Monday, April 25th 2022
Would you like to hear what the end of the world sounds like in a calm and cool voice so riddled with corruption that you feel like you’re catching cancer just listening to it.
If your shiny suit politician is talking about money, we are screwed. If you hear a Democrat telling us about the importance of the oil business, you have a fake. And if you have a president with two direct relatives implicated and scandals directly connected to the oil business, well, how far from Donald Trump have we actually come?
And yet, the Americans are also actively working on the side of the ukrainians.
I find this so unsatisfying. The article points out that there are thousands dead, millions displaced but yet there is no end in sight to the conflict and no end in sight for the conflict of interest. The big machine rolls on and the oil keeps pumping and all we ever care about is money.
***
Good morning. It’s about 5 minutes to 8:00 and maybe this time I’m waking up for real. I was up very late at night or very early in the morning from not sleeping. Several times I had a thought about getting up and starting my day very early. These are all very ambitious thoughts. But this is Monday and my traditional respect for Mondays is to just stay in bed and let them pass by.
I am going to do some work today. I’ve taken 2 days off in a row to give my leg a chance to heal a bit. But I do have too much to do this week to sit around. I’m going to have to be a tough guy and just hope for the best. But for the moment, I’m still feeling the laziness.
Looking deep inside myself, I can’t find anything I really need to work on or think about. There’s no profundity waiting around waiting to be chosen. I know I have things to do this week because it’s going to be planting day this coming Sunday. I know I have a bit of bureaucracy in town that needs to be taken care of. That has to happen. I have no choice in it. But as of right now at 8:00 on Monday morning, I don’t have an office to go to and I don’t have any rah rah rah, let’s go let’s go let’s go at all.
I really did get sick last week. It’s a funny thing about my body in that I don’t really particularly feel sick even when I get sick. I mean, I noticed that I am a little under the weather and there are some signs that things are not right. But I don’t get pinned to the bed or blown out of life. I don’t really suffer being under the weather. It’s great really.
There was a time maybe 10 years ago when I was suffering from anemia amongst other things. I was trying to keep my teaching going and be a legitimate human being as best as I could. But I would have these unbelievable and debilitating illnesses that would creep over me. They were like colds or flus and if I allowed myself to get cold even for a second, I would become almost unconscious with fever and would be forced into bed for three or four days. It was an awful time and I hated being so unhealthy.
Those illnesses became less and less over time and I was given a medication by a doctor that would somewhat help the anemia but it remained with me in one form or another for a very long time.
But then a couple of things happened. One of them was that I quit drinking and the other was that I went vegan. Taking up bicycling helped but the exercise was not the main thing. In fact, before I quit drinking, I was relying on physical exercise to carry me through life but it just wasn’t the answer. I think alcoholism does something to your metabolism where you need a certain amount of physical exercise just to demand that your body do something to filter out the poison. Removing the alcohol removes a lot of the kinetic energy. It also removes a lot of the psychosis and demands to harm oneself.
You can’t just be a jellyfish though. I feel bad for people in wheelchairs who really can’t be active. I feel bad for non-active people or people who never get any fresh air and toil inside offices all day. Actually, I feel bad for slaves generally. It’s a shame that the world we have is built so that nobody ever has a moment of freedom. It makes people quite hateful or at least very open to overt or subliminal messages of hate. It seems to be a key to keep slaves locked down and under control and the people who make decisions get to retain power.
Before the Biden video, I saw another video from the American legislature where some conservative suit was crowing how proud he was for passing right to life laws. The conservatives just never stop bringing misery into the world. They set up a system where people are insane and poor and have to fight their way out of the pit just to find a place of stasis In perpetual toil.
Most people would probably come to the realization that they don’t want any added responsibility because of the economic crisis that they have to live with every day of their lives. Most people with half a brain will decide that it is not appropriate to bring children into this world. It’s too unstable and too violent and the odds of their being able to give any child a good childhood or to even stomach the thought of what looking at them go through life would be is too much.
There was a movie called Idiocracy that talked about this sociological construct. The main hero and a local prostitute end up in a time travel experiment and get flung into the future in which stupidity has taken over the planet. It turns out that anybody with any conscious thought or intelligence has decided to avoid having children or even becomes neurotic about it whereas mindless thugs start breeding like rabbits and as a consequence, the world remains remarkably stupid and stuck in foolish consumerism.
I highly recommend this. Like most futuristic films, it is a beautiful social satire about today.
Again, I don’t mean to kick a dead homeless person but if we look at the world through the lens of ecology and sustainability, trimming the herd would be our first choice. This is more of my well-known irony really because if we were looking at something like a national park where the deer were starting to overrun the place, it would be our decision to start killing as a way of keeping the population down.
Certainly the powers that be promote bloodthirsty wars or at least have traditionally done so. We separate the males from the females and we let a good percentage of them kill each other. We also let some of the colonizing group or the traveling team share some DNA with the local population. Theoretically this prevents too much inbreeding. Or if you wanted to be truly ironic, we could say that it shares the bad traits of inbreeding with other unfortunate people.
Or we could look at the whole place without War and just simply agree that we need less people walking the planet. If we didn’t have social striations or certain people believe they are entitled to all privileges and certain people are denied all privileges possible, we can see where it would be a problem.
The answer of course is public education and a change in public policy to allow people to live without making children.
What I have just said by the way is probably the most offensive thing you could possibly say in the Slavic world. I don’t know if you have listened to any of those broadcasts that are captured by the Ukrainian army but Russian gopnicki, the Russian lower classes, have a particular manner of swearing in their talking. And they swear a lot. But the number one offensive name that they call each other has to do with homosexuality. Being a homosexual is the absolute lowest thing a human being couldn’t do. In fact, taking your mind off your dick for even half a second seems to be some kind of a sociological faux pas.
Humanly beings are animals and we are absolutely no more than our reproductive organs. If you’re not being driven crazy by even the most pox riddled whore, you’re not a real man.
I personally count this as epic stupidity. I could say really intelligent things about this but it’s too much effort to make my muscles move to say the words. The point is that instead of doing the slightest socially aware thinking or promoting any sort of sustainable culture, the local pro-ethnic conservatives breed Hysteria.
It’s a rather horrific mix that only makes sense if you truly believe that Vladimir Putin is thinking old school Alexander the Great / Hitler / Genghis Khan / Roman emperor / conqueror. If you believe that the man’s ambition is to elevate himself to some epic historical storybook level of self-importance, we have him using every method of modern communication towards his advantage to facilitate his desire to conquer.
This is pretty much what we’re looking at and of course, I am not the only one who sees this. The president of the Republic of Belarus has used the words “little Napoleon” as a reference to Putin. The problem is that all of his efforts are tied into the oil business which means he has friends in all of the global oil conservatives in all of the countries. The USA is absolutely included in this group. Joe’s speech is obviously enough to make my point viable and I don’t even need to say anything about Donald Trump’s presidency.
The question we all need to ask ourselves is whether driving our car is more important than the future of the planet. Or an even better question is whether driving your car is worth having a fascist War loving dictator telling you what you can see, what you can hear, how you live your lives, who you can be in life and what to do with your body. If having the drug of movement and speed that automobiles are is more important than your personal individuality, the drug dealers have won.
I mean, we can look at the leaders of our country and scream narcissism.
Narcissism is extreme self-involvement to the degree that it makes a person ignore the needs of those around them. While everyone may show occasional narcissistic behavior, true narcissists frequently disregard others or their feelings. They also do not understand the effect that their behavior has on other people.
But it also fails to understand the narcissism that we all have.
For example, if you believe that there is no possibility to lower your carbon footprint even for the knowledge of how much damage it causes to our environment and the future of our planet and all the species of life that live on it, that’s pretty narcissistic thinking, wouldn’t you say? If you cannot wrap your head around the crime of single-use plastics or even shopping for imported products based upon your own feelings of superiority as being narcissistic, that makes you kind of foolish, doesn’t it?
Or, if you are pretty happy with what you have and feel pretty good about the lifestyle you lead because of the modern conveniences that surround you, you might feel pretty good about giving away all of your human rights. As long as you have enough drugs, any place is okay, right?
I’m not immune to this. I would prefer to have some level of comfort. Probably I choose a lot less comfort than most people would tolerate at least at a glance. I live a pretty rustic life right now and I receive hatred from my neighbors because of it.
But it is worth noting that narcissism is not a dismissive word to toss on Vladimir Putin because he’s put 10 million people out of their homes forcefully. It is a word that we need to take under personal consideration. And if you are of Slavic origin and you come from poverty and want because of the social position of the former Soviet Union in the world, you can’t allow yourself to follow in mafiosa footsteps just feel like you fit in with the European community. This is also narcissistic thinking and it is the flaw in the argument from my good friend Mr Zelinski.
Blinded. Hypnotized. Brainwashed. Browbeaten by social engineering. Swept away by a wave of patriotic mass media. And all for petrodollars that none of us will ever see or touch or be a part of. All for access to the best drugs for a very small percentage of the population and the rest of us controlled by the garbage drugs that are allowed to be affordable to keep people hooked.
My drug of choice? I think bicycles are pretty good tools of movement. You construct this little metal frame and you use your legs to pedal it and you can go much, much further than a person can go on foot. You can also carry things you need like about a week’s worth of food if you have a bag on your back. Bicycles are good drugs.
I have a guitar. I’ve had it for a long time and sometimes when I’m bored I can play music for myself.
I also have a phone and a computer with the internet and I use electronic entertainment to amuse myself. I’m as guilty as everyone for that.
I guess I like drinking coffee in the morning with breakfast. I don’t really need it and there are times I just let it go and live without it and I’m equally as happy without anything. Hot water is nice and I boil water for a small pot of tea every evening.
Oh yeah, I really like marijuana. Marijuana is an excellent substance in the world because it allows you to want less and be amused by less. It heightens the experience of the moment and makes you a bit more sensitive and takes away a bit of your pain. If you use it with people you genuinely like, it is as good a tool of bonding as alcohol is. But you really don’t need very much of it at all to make life interesting and tolerable and you can grow it yourself without too much trouble.
It also has a remarkable amount of positive medical applications and is an unbelievable relief for people who suffer from chronic illnesses and pain.
Why is it illegal here? Probably because war is legal. Probably because people like making their money from human misery or that they make a lot more money from human misery. Having a comfortable, polite and sensitive Earth living constituency is the very last thing that the oil business wants.
Damn. I didn’t think I had anything to say and then I went on a run and I ended up trying to say something profound. Look at this mess. Narcissism, Idiocracy, eating a plant-based diet and relaxing as a way of fighting the war against global warming and climate change and pollution. Look at all of this illegal banter that I am into today. Even talking about not making children is enough to get you killed these days.
I don’t know about myself sometimes. Either I’m trying to help the world get better or I have a death wish. Someone should ask my neighbors what their problem with me is. They would probably give an answer about how I think about myself and how I am so narcissistic and need to be brought down. I sincerely doubt they would cite anti-semitism openly. They might simply call me an American as a means of justifying their hatred. I just doubt they could truly vocalize their hatred because I don’t think they have any brains between them. I think they all live on drugs and reflexes and I don’t think they think about anything very much at all.
***
The Americans are in Kiev.
***
I just got a note from a conservative American human. I can’t use the word friend even though I know him and technically Facebook says we are friends. He says that because I published my opinion about Joe Biden I would never be welcome back in the United States again. Really? Crazy. Free speech gets you kicked out of the United States of America. What will happen next?
I just finished breakfast. I have been eating a lot of potatoes lately and I tell you, I feel really good. You put a few potatoes into your diet and it really makes a difference. I wasn’t planning to plant too many this year but now I’m sort of rethinking things. I don’t know that I’m going to plant an entire field but I definitely think having a few kilos of potatoes lying around is a darn good thing.
Speaking of agriculture, I was listening to this while I was enjoying my breakfast. It’s not about the northern world, it’s about the land where Mexico City now sits but it is pretty thought provoking at least in the argument of quality of life versus commerce. The film makes a point of how much of the food producing capability of the region was given over to making roads for cars in Mexico City. And you don’t really have to think too hard about quality of life regarding Mexico City. All you have to do is go online and ask about the air quality.
Air Pollution in Mexico City has been of concern to the city’s population and health officials for decades. In the 20th century, Mexico City’s population rapidly increased as industrialization brought thousands of migrants from all over the world.
Don’t you love the University of Google? Ask a question, get a logical answer and learn something for free. Well, not for free. There is the cost of the electricity of your device (not much) and availability of a good internet connection (not much at all). I guess you need to have a home though. It helps if you have a home and time to study.
Anyway, check out this rather thought-provoking video about regenerating farmland in and around Mexico City during a Time of drought caused by human activity.
***
By the way, it is a very warm sun shiny shirt sleeve day today. I have been lollygagging long enough and I’m going to attempt to do a little bit of work around here today. I’m going to take it easy on myself because I’m not really interested in getting any infections that will have lasting problems. But I have work to do and so I’m going to go after it.
Probably yesterday, I could have been more industrious. I have some ideas for literary projects. This is not new work. I am not very inspired to create any new plays or screenplays right now. This blog is more than satisfying for me and there is absolutely zero reward for any creativity on my part even personally so, this is what I’m doing. But I am working to repackage some of my old work and I ran into a sticky problem.
Last year, I wrote four short stories that I think were actually pretty good. Several of them could be considered activist stories, one of them is a very long and beautiful utopian story and there were two children’s books about creativity and another that was at least environmentally astute.
The problem is that I’m not really sure if they all go together or how much material I would be offering in a single volume. If I put the short stories together, it’s a very thin book and runs a little bit less than 100 pages. It’s about 25,000 words, about the same as a small novella. Perhaps this is fine and I’m overthinking this but I can’t help thinking that if people like it, you have to give them something to eat.
I have these stories ready to go and the children’s stories but I’m a little unsure of what I could add into the mix.
Last year, while I was working on the green2021 website, I wrote quite a few essays under several environmental headings. I’m not really sure of the quality of these essays. I agree that I am saying something but I can’t really say it was my most intense or inspired writing. I don’t want to say that it’s garbage. It’s just that some of it might be a little simple and emotional. Who knows? Maybe this is good and maybe this is what people will be able to digest.
Sorry, the green 2021 website is not online because of the shitty web hosting plan I had but don’t worry, I still have all the original material.
I also have a second volume that also requires some work that would carry three Belarusian plays. Two of these plays were well complimented and the story behind at least one of them is probably Worthy of being written about sometime. Probably that’s not going to be right now because I’m not inspired to do so but should people take an interest in my work ever, they would surely be interested in the history of that play.
I probably should have worked on these two projects yesterday but I didn’t. I don’t know why I have become so allergic to web work but I have. I’m not teaching right now and I’m not doing any translations and I’m also not doing any personal marketing to get myself any attention for any of the things that I have done for money. Truthfully, I’m just working on building this Garden right now and trying to get my body back as much as I can. Or if not get it back, explore the limits of what I am capable of doing physically.
It’s not that I’m apathetic about making money and it is certainly not that I am rich. It’s just a question of quality of life. Perhaps there is some money available somewhere from somebody for something but going down any of these roads is simply agony for me right now.
I just don’t want to be with power people. I don’t want to be with people who believe they have power over me. I don’t wish to be spoken to by someone who believes that they have the right to dictate policy over my life. I don’t want people speaking to me as if I am an object.
This is part of my problem with my neighbors. They are shit. Empirically, they are shit. But in their minds, they live on some social strata that they believe gives them rights to shit on me.
I guess power is the greatest religion in the world these days. You get this idea in your head that you are somebody on somebody else’s nothing and you have rights to do whatever you want with them.
Personally, I would classify this sort of thinking as mental illness but apparently it’s a money maker for the conservatives and oil Business and slavery types so all Roman roads are open for this new form of Christianity.
Kind of a rock and a hard place situation, isn’t it? To have human garbage laugh at you because you choose quality of life over slavery means they have the right to shit on you. That is philosophically crazy, isn’t it?
Anyway, I’m sure I’ll get to all of this literature stuff sometime. Or maybe I’ll get shot. Or maybe I’ll just forget about it. Or maybe I’ll get a call from somebody who says that I’m an important writer and need to be supported and my whole life changes in an instant. Or maybe I’m just going to watch the beans and cabbages grow.
I mean, you can dream and you can work to follow your dreams. But then the psychosis of inspiration kind of fades away and you find yourself doing things that are much more practical. Right now, just keeping this beautiful little place going is enough for me. It’s enough of a game to keep my mind occupied. And besides, there’s a war on and absolutely nobody is thinking anything about the future or quality of life or anything other than maximizing death and maximizing profits from death.
***
Okay, I completely understand that what I just said is going to be misunderstood about a couple of small regions. So I’m going to explain my thinking about one piece of business.
Theoretically, I had a lot of money stolen from me by Americans. But this is not my personal money that I earned in my life although that is also in question thanks to war sanctions, this is family money that was supposed to go to me but was stolen by a smart little fellow in Florida.
You should not take my thoughts about quality of life as meaning ambivalence towards the situation. I did not ignore the situation or wave it away in favor of peace. I went to the police, I went to the sheriff’s department, I went to the public prosecutor and I went to the press. The issue was that nobody wanted to do anything. The public safety people would not even pick up a phone to make a phone call and the legal people are only interested in their own money and getting paid extraordinary amounts so that they can keep the misery going as long as possible. As long as they keep a case going and have billable hours, it’s like rolling sevens on a crap table.
I have gone to several individuals and even some family members for some basic help in this but found absolutely nothing but hysterical lunatics everywhere I went. Either they were paralyzed with fear over what, I will never know or they were too worked up in their heads to organize even a simple protest. I had more than a few friends who loved hearing about my problems but who would not lift a single finger to get involved. And even when it was not a matter of fighting and it was just a matter of having access to my own funds, nothing, zero, zip, zilch.
So when I talk about choosing quality of life, it is not that I wave away my problems and exist in an existential cloud hovering above humanity. It would have been nice to have a few more dollars and it certainly would have made life a bit easier and some of my choices a little better. But we’re talking about working with Americans here and Americans are a slightly different animal.
Probably the best thing I could say about this is not even my own thought. It came from the journalist, a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist who while taking my interview with a bit of a hangover, ended our time together by holding up her cat and asking me if I thought it was cute. Did I mention this was a conservative newspaper?
Her quote was that nothing was going to happen because Americans require quite a bit of blood before they take notice.
Exactly, you know? Exactly.
If anybody has any ideas how to fight on this front or can recommend any lawyers who would be happy to work for their cut on the back end or, if y’all just have a friend who gets what they want because they’re not too afraid of breaking the rules, you let me know. I would love to have someone go say hello to my smart little relative. I would love for him to get a wake up call from me.
And no, I can’t call him myself. He broke off the conversation when he decided to put the money in his pocket and run. I simply didn’t have the money to chase after him. Cheers.
***
It’s 3:30 and I’m taking a bit of a break. I ran out of gas in the wood pile. Truthfully, I’m almost done. Maybe 1 hour more of work if I had the energy. I don’t have the energy.
So I’m thinking really hard about what I can do to press on and I’ve come up with two possibilities. First of all, I think I’m eating too much in the morning. When I was staying with my ex partner, I had myself on a strict intermittent fasting regimen where I wouldn’t touch food until noon. Of course, by the time I got to noon I was really hungry and would often eat too much there. But if I’m going to eat breakfast in the morning, I should eat small because if I did, I might be hungry and get some energy from some fruit and nuts.
This is like the best bicycle food in the world and if you’ve ever been out riding and bonked, a few nuts and raisins will rejuvenate you. And if you don’t know, bonking is just going hyperglycemic and not having anything to burn anymore. It’s a pretty difficult state of life. It’s different from what I’m feeling right now, which is just complete lethargy and a lack of desire to move anymore. I wish it was just a matter of sugar bonking but this is different.
The other possibility is simply taking up alcoholism again. I am generally against drinking…
You know, life is so funny sometimes. Exactly at the moment that I start thinking that maybe a few shots of vodka to numb it would allow me to finish this bloody fucking work that I have to do and I have a local alcoholics screaming at me from the road. My fence is locked so people don’t come to the door anymore (God is great, God is good, thank you God for small favors. Amen.)
But I heard somebody calling my name and you never can tell why people are screaming your name so I opened the kitchen door to find out the story.
So he, I don’t know who he is, is drunk off his ass and he says something about it being pascha.
I said okay. And he asked me what I said and I repeated the word okay.
And then he repeated that it was pascha and I said that yesterday was pascha. And then he mumbled something that was generally unintelligible and I remarked that he was drunk. And then he agreed that he was drunk and then started rambling again about something I couldn’t quite understand and then I mentioned that I don’t drink.
This stopped him. Of course, he was looking for someone to drink with him and my curiosity certainly meant that I was unavailable drinking partner. I’m not. Even if I am thinking of drinking, I am not looking for local alcoholics to drink with or to offer my alcohol to. I’m not lonely, I just need a little brutality to get through this work.
And then he focused his eyes on me and asked if I was Jewish and I said goodbye and closed the door. It was enough Russian conversation for me and it was enough wonderment about how the universe seems to show us the way. This fellow was nice enough to show me a road from A to b, today I am at point a and he is my eventual point b if I start drinking again.
I wish I was hungry and I wish my legs didn’t hurt so much. And I wish I was younger and I had more energy and I wish I wasn’t so bloody miserable. And I wish I didn’t have any problems with my ex partner and I wish I didn’t have any more digging or wheelbarrow carrying to do. And I wish the world was not so motherfucking empty.
So how do you make this decision? I’m seriously thinking about picking up some vodka. If I do, it’s going to alter things for quite some time. But, I have gotten drunk in the evening anytime and I know perfectly well how this particular form of liquid narcotic works. It’s not enjoyable, you just get numb and stupid and then you pass out and then you wake up and you feel like shit and the only thing you can think of is to move around a little bit so you don’t feel so bad. Maybe this is a perfect lifestyle for the physical labor I’m doing right now.
I’m just saying that I need something.
***
Dr Greger
Maybe the problem is the food we eat.
***
It’s 7:00 and I am in the kitchen and I almost don’t feel at all like telling you what I’m doing. I’m not eating healthy food. Pickles and fried bread with this unrefined factory sunflower oil. This is not good for me at all. And I’m drinking. That’s it, you heard me say it, I’m getting drunk.
I had a couple of decent shots before going out to finish the wood pile. I figured it called for some brutality. I needed my mind to ignore any pain or nonsense from my legs or my body and just do the job that needs to be done. And I was very effective. I was imitating these Russian haywagons I used to see where they pile the card probably with 5 m of hay. Get to the very last possible drop of what you’re doing. Brutality.
I had a house in Minneapolis once upon a time. I had a neighbor who was a house painter and he used to say that he was a ruthless painter. He was a devout Christian and I know for a fact that he didn’t like to drink. But when he painted, he did not rest and he bullied through the job no matter what. This is what we are talking about here. We are talking about bullying through a job that needs to get done. We are not talking about creativity or falling in love with the moment or feeling some particular compassion for what you are doing. We are talking about bullying through this shit as if it doesn’t matter. Bullying through it as if there is nothing else in the world to pay attention to other than bullying through it.
I have a pile of leftover garbage from the wood delivery in front of my house and I’m going to use a bunch of that for tonight’s fire. I’ve already put the big Canon in the closet for the year. I’m not going to need it anymore. The weather is turning warm and I don’t need an industrial heater anymore. We will see that guy in 6 months or seven. Glad to have it and glad to have the electricity to run it.
Probably tomorrow or for sure this week I will be putting my other heating element into a box and closing it up for the summer. Making a fire is enough in the evening to keep things nice. My body has adapted to the weather well enough. I don’t need much help and I don’t need to spend the money.
Tomorrow I think I will be bullying the wheelbarrow again, this time dragging dirt up from the paths and putting a top on my raised beds. I’ve done my job but I need to close things up before this weekend. And about this weekend, it is an interesting thing to note.
In a couple of minutes I’m going to call my ex partner. I know for a fact that she is not going to take what I told her yesterday with any seriousness. She’s going to pretend as if nothing is very important and she will not come up with any suggestions that are meaningful in any way. I know she has been thinking about this and I would bet all my money in the world that she has come up with the idea to say something that is generally negative but mostly meaningless. This is the way things are done here. I’m a male and therefore I am not to be taken seriously.
I know this from practice. I know this because I have more than one ex-girlfriends hanging around in the world and I know what it is like to talk to them again. I know I have an effect on them and I push their hand. I make them do things that they otherwise would not do. I know what they are thinking. I am important to them. I was at one time very important to them but they have all of these reasons to ignore me and to bully on. Have you heard that word before? Have you heard me say bullying already here this evening?
It is an alcoholic culture and one formed by alcoholism. What I have done here today by doing a little vodka drinking is as normal as watching the sun come up in the morning. I can talk about the pluses of marijuana. I couldn’t sing the praises of how much better it is for our health. No one here is going to listen to me. They only understand the sugar. They only understand the alcohol.
I am tempted to tell the truth about why I do not have any marijuana. I am tempted to tell the story. I know the story. I know the story and I am quite capable of telling it eloquently and with nuance and in such a way that people will understand it. I guess you knew that already. But I have no access to my friend right now. It is unavailable and I have been told by either a drunk or a KGB agent that with the war going on, I might as well forget about this sort of thing. The oil business is going to win today because they are killing people to make their point.
You do see that, right? You do see how that works, right?
So this evening I am eating what is probably the last present that Grandma Olga left behind. I’m working on a 3 l bottle of pickles that has more of a chance of food poisoning than it does of pleasure. And I am getting drunk. It has been my plan all day to do so and I am drinking even as I write these words. Maybe you can tell by the texture or the rhythm of my style. Maybe you already knew this by the brutality of how I am grinding through line by line. It is the same brutality that got me to the end of the woodpile. And I am at the end of the woodpile.
About 150 years ago, literally something like four score and seven, the American North and South start killing each other over the issue of whether we should have slaves or not. The man who we consider the greatest American president, Abraham Lincoln, said that it was foolish to consider men to be slaves simply because of the color of their skin. This started a massive war because the economics of slavery were well in place in parts of the USA But in others, they were full hearty enough to believe that all men were created equal.
The war itself was at a stalemate. Both sides were dug in trenches. It was a meat grinder of a war with archaic weapons and original ballistics where you would physically pack a lead ball into the cylinder of your rifle, add a small packet of black powder and shoot one shot which would be enough to cause great harm to a human body if you were lucky enough to make contact.
The doctors would look at the damaged limbs and simply cut them off. There was no real surgery, no antibiotics, no real knowledge of how to curtail infections and if you were unlucky enough to be struck by a ball, you might actually be better off dead.
You can say blah blah blah about modern warfare and the amazing strategic weapons that people have now. You can say hoorah to the Americans for agreeing to allow the weapons business to accommodate the ukrainians in their fight against the motherfucking Russians. We could say that we are genuinely intelligent now because we can Mass produce bullets that fly hundreds of meters per second and either go directly through a body or explode and fragment and make a ridiculous vapor in the exit wound.
But back in the American Civil War, the stalemate was broken by a sincere alcoholic. Ulysses S Grant eventually became president after some Southern gentleman decided to shoot the greatest president of all time in the back of the head while he was attending a play at a theater. That was some meaningful brutality. Better to shoot the fucker in the head and listen to his words about the truth of humanity.
Ulysses S Grant didn’t give a shit how many people died to fulfill his plan. He didn’t give a shit about the pain and he didn’t give a shit about the death toll. He ran can gave orders when they shot those lead balls at each other. Eventually, the union side one. It didn’t matter how many casualties. Winning was the only thing that was important and to get the job done, they hired a good alcoholic.
Truthfully, tonight I’m going to be watching TV shows from America about Los Angeles. I feel like a fraud because I hate Los Angeles as if we were in a civil war. All San Francisco’s hate people from Los Angeles and there have even been some brain damaging attacks along the lines of how much North and South California hate each other.
One time I visited the US embassy. I was there to get my passport or something like that. There was a more than attractive Asian girl there and I asked her where she was from because I noticed that her accent said something about California. She didn’t say that she was from the San Francisco Bay area, she was from Los Angeles. I ended the relationship almost immediately.
“Really?” She said to me.
“I cannot forget who I am.” I said. Or something equally as dramatic.
But these days I’m watching two TV shows. One about the rise of the Los Angeles Lakers called Showtime. This is about the year that Magic Johnson joined the team and this, combined with a run and gun offense, changed basketball forever. I’m also watching another show specifically about magic Johnson. I’ve seen three of the four episodes and the third one is about when he was told that he had AIDS and became a spokesman for the disease and all of the science behind trying to find a cure for it. Magic is still around by the way and is now the owner of the dodgers, fuck you very much. They are an amazing team now. No small coincidence, I am sure.
What does this all have to do with the cost of tea in China? Nothing. I’m just sitting in my kitchen getting drunk and eating Grandma Olga’s pickles and some fried bread with some unrefined sunflower oil I picked up from the local store. If I had access to weed, there would not be a question. If someone would speak to the unquestioned ruler of this country and tell him the truth, maybe he would do something to the positive. In the meantime, and especially if I want to get all of this physical work done and will be needing to bully through it, I guess I’m going to be an alcoholic for a little while. I’m an adult. I have a right. Fuck you generally for any trolling you wish to do at this moment.
Anyway, the wood pile is picked up and put away. I’m sure I need to put a lock on the little Barn. Not that I think anybody gives a crap about the wood I have there. But you never can tell. And as far as my ex partner is concerned, I’ve got about 40 minutes until our scheduled conversation. I’ll put all my money on the table that she says that she has not given the thought to anything and we’ll wait for me to talk. That’s just the way it is. No other way. I mean, in a perfect world we might get something different. But that’s just not where we live.
I seem to have gone beyond the fold of the page, haven’t I? Is it because I’m drunk? Give the person who said yes $2 as a prize for being socially aware and cognizant of the truth of the situation. I could say something about sensitivity. I could say something about my connection to Nature. But at this moment, I just have to finish my fucking work and I don’t have access to anything better than local factory alcohol. Fuck me? Exactly. Let’s just deal with the inequality of the page and what we have to do to get the Garden up and running. I’ll worry about the ex partner if and when she actually shows up. The same is true for either the belarusian, Russian or Ukrainian armies. Fuck you all very much and I’ll see you when you get here.
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