Mother Euthanised...

After viewing an episode of Kate Plus Eight, a local mother of two had to be euthanized to protect nearby civilians. Her children have been taken into protective custody because, says fish and game warden, Michael Foley, "They may have learned bad habits from their mother."

The Kate Plus Eight reality program on The Learning Channel follows a mega rich woman and her eight children through their days. The mother is often signing books or dancing or crying in a limousine and her children are seen as seldom as their father, a man who has separated from the mother and is suing for custody while chasing teen ass and getting tattoos. The tawdry, petty details of these ten people can only be described as "Terribly, terribly wrong. A bad influence on anyone, ugly, unusual, horrific."

So, when a local mother of two admitted to having watched an episode of the reality program state game officials were forced to euthanize her.

"It's a last resort, but we've seen this before. As soon as a mother gets a taste of the putrid soft scripted poison that is [Kate Plus Eight] then that's the end of her. She'll always be back and back until she's completely devoured by vicarious desire for false fame and hollow accolades. We had to do it."

The governor is defending the move saying, "Kate Plus Eight is unfortunately a despicable program that rots the brain of anyone who watches it. Therefore, regretfully, the woman who saw an episode had to put down. We'll try to boost our public service messages about the dangers of this program in the future. It is basically family pornography that totally and permanently distorts a person's view of reality. To view a single episode, indeed a single moment, renders an average person completely crazy. It is irredeemable. Irresponsible. I would say more about it but I'm already gagging on my own vomit by the hint of a suggestion that I know what the program is about. I pray The Learning Channel cancels this program. Please god! Please cancel it!"

The mother's two children were sequestered in cardboard boxes devoid of stimuli in hopes of turning them back from the edge of insanity.

"The two children were unfortunately in the same room at the time the woman watched the program. And they can understand English so it's likely they caught some of the incredibly selfish and pitiful comments from the principal characters. The kids might recover to a pre-Kate Plus Eight emotional level but more than likely they will have to be put in a zoo since all instincts will have been obliterated." Added the official, "Thanks to that damn shitty program."

In other news a man was found with forks in his eyes after he watched a Full House marathon. Neighbors are calling it a mercy killing.

scorpion king

I talk about the future but the future never arrives. It's always today and the people of today don't know what happened yesterday and don't care about tomorrow. Kids born today will have to read in history books about a time when edible seafood was caught in the Gulf of Mexico. And they will not mourn our carelessness any more than we miss a spilled beer from 1993. The damage has been done. Does anyone miss the Buffalo? Or the gray wolf? No, because we never had them to begin with. Not us. Maybe some guy 200 years ago would care if he lived for 200 years. But stuff changes so little in 100 years that every generation finds a way to fit in, finds a way to accept the latest extinct species. Even old curmudgeons like me eventually fit in to their cabin in the woods. Coercive media has terrorized this country into submission like Nazi propaganda tactics obliterating any common sense. Walmart is the new Catholic Church. Amen.

Clock ticking

Most of the times I can say, "At least I've got my health." After all, I made it a priority after 5 years of limping on crutches in the 90s. That and old Grandpa Stevens said you don't have anything if you don't have your health. So, I made it a priority to do things that were generally healthy such as bicycling and living simply with no chemical soaps or packaged food. I didn't say the things were safe, but they were healthy in that Native American way. This worked for the most part except when I threw my back out in the merchant marines so badly that I pissed myself and still feel the bulge of muscles and also when I tore my groin in Wyoming and separated my shoulders...
But really, that shit could happen to anyone. I didn't do it on purpose, but in the pursuit of a healthy lifestyle I crossed the line a few times...but at least I ended up in Alaska, living cheap, reading, crippled, but otherwise heart healthy. My soul was uninjured, is my point.

Alas, sometimes a perfect shit storm arrives and I am not only sick but I am also soullessly vacuuming my morals into outer space. That was the last week of July for me as I did nothing less than fuck dirty old men in port-o-potties for cash (moral equivalent of copper mining)...maybe it was this terrible turn in fortunes and maybe it was the 2X4 scorpion bowl anesthesia administered by Dr. Hawkins. I don't know, but either way I was both soullessly grieving AND ALSO violently ill. That means puking in the parking lot of the very job where I am on short notice due to my behavior (pointing to a diagram and both me and my boss noticing simultaneously that my finger is quivering like a Geiger counter) pale skin, hacking cough, teary eyes. So I must hide my vomit behind car and in bushes and quickly slip into the bathroom to vomit and emerge with a fake smile.
"It's almost Monday." is the fake office humor comments that I grin at.
"Yep. Almost Monday."
I burp vomit flavored gas from my bloated belly and return to my work bench with pages of wire run sheets and connector details. Where did that 22 AWG female D sub pin belong? It's almost Monday...Almost...

This is when I'm defenseless as being broke led me to the devil's workshop, forging impenetrable copper arrays for demons in dark places. And also being physically bereft leaves me weaving through dead bunny corpses and seeing how close to that on coming car I can get, sweat pouring from my gray hair, three day old beard filled with dandruff and pollen like a hoary tree designated for the mill.

But I shut off all communication and meditated on this situation for one day, sweating through withdrawals like Miles Davis kicking heroin. My soul has gone into hibernation.

The ignorant will say I should find another line of work. My answer is that this line of work is sucking the life blood from all that is sacred. Knowing it, and understanding it may be the only way to stop it. See, it will kill us all whether I work there or not. But I can't turn my head away and pretend being a watch repairman is going to stop this assault on the earth's heavy metals. Neither can you.

Yes, dwelling in the belly of the beast is a dangerous pastime. It has costs but the payoff will hopefully be a better understanding of the world we live in, the insane industry that man abides by. Thoreau was a simple man and that left his world view simple, limited, undeveloped. He spoke without a businessman's experiences. He trusted his instincts. But that's not how the world works. Most people obey the media and the media has replaced instincts with filth. I remember 1987 bonfire beer parties and feeling that we acted like this not from choice but because we saw it in Animal House. The drunk guys were the heroes...thus...let's drink. Our cultural habits were adopted from screenwriter fathers. I don't believe this is an accident. It's too diabolical...too perfectly designed to keep the common man obsessed with beer and sports while the Pharaohs plunder the earth.

How will it end?

First, I will take my head out of the toilet.
Second, I resolve to complete my treatise on the poisonous cultural forces at work.

I can not do this alone. The war has begun and I'm telling you the enemy is working day and night to destroy us. He lurks among you. He must be challenged or we are all facing a never ending work day that divides and conquers us, leaving our souls to be ravaged by demons.

OK, that sounded a little insane, but seriously, what is it going to take? Just tell me. Let's make a plan.
I bring this up because I'm on the brink of great changes. Labrador, the fourth corner, beckons. Kelly Anne requested something optimistic but this is all I could come up with. It's sort of optimistic.

Sun Shines on Dog's Ass

Blame it on the fading moon.
I spend 9 hours a day working to save people time. Does that make sense? Does it add up? If you have a car that theoretically saves you time when you drive to Boston but an industry is spending millions of hours to design and manufacture cars then can you really say it saved any time? And if you drive for a living then the car hasn't saved you any time at all. In fact, it's all a complete fraud. "We're saving time." Bullshit. Total bullshit. Someone invented a noose and it'll save you time in getting to the grave. Die faster!
Believe me if you spend as much time manufacturing high tech stuff as I do then you would begin to question if there is any truth at all to its purported benefits. Basically what happened was I earned enough money to buy some tires and a six pack of beer so someone else can navigate a submarine remotely or test chemicals in the atmosphere...which will take up all of their time. What does it mean to save time? I believe I know since I spent 8 months using all my account of saved time. I figured, fuck it. Time for a withdrawal. I'm saving it and I will use it. I'm not going to die with a balance of saved time. No way. And at the time I went to Mexico I could not raise my arms above my head and walked stooped over and penniless, shitting blood for five years...so I didn't think it was smart to buy the bullshit that I worked to save someone else time.

Whatever, it's a social convention that's been swallowed like the bait you throw out to catch bass in the lake.

Speaking of death...I'm taking care of Bonnie this weekend. She is not only deaf but now she is also blind and needs drops put in her bugging eyes. I have to look at her belly when she is laying down to make sure she's still breathing. Give her mouth to mouth resuscitation when she gags.
I need some paint to decorate her Elizabethan cone. Like, color it to match her coat. I feel bad for her but I wasn't much different this last week. A full 40 hours working on a single impossible harness with a dozen breakouts and pins and connectors and strain reliefs. The stress actually broke me and the boss gave me a warning. The stress was too much and I was abandoned on the factory floor without food or water and I would come home to a 99 degree attic and pass out from exhaustion and then awake at 5am to do it again. I sort of laughed because the indignity of dying because I was wasting away under florescent lights building mystery machines was too beautiful. There was no music and no one speaks. We drag our bodies to work and home...it's almost like what we're doing is important but we actually have no idea what we're building. Some might say it is intelligent design but I call it something different. Anyway, I was deathly sick and lost the sight in one eye, it was weeping for no reason and I developed lung congestion and the pain in my neck is bad enough for me to take advantage of the bulk pain killers the company supplies because everyone there has diabetes and bad backs. This is exactly what a human life is worth...I had no idea what day it was and wandered the concrete floor in search of pins and crimpers and did not pass humans but shells of fleshy robots. So this is it, I figured there wasn't much difference between death and a lifetime of cable assembly. I mean, really. That's my excuse why I wound up in the woods with Kenny trailblazing through a forest of downed trees. I was on my moped and that meant dragging it under logs, coughing, sweating. Kenny, a punch drunk lug who looks like he fell out of the tree of hard knocks and hit every branch on the way down said I looked like a beaten man and he was right. Kenny rode his 650 Honda over branches and ended up in someone's backyard while I fell down the hill near the old age home. We sang our ode to Jackson the dwarf goat and for a second the labor and wasted time was worth it because as you know I worked at Bauer moving hockey equipment for this piano that Mr. Hawkins beat into submission. That night I ended up in Prescott Park in the grass making a video I can not post.

Anyway, this job is as physically easy as a job gets but the existence of this job is like a dagger in my heart. These products are indestructible. They are the opposite of biodegradable and we're shipping out hundreds of miles of copper. This is literally how you would treat a planet you were plundering because your ship is waiting to take you home to Jupiter in a few minutes. I wonder if Bill Gates hasn't already colonized another planet and Earth is just like a spare parts bike to the elite. Because this is how you would behave if there were no environmental consequences. It feels like we're so obsessed with preventing our extinction that we're going to cause our extinction. You got New Yorkers walking over dead homeless people. Come on, Bill, you think mankind is going to relocate to another planet? A job like this will kill me if I work at it or not. I'm inside the death factory and I can see that it's unstoppable. This relates to my opinion that the education system failed utterly but I don't want to get into that right now.

I'm also resisting the urge to commit to the manufacturing because in my mind it is a choice between that and life. The memory of certain people fades with the complexity of these harnesses. I love to do things well and to do these things well means a tolerance of 3 mm over a distance of 31 ft. That will produce a professional connector array. But it also demands I treat friends and memories like the heavy baggage that is slowing down the ship. Like, I'll drag the ocean bottom when I pass this way again. Ha! I thought my priorities were right but apparently they are fucked. I wonder how family and friends can encourage such a thing. Are they really family? Are they friends?
Or is that where they put me in the hierarchy of their demands? I come right after soft toilet paper and paying the cable bill?
Well, I don't have toilet paper or a cable bill. And if the vote is for me to embrace the war against the environment, and to embrace it so fully that their memories are less important than where IEOG-J2 #22 will connect to AEIGG J1 #7 on a robotic cable harness then I've definitely misunderstood something. Or they'll forgive me when we're having a barbecue and I steal a little time to practice crimping a #18AWG D-sub AMP Reverse sex socket...because it's more important...it saves people time....

Here's a multiple choice:
Which do you want?

A:
B:generic technology

Circle your choice. You may only choose one.

You Reap What You Sow

What person said that? Five words that say a lot. You harvest exactly that which you nurtured. No more and no less. It can be applied to a simple backyard garden and, I believe, to humanity in general. We reap what we sow.

GALATIANS 6: 7-9 "For whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap."

Now, it does not guarantee moral choices. A thief can do his diligent best to prepare and if his heist is a success then he has himself to thank. And if the heist is initially successful but ultimately leads the police to his door then that is also a cause and effect issue.

We are living in a time when many people are sowing many things and reaping and raping are widespread. This is folk wisdom and it requires that you either be old with a belly full of experience or young with lots of time to ponder the effects of your causes. What are you sowing? What is our country sowing? What is the world sowing.

I spent some time writing a due diligence manuscript regarding commercial solar farms. That sounds sensible. Demonstrate that you sowed only profitable seeds. Demonstrate that you did your homework to A) avoid problems and B) show you tried to avoid problems. BP executives were asked why they ignored internal memos that called the Deepwater Horizon project "A nightmare well." That is when due diligence comes into play. You are supposed to look out for red flags like "nightmare" and take action. BP did nothing and now are paying for it. They looked like assholes at the congressional hearings because they are assholes. They are reaping what they sowed...just like they deserve the oil they can suck out of the earth when the whole thing works. It's not a miracle; it's due diligence.

Now, take a mile high view of it and map out the project implementation for mankind. It's not easy to do. Maybe the bible is a kind of due diligence written in parable form. That's possible and that will also be incorporated into my own diligence manual for humanity.

The difficult part is living while simultaneously studying the upcoming harvest. Because the act of studying what one will reap is also part of what one is sowing. The process is not done in a vacuum so I am trying to study what I will reap while not sowing anything that I think will poison the land.

But because I feel this is a task I am uniquely qualified to perform and because no one else seems to have done it, so I've got the market cornered on macro-cosmic harvest factors, I will continue to juggle the metaphysical juggling pins aflame with the petrochemical soup. And if this is a harvest that will be ultimately destructive to me then that's what I deserve to reap. It's a tidy axiom and I'd like to challenge you all to ponder it.

Here is my Sermon:

I passed a gray bunny crossing the street by the Greenleaf farm on Peverly Hill Road. It was 5:30 am and it was just me and the other early birds on the street, squirrels and bunnies. The horses on the farm were still hoping fences in their long nose dreams. A fog hovered above the field of brown and green. The trees dripped with the moisture from the evening rain. I saw the bunny grazing near a blown out flip flop across from the YMCA swimming pool. I had a moment of synchronicity with the bunny because in our own way were were reaping what we were sowing or at least sowing something intentionally. If I make it to Labrador or Guatemala then it will be from these 5 am commutes to the robot factory. That bunny was providing for himself and his family. I was nurturing my own field of dreams.

Later, on the way home from work at 3 pm, I passed the YMCA pool and swerved around a bloody mass of gray fur on the double yellow line. Kids were jumping off the diving board, the streets were filled with cars, the horses were standing on crooked knees under the shade of a maple tree. I passed the roadkill fast so I couldn't be sure it was the same bunny or even if it was a bunny at all. The messy lump was the same color but some cats have that color coat. There was no way to tell as I turned the corner and rolled into Portsmouth to ponder these messages. I feel like I've found a trail of breadcrumbs that leads through the universe.