My wife Mary is a vegetarian. She has controlled Type 2 Diabetes for 4 1/2 years with her diet, which swings from vegetarian to raw vegetarian to raw vegan depending on her needs and what she feels is necessary. She is a real role model as far as I am concerned.
I am a carnivore, I just don't eat much beef. I like chicken, turkey, fish, and pork. She rarely lets an opportunity go by to gently needle me about my dead animal proclivity.
This afternoon, she was painting parts of a small wooden farm set she made for our eldest granddaughter's 3rd birthday coming up. Here was the conversation:
"I am painting the little piglets pink. They are really sweet."
Me (unsuspecting carnivore): "Cool"
"You ate one this morning."
"Huh? I ate what..?"
"You ate one this morning. A pig."
"I ate a whole pig?! It was a Tim Horton's Breakfast Sandwich..."
"It had sausage, right?"
"That hardly qualifies as a whole pig."
"Tell that to the pig."
I know when I am beaten....I went back to typing, secure in the fact that she loves me enough to want me around, but I do like sausage.
Mary brought the finished critters in to show me. They reflected her careful, beautiful work. I looked at the little pigs. I swear the little suckers were smirking...
Sigh.
Tim
Friday, July 31, 2009
Random Neural Firings on a Friday
Now that I am retired, Friday is not what it was when I was working, and one of my charges had inferred that I had had illicit carnal knowledge of my mother for the seventeenth time in a five hour period.
Still, the culmination of a week is always a good thing if one has been raised in a society that believes in weekends as being a time of relaxation, play, sporting events and betaking one's self to the consecrated auditoriums of faith, begging, whining and sucking up to the Big One. This is not to say that 'worship' does not help many people to feel that their lives are more tolerable, it does. It also serves to reinforce many prejudices about the 'other' that some people hold as dear as life itself. If you doubt that, say 'gay marriage' or 'pro-choice' or 'Muslim' in certain religious communities, and you'll see what I mean.
Speaking of religion, especially the Levantine Monotheisms , Judaism, Christianity, and Islam...I give Christianity a pass on the monotheism thing because they have three gods (four if you are Catholic and count Mary the Mother of God into the mix) but they just say "It's a great mystery and cannot be fathomed by the human mind...they are three but ONE!" Gee, I never would have guessed. So, back to my point...most of their appeal is based on the greedy desire to live forever, set on thrones, or recline on cushions if one is a Muslim, and have a select place in the beatific afterlife. If that does not work to bring one into line, then there is HELL, the place where everybody who does not believe 'the RIGHT way' is put to be hideously tortured for all eternity in a manner that would have made De Sade run for the barf bag. Selfishness, pure and simple. One wants to keep out of the torture garden, and be in the Paradise of untold delight. Nothing like appealling to the highest in man, huh?
The best thing I have heard about all this is from the Sufi Poet Rabia. She said that if she loved God in order to receive heaven she did not deserve it, and if she loved God out of fear of the fire, she deserved it. That idea is found in some Rabbinical writings and in some mystical Christianity as well.
Imagine if you will, a priest, pastor, rabbi, or imam getting up in front of the congregation and telling them that if they did good and loved God, just for heaven, they should be put in hell, and if they did good and loved God just to avoid hell, they would get an up close and personal tour of the Inferno. I would buy a ticket for that one. You can bet the collection that day would take a hit.
That is about enough for one Friday.
These are just some of the things that crept across my cortex this morning. Take them for what they might be worth. I am just a fool...a fool who is going to go watch one of our chipmunks stuff his face with some of the peanuts I set out on the back patio.
Be well, and be kind.
Tim
Still, the culmination of a week is always a good thing if one has been raised in a society that believes in weekends as being a time of relaxation, play, sporting events and betaking one's self to the consecrated auditoriums of faith, begging, whining and sucking up to the Big One. This is not to say that 'worship' does not help many people to feel that their lives are more tolerable, it does. It also serves to reinforce many prejudices about the 'other' that some people hold as dear as life itself. If you doubt that, say 'gay marriage' or 'pro-choice' or 'Muslim' in certain religious communities, and you'll see what I mean.
Speaking of religion, especially the Levantine Monotheisms , Judaism, Christianity, and Islam...I give Christianity a pass on the monotheism thing because they have three gods (four if you are Catholic and count Mary the Mother of God into the mix) but they just say "It's a great mystery and cannot be fathomed by the human mind...they are three but ONE!" Gee, I never would have guessed. So, back to my point...most of their appeal is based on the greedy desire to live forever, set on thrones, or recline on cushions if one is a Muslim, and have a select place in the beatific afterlife. If that does not work to bring one into line, then there is HELL, the place where everybody who does not believe 'the RIGHT way' is put to be hideously tortured for all eternity in a manner that would have made De Sade run for the barf bag. Selfishness, pure and simple. One wants to keep out of the torture garden, and be in the Paradise of untold delight. Nothing like appealling to the highest in man, huh?
The best thing I have heard about all this is from the Sufi Poet Rabia. She said that if she loved God in order to receive heaven she did not deserve it, and if she loved God out of fear of the fire, she deserved it. That idea is found in some Rabbinical writings and in some mystical Christianity as well.
Imagine if you will, a priest, pastor, rabbi, or imam getting up in front of the congregation and telling them that if they did good and loved God, just for heaven, they should be put in hell, and if they did good and loved God just to avoid hell, they would get an up close and personal tour of the Inferno. I would buy a ticket for that one. You can bet the collection that day would take a hit.
That is about enough for one Friday.
These are just some of the things that crept across my cortex this morning. Take them for what they might be worth. I am just a fool...a fool who is going to go watch one of our chipmunks stuff his face with some of the peanuts I set out on the back patio.
Be well, and be kind.
Tim
Thursday, July 30, 2009
Cash for Cluckers?
It is a bright sunny day, and at Tim's Chicken Ranch and Boutique, my 1972 Gremiln finally falls apart totally. I mean I have gotten tired counting the road kill that flashes by the manhole size hole in the floorboards. I see the "Cash for Clunker's" ad in the monthly Rag and Bugle, and I am excited...a new car!!!! Yes. I load up my capital, hitch the rusted corpse on the back and tweedle off to the dealer. They only allow me 2500$ for the Gremlin, which I take as it is about 6000$ more than it blue books' at, and I seal the deal. The salesperson asks how I am going to pay for the new Go-Kart sized electric/compost/propane powered cross-over. I take said salesperson out to the lot to see my slightly sagging truck piled high with cages and 12,562 squawking, flapping, shitting and fighting chickens. I must aver that I had never heard a salesperson say such an eloquent "What the Fuck!!" in the middle of a sales transaction before. I said that each chicken had a market value of a couple dollars, and there was also the egg and guano things that had value, for egg salad sandwiches and right wing talk shows respectively. "It's worth a good 20,000$!" I told the goggle-eyed sales person.
Later on the way home, chickens and Gremlin in tow, I pondered all of this. If I had said I had 20,000 small pieces of somewhat worn greenish/orange/bluish pieces of paper with the pictures of dead politicians on them, all would have been swell.
Which brings me to my point. Money has value because we believe it has value. We believe the government will back its' worth. The banks & credit unions believe the government will back their dispersal of said funds. It is all belief in money that does not exist in reality. Are there people who believe that every dollar circulating is backed by our horde of gold in Fort Knox? I suppose so, but then again there are people who believe that Sarah Palin is our salvation as a people (sorry, Jesus). Fact is economies today tend to move on money that does not really exist. If you doubt this as liberal twaddle, 'investors' and 'funds' 'bought' oil futures up the wazoo, pushing real time oil prices through the roof, hence gas prices, hence the loud, resounding crash of the US auto industry, and the ripple effect of the crumbling economy. Couple that with similar speculation on the housing market over the last 12 years, and you have the mess we have now, caused by those who bought oil not yet even produced, with money that they did not have, except in theory. The result, real unemployment, real hardship, real sorrow and fear. These speculators could have cared less. When you have that kind of money to be made, compassion has no place in their world. They are like a bull full of viagra and crack, who has just stumbled on a herd of cows. It is not pretty.
Well, I am going to try to get the Gremlin running. These were just some thoughts I had on the way home. Take them for what they may be worth.
Tim
Later on the way home, chickens and Gremlin in tow, I pondered all of this. If I had said I had 20,000 small pieces of somewhat worn greenish/orange/bluish pieces of paper with the pictures of dead politicians on them, all would have been swell.
Which brings me to my point. Money has value because we believe it has value. We believe the government will back its' worth. The banks & credit unions believe the government will back their dispersal of said funds. It is all belief in money that does not exist in reality. Are there people who believe that every dollar circulating is backed by our horde of gold in Fort Knox? I suppose so, but then again there are people who believe that Sarah Palin is our salvation as a people (sorry, Jesus). Fact is economies today tend to move on money that does not really exist. If you doubt this as liberal twaddle, 'investors' and 'funds' 'bought' oil futures up the wazoo, pushing real time oil prices through the roof, hence gas prices, hence the loud, resounding crash of the US auto industry, and the ripple effect of the crumbling economy. Couple that with similar speculation on the housing market over the last 12 years, and you have the mess we have now, caused by those who bought oil not yet even produced, with money that they did not have, except in theory. The result, real unemployment, real hardship, real sorrow and fear. These speculators could have cared less. When you have that kind of money to be made, compassion has no place in their world. They are like a bull full of viagra and crack, who has just stumbled on a herd of cows. It is not pretty.
Well, I am going to try to get the Gremlin running. These were just some thoughts I had on the way home. Take them for what they may be worth.
Tim
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
Why the name.
I was reading Violence by Slavoj Zizek over an Iced Capp at Tim Horton's this morning and I came across a citation that really sums up my feelings, and I am sure the feelings of a lot of other people today. It is from the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze. "Si vous etes pris dans la reve de l'autre, vous etez foutu." If you're trapped in the dream of the other, you're fucked." I feel that would be a great paradigm to write my blog from, because as I find my own health insurance becoming more and more expensive, especially now that I am retired, and listen to the flatulent bursts from politicians, and talking heads, I do feel that I (and I might add all the GM retirees who are watching their dental and vision insurance evaporate) am trapped in someone else's dream. Not only that, we are all definitely beginning to experience the truth of the final phrase of Deleuze's statement.
Yesterday I heard some politico of some sort or other saying that he didn't want his health insurance premiums going for advertising, which would be the outcome of real freemarket competition incidentally. Well, fool that I am of course, I seem to see that millions are going into the pockets of campaign committees, and other sundry efforts to make sure that the great capitalist wet dream of the insurance and pharmaceutical corporate orgs continues unabated. Does the guy I heard yesterday think all that money is picked off a tree in the Garden of Eternal Cash? If he believes that...well I return to the word "foutu".
So I am off and running with this little effort of mine. I see things and I am going to share some of these insights for what they are worth.
Tim
Yesterday I heard some politico of some sort or other saying that he didn't want his health insurance premiums going for advertising, which would be the outcome of real freemarket competition incidentally. Well, fool that I am of course, I seem to see that millions are going into the pockets of campaign committees, and other sundry efforts to make sure that the great capitalist wet dream of the insurance and pharmaceutical corporate orgs continues unabated. Does the guy I heard yesterday think all that money is picked off a tree in the Garden of Eternal Cash? If he believes that...well I return to the word "foutu".
So I am off and running with this little effort of mine. I see things and I am going to share some of these insights for what they are worth.
Tim
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