What just happened...II

For those who follow the minutia of our personal monetary situation... This is Tuesday, July 26. Still no word on whether or not there will be money coming to pay our past due rent. I am about 90% certain that there will not. The reason is that the landlady is one of those paranoid types who refuse to give their SS#, which is one of the things required on the form that she was supposed to fill out in order for the Community Action For Improvement (CAFI) office to put in the request to whomever they request it from. If that doesn't come through, we are left to manage to slowly catch up the past due amount. We've done that before. We were once more than $1000 behind on the rent and we caught that up. The difference between now and then was that I was trucking and later Melinda had her job at the Wild Animal Park. Now there is nothing but the disability check. There was some hope last Monday when Melinda applied at a truck stop restaurant as a cook. She was told that her app would be on top of the pile and, since the kitchen boss there also rents from our landlady and she had put in a good word for Melinda, there seemed good reason for hope she would be hired. Now, more than a week later with no word at all, I am severely doubting that will happen. Call me a pessimist, most do.

Of course I could be wrong on either or both of these accounts, and I certainly hope I am...I'm just not a "person of faith", except in the sense that, if anything can go wrong, it will. This, based on over half a century of experience. Direct TV has not yet stopped the service, but will as of the 8th unless we pay about $150. Of course that ain't gonna happen, so we will be out of that. Oh sure, no one could possibly drop dead from being without TV. Many people CHOOSE to be without any TV at all. That's not the point. The point is that it is one more cut in the "death by a thousand (or far fewer) cuts" that comes with being poor, at least for those who have a need for TV. I am considering talking with AT&T about possibly getting a "bundle" which would include Direct TV, at a cheaper price than the current AT&T bill plus Direct. We dropped the burial insurance so now, if one of us dies, it will be up to any family, if they are able and so choose, to deal with our "disposal" or up to the county. Doesn't matter to me. Dead people not only don't tell any tales, they also don't have any problems.

August will be the last full payment on the computer, and after that, only a small amount remains and we will have more toward other bills. The computer is another example of how the poor get screwed. We got it through Rent-a-Center. Yes, by the time we finish paying on it, we will have paid somewhere between 2 and 4 times what the actual cost of it should be. That is a cost of being poor. If you are poor your only choices in such a situation are to either pay far more than a rich person would pay for the same thing, or simply not have one at all. There are many examples of the poor having to pay much more than the rich or simply be denied.

Of course there are many millions of Americans, not to mention other people in the world, who have far greater financial and other problems than ours. The typical reaction to such a thing is, "Oh well, it could be worse." Indeed, it could. Why do so few people though, voice the obvious alternate that, "It damn well could be a lot better too." Why do so few people seem reluctant or unable to voice their own sense of justice and fairness about such things?

There is a bit in the CAFI thing above which says something about helping people to become "self-sufficient". I find this hugely insulting, not to mention just plain stupid. "Self-sufficient" is in the same category with "self-made man"...utter bullshit. Everyone knows this, but few will acknowledge it...why? If you use electricity that you did not produce, if you drive a car that you did not build, if you live in a building that you did not build, if you wear clothes that you did not make, if you eat food that you did not kill or grow, don't even give me this "self-sufficient" horse shit. It is a flat lie. Many people seem to actually believe that if they work at some job and are paid money and they then use that money for their needs, that they have somehow "done it on their own". Amazing. If no one agreed to give you any money for your work, where would you be? A job is not a thing one simply goes out and gets, as though it were a pebble alongside a road. Someone somewhere must agree to pay you some amount of money in exchange for your work. Naturally, being a severely inferior person, by virtue of being poor, your pay for spending an hour of your time will be nowhere near the "pay" for a hedge fund manager who spends an hour playing squash, or even for doing his "work" which helps no one at all but himself and the small rich group he is in.

As anyone who has read many of my blogs knows, I am one of those people who most certainly want to live forever, or at least very close to it. A truly intelligent and caring species would recognize that the final defeat of the last disease - death - would be, could be, the zenith of human accomplishment; that it's not even that difficult, now that we have the ability to print out or grow all manner of human replacement organs; that a "waiting list" for people who need transplants, and that based on the death of others, is hideously primitive and unjust. And yet, the thought of living a very long time in such a social system as that which we have here makes even me, grateful to know that death, the infinitely patient friend, awaits me; promises the only genuine freedom there is from the insanity.

There is no hope of "educating" significant numbers of our kind to be able to live in a world of plenty and fairness for all. You could never teach your dog even simple mathematics. A dog's brain, no matter how smart relative to other dogs, simply has no capacity for understanding such things. In principle, IF we knew enough about brains in general, we very well might be able to increase a canine's cognitive capacity to the point of understanding maths. No reason why not that I know of, other than our current ignorance of understanding how. Likewise, although many people across the world do have some understanding of justice and fairness and a world of plenty for all, their numbers are miniscule compared to the rest. And most of "the rest" have no more capacity to understand such things than a dog has to understand mathematics. Human animals still carry a great deal of their evolutionary baggage, some of which evolved long before there was even such a thing as a mammal, much less a human. Such are not actually "mindsets" at all, but far more primitive... instincts; the same instincts that work just fine for constructing the various hierarchies of existence of most other species. We are the only species, so far, with the possibility of surpassing our "instincts". But in order to do this, we must become, in a very fundamental sense, something other than the current definition of "human".

In order to do THAT, we must first, have a complete understanding of the genetic programming, the capacities of human brains, how they do what they do and how to operate them with intent. We are just beginning to have some understanding of that and I'm sure it will take a long time to arrive at a real understanding. I have no doubt at all that, aside from the possibility of total extinction, the human species must and will, at some point branch into at least two different species. One will be considerably "smarter" than the other, and the other will have little chance of survival unless the smart ones, for whatever reasons, see to their survival. Unfortunately, "smart" does not automatically coincide with fair and just and compassionate. In fact some, as some do now, will consider such traits as anathema to their own survival...hence the very rich.

TRB

What just happened...

So, here's what just happened. All the money was gone or 'spoken for'. We put the last $2 into the gas tank and got a whopping half gallon of gas (I remember when you could fill a big tank for that) in order to get over to the discount store. We had a little left on the EBT card and were out of bread. We got bread and some OJ and a couple of cheap dented cans of veggies and some marked down (almost to a reasonable price) cubed steak in which the green had not progressed very far. We have been completely without any tobacco of any kind for about 3 days now. I don't like it and it ain't easy, but for Melinda it's more than that. Her addiction is stronger, both physiologically and psychologically than mine. She had already gone the 3 days or so, using up the last shreds of the roll-your-own pack someone gave us. She was in pain, to the point of tears. We have about 9 days yet to go before more money shows up...IF the Republicans (infuriatingly enough enough, with Obama's consent) somehow don't manage to cut all disability, Social Security, etc. There was just over $11 left in the bank, 'spoken for' by Netflix. I could not sit here and see my wife, whom I love very much, in tears from the pain, and experiencing nightmares. I went to a store and got some cigarettes.

This means, of course, that when Netflix puts in for their payment it will trigger an 'insufficient funds' at the bank. In turn, the bank will then put an 'insufficient funds charge' on my account of about $30. The net effect is that, when the next check comes, I will have to pay the regular Netflix bill of $10.69 (assuming they have not yet kicked in their new rate of $16), plus the bank charge...in effect we will have paid $30 for 3 packs of cigs. There are those who may think I am not smart enough to understand that this is illogical. Indeed, it is most illogical...BUT it is only one of many illogical things in the scenario and, there are more things to consider than JUST logic. Some of the other things involved...or, at least, that SHOULD be involved in this whole scenario, are kindness and compassion and empathy.

Some will say, just get rid of the Netflix, it is not a necessity, just turn off the Internet, it is not a necessity, just stop with the tobacco, no one has to have tobacco, ad nauseum. It is very easy for some people to declare what is or is not a necessity, especially for other people. Interestingly, how often do you hear anyone say, of the very rich, just stop with the investing, no one has to invest, just stop with the multi-million dollar houses, no one needs more than a simple compact home? I do tend to say that sometimes, but usually get screamed at, as though I had suggested rich people do without oxygen. Of course some people couldn't care less about having a computer and Internet access...that's perfectly fine for them. For other people such things are as vital to their well-being as heart medication.

Our little situation here is one of millions of microcosm examples of different mindsets. It's difficult for me to write about such things because I have to continually jump back and forth between what is and what should be; what would be a reasonable, kind, compassionate and caring world in which all people have the basics of what they need in life, and the actual world we have which is mostly one of overly simplistic and primitive ideas like, "if he don't work, he don't eat". Again, strangely, the logic of this primitive ideology seems to not apply at all to the very rich. "He has $100 million dollars. He doesn't work at anything at all a day in his life, yet he has an enormous continuing income simply because of the fact that he has $100 million dollars." But no one says, "Why should he sit on all that money and still have so much...why should he not only eat but eat very well, when HE doesn't work at anything"? It is a mindset in which people are judged to be inherently superior people by virtue of having large amounts of money...conversely those who have little or nothing are judged to be inherently inferior people.

Everyone knows the scenario... a disheveled-looking guy dressed in dirty and torn clothes walks into a "high-end" (even the language is biased) store and someone immediately comes over to hustle him out. Chances are that no one will ask him anything at all; no one will say "May I help you"? - probably no one will be respectful toward him; the main thing will be to get him out of there as soon as possible to avoid embarrassment to the workers and customers in there. If it is then revealed that this same individual is in fact a very wealthy man, a multi-millionaire; that his appearance was only a prank or joke of some kind, he is then welcomed with open arms, workers compete with each other to see who can better serve his needs and impress him. Why? Is he not exactly the same man as before? Sadly, the answer is no. In a sane, kind, compassionate and caring world, he would indeed be precisely the same man as before. But we do not live in such a world. In our world, it is almost a universal truth that "rich" = "good" and "poor" = "bad".

This is not new. This mindset has been around at lest since biblical times, and surely far longer. Even the Bible says you will always have the poor with you. That is hardly surprising within a monetary system which cannot exist at all without a relative few rich and masses of poor. I found an interesting article in the Daily Kos by a person known only as 'cmhmd' with the title The Poor You Will Always Have With You. I'm in general agreement with the article, though I differ with the interpretation of that statement. From the article:

"Jesus is being lavished with expensive oils, and a member of the group sanctimoniously points out that these oils could have been sold to the benefit of the poor. Jesus notes that we will always have the poor to take care of, long after he is gone. Jesus is actuallyreferencing the book of Deuteronomy, "There will always be poor people in the land. Therefore I command you to be openhanded toward your fellow Israelites who are poor and needy in your land."

That is cmhmd's interpretation of the line "The Poor You Will Always Have With You". My interpretation is that, sensibly enough, someone pointed out, that lavishing expensive oils on the feet of Jesus was basically a waste and could have been better used to help the poor...in much the same way as some people today point out that all the billions of dollars wasted on humongous expensive buildings and rites, and rituals, could be better used to help the poor... The Jesus character, perhaps tasting the corruption of wealth, basically dismisses the poor with the airy comment that, "Oh, there will always be poor people" and goes right on enjoying his oily footsies. Sounds downright Koch-ish to me; or maybe a precursor to the Queen of Mean, Leona Helmsley's infamous quote, "We don't pay taxes. Only the little people pay taxes"..

There would at least be a kind of internal logic in the mindset that the rich are inherently superior to the poor, if it were only the rich who tout such a notion. Amazingly though, a huge percentage of the poor fall right in line with this bizarre thinking. Now THAT'S propaganda that works! At least a lot of it is. Sadly, a lot of it is also left over evolutionary baggage from our past which might have had merit long ago, but now is only a hindrance to the species. I'll be Bach (in some lifetime).

TRB

Scarcity and Time

I never understood the idea that the less of a thing there is the more valuable it is. I would be interested to know if there is a name for my particular brain disorder. It seems common wisdom that the correct equation is ^s=^v. "Increased scarcity equals increased value". You hear it all the time, if there is a holdup in oil production and thus a slight drop in the amount of it available, the price rises sharply. You hear it in the every days lives of people, "life is so precious because it is so short." I enjoy shrimp. If there were only 7 shrimp left on earth I would not enjoy them any more than if the earth were drowning in them. One reason I find it very difficult to get all enthused about doing a lot of things is because life is so short. A human life time is a barely detectable flicker. Assure me I can reasonably expect to live 10 thousand years, and I could get interested in doing stuff; then I have time to do stuff. I'm 53, I've just barely started really learning important stuff. I need another century just to get reasonably well educated.

Look at this video. There are 8,000 year old mummies there in Chile. Get this, some of them still have their own teeth and even some hair...after 8 THOUSAND years! I have 6 teeth left and not a lot more hairs. WTF!? I'm sure his mommy made him brush after every meal and brush his hair 100 strokes every night before bed and I never did that so it's naturally all my fault.

Mummies in Chile.

In either the third or fourth installment of Michio Kaku's series on BBC called TIME, there is a piece about large salt crystals that were found in a cave in Arizona, I think it was. Inside some of those crystals were little drops of water. Inside the water were bacteria that were living. Not bacteria fossils, not dead bacteria that were once alive, but living moving animals that have been in that particlar drop of water for about 200 MILLION years! Watch the whole series here, it's only 4 hours. Ah, ya got plenty of time.

TRB

On The Verge

When George W. Bush was President, there was a while there when I very seriously wondered whether he would step down when his final term was up. Maybe it had to do with that remark he made, "....just as long as I'm the dictator". Maybe it had to do with the first time in my memory, a man being installed as US President who did not win an election or get there through any legitimate means. (Gerald Ford was never elected either but got there through normal means in an unusual situation.) There was some relief when I did not see tanks in the streets as Obama prepared to take office.

I either did not know yet, or had forgotten, that who sits in the Oval Office has no more bearing on the nation's policies than who will replace Katie as anchor at CBS. Democrat or Republican have been the only "choices" allowed since Millard Fillmore in 1850. Not even if you have your own billions to spend on a campaign can you be elected if you are not Dem or Pub. The Agenda rolls along, unfazed, either way. I don't know whether Obama was part of the plan from the start or whether he was just naive. Perhaps he didn't know either until he was actually elected and then given his orders.

In any case he now seems fully on board with the Agenda. He finds reasons why he has not closed Gitmo. Finds reasons why he cannot fully and unequivocally support the LGBT community. Finds reasons why he must (at least claim to) spend time with the Big Daddy in the Sky - on his Blackberry, even. Now he says he cannot guarantee that the eighty plus million checks that the government is supposed to send out next month for SS, disability, etc., will be sent. There might not be enough "money in the coffers". Imagine tens of millions of Americans having ZERO money for food, rent, etc. If this happens do you really think it will be very long before there ARE tanks in the streets here (never fear, there is always abundant "money in the coffers" for that kind of thing).

How long until some of the poor start to push back? How long until some of "our service men and women" who are "keeping America safe" from horribly threatening military powers like Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Yemen, Libya, etc., are also called to "maintain order" in American streets? Can't have starving people raise a ruckus, now can we? Why, that would be unseemly. Just die quietly and all will be well. It's going in in small scales now. In Florida you can be arrested for feeding homeless people.

Much of the state of Minnesota is officially shut down. The latest "official" national unemployment rate just went up to 9.2%. Of course, most of us know the REAL unemployment rate is far higher than that, some saying it is well over 20%. Luckily, many of our corporations are stepping up and saying the unemployed need not apply. Wait...what?

The "debt ceiling" is now being hailed as the huge CRISES in Washington. There may well be a crises for many millions of Americans if this "ceiling" is not raised. Raising it is not a big deal. Not raising it could result in civil war. The debt ceiling has been raised over 70 times since JFK. Republicans raised it SEVEN TIMES just while Dubya was president. They actually might not this time because they, in particular, seem hell bent on driving our country literally into the ground. Read more at Mother Jones.

If you are on a "fixed" income, or Food Stamps or Welfare or any such program, that rumbling noise you hear may be your stomach growling...for now. When it gets very loud it may be tracks on pavement. That rhythmic sound you hear may be your heartbeat...for now. When it gets much louder, it may be the sound of thousands of boots marching in unison. Perhaps it is nearing a time when all Americans will be reminded, again, that without the Second Amendment, the First, indeed all the others, are meaningless puffs of air.

STOP! Children, what's that sound....Everybody look what's going down.

TRB

Tick

It all started with a tick. He bit me on the arm back around the2nd or 3rd. Well, you know what they say, "Lie down with ticks, and you get up with dogs...er sumpin'". That's happened several times, no biggie. THIS time he launched a stealth suicide attack. HE didn't last two minutes after he bit me, got flushed. Turned out that he was basically a personnel carrier, and unloaded bunches of other critters into me. They immediately launched a blitzkrieg attack, starting with the formation of a base of operations at the landing site. Turned that into a red mountain with a strange black hole in the middle that I could play Yellowstone Geyser with when I poured hydrogen peroxide into it. No doubt a diversionary tactic.

I wasn't all that worried about it because I was already on bactrim, an antibiotic doc had given me at last visit for a UTI. But after a couple days seeing the minions had decided that was a cool food source, I suspected harsher measures were needed. They were marching in red rows up my arm through the lymph nodes and across my chest. I started to think maybe the main mission was to get to me defibrillator and knock that out, thus taking me down and making me easier to eat.

Went back to doc. He said, "they are drug resistant", I said no kiddin', where do ya keep the Apache attack helicopters of meds? We laid off the bactrim in favor of amoxycillin. I don't know if they knew it or not, but I ain't exactly alone here. Their initial surprise attack set my guys back a bit but, as the general, I supplied my own minions with a whole new weapon. That set off full scale war. That, in turn, led me to discover surprising new territory I never knew I had cuz it never hurt before. Fever and chill and chills and fever. It's 300 freakin' degrees in here!, an hour later how the hell did I get to Antarctica? If I still had teeth they would have chattered.

Meanwhile, back at headquarters... I'm also in a whole different war none of the minions know anything about. Gone begging at some places which supposedly offer rent assistance. Spent a lot of time walking on sidewalks in town. Turns out, most don't. "No funding" is the standard reply. Understandable. Finally got to one place where, we had an appointment at 1pm. Sign on door said, be back at 1:30pm. We sat under an awning in 95 degree heat heat for over an hour. No one came to the door till well after 2pm. Woman there finally gives us form to take to the landlord and an appointment for the 18th. This, AFTER she harangues and belittles and ridicules for half an hour about WHY we need help with rent; ringing on her calculator on how if we didn't have Internet and a computer payment we have rent money. I almost didn't make it, almost walked out. We'll see if it results in any actual money.

Whole body broke out in red pimples, looks almost like measles. The sore from the bite has changed little. May end up going to surgeon to get the sucker cut out like coring an orange. Have only been hit and run a little on FB, can't focus attention very long. Haven't blogged at all. I hope to do it again soon, if I can ever get healed up from whatever this is and get the impotent hurt and rage tamped down some. I had a 40 ouncer a couple days ago. First beer I've had in years. I used to be a good boy. Not so much when I'm angry and hurting.

TRB

Pledge of Allegiance

The basic facts of the Pledge of Allegiance are short and direct. You can find them here, or at wikipedia. Written by a socialist. HA!

My first problem with it is that it's a pledge of allegiance to a piece of cloth. WTF!!? I can see someone pledging allegiance to the country, it does at least make some sense, but what kind of maroon would pledge allegiance to a bit of cloth!?

Bellamy, being socialist and all, seems to have stuck his ideals of "liberty and justice for all" in there. Cool ideals, but ideals and $5 will get you a cup of coffee. There was no "liberty and justice for all" when the country was founded in 1776, and not much had changed over a hundred years later when Bellamy wrote this. "Liberty and justice", to the extent they existed at all, was for rich white men. If you were not a rich land owner, pfft! If you were not white, you didn't mean spit, unless you tried to get uppity. If you were a woman, you were breeding stock, nothing more.

Bellamy, even being Baptist, didn't stick his God into it. That only happened when most of the American government, and its people, were scared spitless of something they knew not the first thing about; "communism". And the greatest terror of THAT was because people thought "godless" and Communist were the same thing and both were vile. Now, more than 100 years after Bellamy, some rather trivial "progress" has been made, though the "rich landowner" bit is roaring back with a vengeance.

You won't ever get me to "pledge allegiance" to any piece of cloth, even the Rebel flag, which I like. Fuck a flag, all flags. My country does not want my allegiance either except as a silent, mindless cog in the Big Machine. You want me to have some respect, some allegiance, some enthusiastic support for my "republic"? Start implementing that "liberty and justice for all" bit. Let's not have all these millions of Americans homeless and hungry. Even the used up bits of cannon fodder soldiers that gave so much of their lives fighting people they didn't know to make very rich people they will never know, just so much richer.

Respect and support are things that must be earned. Fuck JFK and his "ask not what your country can do for you." That's what it's friggin' THERE for, to meet the needs of its citizens. Remember this:?

"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

I guess you could say this Preamble has been a rousing success, when you remember that the "ourselves and our Posterity" meant rich white men. How many women were at these various meetings and conventions? How many Mexicans? How many Indians? How many black people? Whatever happened to "general Welfare"? Just words, various puffs of vibrating air, lost amid the universal animal lust for power. How could it ever be different as long as we remain animals?

In1830, there were 12,866,020 people in these United States, according to that year's census. Source. We only had about 22 or 23 states then. If you add another 1.5 million or so to the population number above, you get the number of unemployed Americans in 2009. Source. That was a jump of nearly 60% over 2008.

Yeah, here's MY Pledge of Allegiance...

I pledge allegiance to the void, from which I sprang; whose infinite black nothingness holds the closest thing to freedom that humans will ever know...er, not know.

Maybe we should all move to Europe...at least they have more interesting tunnels.

Y'all have a Glorious Fourth!

TRB