Reblogged from Dandelion Salad:

Dandelion Salad Warning This video may contain images depicting the reality and horror of war/violence and should only be viewed by a mature audience. “Let your life be a counter- friction to stop the machine.” — Henry David Thoreau ClassWarFilms on Feb 13, 2012 A brief and crucial history of the United States Let Your Life Be a Friction to Stop the Machine *** Transcript Let Your Life Be a Friction to Stop the Machine Nightmare and insanity are akin: mysterious and involuntary states that skew and …

The Frenetic Info-Matrix Endorses this film with the following suggestion: The term “Global Corporatism” should be substituted for “predatory capitalism” for the sake of accuracy.

Reblogged from The OK Fray:

The religion that a politician claims as their own has little to do with how they will behave in office. Nixon was a Quaker. It shouldn’t even be a consideration. Santorum’s Catholicism has a concrete effect on his anti–abortion anti-gay rhetoric, but even if there were no constitutional barriers to making laws on the basis of religion, a politician will generally act in their own interest once elected. The characterizations of Obama as a radical leftist or a Muslim are laughable, whatever he believes in, …

Re-blogged from our new sister sitr “The OK Fray”

Addictions to money, power, gambling and greed, in my opinion all fall into the larger category of control addiction. Right now, we are watching as control addicts, having blown all their own money and a whole lot of other people’s feeding their habit, are allowed to remain in control.

If you have no home, your head is your only house, and what you allow in there theoretically is entirely up to you. Unwanted persons, memories, grudges and traumas are all rightfully subject to eviction. I understand all to well that this is easier said and done, especially of somehow you have allowed the toxicity of your environment to contaminate your brain with viral type material.

If you watch TV, even a relatively short period of exposure can get you thinking prefabricated thoughts, desiring things you don’t actually want or need, The internet is is just as bad if one is not careful.

Again, the goal is not only to keep your head out of plastic bags, but to keep things that come in plastic bags out of your head. Find one, tie a good knot, and just toss it out. If you choose, dissect the contents, find the pathological memes, develop counter-memes, and throw them back out into the information environment again.

Meanwhile if the goal is to stay awake long enough to go to sleep, if worst comes to worst come to worst you can always go back, watch more TV, and repeat the whole process.

Or one can always resort to drugs, just make sure you follow your doctor’s instructions when taking your government approved dope, which like TV, will do you no good in the long run, but at least it may distract you from the source of your irritation, melancholia, indignation, constipation, memories of bicycle accidents etc…

Just remember, that if you sit with your ass on the ground, spine straight, heaven above, and earth below, you will not fall off of the earth into outer space (paraphrasing Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche). Similarly, the earth will keep turning and this does not require any effort on your part, the next day’s arrival is (as far as I can tell)  guaranteed You may not be here for it, not then again, I may not be here for it either; that’s not worth worrying about.

What is problematic is that in all likelihood you and I will be still alive when the dawn comes, and sooner or later will land again withing the confines of  flesh, to face this thing they call life. Go ahead and look, it’s often not pretty, can scorch your soul they say, but you will know more than you will before. That in itself justifies the rest of it.

“Don’t do it, there’s always a rational alternative”

I reject similarly the tendency to cover underlying truths in misleading polities, and the mendacity of manners. Where the ugliness is, I’ll confront it, but I will not bear it with me in my soul throughout my days.

I refuse to have my time wasted. My time is all I have, take if you will what little money I have, steal and sell my possessions or smash them in the street; just if you insist on doing so, get on with it, don’t waste my time.

If you choose to lock me in a prison cell there is little I can do about that, but spare me the morality, or justification that in destroying this life, you save another one over here.

People grow old and approach death, the wisest among them spend as much time as possible doing the things they love, and while never free from the triviality of daily existence, they shove mountains of accumulated debris aside, to clear a path to a summer day, or frozen waterfall, and let sorting of the unaccounted for and uncategorized wait unitl after dark or duller grayer days at least, and those who fight with vicious insistence for control, of the exact location of each of their possessions, of the thoughts and choices according to a doctrine of  “selflessness” and responsibility borne of a time that is not this one.

Some say they’re seen it all before, but that’s the biggest delusion; each day’s dawn is something you’ve never seen before, and there is no limit to the beauty of nature, and of human nature. There also is no atrocity whose vileness cannot be bested by the next, no dictator, rich thug or warlord whose world record will stand forever.

So tell me what you must, but if there is nothing I can do to ease your suffering, do not expect an answer. If there is something I can do to help, please let me know. But I’m a pale shadow of someone or something that could have been and never was, not bringer of miracles, a warrior perhaps, but no hero, bearing only scars and disgrace. As a beast of burden, maybe I have a few more years of lifting heavy loads and moving them from one point to the next, but healthier men than me have dropped dead in their tracks at much younger ages, the experts gleefully predicted that I would die for ignoring their warnings; how was I to know they would be wrong? Outliving the clean living, the good who die young, because “only the young die good”(copyright2003 freneticmemetics.com) with a will of ice and axe steel crawled through sewer troughs of prisons, pathogens and coinflip trusting in the surgeon’s blade all for what….there is nothing I can do, not tonight anyway.

As we used to say back in the day “Don’t fuck with me man, I’m too damn tired for this shit….”

If you choose to live, truly live, and love without contract or condition. Just don’t wast my time. Most importantly, don’t waste your time!

We never question why

We waste our time

Scratching for the face of whoever’s near

that’s what you do when you get the fear

of death in your eyes

We worship men who kill

Obedient stripped of will

“thy will not mine”

Is for slaves

on their way to the killing floor

Forward march, to the front

 there will be no other door

There goes your time

We waste the hours at hand,

failing to understand

The reasons why we’re here,

we place our trust in fear

We waste our time

Looking for the prize

wanting just reward

sweaty  grasping hands

 open one more door

bearing bodies live,

corpses back,

 just one more war

living  fear,

spattered blood

into image death

waters acid bound,

burning holes in your eyes

We waste our time

When will you realize

Those things that money buys

Can’t break the running chain

Or change the sad refrain

We waste our time

Crawling bound knees to dirt

Face to glass

Dripping blood ‘til we drop

Casting stones to the ones who stand

Bending down in the grip

Of the greatest living lie

Serving hate while we wait

For our final pay

Comes the dawn see another day

Each one the last for the one

Near the edge falling off

That one isn’t you

Can’t recognize what you do

We waste our time

I reject similarly the tendency to cover underlying truths in misleading polities, and the mendacity of manners. Where the ugliness is, I’ll confront it, but I will not bear it with me in my soul throughout my days.

I refuse to have my time wasted. My time is all I have, take if you will what little money I have, steal and sell my possessions or smash them in the street; just if you insist on doing so, get on with it, don’t waste my time.

If you choose to lock me in a prison cell there is little I can do about that, but spare me the morality, or justification that in destroying this life, you save another one over here.

People grow old and approach death, the wisest among them spend as much time as possible doing the things they love, and while never free from the triviality of daily existence, they shove mountains of accumulated debris aside, to clear a path to a summer day, or frozen waterfall, and let sorting of the unaccounted for and uncategorized wait unitl after dark or duller grayer days at least, and those who fight with vicious insistence for control, of the exact location of each of their possessions, of the thoughts and choices according to a doctrine of  “selflessness” and responsibility borne of a time that is not this one.

Some say they’re seen it all before, but that’s the biggest delusion; each day’s dawn is something you’ve never seen before, and there is no limit to the beauty of nature, and of human nature. There also is no atrocity whose vileness cannot be bested by the next, no dictator, rich thug or warlord whose world record will stand forever.

So tell me what you must, but if there is nothing I can do to ease your suffering, do not expect an answer. If there is something I can do to help, please let me know. But I’m a pale shadow of someone or something that could have been and never was, not bringer of miracles, a warrior perhaps, but no hero, bearing only scars and disgrace. As a beast of burden, maybe I have a few more years of lifting heavy loads and moving them from one point to the next, but healthier men than me have dropped dead in their tracks at much younger ages, the experts gleefully predicted that I would die for ignoring their warnings; how was I to know they would be wrong? Outliving the clean living, the good who die young, because “only the young die good”(copyright2003 freneticmemetics.com) I will of ice and axe steel crawled through sewer troughs of prisons, pathogens and coinflip trusting in the surgeon’s blade all for what….there is nothing I can do, not tonight anyway.

As we used to say back in the day “Don’t fuck with me man, I’m too damn tired for this shit….”

If you choose to live, truly live, and love without contract or condition. Just don’t wast my time. Most importantly, don’t waste your time!

There’s always the next bus out. Never mind the “will I make the train to city, what will I do if I get there too early or too late….etc? -And the rest of that crap, nomad no more, just a madman’s vacation. Take it out of context for a while and see what it looks like.

Not surprisingly, no major problems have been solved. WSB once said something like “a problem is only a problem once you have defined it as a problem, at which point you have lost all hope of ever solving it.”

Conversely, on of Chogyam Trungpa Rinpche’s favorite responses to troubled disciples, spilling their guts about drug, alcohol, and relationship problems, as well as the ubiquitous “I think I’m losing my mind…” was “No Problem!” and a smile. Of course this is someone who regarded death as a “parking ticket.”

I want my damn parking validated! I don’t even have a parking place! Crashing into thing a lot lately, real life speeding tickets, too petty to put points on my license put fines large enough to cause even a well-paid Washington DC bureaucrat to wince in pain.

Oh well, time to start packing, the morning of departure is never the right time, and even now it is almost a given that I will leave something behind. As long as it isn’t the jar of pickled garlic cloves for my wife, the headset with the voice mike or the motorcycle jacket from the used clothing place…

I got outside and walked, seeing the sky again, feeling myself moving through the world without pressing down on an accelerator, cold in the wind countered by self generated heat, keep moving….no this is not exactly how I’d want to spend my last day, but other than the moralistic voice inside condemning the urge to indolence and hypersomnia, I’m not sure what I could have done differently. In any case the day is n0t over yet, and tomorrow is going to be a long one if all goes according to plan….

It costs money to keep the site up and running; since 2003 I’ve been paying for it out of pocket. I get paid for what I write once in a while, but not anywhere nearly as much as it’s going to take to save my ass from one of the classic “failed artist” scenarios. Go to the site, read some of my real stuff, then answer:

I once asked a rich man for some paltry some of money, 150.00 I think it was, claiming it was for an artistic project, when really I intended to spent it on an accessory to an expensive piece of electronic equipment. I was neither deserving of or entitled to help in this case, and whatever resentments came about as a result of this have long since faded to a very faint hue.

What remains puzzling is the rich man’s response: “Money is a problem you have to deal with, like rocks,or bad weather.”

An irritating zen koan from an uptown Marxist-Buddhist who struggled tirelessly on behalf of those he considered worthy of his assistance, but had little more than free advice, that is if I paid for the phone call.

Angered, I called back at some unseemly hour on another night, high on I don’t know what, but demanded to know “When the fuck was the last time you had to deal with rocks or bad weather, except possibly on one of your expensive vacations in the Himalayas?”

There was no answer but “Thank You.” and I let it go at that. Perhaps the fact that I give money to people who ask me for it at times, without regard to what they will spend it on, or judging as to whether they deserve it accounts for the fact that I exist in a state of constant negative-capital, perhaps with something in my pocket, but enough debts by now to make bankruptcy a possible course of action if I ever had any assets worth defending against the predatory lenders and other less laughable creditors who want my head on a platter.

One thing is for sure, it is much easier to find rocks and bad weather than it is to come up with money. It is much easier to withstand bad weather, and climb over and/or circumnavigate rocks, than it is to make money without money.

Why won’t the rich kick down the cash when you need it? I don’t know, but one thing is for sure, they didn’t get rich by coughing up the dough to the likes of your or me!