27.9.05

There are few

words, phrases, or expressions that suit my mood at approx. 7:15 AM this day. This is when I saw Charlie Gibson sail a courteous greeting at Bill O'Rielly, welcoming him to Good Morning America.

Here's the phrase:
What the FUCK?

Ow. Oowoww. Ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow.
This happened just after they introduced Robin Roberts live from some disaster zone, wearing a t-shirt that said "GMA - Getting It Done." When a news organisation has to try out new action-oriented slogans while covering a token rebuilding effort in the middle of the worst natural devistation in a hundred years, you know you're in trouble.

Or you're in the Twilight Zone! Doo dee doo doo, doo dee doo doo! That's how What the FUCK?-ed up it was.

25.9.05

I just told

Lindsay B. to follow the dream that I abandoned. She seems to have something I don't, a belief in the basic goodness of Humans, which should make her far better equipped to write in a way that people will pay attention to.

It follows that I do not have a belief in the basic goodness of Humans. This has been said before, and is the primary source of my tendency to be an asshole, which I have just realised creates a very serious feedback loop of Negative Vibes. It is easy to feel superior or inferior to people when you believe that a person can be either. It is hard, in the course of a day, not to believe it honestly. I watch people throw trash out their car window and I think, "I have a superior understanding of the consequences of littering. They are ignorant." I hear people talk about how awesome their drug and alcohol use makes them feel, and I think, "I have a superior understanding of the effects these have on the human body and spirit. They are self-destructive."

I watch parents shopping with their fat children, buying them candy and junk food and yelling at them to quit running around, and I think, "These people have no idea the damage they wreak upon their heirs. They will cripple the civilisation that sustains them. But I know better."

All of which is despicably self-congratulatory, and yet, feels right. I suppose that's just as scary as listening to some crazy Revelationist describe the lake of fire that we'll all be cast in to, for they are no less certain of themselves. This is my weakness.

19.9.05

Could it be true?

Am I really watching a fat woman outside this cafe hand out pamphlets by Jews for Jesus? What kind of spiritual/racial/personal clusterfuck is going on there?

At least we're heading for the End Times. Not in the silly teleport-the-nice-ones-to-Heaven kind, but the social upheaval that will likely result from the extraordinary cost of natural gas heating this winter. Combined with a real gas / refinery shortage and the orgy of debt spending that will surely come with the Shopping Season, these factors will start causing real problems for an awful lot of folks in the near future. I had a long talk with mum the other day about what I really believe will happen, and why I'm not doing more about it - educating people, writing, working for environmental groups and so forth.

It comes down to the fact that there's damn-all we can do at this point. The disease - growth-dependent capitalism and mass consumerism - has spread too far. The cancer is now in virtually every system. The body feeds its growth. To kill it is to kill the host.

Us.

So yeah, researching old ABM missile systems for history class isn't exactly the foremost thing on my mind right now.

6.9.05

Ah well.

I assured me mum that when the Navy finally arrives at New Orleans in force, some serious relief can get underway. The small boat capacity alone, together with all that helo space parked right next to the worst of the flooded areas, would make a huge difference. That is, if FEMA were interested in utilising them. Or if they felt like allowing people to leave the city. Is any of this real? How fucked up in the head do you have to be?

Something tells me that Bush could have waited a week before nominating a ghost like Roberts for Chief Justice of the Supreme Fucking Court, which raises the question of Why Now. Abysmal poll numbers and clearly videotaped incompetence during the nation's largest modern disaster relief effort, together with the blatant efforts at spinning massive death and utter destruction point to a lame effort to divert some smidgen of attention from his failings. I shouldn't even be able to consider this about anyone, it's wholly inhuman, but with these jokers...

1.9.05

Yes. The Devistation

is indeed nearly complete. It now appears certain that a number of "actionable items" were in the works to repair critical weaknesses in the levies and pumps that kept the water out of the New Orleans bowl. Funded in large part by government monies, these plans were cast aside as the more critical War On Terr'r sucked funds away from all sources. The Treasury, which once boasted of a tremendous budget surplus, has been wiped out, so that all our national savings, the product of past productivity, are gone. There is no room in the current budget - indeed, there could be said to be negative room, as the deficit en masse continues to grow. And all future plans, especially planned programs like Medicaid and Social Security, are endangered by this Terr'r. Is it scary, or merely strange, that we are siphoning funds from the entire American space-time continuum, past, present, and future? It no longer seems real.

I, like a not-insignificant portion of My Fellow Americans, have been to The City That Was. My time was spent wandering the old street fronts during Mardi Gras, the peak time for partying and chicanery of all sorts. I have fond memories, what memories remain intact, and of course the human loss should be enough to sadden even those who have never ventured outside their home counties. In the end, that's all there is in the state of LA. Loss.