Don't Thank A Veteran This Memorial Day

I might as well get this out of the way. I promised I wouldn't rant any more so I'll keep it toned down.

This Memorial Day, don't thank a veteran for his service. It's an inane and insincere thing to say. And it's all about you.

Instead, apologize. Apologize that he had to serve and you didn't. That would be honest and sincere.

I have a friend who took two in the leg for the 4th Infantry division near An Loc. It negatively affected the rest of his life. I had a brother-in-law who won the Distinguished Service Cross with the 173d Airborne near Saigon. His life became a downward spiral to an early death.

Your thanks for that kind of suffering are meaningless. Your apology might not be.

Enjoy your burgers.

"What is learned in combat is never forgotten." - Jonathan Shay, Achilles in Vietnam

Home To What?

Home from the asphalt seas. Six days and 600 miles. Mobi, 240,000 miles and all, ran like a Formula One car the whole way. You just need faith, and one of the few things I believe in is Mobi.

Didn't catch any fish to speak of, but I had a great time and great company. I'll call that a success.

The question now is now what. I am officially retired. No more wage-slavery.

The actuaries say I have 18 more years. What to do? I have some ideas, but what I need is a plan.

Hopefully, that will take shape soon.

Stay tuned.

This Will Be Hard

A good friend pointed out that my rants are futile and tedious. That's what friends are for. In his honor, I will try to refrain from ranting. I can't promise complete cessation, but I'll try.

Hiatus

I'm travelling from the 14th to the 19th so the blog will be still for awhile.

I'll be hitting the road in my 97 Saturn, Mobi. She only has 240,000 miles on her so it should be no problem.

Stay tuned.

Mike

Usury

Usury is the most foul and destructive act of lending money at interest. It was forbidden by all major religions (until they discovered it could make them rich). Mainly, it was considered heresy, the creation of something from nothing, which rightly only God could do.

Pound referred to it as: "usury, age old and age thick."

"Dante puts the usurers in the lowest sub-circle of the seventh circle of hell, with others whose sins are regarded as doing violence against nature and nature's God; many people have noted that usurers are placed deeper into hell than violent murderers, violent suicides, blasphemers, and sodomites. Dante regards usurers as perverting art, i.e., productive skill, by means of which we are supposed to produce and create and thereby imitate the goodness of God. Usury is the anti-art: it produces nothing substantial, being just a set of multiplication games with money, and therefore does not really contribute anything to 'earning one's way and furthering humankind'. It merely gives the illusion of doing so, and is therefore a sort of mockery of both human reason and divine providence -- indeed, a sort of universal violence against neighbor, God, and one's own reason, an extraordinarily efficient form of violence by which you do the most damage with the least effort.

The Violent in Dante's hell suffer violent punishments; the punishment of the usurers is to sit while futilely and wearily trying to ward off with their hands the violent, whipping winds that sometimes shower them with burning sand and sometimes cover them with flaming fire."

The Koran says:  One who takes interest, his belly shall be filled with an equal quantity of fire by Allah. If he has earned more from the interest money, Allah will not accept any of his deeds. And till even a grain of interest remains with him, Allah and his angels will continue to curse this man.

It wasn't the telemarketers that Jesus attacked in the Temple, it was the money changers (usurers).

Even the Jews, infamous usurers, though not by choice, initially forbade the practice.

And yet there is hardly an Amerikan who is not in the usurers' thrall (aren't you)? Paying interest is another form of slavery which Amerikans have embraced. There will be a reckoning for this greed. Invented money does not last forever. Ask any Weimar German.

A Few People I'd Like To Have Lunch With When I'm Dead

Dead people are no doubt bored, so I'm sure these folks would be happy for free food and conversation. Of course, this is just a partial list, subject to addition and deletion. Feel free to add your own in comments.

• Buddha, but a light lunch.
• Hitler, come on, who wouldn't.
• James Joyce, just to mock him.
• Hemingway, but just drinks.
• Reagan, to deliver some Depends.
• Bakunin, for mutual aid.
• William Butler, my ancestor who survived most of the Civil War battles.
• Audrey Hepburn, but a date, not lunch.
• Ingmar Bergman, just to cheer me up.
• Ervin Schrödinger, about that cat.
• Shakespeare, because I've always wanted to meet an extra-terrestrial.
• Ezra Pound, to tell him he was right about usury.
• God, to let him know how disappointed I am.
• Richard Nixon, so I could drive a stake through his heart.
• Julia Child, just to hear her voice.
• Lenin, because he was a self-starter.
• Mozart, because he would be fun. 
• Emma Goldman, to dance.

Come on, I'm sure you can add to the list. Don't be shy. 

Fucking New Phone

My ancient cellphone died. Had to replace it with a smart phone. Samsung Galaxy. No Choice.

Smart phone my ass. It has been nothing but a hassle since I got it.

Phones should make phone calls. I don't want the weather in Ukraine. I don't want people emailing me on my phone. Don't want to play games or listen to music. Sure as hell don't want to watch movies. What kind of moron watches movies on a phone?

Ned Ludd where are you? Call me.

43 Years

Forty-three years ago today I got drafted and became an unwilling soldier. I should have said no, but that just wasn't in a small town kid's vocabulary. As long as there are soldiers, willing and unwilling, there will be wars. Until - finally - young men find the courage to say no. I'm not holding my breath.

I Love The Flag...

Kent State

Forty-four years ago today the Amerikan Establishment decided to teach its youth that enough was enough. So they sent soldiers to murder unarmed students. Four died. No one was ever held accountable. The lesson was learned. Since then the screws have continued to tighten. Who remembers? Who cares?

Beware The PC Thought Police

The Donald Sterling affair is a travesty. An American citizen expressed private thoughts in what he thought was a private situation and has been pilloried for them.

This is not about what he said or your opinion of it. You can have whatever opinion you prefer, as long as it is PC.

But he can't even think "inappropriate" thoughts? Where does this end?

Is he a racist? I don't know. The tape shows that he doesn't want to hang out with black people. Is that racist? Is it a crime? We can't choose with whom we associate? What about black people who don't want to hang out with white people? Oh, that's OK because they aren't white. PC only works one way.

I don't want to hang out with stupid people. Shoot me.

What would you expect from a Donald Sterling anyway? He is a member of the "Greatest (read racist) Generation," he is obscenely rich, he dumped his wife of fifty years for a bimbo and (gasp!) he is white.

And how about the gold digging cunt? She broke federal law by secretly taping him. But she's not white so that's OK.

You should be allowed to think and say what you want, no matter how stupid or reprehensible it may be. If not, the First Amendment is nullified. This whole travesty is not about racism, but free speech. The PC police do not believe in free speech.

If you believe in freedom, this should frighten you.

If not, you are stupid, and as noted above, I don't want to hang out with you.

Wage Slavery

A wage slave is anyone who trades their time (life, soul, individuality, freedom) for wages or a salary. That would be at least 90% of working Amerikans. I have spent my life in this pernicious servitude. I'll bet you have too.

The rationale for this is that you have been brainwashed to believe that getting that money to buy stuff is essential to happiness. It isn't.

A wage slave submits to drug tests, background checks, credit checks, forced physicals, etc. He is told when he has to be where and for how long. He is told where or if he can smoke. He is told when he can eat or take a break. He punches time clocks. He is watched, monitored, evaluated, disciplined. He is owned. And then he is supposed to be thankful for having a job.

All this has been brought to you by the usurers and their consumer capitalist cronies.

Actually, chattel slavery was a far more honest institution. A black slave knew he was a slave. We don't. We have been propagandised into accepting this horror as normal or even good. That's why chattel slaves constantly revolted, but Amerikan wage slaves never will. We are too busy buying more stuff and paying the serpent usurers. And thinking how lucky we are for getting the crumbs that we get.

The 26th is my last day as a wage slave. After that, I will never take any work that involves wages or salary. Fuck the masters. I'll work under the table or as a 1099, but never again will I sell my time.

Like Scarlet O'Hara, I swear...

Cunt

Didn't see that coming, did you?

This is considered by most women as the ultimately vile word.

How to defuse this verbal bomb?

Simple: do what the Brits do, remove the gender aspect from it. In merry England cunt just means ass-hole, male or female, as in: "He's nothing but a bloody, fucking cunt." This could refer to a plumber.

As Lenny Bruce said, there are no dirty words, just dirty minds.

Anyone who disagrees with me is obviously a bloody, fucking cunt.

And you know who you are...

Wogs

Nigger, spic, greaser, wet-back, gook, kike, towel head, dot head, cracker, et all. So many nasty insulting appellations for those we disdain. What we need is an ecumenical insult.

I propose wog.

The British upper-class, one of the silliest, most useless groups in history, brilliantly came up with this word for anyone different from them. It meant blacks, indians (the ones they owned), orientals (no asians then), even Frenchmen. Great word. One Empire; One insult.

Let's bring it back and abandon all those specific insulting words. If we all use it for those we hate, it won't mean anything nor will it sting. Too general.

Rainbows will appear everywhere. Oh joy!

Political Correctness

I loathe political correctness. One wonderful freeing aspect of being out of teaching is being able to reject that vile, dishonest culture, to be able to call a spade a spade.

Political correctness has poisoned our language, thought and actions.

A few examples:

• Chairperson -Logically, a chair that can walk and talk. A word without balls.
• Person of color -  The PC way of saying "colored person," which without the preposition is somehow racist.
• Woman/Girl - Even females can't exactly define this distinction. From now on they are all females to me, or bitches, whichever is true.
• Challenged - Actually means crippled, feeble or stupid. Taken to absurd extremes. Fat people are weight challenged. Right.
• Feminist - a word so debased by feminists that they can't define it. See females and bitches above.
• Multi-cultural - What was wrong with "many cultures?"
• Diversity - A cover word to hide the fact that different races, cultures, religions etc. often hate and wish to exterminate each other, but we must never mention that, ever. Hence, diversity is a good thing.

I could go on endlessly. Lucky for you I'm tired and won't. But there will more to say on this later.