Enough is enough...

I am running out of patience with the conservative mindset in this country. Last week in Barnes and Noble, a twenty-something hopeful stood among the regional books, less than a vague interest in books obviously. He was far more interested in getting the designer jeans off the blonde he was talking to than finding the most remote ghost towns in the Colorado high country. Their "conversation" had turned to politics-- not real debate or discussion but politics-lite, the non-committal don't want to sound too radical or thoughtful or offensive conversation that is common among the mating (or mating hopefuls). He hemmed and hawed about the new president and finally said, "I don't have any major problems with what Obama is doing but I don't want my taxes to get raised sky high. What is the point of working hard if it means that you're just going to have all your money taken by the government?"

And that is when I ran out patience. I nearly walked over to him and said, "What the hell makes you think you are EVER going to make enough money to pay that many taxes? Only one percent of Americans are making most of the money and they have tax accountants and lawyers and congressmen all making sure they are not going to pay more than they want to!" Well, fortunately I restrained myself. Doing this would have been bad form while I was working-- but it continues to baffle me that so many people are brainwashed into believing that the only thing that will keep them from making their millions is laziness and/or government interference.

Wake up people! I know you don't want to hear this. I know it runs counter to your massive American egos and sense of invincibility, but the cards as they are dealt right now are stacked against you. In fact, the odds of "making" your millions are probably about the same as winning the lottery.

You might make enough money at your chosen career path to get yourself a big overpriced house, two car payments and lots of credit card debt -especially if you are married to someone who also brings in a significant paycheck- but the odds of having any money leftover to invest and make your millions on a stock market that is as volatile as a supervolcano are next to nil... and almost as dangerous. And even finding careers that pay anything significant for your services are becoming more rare. Most frequently it is about who you know. And even worse-- you might find a job out of school and get the nice house, the car payments, etc. and find yourself out of one or both incomes because the mindset that allowed you to find your job- this love affair we have with youth- will mean that as you get older there is actually less security in your job. Then you might be lucky if you are left with any retirement-- let alone the millions you planned on in your twenties.

But what really infuriates me about this mindset is that it is based on pure selfishness. Taxes need to be raised on the wealthiest of Americans. They just need to be. Jobs need to be created for common people and there needs to be universal healthcare so that small businesses can pay their employees more and not have healthcare as an expenditure. (Healthcare for small businesses is a prohibitive cost which means they are often not able to provide it or they cannot hire as many employees.) Since we already wind up paying for the uninsured via our tax money it seems logical for the government to intervene and provide a healthcare that is based on a good workable model like Canada. There are many more changes that need to be made in the way our government operates (as has been discussed in other pasts on this blog) but there is no will to do it in Washington. They represent the wealthiest of Americans and the corporations-- they are not there with genuine intentions of changing the business as usual politics of D.C..

So it's up to us.

When FDR became president, a group of progressive activists asked him to push for some really big changes. His response? "I agree with you. I want to do it. Now make me do it."

Will we, as Americans, ever push for change that represents what is best for ALL or will we continue to hold back afraid of too much "socialism" and government "interference" with the wrongheaded notion that you won't benefit from the "free" market (HA! As if it were actually free)???

The alarm is sounding! It is time to wake up!!!

Jamie Lee Curtis and I seem to be on the same wave length-- check her article out on the Huff Post:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jamie-lee-curtis/a-fish-called-denial_b_168817.html

Hamster on a wheel

So you want to be a droid--- a robot in the mindless machine of making and buying produce. Luckily, you're on the right track! And we have just the education system to make sure neither you nor your children, nor your children's children will ever be on the verge of living any life other than the one that we have planned for you.

It all begins in childhood. Products designed to "give your baby a head start" that run the gambit of in the womb CDs to Baby Einstein-- a learning system that paradoxically uses television and video for educating the infant to toddler set-- are marketed to you. (I say "paradoxically" as all studies show that television for the young do more to HARM the ability for tots to think and learn)When they finally get to school, they will be given data entry (just like computers) which is often complicated and challenging giving you the illusion that your child is really learning something. Thus, you run out to buy teaching aids or send them to private tutors so that they can keep up (once again contributing to the swelling of our pocketbooks, not really helping your children in any meaningful way). What they are really getting are the system tools to regurgitate the information we want them to spit out so that one day they will be able to enter the workforce and produce the type of work we need. They will also often be completely turned off of learning and education because all they will have ever known is a drudgery that stilts and plunders one of life rather than enhancing and contributing to life (as a real intellectual life & thought will do).

This will continue throughout their young lives- even into college (although occasional trip-ups in college do lend the possibility for intellectual development-- we try to halt this wherever it happens!) We are able to do this because colleges are, after all, a business and if they are seen as too radical and oppositional to the system, money dries up. Professors don't like losing money-- for their homes or otherwise. We also quickly wrap the students up in debt. Although the school loans they are receive are low in interest, they are for many thousands of dollars and force the student to make a certain income in order to make the investment worth his or her while. In addition to this, we seize the opportunity to help these poor struggling students through their financial difficulties by offering them credit which they use for survival purposes. They are now completely reliant on the system that we offer them to pay these debts back. They will not head off for a year of exploration through Europe or spend their early adulthood seeking adventure and a meaningful existence. They will spend their energy trying to make enough money to pay their bills back and have a nice enough car to impress their family and friends.

Once they are out of college, we will continue to disguise real information and facts with pseudo-science and opinion. And we will use this method to keep you continually off balance. If you are unaware that there are actual facts out there, you will, most likely be stunned into immobility, unable to act in your own best interest simply because you do not have the ability to make the proper decision for yourself. We are helped with this endeavor by the media. They are owned by the companies that require your servitude, so they rarely give any information that might cause you to ask difficult questions that would shake up, even minutely, the status quo. We will also feed your obsession with yourself and your "needs", talking at great length about the need to be whole and happy and balanced- all the while ignoring and even cheating the real needs of the body (i.e. food and healthcare). We will perpetuate and fertilize racism, sexism, homophobia. These will ultimately divide you so that you are always at odds with the people around you who might unite with you against us. We will enable and in some cases even outright support religious institutions to convince you that are noble child of a deity with a higher purpose than the mundane realities of an earthly existence (this is all temporal-- you should be focused on your eternal destiny!). It will also, hopefully, guilt you into subordination. We encourage the nationalism and loyalty to our system that religious systems ally themselves with. As as result of your miserable existence, you will be devoured with the desire for entertainment and distraction of all sorts, never realizing how this further enslaves you to your master.

Thus, you are left, like the hamster in the cage, with a wheel to turn and nowhere to go. You will wake up, run and run and run, getting nowhere and finding nothing. You will eat the foods we give you at whatever price we mete them out at. You will consume entertainment and spend all your waking hours making a lovely little nest for yourself- all the while ignorant that there might be more meaning to life than the bars of your cage allow. You will spend your time so busy with YOU: your needs, your emotions, your eternal preparations, your status, etc.-- oh and, the bearing of offspring that you won't even try to reach for the latch on the cage door. And your offspring living what they have learned will be compelled to continue the cycle in this great Circle of Life. At least the circle we have provided for you.

And YOU should be grateful for it.

Death and Politics at the end of the world

Five miles to the best Key Lime pie!
Number One Key Lime Pie…
Favorite Key Lime Pie…
Award Winning Key Lime Pie…
Who decides?
Key Lime cookies-
Key Lime cake-
Key Lime ice cream
Key Lime soup
Chocolate-covered Key-lime-on-a-stick
Key Lime off-a-stick
Key Lime Lemonade
Key Lime Margueritas!
Key Lime edible underwear…
hmmmm

Some people claim that
there’s a ma-an to blame.


Hog’s Breath—God’s Breath—hamburger yummers!… with everything… fries, Bartender’s special drink--- P-Thingy.


Bone Island: Boner…
Boner Island?
Key-
Boner Key—Bonkey…
Don key Otee.

For God’s sake, move- need to go!
“Land of the Free because of the brave”- figures, moron.



Left turn, right?
Right… Right?
No! left… right.


Southernmost Point
Southernmost Real Estate
Southernmost Hotel
Southernmost Café
Southernmost Bank
Southernmost Key Lime Pie
Southernmost oxygen.

Most Southernmost


turn…


Busy!

People everywhere.




It’s a zoo…

Death and Politics at the end of the world

Bells over my right shoulder. I glance over, startled to spy a stout, charcoal-skinned grandma in full gypsy garb, hobbling off the curb just as the Conch Tour Train rattles up to the light. She leaps nimbly backwards, the fluid motion in surprising contrast. She lifts her fist and shouts, face contorting as though uttering a curse. The train rambles around the corner. A tall broad-shouldered… woman? adorned in a floral, foo-foo tutu and flowing hot pink boa hung out the door of the train, shouting back to a thick-chested man leaning against the back window sporting a leather bustier, one thigh-high booted leg draped casually down the side of the car. The passenger-laden train is practically bursting with men outfitted in a rainbow of feminine fashions from antebellum to Harlem harlot. A rowdy rooster struts down the sidewalk, ostensibly unaware that dawn is long past, his squawks punctuating the human cacophony. A swimsuit clad couple, sporting matching full-body tattoos, brattles by on bicycles, weaving in and out of idling traffic.

“… more like a carnival.” I ease my vice grip on the wheel, clicking the red ruby slippers of memory. “There’s no place like home. There’s no place like home.”

Involuntarily, yet necessarily drawn to the water, I drive. Past the turn in to an abandoned bar where, once upon a time . . ; past palm and pond; past bougainvillea and banyan; and finally, past the fort . . . past the past.
Bread crumb colored shoreline nearly deserted.

The gulf breeze tousles my hair


I come to myself, agape…