A Few Good Billions

Is anybody else bothered by the fact that we taxpayers spend untold millions, if not billions of dollars, for the armed forces to advertise? What made me think of this was the slick ad that appeared on the screen before the movie the other day. "Army Strong" is the current Madison Avenue theme to entice young people into the ranks, where they will be taught to say, grunt, shout "hooah" at all occasions--esprit, ya know--and not incidentally, of course, be fed as human fodder into the maw of whatever war whatever commander-in-chief, even a dangerously deluded one like Bush, wants to send them. These campaigns are devised by the most talented ad agencies money can buy. And why not? Money is never an object to the military. It gushes from an unending spigot since neither Congress nor the American people, not to mention a president, have the intelligence or courage to question the billions upon billions upon hundreds of billions this country spends on "defense," one of the best examples of Orwellian speech our government has devised. The American military hasn't defended anything since the end of World War II except the right of corporations to operate without hinderence anywhere on the globe they choose.

We're such a bunch of unreflecting morons! Spineless sheep! We citizens who have it within our power (still, but maybe not for long) to determine the course this country takes. But we've gotten so dumb, so uninformed, so addicted to the consumption drug, we bow to the Defense Department god and give it everything it wants, we internalize its adverstising slogans, and we break out the flags at any and all military adventures the US launches. Meanwhile the country is falling down around us.

It's difficult to find out exactly what military advertising costs us. I tried the standard Google searches but couldn't turn anything up. Why shouldn't this be an easy number to come by? I did discover this interesting tidbit reporting that the Air Force is spending our money simply on advertising for itself. Got that? Not for recruits, simply for PR, so we, through our elected agents of capitalism, will give them even more millions. Well, somebody might object to this, but don't go betting a court anywhere is going to find anything wrong with it. We already live in a military state.

[And then there's recruiting in high schools, ROTC, and other intrusions of the military into the fabric of our lives. But that's for another day.]

Walking the Dog: A Text Poem

This started out as more conventional verse, but this is how it turned out. I never question the Muse.

Walking the Dog

No sweeter words caress the ridiculously tall ears of my resident Boston terrier than, “Wanna go for little walk?” Instantly her buggy eyes brighten; she dashes to the leash-draped chair. Her tongue begins flitting out and in over and over, licking her chops, one supposes, in anticipation of numerous fecal and urinary deposits she’ll soon render, but also those of other dogs she will subject to intense visual and olfactory inspection. From all indications a ritual of the tribe Canine beyond the grasp of mere human understanding. At least that’s the theory I entertain, though perhaps what’s beckoning outside is simply fresh air or the myriad smells in the grass, on mail box posts, and the unrecognizable bits of assorted matter on the sidewalk. Walks never bore if you’re a dog.

But I’m bored a-plenty: the same suburban facades, SUVs in the drives, the same silly yard ornamentation, the same grass and garden expanses betokening our collective Babbitry. The same sense of impending decay. Only an I-pod in the ear stills such contemplations. That, and an occasional foray off our habitual walking routes. Like the time we ventured onto the dusty churned-up path construction vehicles cut through grasses and weeds behind the houses. Preoccupied, if not rapt, by the sounds in my ears, I failed to notice the dog lagging, limping on three legs, till the tug on the leash: a vicious looking thistle between the pads of a front foot. Gushing with guilt—“How long has she been hurting like this?”—I plucked out the torment, picked her up, and carried her home.

This is not something normally done with humans whose lives often bristle with thistles. Them we just let limp or lay in the dust of the road.

"Why So Serious?"

Went to the movie yesterday with my grandson--the latest Batman flick, The Dark Knight. It was fun, disturbing, thrilling, and Heath Ledger should get another Oscar for his portrayal of a really evil Joker. I wouldn't mind seeing this one again, it's that good. The top critics are almost unanimous in their praise. Dark. The darkest of the Batman movies. With a magnificent bad guy: The Joker. The Joker is a murderous psychotic, who enjoys killing and sows chaos wherever he goes, all the while behind a hideous clown face. And he's clever: he does have plans (despite his line to Batman at one point, "Do I look like a man with a plan?")--fiendish ones that always result in people dying. He brings out the worst in people. And he relishes it. Whereas Jack Nicholson's Joker of almost 20 years ago was actually amusing at times, it's only accidental when the present manifestation is. He's a killer.

But when the Joker is on the screen, he's mesmerizing. Here's what he says to one of his hapless victims, a Gotham City mobster who's had the temerity to oppose the Joker's takeover. He's got a knife inside the guy's mouth and he's saying . . .

Wanna know how I got these scars? My father was....a drinker. And a fiend. And one night he goes off crazier than usual. Mommy gets the kitchen knife to defend herself. He doesn't like that. Not. One. Bit. So, me watching, he takes the knife to her, laughing while he does it. Turns to me and he says "Why so serious?" Comes at me with the knife,"Why so serious?" He sticks the blade in my mouth. "Lets put a smile on that face!" And..... Why so serious?

You can guess what happens next.

Why so serious indeed. Because at bottom the movie is serious and far from a mindless escape flick. In a strange and unsettling way the mayhem and wholesale destruction and killing at the hands of a guy who has no rules reminded me of the reason I protest the same thing our country is doing. Not only overtly in our merciless disregard for the rights of others in foreign policy and our murderous invasion of Iraq, but covertly in our voracious, destructive consumption, which is as without compunction as any of the Joker's evil antics. No, ultimately The Dark Knight is about us.

Oh NO!

Why am I not surprised? Although as yet to be confirmed, the evidence is beginning to accumulate that former senator, former Democratic aspirant for the nomination, clearest voice for the gap between rich and poor and the need to address it . . . you know who I mean. John Edwards. The evidence is beginning to accumulate that he was having, is having, an affair with one Ms. Rielle Hunter, apparently a campaign aide of some sort, who has now given birth to his child. Not sure of every single detail because once I got the gist of the story, I read real fast, just so it would be over. Can you imagine the shit storm that's coming if this is true? I don't want to think about it. Just what the Democratic party needs right now.

The best possible spin on this is the video here.

I'm reserving judgment--this is, after all, something uncovered by The National Enquirer--but if this is true, John Edwards is a scumbag, and I don't care what his politics are.

Skipping through the Blogosphere

It's amazing what you can find out there in the blogosphere. Truth is I could get lost out there and, like going to the ballgame, never come back. There's just so much good stuff. Virtually any subject you're interested in, somebody's blogging. Baseball? Try Baseball Blogs for guidance. There's a lot of 'em. Chess? Bunch of those, too. Poetry? Scads.

Within the past couple of weeks, I've discovered that my first cousin down in Lafayette, L A has be blogging for years. He turned me on to yet another guy writing intelligently about Louisiana politics. And then just a couple of days ago I ran across another blog that caught my interest. It's called "A Father Talks to His Daughter about God: The Holy and Morality in a World of Idolatry slipping over the edge into End-Time." What a marvelous title!

It's the product of an obviously cultured man who likes (and writes) poetry and can't stand George Bush and the Republicans. He's also a fellow writer who likes all kinds of music. What's not to like about this guy? He turns out a professional looking blog, and he's been doing it for a long time. Check it out sometime.

Isn't This Interesting?

Interesting, indeed. And now we know why the GOP is always for drilling, extracting, mining, or gathering whatever it is that's helping kill the planet. It's for their own energy-bloated selves. (Of course, I'm not excusing the rest of us addicted consumers, just trying to add perspective.)

Sorry about the quality of this chart, but I think you'll be able to make it out. If not the graph lines top to bottom, blue to violet, are labeled: Republican states, US average, Democratic states, and California. The x axis is a timeline from 1960 to 2003; the y-axis is number of KWh per person in thousands. What it all means, the bottom line--well, in the graph, the top line--is that the people in the red states are energy hogs.

Let me post the source of this data before I forget:

Sources: [10426] Electricity Consumption per Person- Republican states; [10427] Electricity Consumption per Person- US average; [10428] Electricity Consumption per Person- Democratic states; [10429] Electricity Consumption per Person- California
All: California Energy Commission; The Economist, 1/27/07 - www.data360.org

I found this chart on a fascinating web site called "Data 360." You can go there and find out all kinds of interesting stuff like, for example, that U.S. voters would be much more likely to vote for a homosexual (55%) than an atheist (44%) for president. Odds have gotten considerably better for everybody including Catholics, Jews, blacks, and women over the years. But I would imagine that if you're a black lesbian who doesn't believe in God, you wouldn't have much of chance of becoming president for a few decades yet.

One Split Anti-War Dude

This piece in Common Dreams has got me to thinking. "Anti-war Activists Split over Obama's Troop Plans" say the headlines. Well, count me as one of those split anti-war dudes. It should be apparent to anyone who actually checks in here on occasion that I'm a dangerous radical on lots of matters, but probably no more so than on the matter of peace and war. My position is easy to understand. I'm against war in any form. There's no rational justification for any war. Period. I'm especially against war being waged by my own country. And when the war is something that's been perpetrated by that vile little nitwit pretender in the White House, my opposition knows no bounds.

My plan for ending the war is also simple: start landing big ole airliners in Baghdad right now, fill them up with troops, and fly off. Continue night and day until there's not a single American solider, airman, or marine in Iraq. Do the same thing in Afganistan. (I told you I was a radical nut.)

Why are all those troops there? Well, it's the war on terror, right, class? Everybody, and I cannot think of any exceptions--let me know if you can--talks about the "war on terror" as if such a thing were a) actually possible and b) extant. But Wikipedia also has a fine piece on why such a thing as a war on terror cannot exist because terror is an abstract noun. "Terror cannot be destroyed by weapons or signing a peace treaty. A war on terror has no end." But this war without end is why we've got thousands of troops in Afganistan and Iraq. Got that?

Like the "war on drugs" and the "war on poverty," "war on terror" has that testosterone ring about it that disquises the fact that these phrases have no practical meaning. They're Madison Avenue slogans. They sound useful in the mouths of politicians with agendas. That's all. But they fool a lot of people into thinking they actually mean something that you can wrap a meaning around. Take a look at the tortured graphics on the Wikipedia site cited above with its lists of belligerents, casualties, commanders, and campaigns--just like this was World War II or the Civil War with all those set battles you can lay down on maps.

So to answer my original question: the troops are in Iraq because it suited George Bush to start this accursed war. We can speculate what his little pea-brain conjured up as reasons, but it's safe to assume he agreed with Mr. Cheney and his cronies in the oil business that Iraq's oil would be a good thing for them to have. That's why those troops are there.

And so now I'm reading that Obama is talking about leaving a "residual force" of 50,000 troops in Iraq. That's 50,000 of our young men and women in Iraq and beefing up our people in Afganistan by another 10,000 or so.

HELL, NO! I say. A thousand hell noes. The more that our favorite African-American running for president settles into the role of "being presidential," the further he drifts from the ideals that seemed so conspicuous when he didn't yet have the nomination locked up. This guy cannot be all things to all people despite what his high-priced handlers are coaching him to say and do. Hell, a three-legged goat with blue eyes could beat McCain in this political season. So why in the name of hell don't the Democrats run on an all-out progressive platform? Why this damn trimming of ideas that actually promised to bring about some change? How does the Obama slogan go? "Change You Can Believe In"? Well, count me out on anything that prolongs this war, even if Obama's paws are all over the plan. . . this is change I can't believe in.

Bush's All America Tour

The best laugh of this still young day. (Too bad it's mostly true.)

Making the Corner Safe for Weed-Eating

It was as hot as hell, hot as only Oklahoma can be hot, at the corner of Main and Flood last evening about 6:30 p.m. Gathered there in the stifling environs were about 10-12 people, almost all of whom could be described as middle-aged, although those much younger might consider some of us geezers. Gathered there we were to protest publicly our country's involvement in Iraq with signs and flags. It's a weekly Monday afternoon thing. Our usual number of local protesters, about 4 or 5, was swollen by a contingent from Oklahoma City, who brought a bunch of great big signs--we need to get some of those for ourselves!--that said "Honk for Peace" or "Peace is Possible" and other subversive sentiments.

Also present was one each lawn-mowing, weed-eating guy. I spoke to the gentleman right after arriving and he allowed as to how "I don't care" but that we should wait until he was finished with his work before we deployed our flags, signs, and selves on the corner. Let me set the scene for you: we're talking the sidewalk and grassy area in front of an abandoned Grandy's, one of those monuments to late 20th century futility that you can find anywhere in the dying American empire.

Well, to make a long story short. Said weed-eater got pissed off because we didn't wait. (I have to tell you that the area where we were had already been mowed, and we were not preventing weed-eating anywhere as far as I could tell. I also should add that I have no doubt that Mr. Weed Eater was probably having a crappy day. Who knows how long he'd been toiling in that ridiculous heat at minimum wage? And maybe this wasn't even his last job. He's got my sympathy.) And he called the cops on us. Two of Norman's finest soon appeared and shooed us off the corner because our cars were parked in the abandoned Grandy's parking lot. It's private property, you see, by definition an object of worship. Which means, of course, that this parking lot can summon armed guardians of the temple in a matter of minutes to prevent its defilement by a ragtag bunch of radicals with families, jobs, and mortgages who believe in peace.

One of the cops was apologetic, and both were nice. But we had to leave nonetheless. Kinda makes you wonder, doesn't it, how easily the exercise of First Amendment rights can be blunted.

P.S. We'll be back on the corner next week. Lots of people are honking.

The Layers

A lovely poem about aging by Stanley Kunitz, a poet who was 100 years old, just a few weeks short of 101 years old when he died in 2006. I wish I had half his talent.

The Layers

by Stanley Kunitz

I have walked through many lives,
some of them my own,
and I am not who I was,
though some principle of being
abides, from which I struggle
not to stray.
When I look behind,
as I am compelled to look
before I can gather strength
to proceed on my journey,
I see the milestones dwindling
toward the horizon
and the slow fires trailing
from the abandoned camp-sites,
over which scavenger angels
wheel on heavy wings.
Oh, I have made myself a tribe
out of my true affections,
and my tribe is scattered!
How shall the heart be reconciled
to its feast of losses?
In a rising wind
the manic dust of my friends,
those who fell along the way,
bitterly stings my face.
Yet I turn, I turn,
exulting somewhat,
with my will intact to go
wherever I need to go,
and every stone on the road
precious to me.
In my darkest night,
when the moon was covered
and I roamed through wreckage,
a nimbus-clouded voice
directed me:
"Live in the layers,
not on the litter."
Though I lack the art
to decipher it,
no doubt the next chapter
in my book of transformations
is already written.
I am not done with my changes.