sore
you see as me.

Go see a doctor! Get it fixed!
your plumbing's all fucked up!
I'm not your tool, I'm still my own.
I won't share my guilt with you.
You're the Hindenburg of guilt and you think it's just gas.


End

Read entry | Discuss (2 comments) | Remove from Journal | Add/Edit intro
She died too young.
Posted by Tom Yossarian Joad in General Discussion
Tue Mar 14th 2006, 10:47 PM
She died too young,
My baby Sister.

Chained to medicaid.
To the Government Dole.

Hepatitis and psychosis
ripped at her soul.

Her children watched her crumble.

Her mother, father, brother and sister
watched her fall
without thinking it was real.

And then we found her dead.
A tea glass resting on her chest.
A half a joint in the ashtray.

Her poodle crying in the corner.

She kept a journal
for most of her life.

One of the last entries
was an instruction
to tell her creditors
to go fuck themselves.

She lived good
and hit hard times.

She is an American
and suffered for it.

Medicine and Doctors could have helped.

She could have lived





If she had cash.


I love you, Chris,
I miss you.

Tom Yossarian Joad's Journal - Archives
It's a small war after all. What if your baby was the one killed?
Posted by Tom Yossarian Joad in General Discussion
Sun Mar 19th 2006, 10:10 AM
By an American bomb.

What if it were your husband, wife, father son or daughter?

How would you feel about the vendor of destruction?

America has become the largest manufacturer of hate and violence in the world today simply by its actions.

Remember the weeks after 9-11? The entire world wanted to help us.

Now they want to destroy us.

We cannot allow the present course of action to continue.

This administration may be doing more damage than we can recover from.
Read entry | Discuss (20 comments) | Remove from Journal | Add/Edit intro
Poetry From Another Dimension Where Sylvia and Adrienne Have Testes
Posted by Tom Yossarian Joad in Writing Group
Wed Mar 15th 2006, 05:27 PM
Tongue-in-cheek, a literary rebuff to Sylvia Plath's and Ms. Rich's poetry disdaining thier fathers. (Google Plath's Daddy and Rich's Wreckage)
Poetry From Another Dimension Where Sylvia and Adrienne Have Testes

Like the Hindenburg you float
about my psyche, waiting for saint Elmo
to ignite your hydrogen temper.
"Oh my God! I can't believe it! Oh my God!
She's Burning...They're fallinq from the sky."

Oh, Mother Earth your teat was sweet,
and filled for just a year.
Then quickly sagged as I filled up,
taking away the nourishments of love
you spat about in faerie tales.

She dog, she dog. You
loathsome Delilah, snipping at my hair.
Sphinx-like smugness in your rigor.
Morte, morte, morte.
You bleed me cause you do.

You know you hold your candles well,
you're brass to wax and string
which burns brightly
if not briefly. But you know there's other candles.
You make them all yourself.

I am pliable like beeswax,
inspired by a queen,
to stand and show red hourglass
waiting yet to mate...
devoured when the act is done.

Down, down, down,
the wilted carcass slips,
to lie among the wreckage,
to die among the wreckage,
as mantis-like, you prey for more

Holding scissors, lower still.
Teasing in your voice, making up
for when the boys tied June bugs
to the strings of springtimes past.
"Vasectomy is vengeance, Dear, hold your breath
Don't scream."

You genetic Judas goat of silk-
lined wetness to entice,
your pheromone scent and lotus petals...
You're Medea with a knife.
And I'm drawn like a fly to sugared glue

To land and eat a final meal
of sugared glue.
Of sugared glue.
You are Hitler,
I am Jew.
Without Judea.

Oh, but you still blow me
away. Though I've mandrake root and
belladonna, your witchcraft still gets through
like winter wind, it catches up my pant-leg.
Chilling to the bone.

You stand about, a loaded gun,
with a chambered bullet, me.
waiting to discharge that load,
into my heart goes me. Powered
by your powder. Your rouge, your oils, your cream,

You say that I'm a vampire,
feeding on your blood. But blood is bait,
and bait is blood, waiting to congeal
and crust...over the festering sore
you see as me.

Go see a doctor! Get it fixed!
your plumbing's all fucked up!
I'm not your tool, I'm still my own.
I won't share my guilt with you.
You're the Hindenburg of guilt and you think it's just gas.


End



Read entry | Discuss (2 comments) | Remove from Journal | Add/Edit intro
She died too young.
Posted by Tom Yossarian Joad in General Discussion
Tue Mar 14th 2006, 10:47 PM
She died too young,
My baby Sister.

Chained to medicaid.
To the Government Dole.

Hepatitis and psychosis
ripped at her soul.

Her children watched her crumble.

Her mother, father, brother and sister
watched her fall
without thinking it was real.

And then we found her dead.
A tea glass resting on her chest.
A half a joint in the ashtray.

Her poodle crying in the corner.

She kept a journal
for most of her life.

One of the last entries
was an instruction
to tell her creditors
to go fuck themselves.

She lived good
and hit hard times.

She is an American
and suffered for it.

Medicine and Doctors could have helped.

She could have lived





If she had cash.


I love you, Chris,
I miss you.







I heard the spray paint through the wall.

Twice.

Psssst, tsp.

Psssst, tsp.

The sound of a red X.



Before the paint I heard.

My mother ask me to care for Dad

And breath her last.

My father ask for water.

And breath his last.

I heard my sobs from far away.

Even though the water rose.

I heard the lapping water
Slowly still.

I heard the buzzing flies
and far off dogs
looking for their masters.

Oww! Owwwwww!

I heard the silence.

I heard the helicopters overhead.

I heard time.
No ticking, no Big Ben.
I heard time creep into my bones.

Lay me down, lay me down.

I heard the splashes of feet and legs
Coming toward the house.

My heart jumped,

They're finally coming. They're coming.

I heard the legs and feet
Splashing through my house.

They're here. Thank God, they're here.

I heard the sighs.

I heard them leave.

Thank God, I'm finally safe.

I heard the spray paint through the wall.

I think I'll stay here for a while.


I heard the spray paint through the wall.

Twice.

Psssst, tsp.

Psssst, tsp.

The sound of a red X.



Before the paint I heard.

My mother ask me to care for Dad

And breath her last.

My father ask for water.

And breath his last.

I heard my sobs from far away.

Even though the water rose.

I heard the lapping water
Slowly still.

I heard the buzzing flies
and far off dogs
looking for their masters.

Oww! Owwwwww!

I heard the silence.

I heard the helicopters overhead.

I heard time.
No ticking, no Big Ben.
I heard time creep into my bones.

Lay me down, lay me down.

I heard the splashes of feet and legs
Coming toward the house.

My heart jumped,

They're finally coming. They're coming.

I heard the legs and feet
Splashing through my house.

They're here. Thank God, they're here.

I heard the sighs.

I heard them leave.

Thank God, I'm finally safe.

I heard the spray paint through the wall.

I think I'll stay here for a while.








"I give permission for this to be printed in the book above
referenced."

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

3. What If

What if we are really all one being, not really seperated, but interconnected, so that what one does influences us all? This isn't as far-fetched as it sounds. Scientist friends of mine talk of something called "entanglement". This deals with subatomic particles. It has been observed that when two subatomic particles that have been in contact with each other are seperated, something strange happens when you change the spin of one of the seperated particles. The other particle changes instantly to same degree no matter how far apart the two particles now are. And this happens faster than the speed of light. The physicist Erwin Schroediger wrote, towards the end of this life, "I have come to the conclusion that the total number of 'minds' in the universe is one."

Even if you don't accept the observations of scientists (which is echoed in the concepts of many mystical schools), just for a moment, for argument's sake, take this on as a premise: we are all one. One mind. What we do, what we think, effects everything and everyone else. How does this change the way you act? How do you get around the concept of good/evil? How do you explain creatures such as G.W. Bush, Dick Cheney-or the Dalai Lama and Nelson Mandella? If we are one mind, one being, how can we influence this seemingly ungainly thing so that the outcomes we observe are those of peace, harmony, and tolerance?

I don't pretend to have the answer, but I think I might have a way to start. It begins with our own thoughts, and their power. Anyone who has posted at DU long enough knows that there are times when people here sink into the well of their own depression, which is dug by their own thoughts and projections. And haven't you been inspired at times by the words posted that tell of one person's courageous stand-or one person's idea that sparks inspiration in others? Thoughts do, indeed, have power. Managing one's thoughts is not an easy business-they can slip and flow and send you right back into mind ruts that have been created by the same kind of thinking done over and over again. The key to getting out of the mess we find ourselves in might very well be connected to filling in our mind ruts. Working at being peace, thinking peace, acting peace if peace you seek. Working at knowing we all have power, that we can use this power for positive action, that we can prevail.

"I give permission for this to be printed in the book above
referenced."

Thank you for this opportunity.

[Deja Q]

4. Mirror, mirror, on the wall. Who is the most two-faced puppet of them all.

What we are told:

We are told we are a Christian nation.

We are told to help one another.

We are told life has reverence and that it must be cherished.

We are told to work with each other.

We are told to share.

We are told to learn.

We are told vanity and envy are wrong.

We are told to treat others the way we want to be treated.

We are told to be honest.

We are told to give.

We are told we are a civilized society.

We are told...

Well, we're told lots of good things.

Now let's look at the actions:

We are cajoled to "keep up with the Jones'". This induces vanity and envy, which in turn leads to crime - from something as minor as theft of posessions to something far more lurid as murder.

When disaster strikes, who does the helping? Not those we vote to govern us. But charities. And especially with the United Way, we are not just robbed of money, but of trust.

Those who lead, both in political and corporate form, engage in acts that help themselves - more often than not at the expense of others.

It is difficult to learn when there are no opportunities for learning; the few that remain have no qualms inducing costs that are not conducive to learning.

We are lied to at every turn, particularly about the actions that hurt us. From politicians to our supervisors to even our landlords and grocer's.

We tell each other to avoid what is different.

We lure people with incentives, and tell them they can have things now via things like credit cards. Then we turn things around by creating "reforms" and pinning the blame solely on those who listened to us.

We even hurt what is not like us in every aspect.

And we take at every opportunity.

As for cherishing and supporting life, we sure as hell have no qualms going overboard protecting a less than fully developed fetus... yet the moment it plops out of the womb, we impose conditions on it that are certainly anything but "pro-life". Or is poverty soon to become the next thing the Jones' and all their friends will want? Poverty with no affordable health care, so be careful where you trip and what you land on - I recommend something very soft... or something very deep. One way or the other, you really won't be hurt by the outcome. (well, the other outcome is death, but that's why they call it "peace".)

And we work to others. Usually to knock them down so we can get a better standing. Even in a position of mutual insecurity, people still prefer to knock each other down for one's own sake. (the trouble is, knocking ourselves down only hurts those out to be rid of us. We just don't realize it at the time. Usually because Kohl's has a 50% off sale, and we find that more important.)

And, in reality, we treat people callously because it might get them to cower before they can do the same in return.

How would Christ view the offshoring America engages in? If offshoring did not mean the decimation of millions's of Americans' very livelihoods, no doubt Christ would approve. But that is not what's going on. Lives are being affected. Negatively. Indeed, some have asked why the media has not reported why other countries are building plants in America. Well, that's because for every one incident that helps America, dozens more incidents occur that hurts America.

No, we do not cherish life. We sell it. For the highest dollar. And those who can't afford it? Well, they must be stinking bug-ridden offal, not worthy of the designation "life". and we devour them in return. Those that devour their own end up with nothing left to eat, apart from their own degenerate hubris.

America, this is your folly. And Madame Karma is not known for being lenient toward cheats who are not just proud of their actions, they are brazenly arrogant in their approach.

[Minstrel Boy]

5. The Great Race and the Marathon of Hope

Thinking about John Bolton the other day got me thinking about Terry Fox. The mind's funny that way.

But first, let me tell you about this friend I had in Grade Six. He was the kind of friend who, even in Grade Six, made me wish I had one less friend. But try telling my parents that. ("He's a nice boy! You want to sit in your room reading all day?") He was the school bully. Not a beat-the-shit-out-of-you bully, though his smile always implied that he could if it came to that, so it never came to that. His metier was psychological abuse. Some eleven-year olds just have a knack for the psy ops, you know?

One week, he got it in his head that I was his "slave." To win my freedom, he said, I needed to beat him in a race. One contest a day was held at recess to see if I could be a free boy again. The first time I beat him I was thrilled, until he told me nuh ah - that was just practice. Darn it! When I beat him again, he said I'd merely earned X number of points; I needed Y to be free. Crap, this is harder than I'd thought.... And I kept competing, because I wanted my freedom, and because every time he moved the goalposts I felt more like a slave.

I'd like to say I woke up one day and told him to go to Hell, but I didn't. The episode just petered out as he found some other child to torment. It wasn't until later that I realized how much a party I'd been to my own enslavement by simply accepting the base premise.

Which brings me back to that other bully, John Bolton. The Senate, of course, could have denied his appointment to the UN, which would have meant a rare loss for the Bush Administration. So rare, I can't off the top of my head think of a single thing that's been denied them.

It's difficult to watch the perpetual dashing of hope in America amongst those who still think politics matters, and that political action is sufficient to reverse America's parapolitical course. To them, it remains a race. C'mon gang - we can win this thing! But their opponent is more than a competitor: he is also the track official, and what a bloody-minded bastard he is. He has neither conscience nor fear of reprisal for tripping them up, tying together their shoelaces and moving the finish line. If he's seen to be running, it's simply to be seen. And so he's not even a true competitor, because there is no competition.

After the Supreme Court rubber-stamped the coup of 2000, I heard "wait until '02!" After Wellstone was murdered and the black boxes began counting backwards their invisible votes, I heard "wait until '04!" And even before Ohio and the bizarre Skull and Bones shadowplay, I started hearing "wait until '06!" And I tell you, I just can't hear anymore.

Lewis Lapham wondered, in last July's Harper's, "why so many people continue to insist that we're living in a democracy that somehow would have been recognizable to Franklin D Roosevelt or even to Richard M Nixon. The belief is bad for the health and mental stability." Perhaps if Kubler-Ross had been a political scientist she would have described it as the first stage of grief upon the death of a republic. Either that, or they are simply inattentive, and still don't know enough to be in denial.

Listen, America. I've been there. The bully won't let you win, even when you do, as you have a number of times now. As soon as you rise to his bogus challenge, you give up your power, and he's got you.

If politics is a race that can never be won, then perhaps parapolitics is a solitary marathon that can never be finished.

If this is it, and the old cancer upon the presidency has metastasized beyond treatment, and all we can do for the American Experiment is make it as comfortable as possible, there is still hope. Hope for us, I mean, and not for a system, nor even possibly for a civilization. Because if what doesn't kill us makes us stronger, perhaps what kills us - or could - makes us strongest. I mean that like Dylan meant this, which he wrote during the Cuban Missile Crisis:

I will not go down under the ground
'cause somebody tells me that death's comin' 'round
An' I will not carry myself down to die
When I go to my grave my head will be high
Let me die in my footsteps
Before I go down under the ground

To me, the metaphorical oomph of one-legged Fox, running halfway across Canada before the cancer took him down under the ground, is not the ringingly hollow "cancer can be beaten." Because, after all, it beat him. Rather, it's "Hey cancer, you sonuvabitch; get a load of me - I'm alive!"

It's not a race, but we have to keep moving. And long may you run.

[Swamp Rat]

6. Since I am not as verbose as my DU friends I can only offer images like:

If you want a few more, I will provide them at a higher resolution than the sample (not to be used since it is low resolution) above. To look at most of my pix, click on the link below and scroll down to the bottom to see my galleries (these are low-res pix). Let me know if you have any requests for certain pix.

http://news.globalfreepress.com/gallery/index.php?cat=10002

I give permission for my artwork to be printed in the book above referenced, provided that only high resolution, color images are used (of my choosing). Let me know and I will PM them to you.

:)

[bloom]

7. Conformity - and Morality.

I think you can have 2 people - one on the left and one on the right - they may both lean toward depression, toward not reading social signals, toward dealing with people in what seems to be the most logical ways. They may both have Asperger's (or not). They are both concerned with morality. They may both be obsessive to some degree.

Where the difference comes in - is the one on the left choses non-conformity and the one on the right choses conformity.

The non-conformist doesn't expect herself/himself to be like everyone else and allows others the same consideration. This seems like a very logical way to live. It's possible as part of the mix that morality is more important (such as to an Asperger's person who wants to make sense of behavior) than to others and the non-conformist may expect everyone to be try to behave morally - but with looser parameters than the conformist. It may be a simple matter of not doing harm to others - the "golden rule", etc. Concepts which have their logic in basic social harmony.

The conformist (esp. an Asperger's type conformist) - the one on the right - may become more obsessive about everyone following the same rules. It may be working for him/her to completely follow some exact script (which is why fundamentalism is appealing - scripts about everything). And the person assumes that what works for him/her should work for everyone and that their way - like heterosexual marriage - should be codified into law. So nobody can deviate from the script. So everyone has the exact same morality - and those who don't - don't get the benefits of society.


The difference is about basic morality - and how it is defined. Do No Harm & the Golden Rule - OR - Do it This Way, the Strict Father Way. The right-winger might THINK that they believe in the "golden rule" - but that is because they expect everyone to conform to THEIR way - not any other way. "Do to others as you would have them do to you" does NOT mean "others must do things the same way that I do them" - but should be about allowing others to make decisions when those decisions do not cause harm to others. Activities that require the degradation of others would be an obvious violation of the the golden rule.

This plays out in the abortion debate. Anti-abortion people expecting people to conform to their way - not allowing that there could ever be extenuating circumstances and not allowing that not everyone thinks the same. It's not using the golden rule to say that others must make the SAME decisions that you make - that's the conformity rule.

For the broader question of what is best for society - it makes much more sense to have gay marriage than not to - more people in secure relationships - and with the rights afforded to those relationships. Same with abortion - it makes more sense for women to have children when they are ready to have them. From the perspective of the whole (and the individual - either way).

The right-winger's arguments fall apart easily - when they say that abortion harms how people view life - when they turn around and support the death penalty, war, torture, poverty, etc. Same with gay marriage - their argument supports instability and promiscuity - things that they are ostensibly against.

It's a problem of basic conformity - where people are getting sucked into conforming to things that are NOT in society's interest. Take patriotism and nationalism - that work so well for people on the right. It's all about conformity. The military as well. Non-conformists might pretend to accept it, but a military that is fighting an immoral war cannot be defended by any logical reasoning as being moral. Nor can an immoral war be defended as being in society's interest. It causes harm to our country as a whole, to the troops, as well as (obviously) to the people who are being killed, torn up and overrun.

In our globalized world - conformity needs to be resisted on many levels and for many reasons. Fortunately the "golden rule" or "ethics of reciprocity" is a basis of morality in most, if not all cultures. Non-conformity as part of one's moral system is far more likely to lead to social harmony and respect between cultures than conformity ever will.


I give permission for this to be printed in the book above referenced.

[Bhaisahab]

8. one way ticket

on saturday they told me
this country’s on a one way ticket to hell
on sunday they said
but you can save yourself by going to america
america is where the sun always shines
and where fortunes are made
so on monday
i got me a ticket and some dollars

but then my wife
she comes running out of the house
and she tells me hold on honey
america’s just being nuked by the axis of evil
oh no! they screamed
and they ran away
fuck knows where
for america has been nuked
and here i am
on a one way ticket out of hell


ON EDIT: I give permission for this to be printed in the book above
referenced.

[kentuck]

9. My Journey to the Underground...

It all started with the election of 2000. Just as the Florida Supreme Court was ready to recount all the votes in Florida, the Bush/Cheney legal team - headed by former Secretary of State James Baker - immediately appealed the decision to the right-leaning US Supreme Court. The process was stopped dead in its tracks when the US Supreme Court, by a 5 to 4 vote, declared George W Bush the winner of the Presidency of the United States. I knew it was historic. In my bones, I felt like a coup had taken place. I felt anger. I felt helpless. I felt threatened.

At first, I had no idea what could be done. I wondered how many people felt the same way as I did . I was searching frantically to get out the message that we could not let this stand. We had to fight it. Unfortunately, at the same time, the corporate media was telling America how popular the “new” President was and how the American people supported him. It was not a very happy time.

Then, just a few weeks after the Inaugural Parade, my dear wife told me there was a new site that was looking for “writers”. It was called the “democraticunderground”. They were the guys standing out there in front of the parade on Inauguration Day with their banner announcing their new website. I liked the sound of it from the first, because I had the feeling that we would need to fight these people “underground”. I put it off for a couple of weeks and then signed on. And I have been here ever since - fighting with words and ideas for an America that I believe we need and that we once had.

Looking back, I would have to say that the Administrators and founders of DemocraticUnderground were visionaries of unplanned consequences. At first, the most radical left and some “freepers” (the other side) strayed in to voice their opinions or to disrupt the site. But everyone hung together because we knew it was important. We had to be there. Democrats and liberals from all walks of life joined in the “movement”. And some of us did feel like it was a necessary movement. There were former politicians, professors, school teachers, writers, the gay community, common folks, people from all over joined in the fight. Many of the well-known “bloggers” now on TV and radio shows at one time or another posted their comments on the “democraticunderground”. We were the pioneers in the movement.

Our views were not in the majority. We were nicknamed the “ten-percenters” because we were the only ones disagreeing with the policies of this Administration, especially after the attacks of September 11, 2001. At first, we reluctantly joined in the support for the war in Afghanistan, but we knew that was only going to make it that more difficult to oppose what was happening to our nation, although we understood the gravity of the tragedy. Most of us were against the invasion of Iraq from the beginning. We did not believe or trust the Administration and time has proven us correct.

We knew that many high-profile politicians were visiting the site but they were too intimidated by the name of “underground” to actually go public with their thoughts or comments. They must have thought they would be tagged as a member of the “Weathermen” or some radical group? One notable exception was the courageous Elizabeth Edwards, the wife of the former Democratic VP candidate, John Edwards. She was greeted and adored by the posters on DemocraticUnderground. We know others have stopped by with “aliases” on occasion. After a while, the Administrators with the help of members called “moderators”, were able to weed out almost all the disruptors and the “underground” became a haven for left-wing and moderate Democratic voices. More moderates came into the flock as the numbers grew. That fact created some tensions with the old-timers, who were generally more “left-leaning”.

The election of 2004 was devastating to many “DUers” with the defeat of John Kerry and the re-election of George W Bush. Our job was much bigger than we thought. The Administration used the war for political purposes and had manipulated the media with lies and propaganda like none seen in the history of our nation. To this day, we continue the struggle to regain our freedoms and liberties that we had fought for since the days of our Revolution. I’m sure we will remain here on the front line until the American people win the next “revolution”.


I give permission for this to be printed in the book above
referenced.

[Viva_La_Revolution]

10. Is the fog starting to lift?

The murky twilight zone creepy fog of the 2004 election fraud, the Bush lies, the MSM blackout, lies leading to war, the stench of greed. Sounds are muffled, for months I can’t even see my own hands before my face! The fog is thick, viscous… whispering “sore losers”… “conspiracy theories”…

Wait! A spark of light, did you see it? Conyers, investigating! Another! Arenbeck calling for recounts… they faded so quickly, I wonder, did I really see that? Perhaps it was just an illusion…

Oh! I can see shapes in the fog! Others, wandering in this soup, confused as I, now reaching out to each other, clasping hands, no longer alone. Slowly, as more of us gather to each other, our voices combine, stronger, louder!

A brief ray of light illuminates Boxer and 32 members of the House of Representatives standing up, bursting though the evil fog surrounding us…and then the light is gone. Still we cling to each other, struggling through the fog. It’s a bit easier now, together, helping each other avoid the pitfalls of lies and propaganda, war crimes and atrocities.

I can just make out the faces of those closest to me now! Faces of every shade, every nation, all united by our desire for peace, for truth, equality and freedom.

Together, we are the Sun that burns the fog away.


"I give permission for this to be printed in the book above
referenced."

[Asgaya Dihi]

11. Second Chances

My name is Dan. I grew up mostly in the Maryland suburbs of Washington DC, living there from 1969 till shortly after I turned 17 in 1980. For the last several years I've been involved in fighting against the drug war and the for profit prison system. Early it was fighting injustice in our marijuana laws but the more I learned about the drug war as a whole the less I liked it. I worked a short time in the past with a group called Law Enforcement Against Prohibition and have since made an effort to deal with anyone involved in any aspect of the system as often as I can. That's an odd statement coming from me. As the Grateful Dead would say, “what a long strange trip it's been”. There was a time when I would have hated a cop.

Life doesn't always revolve around the big things. It's more the little ones, or luck. Meeting the right person by chance, meeting the wrong one and getting hurt. Being born in the right place or time, or the wrong one. Little choices or events sometimes turn into big ones and unintended consequences are real too.

The first several years of my life were fairly normal I'd think. I got into a few fights but they were more because I didn't have the sense to back down from a bully than because I was ever one myself. I had moved a few times so was always either the new kid or someone who could sympathize with the new kid. Trouble didn't seem hard to find but it was just kid stuff. At about 6 years old my father started beating me occasionally, as I got older it got worse. He'd leave me with huge welts and feeling like I couldn't breathe, it was almost like being stoned I'd get so dizzy gasping for air. Things were going downhill fast so eventually my mother divorced him.

This was in the DC suburbs in the early 70's and although things weren't as bad as they became since it was always a high crime area. My mother couldn't afford a very good neighborhood on her own so I ended up in a school with a developing gang problem. More knives and fists at the time rather than guns like today but not a lot of fun. At the time it didn't occur to me I had a choice so I just went to school and fought them. After a while they asked me to join, said they liked the guts. Now I had a choice and at 10 years old I didn't like it. I could join them and do to others what had been done to me or I could say no and piss off this group asking for worse myself for as long as I lived there. Neither made sense to me so I just stopped going to school.

For that the State of Maryland decided I was uncontrollable and locked me up. Turned into four and a half years before it was done with, never occurred to me at the time I could do more time for saying no than I might have if I'd stabbed someone. Either my mother signed me over or they'd take custody and she'd totally lose me, I wouldn't have anywhere to go till I was 18. At the time they could move you around same as now, I started in the DC area and spent a couple of years there, then a short time in Connecticut and finished the time in Texas. DC was a total lockdown, the Connecticut one wasn't too bad but after being used to DC I got in trouble fast and sent to the one in Texas. That was the one where I spent two terms of over 30 days in an isolation cell.

Isolation is a strange place and it changes you. The strangest part is that it's really not so bad after you get used to it. The cell was about 8x8 with a solid wood door on one wall and block construction the rest of the way around with a translucent Plexiglas block on the wall opposite the door for a little light in the day. You pace, you exercise, you think a lot. You deal with it or you lose your mind, I dealt with it. We got out to shower, go to the bathroom and eat at a desk in the same room each meal. No exercise yards, no sun, nothing else. These days I can go weeks or months without seeing a soul other than my wife and kids and be fine with that. It lends itself to having a lot of time for research. Finally they sent me home and I never did go back to school. Self-educated and got a GED since then, but I was on my own after that.

I was released at about 14 and a half years old. Two friends and I, one in his early 20's who had just got out of prison on an assault charge, decided to hitch to Florida and back. I told my mother I was going, she asked if she could stop me, I said I doubted it so she gave me $20 and said good luck. The next couple of weeks was a blast. We hitched to Key West and back working along the way shoveling sand for a sandblaster in Fayetteville NC for traveling money. After that I never looked back. I was on my own and on the streets, and I was pissed. I had a home to go to but I often didn't. Sleeping at some biker's house or in the woods worked as well. I got armed, carried a folding lock blade Buck 110 with a hinge loose enough to open with a flick of the wrist. I saw gunshot wounds; my best friend did three of five in Baltimore State Pen for stabbing someone he didn't stab. Someone else did that part but things got confused and they got the wrong guy. I saw a guy get his head slammed into a doorjamb hard enough that part of his scalp rolled down over his eyes. I'd get bored and go do things I had no business doing, not because I needed to but just because I was bored. If someone had tried to stop me I'd have stuck them.

The thing is that I went in I was a kid who defended others and would rather risk trouble than hurt others, but when I came out I was mean. Both times I spent in isolation were for stealing cars of the place I was held to get away, it made my two friends and I celebrities of sorts in the El Paso juvie near where we were caught the first time. They thought it was funny, not only broke out but also stole the company car. The longer I was in the worse I got and I was getting tired of being there.

When you take someone and destroy all hope, treat them like a criminal and isolate them with criminals, you breed criminals. That's your peer group, that's what you talk about and that's what you learn. You either fit in or you're a victim. Change is slow but make that home for years and what do we expect to come out? It's just as simple as that. I had no hope so I didn't much give a damn about anyone else either. A large part of our current prison and jail population are purely non-violent, many of them drug offenders. Of the ones who are violent many started out as non-violent offenders and were taught violence in our system like I was. We DO NOT have a drug problem in this country, we have a prohibition and zero tolerance attitude problem. We're creating new criminals about as fast as we can. Mandatory minimums combined with overlapping safe school zones are destroying more lives than we ever hoped they'd save.

It took years and the help of the lady I'd later marry to remember who I used to be, to get over the anger. Around Christmas 1979 I met the lady that I'd later marry. Several months later we did marry, her at 19, me at 17. I hadn't been a kid for a very long time, I knew what I was doing and am still with her now. I got lucky, I got out with the help of a lady that offered me something to care about, some hope, and even then it took time. There's a lot more out there though, many who didn't start off any worse than I was. Many who started off better but are in our system just the same. I started off a decent kid, with help to get out of where I was I think I'm a decent person now. I haven't been in trouble since about `81 or `82, which was minor. Why was I ever the way I was? Zero tolerance and punish them attitudes, being isolated with criminals and losing hope. I made bad choices which I don't minimize but confining people for reasons like that will have bad results often enough that we don't need to be doing it anymore. Punishment shouldn't be more damaging than the mistakes themselves.

For me it was zero tolerance attitudes about school, for others it is zero tolerance about drugs, or about a probation violation, or a petty theft as a third strike. We've got little tolerance left for anything anymore and as a result we imprison our own at a rate five to eight times that of nations we claim to be better than. We're destroying our own kids, creating our own criminals, and nothing has improved for it. Heroin is cheaper by far than it was when we started and more pure, death rates have done nothing but climb. We're financing our enemies as we destroy the lives of our own. It costs us tens of billions of dollars a year to damage our children in a for profit prison system.

A nation can be judged by the standards set for the most vulnerable of their citizens. If we can mistreat or ignore them the rest becomes just a matter of degree. Once the poor became beside the point, the middle wasn't so hard to exclude as well. It was only a matter of time. If we're ever to get anywhere as a nation it will have to be together, some of us alone isn't going to do it. Trickle down was just the rich pissing on the middle class and it's no better from the middle class to the poor. Either we rebuild the nation from the bottom up or we don't have the right to a better one.



I give permission for this to be printed in the book above
referenced. And thank you sweetheart for the help with this, it's better for the input. If it needs adjusted I'll do a second post but I wanted to get this out of the way for now.

[undergroundpanther]

12. I'd be glad to add stuff

Where/who do I send it to?

[undergroundpanther]

13. 1

When I was 19 I was in a mental hospital.When I was there my therapists tried to make me un-transgendered.

One day my therapist said she was curious about my 'sexuality".She thought it was"peculiar" So we began to talk about it.She remarked how "masculine" I looked.I told her how I never heard the end of taunts in school,stuff like dyke"It", etc. I told her I felt more comfortable being masculine. She asked why?
I told her I didn't know why,it was always this way for me ,I never felt all that "female".I didn't know what transgender was back than. All I know is I was not a girl,never was.I explained to her my body didn't match the me on the inside,that there was always this discomfort about my body vs what I feel I am or was supposed to be.I told her my breasts felt like tumors and that I wished I could get them off,I told her I wished I could get my uterus out. That I would do it right now if I could.

What was the response? A sex reeducation class.
She described the class like it was a high school sex ed class.I told her I already knew the basics about sexual mechanics and all that. I told her I was not active sexually because I felt such pain and revulsion with my body being so wrong.She insisted I go to the class..So I went.

It was a nightmare.

In the class first day there were big sheets of paper taped to the wall,we were told to write the slang names any names of sexual body parts on these papers,since I was "female" I was put over in the female section of the room. I stood there not wanting to write, I saw others put up twat,pussy,tits, cunt etc. I just wanted to die.
I stood there with my magic marker..

Than each person read what they wrote,I was scrutinized because I didn't write anything.I sure as hell didn't say why.What followed was a typical film about sexual body parts you would see in high school health class.


The next class the presiding therapist asked everyone about their sexual expressions,again I said nothing but I had to sit there and listen as another patient described in detail masturbating in the bathtub on his unit about rape,and the person he described was me. There were not many people in this hospital with a big blue Mohawk and a vest with a panther on it.I was mortified. After that we saw a film about women's sexuality, it was as crass and degrading as a "girls gone wild " commercial and I was grilled about how I felt about it.And after that I got advice I didn't want.

After being told I would never attract a man with the masculine appearance I had,and that I was too"rough" and inappropriate I exploded .I told the therapist I am not a girl,don't you get it? NOT a girl NEVER was!! I don't want to force myself to be one!! NO I don't want to learn to be one either!! I stormed out.

After that I refused to go to class and spent the time in solitary. In response to my "non compliance". My therapist made up a "behavior modification" program she wanted me to follow. I was told to"soften" my look,to stop shaving my head, to not wear my vest,to try skirts and makeup and I was informed that staff would "assist" me with this..

This program became the mother of all power struggles,and I was put into solitary,restrained, lose privileges and humiliated until I complied. I was told how to sit,to not sprawl out,to walk a way that felt weird. One day I walked out on the unit in a skirt feeling so awkward, I went back to my room cut my arms and and put on my jeans.And That got me in worse trouble.
I could not stand the greasy feeling of foundation, I hated the hair I wanted my hawk back.I felt like a clown dressed up "pretty". Eventually they gave up on changing me..But for months I had played their silly gender conformity game, and fought against it.I tried to be someone else,and it made me dangerously suicidal.It never occured to them THEY were causing it.This hospital kept me way longer than what was required i had very good insurance so the admistrators had a financial interest in declaring me as messed up as possible to get the insurance money.

By the time the staff gave up on this 'program'the damage was done. I was re traumatized and I to this day don't trust any"professional" who thinks transgender issues are just a bunch of hysteria. Trying to be a "girl" is painful to my mind be it for my mother ,or to avoid being bullied at school or to please a fascist therapist ..Playing that game is deadly to me. I cannot be a girl or dress up like one, every fiber of my being reacts against it,it's like a gay person trying to act straight you cannot keep up the lie for long before it starts to tear you apart from the inside out..

To do sex at all for me is about focused imagination, because I do not want to feel my body is what it is.The wrongness is intrusive and it totally ruins sex for me.So I am asexual.

When I got my hysterectomy no longer was my body being flooded with crazy making hormones that made my mind crack up,no longer was I bound by the bleeding and the pain.With the uterus gone I felt calmer and more relaxed and no longer dreaded the reminder every month of everything wrong with me..

The therapist I have now,he knows my body is at war,conflicted,it's not all in my head. A war exists between my masculine psyche and partial male body and the feminine remnants,the parts that are a 'mistake'that will not disappear without some intervention. And he wants me to get my mastectomy. He agrees it will help me.When he signed his recommend I cried.If I can get the money I can get it done now! I wish so bad I could be free of this chest, for want of 6,800 bucks,I cannot afford..Surgical help so I can feel at peace.Transgender hurts until the body matches the mind.

That's how my situation us. For Trans-people the wrong body is like a closet we live through everyday of our lives. This closet body goes everywhere we go,with us every moment,this closet is there,until it is taken off and our true self is free.

o the bigots that run the state and many health insurances my situation is not real..and this is really bigoted. Just because some people don't understand they will not take my suffering seriously..And because of bigoted attitudes ignorance and fear the state will be able to discriminate against trans-people deny us a way to"come out of our wrong bodies, and feel at peace. It will go on as long as ignorance ,social control and unwillingness to accept what you yourself do not experience and cannot imagine can be true for someone else society will try to force gender and sexuality to fit into particular narrow binary forms ,and this will enable bigots to treat people who don't fit the mold as 'deviants' and make them second class citizens, deny them help they need and their human rights.

Different oriented and identified people who are not by their nature simply male or female or straight will suffer living lies.The closet is not just denying who you are attracted to and hiding it,the closet for trans-people is our own body.Straight sexuality is not all there is,likewise make or female gender is not all there is, it all runs through a spectrum,It is not male or female, straight or gay it's both/and/whatever else ...in different combinations inside each person. A dual rainbow.A dual rainbow has 2 bows the spectrum in a dual rainbow runs both directions..And sometimes one bow is more pronounced than the other one,sometimes they both are bright, it varies..Like the spectrum of sexual/personal identities and orientations do. The twin bows of orientation and gender are vast and unique to each person.

I ask how can another person who is not me ,who does not want to understand my situation,who will not empathize,or is unable to,or chooses not to get to deny me the right to define who I am for myself!!? .

And isn't that what WE ALL are fighting for?
The right to really BE WHO WE ARE and be treated like human beings with dignity and human rights?

[undergroundpanther]

14. 2

The Mystery of Identity
By Underground Panther in the Sky

I always hate it when people ask me, "Who are you?"
Because I find I have no answer for them. I mumble ummm.uh hmm er...I dunno..who I am.
If I knew who I was I would have solved one of the biggest enigmas that have stumped philosophers since the beginning of time. When someone says they "are" something what does it mean really?

I can identify what I "like" or have an affinity for, and what I don't like. Sometimes I can choose this,sometimes I can't.
But that isn't just who I am. It's a part of me I presume, but It exists outside of me...too. I co-opt these things
they are like accesscories to axcess me.

I like all things feline, I like art, glittery things, and that killer 3 layered 4 inch thick chocolate mousse cake from City Cafe'. I like animals and magic, the woods, sunsets and thunderstorms, Earth and the Sky in general. I like mystery, history, spirituality, prose, and music. To make a long list short I like alot of things. And I do not like other things ;eating mustard or liver and onions comes to mind.. funny I am beginning to change my opinion about mustard..Even your tastebuds change over the years. And there are unchangable things I decided long ago I can't stand having as part of myself: choosing to manifest a deliberate desire to violate others consent to control them or abuse them, and being manipulated and dominated.

Being a bisexual means basically I like who I like and I don't care what sexual equipment they posess or don't posess biologically. To me it means I like people. I see beauty in people. I prefer no gender over the other. Both are equal and different in my taste. Being an androgynous/transperson too means basically I don't believe in gender. I reject the notion of being forced to live exclusively in a role of man or woman, socially, sexually, or otherwise. I don't feel like a man and I don't feel like a woman, I find I am comfortable shifting around in the spectrum of masculinity and feminity. I feel I am more true to what is inside me when I am living in the ambiguity of both and niether. People tell me they sometimes don't know which gender I am, I get ma'am'ed and sir'ed..in stores on the street, and it seems to be a phenomena independant of what I am wearing. I don't take it personal when other people use a gender label because I dunno who I am really, I just know the me inside is somehow different then my genetics or body that biology says I am. In fact I kinda feel sad for these people I meet getting all flustered and embarassed when they discover I have breasts too big to bind down..(hopefully not forever) after they have called me sir, or blushing after they say ma'am when they suspect I am a man. Gender is, at least as it is taught in our culture, a rigid binary system. And in a reality that is incredibly complex a simplistic notion like gender is not able to contain a person who asks certain questions like: why can't girls play baseball and boys play with dolls,women grow penises and men get vaginas installed?

I feel like an anthromorphic person or as some say, a furry. I walk around with cat ears and a feline tail most people think is "cute." And that's ok, little do they suspect I am a panther-literally. At least I take comfort that I ain't getting harassed over it. I have found I do not feel comfortable living as just a human being in a human suit. I remember when I was a little kid I was the Rainbow Tiger Sun Storm when I was happiest in my own skin. Those memories of being RainbowTiger Sun Storm, shine out to me as some of the most honest and comfortable times of my life. And since I am persuing happiness like the rest of the world does why not be happy in the way I know best how to? As an adult I call myself Underground Panther in the Sky. My life experinces have changed my name but not my image. Some therapists, and other well meaning but kinda controlling folks, looking to put words in my mouth,they might claim my feline thing was due to my abusive past, or it's a phase, or rebellion, or body hatred causing my happiness to be found in some form our culture tells people it does not want here. Some might say my feline issue happens because I liked watching the Thundercats cartoons way too much. These kinds of lame explanations directed at my understanding of what makes me happy says my felineness, and happiness, makes the observer feel very uncomfortable. They project upon me asking am I doing this to push people away, to move away from people because I feel vunerable or angry. They assume alot they cannot know in these statements,so are they talking about how they feel? Logic says to be safe and fit in with this culture be a conformist, acting"normal" is safe and safe too often get aquainted with values like sucess,sanity or goodness that have nothing to do with being safe.In a fact it is known among forsenic psychologsts..serial killers look "normal" until the cops find all the bodies stashed in the basement.Creating the appearance of Normal and Moderate offends no one, it is like an Identity Mastercard.
The NormalCard gets you accepted into most social circles everywhere human society wants you to be.
But not nessesarily everywhere YOU want to be.
Going where the interest rates are higher gets more difficult as it begins to cost you social clout among your 'normal'peers.

I wonder if my differences bother "normal" "conservative" or "religious" people because they never questioned what it means to not be a human being.They just do as they were told to.. We are taught to put our own kind as the center of the entire universe and the pinnacle of creation. Old spiritual drawings, philosophy, and psychology tests echo this anthrocentric veiw. Yet it is human civilization that might destroy this planet. How is committing planetary genocide and anthro-suicide the pinnacle of anything?

Seeing a 'civilized' human adopt 'wildness' and look like a Panther person opens up deep and unconsious cultural issues about consent, control and powerlessness that humanity has a hard time coping with in general. People that are uncomfortable will pretend and to keep this illusion of 'normalcy' they see as 'stability' they try to set limits on others by assuming marriage must only be between one man and one woman, likewise cultural assumptions say our genders must be limited to being a man or a woman. Reality proves much more ambigous when you look at hormones, genetics, the influences of enviromental factors, and what having an identity might really mean in and of
itself. And There are plenty of Transpeople proving gender is just another cultural assumption, by living who they feel comfortable as, showing humanity that a cultural belief is just a belief and any belief that makes you miserable, need not be part of your reality. Even when everyone else thinks it must be as they say, so they can selfishly avoid feeling uncertainty about who they are and avoid cognitive dissonance about being civilized. They will inwardly cringe as a happy cat person goes walking by and it is nowhere near Halloween.. The beliefs that bind the mind become a tiny bit more consious.. and it hurts. And this might be a good thing.

When you step outside the species closet, as a furry you begin to question the very essence and purpose of the definitions of what it means to be civilized and you question the value of human culture itself and if it means anything to you. We are taught by adults, by society, by marketers..ect.. A cat is not a person. A cat is less valuable than a person. Etc. My experinces show me Cats care when people are too hung up on thier beliefs to care, Cats don't carry the baggage and impositions of this human culture to a relationship. It raises other questions too,like Why are women and people of color seen as less worthy than white rich men?

It raises the idea that the world, people, creatures, plants, and minerals might have a purpose independant of what we think it is. That this Earth might not exist just for us to use up as Francis Bacon so declared in terms dripping with abusiveness, non-consenting domination over the Earth... And it raises the notion that our own kids might choose to be something other than what parents want or society expects. We say children are our future.. what if they choose a different future without the ways we know and imposed upon them? Are we born to be wild or domesticated? Are we conditioned to accept domestication and civilization? Or is a civilization that subjugates and punishes it's people seeking equality, justice, harmony, and freedom... in thier search for happiness and integrity, is it somehow"natural" as it wipes life off the surface off our home in the name of growth, progress, and human 'acheivements'? What does it all mean to me? How do I fit in with this? Do I even want to?

The tail and ears I wear are just extensions of this expression of animal human in me. Someday I may grow whiskers in the form of pierces upon my upper lips, implanted fangs, and tattooed rainbow stripes, transforming myself into something unique I find incredibly beautiful, liberating, and comforting to my mind and spirit. I am determined to become my own dream. The rest of the world might reject me, call me freak and be scared of me... But I have learned the hard way I cannot live my life for anyone else, or live as anyone else, and still be happy in my own skin at the same time. Sadly, it has taken me years to realize this fact about my life and it has taken 38 years to have the courage to be who I am despite the hostility of an entire culture that wishes I'd be content in a simple definition of what everyone expects of me, that does not challenge cultural impositions and assumptions about what are we, and raise all those thorny conflicting questions about life, humanity, relationships, and culture that they would rather not see. I can't play pretend with society if it hurts.

Ok Am I my spirituality?

Well I have learned to not label myself as anything spiritually, I have explored alot of belief systems, each time looking for the truth, I took the useful stuff and chucked the rest that was hurtful, useless, or false. I am pretty heretical to authority and tradition. I struggle to find the spiritual fruits in whatever belief system I'm in. I struggle with issues of right and wrong, to build up my character. I took the lessons of spirituality and used it to become more honest about myself, and caring about others. I went into my first belief system, wondering why the world has such an evil problem, why people hurt each other, why we are born to bloom, or not bloom just to die, I have agonized over these issues. I have accepted Christ into my heart, kicked him out... I still have no clue what happens after we die. I think alot of beliefs are elaborate coping mechanisms to tolerate the human condition, they are guesses about vast unknowns mingled with hope. Religion attracts seekers but it also invites authoritarians into a power structure and hierarchy system that can be misused to exploit people's hope and seeking, and it hurts people in the most depraved ways. Spiritual abuse is to me a horrible thing to do to a person.

I do think there is a vast unknown, a great mystery, a one-and-many something trancendent and immanent. I haven't a clue what it is. It speaks to me through the Images of Sekhmet, and Michibizi, and the other feline gods all over the world. It speaks to me through mostly feline archetypes. It seems to speak to other people other ways in other images or no images at all. It can make us better, it can make us act like monsters: if we don't discern what we recieve from these mysteries with what our consience says is right and wrong. And whatever we do with it we are still responsible for the results.

But is it God? I dunno what God is frankly. And I can't live with myself if I were to be so arrogant as to say I know 100% what God is. Maybe I need an epiphany, maybe I've already had one. I crafted a belief system that is unique to me, based in what I have experinced, what I observe from paranormal experiences, dreams, my goals of helping, healing, and getting out of this mess, and the accumulated results of a long and varied spiritual journey I call my spiritual life.. and I am still wondering why the world has such an evil problem, why people hurt each other, why we are born to bloom, or not bloom, just to die, I still agonize over these issues, and I still cry out in the dark for wisdom and understanding. Sometimes I get some insight, inspiration, and comforting.. as I hear Sekhmet's deep voice telling me I am A Tiger divine,as cat fairies flit around the room..sometimes it's just me crying to myself in the dark.

But is this struggle what I identify as who I am?
Nope it's just a part.

Than what about Identity with my own life experiences?

Am I just a product of what I have lived through? Am I a product of my cultural conditioning? Am I a product of cultural rebellion? Is my ancestory a part of me? My history, my genetic code?

How much has marketing influenced me? Did my mom drop me on my noggin as a baby? Do I really like Thundercats cartoons too much? Is it because I do not agree with someone's assumptions about who I am that does this, that entitles them to call me sick, a problem, even a threat to society, and scapegoat me? Is any of their fear justified? Is my fear of thier 'power' justified? Are norms sane at all?

Because I have struggled with the dark side of culture, does my lack of faith in cultural norms entitle the believers in these norms to hate me with impunity? Because I have asked myself what does it mean to be a gender or a human being.. does this entitle those who never asked those questions for themself, without a guidebook or guru explaining it all, the 'right' to push me into a closet of thier own design? Because I like people and see beauty in relationships with anyone does this entitle some people who have a specific veiw of the unknown and what that transcendant immanence is about, entitle them to by force of law, by threats, or by the will of thier condemnation, be permitted to force or shame me into limiting myself to someone elses definition of what I like, just because I have a vagina and breasts, and they so strongly believe a female human is designed to only see beauty in men's bodies? And do I deserve to find happiness? To be true to myself? To be whatever I be?

Who Am I?
The answer to that question depends on when you ask me. This is because I change everyday. I would have given different answers in the past and I know I will give different answers in the future than I would give you today. I'm not being dishonest or contrary. I'm being accurate about the human condition as I live it.

Identity seems to be conceptual a kind of interactive fluid prose of self.
A sign,a shell,a label. A shelter...

Sometimes out of convienence or from the limits of language we put ourselves inside a label until we find out we have grown too much to fit within it comfortably, then we sometimes seek another label to inhabit, another comfort zone is marked out in point of veiw paremeters, on the field of consiousness, daring us to look past our own fences. Until we step out of bounds, then we find we need a new label given what we experienced and understood. Than we need a bigger fence.

People in thier lifetimes grow out of many label 'shells' they identify themselves with, because they change, grow and experience more. We are taught to assume the shells you tell the world who you are. People can spend alot of lifetime living like a hermit crab, trying to find a shell that fits until one day, they figure out no shell others have made for you fits, and they find they have run out of shells to contain them. Then they find they are on thier own free-falling into finding out. And it feels different, unknown,unpredictable, daring and vunerable. Doubts are everywhere, people around you react to the changes. It feels like coming out of the closet and going into a closet at the same time.

You start to make your own shell and tear it apart remodeling it until you feel at home.
This is what social heretics like myself do, because I can't live in a lie in my own heart.

This can scare alot of the hermit crabs around you who do not know how to make thier own shells yet, who are still living in prefab ones culture makes up for them. Insecure people who are afraid and vunerable, because your presence makes thier own shell feel confining, because it begets questions and stirs desires for things 'off-limits' outside of the comfort zone. It's hard on the psyche, losing your shell in the dangerous sea of ideas. Having no shell ,limits or boundaries makes you become vunerable prey to any predator out there looking to make your life miserable by poking your soft parts until you are goaded into a shell that is harmful to you to avoid pain.

I can stick labels on myself and take them off again.. But this doesen't change who I am either. Labels on people don't change how other people are to me either.I am a self-soliloquy living explorer of consiousness and experiences, telling my story as I write it all down in multidemensional realtime with invisible ink. I am change I percieve.. I am limited and limitless. A paradox wrapped in an Enigma. I can change and I can't change.I can learn and unlearn and relearn and remember.. I seek to find what is... in my struggle to find my meaning, my truth, and to feel happiness in this life.

My discriptions of me will fail to tell you who I am....I dunno who I am.. I am what I am..
Or is it I am therefore I think..nahh...I ain't into Ayn Rand.. So..I grab another slice of pizza...
And this brings us back to Descartes...Thinking therefore I am?
sigh.. I guess I just am.

So Who are you?

[undergroundpanther]

15. 3

Freedom - to abuse and manipulate
by Underground Panther in the Sky June 12, 2003

Some people are more emotionally equipped to handle freedom than others are. People emotionally equipped to handle freedom don't have a compulsion to lie, they don't get off on physically or verbally abusing people, they don't abuse people 's trust either. They don't intimidate, humiliate or belittle other people to force them to be silent. They don't act like greedy pigs at other's expense.

They police themselves from within. They have self control and confidence that comes with self awareness.

Some people don't desire to dominate relationships they are involved in. Some people are not afraid of losing, being wrong, looking 'weak' or having their own integrity doubted by others. Their personalities and personal flaws are less defended because the person accepts them and is aware of their own limits.

They are well aware of their own autonomy and power to choose right and wrong. They are self aware, self responsible, compassionate and secure. Some people know how to share what they have and are oriented towards cultivating right relationships with others. They know how to be assertive without being aggressive. Some people have enough self control to handle freedom of speech and free association.

Other people can't cope with freedom, and beg by their actions and abusive speech to be limited in their freedoms. They readily use the noble idea of freedom as a rallying cry for the right to abuse, use or mutilate others. They use freedom of speech as a cry for their own alleged right to verbally abuse others. They use freedom of association as a cry for the rights to use others to look "powerful" and con them with religion, scams or false hopes.

People with conduct disorders want the freedom to be intimidating, pushy, deceptive and cruel, and disrupt others' freedoms and relationships. They need to dominate and control social situations. These people can't handle freedom well. They are emotionally and socially screwed up.

They want to be free to abuse and manipulate other people around themselves and reduce other people's freedoms in the name of the bullies' sought-after authoritarian "freedom."

Tyrants, abusers, and bullies have problems with their own conduct in relationships of any kind. They are freedom killing, disruptive authoritarians, aggressive greedy and deceptive.

A person who is behaving like a totalitarian, a bully, a dominator, a user or abuser is INCOMPATIBLE with a society that values freedom and democracy.

Yet taking an absolutist stance on 'freedom' ... preserves the bully's "rights" to abuse, as well as our own rights to relate to whom we wish to, and to speak our minds.

It was said by the anthropologist who studied a very aggressive and abusive patriarchal tribe, the Yanomano, that in order for one segment of the population to dominate and know power over the "lessers," the other segment or "lessers" must be indoctrinated in cowardice.

It has always been this struggle in society ... what do we do with the bullies, exploiters and liars? Do we give them, rights and let them abuse our freedom ... so they can lie disrupt, foment hatred and abuse people? Or do we limit their damage? Restrict their freedoms?

In a small, close knit tribe where "leaders" have less power over the members and are held accountable by the force of close proximity to the populace, it might be possible to recognize problem people just by watching their habits. Then a population can purge its sociopaths and bullies by exile or by restriction, and maintain sociological health (that is, if bullies are not dominating the tribal government).

But in America, in this civilization gone insane, you can't just limit a bullies freedom without limiting your own freedoms. We are caught in a double bind here. And can we get ourselves out of it - and still be free? If so, HOW?

How can a distant uninvolved entity like the government recognize a conduct-disordered bully from someone who is just colorful and outspoken? The government we allow is currently run by authoritarians, bullies liars and abusers. The people in the government have various conduct disorders; that is why we expect them to lie, expect them to exploit us and expect them to abuse our freedoms. This is why we do not trust the government to do much in the interests of maintaining civil freedoms from bullies. Better use those absolutist principles to restrict power-made authoritarians who are equipped with homeland security, FBI and CIA, and huge nuclear arsenals built with our tax money to restrict our freedoms and the freedoms of other nations.

You can risk your own comfy position and turn on the bullies around you with teeth and expose them, call them on their lies publicly, and denounce their sick disordered social control tactics, their greed and destroy their stranglehold over others. So that they know they are no lord or master over others ... It would be a constant fight to get conduct-disordered people to restrict themselves from within. But this is one way out of this "double bind" about freedom.

The other way out is slowly strangling and silencing your own humanity within, by betraying yourself from within. For America's top 1%, the most wealthy to be in the powerful position they are in today, the other 99% of the population of America has to have learned the lessons of cowardice.

A lot of sad, alienated, tired, insecure, overworked, guilty, confused, emotionally unstable, intellectually lazy, and fearful people who are emotionally unequipped for confronting an asshole boss, or an asshole kid, or an asshole spouse have given up freedoms. Especially if they are dependant upon the bully for a paycheck, a relationship, or if they are afraid of confrontation or deep down believe they can't change the situation.

When 1 in 4 Americans have some form of mental illness, it's a warning that our way of relating to each other socially is becoming very sick. I think it's a call from within to stand up and confront the bullies around us, the bullies we let be in power, the bullies who are making us all sick. I am referring to the corporate polluters, liars, con men, the advertisers, politicians, lobbyists, spin doctors, media whores, and all the other public abusers of trust, as well as the domestic bullies like spouse beaters, con men, the TV, school bullies, religious bullies, work bullies, parent bullies and social bullies.

A person's conscience (if they have one) can torment them emotionally from within, until they make things right with themselves. If you ignore your own conscience's convictions of your wrong actions and words long enough, you can condition yourself to become numbed to it. The cost of ignoring your own conscience is to become neurotic, dishonest, addicted, impulsive, passive aggressive, manipulating, secretive and insecure.

A conduct-disordered person has a conscience disorder as well. Authoritarians can't self-police their own actions in society. They see no wrong in harming or using others or destroying the Earth for profit. Other people have to step up to control them and contain them or they will not stop.

If you let bullies dictate how you live, if you let bullies lie and steal unchallenged, then you are setting yourself up for a big explosion someday - or for a freefall to the bottom. Or you just might lose your conscience, either momentarily or forever, when you choose to betray yourself in a fit of rage, frustration or despair. When you are down or shattered to bits inside, a bully does not care about your pain at all. He sees you as an all day sucker to exploit, or as a weak, pathetic loser. He thinks this way because he has no empathy for you.

Authoritarians, bullies, liars, users, abusers, con men, and control freaks are incompatible with notions of freedom and democracy in any civil society.

Yet there is another half of this sick equation: the enabling, passive cowardice of a population who accepts being exploited, who are willing to throw away their consciences mental health and civil society for a pittance and cling to absolutist principles because they don't want to risk doing anything others might disapprove of. They don't want to risk more corrupting influences, to remove to corruption that is already there. This sad dynamic in people makes "the natural domination of sociopaths" in society possible.

Get honest and right with yourselves, people. Freedom for the World begins within YOU.

Fuck what others might think of you and fuck those absolutist principals, and do what is right. Authoritarians, con men and bullies are by their nature incompatible with freedom and democracy in a civil society. Get off yer butt and confront those who would warp and destroy freedom in the name of freedom. . fearlessly. To not listen to your own conscience and to choose to not have self control, to avoid confrontation of a bully at all costs is what it takes to truly lose your freedom.

[undergroundpanther]

16. 4 This one is special

When I was Feline.. By Underground Panther in the Sky
September 30, 2004

I was at home,in the trees, once.
I was there and I was not afraid, not ashamed of anything.
I lived most the time in the tree tops,in dappled shade
like a lurking laughing leopard..
eating grapes and playing with my animal freinds.

I never wore a bra because I wasen't a girl yet.
Nobody had forced me be one yet.
My chest was strong,belly muscled and flat.like a cat.
My arms were strong,I could zap up trees,
my hair fell into a golden mane,the color of the sun.
My feet knew the Earth.

When I was feline my hair smelled of leaves and dry grass,
I was fearless,bold and creative,acrobatic,dramatic and secure.
In August the sun was still gentle to my skin,and the water was cool. Food was still my freind,My blankets were soft,dreams were sweet, and I could be anything,because colors were in the sky
and I could see I was up there among them.

I had nothing ugly between my thighs,
No shameful teeth to fix ,or belly too big,to hide.
Nothing bad of any significance was of me.
I was innocent.

When I was feline,
I could run like a Cheetah and dance up a storm
until the heavens flashed down and no shame stillied my motion.
I could leap like a cougar in my color changing spots,I could fly anywhere!No inhibition limited my thought.
Stong I was like a tiger,clever as a lynx, as handsome and rare as a snow leopard on a mountaintop.And no one hunted me down as thier trophy.

I was a true lion king a rainbow son,phosphoresent luminesent cat shaped one.Lightning flashy, frighteningly tacky,clawed and sharp as a razor as nails,giving the shit right back where it came from.
A bubbly, silly, gentle flower thing,rhinestone kitty heart in a fairy costume with clear wings,shiney crown,
cap guns in wild west holsters and a slingshot.
Such a powerful thing I was,to be housed, in such a small package.
Precious I didn't even know it.

He came to me with indecipherable eyes of greed,
secretly looking to fill himself with me,
They took my trust and broke it, took my mind and shattered it,
He took my heart and chained it down with words of hate and threats
until it took my voice away.

Predator seducer, looks just like a freind .
Concerned and interested long enough to put his hook in.
Entrapping me with freindship I sought in my heart,
So he could satitate his greed upon my innocence and sex.
Stabbing his poison through my body deep into my heart gave birth to this existential pain.

He used me ,because he thought he was entitled to, and I was there.
Wrong place,wrong time,
Nobody saw,nobody complained,nobody cared.
No one saw what he was,they were fooled with his holy man charade
So he had no reason to stop,nobody made him stop, they trusted him..that he was a good man.

He's rapist with higher purpose,saving little kid souls from satan with his dick. He told me to never tell anyone what he did or he'd kill my cat. I try to supress but cannot escape what I felt...brain trauma is burned mind disfigured forever.
I resist the hateful warden now in my body,the gift from sick society that never stops.
Bullies calling me dyke,fatbitch,idiot,crazy, "It" and loser Why Why? What did I ever do to them..
It is my presence that they hate,I take up too much space Not normal,they hate the real ME.
And I seek death.

Why was I dragged from the jungle,from my spirit to endure the assualt of life lived in this world..
I never wanted to be born,I was forced by parental lust,to come into this world. I cannot escape.I was distracted when the gates of hell closed me in as I struggled to survive..
I woke up years later,remembering and started looking for a way out of this pain.I looked straight into the abyss and saw a sword inscribed with"it's all your fault"with my blood on it.

And I screamed NO!, No,It's NOT.


It's scary how this bra strap has worn permanent grooves into my neck.I try to go without it,but the fear,jeers ring in my ears,and eyes ,lookee at the jugs.,
I dare not take it off now.It's not safe.It's not my fault!
The grooves in my neck are rubbed raw,my shoulders hurt.
I am surrounded by rolls of soft dimpled jiggly fat,and I feel like a swollen tick. Men still say the fat chix don't deserve love ,so throw them away,make them die of secret self loathing,and failed dieting..My jeans have divided my waist in two, by years of corseted compression.But disapline is never enough for them.

I try taking it off and here comes a mandick,looking and judging.
Than when thin chix giggle ,say eww..And he comes to me,wanting some.And I am supposed to be grateful for this.
If I stay fat denigrating sneers of supriority, self rightious are invoking the fat police to remark about some moral weakness,
sin of gluttony just like cotton mathers.,
I notice they are overweight men,but nobody cares,
'cause the scapegoating feels so good to the savage ego.They like to watch..

I dare not take it off, Or keep it on, it's not safe to exist.
This cunt invites rape,because it's always open 24 hours a day.
I want it to heal closed. I want to be safe.
I don't want to suffer to be safe.
Who made the world this way?

My feline eyes cry out from this cage,
My arms are criss crossed scarred stigmata of rage,
I scream but my intensity makes it hurt to hear it.
I talk it out all calmly,but I talk too much.. furtive glances at the clock,They are waiting for me to shut up so they can give me thier sagely advice..There is no peace inside,from vilagence,when made sensitive by nessecity.. Always the danger feels overwhelming.And noone knows how it feels.They don't want to even when they say they do..

To think of the trees, dappled shade and laughing leopards crushes me with anger,a thousand paradises stolen for a 30 second rush of power for adult overpowering a child..

As long as the cry of my roaring tears can be overruled
by shame stigmata, dehumanized , and hysteria
That vunerable sign that inaverdantly advertizes to greedy eyes,
of people who live to dominate and destroy
My body is saying to them,despite what I say ,cum, take and consume.

So I bind my chest,wear a vest,and put on my shit kicker boots,
I am not a woman.Nor a girl. I am my own.
I stay inside the house more than I used to because
I am not me anymore, I am a spiked, cold leather chastity belt,
I walk the streets at 3 am the dark is soothing and my bootknife is ready.I'm angry ,alone,anxious, tormented,demented.Clawing off a human mask.A face that is not my own.I don't know who I am anymore.
There are no reasons,excuses, or justification for this injustice.It is and it must stop.
I look to the past for an end to this story,
The bars speak I pace the cage perimeter,
those dark wet streets for the billionth time.
I cannot hide my wounds anymore because
they make the fortunate ones and the bullies cringe.
Just who is the real monster here?

Day after day I slowly rot away
feeling every moment of my own decay,
There is nothing for me here again today..dispair..
My feline spirit was forced into the shape of a human female cunt,
By biology,Forced by those wanting what is not thiers to have..
Too much of my lifetime wasted hiding to please others by forgetting .Mocking itchy, moist, raw and sore..a laughing /crying shame that will not be ignored.It is angry and there is no soothing it.It's full of poison.It makes me sick.
Two ton tits rubbing together, drawing lust eyes making me a target.Feel like a deer with no bra caught in the headlights of an oncoming phallus.NO! Not this time asshole.., If you try it ,I'll bite it off.I'd rather YOU DIE this TIME! I am stronger than YOU.

So I begin to build myself anew.
The uterus is gone I bleed no more,I am healing,
My chest someday will be made flat like a cat,My skin gets striped
and I am..freeing..myself.

I am a phoenixcat, divine is my pride,androgynous lightning lioness king. The rainbow sun,Halo horned Panther in the Sky! And I will not be abused or abuse.Even if it kills me and it kills them.I will not stand by when abuse occurs,or play make believe that domination does not harm.And play the games.
I am justice when justice does not arrive,Bourary maker on the Perimeter.Waiting for the flames to start burning imprisoned by vunerable existance, A sitting fuck,Waiting to die,no more
I will change my shape my own way ,and rejoin my divine pride,and fly.Watching the poison blood pour out an unspeakable a stain,upon the guilty.I am not sick. Like red fount of fire from the cat shaped hole in my heart buring down the chains of command
Beating down the gates of hell..attacking the archon heart.

Bully scared curls up inside eating his words , he looks like a mouse cornered in a mirror, with nothing but himself.. here the truth comes out, with only the power of his own voice,drowned out by fear thundering in his ears.
My experince felt and echoed in a billion lives conquers his excuses because I speak truth to faux power.
I see through that game,I don't buy his masks and suddenly,he wants nothing more to do with me,
squirming on the tip of my claw, talking shit,making escape plans trying to hide his face and project his mistakes on anything but himself.The spell of control is broken,the dick grows flaccid, authoritarian enchantment ruined .Conquest is not to be had..
I see it so clearly when that strange cat fire rips lightning through my eyes and my fangs sink in.. the pulsing lies.
His manhood is curled up in a fetal position crying like a baby.. when he feels what his greed has done.
No more playing make believe for anyones face sake..

Remembering, backward glancing jaguarcat,walking out from the secret places,I was in the cage, stinking ash, dead human body, look,no cat shape in there now.

Walking through the Savanna grass ,
I see my muscles ripple like a sea of iridesent glass,
There many kinds, here some with rainbow manes like mine..
A diverse divine pride of peace.The mighty precious wounded ones
Dissapear back into the trees,laughing like leopards together


For all the ones that have been thrown away, left to die "Outside"..
..

[undergroundpanther]

24. For Underground Panther's posts.. put up

For posts labeledf..1,2,3,and 4 this is special
I add this disclaimer..

"I give permission for this to be printed in the book above
referenced."
Underground Panther in the Sky ( this is my entire writing moniker)
Sorry about forgetting to stick this on each post.It applies to all four.
For your Notes from Underground book only.

And I'll add one more ,use any of these 5 you want..

Gay rights: A threat to the traditional insult
by Underground Panther in the Sky August 5, 2003

What would it mean to "society" if "families" were not just mother-father-kids?

It would destroy a mythos, a lie our entire culture has bought into, that serves the power elite the best, the lie the wage system needs us to believe, that keeps us in separate houses with separate cars that keeps us from coming together to see in real life we are all related. It would spell doom for the idea that a family is a separate entity, a family "makes it on its own two feet," and a home is an island. That a "breadwinner" can be a dominator by default 'cause he's usually male.

Sodomy laws: Sodomy used to be the ultimate sign of a person's vanquished status, of defeat, of humiliation and shame. Sodomy for a long time was the kind of secret you never even admitted to yourself. It was a trauma inflicted by a dominator, to a victim a secret scar ... unspeakable shame - and so, it was invested with power from the would-be dominator through shame, of violation, victimization, the conferring of a less than personhood status.

When sodomy is a social/sexual weapon, it is used to break a person's spirit and make them submit and be coercively shamed into self-distrust. When the definition of sodomy is taken away from the controlling, sick people who would use it to shatter the souls of those they would desire to dominate, and the dominated and shamed people re-define it as they see fit and say it, out loud, and speak of it in a way that is empowering ... sodomy loses it's perversity. It loses its power to shame and hurt people. Society's power-lie becomes more visible, the social control game is exposed for the wrong way it has been used by these domination freaks. The injustice gets a voice. And the truth gets louder than the shame.

With fearless understanding and acceptance of your own authentic self, healing comes and a new perspective on the act of anal sexuality is considered and chosen - without input from those who would destroy others for power, or prestige, or profit.

Once I was dealing with people who hated me, bullies in middle school. They were trying hard to tear me down with insults and shame. One insult was actually funny, and I laughed and told the bully it was funny. He looked crushed. They never used that "insult" again, because they discovered it had no power over me. I wasn't shamed. I learned a valuable lesson about my own power. The power of self-definition.

Likewise, when sodomy becomes just another flavor of sexual pleasure, then it will hold no more social power of shame over the people who have been hurt, betrayed, shamed, or socially coerced into playing the role of an object to be fucked up. It would have a new meaning. Because it would respect personhood.

The insult (sodomy) would have no more weapon-power. It would cease to be a threat, if the real purpose of the shame was visible. People would be outraged and bite the hand that feeds people these hurtful lies.

Those who abuse power need to take ordinary or different things about people and made them into something awful, shameful. They do it just to look more powerful or better than the people they seek to dominate. And a dominated person has to believe there is a shameful thing about themselves to hide. It is only that belief that grants power to the bully's insults. It makes the insults look real to the victims and real to others.

Heresy is simply speaking truth to the corruption of power and its self-serving orthodoxy. When a tower of power is built on lies, the truth is dangerous indeed - because the higher the powerful think they are above others, the farther they will fall, and the harder the truth will hit.

© 2003, by the author.



"I give permission for this to be printed in the book above
referenced."

[Wetzelbill]

17. This is called: "The Way It Is"

the way it is


ugly
beautiful

nights up late when
streets buzz with homeless

a guy once cut a pimp’s ear off
tossed it in an apartment complex laundry room
To rot like the hurt he brought on his whores

crying
aching

the smile of a child on a bus
coloring innocence in her face
and her mother cannot pay her bills

this old Hispanic man with a walker
who hobbles like someone’s dad

there are moments when even the youngest become old
and the happiest among us become wrought with grief
stung by tears so great the pain is ingrained in our bones

oblivious
conscious

the world is so indifferent
the world is so ignorant
the world is so full of hate

I want it to be better
I do not think it can be

at least not most of the time

some kids have a better chance
at prison then a high school diploma

there is the mobility myth that tells
us we have won the lottery by
being born in a certain country


nobody I know has cashed in

I fuck the same person every morning in my imagination

sometimes there is so much emptiness
that nothing you can do will ever fill it
there is only hope the world is not too much

without touch
without feeling
without mercy


alcohol
drugs
food

an addict sweating out meth beads
months after she has gone clean
sweeping them off her sheets every morning

incognizant
cognizant

women make more money then men
in the porn industry
which is about the only field they do

raging
calm

there is no way to measure the regret
that has built up over the years of our lives

no way to understand why it has

the clock ticks 3:33 am
and the diner is open

late night coffee
permeates the air

we are so indifferent
we are so ignorant
we are so full of hate

I wish that things were fair
nothing more or nothing less

Lincoln should have let the South secede

Washington should have admitted to
telling a lie just to get it over with so
we would not expect that fucking much

I am not sure what to do
or how anything will turn out

right or wrong
or nothing or neither

only this is more the beginning
than the end


I give permission for this to be printed in the book above
referenced -Bill Wetzel

[Wetzelbill]

18. Metallic Persuasion

Metallic Persuasion



In his hand. Cold and steely. Metallic persuasion. Shakespeare, The Prophet, wise more than us mere mortals could ever know. “To be or not to be?” That no longer seems the question. The answer is clenched, burning in his palm. Fire. Pain. Anger. Melancholy wisps floating in the air. Hovering in his car. Those final moments alone. When rhetoric no longer matters. Everything melts around him. The wisps die. City sounds drain away. The stars fall. In one move. Silence.

____


I’m not sure if I can imagine how it happened. My youngest brother’s friend. My friend. Nick. He committed suicide a year ago this summer. I’m not sure if I even want to know how it happened. The act. Those last moments alone, when someone feels such pain, when they are in so much pain, that pulling a trigger seems like a rationale thing to do. The only thing to do. The right thing to do.


I cannot comprehend this.


I don’t want to comprehend this.


Nick was playful. At times child-like, cheerfully throwing punches; with a hint of apprehension. Self-consciousness. Tacitly, he looked for my approval. His friend’s older brother. Someone he could talk to about boxing - a love of his - politics, or current events. Unfailingly friendly. Genuine. Yet, underneath, you could sense the nervousness. In some way, you could tell there were demons. Inside this great guy - and he truly was one - an obvious battle was raging. It’s easy to relate. We all have our moments. Mood swings. Depression. Angst. Just not like this.


Not to the point of no return.


Not so bad that it gets the best of us.


My inclination is to always think of events in a political manner. That’s who I am; it’s my nature to think of solutions to problems. But how do you find a way to legislate against suicide? No law will stop somebody from pulling that trigger, tying that noose, swallowing those pills. No law can ease someone’s pain before it’s too late or their loved one’s anguish afterward. After the son of Oregon Senator, Gordon Smith committed suicide, the senate passed mental health legislation. Smith wept bitterly on the senate floor throughout the vote. I would imagine a new law was small solace for his overwhelming loss. I know the law gives me no relief. I think of my friend constantly. Miss him more than ever. No amount of critical thinking or creativity can change any of this.


For once I have no solution.


No grand idea to save the day.


I’m not really sure if I should.


A day or two after Nick’s death, his girlfriend came over to my apartment, and I was sitting next to her on my futon, trying to articulate my sympathy. I had no words. Nothing coherent. I mentioned the bible, how I had been reading for strength, yet I could not clearly explain what I was getting at. I didn’t know. I still don’t know. I don’t find any meaning to something like this. Just pain. Sometimes I still find myself thinking that he’ll come over. I constantly wonder what he is doing. I wonder if he’d like to come over and watch something on television. I wonder if he could maybe give me a ride to the store. Then I remember he is no longer alive. And, something breaks inside of me every time. Smashes hard in one blunting blow. It makes me ache deeply for several minutes afterward. I feel ashamed in these moments.


Because I forgot he was gone.


And, for what I didn’t do.


I knew for at least a month beforehand that something was wrong with him. I could tell he wasn’t right. He’d come over later than usual, be jumpy and apprehensive. He looked progressively thinner, sleep deprived and seemed more melancholy with each visit. Yet, I didn’t say anything. I never sat down and talked to him. My brother said he feared telling me that he had a drug problem. I suspect he feared telling anyone just what kind of mental pain he was in as well. I do not blame myself, I just wished I had tried something. I wish I went with my instincts. I have long since quit trying to make sense of death. I’ve witnessed people torture themselves to death with drugs and alcohol. Known others who have died from various diseases. Had several friends die in accidents, automobile and otherwise. Had a friend shot to death once. None ever made sense to me. But I do know that Nick could have been saved. That’s the only lesson I can think of in this. That there is help out there. Search for it. Seek it out. And, if you know someone who needs some then don’t hesitate to reach out. Go with your instincts. I wish I did. You just never know the place someone may be in.


For Nick, I will always remember.


And, never forget.



I give permission for this to be printed in the book above
referenced -Bill Wetzel

[catbert836]

19. The Dead World

I look out on this world, and I see
Poisonous fruit dropping from dead trees
Particles of dirt swirl through the smoky miasma
Filthy fire flying from hazy mountains

People once lived here, I suppose
I know from the ruins:
Inky glyphs smeared on dull metal
Paper and plastic rubbish scattered through broken streets
Building skeletons, bleached by the red sun

And what happened to those who lived here?
Did some see their failures, just before the end?
Did some try to stop themselves when it was already too late?
Did they realize that they had killed their home
And themselves?

The black sky shimmers, yet
Offers me no answers.
I hear a whispering, from a long way off
The ghosts are speaking

What will they say?

[catbert836]

21. Disclaimer

I give permission for this to be printed in the book above referenced.

[Deja Q]

20. Those who demand conformity. What happens if they GET it?

The never-satisfied people in power. They belittle, they cajole, they bribe, they threaten.

They say homosexuality is wrong and need to be hetero. What if we did turn hetero for them?

They say working hard is rewarded? At what point do the people realize that is not true?

They say we are wrong for criticizing our people in power. What difference would it make, to us, if we turned and sided with them?

Nothing.

We don't matter one way or the other to them.

Speak up and you become a target. Particularly if you mention any hypocrisy.

Did the Jews who supported Hitler survive and prosper in the end?

The Africans who helped the white man during the slave trades?

The homosexuals who support the Republicans and "Christian" right?

If I capitulated and became just like the folks those in power want us to be? After all, I want to be loved and accepted. A society depends on people working together...

So what will be different if I did change my tune?

Nothing. They would still find things to complain about. They would still find things to separate people on. And that's what they need to do. Keep finding new things to divide people with.

[Deja Q]

22. The danger of excessive technology.

Ditch your ipod, ditch your books. Get accustomed to peoples' looks.

Our society's collective soul is dying.

Dying due to the separation of people.

Separated by technology. Ipods, DVDs, Gameboys, oh my.

It is easier to keep people occupied with machines than it is for them to interact.

Especially when not everybody is easy to interact with.

And then there are those, either bullies or bullied, but typically bullies, who because of their disconnection, go on to do terrible things.

And then you can see TV reporters, who out in the field comment about such thugs, spend the "off camera" moments doing a happy jig.

Our society is set up to hurt people. And delight in it.

And if those people who are hurt decide to hurt in return, we choose to point fingers at the symptoms; ignoring the root problems entirely.

Those who do hurt need to be punished.

But if we really saw the causes of hurt, we'd be able to reduce the amount of people who hurt, who in turn create fewer people who do the hurting.

[yellerpup]

23. YELLOW DOG DEMOCRAT

My grandfather was the most loyal Democrat that I ever met. He was born in Indian Territory in 1907 a few weeks before it became the state of Oklahoma. He stayed on during the Dust Bowl years. He and my grandmother raised two sons and one daughter through the Great Depression. Too young to serve in WWI, Grandpa lost three fingers in two separate oil field accidents that made him ineligible to serve in WWII. To aid the war effort, both he and my grandmother went to work for Douglas Aircraft. Grandma was a riveter. I don’t know exactly what Grandpa did, but a copy of Rodin’s statue “The Thinker” awarded to Edgar Gipson for outstanding innovation in the field of aircraft mechanics graced the gate-leg table in Grandma’s living room until she died a few months short of her ninety-ninth birthday.

If Grandpa ever had any other political affiliation besides Democrat, I never heard about it. He always said, “If it come down to votin’ for a yellow dog or a gol-danged Republican, I’d take the yellow dog every time.”

He was an avid admirer of Thomas Jefferson. He sized him up this way: “Smartest sum’bitch who ever lived. A Democrat. He wrote the U.S. Constitution.” Then, he asked me, “You know what it says?”

I, about eight at the time, admitted that I wasn’t exactly sure what the Constitution was, much less what was in it.

He said, “Well, you can read, can’t you? Find out what it says and tell me if I’m wrong.”

I went to the library and the librarian helped me find a copy of the Constitution. I struggled with it, but I managed to get through the Preamble. I had to admit; it was downright impressive. I told Grandpa as much. Then, he says, “Now, how about Herbert Hoover?”

By now I was a little weak in the knees, afraid that I was going to have to read another Constitution that Herbert Hoover wrote.

I rolled my eyes and heaved a sigh. I said, “Grandpa, I don’t know anything about Herbert Hoover.”

He said, “He was a Republican. The sorriest sum’bitch who ever lived.”

You see, to Grandpa everyone was a sum’bitch of some kind. There were good sum’bitches and smart sum’bitches, and on the other side, there were ignorant, lazy, or sorry sum’bitches. Everyone was a sum’bitch in one way or another, so I never learned it as a perjorative term except by its modifier. I apologize for the cussin’, but I can’t tell a story about Grandpa without it.

If Grandpa was still alive today, he’d change his mind about who is the sorriest sum’bitch who ever lived. He’d be kicking like a donkey to get that lyin’ sum‘bitch we got in there now out of office. If things keep going the way they’ve been going since GWB took office, the U.S. Constitution will be degraded until it is no longer recognizable. We need to act now to save it.

I know what Grandpa would say about that. He’d say, “Git to work, gal, and put your back into it.”



"I give permission for this to be printed in the book above
referenced."

[undergroundpanther]

25. This is art but some people really liked it

I dunno if you want to use these in a book of writings but what he hell.. I might as well offer it ANd..If anyone here wants to use em for protest signs /flyers or whatever go ahead ,
I don't care if you make them in shades of grey with a zerox,just keep the designs as they are. If anyone wants the fur one bigger let me know.

A gay gasden

A transgasden

This is for "furry "transpeople..




"I give permission for this to be printed in the book above
referenced." And anyone else who wants to use it as long as the design stays the same.

[sweetheart]

26. Doubtful this will be a colour print.

Just so that y'all who are including images have a heads's up.

If they do go in, it may be as black and white, and maybe no images at all.
I frankly wasn't planning on any.

excellent submissions thus far! :-)

[sweetheart]

38. Including PI's submissions

http://www.progressiveindependent.com/dc/dcboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=32490&mesg_id=32490

Regarding photos and photo essays, please be sparse.

Photo resolutions limit their print-size, and a photography book
is not really possible without emailed 8mb submissions. That
defies the simplicity of this, and so as photos will be crumby screen-resolutions,
It makes my editor's work a lot harder (!).

I was hoping that people would take a look at what they would want to
see in an inspired printwork with their collegues of underground writers.
If *must* be a picture... it might wind up in black and white, depending
on print costs.

If any of you are offended at the submissions i am linking to at PI, and wish to withdraw
your participation for including PI, please say so, but i'm trying
to get enough submissions here, and PI's got some great writers.

This is a sort of open-source printing to match our open source collective.

[Deja Q]

27. When it comes to money, why can't income and cost be treated equally?

Our society has no qualms in creating products meant to wear out early. This is known as "planned obsolescence". I don't know about you but, for example, I don't like it when a pair of underwear falls apart after only 6 washings. Ditto for socks.

Also, products being made are often substandard and are made so we keep coming back. Microsoft is the biggest example of this, who often punches its own preceding products to peddle the new ones. (Or say how the new one is how the older one was supposed to be like the newer one.)

Half-related to the aforementioned point, it has been said there is no profit in a cure. The next time you start poppin' pills for an ailment, ponder if there could be a cure.

Now explain this:

At your job, how often are errors tolerated? How often are you told to work smart? How come shoddy work is tolerated everywhere, except when it comes to your job? Particularly when you do not make errors?

[Deja Q]

28. This is what loneliness is.

Loneliness is being treated as a disposable object by your peers.

Loneliness is being treated as a disposable object by your lover.

Loneliness is being treated as a disposable object by your supervisors.

Loneliness is being treated as a disposable object by the people you elect to run your country.

Loneliness is all too commonplace and we find excuses to justify it, for that is the easiest solution to them all.

[sweetheart]

29. On weather control: 'prohibition is a failure'

The meme is the man tying a woman's wrists before he rapes her. Prohibition
is to prevent her from defending herself, and likewise, it prevents a generation
of people from defending and defining their own life choices without interference
from violent criminal materialists.

But that is the patriarchy, putting a muzzle on the weather, controlling her,
whilst the earth's power is profound, hardly a frame of patriarchal control
freakery. Yet, it is weather control, woman control, put a leash on her,
tie her up and milk the cow.

So we are no longer citizens, but cattle in a pen, injected with hormones,
incubating the mental fantasies of the rich, so that for every rich man there
are 10,000 craving his lifestyle of idyll. Yet any person has idyll, and it
is controlled like the weather, raped, until none of life is *being*.

And the marsh has been paved over, the weather is fixed and controlled. So
when do you think they'll realize that it doesn't go anywhere, this transport
subsidized distopia. And after looking underneath every rock and pebble, eating
the entire menu of every great resort on earth, fucking every sexy body on the
planet and all the other contentments... and after all that irrepressable
humanity, the job of the neo-government is to prohibit the weather, to stand
between the citizen and their natural rights.

All to contain exposing the strategic deception of transport subsidies.
Tomatos from south africa are not better than tomatos from your local field,
and they are not "cheaper" for all the fuel that has been used to shift them
several thousand miles to your table. The economies of scale that have
made these bush patriarchs jousting at windmills. But at the root of their
way of life is cheap gas, cheap flights, cheap space travel, cheap global
container shipping, cheap global navigation, cheap air freight, cheap railroad
transit, and so much pork in the congressional budget.

This "way of life" is controlling the weather, an unsustainable destabilizing
porkfest on credit. When this way of life is the core value in a global
civil war, between the american economic transport model, endemic to all
international trade, and an emerging consensus to look towards an energy/transport
model that is long-term sustainable for all persons on the planet to adopt.

But to believe that is to believe that all of humanity could become a "rich"
nation one day, something that conservatives don't believe, their world view
insists that there be a small, elite wealthy class, and a hungry wanting mob
outside needing their charity they are so disenfranchised. Weather control
indeed.

I first published this here: (i give permission for this work to be used as
in the above book description.)
http://www.progressiveindependent.com/dc/dcboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=3290&mesg_id=3292

[sweetheart]

31. A few poems

helicopters of justice
'Copters of justice' meting god's patient hand,
flogging out missiles on the poor undefeated,
wasting the taxes in asian desert sand,
blogging the army, hearts and minds defeated.

violent murdered women, misogyn every land,
killing civilians, presciently foredefeated,
strung up hurting villains, knife in every hand,
peace in the bombstrikes, missiles apty greeted.

War in the head, war just ain't so grand,
bloodlusting mindstate, mythic lying we're cheated,
to rape her tied in bed, stifling hatred fanned
conscience awaken, rotting corpses stench so fetid.
Warcrimes enflame ten thousand violent ends,
timebombs of justice, christian war amends.


Its beautiful
I saw you outside, blue jay,
blue light in the blaze of day,
naught a 'morrow to betray,
lord your beauty is today.

Ancient twitter on the wind,
Wheeling free my breath decay,
time consume, and life rescind,
Falling to the earth astray.

Awakened saddened present day,
cumbling does the earth away,
leave us here, if it may,
arising at the end of may,
sprouting in the sunny day,
blue jay's way away away.


war in the desert
Among the bodies of the dead,
shadowed by crumbling towers decayed,
lies the prayers, cries of dread,
spirit of life and truth betrayed.

blood on the sweltering desert sand,
eye for an eye, a millenia waylaid,
egos and fire, my father's last stand,
surround the theft with a wall they made.

Nation of God, buried beneath,
bodies of those who's rot invades,
dead body bomb, surrendered belief,
cycle of death repeated in spades.
Marching crusades, a thousand years of war,
newsmedia tirades, thunderous fears deplore.


sacrificial scapegoats
Is there to be another witch hunt,
has jesus christ deserted them so,
what outrageous libidinous funk,
hunt down the poor, kick from below.

Benign time forgiving beloved death,
jesus suffers then dies from the blow,
profound giving in every breath,
ambient air already knows.

Nobody knows who knows who knows,
misrepresented artistic loo, however low,
thickening mindstates come to blows,
ancient stillness windless flow.
Skewered on a living spit and dying,
mother didn't give a shit, i'm crying.


Oh Shiva's Sacred Kailas
Nowhere in unearthing hypocrisy
is there any endorsement for imperialism,
or the side effects its wars, slavery,
adharma terrorizing with nuclear ethnocentrism.

Nowhere is anyone granted the right,
to threaten a billion with aggressive-war fascism,
Nowhere even in the constitution's light,
is there any possible way for such a schism.

But that all presumes we can read,
that our minds are not rotted on television,
working 2 jobs high on speed,
surviving today the principal vision.
No felonious warmonger has ever had the right,
not now, not ever, there will always be a fight.


war because we can
because we do, because it is who we are,
to bomb and destroy at every patience,
distrupting the silent terrorist afar,
cone of echoing silence, chaos' control disgrace.

How the hell did it happen,
its about money in a plutocratic race,
war to grab the power of a billion men,
and do some crimes, democratic loss of face.

900 channels of fat jello mind,
rotting away on couches all across the place,
Uuhh, war is cool, invasion's fine,
underclass imprison the entire human race.
Bushliar stole his cheated little votes,
votefraudster felons no longer idly gloat.


the snake that ate his own tail
discovered that the internet war he was fighting
turned out to be against his own children,
and he killed them for threatening,
the future of aging men.
All the while the
propaganda got
smaller and
smaller
until
it
.
.
.
.


no observer, no entertained
As we sit back and entertain,
those verbal prognostications argued of youth,
some persons believe it be in vain,
to frame ourselves as needing to be told truth.
om vedically were the wisdom then,
arisen in chakra spine of a few empower,
enlighten magnets to keep them in heaven,
lest they loose the plot and kill the flower.

Hidden in every human cluster, apparently similar,
the dissimilar past life DNA of humanity resides,
a complex pscyhic interrelationship chaotic dissimilar,
Don't worry, for now, "the dude abides".
The failure of democracy to account or aware,
incarnate forces dark, but balanced out there.


US 'unaware'
That pretty much says it, "US unaware".
It is the sum total of bush ultimately,
some would disagree, oh but au contraire,
unawareness is a common thread in all their activity.

Blubbery blundering bullishly beating bushily,
Thick armoured, soundly detached, forceful to decieve,
For all the awareness, in minarets, luminous punditry,
the resulting collective mass, a political unawareness sieve.

Aware makes no effort, no wars delcare,
to overturn anything other than observe leave,
inexcusable so horrendously their strategic err,
to disrespect the awake silence to thieve.
their little tent will be folding shortly,
don't forget your coat, paper vote them out discretely.


the tip of that irresponisbility iceburg
I didn't do it, my crazy mind did,
The drug dealer sold it to me, i am innocent,
the cult leader made me place an ebay bid,
but i'm not responsible, somehow not sentient.
I didn't trash my previous relationship,
that it was predestined said the psychic clairvoyant,
I fell on the floor fresh-waxed ooh, I slipped,
its clearly the fault of the pavement inhabitant.

I started a war on the planet's other side,
But someone else caused it, fights and dies, unpentinent,
I retire as leader while in office smiling snide,
I can do whatever crime i want, i'm the fucking president.
Insanity is often the excuse of those culpable,
Seems sanity is even the more irresponsible.


really dangers?
Maybe i should quit getting stoned,
and go out and buy a suicide bombers vest,
Then when they violate my private alone,
my freedom of religion, I'll be prepared for the test.
The drugs war has already stolen my country,
Stolen friends uglified in prison so stressed,
police thugs search and sieze with impunity,
whatever constitution of slavers, underclass repressed.

Its not about the drugs anymore,
its about the freedom to make a choice,
slaves have no choice over the food they abhor,
racist laws program truth, supressing popular voice.
As a pot-smoker enemy, opposite in war,
they have no coherency, ugliness in store.


No, you are an unwilling slave
Oh slave go back to your burger flippingly,
and wonder if the rebellion is really prepared,
for an assault ontologically impregnated lingustically,
for the frame for which word song defined when aired,
meanings unstated, deep seated, nationaliztic, toxic sarcastic,
undermine their opponents ruthless order of business, where,
rot in prison or pay taxes for your unwilling part in *'s criminal schtick,
blood money buys more votes, corporate war machine dare.

The ziocon language is exactlingly precise,
and no error is made on ROM RAM nom de guerre,
it is not random to forget relevant contextual device,
Their objective served, dissonant static lost Voltaire.
RAM is all we'll ever have to give,
ROM crusty mind becomes a sieve.


The dems do good stuff for regular folks
When the supporters get up to complex analysis,
Its time to step back and wonder about simplicity,
the spiritual left does not see any crisis,
man's doing an infintesimal drop in life's totality,
its easy to trust when good eyes speak wisely,
beating hearts i can trust; the real ones keeping us us free,
no mysterious game of nukclear deception adeptly,
plain talkin the dems gotsa be, "No stealing the taxes, see."

"No running up the credit card til our kids money's gone,"
"no thievin and wars in some one elses country,"
"no making yourselves abolve the law to elevate King George bush's throng."
and "No ripping off our social security."
asian desert of bush alexander two's flaccid fallacy,
the bleeding death of empire on to the every day iraqi.


could it be a karmic degeneration perhaps
...like a viral sort of terror,
an outrageous implosion, collapsing of tower,
behind enemies corporate interior,
a greying confederate reversal of power.
The union enslaved to its most degenerate license,
adults taken over by mad children deflower
reversal of empire on course for the greater imperial sense,
of the interplanetary league guide's earth, prison-empire gone sour.

And oh, the passionate meandering shadow beneath,
my lover's giggling, we're on course to blow the seals of power,
and atlantis will sink again underneath,
the waves, another civilization debased devour.
maybe it has to come to rest.
returning karma does its best.


speeding elisabethan 100 miles per metre
when we only write to talk
devious rotting undermines society
setting out to walk the walk
beyond voices lifes fine examples be
then the masses talk to spam,
erasing mind in mass incoherency
Are we not right or left to damn,
trolling influences we know from the free..

But who is it who really cares,
speeding topics of the GD,
Propaganda feeds its own dispair,
lonely voices blending futility.
Would that we were in power,
then we would well command the hour.


Kiss of the sessile oak
Kissed me oak tree today as the day it passed away,
A thousand years began, spade turned against the pan,
the journey of the oak began, its roots embracing earthly hay,
and while the years waste me away, sessile oak will come to stay.

A thousand years began today, only but a second's stay
the planter's hand's caress away, carrier of the seed, nigh the god of the deed.
The sessile oak kisses back today, life begun a joy away,
seeing the planter pass away in naught so many passive plays,
ancient oak comes life today, in my heart a bud display,
a joy embraces thee, the glory of the seed,
that god does the deed, no matter bird, egg, nor creed.

The oak tree tolde meee, as i kissed thee, that seven
buds make up thee, one at the root of the head, one at the
root of the bed, and so many branches thee, no words
further could there bee, a thousand years enlighten thee
oak tree blessing aways be, long years may life share we.


Golden lastly
Golden lastly did the crime,
vain ego bumbling to the time,
rumbling stupas by the way,
any Buddhist runs away,
too blinding is the wind today.
Silent silver glittering sand,
blessing all across the land,
no self to think or seem apart
from the mind that is the art.


---
I give permission for these works to be used in the above book as described.

[Taxloss]

30. Power is a story.

"To a very large extent," Philip Gourevitch wrote, "power consists in the ability to make others inhabit your story of their reality." Power is a story told by one to another.

No one can fully grasp their place in the workings of the modern nation state. They see their interactions with it - paying taxes, getting speeding tickets, occasionally voting - but that picture is as accurate as a hospital patient trying to figure out how a hospital works simply on the basis of how he or she is treated.

To understand the larger picture of modern Western civilisation, we use what historians call "metanarratives". These are over-arching abstract concepts that bundle together a great number of separate stories into a collective history. Class. Race. Liberalism. Conservatism. Ecology. Democracy. Each has its story; each overlaps with the others.

Those liberal wags who called the "War on Terror" the "War on Abstract Nouns" were far more correct than they imagined. The War on Terror is a metanarrative, lining up neatly against other 20th-Century metanarratives such as "Islamic Fundamentalism" and "International Law". The purpose of these narratives, these stories, is brutally simple - it is to take and retain power. Put crudely, he who tells the best story wins.

The currently dominant metanarratives in the United States of America are: Conservatism; The War on Terror; Liberalism; The Rule of Law; Militant Christianity.

Note that, in this case, the devil has the best tunes. Liberalism flails on its own among those themes, precisely when polls indicate that it should not. The Rule of Law could read either way as an issue; traditionally the right has enjoyed superiority on it, but with the Constitutional abuses of a criminal Presidency, it is all to play for.

Why should liberalism be in such trouble? Because of polarisation. The simple stories are often the best stories. Simple stories require clear delineations between such black/white, good/evil, right/wrong. The story the right has been telling for the past 35 years has been simple - they are at war against the left. They have managed to dogmatise their base to the extent that "liberal" has become a curse in some circles and areas.

"The War on Terror" fits this manichean pattern perfectly. It is painted as an epic black and white struggle: freedom versus terrorism, you're with us or you're against us. The subtext is; "We'll define who's 'us'". The carefully tuned hard-right masses were ready to slot into this new struggle immediately, and they were joined by innocent millions shocked at what had happened in September 2001. At that point, the 20th-century liberal vision of America died.

Some liberals want a centrist vision - this is the line of the "DLC" types. Politically, it's an understandable approach, but a short-term one that can achieve very little. Others have, sadly, fallen into the trap of polarisation and see the Bush administration as evil incarnate, pure fascism, an omnipotent world-spanning beast. Others long for a dynamic leader who can articulate the best of the old liberalism. False prophets are lauded, then reviled.

But the plain fact of the present despondent state of the US Democratic party is this: in the medium term, it will hurt the Republicans more than the Democrats. Ineffective opposition leads to apathy. It opens up opportunities for better, more vibrant politicians, more on the side of the opposition than the incumbents.

More importantly, though, it diverts attention away from the national and onto the local. If it is unlikely that control of the Presidency, Senate or Congress will change, then even ardent Republicans will reject local politicians who are failing. The future of the left in America lies in localism. Local campaigns, city-block issues, recruitment and campaigning at the most basic level. There is no clear national story for the left at the moment; but there are many local stories, micronarratives that can be told.

Find out that local story, and tell it. Don't treat politics as a national thing of wars and budgets. Don't consider democracy to be a vote every now and then. It's an everyday story.

On edit: "I give permission for this to be printed in the book above
referenced."

[Deja Q]

32. For all of my entries:

"I give permission for this to be printed in the book above
referenced."

[Deja Q]

33. Of stupidity, laziness, and treatment of one's fellow man.

We are told that we are lazy and stupid. This is why offshoring occurs. In their eyes, but they should be checked for a certain psychological disorder that makes delusional thoughts seem real.

What we are not told are the stories of thousands of workers who show an interest and ability yet are ignored and overlooked.

What we are not told is the investment being placed into other countries for their peoples to learn what we are doing. For pennies on the dollar.

What we are not told is that while we are told to become more educated, more and more jobs and career paths are going away. Either to those shores for pennies on the dollar, or eliminated. Indeed, anyone knows an educated populace is a non-profitable one. They are smart enough to choose. Hence the desire to "dumb down"; appeal to the most common denominator and name-call and point at those who do not drool upon command in the process. Those who do not conform must be shamed into doing so or do themselves in out of unworthiness to their unspoken Masters.

What we are not told is that while we are studying a new career path, new software is being engineered to render those jobs obsolete. Even a PhD in a recent training class said "Point and click. No need to think." Just who makes these software products? Corporate America. The ones who tell us to buy their products and not think.

Indeed, there is a concern greater than offshoring and the economic murder of Americans: Brain drain of humanity itself. We do so much that allows computers to do the work for us, our ability to think goes from the actual work to merely clicking the two buttons "Function" then "OK". Without the core processes to learn from, we cannot truly innovate and improve. It's all done for us.

We are consumed by our own creations. And that isn't as much as blind stupidity as it is stupidity brought about by greed.

Worst of all, the day energy resources become unprofitable, what would have been the point of developing all of these things at all?

Indeed. We fought Vietnam because China was infiltrating and upgrading it. 30 years later, (Corporate) America has infiltrated and upgraded it. Both of them. (Vietnam makes our clothes, China makes... everything else.) Indeed, even politicians are now wary over Chinese imports and I have seen pre-installed applets very similar to keylogging spyware of the same name. Forgive me, but why did we bother spending all of those years and lives in that country again? Or Nixon to open relations?

People call us treasonous. Why? The people they support seem to be the anti-patriots; selling out to known enemies. I will stand for America; both Republican and Democrat. They will stand only for Dollar. And ruin anybody in their path, regardless of how patriotic they are. For they eat their own.

They stand for the Dollar. A sinking currency, no less. Will we be better off when they sink America? And why didn't we learn by 1929, the lesson of unmitigated greed? How many more will suffer because of another man's actions? And does that man dare call himself a Christian, in the house he built? The house built out of glass and grass; it won't hold up on its own and to throw rocks from it doesn't help either.



"I give permission for this to be printed in the book above
referenced."

[Jackpine Radical]

34. Here are four pieces from the past year or so:

Rick Santorum, Wonder Boy

I see by the papers that Rick Santorum, a Republican Senator from Pennsylvania, is again floating the idea around that weapons of mass destruction (WMD) have at last been found in Iraq. In one sense he’s right, but in another sense he’s horribly wrong.

When our troops invaded Iraq in 2003 in search of WMD they found no active, usable ones, but they did find lots of old missile remnants and disarmed warheads that still showed traces of the various toxins, such as mustard gas, that they had once contained. In fact, the existence of these relics shows that Saddam had actually disarmed after the first Gulf War, as he had been required to do.

Now Rick Santorum in his fantasy world has resurrected these dead weapon parts and is trying to pump new life into them, saying that they are actually the mythical WMD that we went into Iraq search of. Unfortunately, not even Bush’s Department of Defense will back Santorum on this whopper.

I’m basically a humane and compassionate person and so this latest nonsense of Santorum’s leaves me with a conundrum. I don’t know if it’s kinder to view Santorum as dangerously delusional or whether I should see him as a pathological liar. But as far as I can see, it has to be one or the other.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A Message for the Uninvolved American


I know you have a busy life and no time for politics, so let me give you a short summary of all you need to know about the state of affairs in the nation today.

The Republicans are liars and thieves. Unfortunately, they are very good liars and thieves, and most of those smiling faces on your television sets are trying to help them lie and steal.

They told lies to get us into a war. They lie about decorated American war heroes like John Murtha, who is doing his best to save the lives of your children. They lie about everything.

And they steal. They are stealing your savings by running up huge debts that you, your children and your grandchidren will have to pay off. They and their rich friends are stealing from you at the gas pump, at your doctor's office, and at the grocery store. They are plotting right now to steal your Social Security and Medicare.

That is all you really need to know about the Republicans. They lie and steal.

The Democrats are trying to save you from the worst crimes of the Republicans, but you don't hear much about that because those smiling, lying faces on the TV screens don't want you to know.

There is one more thing you need to be aware of. On November 7 there is going to be an election. This will be your chance to help the Democrats defend you from the Republican thieves and liars.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


STUPID LIBERALS

From 9/12/2005

The liberals like to make fun of President Bush’s intelligence. Why is it then that the average Democrat is too stupid to understand the President when he speaks in plain English? As, for example, when he praised Michael Brown for the outstanding job he had done in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina. And again when he challenged his critics, saying, in effect, “What makes you think something went wrong with the disaster response?”

Consider the effects of FEMA’s brilliant New Orleans strategy. First, the New Orleans black population is now scattered across the country, thereby dissipating their voting power. I guess they won’t be delivering Louisiana for the Democrats in the foreseeable future. Second, real estate developers can now make a clean start and build New Orleans into a gigantic theme park that will put all the Disney enterprises to shame. And third, since all the actual disaster survivors are scattered across the country and are too poor to hire lawyers, there is nothing to prevent the Administration from funneling all the disaster relief money into the coffers of deserving but uninjured campaign contributors, just as Mr. Brown did in Florida after Hurricane Frances and just before the 2004 election. Admittedly, Brown was able to siphon off only $31 million for Bush supporters after Frances, but that was just sort of a practice run. This time tens of billions will be available to reward loyalists and friends of the administration for their support, regardless of whether they actually sustained any material damages from the hurricane.

As an indication of what is to come, Halliburton already has the contracts for cleaning up all military facilities in the wake of Katrina, and Dick Cheney’s recent visit to the Gulf Coast was followed a day or two later by the announcement that Halliburton subsidiary KBR got a no-bid contract for the civilian cleanup as well.
How, in the face of all this evidence of the Administration’s brilliant planning and execution of disaster relief efforts after Katrina, could any Democrat be so blind and stupid as to accuse our President of not being prepared, or of not being able to rise to the challenge of an unexpected opportunity?



A NOTE FROM HOMELAND SECURITY

Wed Jun 21st 2006

Although we have been doing our best to maintain secrecy on this issue, you may soon be hearing that the National Security Agency has been eavesdropping on the domestic communications of American citizens without warrants. This should not concern you, as it is just one more way in which we are defending you against terrorists. If you are a good, right-thinking American, you have nothing to fear. If you are a domestic terrorist, however, we will soon know everything about you—who you are, where you go, what you do, and whom you talk to.

You may be wondering just what a domestic terrorist is. Well, tree-huggers, liberals & peaceniks are domestic terrorists. They are actually the most pernicious variety of terrorists threatening America today. They are especially dangerous because they seek to overthrow the government by darkly sinister, so-called "peaceful" means, such as trying to mislead large numbers of people into voting against the President and the Republicans. If the communications of any group need to be monitored, then surely our government needs to listen in on these evil and subversive people in order to discover and thwart their nefarious plots. Among the most successful of our operations in recent times was the electronic surveillance of the traitorious Kerry campaign in 2004. Armed with knowledge of their innermost secrets, we were able to neutralize every one of their electioneering strategems, and were always able to counter their vicious attempts at veracity with well-timed disinformation.

So remember, if you want to maintain your standing as a loyal American, it is vital for you to distance yourself from Democrats, liberals, environmentalists, despicable altruists, and anyone who shows signs of sympathy with any of these groups. Never hesitate to report these unsavory people to the authorities. Be aware that if, for some mistaken reason, you actually befriend or talk to one of these people, or if you ever speak out in a way that even remotely suggests that you are in sympathy with them, then the Government will have no choice but to add you to the Enemies list. Pay heed to what a White House spokesman so wisely said a few years ago, and "Watch what you say, watch what you do!"

[Deja Q]

35. The digital world is a phony world.

There is nothing on paper.

There is nothing tangible.

Just plastic. Powered by electricity.

Sap the electricity and the power is gone. So is everything digital. Everything you've spent money on is now useless.

Inaccessible.

Void.

Why do humans separate themselves via the "digital" age?

And when our age becomes useless, how do we relate to others again? And can we trust?





"I give permission for this to be printed in the book above
referenced."

[alcibiades_mystery]

36. Banned

Summer, 1989. V. and I are hanging out in his room, trying to get past some level of Zelda, when we decide to pause the game and run around the corner for a cigarette. V.'s mom is home, so we take up our usual "hide cigarette smoking from parents" position behind a large wooden fence on the other side of the block. Here we are, well hidden, yapping away, smoking our smokes, and generally passing another care-free teenage day, when who comes trotting out of his house, videotape and remnants of McDonald's meal in hand, than Gino the Douchebag from across the street. Oh, Gino the Douchebag. Early-thirties, baldness exacerbated by a stringy mullet, aspiring to Queens guido status, but too unattractive to even pull that off, thick herringbone chains - purchased from some discount Indian jeweler in Main Street, Flushing – all adanglin', white sneakers all aglistenin', wife-beater tank-top and Sergio Tecchini's all tight in the wrong places, his thin little mustache recalling maybe the era of fascism, or a bad go at Errol Flynn. Gino's been a douchebag for a long time. When we were younger, and played baseball on that corner, Gino would gun his sad little Camaro at us, and always seemed quite serious about it. Once, when Brian G. hit a ball into his yard and - on the sacred principle that he who doth smack it doth likewise track it - jumped the fence to retrieve it, Gino - a grown man, mind you - grabbed little Brian by his red Irish hair and pulled him out of the yard, then kept our ball. Like I said, douchebag.

Perhaps it was fate, that led us down the path. V. and I halt our conversation and watch from our hidden vantage Gino's progress to the curb, where his now even sadder Ford Probe sits next to his garbage pails. Strutting and preening, he tosses his McDonald's bag into the trash, then circles round the Probe to the driver's side. Pay attention now. He's about to make a decision that will change three lives forever. Gino opens the door, hesitates, places the videotape on the car roof, reaches into the car and grabs the McDonald's soda which he'd left in the console, brings it to the trash, dumps it in, circles back, gets in his vehicle, revs it up, and drives off. Did you see what we saw, careful reader? Did you notice Gino's slip up? Because yes, indeed, the douchebag had forgotten his video perched so delicately on the Probe's roof, and there it is now, sliding off the back of the car to the cracked street below. Transfixed, we knew we'd seen the same thing. Clairvoyance, no communication necessary. V. and I turn to each other and say, in unison, what we're all now thinking: "That's gotta be porn."

We wait for Gino to drive out of sight, then run over to where the videotape lay in the street. It's in one of those video rental boxes - no cover art, plain black, with a sticky label on the spine. V. picks it up and - O Fortune has smiled on us this day! - the spine reads simply: P*SSY DREAMS. We open it up, and there is a videotape, obviously porn, plain black with a cheap label: P*SSY DREAMS. We exclaim at once, "P*ssy Dreams!" and run back to our smoking spot. No doubt Gino was on his way to return it to the video store on Union street, whose porn library - a forbidden fortress for us - was legendary. I've often thought since about when he realized that he'd slipped up, what fury must have coursed through him as he tried to make sense of the sudden disappearance of his rented video, so recently firmly in hand, and whether he ever figured out the mystery of its abrupt absence. But it was gone now: gone for Gino forever, and soon to be forever with us.

Tucking the videotape between skin and waist band, V. re-enters his house, with me fast on his heels. But this windfall must be shared, surely? Are we so selfish as to deny others this boon? And besides, maybe two teenage guys watching porn together is a bit - ahem - you know? These considerations are made, and we decide that both the interests of selflessness and heterosexual orthodoxy require a third, and that damn quick, so we call Patty, the toughest kid on the block, with the following message, telegraphic in urgency: "Dude, Gino the Douchebag just dropped porn V.'s mom leaving for work 20 minutes come over immediately pick up snacks dude we are not fucking around with you yes porn yes Gino yes The Douchebag yes porn porn porn." Pat asks, weirdly: "What's the title?" "P*ssy Dreams," V. laughs into the phone. It's decided that Pat will get dressed, drop his sister off at his grandmother’s house, run up to the bodega on 149th Street, pick up some snacks, and come over. It’s on.

Six minutes later, in comes Pat, greeting V.'s mother with a smile, and carrying three quarter drinks and the biggest box of Mike 'n Ikes I've ever seen. "We've got food here," V.'s mother says as she departs for work, "You didn't have to --." Pat's charming now: "Oh thanks, Mrs. L. I was in the mood for some Mike 'n Ikes." As soon as she's gone, he demands to see the tape, which we immediately produce, laughing and tingling with anticipation. Porn in the afternoon for this secret brotherhood. We take our places, arranging ourselves to best conceal any sudden bodily emergences from each other, it being perfectly OK to watch some porn with the fellas, but necessary that one maintain some distance in such situations, yes? And with a flourish, V. slides the tape into the VCR.

The first sign that something has gone terribly wrong is the distinctly Teutonic voiceover that greets us through the black screen. "That ain't English," Pat sagely observes. No. And it turns out language is the least of our miscalculations. You see, we've assumed the wrong vowel. For P*SSY DREAMS is not so much concerned with the female genitalia and nocturnal symbolic imaginings thereof, but rather with a particular liquid that from time to time is released therefrom, and the various ways of placing said liquid on, in, around, or about other individuals. In addition to this somewhat yellowy focus, P*SSY DREAMS also seems to devote a major segment to the practice of inserting the balled human hand into various orifices, with or without accompanying micturation, and with the further suggestion that those on screen engaging in this practice – while all seemingly of legal age to consent – are nevertheless all members of a social unit known to our sociologists as nuclear, thereby rendering the content of this particular segment of P*SSY DREAMS rather Oedipal, and its title, as it were, positively alliterative. Gino, my friends, is much more freaky than we originally imagined. Needless to say, most people would turn off the revolting mess that was P*SSY DREAMS almost immediately, and we surely would have too, but what else were we to do on this summer afternoon. Point being: we watched the entire hour and fifteen minute video in all its disgusting splashiness, we never looked at Gino the same way again, and I can assure you that none of us has since eaten even one Mike 'n Ike, nor can see them being eaten without falling into full-out gags. But we learned something that day, to wit: never mistake an "I" for a "U" - a common lesson for humanity.


I give permission for this to be printed in the book above
referenced.

[sweetheart]

37. Universal Declaration of Human Rights

(Adopted and proclaimed by General Assembly resolution 217 A (III) of 10 December 1948)

On December 10, 1948 the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted and proclaimed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights the full text of which appears in the following pages. Following this historic act the Assembly called upon all Member countries to publicize the text of the Declaration and "to cause it to be disseminated, displayed, read and expounded principally in schools and other educational institutions, without distinction based on the political status of countries or territories."

PREAMBLE

Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world,

Whereas disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind, and the advent of a world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and want has been proclaimed as the highest aspiration of the common people,

Whereas it is essential, if man is not to be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human rights should be protected by the rule of law,

Whereas it is essential to promote the development of friendly relations between nations,

Whereas the peoples of the United Nations have in the Charter reaffirmed their faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person and in the equal rights of men and women and have determined to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom,

Whereas Member States have pledged themselves to achieve, in co-operation with the United Nations, the promotion of universal respect for and observance of human rights and fundamental freedoms,

Whereas a common understanding of these rights and freedoms is of the greatest importance for the full realization of this pledge,

Now, Therefore THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY proclaims THIS UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS as a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations, to the end that every individual and every organ of society, keeping this Declaration constantly in mind, shall strive by teaching and education to promote respect for these rights and freedoms and by progressive measures, national and international, to secure their universal and effective recognition and observance, both among the peoples of Member States themselves and among the peoples of territories under their jurisdiction.

Article 1.

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

Article 2.

Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. Furthermore, no distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty.

Article 3.

Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.

Article 4.

No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.

Article 5.

No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

Article 6.

Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law.

Article 7.

All are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law. All are entitled to equal protection against any discrimination in violation of this Declaration and against any incitement to such discrimination.

Article 8.

Everyone has the right to an effective remedy by the competent national tribunals for acts violating the fundamental rights granted him by the constitution or by law.

Article 9.

No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile.

Article 10.

Everyone is entitled in full equality to a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal, in the determination of his rights and obligations and of any criminal charge against him.

Article 11.

(1) Everyone charged with a penal offence has the right to be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law in a public trial at which he has had all the guarantees necessary for his defence.

(2) No one shall be held guilty of any penal offence on account of any act or omission which did not constitute a penal offence, under national or international law, at the time when it was committed. Nor shall a heavier penalty be imposed than the one that was applicable at the time the penal offence was committed.

Article 12.

No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.

Article 13.

(1) Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state.

(2) Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.

Article 14.

(1) Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution.

(2) This right may not be invoked in the case of prosecutions genuinely arising from non-political crimes or from acts contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.

Article 15.

(1) Everyone has the right to a nationality.

(2) No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality nor denied the right to change his nationality.

Article 16.

(1) Men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family. They are entitled to equal rights as to marriage, during marriage and at its dissolution.

(2) Marriage shall be entered into only with the free and full consent of the intending spouses.

(3) The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State.

Article 17.

(1) Everyone has the right to own property alone as well as in association with others.

(2) No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his property.

Article 18.

Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.

Article 19.

Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.

Article 20.

(1) Everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association.

(2) No one may be compelled to belong to an association.

Article 21.

(1) Everyone has the right to take part in the government of his country, directly or through freely chosen representatives.

(2) Everyone has the right of equal access to public service in his country.

(3) The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government; this will shall be expressed in periodic and genuine elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage and shall be held by secret vote or by equivalent free voting procedures.

Article 22.

Everyone, as a member of society, has the right to social security and is entitled to realization, through national effort and international co-operation and in accordance with the organization and resources of each State, of the economic, social and cultural rights indispensable for his dignity and the free development of his personality.

Article 23.

(1) Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment.

(2) Everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work.

(3) Everyone who works has the right to just and favourable remuneration ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented, if necessary, by other means of social protection.

(4) Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests.

Article 24.

Everyone has the right to rest and leisure, including reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic holidays with pay.

Article 25.

(1) Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.

(2) Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance. All children, whether born in or out of wedlock, shall enjoy the same social protection.

Article 26.

(1) Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory. Technical and professional education shall be made generally available and higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit.

(2) Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. It shall promote understanding, tolerance and friendship among all nations, racial or religious groups, and shall further the activities of the United Nations for the maintenance of peace.

(3) Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children.

Article 27.

(1) Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits.

(2) Everyone has the right to the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author.

Article 28.

Everyone is entitled to a social and international order in which the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration can be fully realized.

Article 29.

(1) Everyone has duties to the community in which alone the free and full development of his personality is possible.

(2) In the exercise of his rights and freedoms, everyone shall be subject only to such limitations as are determined by law solely for the purpose of securing due recognition and respect for the rights and freedoms of others and of meeting the just requirements of morality, public order and the general welfare in a democratic society.

(3) These rights and freedoms may in no case be exercised contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.

Article 30.

Nothing in this Declaration may be interpreted as implying for any State, group or person any right to engage in any activity or to perform any act aimed at the destruction of any of the rights and freedoms set forth herein.

[sweetheart]

39. My journey to the underground

My name is 123-45-6789, I was born in Santa Monica, California in 1962. Both my parents grew up in the working class suburbs of Philadelphia, PA/ Norristown, and my father moved to the west coast in the 1950’s to install the first defense radar computer systems for the 200 mile radar defense coastal limit. Santa Monica was a working class, white protestant world, and I had the benefit of the good schools before the erosion of public education. All my parents and my friends parents worked in the weapons manufacturing industries, and my friends and I used to go in to workplaces of our parents to play games on the super-mini computers in the 70’s (PDP-11’s).

But I honestly believe my journey to the underground began as a young child to get under the desk, “duck and cover”. I asked my teacher, “Why do we have to do this?” And she explained that the blast would probably come from over the mountains, and blow out
The windows of the classroom with a huge fireball, and if we were under our desks, we’d be safer. If I was not “born” underground, then that moment was its seed, that my culture had need to fear for such an ending, and why?

I grew up paranoid that my city would be vaporized by nukes at any instant; next year, and if not that, the next. The culture said ‘Live for today, as there will not be a tomorrow.’ And I believed that. My protestant upbringing pounded in a competitive patriarchal intensity to succeed in sports, academics and scouting. And as well, my friends were fascinated with nuclear weapons and how to win a nuclear war using ICBMs. I was grew up, a Cool-aid drinking American terrorist if there ever was one; I was proud to register for the draft under Reagan, and I believed in Reagan’s positive message of defiant armaments wars.

I went to Texas A&M university on a scholarship, paid by the oil industry, to become a petroleum engineer, as the career apparently paid well. I met senior executives of the oil industry who informed uz that the world is ruled by the oil industry, and if we played our cards right, we might rise up in the profession to rule the world ourselves. It was around this point, when I realized that something was up, some lie they weren’t telling me. I tried marijuana and discovered it was not at all what they told me it was. Then realizing I had been lied to, I started experimenting with every drug I could try. I had a book “legal highs” and tried mushrooms and mornning glory seeds, and had profound experiences that were religious-like, of being one with the universe. And those first experiences, taught me that the university was shallow knowledge, and that I wanted to learn about enlightenment. I tried to order some drugs through the university, ones my book said were legal, called 1,1,1-Dimethyl tryptamine. When the university got them, the DEA were informed, and I formally entered the underground, as my reputation became permanently sullied as any kind of political career (well until GWB set a new precedent). I’m lucky i did not end up in a Texas prison back then, and lucky to have left Texas when I did… but I saw the heart of darkness in East Texas and it is racist and evil.

So I returned to California to study enlightenment, where I attended sessions of many meditation traditions, and met some profound gurus. But it did not gel for me until I met Rama, Dr. Frederick Lenz, in 1983. Meeting him, left me with no doubt that spiritual Enlightenment exists and that my life was to serve Enlightenment, and I decided to, like a tax collector once did on meeting Jesus, drop my life and become a devotee. I quit taking drugs, learned computer programming and joined the hamster wheel on his inspiration, as his meditation school really worked for my life. He inspired me to leave Los Angeles, and the decaying, crime ridden, traffic nightmare of overpopulation and poverty, for the life of a corporate migrant, living in many cities, and enjoying the thrill of designing and programming software systems. He inspired me to get a masters degree and to help others get their careers together that they have the economic means to be free, to buy the living space in a world where money buys everything, even good meditation aura.

I spent the next 18 years as a devotee of Rama, just happy to be there, and to support his Tantric school in whatever way I could. His teachings were not political, insomuch as awakening is dispelling the illusion of all convention and apparent knowledge, this being far beyond political. His school consisted of meetings in various auditoriums and theatres around the world, meditating together in silence, to some light chatting, or to music. In Satsang, rama would use energy to compensate for the horrid energy of American culture, and thousands of otherwise very sensitive souls got a real boost from knowing him, several hundred willing to pay anything for a moment with him.

Over the years, the mainstream media started to attack our religious group. It started with a kidnapping scam, run by some felons in the west states in the late 1980’s. They’d offer to kidnap and deprogram someone from a religious group for 50,000 dollars cash. And to get the parents to fork out this kinda dough, they apply a comprehensive swiftboat attack on a religious group. The first coupla victims of the kidnapping, became part of their rolling propaganda attack and semi-legal kidnapping scam. As Rama taught meditation publicially in America, to millions of people in cities all over the place, he was a public figure, and so this media hit time magazine, newsweek, A current Affair, Dateline, Washington Post, san Francisco chronicle (the M$M). As a devotee, I knew the allegations were untrue, but the witchhunt came to the point of blacklisting, and as my name was on this blacklist, though my references in business are impeccable, it became difficult to find work in the US. Rama took his own life Easter weekend in 1998 to protest the treatment of Enlightenment in the USA.

I never thought about the politics of our religious community, but Rama assisted hundreds of women to get themselves out of poverty and in to economic self sufficiency. As a devotee, I held free public meditation classes in Rama’s tradition, in San Francisco and Amherst, MA in 92 & 93, and was involved with assisting the persons who attended in achieving their American dreams. I got involved assisting many persons in getting out of poverty that they gain the economic means to change their situation in life. My classes, like those of my master, were about meditation only, not politics and not drugs (surprise!), but our church-like community helped each other improve careers and to get better jobs, as a win for one is a win for all, in an economic/religious collective.

Being attacked by what we now call “swiftboating”, before the term existed, was worse, as people trusted the media more than they do now. In the blacklist, it was suggested a story of brainwashed followers, or whatever completely unfounded allegations, but such is how Swiftboating works, to scare away the economic connections of its enemies by spreading paranoia. And it works well, I left the country to find work, and started working in Canada, and found my way to Great Britain, where I was not sullied by the lies that attacked my Religious group. My career had become successful, and I was the Chief Technology Officer of a primary venture capital backed FIX protocol company in London. This protocol, by accident of happenstance (or not), was having a USA tradeshow at windows on the world at top of WTC1, on the morning of 9/11.

My business had planned to have me attending a meeting going on in the world trade center towers that morning in Windows of the World, and to complete the irony of my death, the first plane hit square on the location of Rama’s postal address for much of the time I knew him, 1 WTC, Suite 7967, 10048. So in a fell swoop, I was supposed to be dead, and the Islamic terrorists were attacking a seat of my root guru. I realized that I am lucky to be alive today, and that there must be something I represent that they wanted to kill, and my online work since then is a rhetorical inquiry as to why?

9/11 made me underground, because I am one of the dead. Though I had written online previously as sweetheart, I broke the dam after 9/11 and have been underground writing, like fragments of my life falling off the world trade center towers, framed in text, and trapped on a screen.

(This post is to replace the one this is linked to. I give permission for this to appear in
the book above referenced)

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

40. I've been a bit verbose of late,

Grab anything you want from my GD threads and PM me if you need permissions.

[bridgit]

41. I offer ‘narrative’; hold up, that was too immediate…

I do not offer it freely per se (though I would it’s just that I don’t see allot of ‘Will Work For Narrative’ signs out there standing on street corners so :shrug:) but rather after a host of professional considerations i.e. referrals, compliance to profiles & protocols, signed contracts & work orders, promises to pay, and the like. Etc: too. I would offer it freely, but many may feel the product of a lesser quality…so as a rule I do not.

“too immediate” as well in that it’s not merely narrative; but a product of the above as well as: observation, compilation & collation…unless of course that is what ‘narrative’ is. If so, then I guess it’s all: good.

Still & however, in that process I am able to lend loft & flight to the flightless DoDo, the broken wing. Gravity to the insufferably random, or: light-headed. Kudos to they who’ve heard them too: seldom. And/or a new plan of action for they that may feel that: their shit doesn’t fucking stink. Like mine, or maybe: yours. (hubby says his shit smells like kitten whiskers, and that mine smells like rancid buffalo meat…I still love him though)

But after the ‘all of it’ I sometimes come here to freewheel, coast, have fun…or maybe do nothing at all after all this sort of endeavor works it’s way through ‘the machine’. Or maybe be an ass if that seems what is called for. This oft times fun & societal little pink poodle snake pit I know of where their hounds they do not bay at “ships with tattooed sails” as one might think, but too oft times lately snip & snark as do carrion they caw & chirp as bones are picked cyber-sonic clean with tones instead alternating various between: persecution, plaintiff & prosecutor. And the occasional: “eeee!”

Who would find quarrelsome…a flop eared silicon puppy licking the rolly wheel on the chiny chin chin of a plastic mouse? Who indeed: (it is said a rhetorical question requires no question mark but the jury seems random & willful out of spite). Were they ever my cyber gf’s, my friends to any degree? Oh but to be discovered the subject of a portrait painted by an expatriate’s hand nestled in the snow dusted regions of a world waft of Nag Champa beside a gentle pool lit from within by the ascended; yet another ascended son of a rich man espousing ‘nothing’ as the core of all that can be seen. It’s good to have a home. In my further opinion, it’s better to be able to recognize if & when in fact you do.

92,703 user registrations and 24,307,027 posts since January 2001 – Sat Jul 29th, 06:24PM (USA/Pacific)

But it is less an image at times, of breezy blue skies with puffy white clouds drifting past as 92,703 men, women & children all smiling with happy, milky white teeth, and clear, soulful, dope-less eyes sing glad songs of labor & completion, planning & resolve whilst tethered to a great & dragging solid gold tipped, exquisite, hand chipped & polished with glorious & mystical glyphs; the groovy black onyx obelisk to be sooner tipped before the temple of a benevolent philosopher king during an even grander harvest festival in the moon, and bon fire lit night skies strewn with handfuls of star cast sapphire, diamonds & twinkle…

As it is too often a gymnasium floor wall to wall set and still smelling of weeks old gym socks like stale Taco Bell cheese; yet set all the same with spring loaded mousetraps packed edge to edge atop which sit little white ping pong balls filled with tons upon tons of feather light nothing poised, and just waiting they wait unaware of just what they wait for uh, uh…not Godot…but for him/her/them/they, with their dog and you now the one I mean. Yes. That dog. That dog with the face that only a bitch could love.

Beyond snaggle toothed, hair if that is what it could be sprung into tufts like the hairs from the crack of a bore’s ass then held tight with hot pink Dollar Tree scrunchies, 10 for a $1 soaking with dog snot & dribble.

There is no bull’s eye, no wrong way to do it, no hat trick involved cause it’s dirt simple. You just squeeze that ugly-ass dog till a turd plops out then you kick it. One need not kick it anywhere near to the center. An edge will produce the desired effect. At first, if you’re watching, you can see it ‘the steaming dog’ go flying through the air with the greatest of ease and you may think cause some actually do,

“Wow, look at that. Steaming dog, hm.”

That’s when the plan takes shape hitting the first little white ping pong ball and BOING! It takes off. Hitting another. And another, then by two’s and three’s magnitude’ & factors and they are soon energetic. But you are on a curve now and the curve is rising.

Again, at first, it all may seem a form of beauty. Little arcs affecting other little white ping pong balls evermore…quite nearly the image of good industry, of a society of sorts and so…they react.

But soon there is chaos & random activity filling the mind’s eye to every corner of the screen, leaving an observer with the sense of things gone terminal oddly evermore chaotic & frenzied while it is sooner still spent with residual ping pong balls still arcing, snapping, bouncing all about themselves and off and onto the walls of the gymnasium and back onto the collection of mouse traps themselves their frenzied dance as they SNAP & release, spent to a stop clacking as they do so, and all but for naught but for the will of him/her/them/they instead…and a piece of steaming dog.

I wonder, when you pop a bag of popcorn in the microwave. And those few little pops at the very end pop-pop, pop, pop…pop/pop………pop. Are they saying somehow, “Don’t leave us please. We are popcorn too.” Eh, fuck them anyhow bastids…they got no dog in this fight.

You are, hopefully, on the backside of the curve by now. At least that is my hope for you for me. But whether you’re here for the spring loaded mousetraps, the little white ping pong balls, the tons upon tons of feather lights nothing, the chaotic, spent/energetic release, the steaming dog…someone will need to come into this cheese laden, Taco Bell environ and reset all these freaking mousetraps. Won’t they? Would a gymnasium floor filled with dominos be easier to reset? Or a three story house of pinochle cards? Cause I am just a protocol droid, and no one has a need for a protocol droid,

And I’ll give you a clue as to why…you see…

This is the world wherein is has been suggested routinely and with great fervor that God Himself was nailed to a piece of wood (I personally believe that it is not possible to nail God to anything, but that is a matter I will take to another forum perhaps) and that to follow, from the likes of, if while beautiful, little chipped agate snuff boxes are pulled religions with 15-year-old elders.

What are your thoughts about 15-year-old elders? Do you revere them? Do you swallow what they have to say ‘sight unseen’? Do you shower them with unending adoration when they are themselves seeking the adoration of some magi somewhere? Or should be?

Though he hasn’t in some time cause they don’t come round anymore, hubby would invite them in. He doesn’t tell them that his uncle is a bishop in the church but in they come, and down they sit their eyes and hearts filled with joy & mission they talk all three. Soon they pray for our home and our eternal souls and they are gone upon waves and smiles they away on their bikes, “Bye!”

But they return with tales about lost tribes, and mythological deserts. And that is when hubby asks them to provide a map. On the next visit they do. A map to: nowhere. With little dotted lines delineating, presumably, footsteps. The discussion becomes more contentious. But these 15 years young-elders they do not falter here. They persevere somehow. At least until the next visit when they do indeed arrive with an: Elder Proper. A vintage and white haired old man bathed in the blood of the lamb with pioneer eyes that peer as though straight out from the inside of a sepia toned survivor of The Donner Party. And they talk some more though now with no more pretensions. No more airs.

This Elder Proper does not care for pretension, for self-adulation. It is this Elder Proper, his task, his: mission, to convince this world that all is doomed without faith in his religion. Yet they still part upon firm handshakes even if this new found Elder Proper looks as would a chicken onto two: June Bugs, jumping round a barnyard full of chicken scratch. The two young-elders hang their heads. God Bless the child that has it’s own.

I knew a 15-year-old elder that peddled away at the first thunderclap. I know a highlander guards a precious litter of pups beneath breezy blue skies with puffy white clouds drifting past. But I come here anyway. Now where’s my goddamn apple-tini x(

Welcome to DU, (fill in the blank) :hi: :patriot: :kick:

[Taxloss]

42. So, sweetheart, what's the status of this project?

Any news, or has it been put to one side?

[bridgit]

43. kick...

:kick:

[symbolman]

44. Christmas In Iraq

“Good morning children! At ease.. Sgt Burly Here, US ARMED FORCES..

Now in our country we like to hand out toys each year to celebrate the one true religion, not the heathen one your parents celebrate, god bless their souls, if you still have any.. and these toys make the little boys and girls REALLY GLAD to see us even tho we are running around shooting people dead and putting it up on the internet for our pals in Florida to laugh at, and blowing whole villages up..

Because Jesus died so we could come over here and make you love him or kill you.

This has nothing to do with the democracy that we are making you have or killing you for, this is about CHRISTMAS.

And what put’s the Christ in Christmas more than toys we all collected from all the other dead boys and girls killed in the shock and awe attack when we first showed up here, and giving those toys to YOU. Now some of you children may have already seen these toys, since they may or may not have come from an older brother or sister, heck, maybe even and aunt or uncle who kept them in their houses before we killed THEM, but I’ll bet you’ll be glad to see them again, and they’ll bring back some good memories of other Christmases you’ve spent with THEM before we utterly destroyed them, okay?

What? You, under the desk.. what did you say? YOU’VE never had a Christmas before now? I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that and I think the Teacher here needs to maybe let you stand with your face in the corner for a while.. go on..it’s okay.. I’ll take the magazine out of my gun since this is a time of peace for all mankind.. Listen, I’m not gonna shoot you right here in front of all these cameras now am I? There you go, off to the corner.. Smith, you, uh, keep a bead on that boy once he’s turned around, eh?

So my guards here and our new Iraqi leader of the week are going to start handing them out, so just try to hold still.. JOE, WE GOT A RUNNER! LOCK AND LOAD GENTLEMEN! READY, AIM.. oopsy..heh, the little girl just wanted to hug that reporter’s leg I guess.. Aim the weapons at the floor Men..

Sir, did you want a sidearm while the lil one is hanging on your leg? No? Well, she COULD be Packing.. okay then..

Like I was saying, you kids hold real still at your desks and we’re gonna hand out these here toys.. MEN, FLANKING PATTERN, HUGHES GO RIGHT, SANCHEZ MOVE LEFT, SMITH DOWN THE MIDDLE - ON THE DOUBLE!

UP KIDS! STAND UP.. now SMILE for the cameras.. ahhh, that’s GOOD.. keep smiling, and don’t run.. no one wants any lead poisoning during this time of Peace on Earth, right? YOU THERE, HANDS ON THE DESK.. gooood.. that’s real good, boy..

Okay, everyone has a TOY.. isn’t that NICE? Keep Smiling, that’s it.. Now there are going to be some flashes of light, and they’ll just be cameras, nothing’s gonna blow up, no one’s going to be on fire or anything like that.. you just gotta KEEP SMILING the whole time..

GREAT! You guys got all that on film? All right then, hand the film cartridges over real slow.. that’s fine…AIM them cameras UP when you head out..We’ll get that footage to the Media Center for our men to do their magic, and you can pick up the Edits at three o’clock..

KIDS! HANDS ON THE HEADS, LIKE THIS.. got it? Everyone? There we go.. Now, first the Reporters are going to leave, but I want you all to keep looking STRAIGHT AHEAD with those hands ON THE HEAD.. that’s right.. keep moving the embeds, get them behind us.. BACKS TO THE WALL GENTLEMEN! We don’t need any incidents..it’s Christmas time after all!

Okay Men, let’s MOVE OUT.. HOOHAW!! MERRY CHRISTMAS, and to all a GOOD FIGHT.. er, NIGHT!

THE NEXT DAY—–

Say Sgt, isn’t that lil Hamid’s HEAD there on the school steps? Wasn’t he one of those kids we gave them presents to yesterday? Yeah, I know where he lived, gimme that toybox, I’ll take him home..or what’s left of him..hmmm, wonder where that toy went, no use wasting it..”

**********************

I give permission for this to be printed in the book above
referenced.

[symbolman]

45. G.W. Bush - The Shreddinator

From a Mole in the White House:

“No..No..NO MR PRESIDENT!! You put the paper IN THIS SIDE of the Shredder.. NO! Don’t PULL on the paper, just let it SLIDE on in.. Let..uh, LET .. GO.. LET GO OF IT!..

Oh my GOD! SOMEBODY CALL THE DOCTOR!! Jesus Christ.. Karl, I TOLD you he shouldn’t be let NEAR the SHREDDER.. just LOOK at his FINGERS! How are we going to SPIN this ONE?

We’ve already USED the Pretzel, the Bike, the rolly thing, what was that, uh.. remember Cheney used it just fine, but Bushie boy here couldn’t find the on/off switch? Fell right off of it..Segewey something?..

Okay, okay.. FISHING — it was a FISHING accident, that’s IT! He was hauling in a big bass and it BIT HIM.. no, a SHARK.. no, too scary, no sharks in Crawford..uh, ah.. a..

Ah fuck it, a SHREDDER ATE HIS HAND, let’s tell the DAMN TRUTH FOR ONCE.. What are you pointing at Karl? What? Something IN the Shredder?

Wait a minute, that’s MY TIE, don’t stick my TIE in the Shredder - it could pull my Head off and kill meeeeeeeeeeeeeughhhgggggjugjugjug…..”

*****

IN A MEMO sent to aides yesterday, Bush expects all White House staff to adhere to the “spirit as well as the letter” of all ethics laws and rules.

As a result, “the White House counsel’s office will conduct a series of presentations next week that will provide refresher lectures on general ethics rules, including the rules of governing the protection of classified information,” according to the memo. –

So basically a MEMO about Ethics Training was LEAKED from the White House to the Washington Post. Cute.

***********

I give permission for this to be printed in the book above
referenced.

[symbolman]

46. THE TELL NO TALE HEART

THE TELL NO TALE HEART

A little Parody written in the Style of the Sicko Scooter Libby just for YOU - Evidently He wrote a book with sexual references to a child being abused by a Bear in one section.

*****************

The Hammering of Cheney’s overhead cam dual exhaust Heart Unit was a palpable sound in the bed while he poured buckets of sweat, stroking his beloved pet, stroking, stroking, sensually sliding the fingertips of sausage digits with a smooth backhanded motion, slowly so as to feel every nook and cranny and quiver of his prize.

The object of his affection responded with a wiggle and a sigh, bubbling as Cheney murmured to it with his hypnotic voice.

“Do not despair my sweet”, his crooked lips let slip breathlessly, “soon the Bear will be here to fondle you in your most double secret places..” He circled an orifice with his tongue playfully, causing his love to shiver shamelessly, yet not willing to release the combination of fear and lust so soon.

“We will keep the Bear muzzled at first”, he whispered growing closer so the object of his affections would not miss a word, “but then once the muzzle is slipped off you will know your master, and the Bear will not be the Ultimate master, but a tool I will use to keep you mine forever..”

He rubbed the silky smooth “skin” of his love lightly at first and then with more vigor as he announced in a mind numbing monotone, “You will never want another when I have unleashed my passion and once the fear of love’s possibilities have been erased from your being through the terror of the Bear’s hideous countenance hovering over your sweet body..”

His object of affection was beginning to heat up under the hot lamps that Cheney used as he grilled his latest love.

He splashed freezing water on the object of his lust, and roughly fingered every orifice as if picking up a sixpack of 40 weight oil, causing his captive to thump wildly against the bed, nearly making it to the edge of the mattress. The terror was building and the thought of the Bear being smacked on it’s genitals while pawing excitedly at the raw visage of the creature of his desire was giving Cheney the erection of his life.

Opening his fly he waved his throbbing manhood, “Do you SEE THIS?” he half moaned. “THIS is for you, ALL of it - but only after I have broken you and the Bear will do most of the work, having no choice as I whip his genitals into a frenzy while he stalks you in this very bed.”

He rolled his eyes, “You won’t know WHO is entering any of your throbbing glory holes in the midst of our passion, and know this - you will never be the same, violated twice, first by being entered against your will and second by not knowing WHO or WHAT is penetrating whichever orifice we choose..”

Cheney ripped open his shirt as a low growl filled the air behind him, “Do you see this SCAR? None have seen this Scar and lived to tell the tale - not even the Bear..” He firmly grasped his prey and held a Taser near his sweetheart, a beefy hand waving the electric unit, jabbing then parrying to confuse the hunted held under his spell..

Then he touched the electrodes to the thickest part of his prisoner and snapped the switch on and off repeatedly, forcing a rapid fibulation of the heart muscles, the object of his sick affection thrashing about, the smell of burnt flesh in the air. This excited him even further and he applied the Taser’s electric force again and again, while shouting, “Comes the Bear! Now Comes the Bear! Your torture is just beginning.. say that you are MINE, SAY IT!”

Cheney suddenly reached an orgasmic state and his throbbing manhood felt the overwhelming need to Enter his victim. His hips lunged forward spasmodically, licking his lips in anticipation, lost to his animal part of himself, sheer instinct and raw lust guiding his throbbing member with no regard as to which orifice he would plumb. He scarcely felt the hot breath of the Bear on his buttocks as his midrift tightened, driving his giant penis to ecstasy..

Then his victim expired on the spot, whether from fright, too many electric shocks or the fact that it had been ripped from the living body for too long.

It had no spirit to leave it as it lay quiet and in peace as it was not a person, but a mere organ - the heart of a young South American woman.

Cheney’s erection dwindled as he screamed at his aide, “Turn the goddam Bear recording Off Scooter!”

He clutched his clothing about him and scowled at his Chief of Staff, “I TOLD YOU - it needs to be a FRESH Heart! If you’re going to bring me a new one each day, use the LEAR JET and Not the Air Force Two - the hearts are half dead by the time I get them into position and warmed up enough for ‘fun’..”

Libby’s lower lip quivered as he sobbed, ” And I TOLD YOU that it took a REAL BEAR, and Children - but YOU never listen to me, and after all I’ve done for you with Novak and Russert..” He stamped his foot. “I demand SOME Respect. There’s Nothing to do in this Damned bunker all day but cater to you or TRY to write my great american novel..”

As he pulled on his pants Cheney had an errant thought.. “Maybe I should set this dumbass up so he takes the fall over that Plame bullshit..” He zipped up and lunged at Libby, beet red. Libby fell over himself trying to run from the room, scrambled to the door frame and limped away whining, “Now you’ve hurt my poor foot.. You’re, you’re just a MONSTER!” Libby hobbled quickly away crying hysterically..

Cheney buttoned up his shirt, picked up the smoking heart which he tossed across the room where it hit a mini backboard and fell through a basketball hoop, dropping into a trashcan filled with other destroyed hearts with a sickening squishy Splat.

“Naw, if anything I need to take that Rat Bastard Rove out of the game - now THAT’s a heart I’d like to get my hands on for a little lesson in love..Pulpy, Fatty, Creamy..”

He shouted, “Scooter! Get me the Organ donor Mafia in Vietnam on the scrambled phone or I’ll kick your ass upstairs and make your work for PuppetBoy and his Zombie Twit..”

Cheney shook his head as he attached a series of electrodes to the stainless steel mini bolts covering his body, “Even if you’re a fucking Trillionaire you STILL can’t get
good ‘Help’..”

******************

I give permission for this to be printed in the book above
referenced.

[symbolman]

47. Bush Meets with Prince Charles and his “Squeeze”

Bush Meets with Prince Charles and his “Squeeze”

A Little Tale about the meeting of the Minds when Bush was “hanging loose” with Prince Charles and his “squeeze” not long after Katrina, in ‘Merica..

I’m sure that Bush “winked” at them…

You know, like that “Ahm gonna sell you a CAR before you walk outta here..” kind of wink thing he does, and said,

“Hey, you know what would be a LOT of fun? How’s about I get my Dad’s big old Cigar Boat down here and we could open a few of them valve dohickeys and get some Speedos on and WaterSki THROUGH the French Quarter?!

Won’t that be a Kick? We don’t have to get drunk or nothin’- I got some kickass PILLS now - and just to be safe we won’t let none a them pazarrapis with cameras go chasin’ Camilla - Pickles, didn’t we have a Hurricane called thet? - anyways, so Camilla don’t get squashed and bleed over over my Dad’s boat like your last wife did.. maybe you jest had her kilt cause she was humping that Egypt guy?

Come over here by me Prince ol’ pal.. Listen, I get to see Pickles necked all the time, but here’s your chance to join the Bolton Club and get a eyefull of Pickles all C O L D (elbow to the ribs) in her suit, and Camilla ain’t the Dog I kept hearin’ she was.. we can get her some spandex and flood some a thet ocean water to get them stipples ‘nikin’ out, know what I mean? (head bouncing)

Pickles! You up for some waterskiing down the French Quarter? Now, you’re gonna have to back off on the meds that’s got yer eyes all bulging out like my Ma’s - everyone’s makin fun of that picture.. which reminds me, did BIG EARS give you a Christmas “Goose” a little early? Was thet why you was buggin’ your eyes? Cos, y’know I CAN declare war on them just as easy.. they didn’t get the message when I went to the Queenie’s house last time and backed my golfcart all over her roses..

You may be a Prince BIG EARS - by the way, WE got a Prince right here in ‘Merica too, tho he’s one of them colored boys and can’t sing a note to save his soul - but like I was sayin’ you may be a Prince kinda guy back there in Engeland, but here in ‘Merica Ahm KING OF THE WORLD, hyuck-hyuck-hyuck..

Got any coke?… nevermind, I got plenty, and just like Elvis ahm keepin’ the world safe from drugs by takin’ them ALL before they hit the street (knee slap)..

You just say the word BIG EARS and we’ll be pullin’ up to one o’ them ‘drive up drunk’ windows they got here in New Orleans - or as Cheney likes to call it now, ‘New Halliburton’..”

*************

I give permission for this to be printed in the book above
referenced.

[TZ]

48. Vaccine FAQ: a background, part 1 of 3 on this subject

Vaccine FAQ’s some basic information ( a series of posts)

So some of you know me some of you don’t so let me say a few words of intro first. There is a lot of misunderstanding of basic vaccinology on DU. I understand, it’s a somewhat complex field. I have numerous years of experience working as a technician in biotechnology lab- bench work is my passion. My work experience is now considered the equivalent of having a Master’s in biotechnology. I have extensive experience in diagnostics, as well as QA/QC type regulatory experience that makes me VERY familiar with the process the FDA uses to approve vaccines and other biologics. However, I recently discovered that my real passion is for vaccine development, it’s a fascinating field for a science orientated person like me. I also had the honor of working at NIH directly underneath one of the world’s foremost experts on malaria vaccines. His passion and dedication to the field infected me with the same enthusiasm. This self same scientist even once infected himself with the malaria parasite in order to produce the needed infected red blood cells for testing. Suffice to say, it was not a pleasant experience for him. That’s the level of dedication I often found in the scientists working both at NIH and at several private biotech companies I worked for. And while many of them made very good money, none of them were really driven by money or greed. It was the passion for science and the desire to help improve mankind that drives the vast majority. The purpose of this post will be to inform all of established scientific facts about this misunderstood field. I am not trying to influence anybody’s personal opinions, merely to inform. All this information is easily found in basic biology, and/or immunology text books. For those who wish to fact check or just learn more, instead of just trying to click on a link to a short article on the internet I would instead go to the library and read one of these types of textbooks. There are many on the subject.

I give permission for this to be printed in the above referenced book.

[TZ]

49. Vaccine FAQ: the biology of vaccines, pt 2 of 3

Now on to the basic biology of vaccines:
1) There are two basic types of vaccines: virus (attenuated, live etc) that are made directly with the antigen (i.e. virus) and recombinants which are made with small bits of the virus…bits that through extensive testing are determined to be the most likely to provoke the most useful antibody response. Recombinants are considered to be the wave of the future because since its only small bits and not actual virus they are less likely to have side effects.

2) A vaccine is neither a chemical or drug but something entirely different. It is designed to train the immune system into making antigen specific antibodies . Once the vaccine enters the bloodstream it is attacked by the immune system. A good vaccine provokes enough of a response that the immune system will remember it on encountering it again, but not enough that they person actually get sick. Sometimes that happens and people have side effects similar to the actual disease. Sometimes it takes more than one exposure so that the immune system remembers it. Those vaccines require boosters. Vaccines DO NOT linger in the body the way a chemical does. Once the immune system is done “attacking” the vaccine, the now defunct complex of antibody-vaccine(waste product) is removed from the body by the spleen, the same way the body removes the killed virus/bacteria/pathogen of any infection we pick up.

3) Adjuvants. This is actually a technology that has been quite widely accepted and used for years. Some of them have very frightening complex chemical names. In truth, they are small molecules that are attached to the vaccines to “boost” the effect of the vaccine. A good adjuvant can make the need for boosters much less. Some adjuvants work better than others with certain vaccines. A lot of pre-clinical trial work in vaccine R+D is determining what adjuvant works best with a particular vaccine. Since it is attached (or conjugated is the technical term) directly to the vaccine, like the vaccine it is bound tightly in the antibody-vaccine complex which is eventually taken out of the system within a short period of time by the spleen.

4) Side effects- all vaccines have side effects. The thing with vaccines is that they work really really well. However since they stimulate the immune system, autoimmune problems can sometimes result from a vaccine. And sometimes people have undiscovered allergies to some of the compounds and that can cause difficulties as well. As mentioned above sometimes somebody just can’t handle some of the very potent vaccines (the live virus ones usually) and they get sick. Mostly its minor, flu like symptoms aches etc, minor fevers. Sometimes for unknown reasons the reactions are far more severe. No one can predict how individuals are going to react to a vaccine. However the serious reactions are very very small in terms of percentages of overall population. Cold comfort perhaps to the few individuals that have suffered a bad reaction but true none the less. The golden rule on vaccines are this: only healthy individuals are vaccinated. Anything less than healthy is asking for trouble. In fact, it is my OPINION that many of the serious side effects that individuals suffer are due to previously undetected underlying health issues. But that’s only speculation on my part.

I give permission for this to be printed in the above referenced book.

[TZ]

50. Vaccine FAQ; myths and misconceptions pt 3 of 3

Now some of the popular “myths” about vaccines:

1) Vaccines cause autism due to mercury in them. There are two points here a) the scientific community in general does not believe there is any link between vaccines and autism (for various reasons I won’t go into here). This is a scientific consensus. Are there some in the community who believe there is a link? Sure. But the vast majority are skeptical. The mercury in the vaccines was part of the preservative called thimerosol. Preservatives are necessary to keep the vaccines potent enough for storage for a certain amount of time. Thimerosol has been removed from almost all vaccines with the exception of flu vaccines. However thimerosol free flu vaccines are available as well.

My old boss was one who wouldn’t even have thimerosol in the lab for use in non-vaccine related buffers. It is therefore now a non-issue

2) adjuvants are unsafe neurotoxins. Untrue as mentioned before they are an established technology. Before any vaccine+adjuvant gets approved for clinical trials they undergo YEARS of animal testing (usually in both mice, rats, rabbits and monkeys). And its not a few animals but hundreds for each candidate vaccine. Both safety (toxicity) and efficacy (potency) studies are conducted in these animal studies.

3) Vaccines are rushed onto the market before safety testing is finished. For the most part, wrong. Besides the years of animal studies done prior to clinical studies, the clinical trials themselves (usually conducted under very strict regs called Good Laboratory Practices and/or Good Manufacturing Practices) are long (usually in the 10 year area) where again both safety and efficiency are checked. Clinical trials are long enough to establish safety. Sometimes though when the data indicates a problem with the vaccine the study will be ended and the candidate vaccine withdrawn. This happens on a fairly regular basis but usually is not reported in the MSM. Some non-FDA approved vaccines have been rushed onto the market for use by the government from time to time. The anthrax vaccine of the mid to late 90’s is an example of this. Non-FDA approved vaccines are used in private industry for people doing experimental work. But all the vaccines used in the general population and distributed by pharmaceutical companies/biotech firms MUST be FDA approved and therefore must go through the GLP compliant clinical trials, after having extensive pre clinical testing.


4) Vaccines are huge money makers for Pharmaceuticals. Incorrect. Vaccine development and particularly production have such high costs of development and don’t have a large profit margin that many biotech’s and pharma’s do not feel the rewards are worth the risks of investing in a long drawn out research project. The UN is constantly begging Pharmas to invest more in the manufacturing of vaccines as there are constant shortages for them in the third world . Polio might be extinct in this country but it is a HUGE problem in Africa and there is not nearly enough vaccine to go around. In fact most vaccines are made by companies in Europe because laws and regs there with the funding is set up so that making the vaccines is not as expensive. The reason why there has been flu vaccine shortages in the past few years is because only 2 companies make it, and one had production issues that made them not be able to make any.

That’s the basics. Are there problems in the industry. Absolutely. I and other sensible techs/scientists often know what companies are more profit minded than science minded and avoid them like the plague (Pfizer has a real bad reputation in the professional community for example). Are there dishonest scientists? Sure and I have encountered them and fought them to the detriment of my career. Most scientists are more motivated by ego and reputation than greed though. The ability to publish and professional reputations are the big motivations for scientists . Some will massage or manipulate data to protect their intellectual reputations. Very few are motivated by simple greed although there are a few. But the vast majority of scientists and techs are dedicated and hard working and motivated to improving this world. That’s why the vast majority are registered democrats….


Note to science geeks: I am aware that I have very much simplified some very complex science in an effort to communicate and inform.


I give permission for this to be printed in the above referenced book