:: The Blurst of Times ::

:: 12.17.2004 ::

A Little Clarification on Yesterday’s Topic, or The Tuna Fish Crusade

* I actually only thought about that stuff for part of the day. I spent more of the day thinking about this:

At about 5.30, when I put the milk back in the fridge after pouring a goodly amount on my Raisin Bran, I noticed that a bowl of tuna salad was missing from my fridge. I looked again. It wasn’t there. I knew I only ate half of it on Saturday, and I knew exactly where I set it when I put it in there.

Instinctively, I blamed my roommates. Those fuckers are always stealing my food. But then I remembered: I don’t have any roommates.

I quickly recounted the meals between then and now. Dinner Saturday - out; brunch Sunday - cereal; dinner Sunday - BLT’s; dinner Monday - Leftover chicken tacos; dinner Tuesday - Combo’s and a three musketeers (I was working)... Here it was, breakfast Wednesday, and I hadn’t eaten that tuna fish. I checked the dishwasher - only one bowl - that would have been Tuesday breakfast. And I had run the dishwasher Monday morning, so I couldn’t have eaten it Monday night. So it had to have been eaten before Sunday night. I know I didn’t eat it before 11pm on Saturday and I know that Sunday morning it was in there, next to the leftover chicken. And I was out Sunday afternoon until almost dinner. Then I came home, read a while, got lit, fried bacon, ate three BLT’s, watched the simpsons, called my mom, got lit again, and went to bed.

But now that I think back, I woke up Monday morning with terrible heartburn, usually indicative of late-night eating. Could I have sleep-eaten that bowl of tuna fish salad? Then I counted my bowls. Six. Didn’t I used to have seven? Is there a missing bowl? Does that bowl have tuna salad in it? Is it someplace around my house, carelessly discarded in a somnambulant binge? Will I come home after the holidays to a noxious stench of rotting fish and miracle whip, not to mention the relish?

I checked the recycling - two pieces of foil - one leftover from last week (fell out in the truck on my way to the center) and the other from the tuna fish bowl. So it had been unwrapped. So I must have eaten it, right? But I wouldn’t have eaten it plain - I either need crackers or bread. Check the bread... looks as I left it, six slices light on Sunday night. Check the crackers - AHA! - one box almost gone, the other box opened. Totally uncharacteristic of my usual simplified and tidied lifestyle - I would never open a container of something without the prior container being emptied or combined with the new container.

Finally, I came to the conclusion that I must have eaten a half-bowl of tuna fish and Wheat Thin crackers, late Sunday night / early Monday morning, rinsed out the bowl, put it in the dishwasher, and tossed the aluminum foil cover in the recycling.

And with that, Encyclopedia gave Sally a knowing wink, while Detective Brown handcuffed Bugs Meany and took him downtown to book him on the charge of stealing Wally’s accordion....

The End

:: Freddy F. at 11:59 PM [+] ::
:: (2) comments ::

Oh Man. We’re Fucked. Or: Bill O'Reilly is huge douchebag

So I started off Wednesday thinking about the Federal budget*. Not the budget so much as I was thinking about the dwindling value of the US Dollar. I mean, it’s falling. And why? Because everything that’s supposed to back it up (everything that I once thought would last forever) is falling to shit. Anymore, giving the US government a US Dollar’s worth of your blood, sweat, and tears is about as valuable as giving a fifth home mortgage to a crack fiend. Seriously. No one wants to be the dude getting stuck holding the bag stuffed with greenbacks. I’m talking Germany post Treaty of Versailles, Wall Street on October 30, 1929, and Mexico for the entire decade of the eighties. I’m talking open your wallet and wipe your ass because the only thing keeping this bubble from collapsing is the hot air coming out of the collective Washington mouth.

But I digress. What I really spent Wednesday thinking about was why we’re in such a bad spot*. I mean, speaking realistically, with a few notable exceptions, the people running this nation are some pretty sharp dudes. A lot of Ivy League backgrounds, a lot of business-running experience, a lot of there own personal wealth to manage. And from the businessmen and bankers that I have been around (mostly the land-development types, unfortunately), people with these qualities don’t usually spend their money foolishly. Rappers - yes. College students - some, yes. People with MBA’s - not so much. And yet, we’re so far under on our Federal credit report, no one even cares anymore, let along the folks running the show.

So I tried to come up with a balanced budget. Being your typical lay-person, I know very little about the actual nuts-and-bolts of Federal budgeting. But I do have a job (income), I am self-sufficient (spending), I pay rent, utilities, and loan payments (needs), and I buy good food, books, and records (wants). In effect, I budget myself on a two week basis, and meticulously document all income and spending. So I figure I’m at least a little qualified to try to hammer this one out. And even if I don’t have all the answers, maybe I can start the ball rolling a little here. At least I’m writing again. So let’;s start from scratch.

1) We need income. Taxes. Knuckle up, bitches, because it’s time to pay the piper. Everybody, antes. Let’s say 25% off the top. All income, no loopholes. You win the lottery, you’re paying on it. You got a 15 million dollar bonus for blowing Michael Eisner, congrats and thanks for the four mil. You make $30g a year as a secretary, you’re more than entitled to pay your fair $7,500. No person making over poverty level is spared: rich, poor, fat, thin, ugly, pretty - we all make the bread, we all share the bread. Next up: corporations. No more free rides. No more discounts, waivers, payoffs, pork barrel benefits, nothing. If you can’t run a solvent airline, find another ring in the circus, because subsidization is through (for the moment, I’ll come back to it later, but for the time being, remember: No More Free Lunch. Assholes.). From now on, there’s money in and money out. If you’re standing there and money’s coming in, you’re paying for it in taxes. But it’s not so bad, see:

2) Now we got money coming in, how do we spend it? To save money, we need to spend less. To spend less and still make progress, we need to spend smart. To spend smart, we need to invest today’s dollars in whatever will provide the most long-term benefits. We’re happy to say that Washington has proven beyond all hope of doubt that defense spending is the absolute wrong-est possible answer.

Here’s my answer: Public education. Let’s make everyone smarter. Let’s make everyone more socially, globally, and economically conscious. Let’s give everyone greater opportunity. Here’s why: People are smarter, so more doors are open - more doors open, greater opportunity, less crime - less crime, less cops, judges, courts, jails - less money spent on fighting crime. Want more? Here: People are more aware of their surroundings, so they are more capable of making conscientious global decisions, they are less prone to vote (decide) on fear, less prone to elect militaristic leaders, less prone to go to war, less likely to need nuclear weapons and massive standing armies, less likely to need Star Wars technology, less money spent on defense. Wow, I just ended crime and war as we know it, and I’m just getting started. Think the energy crisis is bad? Try this: Smarter people will come up with better ideas. People more versed in science, history, and sociology will recognize the need for innovative solutions to pressing problems, will no longer be muddled by backward-looking solutions and tradition, and will be willing to open up to better results. Open minds welcome long-term effective solutions, including solar and wind power, geothermal energy tapping, and ecosystem protection. Open minds see Man as a participant in global ecology, not the dominant factor. Suddenly rising cost of oil doesn’t matter much because we have wind farms in Kansas and solar farms in Phoenix. Suddenly, it doesn’t make sense to build a new shopping mall and huge motherfucking parking lot on that wetland, when we could just build it downtown and everyone can take the bus, ride their bike, and walk. Oh, and by the way, by personalizing transportation (away from the anonymity of the automobile), we’re increasing the stability of the social fabric of our communities, also a contributing factor to reducing crime and poverty. Healthcare, war on drugs, global humanitarian crises, AIDS, poverty, depression, obesity, greed, corruption, pop music, partisan politics, despotism, fear. Think how much we have the potential to affect if we can just get people to think for themselves.

We don’t face as many problems today as we think we do. Every time you turn around it seems like there’s more shit on your boots - first it’s terrorists, then it’s war, then it’s crime, then it’s corporate crime, then it’s the economy, then it’s commercials, then it’s the FCC, then it’s rap music, then it’s welfare, then it’s social security, then it’s healthcare, then it’s Canada, then it’s the UN, then it’s the Ukraine, then it’s Georgia, then it’s political factions, then it’s nuclear proliferation, then we’re back to terrorism. It never seems to end.

But it does. There are solutions to our problems, and it isn’t about Church or God or being white, rich, or male. It’s not about saving the Iraqis from a despot or the spotted owl from loggers. It’s about getting to the root of the issue, about drawing a line in the sand and saying okay, if we don’t let this be the high water mark and stand our ground here and now, there’s no point in even holding your breath, because we’ll all sink eventually. And we’re not sinking in our own little pools of debt and broken dreams - we’re all drowning in a big messy ocean of it. And we can stem the slide. We just have to want to.

“If you’re not part of the cure, you’re part of the disease...”

:: Freddy F. at 9:45 PM [+] ::
:: (2) comments ::

Time. Now There’s a Good Rag.

As you may have noticed, I have been a bit lackadaisical about posting things lately. And if you are the kind of person I am in email-contact with, you have probably also noticed that I’m a bit slack about that, too. In fact, all writing, in all media, has frozen to about absolute zero. Which is to say: The flow just ain’t there.

It’s not like I have nothing to say. In fact, over the last month or two, I have had plenty to say. Last month, I was within 12 minutes of going over on my phone bill (a feat that has never even been close in the past 3+ years). At Thanksgiving, I had so much to say that it split my family right in half and made me very wary of speaking much of that in the future. In social occasions in the last couple weeks, I have noticed that I am very fluid in talking about things, and I’d like to say that my storytelling tactics may even be improving (but that’s not much, since they are pretty poor in the first place).

The problem lies in getting the mental word into the physical word. Somehow, lately, there has been a pretty significant breakdown of that process. I can’t figure out what is causing it, or if it is multiple problems coming together in an ugly head of writers’ block. For one thing, I’m reading a ton these days. I’m going through books like sugar-water. Once I got through Ulysses, I was inspired to tackle bigger and faster (and easier) books (and magazines) and have found a haven in the topics of Urban Growth, Development, Sociology, and Planning. And all this reading is causing me to do some serious thinking. And along with serious thinking comes serious discussion. But right now I’m lacking a forum. Or maybe the ideas are still so embryonic that they are still too amorphous to appear in print. But given the right audience, the discussion has beautiful potential. Also, I’m spending a lot of time at work these days. 12-ish hours and 99% of that time is in front of the computer. So when I come home, I really don’t feel like sitting down in front of another Dell just to type something out. I’ve even tried ‘mood altering substances’ to no avail. Mostly they just make Jackass seem really really funny. These days, I’d rather just sit on my couch and read.

So all this, and barring certain catastrophic events, I don’t feel like I have much to contribute to this Internet these days. But don’t take silence for complacency. The wheels are still turning. Mentally, I’m constantly mulling over problems, issues, thoughts, topics, the future, and the past. I know I am in the midst of what will forever be a watershed year in my life - so much is changing, the least of which are my relationships with people (old and new), my code of ethics and values, and my ambitions. I can only hope that upon my return to the Motherland (or is it the Fatherland), there will be plenty of time and energy for discussion and reflection.

Oh, and about Time Magazine. I haven’t gotten mine yet - it usually shows up on Wednesday, for some inexplicable reason, I blame the landlords, but it’s probably just an anomaly of the mail service. But I hear this week is going to be a good one. If you normally get it, be sure you read this week. If you don’t get it, I suggest you sidle over to your local B&N or Borders and peruse the Dec. 20 issue. Trust me, I wouldn’t spend all this time in front of a computer writing this, if it wasn’t important.

“It’s just another Saturday...”

:: Freddy F. at 11:11 PM [+] ::
:: (1) comments ::

Guess What!!

I got nothin' to say to you...
:: Freddy F. at 10:16 PM [+] ::
:: (0) comments ::