The schedule jumps forward

The schedule has moved up because Wetikos are ignoring the signs due to fear of massive and unprecedented potential for loss.  Can you imagine that?  What is happening now was supposed to happen beginning next year according to prophecy, but alas, its too late.  I regret to inform you loss is the name of the game.

I don't have the patience and you don't have the interest to go over everything that has gone down since our happy new year began.  I was aghast to see such clamor over the latest of so many clamored shooting sprees when there is no clamor at all as usual on the ridiculously expensive, legally approved shooting, bombing, burning and assassination sprees of the resource rip with the exception of a small handful of writers much of whose prose I am not exactly in a position to swallow verbatim since generally they don't pass the leaky wikileaks or the nine one one litmus tests.  What it is that we get is never the real thing, but a facsimile of agenda then widely reported in the form of weakened facsimiles of already slippery facsimiles, i.e.; long on speculation and short on fact eventually morphing into whipped cream riches for an already generously enriched security industry.  Shall we talk about the weather instead?  The exceptionally brutal la nina is supposedly responsible?  For crying out loud.  Georgia has always had ice storms.  Georgia has not always had two thousands daily flights cancelled holding up the machinations of the system (spelled lost profits and pronounced as inability to make loan payments as per agreed schedule).  The real weather appears to be walloping the Wallabies today, yes, even as Pakistan is turned to fade, tomorrow, who knows where or what technology enhanced PA systems will bring forth.

The hibernators inhabiting my region are not hibernating this year.  For whatever else is unnerving, this is yet another sign, one within my view as living, breathing real phenomena of something happening that is definitely not normal.

Actually, its those birds falling out of the sky, (the Red Winged Blackbirds tribaling with their bredren, the Cowbirds, and immigrant Starlings with jeweled Tudor feathers), and the genocided fish stuffing our waterways, strange things that definitely leave pundits rushing for their notes and coming up clown-faced.  We'll be seeing stranger soon enough having entered into this gruesome phase of the revealing.  Can anyone in any location reading here say with absolute certainty the weather we are experiencing is what it is supposed to be based on how its always been since we arrived on the scene?  That it is normal for birds and fish to check out en masse?  That Queensland and Brisbane are on not well on their way to breaking Katrina's record death toll and diaspora?

There are lists around, you've seen them, taking  us through all the horrors from last year into this one.  It  is amazing to me how few mention Haiti, as if everything in Haiti is just lovely.  No cause for concern.  Besides, its all happening faster than anyone could possibly have imagined and the spotlight is on Australia now anyway, Haiti, you'd better be taking care of yourself, not that you haven't already been doing that for a few hundred years.

... It is as if “until it happens to you” that the climatic extremes don’t carry any true weight or meaning. As long as the trucks continue to run and stock the supermarkets and big box store shelves, we simply don’t care how we have treated the planet, or what sort of horrifying inheritance we have given to our children and grandchildren. ...  Admin | Survival Acres

How soon before you are sharing a makeshift pup tent you don't own because you lost everything, looking for the relief workers bearing MREs or standing on the rooftops in gated communities waiting for helicopter rescue?  Any day now my friends, it could be us, it could be anywhere at anytime.  Don't take my word for it, just look outside as the freezing rain turns to hail and still the chemtrails leave ugly ribbons across that clear blue sky quickly turned to thick, darkening snow clouds.  You wonder funny things then, what ifs and so forth.

No sooner did we leave one tragic subject another rises on its heels, keeping us in a constant state of mental occupation, a state of terrorized occupation.  As always, when we are under occupation, a small voice in the back of our minds asks underneath this one and that one, what else is going on?  The thrust to keep us from asking that exact question is on like never before.  We are not to know, under some unnameable threat of some unnameable harm to unknown citizens, some of whom can guess what may be taking place.  It does appear however, at this time in the history of civilization we are revisiting every reason we should never have gone where we find ourselves today.  It is a sad fact of life on Earth that some of us are open minded and some of us are too scared as opposed to being too ignorant, to accept reality on its own terms rather than constantly twisting it into something in which you have a personal investment.  Sure, the ignorant have big numbers, but how ignorant is someone really when no one can miss the events of the present blaring from every bullhorn on every corner of the planet?  You'd have to be all the way out there heavily abusing opiates, fully into your fries and fried pies to remain ignorant for long in the revealing.

Now I am just like you, another watcher, another concerned little person subject to the same incessant diminishment of life's quality.  And surely it makes you feel awful, especially when all people just want to feel safe, free in their homes and communities and at peace with everything and everyone else.  Don't look for corruption to fade away in the snow and ice, they are already showing us exactly how the revealing will be handled.

It won't be handled.  It will be denied to the last man.  Corruption is here to stay for the duration and guide the suffering with excuses and falsehoods.  As the planet becomes a nonstop horror flick, the foreclosures in disguise will continue until there is nothing left anywhere.  The closed mind denies everything until their dying breath.

The closed mind emerged from the womb a sort of shapeless cellulose sponge absorbing the machinations of ego constructs never challenged, educated in complete expectation of being served a birthright of convenience and unoriginal, incomplete thought processes in which use of the physical body supplied was thought an inconvenience.  Picking up the mail last week, I overheard two cellulose adults in line, speaking loudly as if softer speaking would not create the desired impression on their unwilling audience, saying something about as soon as whatever happened she would get a new SUV.  This flew past the ears of twenty five or thirty onlookers in classic frayed farmhand overalls and beaten down workboots which tell you the socks probably do not have any foot covering left.  Onlookers who have already sold their livestock because they cannot afford to feed them any longer.  Onlookers who once ran small shops and businesses who absolutely can no longer afford the fees the state requires from small business and lost the last shreds of revenue to the energy gluttons with card bearers only refueling stations.  The strip malls are empty save the dancing illegal waving his hot pizza sandwich board at the intersection.  The biggest drag in all of this is they will take us down with them - all the way from repairing our own workboots, mending our socks and digging our own graves. 

We are in the thick of it now.  Its all unfolding as we grip our chairs, belted in for the long run, a few thousand years of peak die off to come before one beautiful day it will be different, cleaned up by the Forces where all killing products were lost to resource theft and disease vanished because the official sample keepers lost their vials of stored plagues when the earthquake hit, when the bars to the cells crashed down and Guantanamo simply slid over the mid-Atlantic states into Canada before sinking into a rusticle-covered grave somewhere near the Titanic's crypt.


Last week I wrote  everyday we play musical chairs, let me change that to musical deck chairs because the shoreline is receding making way for the tsunami as we speak.

Even if you did everything right, it was impossible really to back off completely from use of some material, likely a plastic water container or a commercial soap boxed in cardboard and shrinkwrapped, or from the idea we might offend others with our natural scent and sprayed our underarms with an aerosol deodorant.  Even during the flu last December, Dublin Mick and I, thousands of miles away from each other, both took our doctor's orders seriously and ingested pharmaceuticals. Even the lonely woodsman far from advertising's grip makes a trip to Wal*Mart for airtight containers every now and then, I know, I've seen it.  But that's not happening anymore, we ditched our involvements and got right with the Earth, yet sometimes we slip, its designed to be unavoidable.  The trick might be to stop blaming ourselves, but to get on with our survival skills, perhaps write them down, be sure to show them to the children, someone has to carry this knowledge into the future if mankind has a future, something we will never know unless we are reincarnated into whatever species comes about as a result of ... the revealing.


The coming months are almost guaranteed to be a downplay of the present, even they know its over the top already, but if you ask you will find you are in the company of Wetikos who refuse to lose.  So don't waste your energy, instead get that Tao in hand and make peace with the present while you can.


rusticles photo: c. google images

sunglasses, thank you

At first, the revelation Macondo (The Macondo Prospect - Mississippi Canyon Block 252, abbreviated MC252) is actually an asphalt volcano beneficial to sea life brought a modicum of relief. But the part where sea life is murdered in the present only to be replaced in the distant future with sea life shown some kind of beneficience is illogical from a "What was wrong with our sea life in the first place" point of view. It sounds like Iraq, Afpak, Iran propaganda dressed in seaweed. We have to destroy them to make them better. Our leader did promise to rebuild the region better than it was before, did he not? It all depends on what better means, doesn't it. This is where I lost the logic. You see, I thought it was fine just as it was.

How it "was" turns out to be not how it really was and has not been for a very long time. All those little plotted specks in the sea are wannabe BPs and refining ops. Next time, it will be one of them in disaster as it often has been before and worse, as it has been for over 5o years in the Niger Delta. The child selling sodas in the photo at the left was not even born when it became commonplace, this is the whole world to her, likely the only one she will ever know. The older she gets, the worse it will get and maybe the whole reason she is alive at all. Her mother said you need to do something, I am dying, now get up, get out there, take care you don't linger. Not too far from now she will repeat her mother's words never having lived in any other place, never knowing anything else, never having done anything else. Have they all just accepted they are targeted for elimination so they can be replaced by something "better"? Not completely. They have been beaten down into a belief system of obedience among the oppressed-extreme in which any infrequent scrap that may fall into one's possession is reward enough. Scraps bring out the wild dogs. Empty bellies are only aggressive until they are in the weakened throes of starvation. This is our future. It may not be our future today or next year, but it is our future if nothing gets in the way. There is nothing stopping it from taking over as it is doing. You are free to disagree if you can.

It will not escape your attention that we could be talking about any resource rich geography anywhere on the planet. Whether or not its delivered by Macondo or the mining industry or any of the subsidiary support sharks, anywhere there exists an "opportunity" for extraction, the end result is the same. Endless war, endless blowouts, what's the diff? We move back to square one. These crises are all one crisis, however presented and sold, all that is different is merely in the eyes of the beholder made beholden by the MSM and more importantly, the characters of the reporting witnesses. Because, my friends, on the streets, they do not speak of crisis. They do not speak of peaks. They don't know or care about these events. Mostly, they are busy picking up the pieces of their lives as each pillar of existence as they knew it is ripped away. Their days are ruled by loss every day and wondering what to do about it, if anything. They have no vacancy for greater loss.

I've stopped reading many of the stories. You can count on most of them being another message about "blah blah blah ___ barrels leaking per day" in which the amounts were never as low as you were just about to read. Do you need to read more? Knock yourself out, but since these drillers can do what they want freely anywhere else in the world, they do not feel especially pressured to make the persnickety continent of North America into a special case. Again, they are showing us the future. Extraction today and tomorrow and tomorrow is dangerous and dirty work that pays so ridiculously well they feels it fully justifies the mess they make, casting aside all concern for others and for Nature. We saw it with Colony Collapse Disorder and we saw it in Utah where a number of trapped miners were simply buried alive and we see it with the sea life and the death and misery to come. This is the cost of doing business in Peak knowing all the while it cannot possibly last as species are extincting and myriad bubbles bursting far and wide resulting in disastrous consequences unfolding repeatedly across the entire planet. Ignore these costs of doing business and you make a deal with the devil. There has never been a good side to dealing with the devil, evil is destined to last only as long as no one knows what you are doing whether it is hidden for centuries or a day. Many still have no idea or concern, the happy talk has been pounded into their brains from birth cushioned by oversize comforts and chemical delusions. As westerners were lulled into thinking they could have it all, a vast desert of long-buried, ego-driven prejudice was reopened allowing the simpleminded to demean everyone that did not live or think as they do. We are better than them. We are smarter, richer, more clever, more equipped to survive and propagate the species. Ahem, how many times have I said "...when it is all gone, there will be none left for ANYONE at any price".

There must be great energy propelled by staggering riches, expended in the challenge of concealing actions that will unquestionably, eventually, shamefully be exposed to all. The game is to get as much by force while they can before the jig is up. Surely it is intense. It is the most amazing waste of time we will ever live to see take place. It may well be a World record breaker, possibly a Universal record in sheer arrogance. Who are these monsters dicking with our planet? They are global mob celebrities yanking us along unwittingly through their harrowing chapters of massive sorrow as if the tragedy they create were a magic mind-magnet. A large part of the game is our abject dismay. They need us as an audience as black needs white. Without us pointing out what they do, there is no game at all. Imagine that? There would be no plunder if no one saw theft as plunder. When they figure that out (and they may be close now) all the world will be a Niger Delta and there will be no more war, no media, no pundits, no courts, no small freedoms at all, just blackened lands and dead seas. You are either a weapons carrier or trapped in the mineshaft.

If you have read this far, you already know how it works. The longer you watch, the worse it becomes. Its only a matter of time before something crazier comes to the forefront just as soon as the ratings tell them the GOM is slipping somewhat.

We really do "go on". They have agencies to tell them whether or not we are interested. They will wrongly perceive a key to our attentions and pursue that too until its scheduled to graduate to the next level. Of course, you don't like it, but whether or not we approve is definitely not their concern. That much is more than clear.

of saints and beasts in the halfway house

Tempted and tried, we’re oft made to wonder
Why it should be thus all the day long;
While there are others living about us,
Never molested, though in the wrong. ...
author unknown

When you are halfway to somewhere, you are really nowhere at all. You are between somewhere ahead and somewhere past. You can't really accomplish much in that place, you do not know the future, and the past didn't work, so what do you do? You linger in non-action until the passage of time pushes you along, like it or not, and then you are forced to contend with where you land. At least, that is what some people do, here in the land of CAN DO, we'll note they are a majority. Awakening to the late realization they are either nowhere or somewhere they've been dumped against their own unexercised will, they appear to be doing the slow burn. This would be all to the good if they had no fear of consequence and if what needed to be done existed on a small scale, which it does not. Have any of them figured out the idea of choice is nonsense? When you review the current list of necessary repairs required if we are ever going to function decently, we find right away that everything signed, sealed and executed is barely, minimally, addressed in miniscule token and never in our favor. When I say "our" I am speaking of Mother Earth, her body, her species and her glorious (bow your head on bended knee) perfect, all supreme, most elegant system that time after time is shoveled to the back of the line, stumbling, battered, magnificent to the last, here we see honor and the definition of sainthood extraordinaire on its back still giving through its dying breath.

A wise and beloved Rastaman once said "God washed his hands of this place long ago." There are days this may appear to be the case, but now, PRAISES, we have the Apocalypse revealing to us the Divine is right here and the only entity on top of these situations. We learn once again, and again after that, a halfway house is no place to be. Each person living has the true choice of standing up for the whole in spite of the very real threat of consequence. When the job to be done appears beyond your skills, it doesn't matter at all. All that matters is that you are aware and willing to apply yourself when even the vaguest opportunity presents itself. We see these little people in the Gulf taking Pelicans and Spoonbills to the bird cleaning station and the numbers are few, but each worker is a saint. And yet, of what value is sainthood in the growth industry? How often are the saints among us rewarded for their relatively small acts of loving kindness and compassion? They are never rewarded unless they are selected for showcasing at a SOTUS as an example of how benevolently reform stretches above the fruited plain.

Something is missing from the use of the word "reform". It is incomplete as a word without something defining just what is that is being reformed. Health reform, financial reform ... again, its not enough. Reform does not always mean for the better, it does mean" transform" however, which is to change, somewhat, but not completely otherwise it would state so as in Complete Financial Reform Against Corruption. If you pay attention to these kind of sneaky details, you might see that there is no reform of anything. Just a worsening of the condition to the extent we are now seeing (thanks, Apocalypse) the dearth of effective reform is taking us farther along into oblivion in the bullet train. It is this spectacular ineffectuality of our CAN DOs partnering with the courage and heroics of Gumby that reveals to us what to expect in the not too distant future, which is just more of the same as that which came before us in an ever more escalating thrill ride designed to squeeze blood from a rock. Real reform doesn't need up or down votes. That which is filthy and diseased demands a thorough scrubbing and removal of any leftover residue in order to completely reform the health (Livity) of the object undergoing transformation. I don't want to hear about reform delivered by a poseable doll with invented definitions concealing yet another hustle during which sponsor breaks advertise the continuation of exactly what screams for reform in an additional effort to gouge whatever bank accounts of the little people remain intact, if they are intact. You'll note the account gouging is a lot like offshore drilling, resource extraction, its getting louder as there is less and less to gouge. The stakes grow higher with each passing day... the mighty culture of CAN DO has become "WILL DO as long as you don't know what we're doing, besides, you can't do anything about it anyway or you mark yourself but good for some, heh, saintly torture". They mock us. They call us conspiracy theorists and 9-11 enthusiasts in one breath and extract payment with penalties in the next. (Logic: you would think when submitting invoices, if you want your money you would not subject the hapless scofflaw to penalties. That seems to say out front "This is just the beginning of our prosperous relationship where you surrender your first born and the offspring of their unions into infinity.")

Thus it has become increasingly obvious who it is that is really in charge here. We don't actually need anyone in charge in the first place, but especially not when the particular version of being in charge is voting for change and getting genocide. Oops. It may be that we have come so far so fast as to have lost the ball forever. When you think over your past purchases during these several decades of outsourced manufacturing, ask how much of those products and capital goods are genuinely worthy of having been produced, especially at the cost to so many who suffer as a consequence of the insatiability of CAN DO. Now - a step deeper, how could those tragic little people slaving in sweatshops have possibly ever performed as master craftspeople lovingly creating technological wizardry better and at less cost while under incarcerating sweat shop circumstances, indebted servitude, owing their very soul to the company store indefinitely, make ANYTHING that works? And lasts? A pair of socks gets holes on the first wearing, formaldehyde in drywall, melamine in pet food (only pet food?), the blowout preventer seal spawning genocide, every electronic toy you ever bought lies useless next to the useless VCR in the public storage unit rented under duress, but it doesn't matter, there is more where that came from, and all of it run over roughshod with the next release of whatever item/situation/cultural requisite is reformed, improved and upgraded as you wonder how in God's perfect world will we ever be able to recover all that has been lost while it still as of this writing, marches into hell, blaring trumpets, the Beast of Reform hungering, spittle dribbling from its blubber lips, lumbering from side to side, surveying seabeds, tar sands, other peoples' lifeblood needs - always from the point of view of "You Exist, You're Mine ... and here is the pretext we'll follow as I work my way through, limb by limb."

The Beast doesn't give a damn who is in charge or what stupefying reform is pushed through or not. He know its always the same and he damn well knows how to survive. That the beast has no honor is something that would never confuse him. He's a serial killer of the highest order who's work is not just cut out for him, it is handed to him on a sterling tray complete with a cornucopia of the rarest, most sought after, endangered to the extreme, verging on extinction, exquisite jewels such as caviar-covered Pelican eggs. CAN DO is a joke to him, an inside joke, his enabler/supplier always at the ready: "Here, adored Beast, please have more. Its on the house (and senate). Do tell what else should please your grace. The world is your oyster."

You know how it goes. You know what it means and you know where it leads. Addiction never goes well, worse, addiction always leads to justifying addiction, leading to vulnerability, arriving at unwanted coercion. It may be said in some corners it is our fault, but it is not. Our only portion of blame is having been cheated and lied into a dead end detour when all along the road we traveled was meant to lead us to a better place. I'm sure that road is still available if we could only get our bearings. Sometimes I feel like I am watching a secret dog fighting ring, vicious to the death, everything about it wrong and repulsive. Or a cock fight with the tragic rooster in spurs, feathers bloodied, body fluids leaking from every orifice, as screaming crowds shove fistfuls of money into the betting window.

Wondering when enough is enough is a waste of time. Is it not enough to see the truth behind the events taking place, is it not enough to see the response will always be the same despite which event is under discussion or who pens what reform? The dealmaking between the Beast and his caretakers is one sided and that side isn't on the side of saints. They have a special way of dealing with interlopers who have yet to successfully demolish the Beast. But YOU can do it, its a CAN DO culture after all. The not so secret and powerful weapon is to starve him of your attention exactly as they do in the media when they want a story to disappear.

There is good everywhere. Wonders to behold and participate within. I see it on an hourly basis if not more frequently. A healing and hungry Guinea Pig or playing with the dog and his favorite toy, making healthy clean meals for my house of males, planting flowers in the Mofusa and Malcome Memorial Park, taking photos in the desert, a painting that paints itself while I hold the brush, with things like this at the forefront of our attention all the time, why do we need busy Beasts from the halfway house bossing around the populations? Can you explain how these monsters have anything to offer in our time of diminishing resources? They and their psychopath bredren appear to have nothing of more import to do than agitate, snarl and prey on the defenseless even as they know and we know - get hip, we are all in this fix together.

This is how its going to be, will you be there?

Last year I wrote something similar for the deleted Deep Into Artlife West Stories blog and let it go when managing too many blogs became unwieldy. I am so glad to see John's work today, he says it all, as always. You will find his brand new short story in its entirety below. Many of you will have already seen it, however you must be a subscriber to his newsletter and if you want to see his new serial of works, Fade to Black, you'll have to subscribe to that as well. This is the only time I will put it up on this site, all the subscribing information lives on Survival Acres. But if you lose the link, which happens in a crash, I will be glad to share it. It is exciting to see how John easily switches to first person after so long publishing facts. I'm really looking forward to more. We do tire of nonsense, don't we? Denial and cover ups, like hey, just spill it. You see, they think we cannot handle the truth of their corruption, ah but we've been conditioned well during these recent Lost Decades of Lies.
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Short Story

I've got to get these words down before it's too late. I don't know how much time I have, they may have seen me come in here and I know if the find me, it's all over. For good this time.

I wish I had more time, but I don't, so bear with me, I'll try to get it all down as best I remember it.

The Thirty-Years war was finally over. Actually, it didn't last that long and some say it wasn't just a single war. Well, it wasn't, not really, but one war led to another with no break in between and it wasn't long before everyone was involved. It only stopped long enough for the nations to rearm themselves, so we never really did catch a break.

It doesn't matter anyway how long it lasted or what it's called, it happened, and it destroyed everything. By that, I mean EVERYTHING. There is nothing left. There's no water, no soil, no food, no cities, nothing. Not here. Maybe not anywhere, I don't know. It's all gone, dismantled and taken apart or blown to bits. Many areas are radioactive now, but you should know that, everybody knows that.

As far as the planet goes, well, we're fucked. Royally. I'm alive only because I got very, very lucky and because somebody else saw all this coming and he made it possible for me to be here today. But my time is running out. I'm sick now and the strompers are after me, I'm pretty sure they saw me head in this direction.

Sorry, I'll stick to the story. The year was 2010. This was the year we, I mean the planet broke all temperature records, at least it was hotter then it was before. It got worse later, like last year, it was really bad. The crop losses were huge then and the world plunged towards hunger and starvation. It was the poor countries that suffered the most. The rich countries continued to hoard food and energy resources (oil in those days) for themselves. Those that didn't have enough didn't get enough from anyone, anywhere.

The United Nations was still in existence back then, before they were taken over by the Global Legion. But they weren't able to do anything anyway. 2010 was bad, but this was only the beginning of the troubles we endured.

I wasn't even here then, not yet. My dad didn't buy into the promises the government was making and back then, you could still have as many kids as you wanted. Even though by now a lot of people knew that overpopulation would only make things worse then they already were.

I had two sisters and one brother. They're all dead now, both my sisters died from the Red Plague that killed those millions in the 20's. My brother was killed fighting in Angola. God only knows why he was stupid enough to go, although I don't suppose he had any real choice. Everyone was drafted back then, didn't matter who you were or where you lived, you fought. The Global Legion saw to that, everybody was "enlisted".

My dad called this conscription and slavery. I didn't go, because as far as the government was concerned, I never existed. That was hard, living and hiding and pretending I was one of "them", but I wasn't anybody. I worked at home with my dad, and when he died, well I just kept myself going, but I had my dad's library and research.

Our neighbors thought I was unable to fight, but they never asked either. My dad told me once that he'd fixed it for me somehow, and that they'd leave me alone. For that, I am eternally grateful, as I'm sure I'd be among the millions of dead that have been lost.

But I wasn't prepared for what came after my dad's death. It was his books, the ones he wrote himself and the other ones I found. And his journal. That was the most amazing piece of writing I have ever seen anywhere. It changed my life and my thinking and I became what my dad said I would. This was before I even knew what he was talking about. I became a "gojun", the word has several definitions. I like that one that means "fight from the spirit". I think my dad might even be the one who invented this word, but I'm not sure.

He died hard, but I think he knew that he would. The blood was everywhere, but he'd killed the three who killed him. I found him too late to do anything about it, and buried him up on our hill, at night when it was really dark and nobody could see. There wasn't anybody else there and I didn't know who I could trust back then, so it was just me and him in the cold ground. I cried a lot, I couldn't help myself, but I was glad I was able to do this for him. A lot of people had died, and nobody buried them. Entire cities had been destroyed in an instant and entire generations of families were instantly wiped out. By then, I was fourteen and it was 2028.

I didn't know what to say to the neighbors when they eventually asked, so I simply told them the truth. That's something else I learned from my dad, the truth was always better then a lie. They were sympathetic, and a couple had even come by to check up on me since, but I haven't seen anybody now for a long time. George told me that my father was a good man and had made a hell of a difference in the world. It wasn't until I had read my dad's books and his journal did I finally figure out what George meant by that. To me, he was just my dad, and then he was gone.

I didn't know what to do with myself for a long time, but I managed to stay alive. One reason that happened is my dad had made sure I'd have what I needed to do that. I won't tell you everything, 'cause he also said it's not a good idea to blab about everything, but he made sure that there would be the basic things I needed to stay alive and that's what I did.

By 2030, things were getting really bad. A lot of people that were still left had disappeared or died from one thing or another. The Red Plague took a lot of them, but others were killed by the strompers. They were forcing people to talk about all their neighbors then, back when they still thought some of us might have something still worth taking. It didn't matter what you might have, they'd take it. They'd even take the young boys and girls when they found them.

That's why they're after me, somebody talked, but I don't blame them, whoever it might have been. The strompers were brutal, I saw what they'd done to Kevin's family, back when he still had one.

This is where I got lucky. Something, I not sure what it was, told me it was time to clear out. I'd been pretty much planning on doing this anyway, knowing that if others were disappearing near here, it would be my turn soon too. So I'd been moving my stuff, just the essentials to my hidden spot, at night when I could get it done and nobody could see. It wasn't too far, but it was still hard work.

That's when they'd come looking for me, I could tell by the signs they left that they'd been there. But I'd been gone then and like usual, they came at night. They didn't find me, but they'd found some of my dad's guns and some of the food stash that I'd still had left behind. All these things were gone now and I knew they'd be back. But they didn't find the cellar and the hidden door, where my dad and I had hid all the really important things we needed to survive.

But I was out of time, there was no way I could move this stuff fast enough by myself. And there wasn't anybody I could ask to help either, almost everyone around here was gone now. So I decided to just move everything I could and hide it close by, and then try and get that all moved to my hidden spot where I was planning to live.

It took me all night to do it, but I got it done. There was a dense stand of trees still alive back then nearby, where my dad had planted them years before. He told me that this was our future firewood supply and it wasn't far away at all. So I made dozens of trips with a wheelbarrow and taking everything out of the cellar, I got it all stashed in the trees. By dawn, I was exhausted and I managed to drag myself away someplace where I could see if the strompers would come back.

They did too, but they didn't bother to look around much. They just checked the old house and crashed around breaking things, looking for more food and weapons. There wasn't much there, part of my dad's strategy had been to never appear to have too much. They left empty handed this time, having already taken everything that they wanted.

That night, I started making the trips to the hidden spot and getting everything moved. The weather turned cold by the time I was done, I could only do one trip a night loaded down. But nobody found that stash, which was a damned good thing, or I'd have long since been dead.

And this is where I stayed for the next seven years, hiding here, coming out only at night and never in the day. But now everything is dead, it happened so fast, you can see the gray ashes everywhere. And I'm sick, so I broke my own rule and tried to find some help. There's blood when I cough now and I don't know how to treat whatever it is that I've got. And that's how the strompers found me again. I'd left to see if I could find help, I didn't want to to die up here all alone.

I'd gone in the direction of town, but I hadn't been there now in many years. It took me two days of walking to get near, and I didn't see anybody. But when I got there, I realized I had made a mistake. There was nothing there, just some burned out hulks of buildings, but no sign of any people. The town had burned to the ground apparently, and was abandoned.

I decided to take another route back, but it was slow going. What had used to be a verdant forest way back now was now just a wasteland, but there was a great many downed dead trees I had to cross, and this is where they spotted me. I had just cleared the top of a ridge, the only living thing moving for miles around, or so I thought. But I'd skylined myself and the movement caught their eye.

They were down below me in a clearing, there was a camp of some sort with huge piles of junk piled up all around. They saw me about the same time I saw them. I disappeared back over the ridge before they could shoot. If they could shoot, I didn't know if they had any weapons still or any ammunition for them, but I recognized their uniforms or what passed for them. They were strompers alright, and I was certain that they'd kill me if they could find me.

I ran, jumped, leaped and crawled until my lungs tore through my chest, and then I ran some more. Once I thought I might have a little distance away from them, I started back tracking very carefully to hide my path. This was hard to do now, as the land was so badly damaged that going any direction, even backwards was slow going. And I was still coughing up blood, more now that I was exerting myself so hard.

I decided to not go directly back to my hidden spot. If they were able to track me, I'd lead them right to me. But I made another mistake, I didn't count on them not giving up. I was probably the only living thing they'd seen in a long time, I certainly hadn't seen anything alive.

It took me three days of hiding and evading to make it back here, but I'm pretty sure they're not far away now. I still need to tell you about what happened to the rest of the planet, as far as I know it to be. I'm not sure if anybody will ever find this, but I've got to try.

Well, I said we're fucked, and we are. I don't know how many people are still alive, but if they're like me, they didn't move far enough north to survive. Everything is dying around here and that means I can't grow any food or hunt any animals or even drink the water like before. I have to triple filter the water now and it might even be why I'm sick, but I don't know.

The war took everything and whatever was left, was destined to die from hordes of desperate people eating everything. Nothing was preserved. The forest and trees were cut down and what survived eventually died from the gray ash falling from the sky. The streams were choked with this stuff. The plants died, the animals died or migrated someplace else, but here, now -- there's nothing.

I heard the seas rose and flooded entire countries and all the low lying islands. My dad wrote about this in his journal, but I've never seen the ocean. He'd written that there were nearly two billion refugees before I was born, I can't even imagine that number. Where did those people go? My dad wrote about them only a little more, most of them disappeared into other lands and refugee camps, but almost all of them died in the wars that followed.

I didn't know where to go. I stayed hidden all those years, but leaving really didn't seem like an option. If I left, I'd probably have been caught, because by then you couldn't survive off in the woods by living on the land. They'd already wiped out almost every living thing that could be eaten and even though the gray ash hadn't come yet, there wasn't anything left to keep you alive. I survived this long only because I had food. I was one of the few, maybe even the only one who did. The strompers simply took their food from whoever they could, I heard that they had even eaten people after the animals disappeared.

But what I don't know, and I still don't know is if everybody is dead and dying everywhere else. My dad told me that there would be groups up north, far, far away up near the pole. He said they might live, if they were smart, and if they didn't kill everything off. He said it was possible and that's why I'm writing this all down. Maybe they'd like to know what happened down here as much as I'd like to have known what happened up there.

The radio quit working almost four years ago, so I have no idea what's happened elsewhere since then. But even then it was all propaganda like my dad said. They were still trying to force their rules and regulations on everyone, even though there were far fewer of us still around and everything was either dead or dying. But the radio fell and broke and I haven't heard another voice until a few days ago when the strompers tried to catch me. I've been very lonely, but I've been alone so long that I guess I'm pretty used to it by now.

But my story -- I watched everything die, all around me. It was gradual at first, but then it was faster and faster. It was almost as if someone had taken an eraser and was rubbing everything out. It was very sad to see. I loved the forest and the wilds but it became a harsh, bitter place with things dying everywhere. There wasn't enough rain and the forest fires were terrific. This accounted for the grey ash at first, but later there was more as the bombs fell.

The dying continued and it was a dark period for me. I couldn't help it, so I began to read more and more. I'd managed to save my dads book and his journal. It was his journal that saved me. I memorized every word. He had written about this time, predicting it all as he saw it in his own words and in his own time. He had felt that mankind would not learn from his mistakes and would push the entire planet past the breaking point. They called these "tipping points" and he was right.

All I ever saw was death and destruction. It didn't seem to even matter anymore, death was everywhere and humans were behind it. I'd learned to kill, from my father, but only when it was necessary and I'd never killed another human. But I didn't think humans were sacred, there was much too much death in them for me to believe that. I just never had cause to kill another human, but I was always armed for the occasion if it occurred.

My dad had lots of guns and he'd made sure I knew how to use them, clean them and make each shot count. Ammunition was absolutely priceless, even when I was young. Now, ammunition is probably worth a month's supply of food, but I bet you nobody would trade that kind of food for a bullet or even for a whole box of shells. Food is gone now, nobody has any food and what good is ammunition really going to do you if there is no food?

My dad said the same thing about gold and silver. People were hoarding this stuff, believing it was going to help them when things got bad. They found out that this wasn't true, people that had the stuff they needed weren't willing to trade it for useless metal. They'd only trade their stuff for important stuff, like medicine, sometimes liquor (which nobody really needs either, but it was something people in those days still seemed to want) and stuff like boots and warm clothing. Some people got stupid and got drunk and it got them dead pretty fast. My dad had a little of this, but I didn't bother to take it, it's probably still in the cellar.

I did take the guns though, but I don't see how they're going to help me much now. I need help, I'm weak and sick now and there's nobody around now that could help. If the strompers catch me, it won't matter anyway and then I'll use my guns on them. This place is pretty good, if I'm awake when they come, I'll see them first and these guns are pretty good, I can probably kill a dozen before they make it up here.

But I'll be honest, I don't see the point. Why are we still tearing each other apart? Why are we still fighting over the last scraps like this? Haven't we done enough damage? My dad said it would come to this. He saw this coming. He said that the last human would be surrounded by empty shell casing as he killed off the last surviving animals on earth -- which would be another human. I don't know if he thought that that man would be me, but if he did, he never said it.

I don't want this to be me. What a terrible legacy this is! I can't believe it's come to this now, this is too horrible to bear. I think I'm glad that I'm sick, I don't want this to be me. If I die here and nobody comes, at least I will die without that.

But I hope that somebody finds this letter. I really do. I want them to see if they can, that some of us finally understood that there has to be a better way. There was no need for all this fighting, even though I didn't fight, I still feel like I was a part of it. I hid, and I ran, and I stayed away as much as I could, but I didn't have any choice. That's fighting, isn't it? Isn't it really the same thing? We're not working together, we're not trying to make things better, we're still working against each other, tearing it all apart.

This is terrible, but I don't see how it could have turned out any other way. My dad said so too --- he said that we'd keep doing this to each other until we finally destroyed it all because we were stubborn and foolish and stupid and we'd not even believe the evidence before our own eyes. He wrote about that -- a lot. Back then, when he started his journal, they'd not believe anything it seemed, even if they were standing right over it looking at it. I found that hard to believe, but not anymore. I seen it, in the eyes of others and in what my dad had wrote. Nobody would believe it could happen to them.

I wish my dad was here, but it's probably better that he's not. I don't think he'd have known what do now anymore then I do, but I don't know. I sure do miss him though.

I think I hear them coming now, there's a sound down there that that shouldn't be there. I need to stop writing now and get ready. I hope someone finds this -- tell whoever is left that I didn't want it to end this way. Tell them that even in all this death and agony and gray and ash that I believe we could have done it better -- a lot better. Tell that that if we had embraced life and all things living, this place would still be here for us. This was our home. Our only home.

Tell them, if there are anyone else out there alive to still tell -- to never, EVER forget what we did.

Tell them that if they get to live -- to live it right.

And tell them to take my dad's books and his journal. You'll understand why when you read them.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Fade To Black

I've written a few chapters of a fictional book, "Fade To Black", that subscribers can sign up for. It's a free e-book of course, you will need to sign up to receive this.

Admin, Survival Acres

It takes a train to cry

What Color is the Train Today ... I read that on Chris Floyd's Empire Burlesque just before reading Zoner's latest blog entry. It goes right along with what I've been thinking lately, namely when you stop educating the population to educate themselves, as in the true intent of real education, this is what you get. You get stupid people and you get freaks that have no behavioral controls. Then you get the nasty enforcers who have to keep the freaks at bay except there are far more freaks than enforcement. You would have to be a certain type of freak to want to have Halloween every day. You'd think they'd fall over with all the techno-weaponry hanging off their trousers. Out of the vehicle.
And that is only the visible tip of the iceberg. The real results of any movement so elaborate it takes years to implement on a global scale are showing now. It is impossible to mark the day or even the era when it began because it has always gone on. There was always an irrational segment of the population that blew off free thinking and acted, physically instead, often in sotto voce, if you were not convinced, stick around and they'd be delighted to convince you. It was never convincing to a person who thought.

Its amazing that we have so many people overpopulating this planet and so few who can think, isn't it? That the Illusion tirelessly works to buoy weak fabrications about what we are experiencing. None of them know the truth? Get real! They must. Some must. Its impossible to miss. The sell out to fascism was a bad move. Imperialism is a bad move. Bailouts and rip offs are bad moves. No one stands in the way? This is hard to believe. There is no difference in sentiment and opinion in the ranks? When everything is fubar, do you continue down the same road to annihilation or do you do an about face? How deep, how low, how high, how far goes the corruption? Are we, at our core, a corrupt species? Or perhaps corruption is contagious. Maybe it is in the food supply?

We are in an irreversible state at this time, a state of endless war brought to you by the econo-ocracy, the direct link to endless freak stupidity. Every exit is sewn up. Every person is in for a skinning, even if you have no skin left. Homeless, bloody, invalidated as human has no skin left. Every level upwards from the squatter's basements adds a layer of epidermis. Even if you live far away from the crowds in another country, you are living on resources that are and will be necessary to keep up the fiction. If not today then tomorrow. There is no end in sight. This was written in the wind that pushed the sails of the slave ships long, long before there was a word for mapping out parcels of land on someone else's continent.

The Trojan Horse has opened his belly exposing the mercenary armies of the freaks. It will continue until we are no more. Afterwords, there will be just them and then ... nothing, but the dust and smoke hanging in the air and bones brittle in the sun. Everything comes from Nature, everything returns to Nature. We are born from nature, we are nature. It is natural then the last war is ultimately a life and death struggle against Nature. Who will win and when? Each side thinks they know the answer, but the evidence on the mental scales of justice shows one side far lighter than the other. I refer you to The Art of Survival, Taoism and the Warring States in the Free Never Overdue Library on the sidebar concerning the victor knowing his enemy. Victory comes from thinking outside the box, i.e.; overstanding or overthinking, zooming out to the bigger picture, never taking for granted what you might find.

the end of the broken toy empire

Its that special time again, cleaning up the dinner dishes. Our dishwasher, and everyone else's around this hood, is spreading permanent white film on everything I put inside of it. The tap water is foamy. I came to find by reading a flagrag from a faraway county that our immediate area suffered a watermain break in the not too distant past, um, just about the time our problem showed itself.

When these things happen, and they happen with increasing frequency, things like NO SERVICE showing on the cellphone screen or calling into the corporatocracy about my promised Windows 7 upgrade and being told by an obviously outsourced and disinterested voice to call back in around 2 days since they were "in reset" at the moment, or the major artery into and out of a midwest hub has crumbled from the overweight of homebound commuters and everybody drove into the river, or the commuter trains in head-on collisions because the computerized traffic signals MALFUNCTIONED crushing at least 25 people to smithereens while the engineer twittered, we who are watching have little alternative but to weep in anguish that the world we thought was genuine is just a broken toy.

What did the plastics pushers think would happen when plastic breaks? Did they think at all? What did the mechanical engineers think when they put the rolls of plans into the hands of the Soprano's construction manager? What did the construction inspector think when he ran across entire regions of over-valued roach motels infected with lazy errors, bandaids, beerbottles, buckets of cheap labors' urine and Elmers glue-all? What is the community tax collector thinking when he outlaws wells and grazing animals, who is he in league with to declare self-defeating regulations and piles on surcharges and service fees to afford to send out meter bills on postcards anyone curious can read and will? We found one from the property tax assessors recently on a postcard declaring the value of the house. Everyone got one. Everyone knows everything, its their job. Puts food on the table for those outsourced by the corporatocracy too busy "creating" to handle the volume of eligible laptop users trying to sidle out of Vista's clutches. You don't "qualify" without active x going though your underwear drawer.

Oh, these tests and trials, they are the brillo pads of these times. Scrubbing bubbles foaming up the mores of our peeps. Little seratonin smileys leaving the station, gathering sweetly on the platform for their turn on the theme park's uptake inhibitor. We're not supposed to know the world is a box in the garage filled with broken toys that has come alive and threatens to consume the house, the neighborhood, the Interstates, the municipalities, the banks, the food chain, the great institutions of the great urban centers, the health of every living being who inhabits the gross intentional juxtaposition we find ourselves trapped inside today. Even our correctional institutions are privatized sleep away camps. No longer the private cells for two, heh, its bunkbeds dorm-style so everyone does as everyone else will. Cheaper to construct and faster, but when its feuding time its everyone's riot.

...Corrections officers got word that violence was brewing at the prison, prompting a lockdown imposed Thursday night. Tensions between Latino and black prisoners flared two days later, according to officers here.

But in the end, inmates of every race were involved, leaving the cause of the clash unclear...

At the end of the day, all these self-destructing tchatchke and their plastic parts and soldered chips and shims and safety pins are human waste for urban landfills upon which monster doziers glide atop pressing, flattening until the next delivery repeats the overflowing toybox history of superpower legoland in the 21st Century on Planet Earth.

This brings me to to dispel a common belief concerning the popular Fema Camps story. The riot pictures above will have you thinking about that. There will be no internment of dissidents, no meals, no bunks in dorms, no hour of outdoors because it will be all outdoors unless you've managed to squeeze your family into a tent city until they are outlawed and you end up hobos in the underbrush huddling in a lean-to. There is no money for camps, there will be ... nothing. At least imprisoned felons are earning their way through the system, but you? Nada. Its all broken anyway, yes, it says Built to Last right here on the cornerstone, but that's silly, isn't it. Its another logoslogan printed on a removable sticker. The joke's on you. Have another Kleenex. We're all going to be brushing our teeth with leaf paste and eating bark until Darth Vader arrives with his citations pad and leashed collection agents.

Let's say you could play that one out all the way - comforting yourself that later on by Obamagic you'll qualify for some kind of relief. Homecare perhaps (I don't think so) or one of those Adult Living Facilities (no, again)? I seriously doubt the luxury of a nursing home in your golden years will exist anywhere unless Satan is running the personnel department.

The truth is we're in a trap with the lid padlocked and the keycode lost in a fedex breakdown on the Ventura Freeway. Passwords and plastic toy parts and desperate resumes flying every which way into the never-ending wildfires and plastic netting holding back the mudslides until there's no more netting to be found, no matter the price. We are facing no escape, no bunkbeds in government camps, no waiting in meal lines, no place to rest your body and just be. From here on out. After we're lost in the demands of the elements long enough, we could easily forget how it was we ever got there.

Page one again, how did we get here?

Taken individually, and individuals we are, each Internet user is able to come up with enough justifications to justify being online. On an individual basis. Let's assume whole nations as tribes of individuals, the ones making up these nations that are in a position to afford it - are online. Let's say everyone with a bank account jumped on the bandwagon and into the conversation, whatever was being discussed. Got that image? Good. Let's enlarge it. When the cat's away the mice will play. We're the cats.

I wonder why it is Jimmy Carter doesn't just come right out and say it. Maybe he doesn't use the Internet. Who is out there who will risk it?

I remember those days, we were still reading newspapers and watching TV. Our Internet use was intermittent, mostly scholarly then. There were still stores in the malls, places to go, films, theater, concerts, dinners and events. In retrospect, we were too busy to care a whole hell of a lot about politics. We voted if we remembered to vote. The TV determined our vote. Everything beyond the TV seemed to be unfolding normally ... until ... very suddenly too, there was a commotion in the headlines about vote recounts and hanging chads, a lot of peoples' votes were not counted, a general confusion rocked the nation, something big was happening and only the thieves knew where it would lead. The momentum of normalcy and the illusion of progress held us as firmly as if we were lobotomized and lassoed to our chairs. Months after 911 our welcome pages asked questions for us and supplied the answers. "When can we be happy again?" "Is it okay to go shopping yet?" Do you remember that part? You'll note the Internet played a large role then which ballooned over the Earth as the days and nights following September Eleventh wore on.

It is important now and will always be important to unravel the knot. The position we are in requires complete transparency of every detail contributing to our demise. Our demise is worsening, of course you see it too, some want us to know its too late. It isn't too late. To say it is too late is to allow our situation to continue to worsen. Some of the blubber absolutely needed to be lost, like the prices the medical/pharmaceutical industry jacked up beyond reach, although instead of shrinking to being within reason, you know what happened. What DO you think they have in mind while they debate Health Care for All? Ho ho. And another, more snakes swallowing their tails, the corporations have used up everything we used to buy and have nothing to sell now, no one to sell them to, a fine howda ya do. Just like the Illusion, grabbing, shoving, to get the last easy oil, jackbooting over all the dead bodies and not getting it. What can the Illusion get now that they sold everything they needed to sustain this nation? They ate themselves alive.

The hollow state we find ourselves in today is that of trivialization. The governor's tryst I'm afraid, is another slant on Blaggy's last stand, it runs together on the monitor, the media is giving them names to separate these trivias. This is only another wall of cover. As we look at the stones making up that wall, we see it was many years in the making, but will last centuries if allowed to exist. These stones, piled upon each other like the stones in the Pyramids and Machu Picchu are the tombstones of history. We are remembered by our tombstones.

Does it make you question your sanity? When something outside of yourself has you asking that question, you know there is great trouble at hand. This is not a position a thinking person will tolerate for very long. To suppose we'd all just shut up and go away is the assumption of people thinking about their next move, not what they did to you by the last one. Oh, they do not care, What me worry? Why should they, they see we are Occupado. To them, the evil magicians of white phosphorus waving taser wands, we're still pussycats busy licking the catnip.

It doesn't matter what we talk about anymore, who we are or what interesting things we do with our lives as long as the Nine Eleven Wall is in place. Almost a decade has passed and it is growing higher, sturdier still. Are we going to just accept it and trivialize our way through the bloody aftermath?

Haven't you imagined what the planning behind the scenes must have been like, the meetings, the money and sweat? The secret Energy collusion, the crimes committed in advance of the big crime? To go there, to really work it out in your mind is nearly impossible. Their thinking went like this: When something appears as impossible to understand, we generally take it for granted no one would willingly take on the work or the risk of being a spokesperson for the ugly truth.

Now, here we are, watching the Planet self-destruct and knowing it did not have to happen the way it did. But the cats were away, no one was minding the store.

Every time we talk about it, and we talk about it all the time in different words with different mental pictures connected to different experiences, I am more firm in my opinion 911 did not have to happen. All that has followed was going to happen anyway. However, if it did not include the shameless smarmy event of 911, the trail would be cleaner, but we would still know everything we now know without muddy water in the way. In other words, today we know, but it doesn't change the rest.

Dimitri Orlav was right when he suggested it will keep happening,

... Now that the reality of Peak Oil has started to sink in, one commonly hears that "The age of cheap oil is over". But does that mean that the age of expensive oil is upon us? Not necessarily. We now know (or should have learnt by now) that once oil rises to over 6% of global GDP, the world's industrial economy stalls out, and as soon as that happens, oil ceases to be particularly valuable, so much so that investment in maintaining oil production is curtailed. The next time industry tries to stage a comeback (if it ever does) it hits the wall much sooner and stalls again. I doubt that it would take more than just a couple of cycles of this market whiplash for all the participants to have two realisations: that they cannot get enough oil no matter how much they pay for it, and that nobody wants to take their money even for the oil they do have. Those who still have it will see it as too valuable to part with for mere money...

playing itself out in serial crises and catastrophes. We will see it again and then, again. There is no prevention mechanism in place. There are no punishments. They Live.

Add on to your thought process the Twilight Zone episode where Earth steadily moves away from the sun in a dream, but awake we discover its really the Earth slowly moving toward the sun and you have the poison frosting lathered into black roses as the last word in interior design beneath which all these crimes are enacted. No one will be able to survive in the latitudes of the Equator. Simultaneously the return of the Pleistocene in the Northern regions makes survival impossible there as well. Living species will attempt to squeeze in between these regions, elbow to elbow amidst desertification over here, ruined soils, toxic water, impossible winters over there, filthy air, animals and forests long-depleted. Rising sea levels. Again, rising-sea-levels ... This is Climate Chaos. Tell me you're not already seeing it. Tell me this very month of June was not three weeks of hoodies and today, tank tops and bare feet?

And now, UNDULATING clouds. Yeah, I saw them too, last winter, 2,000 miles and 6 months away from June in the midwest. They looked like cities forming in the skies. Above them, whatever activities took place, I don't know.

egos in the woodchipper

In the unlikely event you haven't noticed, things are heating up out there. Your view and my view are probably going to be different because I take thought leaps which make for a very long view. I know not everyone arrives at conclusions which seem obvious to me and lately all the thought leaps I laid out moons ago are taking on physical form. Consider any one of the immediate crises for example, and you will find elements contained within each that are rooted in all crises. This is why I've made seemingly incredulous statements such as "China issued a margin call and we are heading into the Amero" in reference to the economy. As we move along in that direction, many things take place to deny my theses. The distractions of acronym bandages, personalities, numbered G meetings, natural and unnatural catastrophes, all the other crises clamoring for solution, take away our attention from one to another until we sound like Twitterers at the bird feeder, but birds don't go to war. It was just a matter of time before Twitter was hacked, what is there that isn't hackable anymore? Any megaphone is ripe for spreading propaganda, even if its your personal information sold to an entity that "loses" it enroute to another buyer. We're going to have another war. That much is clear. It will be the worst war ever.

The US wants a big war to pull itself out of economic free fall. That will be one objective, the other equally pressing objective is the same IED-pockmarked Neocon objective you've been seeing unfold, wading through blood in the streets to usurp the Mideast's oil supply. These objectives are not lost on our enemy brethren grouping together to figure out how to decouple from the dollar. You'd have to think they are prepared to leave the US out by any means. This is what greed, desperation, death and torture has wrought.

What do they think of when they think of American interests? They easily see the past decade as one huge collaring by noose of their sovereign lands. The truth of this story is in the geography. The problem appears as huge and complex, but simple when paralleled with maps of world resources. Have you noticed this? Have you noticed when the US goes in for the take, it never leaves and the corporatocracy emerges ruthlessly claiming shares, making laws, outfitting a decision-making body mirroring the lassitude of its own vested watchdogs ? It is the rush and grab of the last easy oil, more valued than diamonds or souls. Everything outta the way, here come the mercenaries and the miseries. It does not matter what historic value was held where, nothing is sacred when foreclosure is ordained. No tactic too harsh, too brutish, too under-handed, too dirty. Counterfeiting? That's nothing in these times, hey, its probably de rigeur. You can bet torture will show up carrying a carpetbag and camera phones too. Ahh, but worry not, they want you to know the US does not do white phosphorus.

You know I hate to get on this way. Looking at it is anguish. This isn't how we want to be. But we are just the little people observing, shut out if you will, while the war plans are acted on and the Earth combed clean of everything it needs to support life, not at gunpoint so much as at nuclear warhead, DU, UG99, pandemics, deforestation, overfishing, toxic waste dumping, toxic assets tranched into silk purses, demolition of pensions, demolition of faith ... Where does the US get the idea the remainder of the world is stupid? Maybe from its own citizenry who always fall into line with another deviant diversion, excuse and justification, more burgers, more slushys, more Pelosi, property taxes, bills, furloughs, bankruptcies, its a regular tinseltown Bonfire of the Vanities.

I am just not able to pretty up this picture, if you think I have it skewed, ask why are we in, uh, how many wars right now? Its all one war designed to keep a high living lifestyle afloat while the little people are chained below deck. Who's mother's son, who's father's daughter is next?

The real problem with this picture is the position it puts the rest of us into. It is more than clear we don't matter in this equation. Its like being caught in an argument you never meant to enter, you know who is right and who is wrong, but your input is the last thing they want. They are hell bent on seeing it through, each insisting on the moral high ground, witnesses, coalitions, courts and attacks and there you are, the taxi driver with a family, dying to get away from the fallout. If you want to get home, the one thing you must never do is use what any of them is doing to further your own agenda.

... If a man has some awareness of higher levels and knows that he is free to be anywhere in the universe, he may then seek to justify taking part in a physical game. The most self-flattering way to disguise his appetite is to see himself as a bringer of enlightenment, of purity, of virtue. No one, not even he, will question his motives and results: isn't he doing what he says he is doing? If others fail to reach his height, it's not his fault—and thus he keeps the game going forever. It's self-renewing as long as he is unwilling to see that his own vibrations emphasize the evil and ignorance he sees. The more he hates evil, the more evil there is to hate ... Thaddeus Golus, The Lazy Man's Guide to Enlightenment

Be aware of how it always works to no good end.

Back roads-eye view

On his way home from the jobsite, the fireteacher was passing though a hundred miles of bad road, lonely stretches of weeds, no dwellings, the occasional Sage families, around 6 p.m. Up ahead, he saw the taillights brake on a farmworker's pickup. The driver dumped something on the road and took off. The fireteacher slowed to look. There was Louis. When they got home, I was called outside and yes, it was an instant bond. At first I thought he looked like Peter Lorre, but that's all changed now. That night, Louis and I chatted in a shaft of moonlight from the tallest window. We talked about his suffering through abandonment, he wouldn't have lasted an hour out there, about what he might have experienced of life so far, especially as an unwanted pup on the verge of adolescence and assured him he was home at last. We've had a great time together ever since. He sleeps on the end of the bed already. He shines on a leash. Comes to his name. Its a lock. A win-win. I live in a houseful of males. That includes the Guinea Pigs. Louie's story is a metaphorical parallel to landing in Shambhala.

I hardly know what financial terror driven drivel is supporting the Illusion this week. It runs together like tears dripping down the page, smearing distinctions. It is stunning to me that there are not nearly as many intelligent people around as we would like to think. I had a few encounters with merchants over the past seven days and have nothing good to report. Ahem. While it was always grueling to go into town, these most recent sojourns have been less than chilly. Workers at every place I visited have lost their smiley face. They are able to glaze their ways through routine mechanical tasks, but they physically turn away when you look at the receipt and your stomach drops twenty feet. Its the same with the auto mechanics to the framers to the supermarket cashiers. Each of them lost in a paranoid thought bubble in a ballet class. You do not want to hear about all the nickle and diming going on out there, I'm sure you see it yourself as you start juggling which priorities you can live without. But why do these hourly rate types sink into stupor? And there is a difference between these workers and the salaried who exist in a leveraged universe currently in freefall ... They have always done the best they could in most situations, see themselves as good persons, going along with the program in a timely fashion only to arrive at this moment in history, juggling their own priorities, maybe they can slide another month on the rototiller ... some days they wonder what is going on when there is time to wonder. Except when the card goes in the little reader, then there is a spark of real communication, a shared knowing, but it passes quickly into bagging and what Admin at Survival Acres means when he says BAU, business as usual.

I know we like to wonder into the future, always thinking a little ahead, asking how this multiplies, perhaps it extends indefinitely, gradually worsening. At some point, there are no corners left to cut. Here we are again, why is all this happening? Resource depletion. Too many of us. These are the great Energy Wars trickling down to a hundred miles of bad road, lonely stretches of weeds, no dwellings, the occasional Sage families. Its a long road.