Well now now now now darlin

may a have a little talk with you
Because it won't be long before our true love will be through ...

Its too easy to lose sight of the bigger picture when regional catastrophes use up the lemmings' limited attention span. I certainly sympathize with that my lemmings, being another lemming, sometimes its hard. Only you know and I know where this is leading, its high time the bigger picture is painted. Get this straight, everything that is combusting is because, well, because it is combustible.

What were you up to last weekend? Menu planning on a zero budget? Searching the classifieds that vanished because your physical newspaper is yesterday's ash in the nation's fireplace? Sometimes its hard. But maybe you started out your Saturday with Pepe Escobar's Liquid Wars and followed though to his Asia Times version, Obama's Afghan Spaghetti Western? That would have been a real jolt to your weekend rest and recreation. Trust me, it wasn't the generic coffee. Here we are in Monday at last, no question about it either, plain as day the sun still shines, the Earth still turns and we are at war, of course. We are not winding down, we are not withdrawing, the disease is metastasizing as it spread before, with the same old song still playing we heard on the Waffle Ho's jukebox all those years ago while collecting alligator ashtrays on Souvenir Row... something about the wrong place, no apology, really, it was this other place all along, Eureka, At Last...

The fever is spreading and so my lemmings its time to stick another pushpin on your beaverboard war maps. Or turn off the jukebox, which is a little hard to do because there is no off switch. They saw to that. Eisenhower warned us, but that song didn't do as well on the charts, did it.

It is commonly thought there are many ways to tackle a problem. It is less commonly known there is only one way to achieve a solution to any problem. It is extremely unfortunate that problems of any sort carry a brief window of opportunity in which they can be solved before combusting into greater problems and diseases beyond control. This is THE situation everyone NOT a citizen of the oil rich nations finds themselves. To date the geographic dilemma still appears as 'something going on somewhere else'. You would think the situation dire enough for the bumsters to knock-off their cannibalizing of the lemmings, believe me, gentlemen, the flavor should have lost its appeal by now, those growth hormones are bitter, yes? But no. They will continue it appears, in the same stubborn deadbeat manner they evolved. Sometimes its hard.

You do understand what is at stake? I thought so.

The past few decades have been an international used dumpster parking lot of greed and deceit, indeed its been going on much, much longer than that, but these long years do not show evidence of any real solution. They show many minds working to increase the problem. Blame isn't a solution. Greed and deceit are inflammatory antagonists. And they call it 'foreign policy'. National policy, economic policy, community policy, law enforcement policy ... these are subheads under one policy. It is that one policy that defines the west, broken into divisions, each with warring factions and lower level pretensions, desiring and behaving as if they are peak considerations ... this is not a solution. "Pills" Limbaugh is not a solution. News, on the face of it a word implying something new, which more realistically should be called "Olds", is like the antifreeze in Panamanian toothpaste or sprays of white phosphorus on innocently jaywalking collaterals, again, no solutions there.

Sometimes, I would like to hear the other side speak up. What can they be thinking? Do they see it as the building of global Interstates condemning everything standing in its path? Or do they see it as a religious War of the Worlds? What do they say to each other?

Obviously somebody, somewhere sees what they are doing as the solution or they would not continue. But when you really think about it and take the time to ponder the gravity, especially with an abundance of closed minds unable to consider even briefly that the window of opportunity may already be closed, the outcome does not look good. It may well be true that this sad song has no end. It just goes downhill from here with the vocals deeper and slowing like HAL eternally dysfunctioning in outer space.

new world shopping

I dread going into town, leaving the safety of my paints and the animals, braving the hairpin turns still patched with ice from last weekend's freak snowstorm. The only reason that I make the trek is almost always for my Guinea Pig's needs. Everyone else makes do as I do or fends for themselves. The way I see it is the Guinea Pigs are trapped in a cute little world imitating nature that isn't natural to that which their bodies, responses and abilities are designed because imperialist invaders denied them freedom on the Andes Plains by taking many of them as booty back to their home countries where they were overbred and bloated into exotic trophy pets. Compared to us, my Guinea Pigs have it pretty good.

My first stop then was the feed store where they are down to one employee and no longer order our needs in bulk. They had nothing I wanted. The employee remarked that this town's two other feed stores closed their doors this month. I went across the road to the ridiculous pet supply specializing in various pet fashions and melamine tainted treats to find not only do they not carry hay anymore for the live, tightly caged rodentia on sale there, they refused to exchange, credit or refund a faulty dog collar I'd purchased only a week ago. Hmmm, I thought, tough times indeed.

Continuing on, I passed up the surcharges at the convenience postal store and headed to the real post office. It wasn't the latest ruling on sealing tape or the new fees that got me, it was the mood in the parking lot, no one bothers to look behind them when they back out of a spot anymore. Its a sort of thuggish "get out of my way" driving style en masse that could cost you heavily if you know what I mean.

Next was the big metal box store, a bizarre job lot of mixed merchandise such as high-end toaster cozies and off-brand electronic toys that they like to shove out into the sticks. I was looking for parsley seeds to grow my own for the Guinea Pigs. Why they wanted my email address to make a 79 cent cash purchase is unknown to me. I declined which would have turned into a lengthy discussion leading nowhere with the hypnotized cashier except my horoscope that morning advised me to remain cool for the day. It appeared to work. Yes, I felt sorry for her, nothing else to do, the entire cavernous space devoid of consumers, no doubt she's got deeper concerns.

Outside the window wall was a person in a turquoise satin Statue of Liberty costume looking like the wired-up, bad apple victims, waving around a huge "hot pizza cheap" sign to no one, no one at all.

OK, last stop was the food megaplex. I don't need to tell you what has happened to the prices in the span of one week. I will merely remark on the sudden disappearance of cashiers causing thirty or forty carts to jam up at the three attended registers. What happened to Customer Convenience? What happened to the music? I used to stroll down these very aisles label-reading to the muffled mellow strains of Human Touch. And where are those TVs at the register lines that used to soothe the savages with Harriet Nelson instructions on preparation of processed meals for your busy loved ones? Did you know that the magazine covers are now featuring photo lineups of the "stars" with headliners Guess Who's Pregnant? I must not be the general public, I thought, UFOs were more interesting...

The roads are growing weeds in the pavement. Massive construction projects abandoned. No endearing scenes of grazing cattle because the ranchers went broke and redistributed their pastures. Lands sit fallow at the height of planting season. Skeletons of almond trees tremble in the breeze.

We are now less than pet Guinea Pigs trapped in a faux reality. We will continue to deteriorate until the situation is addressed with truth and dealt with realistically. It is simply not possible to return to that which was impossible to sustain. Its over. Gone. Done. Even if the truth is shouted from the headlines of every media outlet, the People have lost trust. What comes next is going to be the real proof of the American character. Will we wimp out in dungeons? Try to make do borrowing soap in tent cities? Walk the back roads of what once was, all alone in the dark looking to nest for a night or three? I've got that old feeling you're leaving ...

framing with archival gloss

What did they do, give away lifetime no-bid contracts to the old Message Force Multipliers? Geeze, we're under siege these days, anyone got earplugs? I thought this was supposed to be a different administration, but you have noticed it is not. When we unglued our bodies from our cushy internet barstools long enough to actually get out there and investigate Premier Systems' black boxes while simultaneously examining the Watusi cattle waiting in line with us, what were we doing? We were endorsing GM seeds is what we were doing. We were blackening little ovals representing death to the food chain is what we were doing, coloring in little mud cookies, tattooing on paper our complicity in the Doomsday Vault's seedbank is what we were doing.
Wasn't there something about "change you can believe in"? What is it to believe anyway, but wishful thinking, hope that something may happen that was either going to happen anyway or not happen at all (against all hope). Hope is just another dark color in the con artist's palette. Hope makes everybody do things they would not do, but for misplaced trust dangled before their fragile desiring minds to see something be what it is not and never can be what they want. Hope is expectation with a twist, that twist being "improvement on reality", like bariatric surgery will win friends and influence people or make Nadya Suleman a United Nations representative for orphaned children starring in her own Dr. Spock version of The View. Hope is wishing you are somebody else, somewhere else. Hope is wanting something other than what you have. Hope is not altruism. Hope is a lie and will turn on you in its own time which is never your time.

It looks as if certain members of the previous administration are very close to getting nailed because they have all their favorite errand boys muscling their ways onto the airwaves wanting the Watusi cattle to know war works and they won, thanks to their bosses' prescient surgical strategy. They are building a court case, wouldn't you say? They would do that. Advertising evil as righteousness is the general hallmark of con artists just as lacking conscience is the hallmark of psychopaths. But will crisis management work in their favor this time? Only if the Bond Holders are distracted, which is about as likely as Madoff's victims deducting their losses on their income tax returns, although some will do it with high hopes since they are allowed to do that and allowed to hope.

ashes, ashes, we all fall down

Somewhere, surfing the web, I've come across the Humpty Dumpty metaphor lately, more than a few times, maybe on Mirrors, but I can't look it up just now, besides, its always been that where one person leaves off, I continue, mostly unintentionally until no one knows where something starts and where it ends, we just keep moving along, a herd in progress across the barren plain. The herders with their whips and dogs like us to do that. But they slip up at quitting time, dusk settles in, the wagons circle around the campfire and they get drunk on Glenlivet while the herd is supposed to be grazing. Well, they certainly can do that because the invisible electronic razor wire logs keystrokes all night long. At sunrise, the angels are looking homeward. Where are we off to today Boss? Why we're headed to the G20, son. And who's going to be there Boss? Why the Bond Holders of course, be sure to shine your boots and shave.
Aahhhh, the Bond Holders. Here's Mike Whitney at his best:

... Bondholders own everything and they shouldn't be trifled with. They represent foreign banks, governments, sovereign wealth funds, and industry giants. They can afford the losses better than the taxpayer, but they won't be happy about it. There's bound to be retaliation and gnashing of teeth. It will require a carefully executed strategy to avoid a bloodbath; a surprise incision with a razor-sharp scalpel followed by an Obama-led public relations campaign to placate the enraged bondholders. It won't be easy, but it has to be done, and fast. Unfortunately, we are no where near the point where anyone at Treasury or the Fed will set aside the corporate agenda long enough to do the people's work...

The herd is antsy today. They've tired of the rodeo games, the roping's, the shiny flowered boots and bandannas and barking dogs and being loaded into one big trailer after another. They grew depressed at their lot in life being lassoed into slaughter stung repeatedly by the errand boys' whips punished for failing to read the blinking billboards while passing by because they are distracted too much, its all looking the same, 10 in Alabama, 15 in Germany, Ponzis, pimps and possessions, but some few are taking notes. A mere hoof-ful with ergonomic pads and pens and their cellphone cameras.

What were those towers anyway? And what was said about them when they collapsed? Do you remember some of the bull horned beatitudes? Let's put on our tinfoil horns and pick up on the transistors. In essence, it was said Bin Laden hoped to strike into the very heart and soul of the US. At what time in your life did you equate the wtc complex as the heart and soul of the US? The wtc was not the Taj Mahal or the Pyramids or the Eiffel Tower or even the canals of Venice. We were Hollywood, we were mouseketeers, we were supreme sensibility, progress and innovation! We were never just an economy, never just bullet pushers, at least not then. All the wtc was to most people was tall. And not the tallest. And now its gone. But the extended damage it was said could come about, especially if the US did not clamp down pronto and go shopping, you have noticed has taken place. Where's the billboard about that? Where are the billboards about how the hijackers put Bernie in jail and ended Missus Yeoman's shopping spree? About the newly homeless in motels, tent cities and FEMA trailers and foreclosures soaring into infinity while firemen hose down the scene with play money and everybody with a laptop googles mud cookie recipes...

Moo. Bellows. Huge yellow dust clouds rise over the plain. You think it happened like that? Like Seymour Hersh's alleged covert Dicksquad Command operating beyond any accountability whatsoever? Years in the planning, the herd plodding along in sync with boring billboards, oblivious, chewing our cud, blades of grass stuck between our teeth, swatting at flies with our tails. Do the herders know how vulnerable they are? Do they know they are weakened by cruelty and greed? Maybe the Bond Holders will tell them, we would hope in words, although keep it up long enough and words don't work anymore.

I have no idea how the perps live with themselves. I know so little about anything at all. I wish I did not think so much, or see things connect as they sometimes will. Its not who I am.

... Oh I am a lonely painter
I live in a box of paints
I'm frightened by the devil
And I'm drawn to those ones that ain't afraid

I remember that time you told me you said
"Love is touching souls"
Surely you touched mine
'Cause part of you pours out of me
In these lines from time to time ...

At home with the Ponzis

Ex-bookkeeper is charged with embezzling $9.9 million from her company
Vista, Calif. - A former bookkeeper embezzled $9.9 million, forcing her company to make layoffs as she bought 400 pairs of shoes that she kept in a room-sized closet decorated with a crystal chandelier and a plasma television, authorities claim.

Annette Yeomans, 51, surrendered at the Vista jail on Friday and was booked for investigation of grand theft and embezzlement. She was being held Saturday at the San Diego County jail in lieu of $10 million bail.

It was not immediately clear whether she had an attorney.

Authorities allege that Yeomans embezzled the money from 2001 to 2007 while she was chief financial officer for Quality Woodworks, Inc., a cabinetry business in San Marcos.

She spent at least $240,000 on 400 pairs of shoes, $300,000 on designer clothing and 160 purses valued at $2,000 each, investigators allege. She also remodeled a bedroom into a closet with the chandelier and a 32-inch TV, they said.

"On a weekly basis Yeomans would spend $25,000 on her credit card and then pay off the balance the following Monday with company funds," said Sgt. Mark Varnau of the sheriff's Financial Crimes Unit.

The losses went unnoticed and the company never hired an outside auditor to check the books because she had a trusted position, Varnau said. Meanwhile, he said, the company was forced to lay off workers and restructure operations because of the losses.

An investigation began after American Express notified the company in February 2008 that one of its checks had been used to make a payment on Yeomans' account, Varnau said.

Yeomans was fired last year and agreed to turn over her assets to the company, which has recovered about $2 million from the sale of her home, some cars and other property, Varnau said.

Her husband was a cabinet installer at Quality Woodworks but was not suspected of any crime, Varnau said.

Ah, hubby had no idea? As the shopping bags and delivery trucks blocked the windows and overflowed into the driveway, the lawn, the garage and bathroom, what was hubby thinking? As it became a living nightmare of shredded tissue paper and receipts forcing him to squeeze through towers of shoe boxes falling over the microwave to nuke his nightly turkey pot pie because the missus was cleaning out the malls, what could have been running through his head?

While the years passed on and he ran rosewood through his tablesaw and blew off the sawdust mixed with sweat with his air compressor nozzle, as the missus slunk around the executive suite in Jimmy Choo slingbacks with her Kate Spade signature pushkies, wasn't hubby perhaps at times, burning with a little embarassment? Maybe confused, maybe suspicious there was a hidden sugar daddy creepin' round? Maybe all the time he watched, he was watching for the wrong thing. Maybe he satisfied himself by overvaluing the sweetness of a white collar suite. Maybe he satisfied his silent curiosity with various illegal substances and more than a few double lives, stripclubs and buddies and one night stands and adult video rentals while everyone else was settling down, having kids, having Thanksgivings and Christmases and backyard barbecues and birthday parties...

Meanwhile, this shopaholic female twist on a Bernie Madoff Ponzi had to have been under the influence of perhaps entire fistfuls of benzos, saving the Oxycontin for late nights with the 32' plasma when she'd safely be out of the crosshairs of radar guns in hidden speed traps. Maybe then she'd peel down to her Victoria's Secrets and play baby doll in Sundayschool anklets and 10" maryjane platform spikes. Well, hey, you think hubby joined in the jokes? Maybe hubby hogged the remote.

My friends, is it any wonder that the mass spiritual awakening we so desperately require in order to go straight as a global people and get it right and fix this crazy world gone mad is taking its own sweet time? I don't know ANY people like this and maybe I am naive to imagine you don't either. Let us at this minute fall on our knees and bow our heads in gratitude that somehow, by the supreme miracles of the Beloved and Wise Creator Most Divine and Loving, we are just who we are, doing the best we can, for our people and our Earth in all our dullness, in our simple ways, with kindness and consideration for all living species, every day and every night.

Mostly we can give thanks we are not, never were and never will be, them.

chiaroscuro

My roomate, the Firekeeper, brought up the most interesting observation this evening, that being all these troops will be arriving home to no jobs. Yes, welcome home sons and daughters, many of you can expect to spend your days idling in relief lines. After your participation in the clash of civilizations, surely you are wondering what glory awaits you in the new Bernie Madoff economy, the suckling AIGs bailout economy, the crash and collapse economy, the end of days economy and however else the economy as of late is bleached. I would love to tell you everyone will be eager to employ you, and certainly some will, just not in the way you were hoping. Nor do we know if your memory of what once was will ever again be anything remotely resembling what you imagined it to be while you were away. I can tell you only that what you will see is what you will get, a.k.a. wysiwyg. But with such training as you have no doubt received, law enforcement, corporate prisons or merc outfits could very well be interested. Did you start out from nothing, expecting to see some action, pay for college perhaps and insure your medical needs would be met post haste? Well, did you ever get that recruitment bonus? What you are really going to be doing when you come home, if you still have a home, is facing the same situation the whole country is facing along with the majority of our global fellows. Its not a pretty picture. Its a huge watercolor landscape melting under the weight of karma. While you've been on the frontlines, the rug was sold out from beneath our feet, the food chain was poisoned and the future revised to exclude everyone except a mere few prepared to ride it out in underground bunkers until the planet cools down enough to support life again, just how long that could be is anybody's guess. Ten million years? And you thought you'd seen it all? Its the prolonged agony of resource depletion that is working against a return to something that wasn't all that healthy to begin with. We're just beginning the descent on the downside of the bell curve simultaneous to a slight increase in temperature. But the problem with descending is its likeness to sliding downhill on a rollercoaster. One moment you are teetering at the top of the world and the next, there it goes. In the likely event you are suffering from PTSD, you'll have lots of company since the same trauma is increasingly affecting everyone else each day and each long, sleepless night. Some more than others, some not at all, most blame it on anything handy to lessen the pain thinking erroneously and selfishly that by not acknowledging the situation, it is not happening or worse, it can be put off into the distant future that does not specifically concern them.

UPDATE 03.03.09: Here is the key, its up to you to open the door and walk into the light. Go in Grace. Everything Out of Control is Under Control