Saturday, May 10, 2008

A NOVEL IS A NOVEL, NOT HISTORY

By Murph

If you haven’t read Kunstler’s book “A WORLD MADE BY HAND” you might want to get hold of a copy. It has managed to stir up some interesting debates.

Freeacre’s instant criticism was the demeaning and non dimensional role of women in a post apocalyptic age, for which I must agree. There are numerous web sites that have been critical of the novel, and for much the same reason. Here is one of the better analysis of that book that I have come across. http://sharonastyk.com/ The comments on the article and the book are also interesting. On Kunstler’s web site, he answers some of those criticisms which, frankly, I find to be fatuous.

The problem with criticisms of novels (an authors speculation about a non historical event or future events) is that the criticisms often revolve around what was said or not said, not the story or the skill of the writer. It is not history, nor even necessarily a valid prediction about the future. It is a particular author’s ability to tell a fictional story and keep you reading it, and if you like his style, to buy his books and make money for his living. We also have authors that write novels that center around historical events, that use data from those events to create a story about those events, but it is still fiction.

I know people that will not read what they consider to be fiction. Of course, we know that a lot of “non fiction” is very fictional. If you have any doubts about this, dive into a bunch of the early anthropological “non fiction” reports on indigenous people. Among those that will not read fiction are those that only read technical manuals and research reports. Know quite a few of them also. Again, much of their reading, although touted as real world data, is in fact fiction, especially when the conclusions are realized to be a non-secuitur (a conclusion that does not follow from the inference).

So why read novels at all? Right off the top, if they are engaging and well done, they are entertaining. But at a deeper level, often they contain insights about human behavior and motivations. This is also true of movies, novels with pictures. I am sure all of us have had experiences with movies that did not hold our interest or were soon forgotten, and the same can be said for the book forms also.

One form of the novel that I am familiar with in the extreme and enjoy immensely is the Science Fiction (SF) genera. These are novels that explore life into the future and sometimes into the mystical, magical and absurd. The newer SF that has been out in the last number of years I often don’t bother to finish. My impression is that the authors are being paid by the word instead of content, and often the content is totally absent or so weak and disjointed that it is a waste of time to finish the book. Not even good entertainment value.

However, well done fiction contains ideas and insights that can be valuable to the reader. Often they contain an analysis of human motivations that can be useful. In regards to “A WORLD MADE BY HAND” (WMBH) we might criticize Kunstler for making many of his characters shallow, particularly women, but looking about our society today, can’t we say that now? On this blog site we tend to be highly critical of the shallowness and self serving behavior exhibited by citizens and leaders alike. Should we expect a different perspective from our stories in movie and book form? For me, books and movies that depict all of the characters as either shallow or overly complex personalities do not hold my interest. Even in documentaries that are supposedly snapshots of real life contain extremes one way or another and are expressions of the writer’s prejudices and agendas.

We have been watching a number of European made films lately. Some have actually been based on American life. It is interesting to me to see how these film writers perceive us and the generalized writing difference. Generally, in my view, European films seem to be divided into slapstick comedy or deep introspection and psychological examinations into behavior. This introspection is largely absent in much of American Hollywood films that instead focus on action and complex plots. There are exceptions of course in both cases. It is also interesting to me to see Asian movies and how they emphasize a completely different perspective, honor, loyalty and single track objectives in a social dynamic that is very foreign to us.

A friend recently brought over for our examination a couple of issues of “Nexus” magazine. There is also a web site by the same name (http://www.nexusmagazine.com/) that has a few articles that were in the magazine you can read without registration. But the magazine is much more interesting because of ads and some of the really far out articles in it. This publication has what I would call ‘wing nut’ stuff in proliferation. Obviously, if you had sufficient interest, you could look for other sources for verification of the information, but off the top, it is a whole lot of short fiction novels written as if it was a documentary or fact. Our bookstores, news stands and the internet have quite a bit of this kind of writing for you to look at. The problem is the verification. Most of this kind of information content simply cannot be checked out, for a variety of reasons. Of more importance to me are the questions; If it is true, what can I do about it, or what impact will it have on my life and those around me and how should I prepare for whatever it is? I tend to look at such information from the standpoint of being an interesting novel concerning the future that may or may not turn out to be true.

A number of years back, there were numerous writings talking about peak oil. To a large extent, these writing were considered to be fictional novels by the mainstream news and population. As it has turned out, it appears to be more of an accurate predictive data presentation. Many writings from years back have been treated the same and many were accurately viewed as novels. Remember all the writings about Y2K?

But, back to WMBH. This novel falls into the classification of ‘apocalyptic novels’. A huge catastrophe has happened and killed off a large percentage of the population and the novel revolves around how the people that are left organize themselves to keep going. In many respects, it has the appearance of being rather realistic, despite the author’s treatment of women. Different enclaves of survivors may very well do it different under their particular circumstances. Looking at how humans deal with emergencies throughout history, I would say it is quite realistic. Greedy and power hungry people still work at being greedy and powerful. How humans deal with that in a future scenario is what I am interested in. In WMBH, Kunstler has a set of answers. We shall see if we live long enough to experience it.

30 comments:

Anonymous said...

Montana,

Montana,

Thought I would comment on your comment in the last post.

Words, the world is filled with words. They are symbols to convey a thought process. There are three really big problems with words.

1. Because we don't have absolute (and most of the time none at all) empathy with the speaker, we assume understanding of what the words mean. A great deal of the time we are wrong.

2. Because words are symbols of something, we tend to assign the something to the word and the word becomes the thing. A word is a word, it is never the thing. Example. We see a flag and immediately tend to assign a meaning to it. The national flag is a symbol only, it is not the country. It is a multi colored piece of cloth in reality. It's importance to us is a mental construct and has nothing to do with the reality except what we assign to it in our mind.

3. Most words in any language convey an emotional content as well as symbology. With almost no exception, emotional content is an individual feeling that is virtually impossible to transmit to another person. Oh yes, we try, and fail miserably most of the time.

LOL ok man, you asked if you melted down into a liquid how much volume all the people in the world would make. Since most of the body is water, we will assume for a rough measurement 100% water. If the average weight of all humans on the planet is 130 lbs, as water they would occupy approx. 2.1 cu. ft. That would be a can 2.1 ft high and 1 ft square. So, if there are 6.5 billion people, then 2.1 times 6.5 billion is 13.65 billion cu. ft of water. Since 1 cu feet of water equals 6.2 gal. we are talking about 2.2 billion gallons of mashed up humans. If my math is right that would be quite a large bucket of water I reckon. lol

Langosta is so right about the food we eat. Do you know that the quickest way to wipe out a species is to grind up the species and spray the stuff on the remainder? Example. In your garden if you have a persistent pest eating stuff, capture a bunch of them, put them in a blender, add enough water to be able to spray it and you will wipe out the pest. I reckon that means we have immunity to everything but our own bugs?

You tell langosta that I dig what she is telling you.

aho

Anonymous said...

Thanks Murph, i was just reading a piece by a guy name Fred,( fredoneverything.net/) and some of it was in regard to the way men in other countries view women in the U.S and its not very encouraging but when you look around and i can only say with actual fact of the matter having spend a considerable time in Mexico that what the dude says is pretty much right on. of course there are exceptions but the nature of this fucked up christian led bunch of goddam sheep that follow the dictates of a bloodless vampire in charge of the children bitch, and we know exactly who ''they are'' are indeed a despicable, castrating, men wannabes completely in denial of their most excellent state of pure femininity, i mean women in their natural untouched by the horrid douchebags state that are in actual command of their upbringing, yep you guessed it again , the motherfucking BIBLE, god i hate that book more then any other life destroying story on this pitiful stinking,polluted, blood drenched earth!
isn't it an interesting thought that there are so few of us that managed to escape somehow from the reptilian claws of christianity ?
what exactly is it that so maybe not so kindly intelligence has seen fit to separated a few lost souls out to go through the horror of self-discovery in finding out what monsters we all are on some level as a result of this conditioning, the church, but wait there is also the love found in the deeper meaning of who and what we really are which awaits on the other side of that self-discovery search.
the fucking journey is a nightmare but hey, so is life anyway,right, who in the hell can really say that their life is a wonderful ball of bliss, we are goddam sheep and you know what the most shitty part is i think? the fear of loving one another and at how quickly we are at taking up rage at another at the slightest provocation. man we have all seen it, it happens every day for gods sakes, check this out, in montana people from other states love to come here and drive like motherfuckers and along comes this one doing a respectable 55 enjoying the incredible beauty that is montana and hoping to hell that i won't be wearing a fucking deer for a bumper sticker cause they are thicker then grasshoppers and love to walk across the highway just when your on cruise control and zip right through the window of your car, i have seen many of these in the going on to nine years since arrival from the jungle.and i get the middle finger from these ass holes a lot or the time, piss on um, if they don't like the way i drive go home bitches.
so what does this have to do with women,? ...nothing except that in the fact that many women it appears hate themselfs as a women and choose to dress up like men and grow penises or some weird shit and drive like them to i guess, full of rage and to hell with what might be on the highway of life , get the hell out of the way or i will run over you ass with my big penis extender SUV or whatever.
sisters please don't get me wrong but when i see a women that just extrudes the very essence of femininity and knows it,it just give me goose bumps all over, and if it has got to the point that the girls have to wear jock straps to feel like they now fit in somehow, ... man i say this really is a goddam mental institution we call normal.

fuck me, just where did we park that goddam saucer? its time to go home.
peace
aho
mf
ps i know i'm a shitty writer but thats the way i was raised, so there we are, living proof of the above.
pps . also i love each and every one of you that attend this sacred council, i feel honored to be allowed to speak my piece here hopefully it won't be withdrawn cause i flunked english and don't know sentence structure real good,without spellcheck this whole thing would just be garble. fuck what do i mean would be? it is.

Anonymous said...

You know, I wonder sometimes whether the problem is with Christianity or the problem is with humanity. Not that I have not blamed Christians, because I have (and do). But, then I look at other cultures, Islamic, Chinese, Hindu, etc. and I notice underlying cruelty and pain, sadness and selfishness in most of them. But, it seems to come in waves. Because there are also kinder times that happened during Christianity, during the Egyptian era, etc. where people seemed to be better towards each other.
We watched this Swedish movie, Pelle, last night that was really haunting. I woke up this morning practically had to clean cowshit from the back of my ears just from the movie having been filmed so much in this cow barn. Good grief... nothing like a Swedish movie to portray the harsh reality of people choosing to be mean at practically every opportunity...
The same goes for political systems, whether it's capitalism or communism or whatever. All Systems and religions have the possibilities of kindness and love and justice, etc. But, the people involved oftentimes choose the worst parts to focus on to justify their disassociation and insensitivity to each other.
I am hoping that we are on the verge of choosing to be better. Maybe people will have had enough of this bullshit when it just doesn't work anymore for most of us, and the veil falls away and we can see how friggin stupid we have been. We watched that U-Tube view of the "Leningrad Cowboys" and the Red Chorus singing "Sweet Home Alabama" yesterday, too. It was so joyous and fun and silly and good - just broke the mold of taking ourselves to seriously and being so uptight. Just blew all that shit away with music and good humor. It gave me hope for the world.
Maybe Bob Marley was right when he preached that rock and roll could heal the world. I know that that Swedish cow barn would have been a different place if there had been some Rastafarian tunes going on in the background.
aho

Anonymous said...

Oh, and regarding women and SUV's. There's another example of being at choice and choosing the wrong one. A woman (or man) driving an SUV could use it to pick up hitchhikers, give some neighbors rides to the store, share commutes, etc. But, NO... I experienced the same thing around Reno. Passive-aggressive single women in these tanks trying to run everything off the road all the time.
What a perversion of the term "Sisterhood is Powerful." I was in the women's movement at the beginning - when we were looking into what would a woman do if she were truly free to express her femininity. What would she look like and do without the scars from the Middle Ages and the Church on her collective back? It sure wasn't about child support payments, joining the Army and wearing men's basketball uniforms, I can tell you that. I haven't read a Ms. Magazine since Gloria Steinham dated Kissinger. Fuck them both.

Anonymous said...

One more thing: there is a major disruption in the Force with the deaths of thousands and thousands of people in Burma and China,and even our plains states, due to the cyclone and earthquakes, and tornadoes. Those clawing through the rubble looking for the bodies of dead loved ones are truly the "Left Behind." So sad. I think we should extend as much support and compassion as we can.

Anonymous said...

Geez, when was the last time I read non-fiction? Michael Rupert's "Beyond the Rubicon" I think, but I mostly read fiction because I really like to escape the reality of normal everyday-go-to-work-eat-sleep-crap-drink beer life AND because I get facts from the fictional stories. Most novelist have to do a lot of research in order for their stories to be somewhat believable. And yeah, the story might be unbelievable, but maybe the authur's description of Paris, France is on the money ( Robert Ludlum novels?). Now take "Kite Runner" for example. The autor took his audience to a place that I and a good portion of the readers knew very little about and introduced us to a people that he knows about first hand and conveyed their customs, family life, hopes and desires in the form of a story -A much easier to read than a textbook, right?

Yeah, mf, I tend to agree, but it's ALL religion that I have a problem with. And I wonder. Are humans just selfish, egotistical lying bastards just waiting for the chance to screw-over our fellow human beings? It seems like it. Most of our organization are just "us" vs. "them" groups be it religous or political. Why do humans want so much "stuff?" Why do we stab the next person in the back to get MORE "stuff?" Why does that "humans are a virus" scene in "The Matrix" say it all?

A while ago (BM -before marriage), I was dumped by a woman that just couldn't stand that I didn't have tons of money, a big house, wasn't ambitous and didn't care if I win or loose a stupid card game. In my travels, I've come across many, many people like this. It's disheartening, really. I just want to have fun. Climbing the corporate ladder, owning a McMansion, driving a beemer doesn't sound like a whole lot of fun. It all sounds like a butt load of work and utter drugery. I always threaten to sell everything I own, quit my job, move to "da Islands, Mon," grow some hair, learn to surf and change my name to Biff.

Maybe some day. Later -

Dude

Anonymous said...

Roots

Night falls like a woven throw
over the shoulders of the apples.
I lean on the fork handle stuck deep in sod and let the evening
chords of redwings thrill me.
Still, day dies sad.
The tangled skeins of rhizomes,
shaken free of worms,
heap behind me like regrets
I pile and never burn.

-rockpicker

Anonymous said...

Hey all, I've been trying to click on carolynbaker.org for the past two days and can't seem to open it up. Anyone know why?

Dude

Anonymous said...

Dude,
Carolyn Bakers site was highjacked by some bimbo that calls herself carolynbaker.org. You have to delete that from your bookmarks. Then go to carolynbaker.net. That will take you to her site. Bookmark that one.

Lovely poem, Rockpicker. I was looking up at the chem trails glowing pink in the twilight... kinda pretty at night.

Anonymous said...

Hello or Hola FA, should have responded with that on the last posting you had up but I got busy....just want to say though that you do a wonderful job of posting thought provoking writing, I for one look forward to all that you post.

LOL MF, your writing is just fine in my books, it gets the point across and that IS the point really. Perhaps if more people would just say what they mean in a manner that everyone can understand perhaps we in this world would be a little less F'd up. Just a thought...

Dude you sound as though you and I are close at times in thought ie. that Matrix piece.... I really do believe that humans as we are now are in fact a virus that has infected this planet. Some humans are more cancerous than others, those that presently occupy the US Administration for example, are particularly vile.

Ahhhh words are they not great? Trouble is if they were just to convey an idea or a suggestion or to provide information or to express ones feelings or emotions that would be considered a benefit to all. The trouble I find with words most days is that they often are used to manipulate,or misrepresent.

Sigh.....

Ely

Anonymous said...

Ely,
You said,
"Ahhhh words are they not great? Trouble is if they were just to convey an idea or a suggestion or to provide information or to express ones feelings or emotions that would be considered a benefit to all. The trouble I find with words most days is that they often are used to manipulate,or misrepresent".

Exactly the point. If one was able to read and understand everything that accompanies the verbal exchange, then manipulation and misrepresentation would be impossible

Anonymous said...

Ely,

A further comment on this. Which comes first, language and then social organization and attitudes, or does social structure determine language? In my observations, the language is either manipulated or changes naturally with social change. For the most part, all thought is in the symbology of of words. Thus, if you don't have the words, you don't have the thought, at least I think this holds true for most humans. When we don't have a word for something we make one up.

There are some neat stories about societies making new language that encourages logical thought, which is questionable with English and most other languages too. Robert Heinlein explorers this in the short story "Gulf". You might notice that in physics and mathematics that a whole bunch of new words had to be invented to express concepts, but they are still hamstrung by the syntax and ancillary parts of the language.

I guess we have to work with what we have, inadequate as it is.

Anonymous said...

Speaking of science, and specifically, physics, anybody notice how the challenge those proponents of the electric universe theory present to mainstream astrophysics seems to be quietly being ignored? While establishment science rushes ahead with the Large Hadron Collider, set to go online this month, I believe, members of the Kronia group dispute the big bang theory and claim the universal components' most powerful relationships to one another derive from electromagnetic forces rather than purely gravitational interaction.

Steven Hawking quite rudely denigrates any notion of intelligent extraterrestrial life within 200 lightyears of this planet, yet we have a growing body of evidence to suggest exactly the opposite.

Are our leading scientists lying to us in order to protect their funding for 'pet projects?'

Does it make any sense to risk creating black holes or strangelets in order to find out what happens when you smash protons together at light-speed?

Maybe we should check the bread for mycotoxins, 'cause things are gettin' a bit trippy.

-rockpicker

Anonymous said...

here's a link to Kronia;

http://www.kronia.com/electric.html

-rp

Anonymous said...

RP,
I am very limited in my understanding of electricity (or physics). But, if the universe was powered more by electromagnetic forces than by gravity ... then would the universe behave more like the way we think of atoms and molecules? Solar systems behaving like atoms, and galaxies like molecules with positive and negative components and charges? Holy Cow, that WOULD be a lot more dynamic because planets and stars would interact with each other the way compounds are formed. Things could combine or dissipate or turn into a ball of lightening or go all nuclear fission whatever.
Heavy-duty celestial catastrophes would impel survivors to cultivate an obsession with astrology or astronomy, one would think, like it points out on the site. Wow. That is a really interesting site and theory, to my mind.
...So this plasma thing is difficult to understand. But, maybe it is connected to the "Chi" energy that is supposed to flow through our bodies.
I think it is being ignored because it is so different from the way scientists have interpreted the information until now. It took a long time for quantum theory to catch on. Maybe it will catch on - then again maybe we'll be wiped out before people figure out what is happening. Maybe we'll be left with the main tenet of Buddhism: Impermanence.

Anonymous said...

The movie, Thunderbolts of the Gods, is put out by the proponents of this electric universe theory. It is a must- see. The Hubble photos, in themselves, make it so.

In the film, Thornhill and Talbott state that plasma experiments done in the lab can be scaled-up to galactic proportions and they operate in exactly the same manner. Also, they claim that the skies have changed since man first began observing and recording celestial events. As proof, they offer pictographs and other rock art that appear to be representations of some of the phenomena seen in laboratory plasma experiments. The idea is that these 'primitive' carvings are not the result of idle imagination, but rather carefully and accurately recorded 'news' reporting. Cool, eh?

Tesla had a Dickens of a time with the established scientific world. Couldn't get published, was denigrated as a looney, etc. Now we're finding out he was talking quantum physics before their was even a language to describe the theories, and that the scientific community couldn't follow his ideas because of, in part, a simple language barrier.

Look at Bearden and Bedini's work on free energy from the vacuum. It's incredible what we're learning, as these new pioneers delve into negative energy and proceed with the real work of following their own leads.

-rp

Anonymous said...

Murph could not agree with you more regarding how words have sort of been formed after societal norm has been established.Your example of science is valid. As we discover new and innovative concepts we as a society need to be able to communicate that information and devising new words may well be the only way to do just that in any way that would be effective.

Think about the computer world as another example, who a few decades ago had even a small inkling of a gigabyte, download, upload, central processor and on and on. The problem now is that most people may be going too far with this new language as the widespread use of acronyms seems to be forming a language all on it own. Acronyms are in my mind an equivalent of cave drawings during mans earliest times. I can view them put my thoughts of what they actually mean but in a lot of cases I am way off in what the damn acronym actually means.

This new language form is being further promoted by the use of hand held devices to blip instant messaging and so as to conserve time and space the words are condensed and further combined almost to the point of being totally incoherent...

Regarding which comes first the word language or social organization requiring the words. I can remember a certain advertisement for a language course a few years ago that promised to make you more presentable by training you to use more effective language, choosing the correct words and to help you choose words to allow you to exude confidence and intelligence. In essence you are viewed by what you say, and for some this may be true but I disagree that society should view you as something less because you do not use power words.

So if you want to be success in the executive world you better talk like a successful executive. I think this is crap. For me it is far more important to speak, or rather to communicate in a way that those you are in communication with understand. Unfortunately too often people try to come across as being above the rest by using a communication form that only they understand.

There are days when I wonder what it was really like when communication was a series of grunts or moans and simplistic painting on cave walls. With what I see as a rapid decline in the use of words we may actually be heading back that direction....

OK enough for the moment

Ely

Anonymous said...

i'm a shitty writer..."

bullshit!!!!! you need to write a fucking book mf! call it the tao of the bug!! hell, that comment on the last thread was so good i read it 3 times! (lol.. sorry, couldn't help meself)

"If one was able to read and understand everything that accompanies the verbal exchange, then manipulation and misrepresentation would be impossible"

and thats been my point all along. still is. this is just one of the things you get when the electro and magnetic are each operating in unconditional acceptance of one for the other. believe it or not, we are moving toward this as part of the new paradigm here on planet earth which will rise from the candle glowing in the darkness. aka the potential of the human spirit. aka, true evolution.

"Are our leading scientists lying to us in order to protect their funding for 'pet projects?"

duh!!! but soon to be history fodder.

speaking of em, check this out....

http://www.borderlands.com/newstuff/research/infra.htm

then lets have a little chat with the elephants. maybe they can teach us to read.

"maybe it is connected to the chi...."? negative. it IS the chi!!

--

Anonymous said...

It seems professional language is the main focus of what you pay for in college so that you can make the big bucks and everybody else can eat shit. Legalese is probably the worst, although medical language is a close second. Then there is biology...the "dialatheorumisigism," also known as the common clover, or whatever... I remember when Marketing took over the newspaper business. Suddenly we weren't publishing a paper. We put out "product." And, once I got in trouble for using the term, "Oriental" rather than "Asian." All this stilted terminology for really interesting sociological information about people and tribes and things, made absolutely boring due to the "professional" language. What a crock.
And, all these abbreviations... aaargh.Ok, I use some of them (like WTF?). But when working with departments like the CDC or the DMV or the DHS or the different rules and programs and ordinances of the government that all use initials and I can't keep 'em straight. It drives me nuts.
I'd take Montana's take on things any day. And, Rockpicker, well, I'm still out there with him, "leaning on the fork handle." He writes words that you can wrap your whole heart around.

Anonymous said...

Just one more step on the road to perdition


From whatreallyhappened.com -- love his commentary:

House Approves New Property Seizure Law
If you boil it down to brass tax, this legislation allows the U.S. government to lawfully seize your computer if it has one unauthorized mp3 file on its hard drive. It also provides the authorization for the creation of offices within the executive branch to enforce a law that is impossible to enforce.
Posted May 14, 2008 09:57 AM PST

So, an mp3 file which now costs 90 cents will soon cost $2.00 becauser of the costs for all this new enforcement and legal process.

This seems to continue a trend in which the United States makes less and less and compensates for it by adding more and more pointless layers to each product to run up the price.

So, the owner of the cattle farm decides he wants to sell the manure for fertilizer, but the government imposes a ban in just shoveling it into a sack and requires testing the cows for contagious pathogens, then the manure itself for parasites, then to make certain that the manure contains the USDA minimum required things that manure is supposed to have, then OSHA stops by to make certain the correct shovels are being used to harvest the product and that the bags are "up to code" for the estimated weight of the manure they will carry. Lawyers then stop by to inspect the manure and make certain that it does not conflict with the intellectual property rights of the farm down the road which sells a similar product. Great care is exercised in regards to the "look and feel" of the product and that it conform, to industry standards! Finally, the graphics and design on the bags are checked to make certain they represent the contents accurately and do not offend any recognized minority groups.

And in the end, the product is still the exact same thing. It is a sack of shit. But because of all the tinkering added to it in order to employ a bunch of lawyers and bureaucrats who otherwise would be on the unemployment lines, it is now an OFFICIAL (and very much more expensive) sack of shit. And the farmers who need to buy that sack to fertilize their own crops will pay a higher prices, which must then be passed onto their customers (along with all the overhead from the lawyering and plastering of government stickers they themselves must endure).

This is why American products cost so much more without being any better, and why you pay far more for prescription medicines than the Canadians do, or why dentists in Mexico can do a better job but cost far less than here in the US. You are not paying for just the medicine, or the dental bridge, or the sack of shit; you are paying a huge markup for all the regulatory jobs created out of thin air to conceal the fact that the United States just doesn't manufacture much of anything any more. We are a nation running in circles and trying to look busy, without actually getting much of anything done.

This new law on mp3s will not stop the pirates. It is just a way of conning the law-abiding consumer into forking over more money for their products under the illusion that paying $20 for a $5 bag of shit makes them morally superior to the rest of the world.
son of a bitch what's next,?
mf

Anonymous said...

Just one more step on the road to perdition


From whatreallyhappened.com -- love his commentary:

House Approves New Property Seizure Law
If you boil it down to brass tax, this legislation allows the U.S. government to lawfully seize your computer if it has one unauthorized mp3 file on its hard drive. It also provides the authorization for the creation of offices within the executive branch to enforce a law that is impossible to enforce.
Posted May 14, 2008 09:57 AM PST

So, an mp3 file which now costs 90 cents will soon cost $2.00 becauser of the costs for all this new enforcement and legal process.

This seems to continue a trend in which the United States makes less and less and compensates for it by adding more and more pointless layers to each product to run up the price.

So, the owner of the cattle farm decides he wants to sell the manure for fertilizer, but the government imposes a ban in just shoveling it into a sack and requires testing the cows for contagious pathogens, then the manure itself for parasites, then to make certain that the manure contains the USDA minimum required things that manure is supposed to have, then OSHA stops by to make certain the correct shovels are being used to harvest the product and that the bags are "up to code" for the estimated weight of the manure they will carry. Lawyers then stop by to inspect the manure and make certain that it does not conflict with the intellectual property rights of the farm down the road which sells a similar product. Great care is exercised in regards to the "look and feel" of the product and that it conform, to industry standards! Finally, the graphics and design on the bags are checked to make certain they represent the contents accurately and do not offend any recognized minority groups.

And in the end, the product is still the exact same thing. It is a sack of shit. But because of all the tinkering added to it in order to employ a bunch of lawyers and bureaucrats who otherwise would be on the unemployment lines, it is now an OFFICIAL (and very much more expensive) sack of shit. And the farmers who need to buy that sack to fertilize their own crops will pay a higher prices, which must then be passed onto their customers (along with all the overhead from the lawyering and plastering of government stickers they themselves must endure).

This is why American products cost so much more without being any better, and why you pay far more for prescription medicines than the Canadians do, or why dentists in Mexico can do a better job but cost far less than here in the US. You are not paying for just the medicine, or the dental bridge, or the sack of shit; you are paying a huge markup for all the regulatory jobs created out of thin air to conceal the fact that the United States just doesn't manufacture much of anything any more. We are a nation running in circles and trying to look busy, without actually getting much of anything done.

This new law on mp3s will not stop the pirates. It is just a way of conning the law-abiding consumer into forking over more money for their products under the illusion that paying $20 for a $5 bag of shit makes them morally superior to the rest of the world.
son of a bitch what's next,?
mf

Anonymous said...

You see FA.... that is exactly the point. We allow these certain groups, the legal profession, the medical profession, scientific community et al to communicate to us the common person in a language that might as well be Klingon, as what they speak to us is as alien as that.

It goes much deeper though. While some are purposely causing the slow denigration of our spoken language our written word, by this I refer to some of the RAP music that for me is barely understandable at best, and still others (lawyers for example) who seem content to make a game out of blending the language we use to communicate.These take certain pleasure in bending words, extracting meaning from something that should by itself have but one definition and in most cases will use it to their benefit. The legal profession is notorious for doing just that. The medical profession is also very good at using a dialect that serves only to keep ordinary people confused. What is the real purpose for doing this? Is it such that if you have your own language you can then safely elevate your position in a society? What exactly is the reason....

For now I will not go into the vulgarity that the spoken and written language has become.

Oh and MF I do not or will not ever believe the point is to stop the pirating of music, movies proprietary information etc. As I can see it, it is an attempt by the executives and the accountants and the lawyers who see that their means of making stupid amounts and I mean STUPID amounts of money off the backs and minds of others is in jeopardy. In my mind it has never been about the people who write the music, the people who do the screen writing, it has always been about fat cats who cannot stand that now there is a way that people can share this information without their grubby mitts involved. I am encouraged that some of these artists are bypassing the big corporations that feed off their efforts are starting to use the web to put forward their work.

For my part, yes, I have downloaded music and have even downloaded a couple of movies, some books but also have and continue to go to cinema, to live theater, to concerts and will continue to do so so long as those that I find have something worthy of my attention continue to captivate that attention.

Again this is enough for now...

Ely

stoney13 said...

Montana Freeman,

The Bible isn't evil. Far from it! The people who twist the meaning of The Bible, and use it to do all sorts of heinous shit that The Bible speaks against are evil!!!

Take the idea of "Manifest Destiny" that was put forth by the robber barons who wanted to get their claws in all that was west of The Mississippi River. They took the word "God" and used it to put for4th the idea that all that land belonged to The United States of America, and not to the Native American Tribes who had been living there for thousands of years!

People found out that they could get free land out of the deal if they went along with it, and look at the hundreds of years of Genocide that followed!

Was the idea evil? Not in and of itself, but the idea that you can get something for nothing certainly is! The very ignorance of what should have been a foregone conclusion started the rock rolling that triggered the avalanche that will cover us all!

Add to this the apathy for the tribes that stood in the way of this "Manifest Destiny", and you have the perfect recipe for disaster!

This country has become a litany of mistakes, so profound it would almost be comic, except for the great tragedies that have been the price of every debacle!

"Sea to shining sea"? Sure! But at what price! And that price keeps gathering interest as the "Robber Barons" keep hoovering up the cash, while it gets harder, and harder for working people to make a living.

One day the collection man will come to call, and ALL accountings WILL be made! The Earth, our mother will put in her bill, and payments will be made, and nothing we do or say will prevent it!

the only escape, is to start living with Nature, instead of against it! Sad thing, is that even now, it's probably be too late!

Anonymous said...

Stoney,

Very excellent comment my man.

Anonymous said...

Ely, i think you are right on after considering your comment,follow the top greed and find the source, thanks,
RP watched the video and man its good i think, makes more sense then anything i have looked at, even though heavy consideration about what goes on outside the body in an attempt to understand the universe usually does not make much meaning to this one.
i see the entire universe and all that it contains as composed of the exact same ingredients that the great mystery has designed for the two leggeds and if the clarity of vision is enhanced to that point, and i maybe in a state of delusion (LSD or Mushrooms) or Peyote or whatever and even then the visions incurred may or may not been something that could possibly be construed as reality, but then again what can really?
our sensory mechanisms seem at best suspect on much of our life experience because of the cloud of previous experience impinging on the present, and thereby rendering it almost useless as a base of understanding, wouldn't you agree?
its the same with language and the futile attempt of the two-leggeds to converse with one another about any fucking thing and come out of it without reaching for their hog-legs.
the dictionary is really fat but thats nothing compared to the fat between our ears as near as i can tell, i make a point of this each and every day to watch and be aware of the misery and much of it being smeared over by the sound of hollow nervous laughter and i'm sure that its just not this one that catches this, at least not on this site.
anyway, what the fuck was i talking about,? piss on it thats one of the advantages of getting long in the tooth, no one expects to much from you and thats kind of a god send if you know what i mean.

on to , hey guys serendipity smiled upon a friend of mine
a couple of days ago, me too actually, and was given the opportunity to experiment with something called ZEOLITE,would those of you that are interested in health and healing check it out and let me know what you find and your knowledge of it if you have experimented with it? it sounds to good to be true and you know what they say about that.
i started taking it and of course did to much like every other fucking thing i do in life and went straight away right into a healing crisis and thought i was going to die, and then wishing i would,but today its way gooder and i feel like a zillion bucks,better then in a long long time.

geese p. a fucking book? sorry brother but i don't even know enough words to hardly write the horse shit i scribble out here in this place of the unusual and gifted , langosta might but my attention span is about as long as my you know what and the girls don't exactly come running back after some bushes encounter, for seconds.
anyway thanks for the nice gesture and all, for someone that flunked every english class ever forced to attend that tried to make everyone think that i might be a normal human being, hell i know i was dropped off, and am just waiting to be picked up by our fellow star companion visitors, thats probably the only difference between me and the rest of the fishes that swim here. JUST KIDDIN guys, but i know gills when i hear or see um.

GOOD DAMM, i did it again, see what i mean ? how long does it take to learn to push two or three right buttons,in he right sequence?

o shit!

The first targets in any FEMA emergency would be Hispanics and Blacks. The FEMA orders call for them to be rounded up and detained. Tax protesters, demonstrators against government military intervention outside U.S. borders, and people who maintain weapons in their homes are also targets. Operation Trojan Horse is a program designed to learn the identity of potential opponents to martial law. The program lures potential protesters into public forums, conducted by a "hero" of the people who advocates survival training. The list of names gathered at such meetings and rallies are computerized and then targeted in case of an emergency.

if we are toast would someone please smear some organic butter on me?
man if this ain't fun i don't know what id, i mean is. co'mo decir un madre lo fucker a hacer?..... thanks bug. that little critter is handy as hell
sometimes.
from bug late in the night, she says think of it like this, you are a dog laying in your dog house with your head sticking out and in front of your are a pile of bones and on each bone is a word,now this word has a history, and the history includes all of the experiences that are like tags, and have an aspect to the circumstances and so when a situation arises and you don't know how to react you just grab one of those bones and gnaw on it a while.
of course i said what in the fuck are you talking about and she went on to explain that you as a you are not really a you at all but a complex mix of past episodes intermingled with every imaginable tryst and the pronoun is simply a way of taking the edge off of grunting as a form of communication, however also she says that what happens is that the identity factor came into being as a reaction to first watching the animals as they behaved and then noticed that having copied that behavior could assign specific guttural intonations to the individuals grouped around the campfire, much like here she said.
bullshit i said and went for a walk to try to sort out all this malarky, found a stump,fired up a fatty and wafted off into something bright with misunderstanding and really noticed that for the umpteenth time that most of things that bug says is just to much for an old fuck like me to understand. hey so what, she ain't gittin no cherry thats for sure,and personally i could give a big rats ass cause the weed is good and its a beautiful day in the hood and my best squeeze is coming over tonight to work over my drug induced body.
i give thanks to the spirit for good people and the most astounding fact that some of them put up with what has been called ''that crude son of a bitch'', just no clue as to who that has reference to,i know it ain't this one,thats for sure.
guess what i found a button on this machine that if i push it it replaces the fucked up spelling i assign to a word with a good one. now thats sweet.!

love your poems rockpicker, says a bunch about much that hides from most mortals i spect, it been hot to the bone last couple of days and my marijuana crop is lookin right fine i can tell you that,what a good feeling to be able to finally grow it legal like, makes my bones feel good and thats a spirit send for sure. i suppose you are busy creating a masterpiece of stone masonry for some lucky home builder, would like to see some more pictures of your recent work if you can find a niche in your busy day to send some.
hope all is well down south with you and your beautiful companion and the kids.
well enough blither for now,
peace to all
and may great rewards be in favor of all your efforts and the wind blow gently against your back.
SATS,we are still holding your situation in mind and the energy flows as greatly as possible to you and your companion, please send us an update as to her condition if you will, i for one miss your good words here at the council fire.
aho
mf&bug

Anonymous said...

Stoney, my brother, you are right of course, it ain't the book but the use of the book by the pig fuckers whom happen to be excellent snake oil salesmen and the evil that arises as a result of people whom are to dumb to figure out just why it is that killing those fucking indians with a gun in one hand and a bible in the other and spouting that the only good indian is a dead one and it goes on to this day, just look at the churches aligned with the putrefaction of the mind of bitch bush, to me this is just a way to alleviate the normal man with a conscience and allow the piss ant to just go on killin and so what if he ends up raping and owning other folks belongings. the bible says its ok, right? nooooo it don't , at least the part i read, but it don't change a thing, humans by nature are nasty mother fuckers for the most part and originally a wise person would figure it out as to how this was really not a good thing as what you are killing and raping is really yourself.
the whole idea of scarcity which is the forerunner of a mediocre mind and the consequences that are just waiting in the wings to burst forth with glory and gore are just business as usual, and further more, there are good people that have never heard of the bible or any other book of instructions given to the retards that either will not think for themselves or are just missing the gray matter to do more then just shit,piss, grunt and fuck.
personally these people could just drop off the face of the earth and who in the hell would miss um? cept there inbred relatives?
this sounds harsh but given fact that the bible thumping, and the muslims and all the other non-thinking cocksuckers that have destroyed each other and our home i have little regard for their survival in the coming deluge, this is meant to be nothing more then a personal opinion and the last time i looked it was still ok to have one even though this one is pretty much fucked to the bone thats for sure.
but goddam it i have seen first hand the evil that has been spawned all in the name of the baby jesus and it just gives me the fucking creeps and i can't get past it even though i have tried, believe me.

Thanks for the council stoney, man i wish you guys were closer so we could share a hooter and maybe catch a fish to fry.
without prejudice, i send my heart to the fire of this council and seek guidance from those that attend this sacred place of honor.
aho
montana freeman

Anonymous said...

Hello, fellow kids;

I've been out all weekend. Off to work now. Haven't had a chance to read up on the latest comments. In case this isn't being discussed, go READ THIS.

Rumsfeld: "Why Not Another 911"

www.rense.com

Holy Shit!!!!!!

-rockpicker

stoney13 said...

Murph,

Thanks! That was the first comment from the old Vaio! Working like a dream! Bartered some auto repair for a new sound card. Should be here soon.


Montana Freeman,

I wonder what "Jesus bin Joseph" or as he was known in Greek, "Jesus the Christ" would say about what is being done in his name? I wonder what he would think about every thing he ever spoke against being done so enthusiastically by people claiming to be his followers?

I think we, and he are probably on the same page! The "Fundamentalists" are the scribes and pharisees of this age!


Rockpicker,

Went to visit Brother Jeff. Heard what "Rummy the Dummy" had to say! YIKES!!!!!

It's a good thing these fuck sticks are too stupid to keep their mouths shut, or they'ld be more dangerous than they already are!!!!

Oh Yea! Great, man!

stoney13 said...

Rockpicker,

Meant: Great poem, man! Blogger dropped a word!

Anonymous said...

Stoney,

Continuance on the Bible talk. I just found out an interesting piece of information. In the original documents found in the dead sea scrolls there is not one word that directly refers to Jesus of Nazareth. The references to "annoited one" or "the consecrated on" etc were translated as Jesus. A few of the excluded books by the Gnostic's mention his name. Leads one to wonder doesn't it?