goldandrose

10:30am:

The Progressive, December 22, 2006

So this is Christmas.

And that old John Lennon song keeps playing in my mind: “War is over, if you want it.”

I’ve always puzzled over this song, though—especially that lyric.

War isn’t over just by wanting it to be so.

A majority of Americans want it over now, but the war keeps going.

We’ve got 140,000 U.S. troops over there, and it looks like Bush and Cheney and Gates are going to send 20,000 or more.

So John Lennon’s wrong, in a literal way.

The war clearly isn’t over.

But maybe he’s saying, if we really want it to end, and (here’s the implied kicker) if we back that sentiment up with sufficient action, then we have the power to end this war.

Well, we’re not close to that point yet.

Some courageous members of the Armed Services are refusing to report for duty, some courageous peace activists are engaging in nonviolent civil disobedience, but on this Christmas Day, it’s clear that we haven’t done enough, besides wanting this war to end, to bring it to an end.

It’s not enough to want war to be over.

It’s not enough to vote for war to be over, which is what America did on November 7.

No, we need to make it impossible for the war to go on, using every creative bit of nonviolence we can come up with.

At that point, we can rejoice that war is over now.

8:01pm:

war is over

if we want it

7:18pm: up periscope

like an undersea creature in the greenhouse this bromeliad

sent up its red stalk of blue eyeballs to take a look around

5:03pm: i googled 'joy'
and got 88,200,000 hits. surely there is some in the world for one who has so many other things. yet i am losing my smile, which was tenuous to begin with, and the muscles of happiness seem no longer to warm my face.

88,200,000! wonder what results from a search for 'beer'. hmmmmm, 66,100,000 hits. looks like beer, tho also plentiful, is in shorter supply. still, it will make a damn fine stand-in for a while. what'll it be, pal.

5:38pm: executed for 3 inches of pocketknife

firing squad louisiana style:
bang bang bam boom bang bang bang bang blam bang

moral of the story-- don't be poor black and crazy here, coz the blue bitch will waste your lonely ass in broad daylight.

it aint just new orleans. it happened here in baton rouge a few years ago.

submoral-- everybody take a vid cam wherever you go. keep yer finger on the trigger.

they say there were ten casings on the ground. that means there were at least nine of nineteen officers who didn't shoot. gentlemen, salud.

7:20pm: neither prick...

neither prick nor cunt,

today's word is prunt

because my little wineglass

has one or two

12:43pm: no bull

                     happy birthday mithras

11:23am: Mexican Cornbread

2 eggs
1 cp buttermilk
1 can (14 oz) cream style corn
1/4 cp vegetable oil
1/4 cp melted butter (1/2 stick)

1 1/2 cp stone-ground cornmeal (white or yellow or both)
1 cp flour
1 T baking powder
1 T salt

2 to 5 jalapenos, seeded and chopped
1/2 cp bell pepper, chopped (red or green or both)
1/2 cp green onion, chopped
1 - 1 1/2 cp grated sharp cheddar cheese

Beat eggs, add buttermilk, add corn and then add oil/butter.
Combine dry ingredients and sift into mixture.
Add other ingredients.
Spoon into two greased pre-heated 9" cornbread skillets and bake 40 to 50 minutes in 400 degree pre-heated oven. Brush tops with melted butter in last ten minutes.

5:54pm:

a friend will go to the grocery store for you

a really good friend will go to the grocery store for you on christmas eve

the unimaginable friend --comrade, lover, spouse-- goes to the crowded grocery store on christmas eve for a single can of creamed corn even tho his friend was too addle-pated to put it on the list when first he went out into the day.

no one compares to him.

10:24am: keillor extolls arabica and more

Now that medical science has established that coffee is an important source of antioxidants that help prevent cancer, heart disease, diabetes and stroke, you and I can get on with our lives. A cup of coffee is what starts our engines and saves us from torpor and lassitude. We always knew this. Starbucks was built on the idea that there is no such thing as an overpriced cup of coffee. Yes, I know people who have quit coffee and who will tell you in their small tremulous voices How Much Better They Feel and goody for them but to me living without coffee is like trying to climb up the outside of your house using suction cups. Why not just use the stairs?

( hail the noble bean and stalwart comfort )

8:40pm: another rainbow flag

wiphala

2:54pm: imagine...

"Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and torturous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness, with which more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we called it the word of a demon, than the word of God. It is a history of wickedness, that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind"

Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason

12:23pm:

THE BLACK PANTHER

January 4, 1969.

Page 7.

 --------------------------------------------------------

"REPARATIONS FOR VIETNAM"

AT LEAST A million Vietnamese people have been killed by the Americans or by puppet forces armed and directed by the U.S. Precious human lives can never be replaced with money or goods. Yet material compensation must be granted to the survivors. Using the racist standards of imperialism, the U.S. government has paid $34 per person to relatives of persons killed by its armed forced "by accident" in so-called "friendly areas." Such token payments measure nothing but the depravity of the U.S. military rules.

Here is a suggested standard. The U.S. grants each serviceman a $10,000 life insurance policy, for a token premium of $2 yearly. This maybe taken as the minimum value of a human life. Applied to the million plus killed by U.S. imperialism in Vietnam, it comes to a total of more than $10 billion.

9:23am:

and so begins

its return...

10:54am: sayeth jimi

( The Burning of the Midnight Lamp )

7:59am: today's word is 'puritanism'

as defined by mencken:

"the haunting fear that someone, somewhere might be happy"

11:57am: inca diva
( a german reverie )

10:27am: Laughing Club of India

it could have been made more disturbing and scary

but it's plenty creepy as it is. don't watch this one on acid.

2:45pm: "Anybody can sing and talk"

The younger Guthrie sees a parallel with the great Katrina Diaspora.

"My dad, and millions of others like him, had to leave their farms, homes, families and jobs and look for work and stuff to eat. It was a calamity unheard of and unechoed until (Katrina). So there's a family connection here, because my dad would have been one of those guys playing in the (New Orleans) bars. As a young man, that's what I was doing, playing on the streets for tips."

Despite his pedigree, Guthrie says activism is not his natural inclination.

"I'd much prefer to be lazy. That's more in my nature. But you get caught up in this stuff and find yourself doing things that you didn't think you would. I don't look for stuff for protest; I'm not a professional protester.

"But I grew up in a family with values that said you can't just sing about things. Anybody can sing and talk. You have to actually do stuff. Sometimes you have to act without waiting to understand. That's been our family philosophy: Love now. Live now. Serve now. Do it now. The understanding will come at some point. I raised my kids to get involved in what's going on. There has to be somebody willing to help."

12:20pm: it is reasonable and just
to feel contempt for those too mush-headed to work out obvious contradixions in their ideologies or personal codes, and scorn for those too intellectually lazy to face rotting blunders in past judgement, and a degree of loathing for those too flaccidly polite to raise tough questions.

it is, however, difficult to prompt any of these things --to engender these attempts at integrity or housekeeping-- in the lives of one's friends without an arsenal of tenderness or enormous reserves of patience and tact and wit. do friends call friends stupid? probably not for very long.

10:28am: fare thee well, sweet and troubled man

"He opened the biggest door and turned the light on in the room.”

9:31pm: the esteemed academy in stockholm

or more precisely, what pinter had to say to them there

10:25pm: allons manger

there are lots and lots of websites touting kitchen cutlery. you can wander easily n2 the exotica of asian knives and begin 2 think you need one or 2 of those to complete yer kitchen. japanese cutlery particularly is the rage.

in the chinese kitchen, cleavers are used to cut nearly anything-- butchering, carving, slicing, chopping, mincing. the secret is in the chinese wrist? in japanese kitchens a multi-tool approach has evolved, centering on three blades.

those three blades were eventually given simultaneous expression in one utensil-- the santoku, the japanese multi-purpose all-around chefs knife. when you hold a good santoku it feels as if great chefs are channeling thru yer hand.

debas and usubas and santokus may be pretty to look at, but all the cool knives in the world won't make a real cook out of a cutlery collector. the moment of truth is in the kitchen, when blade meets board.

i'm not ever going to be a real cook. i might as well put a stetson on my head and call myself a cowboy. i learned food skills mostly from kraft's blue box of macaroni and cheese, the one with the magic orange dust inside.

but it sure is fun to play with knives.

9:02pm: i'd love to turn you on

jp wants to know how many jelly beans it takes to fill the albert hall

6:00pm: making the most
of a short day, whose light will lengthen the day of our best dreams..