come rain or come shine: updated

For the update, please scroll to end of post.
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Winter is hard upon us now.  Snow predicted but hasn't shown up ... yet.  I know when the fog clears later this week, the mountain tops will be white, ah, make that light brown as Big Agra knows no season.  The animals housed out of doors have been thickening their coats, except for Bernie who is now the proud owner of a black turtleneck sweater for serious winter weather.  He reminds me of a flying ace with his flap ears and back rings around his eyes.  I promise I will not get him boots.  Gawd.  Basset paws ARE all-weather boots.  Now, Jake, the Aussie-Shepard, already grew his organic outerwear an Eskimo would envy.  He's not a sweater guy.

All the talk about hyperinflation going around must be scaring the heebeejeebies out of more than a few Internet enthusiasts.  I don't really think about it, maybe I should, but it seems as if I've been living in a hyperinflated economy for a while now and we regularly scrape bottom.  When someone starts up the hand wringing over "What shall we do?  Eeeek!", I can't feel all that sympathetic or even empathetic, not when the Iraqis probably wish that's all they had to face from us, a devastated economy is rather different than warships appearing out of nowhere during your wedding party.  I don't want to understate what will happen to our population however.  As in Palestine, our obese classes are being put on a diet, by mandate.  The figure I quoted a few posts ago about 3 in 4 Americans will be obese by 2020 can now be rewritten (it always was rewritten, we just weren't in on it) to no one will be obese by 2020, period, since the effects of a failed system according the various charts show the top tiers being affected somewhat as well. By now we should have learned to enjoy rice with veggies and carnivores satisfied with rice, veggies and minuscule meat morsels.  Last time I dined in Haiti, where every menu is the same because you get what they have, despite the menus, we ate fried rice.  "I'll have the snapper creole." And out came fried rice.  One thing I have not seen are the charts from our statistic-crazed statisticians concerning exactly how financial world war is expected to appear in third world nations.  I think they don't want to talk about it because that would put some truth to the recovery story.  Following the Mumbai hotel crisis, I came to find Mumbai was formerly known as Bombay.  And you will recall what Bombay meant before outsourcing ... I'm sure that part is still there, its more that we never hear about because we're well on our way to becoming the new Bombay, while sliding farther and farther away from Mumbai, the new Wall Street, the new arms purchaser to the tune of sixth largest weapons buy from us, as usual.  You will recall when Pakistan held sway in that arena, of all the countries, fer cryin' out loud, Bush via Colin Powell rewarded Musharraf's homeland with Honorary Major Non-NATO Ally status.  Reading further, you come to the part where it reads "for the purpose of weapons purchasing". They never veer off the course, do they.

... Major non-NATO allies are eligible for priority delivery of defense material and the purchase, for instance, of depleted uranium anti-tank rounds.
They can stockpile US military hardware, participate in defense research and development programs and benefit from a US government loan guarantee program, which backs up loans issued by private banks to finance arms exports. ...

So that's what it takes to be an ally.  As if you didn't know.  It takes a lot of skin, a lot of moxy and a lot of dining and dancing.  Too bad our Peace Laureate couldn't take Condoleezza along to play (poorly) some piano during the dancing girls part, but you know, he's got his lawful dancing girl already and three is not a good mixer at these occasions, occasions which could be done on the cheap with their Blackberries since all that is happening is another deal going down.  It is a big deal.  It will some day not long from now change the borders of the entire ME. I ask you now, how is this going to improve the crisis in our own homeland?  Will this deal provide lower costs for nutritious food, medical care and shelter from the elements for our peeps?  Are we, the little people, going on a diet so that India can fly wing on wing formations with the Nevada gamers over Afpak?  And the people of India, what return on this deal do they get?  Clue: its not a bargain with Monsanto backing off.  More like another helping of fried rice, if there is any rice available in India anymore.  I would rather have seen our Peace Laureate pack a C130 with antibiotics and sandbags, tents, blankets and Sterno along with Doctors Without Borders and land in Pakistan's Cholera country handing out survival supplies mending the misery and loss.  Since that requires humility and love, we will never see that come to be.  We will see a lot of suffering here, too. 

Concealment on any scale creates suffering.  Give me a scale and I will give you suffering, even when it appears no suffering is taking place.  There are also those who suffer that have no idea they are suffering with all manner of excuse why they are safe and satisfied going along to get along.  I think you have to be alone, away from it all, for awhile in America to learn suffering.  In a group, its too easy to get shot down and shown ridiculous time wasting dogma supporting a belief in mass happiness, in which case you will be shown hate, prejudice, religious nonsense, your Constitutional rights and so forth.  Do ask them "What rights?"  Yet, it is these people exactly who fight internal wars with their friends, coworkers, partners, families and pastors, floating the lie, worshipping at the alter of myths that never were.  Mrs. So and So down the block passed away in her own bed last winter from hypothermia.  And Mr. So and So passed away from starvation shorty thereafter whereupon their little house was immediately and legally hoovered by the bank to be resold under the abusive program known as Reverse Mortgage.  This winter, we will see a radical leap in the death statistics of all those Mr. and Mrs. So and Sos, everything from alcohol poisoning to fire to suicide. Will the corporatocracy realize they are endangering a dedicated purchasing block?  No.  They are beyond control.  Once the decree has come through the ranks, it is simply too time consuming to spend money on any revisions, and time costs money.  Time.

 What is time?


 I had the unusual experience driving through the heart of Big Agra this past Saturday evening as the earth rotated away from the sun and was a little surprised, only a little, to see the illegals and harvesting apparatus out in full.  How silly of me to think they observe night or Sundays or weekends or holidays at all.  Do they take off Cinco de Mayo?   I'll let you know next spring.  Of course, you know already the trains, those double decker livestock moving louvered cars and refrigerated boxcars, high in the air on tires, chained to a movable platform linking to seventy five or more of the same tottering structures moving along at 35 mph, were running back and forth, one after another, heading in to pick up, heading out to deliver.  All this has to be an inevitable, but necessary part of feeding the masses and sponsored by the little people.   They soon will find, if all the terror talk about hyperinflation has any merit, which of course it does as all that wilting greenery in clamshells has now split into half size clamshells for the same price as the full size, they-can't-afford-any-of-it.  What's worse, they will find the means to afford slushies and chili cheeseburgers on gluey sesame seed buns.  I guess it doesn't matter, its all roundup ready for the tables of the ignorant and the latch-on window trays of the obedient.

The real heart breaker here is that nothing is going to stop the Onward Christian Soldiers Crusade of Madness. Nothing.  One can almost forget about it out here in the middle of nowhere, except there is always something to remind you, something like the holiday season and to whom and what you wanted to gift with presents.  I am beginning to think this whole Christmas present sideshow was created by retailers to draw us into spending which drew us into overspending which was temporarily resolved by credit and then karma came along and their seasons are statistically lackluster while the mall landlords are foreclosed.  If you see a person selling matches in the snow with a pup in a turtleneck sweater outside Wal*Mart this year, it will be me.  Although, I might try a complaint booth of the lemonade stand variety in order to honor your comments.

If we become ill, hurt, maimed, we are on our own.  If we lose our way, go crazy, break down or are attacked, again, we are on our own.  Did you even think 911 would translate into complete disconnection from life as you'd always known it?  You will recall that those buses that finally grabbed Katrina survivors out of the stadium at gunpoint left for parts unknown where they were still unwanted guests in their own country.  They were an unwelcome burden. You are free to tell me I am looking at the glass half empty but there will be no golden twilight years ever again.  All that is left now are ads for elite pleasures still running on old contracts.


Is there an up side to any of this?  Only the upside down and backwards recently mentioned by Visible.  I'm sorry to say that if we are ever going to get a breather, one: it won't be here and two: the slate will have to be wiped clean as we are already seeing happening to the life of species extincted by the day.

Let me get this straight, why isn't India happy with having our jobs and western lifestyle, isn't that enough?  Maybe it wasn't, maybe we ran through everything already and need more?  You'll hear that question which is a partial truth, its more like dealer sees a market, dealer moves in.

UPDATE:  Beyond the ending statement in the above essay concerning dealer sees a market, dealer moves in, we have the head twist which is First, dealer creates the market.  That's right, the whole game is based on identification and development of vulnerability, creating a space in which that vulnerability becomes insatiably addicted while appearing strong, but the hidden weakness has been chronicled and remains.  Then the dealer moves in, everybody plays nice until someone/something crosses the line and all hell breaks loose with the goods we supplied.  Its an old, tired story.  Of course there is a better way, but we will never see it as long as the old story still works for the easy money crowd.