Letter From 父亲 Krishna Mutter 母亲

My children, why do you remain in the darkness? You are angels. You are matter. If you long to see miracles, look around. Can you see airplanes and helicopters flying through the sky? Are you speaking across continents with wireless communication devices? Are you living in something you can’t believe is true? Do you feel alone, disconnected, and unfulfilled? Have you spent your life being taught to be someone other than yourself?

What you have been taught to see as normal is nothing of the sort.

We have forgotten our true nature, but the truth is still with us. We have inherited from our ancestors everything we need, all the knowledge and information, and all the tools, to rise and become the angels that we are. We are one. We are life. We are matter and we are energy. This is our nature.

Energy is light, and matter is meaningless without it, just as energy has no purpose without matter. The earth may as well not be here without the sun. All would be darkness with no perceiver to observe. Why do you think that the earth revolves around the sun? Because it is what keeps it alive? The earth revolves around the sun and goes on living, and therefore we are alive. The interaction of the earth and the sun, two forces, one light and one dark matter, covered in lots of water, is the reason for life. Simple, no need for understanding what a nucleon is. What is the meaning of life? One equation: light plus matter.

The meaning of consciousness is another question entirely, but i’m sure we’ll get to it some day.

So the earth revolves around the sun, and the sun just gives consistent light, all the time, endlessly, as long as we keep hooping around it, slowly rotating in such a way that land and sea, on all the surface of the Mothership, and all her inhabitants, get Light. Maybe father sun shines so nicely on us because we are the only ones in the universe who seem to notice.

Vater and mutter, the German roots of the English words for father and mother reveal more about what we already knew. We like to think we know more than we’ve ever known before, which is true, but it is also true that we know less. It is difficult to know too many things at once.

Mother, mutter, matter, father, vater; begin to picture a taijitu, the traditional symbol for yin and yang. Even more interesting is the German word for matter, angelegenheit. Don’t let anyone tell you that you are not an angel, nor that you are a fallen angel. You just may not have woken up yet. We are angelegenheit. We are creatures of the Light. Much of our language also comes from the Greeks. Hellas means the Light. It’s time we start forgetting much of what we’ve learned because it is no longer serving us. It’s time to start learning what we’ve been taught to ignore: The Truth.

There is a new morning coming, each day, each breath, each moment. NOW.

We have a Mother and a Father. Holy Mother and Holy Sun.

Hill Hill The Dangerous Fruit

Hillary is a dangerous fruit. Do not be fooled by the whistles and the bells. Do not be distracted by the well dressed Mormon, with his slicked back hair, or the empty war hero shell of that pasty white old man, or by Hillary's new found voice. Do not be distracted. Hillary Clinton whined like a little school girl whose mommy wouldn't buy her a pair of earrings and suddenly she won the New Hampshire primary. Sure it's hard. It must be damn hard getting up every morning and being so full of shit.

This woman is a bag of nothingness capped with a little total sell out. If the media had a brain it would have chosen, as it has, Hillary as it's choicest candidate because she is the most likely of any possible Democratic candidate (Hugo Chavez excluded) to LOSE the 2008 Presidential election. You could run a Republican Mickey Mouse against her and he would have a hard time losing to THE HILL. Hillary would be the Democrats biggest mistake since Dukakis, but you wouldn't know that watching the news. She has been the one to beat in the primaries.

Corporations prefer to have Republicans in the White House. The mainstream media is owned by corporations. 1+1, here we go. For a second, when Obama defeated her in Iowa, they thought the game was up, and the reporters were ready to report it. For a second the truth was out. It just slipped out, but it was as if everybody in the Media already knew. The headline was pretty simple, Hillary Can't Win. Obama was the obvious winner over her, just like any of the Republicans would be. But then the spin machine went to work, and New Hampshire watched, and the next thing anyone knew, we were convinced Hillary had a beating heart behind that wooden exterior. Maybe she does, but I assure you it is not the heart of a good president. Also, it is irrelevant, because in this fear riddled Nation she has about as much chance of defeating McCain, Romney, or Giuliani as Barbara Walters does. Let's not forget that nearly 50% of the country has already decided that they would not vote for her. That does not bode well for her electability.

But anyways, we are back to square one yet again. Will somebody please wake up the Democratic party and get people the memo. Hillary is a terrible candidate. Primary voters beware. Do not be fooled. Do not be Hillwinked. A vote for Hillary Clinton is a vote for another Republican president.

Well how bout that?

This is my 100th post! Wow. I'm stressed out and getting desperate in the midst of a series of snowstorms down here on Red Butte Drive. They don't stop, there is little sunshine or blue-sky, and it's beginning to make me feel insane. The skiing has been deep and grand, and the snow is piling up like the bullshit in Washington.

I can't seem to get away from current events, and this heavy snow up here in paradise is making me ever more aware of a dark sense of impending doom for my country. If only our founding fathers were here now to see what has come of their grand visions for the manifest destiny of this continent. They would all be disgusted. Washington and Adams would quickly grasp the failure of their ideas about a strong National Government. These two, smart men both of them, would notice, upon returning to this once pristine and beautiful land, that it had been raped, and that the Federal Government, which they had insisted was so important to unify the country and prevent chaos amongst free states , was chiefly responsible for terror at home and around the world and assorted crimes against humanity and the rule of law. Washington would have realized that Adams was a greedhead and would have been pissed that he'd been fooled by Adams false humility and calm, calculating, demeanor. Adams would look at Dick Cheney and see a chilling resemblance to himself. Jefferson, if armed, would immediately shoot Adams, probably in front of a Wal-Mart, and then he would find some hippies, give them guns, and start another revolution.

These men, were they here today, would be absolutely astounded at the absolute failure of the free-market experiment. They would be astounded at the inequity and human suffering it has allowed, indeed spawned, in the name of "freedom." They would probably feel bad, but they would be able to forgive themselves because they did not know what they were creating. Had they known what their creation would become, they would have gone the way of Canada or Australia, and would not have declared themselves independent of England when they did.

They would watch the 2008 campaign and they would say, in regard to the importance of an independent media and an educated and skilled population, "We told you so." They would be most of all shocked by the idiocy of the general population, noticing, for example, that in order for Hillary Clinton to have a surprise win in the New Hampshire Primary, all she had to do was whimper like a weak little school girl who's mommy wouldn't get her a new pair of ear rings, and then let the media run with it. God help the opponents of the candidate the media has chosen as the best for ratings.

More on Roger Clemens to come.

haiku for a snowy day 2008

we are born then die
just one long day and much sleep
in between

Hingis Back in the News

One could only look at world sport, and ignore all the foolish war, murder, oppression, injustice, bad leadership, and still get a pretty good idea of how stupid the civilized world is. Ms. Hingis, a successful tennis star who has a terribly fantastic ass, has been banned from the sport for two years and is going to be forced to forfeit some of her profits, all because she tested positive for cocaine.

I have one question. Was she doing cocaine while she was playing her match? If so, I don't really see how that is much of an advantage. I mean, I'm not a cocaine user myself, but from what I understand, you don't stay high that long, and from what I can tell from the coked up people I run into generally here in Aspen, who frantically and savagely scan the room while they blabber meaninglessly in the most serious tones, it's not the best for the attention span either. What, was she running to the service line every 20 or 30 minutes to do a bump?

I just think this is stupid madness. All these sports people getting in trouble for doing drugs is absolutely retarded. I mean listen, lawyers don't get tested for drugs. Mayors, nor Congressmen, nor the President of the United States have to submit to Urine Samples. So who the hell are we to test these athletes we pay to beat the hell out of their bodies for our entertainment, so we can be distracted from the massively insane stupidity we are constantly surrounded by in this so called "civilization"? Is it me folks, or are we living in crazy land?

We are in a criminal war in Iraq right now, killing innocent people, making the world a more dangerous place every day with our selfish Greedhead ways. Our president is violently, and with destructive precision, sucking oil out of every crevice he can find in the wild nature of our earth like a Jonesing fiend. We are preparing to put nuclear weapons in space, and giant warheads which can strike any target on earth in a matter of two hours or less. Bye bye. American Airlines planes are about to be retrofitted with weapons systems (I swear to God I heard this one today on NPR).

So where do we get off telling anyone what they can and can't put in their bodies? I myself am pretty cautious about what I put in my body. I try to keep it to the sacred herb and the sacred spirit, and the occasional benzodiazapine doesn't hurt, but come on People. Get real. We are a criminal Nation, The People are the last ones who should be getting punished right now for anything less than murder, rape, robbery, and assault, because those are the crimes our government is guilty of. It's the people in power who should be on the stand.

There is a reason they try to keep us afraid.

Iowa

Alright. Obama won in Iowa. Thank god for those of us who don't want to see another corprepublicanreligiouscat as our next president. But Huckabee also won, which means that the Big Dumb God is still talking loudly. The newer, even dumber, Mormon God had not caught up, thanks be to Allah.

So we have Barack Obama, whose last name rhymes with Osama, as our hope. This might sound crazy, but this inexperienced black man, who has yet to prove his jive talking capabilities, is our best hope. Hillary Clinton would lose to a republican Mickey Mouse, and it would be a loss that wouldn't concern me too much, because that woman scares me about as much as anyone else.

And so we have Obama. This guy, as far as I can tell, is the least dangerous of all the characters on the miserable plate we are looking at. He actually gives me some hope.

Slightly optimistic in 2008,

the Goose

In the World of Stupid

Pakistan is about to blow up, Aspen gets more fur coats every day this time of year, and Lindsey Lohan, it turns out, fell off the wagon. Who cares? Lindsey is probably better off drinking, in so many cases, a drunk drinker is far better than a sober one. Just look at our Commander in Chief if you want evidence. The paparazzi is out of control, this idea of individual freedom is out of control. People have never been so spoiled nor miserable in all of history. I bet the suicide rate during the black plague paled in comparison to the one in America today.

Lindsey should drink, she's young, immature, blond, and famous, drugs and alcohol will likely make her miserable life, of fame, stupid wealth, selfishness, and self-entitlement, a bit shorter. As it should be. Our president, and most of the other world leaders, should go back to partying and leave the leadership of the world to intellectuals and people who know how to use their brains for more than just idiotic power-mongering which puts the ownership of the world in the hands of an elite class of fantastically unenlightened people who seem to care for nothing more than getting richer, even at the expense of the future of the human race.

Feeling optimistic.

The Goose.

2008, Year of the Rat

Nothing says Christmas like a couple of young men getting mauled, and one killed, by a 350 pound tiger at the San Francisco Zoo. The twelve foot high wall was not enough to keep the tiger from attacking these three stooges. These late teens and an early 20 year old were almost certainly taunting this tiger. After two of the “victims” ran away while the feline was chewing on their friend, this driven animal went after the escaped taunters and found them in the café 300 yards away. This cat was no random killer, it was out for retribution. It was angry. The tiger was probably well aware of his capability to escape, maybe he was even in the habit of taking evening excursions, but up till this pivotal moment, he had dealt peacefully with his imprisonment, except for once, a few years before, when he mauled a zoo employee. Clearly this tiger was not completely satisfied with life in the zoo.

What animal, or human for that matter, would be satisfied with a life in a zoo? Speaking as a human representative, who lives in the zoo of western civilization, a prison without physical bars, I have to admit that sometimes I’m ready to go the way of the tiger.

Who do we think we are, keeping these majestic wild beasts in captivity for our entertainment? One of these days (not that this isn’t already under way), mother nature and the animal kingdom is going to turn completely against us. We are evolutionary masterpieces, by the nature of our minds, we are more ready to adapt to changing circumstances than most in the animal kingdom. One could almost say we were created as the stewards of the earth, and yet for the past few thousand years, maybe since we kicked ourselves out of a theoretical garden we are still technically in, and began treating it like a garbage dump, we have been bad little angels, and it’s about time for the tiger to begin biting us back.

Humans have been busy. It’s been act, act, act, for a long, long time, and we have so rarely stopped to think. But for all that action, we can expect reaction. What should we do?

We shouldn’t raise the fences in our zoos to keep from getting attacked by tigers, we should dismantle these zoos before the time of reaping comes completely to pass. The seeds of greed, selfishness, and unconsciousness have been sown, and now we have our crop, more greed, more selfsishness, and more unconsciousness, along with their side-effects: suffering, separation, cruelty, resentment, and death without freedom. But a new consciousness is also growing out of our dissatisfaction with this zoo.

There are tigers inside us all, and they long to be set free. This coming year is the year of the rat in the Chinese zodiac. This is fitting as it is our rat-faced President’s last year in office. But we should also remember some of the good traits of this marvelous little animal as its year approaches. Rats help us clean up our messes, they also take care of each other and live in close proximity with their neighbors, and contrary to our poor opinions of them, they are actually healthy, hearty, animals. Our ancestors would not get on boats if rats were not on board, as it meant that the ship was not sea-worthy. Rats are smart cowards, when things are not safe, they run, they change course. If only our rat look-a-like of a President acted a little more like he looks we wouldn’t be in a criminal war. We have rats to thank for the bubonic plague, like little grim reapers they helped eliminate overpopulation in Europe, without them there would never have been a renaissance.

Anyways, that’s the news in the animal kingdom. What conclusion can we draw? If we want to calm the tigers, we may have to start acting like rats.

Only One

Selfishness is the only sin.

coming soon

Well this isn’t a bad moment. Couldn’t be much better really, the present moment being so generally difficult to beat. So I’m sitting at the Woody Creek Tavern having a cup of coffee and getting ready to order my first meal of the day at 2:00 in the afternoon, two days after Christmas in the year of our Sun, 2007. I’ll begin by giving you a little astrology report. The Age of Aquarius is coming, thank god, is actually really in the midst of coming, by Sun, by enlightenment, by illumination. A new age finally, after two thousand odd years of dysfunction, selfishness, and the idiotic dream land of Pisces (no offence meant for you Pisces out there). The change is already under way, in this most marvelous moment, the present.

I keep thinking that we are somewhere deep inside of Mindhead, which is just a word I got from a cheesy Steve Martin and Eddie Murphy movie called Bowfinger. Mindhead is meant to be a takeoff on Scientology, but the Mindhead concept has some potential as an idea for our own little heads to expand.

I’ve begun to get this conception of the Mindhead as an articulation of a universal consciousness, a frequency somewhere “out there,” of which we are all a part.

Back to the drawing room, two glasses of wine later, still at the Tavern bar, satiated from a veggie tamale and a cheese enchilada. Yum is all I can say, and back to the keyboard of this mad little machine, the computer. The typing happens very fast, but there is often too much background noise, what with all the emails coming in, and all the dumb news to check on Google News, the worst source for news on the internet. But where else is a news hungry man supposed to go? It’s not really all so bad, it’s just that it’s so full of “news” everyday, just like CNN and FOX.

The problem is that most of this drivel is not news. It’s just the same old shit. Somebody died of cancer. Somebody overdosed. Somebody killed somebody. Somebody got more successful than somebody else. A volcano erupted. A VW broke down. Another “invention” was “invented.”

What about the real news, meaning that which is actually new? Well the real news is Mindhead. The real news, in this world of entertainment news, is the news that will actually entertain me, and by entertain I mean expand my mind. That which does not expand my mind is not news. Hence I have grown weary of the general drivel in this massively idiotic, repetitive, and greedily loony mass media.

This afternoon I will drive down-valley to run errands with a higher concentration of real people. The real people are my favorite. But I cannot seem to extricate myself from the addiction that is Aspen. I have to live in Aspen. I love it too much, even while I am overly exposed to a scum of the earth psychopathic elite who think they are somehow entitled to a 20,000 square foot mansion and a leer jet, while the working people of this little town have to work two or three jobs just to afford a twelve foot by twelve foot space in this little wonderland. And the greedheads only grace us with their presence one or two months a year, but they leave their giant screw you mansions everywhere to remind us how much we miss them when their gone.

But tomorrow I’ll ski, and all will be well again, and this afternoon, I will spend my time in thrift stores, surrounded by the real heads. Why are the working locals in Aspen so happy? They are happy because even while they toil and toil to make a nice little trip for the billionaires, they also have a double super buzz, because not only are they stoned, and not only did they get huge powder shots yesterday on highlands bowl, they are also keenly aware that the dull rich person they are standing across from, serving a drink to, is more miserable and empty than they have ever been in their whole life. So what’s that, if it’s not something to smile about?

Welcome to Fat City, USA, where the working folks can smile, because they are richer than the rich here can ever possibly imagine.

4/30/07

The steam of my pain shines like an old man, neck cranked and tweaked, and wretched.
But that will not stop the Gonzo. Pain can never stop the rebels. The future is simply conformity to rebellion.
Liquid,
Aromatic championships.
Forward Ho said the Ghost from his dormancy, and the great spirit whispered happiness in his ear.

The Fat is in the Fire

Everyone you know is completely insane.

4/12/00

I saw the top of a mountain as I climbed
Perspiring, I couldn't stop
I climb towards the peak,
Perspiring
I want to stop
I cannot
I must reach the top
And then further
The mountain goes upward into the sky
The heavens above
I will find love
Gasping for air I cry out
"I must get out!"
I'm just getting started
Summoning Lord, Shiva, Buddha, and the Like
I take my heart and squeeze
Squeeze so I may rise
I'll go beyond the human plane
Go on towards the twelfth dawn
Mystic men, Mayan friends
Moving into love's domain
I'm ready now for what may come
Ready for the Devil's death
Into a kind horizon
See the bills go up in flames
Greed and anger dead in blame
Grasping truth
Tasting fruit without disease
Death, death, to all that's wrong
Ready now for spring to come
Truth flowers bursting forth from evils ashes
Bliss's birth
Calm calm be set free
Let go of all your malady
Release your hand from the devil's branch
Fall from the tree
You will not land
Only rise

Alright

I have very little time this morning, there is a plan to make snowmen. Then I'm going to go put some more paint on the walls at the new shop, (trying to figure out whether to go with Loves Light, Golden Path, or Tomato Soup). Nathan at Ace hardware helped us out yesterday. Fuck the greedhead bastards!! Sorry I may be developing terets syndrome. I'm so damn tired of the nonsense in this world I can hardly contain myself. I'm the happiest, most well adjusted person I know, and I'm also the most pissed off.

Anyways, more about the paint store. We were doing a little filmaroo, and silly tom, the corporate trained swinerag, tells Tony the Tiger and I that we are up to no good. Hey what are you guys doing? he growls, sensing something out of the ordinary because we are cruising around with a camera, laughing, and just exuding a healthy well being of hash and happiness. Tony tells him we're buying a hammer. You guys need to talk to the general manager Master Tom says, but he just left.

I'm actually quite sure if the general manager is any too smart, (as a general manager should be in general), he would have been happy to have us help advertise for Ace Hardware on our fine little yellowjumpsuits.com. We would be sharing with the people the pure wonderment of the cruising around an Ace Hardware. All REDS AND YELLOWS everywhere, and so much happiness, where the paint gets shaken, and we'll be getting it all out to you really soon.

Carry on,

The Goose Wrangler

12/9/07 On At the Airport on way from California to Colorado

Red paper Coca-Cola cups and yellow letters on a Denver airport billboard
Total contentment in a perfect world of imperfect people
Overly smart ants march violently over mommy
Wearing funny clothes over our naked alienness
Good morning winterberries
High noon to the dingbats
Welcome to mindhead said the medicine man of modernity
Come again to purify and reconnect the lonely masses to the ultimate consciousness field
Steve the drunken master knew
At the bar
We talked
We can influence it
I said
Not quite
said Steve
We are it.

Did It

Yellowjumpsuits LLC is now the proud owner of an RV. I'm pretty sure her name is Dolores. She's a 31 foot beauty. I'm a bit nervous. I'll miss my plane tomorrow and drive her back to Aspen from California. Pray for us.

She's the modern day donkey. We'll be riding around this continent finding gems for the people and developing the Church of the Open Mind, which will eventually be found at openmindchurch.com, and out on the open road, and, of course, in your mindhead.

love always.

Goose Wrangler

Preface to the Anti-Christ

by Friedrich Nietzsche
Published 1895

translation by H.L. Mencken
Published 1920

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

This book belongs to the most rare of men. Perhaps not one of them is yet alive. It is possible that they may be among those who understand my "Zarathustra": how could I confound myself with those who are now sprouting ears?--First the day after tomorrow must come for me. Some men are born posthumously.

The conditions under which any one understands me, and necessarily understands me--I know them only too well. Even to endure my seriousness, my passion, he must carry intellectual integrity to the verge of hardness. He must be accustomed to living on mountain tops--and to looking upon the wretched gabble of politics and nationalism as beneath him. He must have become indifferent; he must never ask of the truth whether it brings profit to him or a fatality to him... He must have an inclination, born of strength, for questions that no one has the courage for; the courage for the forbidden; predestination for the labyrinth. The experience of seven solitudes. New ears for new music. New eyes for what is most distant. A new conscience for truths that have hitherto remained unheard. And the will to economize in the grand manner--to hold together his strength, his enthusiasm...Reverence for self; love of self; absolute freedom of self.....

Very well, then! of that sort only are my readers, my true readers, my readers foreordained: of what account are the rest?--The rest are merely humanity.--One must make one's self superior to humanity, in power, in loftiness of soul,--in contempt.

FRIEDRICH W. NIETZSCHE.

YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAWWW!!

Hampton Inn San Jose

Well,

it's the 6th of December, and i'm in San Jose California to attend the wedding of a great old friend of mine, and I'm sitting in the lobby of the luxurious Hampton Inn, with a free glass of wine they just gave me (they rarely give you free anything at the expensive places), but down here in real world land gifts are more common, (which is as it should be considering that all the people staying at the expensive spots (if they can actually afford to stay there) probably shouldn't be getting anything for free.

Our government is on it's way to censoring the internet. Look into it. Call your senator. Get angry. Get mad. This fascistating country is on its way down, and it's a sad thing to see. Turn on CNN or FOX news and watch. They'll tell you we are the greatest country on earth, and make you feel like your filthy desire (trained into you by a corporate greedhead media, and a bunch of corporate marketers who own your mind) to consume more is a sure sign that we are living in the greatest country on earth, full of freedom, liberty, the American way. See you at Wal-mart headupyourasshole.

Other than that, the human condition is beautiful as always. There is joy, happiness, pain, and suffering, and more beauty and lots and lots and lots of love, just like there has always been. I'm going to the rehearsal dinner in a few minutes so I better go shower up.

blessings,

the goose wrangler.

Same Day I think... 2003

Paper is the only one that listens-
Because it doesn't think,
in sadness our tears can drip,
Drip,
and sink,
Then disappear,
and paper says not a word.
Lay ink atop the tear
or leave it alone and circle round it.
The paper has no opinion here.
Scribble sloppy sour severed lines,
or write eloquent symmetry.
Paper won't even notice.
Write ugliness, insult, or ridiculous flattery.
Paper's feelings won't be hurt.
Nor will foundationless compliments make paper an egomaniac.
The scribblers feelings are safe also,
On paper's neutral ground,
For paper will never criticize, laugh at,
or discredit,
our thoughtful or unthoughtful work.
But remember
Though paper is the ever-listening ear,
The only one who is always there,
Paper is a cold hard friend
Because paper doesn't care.

Sometime in 2003-maybe in my second class with Ward Churchill

You the boy from writing class?

"I am a boy from writing class."

The one that pisses everybody off.

"well I suppose that does make me the boy from writing class.
The one that pisses everybody off."

This blatant stamp I seem to put everywhere-

This stamp of my pissoffedness-

This reality-

This misplaced anger and instigation.

Everyone I meet,

I place in the position of debate partner.

You may agree with me, but i'll argue with you anyway.

8/14/02

The classroom
Darkness slipping blind into empty seats
Attempting to open molded minds
Softness
Sweet biscuits
Tearful sad children
Sadly stumbling over television sets

Snowing again and a 4 year old poem

Well the snow is finally falling, and it's falling hard on us down here at Red Butte Drive in little old Aspen Colorado.

I'm going outside to hang a big yellow St. Moritz flag that my housemate Mr. Danny the powder Panda just gifted me. It's gonna hang proud down here by the river.

Here is a little something I wrote back on 4/7/03:

The cold spring air freezes the heat
Alone
The smoke inhales us
Licking our lungs in darkness
Orange lenses blending the wood floor
Sharp lines crystallizing the confused mind
The tunnel
Dreaming resolution through destruction
Insanity
Flames lap at the fragile crest of goodness
Ethanol
The gastrointestinal infernal solitude
The branches are cold
They're shivering
Flowers
Mist is holding an hourglass sideways
Stillness
We're already dead

Aug 1, 2002

HO BA Haroo
The time keeper is in the shoe
It lives scattered on the crunchy asphalt
Surrounded by tar pebbles
Hello to the picture books
The crisp mangoes
HO HO
South of the border organics
My word
The mouth sounds are bloated
Meaningless
Inside the house of grandmother
Leather couches and horses,
Dark, shiny hardwood floors
There are no shoes in here,
No labels
No scattered bills or trash bags
Or worthless knick knacks
This is a museum
I'll steal the pictures
There are no lines here,
These pages are empty
No structure
Can't you see?
YOU
YOU PEOPLE
There is no meaning anymore
No purpose
Don't you see?
This is a dehydrated world
No amount of bleach, detergents, or disinfectants
Can clean up this mess
Or wash away the misery
This world is a museum
Do not treat this world like a museum
This world is our grandparents house
This world is an empty shoe box
And we're walking all over it with the shoes we tore from it,
We're devouring this place
Eating deeper and deeper into its soul
Listen
We've caramel coated this apple
But it's rotting away from the inside out
Just like the shoes we wear
Take off your shoes
And stick your face in them
And smell the sickness

Sometime in 2001

Empty contemplation of happiness
Grateful drips of gravy run down soggy biscuits and sudden sadness
Running down the sidewalk
Smoked Christmas turkey and spider man pajamas
Lost in thoughts of overpopulation
Curing abortathons
Mixing suicide martinis
Time tracking digressions in servitude
Watching a dream of knowledge sink into the dry river bed of truth
Dreamy ripples ever present are here
Absent as I watch flocks thicken and see the shepherds purses bulge
As their lost sheep multiply.
And all the while the spider men fight over jobs that their children will steal
And my smile withers as I look at my reflection
Just another sheep stares back
A bulge in his pants
And a dream of a blue eyed son and a dark haired love
With a Mediterranean smile
And a magic child in her womb
Warm my blood with the blanket of my own humanity

7/7/05

London was bombed today
Just me and an ipod
Ready to make a move
Taliban
Ready to say goodbye
to the fear of an intifada
Time to move on
To fearlessly board a plane
In this world
Which has always been crazy
Chaotic
And totally fine
In all its inherent DANGER
The future just IS
Death
Not something to be afraid of
To shackle us from the present
Which is just as fine as everything else
Actually it's better
Even with its idiots
Like Bush
And his terrorist enemies
All of them in the shackles of the future
Blind to the fine of life
Blowing each other
and sometimes us,
UP
And finding the future endlessly
Way too far ahead of time
So real time is today
for moving on
Into the fine time
Time to plan for the present
Which means finding a tomorrow
Free of the fears of the idiots
And their terrorist enemies
Free of the FUTURE
Which we need not be ignorant of
Nor shackled to
But rather free today
Three days after independence day

11/22/2004

On the field
Kicker for the football team
The John Wayne of the high school crew
Batters the pigskin with his skinny leg
FUMP
The light foot sweeps the brown pineapple off the turf
And bounds it into the air
And the earth takes suffocating breaths
With the suffocating people
All battling to breath
Off the football field
But John Wayne just breathes
Free on the football field
On a mission to kick a ball
Free to breath in the moment
He doesn't even have to know
That the breath of the moment is effortless
Because for John Wayne
It just is

some shorts written 11/15/2004

French Horizon

Dark Mint Castles
Crack gray purple in the dusk light
The French horizon


This casual breath
Filtered serious with the dark scrambling of the mind
Endlessly rushing for answers
And questioning

God Forgive the USA

We have a lot on our plate as Americans these days. Things faintly seem like they are on the edge of something very bad happening. The scariest thing is that we have no leadership. It seems like everyone in Washington is in handcuffs, totally incapable of offering any hope or change in a sad state of affairs around the world. I know a lot of citizens who are concerned and long for some hope of change, but I fear that things are not in our control. I can't think of one presidential candidate on either side who gives me much hope. Why does it seem like we are continually offered Bad and Worse as our options for our elected officials in Washington?

Our government is failing us because it is not our government. It is the government of corporations, organized religion, and of itself. They are the ones electing our leaders, and it is no wonder we, the people, are being led into a giant mess, the likes of which human beings on earth have never seen. It is our corporate media, special interest groups, and a nasty little group of Washington insiders who choose our candidates. And every year it seems American voters have less variety of choice, fewer rights, and less power. The citizens and members of the American community are not in charge, but we are being governed. We are being led. We are being taught, and we are learning. We are learning to be selfish, self-centered, lonely, and totally competitive with the members of our communities, and the other human beings on earth. Is it any wonder we are terrible husbands, wives, parents, children, and relatives, and, most miserably, members of the human tribe of which we are a part?

We have a dangerous criminal government. They have nuclear weapons! Do you really think there is such a thing as "nuking them?" If we nuke them, we are nuking ourselves. No matter how far away they live, across the globe in China or Iran, we are still dropping a nuclear bomb on ourselves. We all live in the same atmosphere. We breath the same air, and whatever we do to "them" we also do to ourselves. Even when we drop smaller, non-nuclear bombs on Baghdad, we are breathing that crap in at some point. How can we all be so dumb? Do we really believe that cancer rates all over the world started going up after our nuclear bombing of Japan just because we've been smoking cigarettes and drinking too much, and eating too much food? That's what our lying government has been telling us so we don't hold them accountable for the truth, which is that it is their idiotic, and criminal manipulation of our mother earth and our atmosphere that is killing us in these disgusting, and unnatural ways. Do you think the cigarettes are killing us? We breath in more smoke from smog and pollution and all sorts of nastiness straight from the chemical factories, coal burning power plants, carbon burning motors, giant cow pastures, corporate farming developments, and shipping fleets, (which transport crap products from as far away as possible so we can consume them and overpack the pockets of corporations and their paid off madmen employees and owners) than we do from smoking cigarettes. They are killing the future for coming generations, our offspring. We are letting them.

Will somebody please take the power away from these madmen in Washington? We need to bring back Federalism. States rights should be paramount. We should turn the White House into a museum of the atrocious behavior of America, from the genocide we committed on a Native People on sacred land in order to gain the right to rape it, to slavery, to the criminal military campaigns of the past few hundred years, to the present nightmare greedhead show that is being perpetrated all over the world by the "freemarket" and it's Washington supporters.

Wake up people, the free-market is enslaving the human race. Do we want a free market, or a free people? Land of the free, home of the brave, has become land of the free market and home of the greedy consumer. We need to start going to AA meetings, all of us. Americans Anonymous. My name's Andrew and I'm an American. I'm humiliated, disgusted, and ready for a change. We are addicted to raping our mother around here. It is sick and twisted, selfish, and horrific. One oil well, city, building, farm, space-station, and highway after another we are threatening the whole natural order which is a result of hundreds of thousands of years of evolution. We are being trained by brainless leaders we created out of ignorance. Our leaders are not people, they are institutions. They don't care for our well-being, they care for our overpopulation, loneliness, misery, and fear. We are better consumers under such conditions.

As a people we need to learn to want what we have, and stop letting these psychotic institutions from continually training us to want what we don't have. As citizens we need to tear down this criminal government, and bring back democracy. This land is my land, this land is your land, this land is made for you and I. This land is not made for them to consume and destroy.

Manifest This

The future of the earth is the tribe of mankind. We will unite under the teachings of all our teachers to become the angels of the earth that we were born to be. We will all know each other as brothers and sisters here on earth. A tribe called the Human Race (instead of the rat race it has become). WETAHA-IWACHUPA

We are here brothers and sisters, fathers and mothers, and all of us children. We are here. We are all in this together. What more could we want than to be taken care of by our tribe, cared for, supported, and taught how to be enlightened, how to find our calling in life? We have spent thousands of years running from the "savage way" and trying to be "civilized," but this civilization is the most savage thing of all.

Our work is to expand our consciousnesses to become free. The language of the future is a language made of many different languages, and we certainly won't call it english, si vous plais.

Tuthakasa-the language of Mindhead, the language of soul, the internet of the universe. We will start to live in the dance of infinite energetic existence, connected as we are to all matter. Greetings, Blessings, help, and energy is waiting for us in the consciousness field that we have all been taught to disconnect from. We just need to learn how to plug back in, and then, after lots of suffering, famine, and war, as the light begins to dispel darkness, and all the ignorance of thousands of years of being taught, and living in, the lie that we are separate from God, begins to be consumed in the fire of our connectedness, we will rebuild the garden of eden here on our mother the earth, while our father the sun gives her the energy she needs to take care of us, so we can take care of her and tend this beautiful Garden Earth. Our Home.

Blessings and joy. We are all the same, ever created, ever destroyed. There is nothing to fear but the delusions we have been living and creating, locked into by our own creations and thoughts. Let us set ourselves free. The time is at hand.

Maybe around the year 2000

Drunk hats on high school heads
Running around the stage.
Let me go
let me go
scream the cool cat kids
as they paint disappearing ink on the scribbled page
leave us alone to rock on polluted rivers
we're tired of these cocksucker sermons
old uncle sam delivers

Good Day

Well it's Wednesday, the day before thanksgiving, and it finally snowed a bit. It seems the fire we burned this past Sunday is beginning to deliver it's payload. Mother nature is on our side. Even when she tornados, hurricanes, or droughts us to death.

Aspen is beautiful all times of year, and even though we don't have much snow, we still have this valley to be thankful for.

I missed a post yesterday, and life is a series of ups and downs, which could never exist without each other. Now it's the day after thanksgiving, and I still haven't posted anything. But here I am. Waiting for you.

The stress of getting YJS operations up and running is quite severe, but I seem to be on an inspired mission to offer recycled clothing and ideas to the people. Why not start with a store in Aspen, where the greedheads are trying to steal this valley from real people, as they have been stealing all the best of everything from us for thousands of years?

These people think they are entitled to more than their share. There is no room for mansions in this valley. They should all be bought up by the city, subdivided, totally greened, and turned into employee housing. Cheap to rent or purchase. The rents around here need to go down, so that not everything for sale is unaffordable to the people who work here. People shouldn't be allowed to be rich enough to afford a home that could house 10 families in addition to their own. You people are welcome to come visit us, but stay in our hotels, spend your money, and then go home, don't leave your disgusting, energy sucking mansions behind to remind us how much we miss you when you're gone. We need a town ban on exclusivity and the cult of holier than thou. We have the potential for a real community here. Aspen is our home, this community of people is our tribe. These mountains are our holy land. It is time for us to put a stop to people tearing up this land with a criminal negligence right out of the Bible. I think it might have something to do with this outdated, false idea that we were created by God. But hold on a minute, we were actually created by our upbringing, the culture we are raised in, the people around us, our parents, our friends and teachers. Does anyone ever wonder why we have all been entitling ourselves to this terribly idiotic behavior?

It's because we have been trained to do so. It is time for us to do something different. That's all. Itistime!!!

two poems from GWB's first term. 2000, or 2001

1.

A most inappropriate museum exhibit
Was a painting of a blue speed limit sign
Standing beside a grass highway

2.

Shellfish carpet baggers sing empty ocean songs while I scuba dive,
Sometimes I must come up for air.
And the Wind whispers in my ear
That life is here
and their is clarity
and I don't want this picture to disappear.
All the ingredients make my soup so confused,
but I know that as they boil together
it will start to taste good.
And maybe I can stop trying to write the menu,
Accepting that hypnotized tribal berries
are there for a reason

May 2001

And I walked through the windowed turquise cup into the fizzing supplemental libation
Watching bubbles of sparkly scoliosis eating spinal columns
Rotten ribs decaying open wound cake widdled knife wise
All bark carved away leaving shiny smooth beginnings

Stones hurdled from cliff heads
Pounding bounces of rock crumbles down dribbling ocean banks
Foreheads broken sweaty soft blood clots
Whisky pore stink from pocket flask

Open sores asking for remedy sloping concrete
Earth moving and earth dreaming of some curing ointment
To wipe away the highways and sidewalks and Hoover dams and state,
Bank, trade, skyscraping, or postmodern, brick, or Victorian buildings

Just something to make all the pain disappear
Bubbles of mumbling mother earth crying for a stop to the mutilation and manipulation
What is all that oil doing down there under the skin
Beneath the skeletal crust of earth

The sort of question she would like us to ask ourselves
But we can’t ask that question
We can’t ask those questions because we might find out that all those minerals and oils
And fuels we suck rip and dig out of the earth

They might have some greater purpose
Like maybe nourishing and lubricating this great big living rock on which we reside
Well fuck that
I need that fuel and oil to keep my 4 Runner running

I need the vehicle to get around
You might say it expands my destructive capabilities
By broadening my domain
Pull, pull, pull some more of those “resources” out

Supply and demand
I might be talking through a microphone
It might amplify my voice
This is necessary

I can ting ting a ling it
It’s metallic
Maybe there’s a metal stand to
It might ting ting a ling a loo

And a chord probably runs down
Twisty around
Twisty rubber cover
Over the metal wire

Inside maybe copper
Running into some machine
Could be metal
We could ting ting a ling it

Bring some metal object down upon the metal machine
With the knobby’s, levers, and dials
We could break it all down with some metal instruments
Ting ting a ling
ting ting ting

Pound on wood
A dead tree
Bop wood
Now the metal instrument on the metal machine

Ting ting ting
Tree bop a lee
Soon to be leeching out of earth
Something to ting ting play with

What’s on the earth is not enough
Ting
Dig it out
Digging deep and playing with metals ting ting

Bring the sword of progression down on the mother
Ting ting
Suck the milk till it’s gone
Strong lip hold on the tit dry of milk

Sucking on
Ting ting
Can’t hear mothers screams cause the jackhammers are too loud
Ting

And we have stereo’s that ting ting a ling from the inside out
And we’re sucking mothers insides out

So I have to step out of the bubbly beverage
Eat a sandwich and ting ting a ling

DUMB

John A. Thain, mr. new chief exec at Merrill Lynch is going to be paid 50 million dollars a year at minimum when he starts his new job this year. He could make as much as $120 million this coming year if he reaches all his benchmarks . Can anyone say dumb? Dumb, dumb, dumb. Getting paid 50 million dollars in one year is just dumb. The guy is already worth $700 odd million. And that's just dumb. There is no need for one man to have so much money when so many people have so little. Sure the richest man in the world is worth close to 70 billion dollars at present, so I guess John Thain is relatively poor, maybe he has goals, and with his new salary he will be well on his way to getting a leg up on those in the tiny sliver of of the global pie chart who are presently richer than him. He'll get ahead in the dumbest race on earth: the richest people race; which is really just a competition for the most selfish person award.

These huge masses of wealth are doing no good when they are just tucked into people's financial portfolios. They are just invested back into big corporations generally, and sure they expand and grow, but the money is not being used for the good of humanity. Who needs that much money people? None of us, because we are all just human beings with the same basic needs and desires, and it would take more than 10 extravagant lifetimes to spend all the money this Thain already has. He's making millions a year already, from the appreciation of his already huge wealth, and it's just stupid. And a lot of these ridiculous rich folks are getting richer writing books telling us how to get so stupidly rich, but the big secret is that these people are kinda detached from reality, and we should not be striving to be rich like them, because it's just plain dumb. We don't need to be rich like that, and having more money than one could possibly know what to do with, or even possibly figure out how to spend, is just selfish and dumb. These people are functioning on a very low frequency, and we should reject it. Look at The Donald. Has anyone ever noticed how dumb that guy is? Being smart is not a requirement for attaining these stupid amounts of wealth, but selfishness, greed, and an irrational sense of self-entitlement seem to be prerequisites. Oh let's just say it people. You have to be dumb to want that much money. And America is in the business of making us all really dumb.

5 HAIKU's

6/12/04
palm tree cloud flower
inverted beneath the sun
bursting from the waves

Japan's Narita Airport
I love this sterile place
purple leather seats

8/17/03
yellow sunflower
walking alone naked down
a dusty highway

slow naked walking
watching yellow sunflowers
dance down the highway

Tired Alarm Clock
Drown You Motherfucker Drown
Toes Growing Longer

To Tokyo. 2/23/1999

Old dirty bastards flow with the beat of their jam
Decrepit yellow men smoke infinitely in the morning breeze
Fresh floral Hawaii with hints of tobacco disgusting mess
Louie Armstrong
oh big black player of the trumpet harpoon
You were my grandfather
Louisiana dusk
Mississippi steam ships coughing along
Tight white T-shirts
On and on
Slave
Wompom
Sing the sacred wind
Striped walking
Striped clapping
Striped red swing
Bright orange balls
Unripe mangoes and Aloha shirts
Yes.
Cookies
As the young lean into the swingness in the jet fuel mess

Fat Boy Belly—March 2003

Outside on Concrete
Looking up at blue sky and green trees
A few winter flowers grow meekly in space
Between concrete and development
It seems like spring
Or maybe it is always warm spring or summer heat
Out here in southern California
Reminders that it is a very OK thing
To be alone
Art is everywhere and fat boy belly
Is hanging loose over unsuspended shorts
Soft fluffy jiggling fat over swim trunks.
America
The plentiful land
Ripe with fast food:
Burritos, greasy burgers and twice fried French fries
No shortage of food here.
All you can eat Buffets
Get your money’s worth
Then go spend some money on a diet plan or diet pills
But if you’re eating diet pills
How you gonna get yo money’s worth
At the all you can eat buffet?

New Idea

As I have trouble writing something new everyday, and have just embarked on the lazy man's journal with a tape recorder, I've decided to start posting something new every day from one of my previously written journals. I've been writing in these the past 9 years. Mostly varied blatherings, poetry, and self-critical personal analysis. I'll probably stick to mostly the poetry and bigger thoughts. None of this has been previously published. I'll be making some editions as I go. Tallyhoe. I'll still be posting rants on current events, it will just be interspersed with older thought thoughts.

Always Surpassing our Expectations

OK. This is amazing. Good old George W., our old time country boy president, the proof that Yale is overrated and will graduate anyone, our fantastic man, our super fun dude, well he's just used his 6th veto to crush a measure which would have funded education, job-training, and health programs. How bout that? He sure loves our Country. The Pentagon will get 60 billion dollars more than it got last year, and we've got a surge of soldiers over there in Iraq, seems that our government cares more about them, than they do about us. But aren't we the ones who are paying them? Don't we pay our government to take care of us and to look out for our best interests?

Maybe i'm crazy. But what the hell are we doing in the Middle East? There is a great deal of oil in the Middle East, and those Arabs are making all the damn money on all that oil, and maybe we'd like a piece, but shouldn't we be investing those hundreds of billions of dollars, which we are spending over there, on eliminating our carbon addiction at home so we no longer need to spend fortunes on grubbing around on other peoples ground.

We use most of that oil, along with China now, and India coming, and those who are learning our little secret about how you can make a remarkable amount of money and get a whole lot of power by simply selling out your offspring and their offspring, and raping the land, exterminating other species, types of food, and eliminating 10's of thousands of years of what sustained our survival on earth. We are spreading this radical way of life. We are really busy teaching the world how great our system is, and we're teaching them to use just as much oil as us, and to be just as trapped as us in the addiction to consumption, an expanding economy and an expanding population to support them. There is no way out but to get off the high horse; but we've made getting up on top of the horse the whole goal of the individual social consciousness. And we just keep spreading the free market American dream around the world with a model of never-ending growth, expansion, and development. We also want to spread our hard-core consumer lifestyle to the Middle East.

Paraphrasing General Tommy Franks a few years back, the war in the Middle East is about our moral obligation to bring them KFC and apple pie. But even while we are one human species, basically all of us the same, we do tend to have very different habits and lifestyles depending on which culture we happen to be born in, once the sperm of a man combines with the egg of a woman, and a little being develops in a marvelous combination of genetics from the mother, the father, and their ancestors, and that little fellow grows and grows and then gets raised into a culture which mostly preordains many of his beliefs, superstitions, and how many wives he will get to have. And "them" might not like apple pie and KFC, and a sexualized, greedy, super fit or super fat westerner lifestyle, that includes getting constantly bombarded with various degrees of rampant advertising and brand messaging all in the name of making us want more. They might prefer to get their hand cut off if they steal.

But here in America, where we make our government ultra-rich with consumer ways that make us fat and give us cancer, our government doesn't even give us health care, yet they pay hundreds of billions of dollars to fight foreign wars, and they don't put that money into helping us get off our carbon burning addiction, and they are asking for 300 million dollars this year to find a way to have warheads in outerspace that can be remotely fired at any time to strike any target, anywhere in the world, within 2 hours. We are not prepared to take care of the soon to be huge numbers of retiring baby boomers who are on their way down the mortuary highway, and yet we have trillions of debt. Are we going to go into more debt to pay for more social programs, instead of using we the people's money for our own benefit the way it is supposed to be used?

President Bush's most recent veto is a scary scary thing. The compassionate conservative AKA savage tyrant. I've never seen a president so proud to blatantly disregard the well-being of the majority of his countries' population and the environment on which it exists. He is flagrantly and consciously, in front of us all (with his little greedhead smirk), taking a big dump on the future of our entire species.

Here' A Smart Move

Intelligence deputy to America: Rethink privacy

[From CNN.com]

WASHINGTON (AP) -- As Congress debates new rules for government eavesdropping, a top intelligence official says it is time that people in the United States change their definition of privacy.

Donald Kerr, principal deputy director of national intelligence, wants Americans to redefine privacy.

Privacy no longer can mean anonymity, says Donald Kerr, the principal deputy director of national intelligence. Instead, it should mean that government and businesses properly safeguard people's private communications and financial information.

Kerr's comments come as Congress is taking a second look at the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

Now here is a great idea. Let's let this totally dysfunctional government, which is the only first world country which does not offer its citizens universal health care, which has led us into trillions of dollars of debt to China, which has taken us into a criminal war in Iraq, which has, and is further developing a nuclear weapons program and accumulating weapons of mass destruction, let's give this government the responsibility to "safeguard" our private information, our discourse, our financial matters, our whole electronically recorded lives. Great idea. Just brilliant.

Led by Blindness

Late flight out of Cleveland
A crooked spine and angry mind
Some tall man with a wig gave me
A New Hampshire quarter
"Old Man of the Mountain"
"Live Free or Die"
On the other side of the coin it says:
"In God We Trust."
I placed the coin on an alter
Live free or die side up
And Prayed for freedom

I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with the fates and actions of human beings.
-- Albert Einstein, following his wife's advice in responding to Rabbi Herbert Goldstein of the International Synagogue in New York, who had sent Einstein a cablegram bluntly demanding "Do you believe in God?"

Fat City Carbon Reduction Plan

Some people drive more than a 100 miles round trip every day into our little valley up here, to keep the big houses popping up on the hill, to keep our bellies full, to keep the service industry alive here in this place where working people can barely afford to live. They drive that round trip not in remarkable carbon free space ships, but in cars and trucks that spew exhaust every moment their engines are alive, like when they sit idling in traffic every morning on their way in and every evening on their way out in our “cough, cough” congestion, so I find it entertaining that a dumb little canary just flew in this morning and told me that Snowmass has made it illegal to smoke cigarettes in public.

I myself am not a huge fan of cigarettes, although I do char my lungs with them every so often when my guard is down and a craving for death hits me. But as we pollute the planet with reckless abandon, filling the atmosphere every day with more nasty crap, turning up the temperature on ourselves and the other species here on this little planet we all float around on, we seem absolutely incapable of any form of reason or sanity. We keep doing as The Lord commanded, living longer and longer, and “prospering” more and more, pumping out little kiddies with ever increasing efficiency while taking more and more space away from other life on earth, and while we are finally acknowledging that maybe we aren’t being any too careful with our precious life support system called nature, we seem totally incapable of putting one and one together and realizing that our obsession with long life and prosperous consumption is just a touch troublesome in light of the damage we are doing to life on earth. We cannot spread “freedom” (read capitalist free market growth and economic development) around the world without also increasing carbon emissions and savage land rape. This is unavoidable at present because “economic development” and the first world lifestyle, of ever increasing life expectancies and consumption, has been built upon a foundation of fossil fuel dependence and selfish individual hoarding of money and materials.

So while our valley’s present sustainability is based on a problematic dependence on workers having to travel long carbon burning distances so that our town can run (since actually holding a job in this Disneyland is too much to ask people who buy 40 million dollar mansions the size of middle schools and are busy catching their next private jet flight out to visit their plastic surgeon and refill their Viagra prescription). And now it’s against the law to smoke cigarettes in Snowmass? Give me a break people. This is just too much. Let’s put two and two together por favor.

The best thing we can do for the earth and for our future generations on the planet is to cut our carbon emissions. What is the fastest way to cut your carbon emissions? Die. So why is it then, young Einsteins, that we are making illegal the very habits that are most likely to reduce our emissions the fastest? Maybe we should start encouraging people to smoke, especially if they want to anyway, and maybe we should thank the smokers for the second hand smoke, which might help curb our ridiculously long and savagely destructive lives just a bit.

Maybe we should start encouraging risky behavior, and make life for us just a little bit more dangerous and give some of the other species on earth a touch more of a shot. In fact, if we want to get people off the roads in this valley, as our City Council is so busy trying to do with ever increasing parking costs, which actually make people want to keep driving since it’s less expensive than being parked, maybe we should start encouraging drunk driving. A whole fleet of crazy drunk maniacs crowding our roadways would probably be effective at keeping at least sane people on the sidewalks and safely out of their cars. And while we are discussing sensible policy changes, I think we should start subdividing some of those middle schools on Red Mountain while their owners are out of town. When they return, we can simply offer them a nice 1500 foot apartment in their former 20,000 square foot mansion, and we can offer them jobs as bus drivers in our newly outfitted, drunk-driver proofed, busses. Ah, how I love Fat City; Snowmass, you can take your law and shove it!

Retardo world

Some employee of the Department of Homeland Security dresses up like a Rastafarian prisoner at a Halloween party and is put on leave because of it? Lame. What on earth are we doing here? Chertoff said: "The idea that you are going to come and impersonate someone of another ethnic group, I think, is completely unacceptable." Oh my God! Somebody dressed up like somebody else! Oh no!

America the Beautiful

The hangman’s noose seems to be making a comeback here in America. From Jena Louisiana, all the way to a professors’ door at Columbia University two days ago, this symbol of racism in the United States has been popping up in a string of copycat like occurrences recently. It’s another reminder of the lingering racism in our country. The noose put outside the black female professors door yesterday brings up both the racism and sexism that are still so prevalent in our patriarchal land.

While we dreamily pretend that Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama could win a presidential election in our fine country here, our sick culture is busy sending us reminders that we have our heads firmly stuck in the ground. There is so much work to be done to repair our social fabric, yet we wander around blindly hiding behind a shield of political correctness which keeps us uncomfortable saying anything “sensitive” while the truth is that we still live in a country where sexism and racism run rampant.

And now we are stuck in a situation where the two Democratic frontrunners are a black man and a woman, and nobody is coming out and asking how on earth a woman or a person of color is going to win a presidential election in a country where nooses show up on female professors’ doors at one of our most prestigious University’s?

Here in Aspen, we are busy building a little exclusive town, squeezing out skinny pockets with parking rates of 11 dollars per 4 hours of parking that don’t make a damn difference to rich people, but are a huge penalty on people who only make twelve dollars an hour and have to pay eleven dollars for a hamburger at the end of the day if they want to eat in the same town that they work; and then they have to spend five dollars per beer. We are squeezing the life and personality out of our town by shutting down affordable bars and restaurants and replacing them with little bastions of exclusivity, membership only clubs and expensive restaurants and bars with bouncers to make sure you look like you can fit the bill and sport the vibe of ignorant wealth and the cult of holier than thou. This is about class just as much as the nooses are about racism and all the sexual harassment and other misogynistic behavior are about sexism. It goes all the way from way up here at the top of the pyramid in Aspen, down to the very heartland of America, where sexism and racism run even more rampant than in the educated class, and it all adds up to an America with its head firmly stuck in the sand, still acting out of its old ignorances, and busily denying that “yes, this is really happening.”

Down in the river, the fall leaves are dancing in the water. Crows are circling overhead trying to warn us about greedhead developers and the implosion of the society of the self-obsessed. Looking around at a big human family at war with itself, the creatures of the sky watch their habitat disappear. The crows hop around on our rooftops. I can hear their claws whispering and clattering on the shingles.

2008- and The Great American Ostrich

I’m not sure what conservative means anymore. I look around this nation, out to Washington, at our national debt, at our lending habits, at our spending habits, and I can’t help but wonder how it can be that “conservatives” have been in charge? We haven’t conserved much in a long, long, time.

It might be nice to have a “liberal” in the White House for a change. It might be nice to maybe have the chance, just potentially, to get someone in a leadership position who might try to lead us somewhere other than further into this mess of unsustainable consumption, waste, assumed entitlement and unjustified self-importance. Not that we should expect that much from the big blue party of our government though. Blue and Red, we seem to be just one nation under a free-market God.

When the wellness of the citizenry is put behind the well being of the economy, it is a symptom of a broken system. What did Bush say the other day about the global warming problem? "We must lead the world to produce fewer greenhouse gas emissions, and we must do it in a way that does not undermine economic growth or prevent nations from delivering greater prosperity for their people." The problem is, we are not going to be able to cut greenhouse gas emissions without undermining economic growth, and the more “prosperity” we deliver, the hotter things are going to get. So Bush was basically saying, “we must do something, but we must not do anything.” Economic growth wins, but at the end of the day, human beings lose.

Does having a whole country of dissatisfied, unfulfilled, over-fed individuals, in a prison of consumption driven ideology, constantly bombarded with the message “you want more, you need more,” make having the most powerful economy in the world worthwhile? I don’t think so. I think the free-market may be failing us. The systems we create should be our slaves, not our masters. When their negative consequences become greater than their positive ones, it may be time for us to stand up and do something. We have to face the fact that it might be time for us to take the freedom from the market before it eats us alive.

To understand how the market is no longer serving us, we can look at any number of things, but we can begin with the 2008 Presidential race and the role the media is playing in the election of our next President. The modern media is just one example of a free-market phenomenon. Corporations own dominant mainstream media, chief distribution outlet of the American social consciousness. Corporations have certain rights and privileges, like human beings. We gave them these rights, and depending on who sits in the White House and who is in charge in Washington, corporations can gain or lose. Their rights are dependent on those who give them. If we can determine that these corporate institutions stand to gain or lose depending on who gets elected then we can also assume they will act to bring about the outcome that will most benefit them.

Over the years, the conservative party has been a faithful partner for these corporate interests, defending and protecting the power of corporations to grow and prosper. I think we can safely say that over the last few decades, having a Republican in the White House has been to the greatest benefit of most corporations, and has also kept the pockets of the ultra-wealthy at their most protected.

Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are the “frontrunners” for the Democratic nomination in the 2008 presidential election. It is almost as if we have been told this since before anyone started taking polls. It seems like the media simply picked these two, and have been telling us over and over again that they are the two most likely candidates for the Democratic nomination. They are the front runners. They are the ones to beat. Like good students, memorizing and regurgitating information as we’ve been taught to do, we give this information right back to the media in polls, which are then used to reinforce what they have been telling us. I remember long before any campaigning was going on, right after Obama’s famous keynote speech at the 2004 Democratic convention, he began gracing the covers of some of our mainstream magazines like Newsweek. He was already a chosen front-runner. They have been talking about a possible Hillary ticket since 2002.

The United States of America, 2007: we are bogged down in a criminal war in Iraq that we were dragged into by neo-conservatives and a mainstream media which were cheerleading us along because war keeps people tuned in to the news; we are pumping out greenhouse gasses, at higher rates each day, even while we talk about needing to fix the problem. The 2008 Presidential race is there for the Democratic taking. So how is it that the two democratic “front-runners” we’ve been given, are logical long-shots to win in 2008?

Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are great news stories, but they are not great candidates. I wish we lived in a Country where we could honestly say that a black man or a woman would have a fair chance in a Presidential election against a white man, but unfortunately, we don’t.

Senator Clinton recently said to General Petraeus, in response to his report to Congress on the situation in Iraq, "I think that the reports that you provide to us really require a willing suspension of disbelief." I think that the same words would be appropriate for our mainstream media, in response to their political reporting.

Obama or Clinton would have no problem winning in 2008 if our only voters came from college towns, educated enclaves, and large coastal cities like New York City, Los Angeles and San Francisco. But America is much bigger than that, and unfortunately our abysmal education system, surprise, surprise, serves the corporate interest by offering millions of red votes, easily coerced to the voting booths by their little communities, influenced by preachers and people like Bill O’Reilly. This population, in between sea and shining sea, has always been there to win elections for the GOP, and candidates like Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are the one’s who really get these good old Americans out to the polls. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are winners for the Republican, not the Democratic Party. And Democrats, by buying into this misinformation, and ignorantly, wishfully, believing that a polarizing woman, or an inexperienced black man, have a good shot at the White House in this America, are unconsciously living up to the reputation of our mascot, the donkey, or jackass.

In these remarkable political circumstances, at a time when a good democratic candidate would be an odds favorite to win in 2008, we are given two candidates, a young black man, and a woman who is, in the words of Time Magazine’s Ana Marie Cox, “…the most polarizing figure on the current political landscape." So is a willing suspension of disbelief necessary to see either of these individuals being a sensible candidate for a Democratic party who wants to win in 2008?

The wool is again uncomfortably pulled over our eyes. Where are the sociologists on CNN or FOX, telling us about the pervasive sexism and racism which still roam across our land? Have we forgotten that right now, in this new millennium, there is a powerful element in this Country still trying to take away a womans’ right to decide what to do with her body? Have we forgotten that our judicial system still punishes minorities more harshly than their white skinned brothers and sisters? Go down to one of the southern states sometime, find some white folks who talk funny, and hang out with them for a day. See how many racist or sexist jokes you hear. I promise, that “N” word is still in common usage outside of the black, hip-hop gangster community. The white folks who use that word can vote, and they are usually the ones who get their votes counted. There are a whole lot of Americans out there, right now, who would laugh if you asked them to vote for what in their mind is just another n!@@$r or b!&$h. Is that a sad thing about our country? Yes. But are we going to remedy it by pretending it’s not true?

Are we going to just sit around and let ourselves be manipulated by the mainstream media, who chooses our frontrunners because they are most likely to keep our wool-covered eyes glued to our televisions, keeping us in the depths of dream-land until November 2008, when another Republican wins because we were fooled?

This is still America. It still says “One Nation Under God” on our currency. That God is still a white, male, patriarchal God, a free-market God. When people ask that God who to vote for, between a white man, or a black man, or a woman, how will that God answer? Are we ready for another Republican President? Are we ready for more years of defending the economy at the expense of the future of the human race? Get ready people, our institutions have more power than our people, and they have the most to gain from a Republican win in 2008. Is it any wonder that things are shaping up in their favor? Now I can't say how systemic the roots of this problem are. It may be that it is as simple as the bottom line and dollar signs for the media, a race between any Republican and Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama is going to be good for ratings. Having the first woman or black man as the Democratic nominee will certainly keep the attention of the populace, thereby increasing revenue for the media companies. Smart Republicans will rejoice if Clinton or Obama gets the nomination. How the leading Democratic strategists can be so blind, or dumb, or both, I cannot imagine. Were they raised in test-tubes, totally isolated from American reality?

Obama and Clinton might look good now, but wait till they get the nomination. Remember what they did to John Kerry? Remember how our media was able to turn a decorated Vietnam War Veteran, experienced, calm, cool, collected, experienced Senator, into a flip-flopping, anti-patriot? Think about what we are going to be bombarded with when it comes to Hillary or Barack getting the nomination.

If Hillary gets the nomination, it will look something like a return to the late 90's, Travel-Gate, all the same Clinton scandals, the cheating, Hillary will be turned into a weak woman for not leaving her philandering husband, setting a bad example for both American men and women, she will be vilified as a danger to the foundations of our country, a threat to the pure, good, Christian values of our land. They will characterize her as a power-hungry bitch, it will spread from FOX news to CNN, and she will be finished, and no doubt they will find a Republican candidate who will be her perfect opposite, a hero, a pure American man, it could be anyone from Fred to Rudy, but standing next to Hillary, he will be the obvious choice to protect American values and keep America secure.

If Obama wins the nomination, the smear campaign will begin. Sure, he's married, and talks good Christian talk, but he will vilified for being too inexperienced, too unrealistic, they'll pull out all the stops and portray him as being too dangerous for our country. They will use his admissions of serious drug use (cocaine, marijuana, etc.) against him, they will tell us how he still smokes cigarettes, and while he might have a better chance than Hillary, it will still be an uphill battle in the hinterlands, and non of us will be immune from the inevitable spin.

End Times

While Tom Cruise builds his bunker in Telluride to protect himself and his family from the Alien Armageddon, we are busy here at home manifesting an End Times destiny of our own. That old saying about saying something enough times and it finally coming true gives me the shivers. Western social consciousness, rooted in the Biblical idea that God is coming, one of these days, has been a convenient basis for our misbehavior. If things are going to end when good old God comes down to judge us, who really cares if we fill the atmosphere with pollution, who cares if we heat the damn planet up to uncomfortable temperatures and make it look like a hell of concrete strip-mall, fast-food wastelands, unsuitable for life. Who cares? We have heaven up there somewhere to look forward to, don’t we? If we turn our earth into a burning inferno of hell, we can at least say to ourselves, “well, see, we told you so, the end times are here.” It is just that it will have been us playing God, ending life as we know it, not God.

We are busy turning it into reality, and is it any wonder that free-market ideology, which is all about growth and expanding consumers, imitates religion in the way it trains humans to serve its purposes? A few hundred years ago we were traveling around the world, trying to spread our faith to the heathens (while conveniently taking their resources, land, and destroying their way of life, and enslaving them), and now we are doing the same thing around the world with our “free-market.” We are trying to spread “freedom” (the freedom to be a good consumer) all over the world. We call this thriving. It is no longer OK to survive, sustaining a way of life while living in harmony with nature. Freedom is defined as an open market, where we are free to consume, and consume, and consume. No matter the bigger picture that it is not sustainable. Big business does not care, just like religion never cared.

If big business and organized religion had a vision for our future, their dream would be for us consumers to cover the earth. These institutions care nothing for our species, they care nothing for our happiness, they are dependent on our continued over-population to expand their consumer base, so that they grow. Corporations have to grow just like religions have to grow, or they whither. So some day down the road, when there is nothing but corporate farmland, housing, stores, or restaurants covering the earth, when all the wild species are extinct, and the sky is red with pollution, when there is no walk in nature option to distract us from our consumption, we will have ourselves to thank for making the lies we’ve told ourselves for thousands of years finally come true.