Tuesday, August 31, 2010
NIGHT O' THE SKUNK ! ! ! ! !
NIGHT O’ THE SKUNK!!!
Or ‘morning of the skunk’
We in CaulEEEfonia have been enjoying a wonderful (for human beings) summer of unseasonably, and record, sways in temperature. We have gone from mid-90’s days in very early spring to high 50-degree temps in July and August. The nights have regularly been in the high 40’s and low 50’s. I have been enjoying this summer a great deal, what with being a post-menopausal female with continuing hot flashes and night sweats.
So, even with these low temperatures, I run my fans at night, choosing to cover up with a variety of different light quilts in order to get that ‘perfect sleep’. And, oh has it been wonderful. One night a few weeks ago, I slept with only a sheet, after a day of 107-degree heat and an 89-degree evening, all three fans blowing the hell out of my hair, sweeping it around and tickling my face. It was hard to sleep that night, but nothing like my last one.
It was a lovely night of 52 degrees. Quiet and still, without the occasional high-speed and so, loud, acceleration of some high school boy’s souped up car that takes place on the road next to my bedroom. Ahhhh…… Lovely.
And then…and then….!!!! About 3AM, I was awakened by the stench of high-velocity skunk stink. This was no ‘skunk passing by’ kind of stink, but the Real Thing. This was a result of, no doubt, a real skunk spray attack. Yuck. The little bastard must’ve done it right outside my bedroom window. But I was sleeping hard and drifted off, thinking that it would go away by itself and I could continue my nice, quilted sleep.
But NOOOOOOO!!!!!!! The little devil – was it hit by a car in the street, still oozing that powerful smell? I couldn’t see anything outside my window, but I got up to pee, just in case that might become an even more annoying situation later in the early morning. I crawled back in bed after closing the windows and dropped off.
Speed ahead 3 more hours. When my clock alarmed, I was awakened to the lingering smell of Skunk. I got up, quickly dressed and grabbed some air freshener. It smelled the worst in my bedroom (of course – why not?) and the rest of the house had a hint of skunk, which could be addressed more easily.
I still have not located said skunk, so I can only imagine that some unlucky feral cat or dog wandering the streets was gassed, but good….well that animal and ME.
I wonder what necessary function is provided by skunks.
Monday, August 9, 2010
BE SURE YOU THINK FOR YOURSELF!
Over the last few years, I have watched the series 'Mad Men' with a lot of interest. At first, I thought, okay, great, another prime time soap opera. I couldn't have been more wrong. It's much, much more than that.
Without even thinking of the entertainment value of the show, I could go on and on about the underlying implications relative to our culture. That, of course, is the basis of the show. It takes place during the early 1960's, which is each season, basically, another year. We just started 1965 this season. Woven throughout the show are small revelations about how our culture operated 'back in the day'. Not the least of these is the way that institutions, in this case an ad agency, manipulate the public. It is the most important recurring theme in the show, but these are revealed subtly, which makes the show even more watchable.
Then, last night, after watching the latest episode of Mad Men, I ran across an old BBC production, 'The Century of The Self'. It is in four episodes and I have only watched two so far, but it is clear to me how connected these disparate shows really are. The BBC documentary is a straight up bit of reportage and Mad Men is pure entertainment, yet they speak the same language: The typical consumer is a person to be manipulated and used for the betterment of The Elites who, says the documentary, have been doing this for many decades by using scientific data to support their beliefs that they are in fact, the best people to make decisions for the world.
The idea disgusts me and yet it has stimulated a lot of introspection. Perhaps they are right to a degree. If The Public is so manipulable we aren't even aware, nor do many of us care, so long as we have The Next Big Thing in our pockets. We are a lazy populace in The West; lazy, fat, and mesmerized by all the various entertainments that our technology supplies to us, with a big bowl of fattening fast food to go with it.
Yet we continue to tout The American Way of Life. I hear it all the time and think, egad! is that what they are talking about? more and more consumer junk that we can pile on top of the older versions of whatever They have sold us in the past. We never seem to think of that these days.
Some of my favorite manufacturers use these techniques and I struggle to avoid the trap they set. Apple Computers is first on that list. Am I the only person who has wondered why they need to wait to install every last function in this, the latest version of the iPod, iPad, MacBook Pro, etc.? Apple certainly has the ability to put that camera in the iPad now, don't they? They have already announced that they have plans to install this function in the next version of the device. iPad 1.1 or would that be 2.0? This is beyond planned obsolescence, no? This is like bringing you to the edge of orgasm and holding off for 6 months. Manipulative?! No! It's more like a subtle kind of torture. Yet buyers line up overnight at every new Apple product release. I'm not sure they even care, so long as they can sport the latest thing. "Be the first on your block" I can remember from my childhood. I was born into this kind of thinking and it has only gotten more pervasive over the years.
If anyone reads this and wants to get the real lowdown on the subject, you can watch the four episodes here:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article12642.htm
We could all use a little education, eh?
Without even thinking of the entertainment value of the show, I could go on and on about the underlying implications relative to our culture. That, of course, is the basis of the show. It takes place during the early 1960's, which is each season, basically, another year. We just started 1965 this season. Woven throughout the show are small revelations about how our culture operated 'back in the day'. Not the least of these is the way that institutions, in this case an ad agency, manipulate the public. It is the most important recurring theme in the show, but these are revealed subtly, which makes the show even more watchable.
Then, last night, after watching the latest episode of Mad Men, I ran across an old BBC production, 'The Century of The Self'. It is in four episodes and I have only watched two so far, but it is clear to me how connected these disparate shows really are. The BBC documentary is a straight up bit of reportage and Mad Men is pure entertainment, yet they speak the same language: The typical consumer is a person to be manipulated and used for the betterment of The Elites who, says the documentary, have been doing this for many decades by using scientific data to support their beliefs that they are in fact, the best people to make decisions for the world.
The idea disgusts me and yet it has stimulated a lot of introspection. Perhaps they are right to a degree. If The Public is so manipulable we aren't even aware, nor do many of us care, so long as we have The Next Big Thing in our pockets. We are a lazy populace in The West; lazy, fat, and mesmerized by all the various entertainments that our technology supplies to us, with a big bowl of fattening fast food to go with it.
Yet we continue to tout The American Way of Life. I hear it all the time and think, egad! is that what they are talking about? more and more consumer junk that we can pile on top of the older versions of whatever They have sold us in the past. We never seem to think of that these days.
Some of my favorite manufacturers use these techniques and I struggle to avoid the trap they set. Apple Computers is first on that list. Am I the only person who has wondered why they need to wait to install every last function in this, the latest version of the iPod, iPad, MacBook Pro, etc.? Apple certainly has the ability to put that camera in the iPad now, don't they? They have already announced that they have plans to install this function in the next version of the device. iPad 1.1 or would that be 2.0? This is beyond planned obsolescence, no? This is like bringing you to the edge of orgasm and holding off for 6 months. Manipulative?! No! It's more like a subtle kind of torture. Yet buyers line up overnight at every new Apple product release. I'm not sure they even care, so long as they can sport the latest thing. "Be the first on your block" I can remember from my childhood. I was born into this kind of thinking and it has only gotten more pervasive over the years.
If anyone reads this and wants to get the real lowdown on the subject, you can watch the four episodes here:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article12642.htm
We could all use a little education, eh?
Monday, August 2, 2010
The Real Reason for the Wars
I have just seen the results of a CNN poll which asked if Democrats or Republicans could best protect us from ‘terrorism’ (my emphasis). The Dems got 33%, the Reps, 47%.
As many of you know already, framing a question or idea can lead to specific and planned-for results. In this case, the continuing use of the word “terrorism” is something I’d like to discuss. Or opine upon, since there is only one of me.
Terrorism is a highly charged word that is the last refuge of fighting people who have no military. The specific tools used in acts of terrorism can run from throwing rocks to IEDs, Improvised Explosive Devices, in other words, home-made bombs (oh my, the American culture does love its acronyms), something along the lines of a Molatov cocktail with flak on a timer or remote detonator; something to explode the thing, which holds heavy metal bits that can maim and kill. These things are certainly terrible, but to focus our attention on terrorism as an enemy of our country and now faced in the Middle East as well as at home, is confusing to most people. Terrorism sounds really, well, terrible. To produce terror? Well, these things certainly do that, but we should not be focusing our thinking (which is a powerful thing and something that can turn the tide and part the sea in the way a war is prosecuted) on the technique of the unfunded fighting people around the world. We should be focusing on the real reason for the war.
Back in the day (as they say), countries in the Middle East were pretty much off-limits to American capitalist enterprise. Those Muslim countries, which had some very strict laws, did not encourage the eat-everything-in-one-sitting ideas promoted by American and other Western businesses. But the real Elites (as The Right likes to call people whom they dislike and fear) in The West had other plans. Not only did the Middle East hold most of the remaining sources of oil, but there were a shit-load of consumers over there, if we could only get those women out from under Burqas and educate the men about tits and ass!! What an enormous pool of ignorant consumers that would prove to be! Why these folks barely have houses, what might they do if exposed to a big-screen TV, for instance? Or cosmetics? And fashion?!!!! Woweee-------What a gold mine that area could be for the thinking man’s capitalist.
Slowly, but surely, our country began to insert itself into the Middle East commercially (you know, those American Interests you keep hearing about in the media?) The Bush Administration, in particular, was pushing for this, offering American companies tax breaks for taking their operations to the Middle East and other countries with large pools of potential consumers.
The business machine in The West has effectively created a nice, fat bunch of users, eaters and consumers over here. Although I have had friends of mine disagree, advertisements are very effective in manipulating our minds. Why else would a product pay millions for placement in films and on TV? It’s a powerful message to an open, viewing public hungry for The Next Big Thing. No sooner has your iPod’s battery run down for the first time, than the next Device-of-the-Moment is offered to the hungry Western public. They just HAVE to have one in every color!
So getting American culture inserted in the Middle East was paramount in the plans to tap that potential consumer. Look what American companies have been able to do in India! We turned those people into wonderful consumers of the products of our American-owned companies. Now they all carry these multi-colored tech devices and literally eat up our fast food.
The day I learned in a hidden story in the media several years ago that Hooters had opened a restaurant in Amman, Jordon was the day I felt like giving up. But I’m not going to. Marsha has a mouth and she intends to keep using this one strong remaining ability I have as an aging human being. I have a mouth AND a mind. Stay tuned.
As many of you know already, framing a question or idea can lead to specific and planned-for results. In this case, the continuing use of the word “terrorism” is something I’d like to discuss. Or opine upon, since there is only one of me.
Terrorism is a highly charged word that is the last refuge of fighting people who have no military. The specific tools used in acts of terrorism can run from throwing rocks to IEDs, Improvised Explosive Devices, in other words, home-made bombs (oh my, the American culture does love its acronyms), something along the lines of a Molatov cocktail with flak on a timer or remote detonator; something to explode the thing, which holds heavy metal bits that can maim and kill. These things are certainly terrible, but to focus our attention on terrorism as an enemy of our country and now faced in the Middle East as well as at home, is confusing to most people. Terrorism sounds really, well, terrible. To produce terror? Well, these things certainly do that, but we should not be focusing our thinking (which is a powerful thing and something that can turn the tide and part the sea in the way a war is prosecuted) on the technique of the unfunded fighting people around the world. We should be focusing on the real reason for the war.
Back in the day (as they say), countries in the Middle East were pretty much off-limits to American capitalist enterprise. Those Muslim countries, which had some very strict laws, did not encourage the eat-everything-in-one-sitting ideas promoted by American and other Western businesses. But the real Elites (as The Right likes to call people whom they dislike and fear) in The West had other plans. Not only did the Middle East hold most of the remaining sources of oil, but there were a shit-load of consumers over there, if we could only get those women out from under Burqas and educate the men about tits and ass!! What an enormous pool of ignorant consumers that would prove to be! Why these folks barely have houses, what might they do if exposed to a big-screen TV, for instance? Or cosmetics? And fashion?!!!! Woweee-------What a gold mine that area could be for the thinking man’s capitalist.
Slowly, but surely, our country began to insert itself into the Middle East commercially (you know, those American Interests you keep hearing about in the media?) The Bush Administration, in particular, was pushing for this, offering American companies tax breaks for taking their operations to the Middle East and other countries with large pools of potential consumers.
The business machine in The West has effectively created a nice, fat bunch of users, eaters and consumers over here. Although I have had friends of mine disagree, advertisements are very effective in manipulating our minds. Why else would a product pay millions for placement in films and on TV? It’s a powerful message to an open, viewing public hungry for The Next Big Thing. No sooner has your iPod’s battery run down for the first time, than the next Device-of-the-Moment is offered to the hungry Western public. They just HAVE to have one in every color!
So getting American culture inserted in the Middle East was paramount in the plans to tap that potential consumer. Look what American companies have been able to do in India! We turned those people into wonderful consumers of the products of our American-owned companies. Now they all carry these multi-colored tech devices and literally eat up our fast food.
The day I learned in a hidden story in the media several years ago that Hooters had opened a restaurant in Amman, Jordon was the day I felt like giving up. But I’m not going to. Marsha has a mouth and she intends to keep using this one strong remaining ability I have as an aging human being. I have a mouth AND a mind. Stay tuned.
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