The Road South?

This might be the year I finally head to a warmer clime during Oregon's rainy months, as I've been threatening to do for years.

In the cards if things work out the way I suspect they will.  I've been in a protracted series of "debates" with my housing lords.   It's been a struggle.

I wouldn't mind cooking in a greasy spoon in the desert.  Saw a character doing that once in a movie.

Maybe the road south would offer a surprise, or at least relief from my current circumstances.

I've been in my present situation for over four years.  Not even sure if I'm healthy enough to hit the road, but if I go at the pace of Li Po, it might be doable.

I'll know more in a couple of weeks.  Will plug away here until then.

One thing that continuously crosses my mind is that a lot of poor folks have died here. I knew all of them.  None were old in terms of years, but their souls were long gone.

I can feel mine slipping away.  Not sure I want to die here.

There was a codger here for awhile, a feisty old guy who fought in both Korea and Vietnam. Dementia was setting in, and he had an "attitude."  Always exaggerated his recent fights, having just knocked some poor guy out.  Always in a tussle with someone, but you could tell it was in his head. All he was really doing was vegetating in his lonely room.

He was finally shipped out to a care home, bless him.  He never lost a fight that I know of, except perhaps for the inevitable one.


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17

You listen in on foreign leaders and politicians across the planet. You bring on board hundreds of thousands of crony corporate employees, creating the sinews of an intelligence-corporate complex of the first order.  You break into the “backdoors” of the data centers of major Internet outfits to collect user accounts.  You create new outfits within outfits, including an ever-expanding secret military and intelligence crew embedded inside the military itself (and not counted among those 17 agencies).  Your leaders lie to Congress and the American people without, as far as we can tell, a flicker of self-doubt.  Your acts are subject to secret courts, which only hear your versions of events and regularly rubberstamp them -- and whose judgments and substantial body of lawmaking are far too secret for Americans to know about.

Something to ponder from TE.


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Critic's Choice

Quite engrossing, I watched Pt. 1 of this last evening.  Recommended if you haven't seen it.


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Not in Our Name

Violence as a primary form of communication has become normalized. It is not politics by other means. It is politics. Democrats are as infected as Republicans. The war machine is impervious to election cycles. It bombs, kills, maims, tortures, terrorizes and destroys as if on autopilot. It dispenses with humans around the globe as if they were noisome insects. No one dares lift his or her voice to protest against a war policy that is visibly bankrupting the United States, has no hope of success and is going to end with new terrorist attacks on American soil. We have surrendered our political agency and our role as citizens to the masters of war.

Chris Hedges speaks!


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Faithfull

Great find by C. Lucas.


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End Game

How are you supposed to get it out of your system when shit like this happens?








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Game Report

Iowa State vs. Baylor better than Washington State vs. Utah.

WSU spent its wad on Oregon.  ISU is pretty good, but so is Utah.

ED:  Oh for god's sake.  I've seen better football at a futbol match!

I joke.  It's fun just watching the futility.

The dogs are both down by 2 TDs.  Not a bad night for a football watcher. I'm entertained at the moment because both of these games are still in doubt.

Later:  Nice comeback win by WSU.  I know they're better than people give them credit for.  They proved that against Oregon last weekend.


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Nader Eviscerates The Speaker

Dear Speaker Boehner,

While millions of hardworking Americans are working more and more for less and less, you and your House of Representatives seem to have no problem working less and less for more and more.


You've got to admire Nader for going right to the epicenter of our discontent.


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Uh, Oh

As a dyed-in-the-wool Duck I didn't need to see it--UCLA smashed Arizona State last night.

Now the team to beat for the title.  The Bruins are ascending, and we all know the Ducks are running on fumes and the arm and legs of Mariota.

Oregon has to play the Bruins in LA in a few weeks.  Be advised, it might be ugly, especially if the Ducks can't find an O-line after a rash of injuries.

Last night ASU threw a pick-six at the end of the first half when a field goal would have tied the game.  The big mo switched in a hurry.

CD is the biggest Bruin I know, and I'm sure he's elated with the outcome, along with his wife Harriet's progress since her recent heart attack.


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The Plan

Off to the dentist again today.

Supposed to be a nice weekend.  We'll see about that.

Did absolutely nothing yesterday except read, probably
dreading today too much to properly cope.

Dentists simultaneously appall and impress me.  Why would anyone choose to spend his/her entire working life probing around other peoples' mouths?

And yet we're glad they do.

One of those things I definitely cannot relate to, like organized religion.


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Are We There Yet?

The way I see it we ought to be jumping into the World Series right about...now!

Sorry, Major League Baseball.  You're about a month behind schedule and you've lost this old one-time follower.


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Hipster Dipsters

Will Self is fed up with hipsters, and who can blame him?

In defense of "dickheads" however, some trip-hop is better than certain other genres of pop.

I mean, give me Portishead over Celine Dion any old time.


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Dooley's "Destruction"

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What if...

But what if we rethink the narrative of progress? What if we believe that the inventions in and after the Industrial Revolution have made some things better and some things worse? What if we adopt a more critical and skeptical attitude toward the values we’ve inherited from the past? Moreover, what if we write environmental factors back in to the story of progress? Suddenly, things begin to seem less rosy. Indeed, in many ways, the ecological crisis of the present day has roots in the Industrial Revolution.

There isn't really much doubt in my mind that I'd rather be kicked in the head by a horse than run over by a tractor.

Rethinking the Industrial Revolution.


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Before the Beginning

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