OK. Back from the horror house where I listened to the radio again. Same station. There isn't another. Why do I take these jobs? Because every Spring I apparently need to be reminded not to,

No, really I love it. It's like painting. You begin with an object - say, a wall - and it looks one way, and when you're done it looks another way. There! You've done something! You have changed matter with your thoughts. You've changed its color.

That's something we take for granted, but it's really quite amazing. I guess we take it for granted because we have to use our hands as well as our thoughts to make the change. If we could just look at the wall and say the word "Red!" to it - and it turned from whatever color to red - we would probably be more impressed.

Well, I would be impressed by that.

Frost tonight, so they say. I just had to interrupt this writing to run over to a customer's house and pull her plants indoors. For that service I will be paid a certain amount.

Earlier today, another customer called me needing to dump some refuse from her office. She asked if she could use my dumpster. I said, Sure. It turns out each time she does that she gives me a certain amount per bag. (I just found that out today. I didn't know that. I thought I was doing her a favor. I don't bill her for it. But there it is...)

What does that have to do with anything? Well, for twenty-five years I worked in the printing business. I dropped out of college, dabbled in radio, dabbled in writing, dabbled in drinking, dabbled in drugs, dabbled in politics, and ended up living in an alley next the public library in a small city in New Jersey.

Naturally, I went into printing. That follows, doesn't it? Well, it's a long story and you've heard most of it.

Mister Lovey-dovey, bonk bonk on the head.

I came back, got a low paying, dead-end job, and on the basis of that decided it would be a wonderful idea to marry the girl I had gotten pregnant even if I didn't like her all that much. And - oh yes - buy a house too, with no conceivable way to pay for it.

Well, it was my right to buy a house, wasn't it? Apparently, I wasn't setting the world on fire as a communist revolutionary. (I did have some sense - just a little - enough to realize that the group I had joined was really no more than a cult. I've written about that, too.) But, in any event, within eight years the house had been in foreclosure and recast, and was in foreclosure again.

My jobs were getting better, but the expenses were getting higher, and no matter how hard I worked I could only make what the company I worked for would pay me.

Towards the end, they paid me well. I learned that achievement comes before the reward, rather than the other way 'round. But, prior to finding that company, I had worked for several others. There were some very bad jobs, and the one decent one.

A very ordinary sort of chain of events. The cops would come to the door with various bench warrants. The repo man would be hooking the car. It was all rather frustrating. Really, all I ever wanted to do with my life was sit down with a few friends, listen to great music, and get high.

Come to think of it, that's still all I want to do with my life. I'm not kidding. I'm not what you might call ambitious.

Anyhooo, while I was working in that one good job I was drinking quite a lot more that the manufacturer recommends - despite the allure of overwhelming profits - and I started disappearing occasionally. But, it never became such a problem with my employer that he had to sack me. Once, he said I must go to a re-hab facility (outpatient, of course - so I could still work every day, the clever bastard) as a condition of my continued employment. I ignored him. The question never came up again.

So, I was now a department head. One of my co-workers, an assistant - the only non-Haitian - (they called him 'petit blanc' - 'little white.' I was 'blanc' - 'white,' which means 'boss') - well, he got into trouble with crack cocaine. Our big boss - mine and his - try to keep up - made good on the threat to him that he forgot about with me, and the fellow ended up having to go to the outpatient re-hab.

I might have known. See, I would drive the Haitians home. The one fellow lived in Queens Village. Down his street a man would be standing on the corner - middle of the night - we worked till the small hours - and his job was to take your money. You'd roll down the window, hand him money.

Down on the other end of the street there stood another guy. His job was to throw something into your open window in exchange for your money. Are you getting the picture? Bien, blanc.

So - my petit blanc assistant knew all about the street in Queens Village. He went to the re-hab. One day I asked him, "What do you do at that re-hab?"

He told me he had to pick a 'hero' - someone he looked up to, and wanted to be like. He then told me his hero was me - that I was his hero.

I didn't want to be anybody's hero. Every night I contemplated killing myself. I had moments of clarity. They were rare. But sometimes I could see that almost everything I said to everybody - and said to myself - contained a lie somewhere within. By that time I had stolen frequently. I had begun to hurt people. I had thrown home appliances through windows, threatened to shoot myself in front of my wife, (who was trying to get a telephone cord around my neck, bless her heart), and... oh, whatever - Bad Lieutenant kinda stuff.

I said, "Why the hell am I your hero?"

He said, "Because you get away with it."

The other fellow - the Haitian guy who could speak English, my 'right-hand man,' as it were - he was always telling me to visit Haiti some time. He would go on holiday there, see his family. They were rich, lived up in the hills. They were connected with the Secret Police. (That's why he had an education.) David was his name. He wouldn't mind.

He said, "You gotta come with me down there some time. It's beautiful."

But I couldn't go. He'd come back with pictures, Polaroids. Love 'em down there. Everybody's got a Polaroid. They drink Guinness too. He had pictures of bodies burning on the road side. A family down in the town, the baby's charred body still smoking. People just walking by.

"What was this all about?" I asked him.

He shrugged, and he said, "I don't know, Monie. Couldn't pay their debts maybe?"

I learned from him that being called "blanc" was a bit ironic. They had a simmering contempt at times - but it was more generally directed not against me, but against him. You see, he was a member of that country's ruling class. I remember when he went to his Embassy to get his visa extended. The same guys who appeared to be his friends at work - because he could translate for them - were standing there, part of a march across the Brooklyn Bridge - it's a long story - and they were shouting "Macoute! Macoute!" with raised fists. Well, that's the name for the Secret Police there. Yes, just like in Graham Greene.

David thought it was very funny that I had troubles paying my bills. He thought it was very funny that some Americans considered themselves poor, or were called poor by others. For his part, he had contempt for us - for Americans - for being self-indulgent and lazy. He once said, "You have no idea what poor is. In this country poor is a choice."

And that's where I learned something that would later help me greatly.

 

Golly, I'm inspired to go on with observations on the skinnyness and fatness of people in general, reminded of the Haitians I worked with years ago. Because being heavy is an indication your family isn't starving heavy women are considered attractive in some parts of the world. I would say those parts of the world need their dictator thug leaders eliminated.

Since wealth is infinite, and comes ultimately from God, the cause of poverty is limitation of the supply by forces either outer (oppression) or inner (wrong thinking). In our nation poverty is a lifestyle choice - that is, poverty is caused mainly by inner conditions since the limits on supply are few. Oh, socialist politicians have been trying for many years to limit wealth, with some small success, and they require the creation of poverty to retain their personal power, but for the most part it is very difficult to be poor in the US. And of course it's quite relative. Our poorest citizen is richer than most of the world's population.

Being poor requires dedication to becoming poor and staying that way. It's a full-time job. The directions for not being poor are as follows:

1. Stay in school, at least through High School.

2. Do not have children before you are married.

3. Do not have sex before you are married.

4. Get a job, any job, and work at it well. Move to where the better jobs are, if you wish. 

5. Live within your means. Increase your responsibilities only as your means increase.

I will guarantee that anybody and everybody who follows these simple guidelines will not be poor. It's more difficult to be poor than it is to be not poor because being poor requires a great expenditure of negative thinking and misdirected energy.

How to be rich is a different matter. Obviously it must begin with being not poor, so the same rules for being not poor apply to becoming rich. But we add this:

6. Find a product to sell, or a product to make, or a service to perform, which people want and desire. Sell it, make it, perform it.

7. Be willing to fail miserably in any venture you undertake.

8. Have no fear of people, because fear of people and fear of money is the same thing.

To that last one I would add that the acknowledgment all wealth comes from God - not from people, and not as a result of your efforts - is an excellent way to eliminate your fear of people and money. It is a very good idea to pray thanksgiving every day for whatever comes. Pray thanks in advance for what hasn't come yet.

Oh - and don't bother becoming rich if it's not fun. You should have fun with it. Being rich, like being poor, is entirely optional. Most of us are pretty happy as we are.

But, what does that have to do with being fat or skinny? Nothing really, except that it sets up my observation about the relationship between obesity and prosperity.

There is none. And it's really just that simple. We are not "too" prosperous. How can someone be "too" much of anything in the context of Infinity?

Obesity is usually caused by eating too much. Prosperity is not the cause of gluttony, nor is eating too much a direct result of being prosperous. Eating too much is, however, a direct result of wrong thinking, just as poverty is.

Unlike the underdeveloped countries in the world where people have been oppressed by gangsters, (like the monsters one finds at the U.N.), the American problem seems to be more complicated. While many are overweight, the body-style considered sexually interesting is rather unrealistically skinny.

As a result, the Nanny State seems to be suffering from a split personality. How many times do we hear from those Orwellian "Public Service" advertisements, or from the mouths of those puppets on TV news, about how fat we are, and also how skinny we are. Well, which is it? Are we too fat, or too skinny?

Well, we're both.

In both cases, the problem is self-worship. Self-worship is the same as self-loathing. One feels he or she is at the center of the universe, either in charge of the whole world or victimized by it. (Remember low self-esteem and high self-esteem are really just two sides of the same coin. Both are falsehoods.) A woman strives to maintain a skeletal skinnyness based on an unrealistic model of femininity presented by the goofy grape culture. A man becomes so involved in attainment that he loses the ability to realize when to stop swallowing. In both cases, the cause is a soul sickness.

It's the same soul-sickness that is at the heart of the destruction of our culture; a mass mentality, or 'group-think' falsehood that places the self at the center of all things. I call it a loss of Spirit, and I'll return to that in the next post.

My fingers are tired.

           

Well I was at a job site today - in the country. I put on the radio while I was working. There was only the one station. It was one of these I-pod stations. They just look at the most popular downloads and play those songs. Some are old. Some are new. In between are commercials. It's automated - no dee-jay. You know the kinda thing.

I'll bet you didn't think I did, though.

I admit it's very rare these days for me to listen to TV, radio, or that sort of thing. I do read a little. I read about what's on, mostly people's opinions of how awful it is. I wonder why it never occurs to them to turn it off. Well...

I formed a few impressions.

First of all, is there some kind of law governing car dealers and obesity? Whenever I have seen car dealers on TV commercials they are grossly overweight. On radio they sound grossly overweight.

I should be more kind. I happen to know a man who owns a very successful local car dealership. He never appears in his commercials, though. He does tip the scales near to 300, I'll bet. Nice enough fellow. Big. Drives a different car every day.

Where was I? Oh yes, radio commercials.

What'cha counting there, Bob?

I'm counting all the ways our customers can get huge savings here at Huge Car Plaza on Route 33 in Hockeyville, Tom Poppard.

Huge savings? Well, Bob, you must be counting pretty high.

That's right! And I just swallowed a ten year-old boy, and now I'm in a mood to make deals!

Look out folks!

My sentiment exactly. Look out, folks.

The other odd thing they do - car dealer commercials, I mean - is they tell us how good their sales figures are. One commercial I heard today - a Toyota dealer - was telling me sales were down last month but they are up this month. Why would that make me wish to buy a car? I'm glad they are doing better this month than last. I'm in business too. I'm always glad to hear people are doing well. But isn't that the kind of thing they really should be talking about at their sales meetings? You know - the meeting where they sacked whoever was responsible for the sales being down last month.

They tell us so-and-so has just joined their "family." A new salesman.

OK, I'm happy for him.

There's a TV ad that runs locally where I am. Again, it's a fat car dealership. Two guys - I guess brothers, with close beards - have now been joined by a third guy with no beard. He is now a member of the "family." It must have taken them... minutes to find somebody almost as heavy as they are. If they took a whole hour they could have found someone heavy with a beard.

But that means somebody got canned, right? If a new "relative" joins the "family" it must mean somebody else is out of the "family." Who knows where those bodies are buried? It sounds like a little investigative consumering is called for. I should go in and ask for so-and-so whom I know to be no longer employed there, see what they say.

No, he's not here. We fired his skinny ass.

Something like that.

Songs! Oh my Lord...

I've had you so many times, but I want you more.

I do not wish to meet the woman who thinks that line is romantic. Here's another:

I would walk through pouring rain for you...

Oh, where do I begin? Rain! What extraordinary sacrifice. That fella must be in love.

I'd bet any money he wouldn't give up his Knicks tickets for any girl.

I want to love you forever... tonight!

No comment on that one.

Oh, there's more! I didn't know whether to laugh or... laugh. Do they intend to be funny? But that was a cross-section of my working day, exposed to radio waves as I was. About two hours ago I left there, got into my car, listened to Frank Zappa with the windows open. Drove through the twilight, over the hills to home. And you...

Baby.

 

 

Fun and games, right?

Tesseract.

That's my default desktop image - that Mona Lisa thinking Tesseract. It reminds me there's more than what I see.

I discounted 2 hours off my confiscatory rate yesterday because I was not happy with the job I did. The customer was happy. I was not happy. And - when I'm not happy, nobody's...

Well, I'm like that.

It's only money. Think of filling a glass to the brim. Surface tension will maintain a level just a hair above over- flowing, as we know from Grammar School when Mr. Science came to the class. Money is the liquid. The glass is your life, your need, your requirement. Most of us never come close to filling the glass. We often think the problem is not enough money. But the problem is never not enough money because wealth is infinite. Our problem is having too big a glass.

So - I have a shot glass, and it is filled to the brim. As I make more money it drops, drop by drop, into the already-filled-to-the-brim shot glass. As the liquid is displaced, I lick the sides of the glass.

Oh yes, I'm posting my Saturday Night Blog Crawl song now. I hope to work through - well, at least till 10 or so.

It's terrible how little John Cale is available. The one selection from "Songs for Drella" with Lou Reed is not one I like particularly. There's a Leonard Cohen cover.

"Big White Cloud" is a lovely song. And "Spinning Away" is from an album he did with Brian Eno, and it's very like "Big White Cloud" in flavor.

But I was rather hoping for stuff from "Guts" like "Fear is Man's Best Friend."

One would think that when Bauhaus covered "Rose Garden Funeral of Sores" you'd at least be able to find that.

I always wanted to hear John Cale sing a duet with fellow Welshman Tom Jones...

"What's up, pussycat?
Do the maggots eat your brain?..."

Oh - "Honi Soit" - my Lord, what a great album! No sign of it in the electronic etherworld. So, we get a very serene and happy John Cale today/tonight. Nick Cave has called Cale's music too depressing. That's trouble...



Well, the last time I had a "girlfriend" - and I've written about her before - try to keep up - she made me a compilation tape of songs to listen to in my car, songs that reminded her of me. There was some Nick Cave on it. And a song called "Nick Cave Doll" that was very funny, and I guess that's what I was to her.

Of course now I have a CD player in my car. I don't like it. I can't segue digital songs when I record them. The old dee-jay in me needs to overdub, hard-stop, and segue. Our new technology is very limiting that way.

I miss that old Crown Vic. Miss it miss miss it. I'm driving some daffy All-Wheel-Drive - thing. The Lady has an Audi. Everybody in my family has a Lexus. No style. None. It's like living in a half-world, a world gone half dark, where people's minds have been - altered so they can't see truth that stares them in the face and can't tell the difference between beauty and ugliness.

I'm glad I'm not young, that when I was young we were still fully human. Some of us.

Our hope is the young. 'Twas ever thus. I hear them - boys no older than my sons - walking by The White Lodge saying "Fuck this" and "Fuck that," but they aren't the hope. They may be - when they wake up. There aren't the rebels. They aren't the revolutionaries. They're merely acting like their waste-of-space baby-boomer parents, conforming to the establishment of post-60's orthodoxy. They're merely imitating what the TV tells them to imitate.

No, I tell my sons you want to be the guy who ends up in jail for being a revolutionary? Have respect for women, and treat them as you would your own mother. Hold the doors. Never allow a word to pass through your lips that defiles you. Dress presentably. Read much. The school has nothing to offer anymore. Fear God; fear nothing. If you fear God you will fear nothing else. No human power will have hold over you. Understand the current 'culture' is an aberration formed by people who will die soon - the hippies, the half-life demons who are bent on deconstruction - and try to retain that perspective. Turn your natural revulsion to them into love by practicing pity. If you pity them you can't hate them, and they'll have no power over you.

Pray for peace daily, and be prepared to fight for it. When you pray for peace you will instantly receive it, and only in that state can you fight to end oppression. Fly your flag, and remember it's a symbol not of government but of Nation. And remember they are two very different things. Learn to shoot, and be prepared to defend your neighbor. You must always assume your neighbor is innocent. Be good to your neighbors; perform kindnesses with no expectation of reward.

So, my older son tells me that's difficult. People aren't 'like that' anymore. Well, he's right - they aren't. But - they will be again. Have to be. There was a time long ago when an empire ruled much of the known world, and we call what happened then "peace" because this empire so efficiently oppressed the people that they could not fight for freedom. That's not peace; that's tyranny.

Until every human being is free, and governments are formed to serve rather than to rule, there is no peace; there's only war. Maybe it's the "quiet" kind of war - the midnight knock at the door, the mass graves, the torture chambers of stability. Or, maybe it's the kind that's out in the open - like between armies or between drug dealers and rap singers.

Yes, it's difficult. The decadence eating the hearts of people obscures the truth. They went on having their orgy even when the wolves were at the door. City after city watched the army of wolves pass them by. At each one the army declared, "We are bound for Rome!"

Now, when you're in that orgy - when you're in the culture, when you watch TV to get your information, when you listen only to what the orgy tells you, and live only in that separate reality that isn't real - of course you'll have no idea about the wolves who are coming.

So, yes it's difficult not to just 'go along' for fellowship's sake into the pit.

As always, the established order is the source of the corruption. The people at the source of the corrosive Evil tearing apart our culture are not the young; they are the establishment - people in later life, the people with money and power, and influence. The Establishment. They are the ones walking by The White Lodge swearing through the mouths of their willing puppets. I tell my sons don't use their definitions. Don't speak their vile language. Don't watch their propaganda. Read. Learn history, write poetry, believe in God, and fear nothing. Don't ever follow the pack. The pack is always headed to the slaughterhouse.

Anyhoooooooooooooooooooo-ha! Enjoy Saturday's music thingy!

The banner ads at the top of the page suggest that I can go to Heaven and get the best deals on Old Time Radio in MP3. Well strip my gears and call me shiftless...