Coming to a precinct near you

Thanks, Bill. It don't get no better than this.

The Umbrella Man

 This may be worth talking about. Humankind’s natural tendency to make something out of nothing. To cast irrelevant coincidences as meaningful symbols in lives unlived. Excitement generated where none exists. Mountains from molehills. Titillation of a lonely nation with the feather of desperation.

All we know

All we know about humanity, all we know about God, someone else has told us. Why should any of it be true? Each consciousness probes the Universe on a spider's thread, blindly intersecting with infinite others at the velocity of thought; yet each consciousness remains a universe unto itself. We know for certain nothing, save love, and that, too, requires the Other.

Occupied Wall Street Journal

I went down to Wall St. for four days to see what was going on. I'll write more about it soon, but I thought I'd post a copy of the newspaper put out by the occupiers. It's about a week old and much has transpired since, but it gives good info on what the protest and the protesters are all about. Occupied Wall Street Journal

Game

Maxine Kumin

Before he died
Archduke Franz Ferdinand,
gunned down in Sarajevo
to jump-start World War I,
bragged he had shot three
thousand stags and a miscellany
of foxes, geese, wolves, and boars
driven toward him by beaters,
stout men he ordered to flush
creatures from their cover
into his sights, a tradition
the British aristocracy
carried on, further aped
by rich Americans
from Teddy R. to Ernest H.,
something Supreme
Court Justice Antonin
Scalia, pudgy son of Sicilian
immigrants, indulged in
when, years later, he had
scores of farm-raised birds
beaten from their cages and scared
up for him to shoot down
which brought him an inner joy.
What happened
to him when he was a boy?

Chinese Protesters Accuse Solar Panel Plant of Pollution

By Sharon LaFraniere

New York Times Published: September 18, 2011

BEIJING — In a fresh indication of growing public anger over pollution, hundreds of demonstrators in the eastern Chinese province of Zhejiang on Sunday were camped outside a solar panel manufacturing plant that stands accused of contaminating a nearby river.

The demonstration was the latest move in a four-day protest that has sometimes turned violent.

The unrest began Thursday, when about 500 residents gathered outside the plant, in Haining, roughly 80 miles southwest of Shanghai. Some protesters stormed the five-year-old factory compound, overturning eight company vehicles, smashing windows and destroying offices. The next day, four police cars were damaged.

The factory is owned by JinkoSolar Holding Company, a Chinese firm with more than 10,000 employees that is listed on the New York Stock Exchange and reported total revenue in the second quarter of 2.3 billion renminbi, or about $360 million. Some investment analysts described the company last year as a promising upstart in the solar-energy products business.

“Return our lives to us, stay away from Jinko,” read one protest banner that was photographed by a news agency. Company officials could not be reached for comment on the unrest.

According to Chinese news reports, residents claimed runoff from solid waste laced with fluoride and improperly stored at the plant had been swept into the nearby river after heavy rainfall on Aug. 26. They said that a sea of dead fish rose to the surface, covering hundreds of square yards of water. Pigs whose sties had been washed with river water also were reported to have died. The state-run China News Agency reported that government inspectors later found that the water contained 10 times the acceptable amount of fluoride.

The Haining demonstrations follow a mass demonstration last month in Dalian, in northeast China, in which 12,000 people protested a new chemical plant that produces paraxylene, a toxic chemical used to make polyester products. Government officials promised to relocate the plant after the protest, one of China’s largest in nearly three years.

Ma Jun, the director of the nonprofit Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs in Beijing, said in an interview last month that protests over pollution are on the rise.

“People have a growing awareness of the damage caused by environmental pollution and a growing sense of rights,” he said. “There are an increasing number of cases that can be characterized as ‘not in my backyard.’ ”

According to Chinese news reports, the Zhejiang solar-panel plant had been faulted for improper waste disposal in April, and the government had ordered the company to suspend production until it constructed a facility to store solid waste safely.

The factory sits just more than 100 yards from an elementary school, and about 300 yards from a kindergarten, reported National Business Daily, a newspaper based in Beijing. A few protesters were reported to have been arrested on charges of theft or vandalism.

In one sign of the government’s growing concern over the potential of Twitter-like microblogs in China to stir unrest, a 33-year-old resident was arrested on charges of posting false rumors that 31 people had developed cancer and that six were stricken with leukemia in the nearby village of Hongxiao, which is close to the plant and has a population of 3,300.

The authorities said only six villagers had been given a diagnosis of cancer since the start of last year.

Meanwhile in Beijing, Chinese regulatory authorities curtailed a popular television talent show known in English as “Super Girl,” saying it exceeded the limit on broadcasting time. The show, similar in format to “American Idol” and highly rated by Chinese audiences, involves online voting via text messaging or other means to select a winning singer.

Li Hao, a spokesman for Hunan Satellite Television, said this weekend that the show, whose Chinese name can be translated as Happy Girl, would be replaced by programs that address social morality, public safety and “practical information about housework.”

The Ballad of Johnny F.

After Johnny F. died, brilliant though he was, a scholar of international stature and wide public (and private, quibblers would add) renown; and in spite of the unwavering attention the world lavished upon him (even in death as it had in the day-to-day drag), Johnny F’s parents were at wit’s end: they wanted nothing more than to be left alone and to forget about their phenomenal yet now kaput son for a while. His fame was his and his alone, they maintained. Why should it now be their lot to shoulder the burden his vast notoriety had spawned, not to mention the puerile imagery and obsequious nose and mouth dribbling that went with it? That was the question Johnny F.’s father had been asking since the funeral. For as the sacred walls of British media tightened round the family, and its members found themselves the focus of an increasingly myopic (some said stick-in-the-eye blind) public eye, the F’s grew ever more uncomfortable in their defenselessness and inability to connect with the reigning social and political milieu, a fact exemplified by the appearance of subversive libertine practices among the undergrads at the college and a purposeful elitist under-girding of the gamut of political issues by the graduate contingent which, even on its dourest and most hung-over days, looked upon itself and its aspirants as the uber-race, as proto-elites, if you will, a class above all classes; chomping at the prehistoric aristocratic bit, demanding to insert its ideas into the mainstream and put its money (or more likely its fathers’ money) where its mouths were (or better, where its mouths wished to be!). And for all of us, that was a day and will ever be a day of consternation and surprise, one which, should it happen again, will find me, well, fishing, either up-state or in the Cleveland Aquapark, depending on my need and mood, and more importantly, upping the levels of my tetracyclic antidepressants and/or reuptake inhibitors. For I can handle myself in almost any situation, be it business or social, serious or serio-comical, and I always appear—to interested and disinterested parties alike, I believe—in full control of my person, to the point where I easily might (at any time) find the gumption to apply for work at Gary's Beverage or any of the other high-end beer and potato chip outlets that unselfconsciously dot this and other similarly sized metropolitan areas.

DF Wallace: living in quiet

Here's Johnny

Nik Climp

 Nik Climp decided that for his own good it was time to remake himself. He had spent too many years being down on the world and down on people, and he realized that his negative attitude was only going to put more polyps in his poopshoot.  He needed to become someone else—someone youthful and dynamic, someone with new ideas, new solutions, new smells. Besides, he had enough health problems as it was: his pushup count had fallen to 75, his erection had reversed its direction, his doctor was dead, his fingerprints were worn away, and he had no interest whatsoever in Rimbaud.

The Cuba Connection: Tourism as Rapprochement

This goal of The Cuba Connection is to reconnect Americans and Cubans. After more than 50 years of boycotts and blockades, political hostility and enforced separation, the typical American's knowledge of Cuba and its people is minimal at best. In spite of the island's proximity--less than 90 miles off the Florida coast--most Americans, particularly those under the age of 50, have little knowledge of Fidel Castro's aging revolution or of the 11 million individuals who populate this stunningly beautiful, largely undeveloped island.

Read my project paper here.

 

Dave Dubranic

Dave Dubranic was just there. Nothing was going on. Nothing much moved. Dave just sat in his living room, or his bathroom, or his kitchen, and thought about the fact that nothing was going on. And that was OK with Dave because when things were going on, life was pretty much a pain in the ass. People wanted things, travel required risk, socializing was stressful, and doing things with his hands was, well, more than he could manage. In general, Dave was very much a do-nothing kind of guy. He preferred it that way.

Bigelow Bing

If the path to Nirvana were open to all

--If the knowledge required to get there

came tied with a bow

Where would it take us?

What would we know?

(Those who seek knowledge, I mean)

Evidence plain for going insane

Or living enwrapped in Bigelow cloth.

Or banging on Microsoft’s Bing

How is it possible this hollow bellow of mine

Has reached your obstacled ear?

Robot High School

liberation technology

U.S. intelligence-gathering networks in afghanistan/iraq/other use secret cell towers on protected American bases to support Obama administration’s global efforts to deploy shadow internet/mobile phone systems and control/surveil/disempower central authorities’ infringement on "people’s fundamental right to communicate" and assist dissidents in deploying stealth internet systems to undermine repressive government censoring efforts and silence telecom networks as potent strategic tools in the asymmetric battle against the Enemies of Democracy by utilizing MESH (continuous connection and reconfiguration routing of signals around broken or blocked nodes): networks in a suitcase: antennas, laptops, thumb drives, WIFI, CDs, self-healing algorithms and encryption software to bypass official networks via phantom infrastructure platforms that transform cell phones/computers into invisible-hubless-wireless webs where voice/data/video/images of savagely beaten protesters automatically engender wireless transmissions across trusted citizen networks and integrated e-mail links while disseminating data relays to mini cell towers that collaborate, propagate, capture and re-route information as trusted traffic through unrelated sensor nodes generating continuous multi-directional reconfigurations around disrupted transmission paths so that pentagon and state department propagandists may carefully frame support promoting the right to free speech not aimed specifically at destabilizing autocratic governments. Is this liberation technology? Not quite. But this is.

Frog Dinner (rerun)

We went to see the Alexander McQueen thing at the Met on Sunday.  All those faceless women in feathers and bones, leather and silk, borne on the backs of working class satyrs. Women addicted to saying yes, yes, maybe—McQueen's conceit is to buck them up. This show is truly a sunrise for a setting brain. It's like watching a man being devoured by lions. The first thing I thought was how many extraordinary people there are in the world and thanks to my impenetrable ego-dome I miss them all. When I get depressed and rained out like a Friday night Yankee game I head for the TV or the bottle, or pursue some bleak Bill Styron scenario. Take out my aggression on the scrambled eggs. But this suddenly dead McQueen is a bolt of brown meth, a textile tornado. A David Wallace for the glitter set: so far into performance truth that he makes Gaga look like a poseur, although she has honestly copped his knob (I’m not saying she’s lying because I do like her; oui, I sup de vez en cuando on her indelicate broth). For she has successfully digested his seed to sprout leaves of her own; as will we all once the Republicans stop trying to staunch the juices we’d happily started oozing till the business class got a lucky break and made religion out of commerce and forced us to eat data bases for breakfast. Don’t worry; those assholes will get theirs. Which is really what McQueen's "art" is about: giving them theirs, hoods and dark music, blood-drenched tartans and rain on the runway notwithstanding. Ultimately he stands up for liberation of body, mind and soul. Of course what Wallace proved, McQueen seconds: there is danger in total freedom because depression, denial and fear of extreme unction always exact a price. You see, in spite of all his outbox and bravado, this pobre moke went down at the age of 39, hung himself with his favorite belt in his clothes closet. Ironía? Asi es la vida? Of course, but with his talent and vision we hoped (like we hoped for Wallace) that he’d go on forever, producing endless inimitable out-of-this-world shit. But we know that’s absurd. Like so many of the best of us he was an imploding star, a black hole sucking the universe along behind him. A one-way ticket to oblivion, which is where he no doubt resides today—laughing and happy on the other side of paradise. RIP McQueen. I for one will keep you in my heart.

Bored

I am so bored with everything that is. So bored that a bridge collapse in East Squeedunk, RI, covered exclusively by CBS, where the few survivors are swimming around in the the flood like lost water bugs, and the soon-or-later-to-be raped reporters with novels on there minds are pleading for their lives at the hands of a sexually deprived mob of Arab construction workers makes me scream for a commercial.

I wait...and the wait is worth it. The cast of Glee, dressed entirely in white, is selling an American automobile forgotten by most of us for the last fifty years...selling it with their fake high school innocence, their patented smiles and wrinkle-free bell bottoms, singing, singling: "Drive your Chevrolet through the USA. America's the greatest land of all..." Ah, somewhere, way back then, I heard that refrain--over and over again until it became part of my Yankee blood, and then it died and I was overjoyed to hear it die, for its death meant the end of an era which, as does this one, bored me to death. And now, after all these years, here we go again, come full circle, driving our Chevrolets across the USA, happy together...

Memes

What humanity in its brief existence has done—consciously and unconsciously—is to build a vast network of memes (elements of culture or systems of behavior passed from one individual to another by imitation). Examples include ideas, religion, art, laws, technology, common sense, folk wisdom, science, educational systems, or any other area that exists to inform us how to think or how to behave). To some degree these systems have proved useful by providing order and shelter in the face of the natural chaos that we perceive to be ruling our world. But, in fact, that chaos is as much the result of the memes we’ve imposed upon ourselves as the natural forces that surround us. As the network of knowledge, laws, doctrines, rules, beliefs, superstitions, and commandments, has expanded, our ability to be comfortable inside its parameters has dwindled. Ironically, we find now ourselves slaves to the very systems implemented to liberate us.

Let me put it more simply. There is very little left in the human world that is essential. Nearly every institution we deal with on a daily basis—society, technology, government, war, sex, politics, sports, fashion—are inventions of man. They are essential to themselves and depend intrinsically on each other for longevity, but in reality they have no value whatsoever. They are the material trappings of a world deceived. Meanwhile, that which man did not create—the cosmos, nature, spirit, the essence of life itself—moves ever further into the background, making it possible, even without intending it, to live great swaths of one’s life without touching the real, or having any perception of it whatsoever. If we add to this veneration of memes and artifacts our penchant for escaping what we perceive to be “reality” through the use of mind-altering substances like drugs and alcohol, we find ourselves living in a world where nothing is essential and nothing matters.

This is not to say that in the contrived world there are not issues that appear to be of substance. Just look at your life and you know that trouble lurks around every corner. Why else would we insure ourselves against every catastrophe known to man, from car accidents to theft, from loss of health to loss of life? We treat the future as if it held nothing in store but heartbreak and woe, so that the great pastime of moderns is earning enough money today to deal with the anguish of tomorrow. Oh, perhaps we’re giving ourselves a cushion to rest on for a few years in our dotages, but at what cost? What, may I ask, does all that work and worry have to do with actually living? For many of us that question has no answer, because for many of us, work and worry ARE what we call living. They have become the overriding memes of our lives. 

Before I look more deeply into the memes that prevent us from living, I want to describe what I mean by the term “living.” I believe there is a world in front of us that we cannot see because our view is obscured by perceptions engendered by cultural and behavioral memes. It is the world beyond the television, beyond the new furniture, beyond education. It is the world beyond right and wrong, beyond knowledge, beyond everything we have ever learned about living and dying. It is a world beyond what we believe ourselves to be. It is the world as it is without fear and greed. It is the world without ego. It is only in that place where real living occurs. I started looking for that world today.

Defecatory stress

In India, when they feel nature call, the good folk shit in the streets. It’s called open defecation, a practice not exclusive to India, of course. 40% of the world’s population lacks sanitary facilities and commit open defecation exclusively. That means there are 1.6 billion daily human shits lying in the open contaminating highways, byways and waterways across the world. 1,600,000,000 piles of human shit every day. In New Delhi they’ve made an effort to deal with the shit problem. They’ve built great numbers of public toilets to shit in and hired thousands of people to pick up millions of publicly deposited turds. That’s a start, I suppose, but still, 70% of New Delhi’s sewage flows directly into the Ganges. Is it possible to clean up this mess? With India’s population growing ever larger, the odds are pretty shitty.

Discipline

My idea of discipline is eating one peanut butter sandwich for lunch instead of three. Having one whiskey in the evening instead of four. If I can eat less than 3000 calories a day, I’m disciplined. If I can hold my daily potato chip consumption to half a bag, I’m disciplined. If I write a page a week, I’m disciplined. In other words, I have no discipline whatsoever—never have, never will. Yet I have this dream of living a life in which my foibles, my weaknesses, my perfect inability to control my impulses, give way to a new man: A Man Principled in the Art of Denial. A man so self-regulating that he can go a week on a slice of Velveeta and a Perrier. A man who shuns the carnal in favor of protracted sessions with the Koran, ignores the pangs of alcoholism for a cold glass of jus d'orange. A man who favors a gloveless ascent of the Eiger to eating a quart of Ben and Jerry’s during the two-hour finale of The Bachelorette. This is the man I seek to be: the man for whom self-denial is a way of life and self-discipline the road to salvation. I'll get started on this new program any day now. As soon as I get a little discipline.

Tiny brain case

Of course, there is in this world a vast creative human intelligence that cannot be underestimated. Cynicism is always the order of the day in human affairs, but beyond its overwhelming pessimism a pure intelligence burns: the primordial fire. The fire of consciousness imagines the best and worst, the entire universe embryonically seething within this tiny brain case, endlessly conjuring.

Well, kids, Chuck's back

Yes, it's been many moons since you all had your Chuckfix, but it's time to get the ball rolling again. I've had an epiphany of sorts--at the ripe young age of 64 (yep, I climb aboard the Medicare train next month--if there still is Medicare--the oink-oink Republicans may have wrapped it up tight and shipped it off to Bolivia by then). Epiphany: a sudden revelation or insight. It pops out of the blue and cracks your head open egg-like, shakes up your juices, your long-held beliefs, grinds down your rude protuberances, pricks your prides and prods your prejudices. In a few well documented cases your epi-fanny leads you to greener pastures, to near-Nirvanic ecstasies, to whiter sheets and perfumed pillow cases. Anyway, my epi-fanny was that I wasn't gettin' no younger, time's a wastin and I just might kick the proverbial bucket any day now, what with all my bad habits like drinking, eating, reading too much fiction and being a captive of the New York Times. Then too I been watching American Idol and Big Losers all winter and the more I watch, the fatter I get. I got on the scale at the doc's office the other day and when I saw my weight I about broke out into sniffles. The had to give me lydocaine intravenously and winch me off the floor into a meat wagon. As I collapsed on the deck my doctor decided to check my prostate, but he couldn't find it. "Your ass is too damn big," he said. "It's like searching for a nickle in a dough ball." And he's a friend of mine. So you can see why I want to get a few projects underway before I buy the ranch, as it were.

So here are some of my plans:
1. I'm going to build a funny little house up in the Maine woods near the lakes and mountains and ski slopes for all to enjoy. This funny little house will sit right on the site of the extant and notorious Nest Among the Hills. Hopefully people will visit from miles around to touch and be touched by the natural world. I'll post the design asap.

2. I'm going down to Cuba to see if I can set up a language program for American students. I want them kids to mix with them Cubans and vice versa and come up all smiles after 50 years of political bullshittin between two obstinate political philosophies. Smile, love, embrace, exchange body fluids. This is my dream. Bring together the white skins and the black skins, Make lovely brown skins, Throw in a bunch of indigenous folks for good measure. Make the bronze skins. It's called the Cuba Connection. You can read about it right here. And even more here. Take your time; it ain't gonna happen overnight. Just know that I'm working on it and I will be asking for your assistance and monetary support at some not too distant future date. Feel free to refuse. It'll happen anyway.

3. I am opening a small carpentry business to supply composting devices to the world. Composting is the next green wave for mankind and we'll soon learn that recycling our egg shells and banana skins is the key to a self-sustaining life on earth, a valuable contribution each and every human soul can make to our posterity. My compost boxes are made of fully bio-degradable materials and as they reach the end of their useful life, can be recycled and composted themselves. Here's a picture of my three models--the 24-inch Minch, for the small kitchen garden; the 28-inch George, for the backyard veggie plot, and the 5-stacker 32x32 Grandon for the orchard, the Pecan patch, or--yes, you equine entrepreneurs--for the horse barn. Write to me for more info and photos. I will also include my famous composting instructionals: The Simpson System: Composting for Peace, Hope and Aristophanes, in full color, with magnificent illustrations: charlesrsimpson@gmail.com

4. I am outfitting my newly rebuilt 2002 Toyota Tacoma for extended travel to all parts of the contiguous universe. Toyota completely rebuilt my truck after it was determined that the frame had turned to cheese and another salt-strewn winter would render it gutter bound forever. So the kind folks at Toyota spent 11,000 bucks to restore my ride to its original cherry condition. I am the envy of the pedestrian hordes now, but with gas tickling 5 bucks, I'm a little reluctant to drive to the Yucatan; in fact, I'm a little reluctant to drive to the corner. But I have it fully outfitted with two cases of skittles, a map, Kristofferson's greatest hits CD, and a large jar of 1 mg lorazepams for those lonely nights in the Mojave when sleep don't come easy.

5. I'm writing a novel, perhaps the great American one, in invisible ink. In fact I'm writing it with tap water. This of course means it will be forever unreadable, even by yours truly. 500-plus pages of artistic genius, deep human insights, a plot that shakes your snake, and a metaphysical theme rivaling Leviticus. I'm writing it with my right hand so as to fuel my deliberative powers, thereby making each page a unique and breathtaking experience unto itself. There has never been a book like this one, and there will never be another. Need it, read it, heed it, bleed it. In better bookstores soon. Sorry, can't tell you the name. It's invisible.

6. I'm rekindling my lost love of photography. As many of you who followed my meteoric photographic career will attest, my images had the capacity to move souls. I heard you moan in anguish when I put my camera down and took up puppeteering last year. Well, I'm here to tell you that I'm back shooting the light with a vengeance. Just lookie here:

So let it not be said that I am not pursuing my passion with a passion, which is what all us Medicare Boom Booms are supposed to be doing as we suck up what's left of social security, hoard our gigantic pension funds, and await the crack of the back and the slash of the lash. Mazel tov.