Reality

Commentary by Michael Bonanno.

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Michael
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Reality

Post by Michael » February 21st, 2011, 3:19 pm

I know some of you have already seen this, so, for you, nothing to see here.

I have to get some things off my chest. Some are personal, some, maybe not so much.

I’m going to post this to a few other places, so it’s going to be a form letter of sorts.

I’ve thought about this a lot, but I am typing this as I think of it now. It’s not so much prepared as overdue.

First, the personal.

I’ve been visiting a poetry site called Arcanum Café since 2000. As I was 50 years old at the time, I’d never seen anything like it before. The internet had only been at the fingertips of a large portion of Americans for a short time then, but there were people born in 1980 and a little after who couldn’t even imagine what life was like without a TV on a desk and a typewriter keyboard in front of it. Of course, there’s the mouse. Personal computers. What a wonderful invention the military finally decided to share with the rest of us.

So, I started to visit AC. I wrote a lot of what I called poetry from 1964 until about 1974. Unfortunately, in order to leave my parents’ home, I had to meet a woman and marry her. Well, at least that’s what they told me and, by the time I was 21 or 22, whatever, they had me believing everything they said. I guess I was too stupid to know that I could have left and they couldn’t have done a thing about it.

By the way, I don’t want this to seem like a woe is me message and I’ve already started down that road. So, I’ll swerve back.

I got married and gave my parents their first grandchildren. Obviously, as I had a degree in nothing, I had to get a job which didn’t require one. So, I worked for The Dow Chemical Company for 25 years. I was no more ready to be a husband than a father and I didn’t love the woman to whom I was married and she never loved me. So, after we had two daughters, we divorced.

I won’t go into details about the next three attempts at marriage, but one more daughter was one of the results.

My point, of course, is I worked for a chemical manufacturer. I worked rotating shift work and I didn’t touch my guitar nor did I write verse nor prose until The Dow Chemical Company delayered me in 1997.

That’s wrong.

First, as much as I now know and probably knew then that The Dow Chemical Company fought every attempt by the government and environmental groups to advance the cause of environmental integrity, I worked in a small plant with a bunch of wonderful people. When I drove through the gate I actually became an adult. When I left, I went home to someone or another who knew that I thought of myself as a child and treated me as such.

I did well making the chemicals that Dow wanted me to make. I worked my way up through the ranks, as they say. I actually became a front line supervisor. I supervised anywhere from 25 to 60 adults. Amazing.

The small site at which I worked busted the union in 1972 and I used to say, “Good, I’d never work for a union.”

I heard stories of having to call an electrician in at 2 AM to change a light bulb which, believe or not, was essential to keeping the process running. Our process was not computer controlled at the time, so we had to determine the level of this or that by actually looking into the tank with our eyes. The light bulb burns out, we can’t proceed until we know that the level is correct.

I’m talking about batches of 4500 gallons of material, of which we produced anywhere from 10-12 a day. Lots of money waiting for an electrician.

Well, the main thing was I became emotionally tied to The Dow Chemical Company and it treated me well. I probably wasn’t treating the environment too well and, once I became a supervisor, as much as I tried to use positive reinforcement to improve the productivity of my reports, the company had a very defined pay for performance policy and, without a union to help them, my reports needed to be “rated” by us supervisors. We had to have so many “Seldom Meets Job Requirements” and so many “Exceeds Job Requirements”, whether they existed in reality or not. So, I helped Dow Chemical screw my former workmates.

The point, again, is that poetry and music were almost forgotten entities at that time despite the fact that, up until then, they were almost everything to me.

I just wanted to be sure that it didn’t come across as if I wanted to write during those years, but my job kept me from doing so. I actually hated environmentalists and unions and I didn’t know what the Iran/Contra scandal was about or what NAFTA was about. It didn’t matter. I was getting promotions and bonuses.

The second thing that I may have written above that might be misleading is when I restarted to write.

Tina, my present wife, began working for The Dow Chemical Company in 1991. I didn’t have to look at her too many times for a flame to start burning. I wrote four poems in two nights. I thought they were good and so did Jane, the woman to whom I was married at the time.

I don’t know if NAFTA did it or some other governmental sleight of hand, but the entire “atmosphere” to which I’d become accustomed changed overnight. One of the first consequences of the change was Dow’s “empowering” my reports and thinning the layers of management globally. Of course, the front line supervisors were the first to go globally. It was funny how fast I went from receiving a yearly merit bonus to becoming a borderline non supervisory burned out corner lamp.

They gave me one last project to do for them, then they laid me off.

That was in 1997, as I mentioned.

I looked for work immediately, hoping to find something in manufacturing as a supervisor. Surprisingly enough, I did find two jobs. However, the managers of those places were not as into positive reinforcement as I was. I quit each job because I tried to redirect reports. The first one actually did something that could have been improved.

The second report took time off to attend her father’s funeral in Puerto Rico. She was otherwise a wonderful asset to the company and when the time came to write a progress report for her, I said as much. I was reamed out unsympathetically by those above me. How could I write all of the positive stuff I wrote about her when she’d just lost all of that work time? I quit, then and there. I turned to the guy who was sort of my back up and said, “You got it.”

I then got a job as an inspector of buoys at a buoy manufacturing place. I remembered seeing buoys out on the water. That was my experience. The training was on the job and didn’t include time for patience. I then became a patient and began to collect Social Security Disability Insurance.

So, it’s 2000 and I find this place where people, for the most part, read all of the poetry that I’d written throughout my life and respond with kind words. Some responded with constructive criticism, but I was once again getting into a positive place. My marriage was still good at the time as well and things were going well.

I made lots of “friends” at AC. In fact, I got a crush on a few of those that I liked, not the least of which was a woman named Jo. We flirted online and my wife saw some of it and, rightfully, became upset. It didn’t split up my marriage, but it was interesting.

I became a moderator, then an administrator. As an administrator, I inadvertently wiped out everyone’s post counts by going where no Michael had gone before and shouldn’t have ever gone. I was forgiven by almost everyone except me.

I was an embittered “victim” of what I began to call The Corporacracy and began to visit a forum that AC called “Open Discussion” more than the poetry forums. I don’t know if I had a right to be bitter or not.

However, I read the book WHEN CORPORATIONS RULE THE WORLD written by a man named David Korten. If everything Korten wrote/writes is true, I learned about the people for whom I worked, what their place was supposed to be in society and what it was becoming. I became even more incensed.

Then 9/11 happened and, after watching David Ray Griffin on C-Span and reading his books, as well as those of others, it made perfect sense to me that those in power in the United States would absolutely want to carry out 9/11. I’m not about to argue that point in this thread, it was just another step in what happened to me after that.

I took a class in html and bought a domain name and a web site from Bravenet. Bravenet, for some reason or another, had gotten my email address and had been pestering me for a couple of years to buy what they were selling. I also got a “free” blog on blogspot.

I wrote at AC, on my blog and on my web site. I also used my web site to post my poetry and music.

I had found magic software which allowed me to play my music on many tracks, sounding like the Mormon Tabernacle Choir if I wanted to and I posted my songs on my web site as well as at AC.

Doreen was a member of AC, as some of you may know, and asked me if I wanted to write a “column” for a message board she’d created called Studio 8. I would write anywhere anyone would let me write at that time.

I hated the Iraq War. I hated the fact that people looked at many of us who thought/think 9/11 was an inside job as if we were equal to those who’ve seen flying saucers or the Lochness Monster or Big Foot. I know that most of them never opened Griffin’s book or any other book or paper written by people with advanced degrees. It just gave me more to write about.

I finally learned what NAFTA was and what so called “free trade” is. I began to hate the lies that CEOs who were pulling in millions and millions of dollars were telling to convince us that it was necessary in a “global economy” to send jobs done by Americans for a living wage to countries whose workers would work for 1/20th or less of the wage that Americans were willing to work for. I was angry that these millionaires made certain that the countries to which they sent the jobs had lax, if any, laws which were meant to protect the earth from which they were extracting their wealth.

So I wrote and wrote and wrote and wrote. I read sites like Common Dreams, Truthout, Tom Paine.com, Information Clearing House and Anti-War.com. Inasmuch as people at AC were so kind as to at least compliment me on my ability to write, even if they disagreed with me, I began to submit my “rants” to these places. None of the places which I read accepted any of my submissions.

Then I found a new site called OpEdNews. It was brand new and was accepting anything from anyone. I got in so early that I became an assistant editor almost immediately. Everything I wanted to publish was published. OpEdNews has worked very hard to increase its readership by leaps and bounds over the years.

I also learned about a place called CD Baby. I believe that one of the lyricists or songwriters at AC told me about it. I recorded all of my songs on CDs, attempting to make them look and sound as professional as possible and submitted them to CD Baby. CD Baby distributed the CDs to iTunes, Rhapsody and many other digital music outlets.

The one other personal thing that I was doing was working very hard at learning to speak Spanish. It was my opinion that, as the US has no government mandated official language and 12% of the American population speak Spanish as a first language, Americans should know how to speak Spanish and English, in spite of the argument that “When my ancestors came here they had to learn how to speak English. “Those people” should be no different. They should learn how to speak English as well.”

Of course, I responded by attempting to remind people that many of “those people” didn’t come here. We went there because someone convinced a very narcissistic people that it was our “Manifest Destiny” to do so. We violently annexed the land of people who speak Spanish and complained/complain that they won’t learn to speak English like “my ancestors from Bosnia or Sicily had to do.”

More anger. More writing. More arguing. More heartburn. More frustration.

I cut way back on how much I visited AC or Studio 8 and, ultimately, stepped down from my position as administrator at AC. I was making records, writing new songs, writing columns for Studio 8, which fell off quite drastically, as well, working on helping to edit an ever-growing queue of submissions at OEN, learning Spanish and, oh yeah, keeping my wife and dogs company.

Here’s a major reason I’m yet again already writing a War And Peace length post. I’ve had no problem posting new songs at AC or Studio 8. At first, people did give me the time of day. Thinking back at that, I wonder why they didn’t stop immediately. However, they did stop and rightfully so. I thought my writing was important and, of course, it was important to me. However, so was yours to you and yours to you and yours to you, etc. Did I stop by to comment on any of your stuff? No. I stopped by to show off my own shit.

Of course, my excuse had always been I didn’t have time to spend the hours I used to spend at AC or Studio 8. Then, I didn’t have time to help with the queue at OEN. Then I couldn’t figure out what I didn’t have time for because I unofficially stopped doing the other stuff. Let me explain. The other stuff was the stuff I didn’t have time for when I was working on that which I was working at any given moment.

I’ve sort of recently gone back to AC and I’ve tried to comment on the work of others. But I’m kidding myself. I’m kidding myself in so many ways.

My poetry has been published. That’s right. I have, on more than one occasion, received two free issues of whatever poetry publication published my poetry.

I’ve sold at least one copy of every CD thus far. I’ve sold some individual songs on digital music sites. Many of the songs pay as much as 0.09. That’s nine-hundredths of a penny. Thus far I’ve received one check for $20 from CD Baby. One check in six years.

I wrote about the unfair treatment President Obama was getting in the beginning of his administration, but see him now as just another actor on the stage of lies.

And I’ve written about the lies. The political theater. The fact that we don’t want to pay for healthcare for our fellow citizens because it will take money out of the pockets of our kids and grandkids, although none of that money would have gone towards making CEOs in the health insurance industry wealthy through spiraling premiums, deductibles, co-pays and join-up fees.

I’m sixty years old, folks. Where in the hell do I think my music is going to go? There are about 7 billion people in the world and 6 billion of them are using the very same software I’m using to make CDs and MP3s.

Of that seven billion, 129 read books of poetry. Where’s my poetry going and why is it so much more important to you than yours is to me?

Oh, and trying to tell people that a “we” society is better than a “me” society is an insult to the matron saint of “mes”, Ayn Rand.

This is the part that’s just a little less personal, yet narcissistic just the same.

I’m fucking goddamned sick of the meanness in The United States Of America. I know there’s meanness everywhere, but “sea to polluted sea” has perfected it.

But just look, will ya? Why should I have to pay for lazy Leroy’s or wanted Juan’s health insurance? I made up the names this time, but anyone who claims that this is not the meaning, overtly or dog-whistled, when people say, “I’m not paying for someone else’s life, those lazy bums,” is insulting those who make such statements. “They’re all lazy” - as if the person speaking knows at least half of the African Americans or Latinos who live in America. That’s my cutoff and I think it’s more than fair. If you know one half of the population of any ethnic group and know them personally, then, maybe, you can start stereotyping. Short of knowing one half of them personally, you know none of them.

“It’s my hard earned pay and I deserve to keep all of it!” Sure you do, but stop lying about how hard earned it is.

Well, I guess it’s all relative. For some people, having to get up out of bed in the morning makes it hard earned.

“And stop bitching about jobs going to third world countries, Michael. If the bleeding hearts didn’t regulate and tax these companies, they’d stay right here in the good ole USofA.”

Is that right? We can stop regulating and taxing demonically wealthy businesses that wouldn’t pay a penny to try to save the planet and they’d turn their backs on workers who are satisfied to make under $2.00/hour? Bet me!

No, that third element would have to be included as well. Americans would have to agree to compete with a wage of under $2.00/hour and promise not to be involved with any organization that might protect their right to live above the subsistence line in order for our global corporate friends to return the jobs to this country.

Here’s the meanness.

Why shouldn’t Caucasian Americans have the right to carry weapons of any capacity they’d like. We’ve stopped talking about protecting the rights of hunters. Now we want automatic weapons with thirty rounds of amour piercing ammunition to protect ourselves against the common criminal or even the government which is trying to pry into our private lives.

People who are of the same sex have no right to love each other in a romantic way. It’s wrong. They will burn in hell if they do that. The book of one of 8 thousand religions says so and god himself wrote that book and if you don’t believe, you’re going to burn too and I’m glad of it. People who marry people of the same sex deserve to burn forever.

This country and that country and the other and even this one here or that one there has a president, prime minister or king that said the word “nuculer” eight years ago. I think we should bomb all of the men, women, children, babies, animals and trees who live in those countries. Kill ‘em all. They don’t believe the same about spirits as we correctly believe, so they shouldn’t live here on earth anyway. We need to bomb ‘em into last century before they throw a grenade on to Times Square and force us to use one of our 2,400 “nuculer” weapons.


(This was already mentioned, but…) It’s a proven fact (it’s always a proven fact) that those people don’t like to work or those people are intrinsically dirty or those people are still in a stage lower than we are in the process of evolution, a lie which I don’t believe anyway. Look at their skin. They’re like animals.

They should have to learn to speak our language. Why should we learn to speak theirs? White, English speaking Canadians, Danes, Swedes and others have it all wrong. They speak two or three languages flawlessly. I’ll be damned if I’m going to do that for those no counts.


(This was also already mentioned, but…) It’s my money. I want it all. I’m not giving it to the government to squander. (Let’s not forget the meanness above that talks about bombing babies into kingdom come because that doesn’t come cheap, yet it always seems to be a solution for people who want to keep “their” money). It’s my money. I’ve worked hard all of my life for it and those people don’t even look for jobs. I know it because it’s a proven fact written in The Bible.

The baby and the mother will die if the mother doesn’t get an abortion? Well, I don’t care if the whole neighborhood dies, it’s illegal to kill so let’s kill that “abortionist” before he or she kills to save the neighborhood.

Ice melts, ass-hole. If we cut back on carbon emissions, I’m going to lose my job and I won’t have any money, all of which I’ve earned and should keep. It’s been this way for the six thousand years that the world’s been around and it will never change. Nothing we are doing is making it any worse. Especially not here in America. American scientists are, by far, the best scientists and the overall vast majority of real American scientists say that the earth is going through the very same kind of natural stage it’s been going through for lo these six thousand years. It gets hot, it gets cold. You bet my company isn’t doing anything wrong. We’re the best because we’re an American company.

I want my money. I earn my money. I don’t want any of it to go toward bullshit electric mass transit. There’s no need of it. There’s so much oil under the earth that everyone could drive a hummer for a million years and we’d still drown in crude. Those do-gooders all have a Socialist, Communist agenda. Those people who want to keep intruding into my person life, who better not marry people of the same sex, better keep their hands of off my hummer. The naïve little girls and boys who believe in global warming should face the death penalty. The only good (commie, liberal, conservative, tall person, short person, black person, white person, person person) is a dead one. I want my hard earned money. I’m not sitting next to one of “them” on an unnecessary electric train. Electric trains are toys for kids and that’s what they should stay.

America is the greatest nation in the world and other countries are happy to have American military bases. It puts us closer to all of those countries whose leaders may have said the word “nuculer” some time in their lives. We can launch a “nuculer” bomb from anywhere and bomb ‘em into next Tuesday. So, babies will be killed. Wouldn’t you kill a maggot to stop the infestation of flies?


My number here is anecdotal, but too fucking many Americans feel that way. And they have shows on the radio and on the television and they just cultivate those feelings among other Americans who are mortally afraid of a world in which people look different, speak differently, look at love differently and, omg, especially believe in the improvable differently than they do.

So, the answer; keep all of your money because taxes just go to lazy people who look and/or speak differently; somehow pay for a military whose task it should be to wipe out half, if not more, of the world’s disbelieving, dark skinned, foreign speaking population. Kill civilians in war, save fetuses, even if it kills them to do it.

I’m sick of the meanness. Don’t give people health care, but send them to war. Don’t let people love who they want to love and don’t even send them to war. This would be a good use of the death penalty. (And they don’t mean lethal injection) Too easy. Make ‘em suffer. No Jesus, no mercy. No Allah, no mercy. No Yahweh, no mercy.

We are the chosen people, not them.

Americans have the best of everything. It says so in the Bible.


The meanness is too overwhelming. We are a mean people. We love the death of those we hate and we hate almost everyone else in the world, including those who call themselves Americans but who we believe should never have been allowed to become Americans.

See? I’ve proved it by posting my stuff and not commenting on others. I’m no better than anyone else. I’m an American. I’m important and you’re not.

But I’m copping to it. AC and Studio 8 are wonderful communities and I just don’t belong. You care about one another and, although I never thought this was true, it seems quite obvious that all I care about is me. I’m an American, after all.

I won’t disturb this great place anymore. I guess this was enough to last forever anyway. But I’ve imploded and exploded. I’ve turned against meanness and that includes my own.

Honestly, this isn’t a woe is me message. Because, no it’s not me. It’s all of you, doing the right thing, caring about one another.

No more stupid music “countdowns”. No more rants. No more nothing.

I think I love all of you, but I’ve had a very strange way of showing it.


I’m very sorry.


Michael

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Arcadia
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Re: Reality

Post by Arcadia » February 21st, 2011, 10:38 pm

hola Michael! :) hey..., I hope this is not a suicide letter...! :shock: I´ve been reading your post while reading some other threads at the same time, and it shows a lot of care about what is around you, amigo!. And we are all selfish and generous and happy and sorry in so different ways..., don´t worry! :wink:

do you have a job at the moment? watching news from Wisconsin an hour ago...

best wishes & a Juan Quintero & Edgardo Cardozo canción for you "Algo más pasará" ( I couldn´t attach the youtube link because the connection is slow, listen to the guitars... !!!!! )

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Michael
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Re: Reality

Post by Michael » February 22nd, 2011, 12:19 pm

No, esto no es una nota de suicidio. En realidad, si cuidar sobre la sociedad es más como el suicidio.

La sociedad americano no quiere el cuidado. Sin embargo, cada persona quiere la atención. Después de todo, cada persona americana es más importante que todos los otros americanos.

Si no fuera por guerra, los americanos que no trabajarían juntos.

"Manifest Destiny" nos ha dicho que somos libres para sofocar la libertad de las otras personas del mundo.

Nosotros somos pueblo malo.


A la amistad,
Miguel

Steve Plonk
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Joined: December 12th, 2009, 4:48 pm

Re: Reality

Post by Steve Plonk » February 22nd, 2011, 6:21 pm

I got my daughter to translate. However, I read the long prose piece that
you posted above. Glad you are not thinking of "offing yourself".

My advice, probably unwanted, is that you've worked hard most of your
life and reality sometimes imitates fiction. Not all is like it seems. (Not
all are able to fully comprehend other languages. I took several languages
in high school and got C's in them. I had to drop out of languages when
I went to college. Some folks in my family are able to pick it up just
by listening to folks on the street. So, I'm not the sharpest tool in the
box when it comes to foreign language. So, I get help...)

I was lucky enough to go to college on the GI Bill and on the strength of my labors. I also got help from the folks. I have two land-grant university B.S.
degrees and have not EVER had a career in anything...Just a series of jobs.
Working for Dow Chemical must've have been like working for THE MAN.
I could never have survived two weeks in a place like that.

My life, also, is a cautionary tale. I wrote a two book novel about my "first
third" of my life called EXPERIENCE FOR SALE...It has not yet been published
but both parts have been copyrighted in 1986. I've had pieces published in
many small local and regional magazines, but never made more than twenty dollars for any one piece.

You appear to be about a year younger than I. We went through the same times, took a licking, and we came back kicking. So, Michael, you have plenty to be proud of. Also, you appear to have three children. I only have one grown daughter, who is an unemployed recent college graduate. So, you have a better
chance to have grandchildren. (I have plenty of grand nieces and grand nephews...)

The wingnuts and religious, societal meanness and ignorance you are fond of
quoting appears here in Tennessee, too. But many of us are living in not
so quiet desperation. We are happy to try, I say try, to vote out these
rightwing characters from time to time. Tennessee is a very fickle state politically. We used to be one of the most liberal in the South. Our state
voted in the constitutional amendment giving Women the right to vote.
The guy who cast that deciding vote in our legislature was very brave and
gutsy. There are plenty of us still left in this state. We believe in the
environmental causes and jobs creation, bringing in new passenger trains,
finishing the locks on the dams, creating quality and affordable health insurance, equal rights, and so on...The gaps between the rich and poor are lengthening, but a livable minimum wage is STILL wanted by many in this state. A safe business is GOOD business...

What is happening in Wisconsin could also happen here in Tennessee and I
think people here would be just as angry as they are up in the midwest.
Around this country, there are many like us. We just need to reorganize into
an Economic MOBE like we did back in the day for environmental and peace issues. We speak on the streets and in the ballot box, like of yore, and Obama's
ideals will prevail. I like our president's ideals... We need to have his back and
not let the Tea Party folks get the upper hand. We still have the US Senate.
We can use the Senate as a bully pulpit and act on what we feel. Massive
voting blocs and letter campaigns may get some results.

Oh, a final word, I have a nephew who lives in California. I need to write him
a letter like this one...Good luck, Michael, keep posting, for God's sake, and
take courage. All is not like it seems..."A bundle of sticks is stronger than one..."
goes the old biblical adage.

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Arcadia
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Re: Reality

Post by Arcadia » February 22nd, 2011, 9:24 pm

Michael: pueblo is a big word...! and yeah, generalizations sometimes can be devastating...

the link works today, enjoy! :D :



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Re: Reality

Post by Michael » February 22nd, 2011, 10:55 pm

Steve,

You’ve touched my heart. My eyes are slightly leaking, I’ll cop to that.

First, as I mentioned, I’ve been studying Spanish for about five years on my own. I’ve purchased Rosetta Stone, which is a wonderful program. I’m not even sure if I got what I wanted to say correct. I’m glad your daughter was able to make some sense of it.

The only setback in my speaking Spanish is that I have no one with whom to converse. There was this cute girl who works at Ace Hardware to whom I spoke in Spanish and I told her that she should be proud of herself for speaking two languages so fluently. She started to speak to me in Spanish every time I went into Ace Hardware. However, I wasn’t going to bankrupt my family by buying stuff from Ace Hardware once a day.

So, I wrote this pretty young girl a note and gave her my email address. I said I would learn Spanish better if I had someone with whom I could converse at least once a week. I asked her if she’d be so kind as to spend an hour with an old guy, sitting on a park bench once a week and speaking her first language.

I never heard from her. Needless to say, I’ve never been back to that particular Ace Hardware. Embarrassed or what? She no doubt thought that I was a dirty old man trying to hit on her. Well, I am a dirty old man, but I had no illusions that we’d do anything but speak Spanish. She had no illusions either, but she may have had nightmares.

I wrote the Spanish post because Arcadia sprinkled some Spanish in her post and, if I’m not mistaken, Doreen told me that Arcadia either is Hispanic or just plain speaks Spanish very well.

Secondly, I am so grateful that you shared with me (and anyone else who read it) what you shared. I can feel I’m not alone.

The meanness has been rollin’ ‘round in my brain for quite some time.

Michelle Obama is concerned about child obesity and the mean people twist and turn and morph her concern into something that’s not even in the same zip code. I don’t know which one said it, but one of them said that he (or was it she?) will eat all the fat and sugar that he/she wants. “The government” isn’t going to tell me what to eat.

That’s not a response to Mrs. Obama’s efforts. It’s got nothing to do with it.

It’s as if, when Lady Bird Johnson took up the cause of beautifying America, someone said, “I’ll litter all I want. The government can’t stop me from making America look like a shit hole.”

I know exactly where it comes from, too. In fact, I’m of the mind that some of the people, Limbaugh, Hannity, Bachman, O’Reilly, actually know exactly that their responses are irrelevant or inappropriate or something along that line. These people are fairly articulate. They don’t seem stupid. So it comes from $$$$$$$$$$$$$$. I wouldn’t doubt that some of them, not all of them, voted for Obama and know that universal health care is better that what we have, etc. To make it an outright ad hominem attack, some, many or, maybe most of them are nothing but whores.

However, I have a friend who turns on Fox (I just don’t want to write “Fox News”) first thing in the morning and has it on until bedtime. He doesn’t sit and watch it for the whole day, but, as he goes through his day, he’ll stop and look at the tube or maybe take a break and watch it for a while.

And Fox’s ratings tell me that Lew isn’t the only one doing it.

I gave Lew a video called “Outfoxed”. I believe it was produced by Glen Greenwald. He told me that he could only watch 20 minutes of it. Why? Why couldn’t he watch the whole thing and then discard all of its information? He said, “I guess somebody just doesn’t like Fox News.”

If he’d watched it, he’d know who some of those bodies are. They’re former Fox News employees.

You say I’ve worked hard all my life. Working for Dow was fun. There were so many cool people I worked with and our jobs as technicians were a combination of brute and brain. We made some of our tasks sort of like sports competitions. We’d manipulate the process control computers that we got in 1978 so that we could do a task early. This would piss off our relief because “I was supposed to do that”. It was all in fun and I really didn’t feel as if I was working for the man.

In fact, when I started at Dow, the CEO was making about 42 times what I was making. I think that’s fairly reasonable considering the responsibility he had.

However, we were taking shortcuts.

We had a Standard Operating Procedure that said we could dump stuff in the Thames River (that’s Thames with a long “a” and it’s in Connecticut) until the fish “appeared to be disturbed”. Well you can imagine how funny that seemed to us and we never saw any pissed off fish. However, it wasn’t funny at all. We should never have dumped anything into that water.

I may have offed myself long ago if not for Dow. I was looking at the world from Dow’s world view and was being paid handsomely for it. I, who my father said was “no fucking good and never will be”, was promoted to a position where I actually supervised, or as I like to say, facilitated adults, many of whom were older than I. I never thought that I had that talent, but I did. The people in my little bubble, who were basically like me, thought I had the talent and promoted me.

I hate what Dow and other American corporations have become along the way.

Lew also worked at Dow, only here in California. He thinks he worked hard all of his life and very well may have. However, he’s told that everything he earned belongs to him and he can help others with it if he’d like to or he doesn’t have to help others.

I say Lew is a “friend”. He’s really a very nice guy. But he’s a racist straight through to his bones. So, if he was able to keep all of his money and he did give charitably to those in need, they’d have to meet his Caucasian, English speaking criteria. Left to our own devices, our philanthropy would target those who we think “deserve” it or, more accurately, we’d steer clear of those we “know” don’t deserve it.

One can’t tell Lew that’s why the government taxes us. You’d have to say, “It’s because of racists like you, Lew.” Lew would become very insulted and upset. He doesn’t believe for one minute that he’s a racist. He believes that it’s political correctness which attaches the name “racist” to people who simply “tell the truth about certain people”.

If you remember my criteria, Lew doesn’t know half of the African Americans who live in the US. He doesn’t know half of the African Americans who live in California. He doesn’t know half of the African Americans who live in the city of Antioch.

Ah, but he knows people who do meet that criteria. Their names are Beck, Hannity, Limbaugh and O’Reilly. They tell him that “those people” are lazy or stupid or somehow not quite on a par with Lew. If not for dark skinned people, there’d be no need for taxes. Ask him about war? Those aren’t taxes, that’s patriotism. If America doesn’t stop “those people”, who will? You think the French have the balls to do it?

As I mentioned, tons and tons of people watch overpaid liars and those liars make their viewers mean, downright mean. Also, as I mentioned, I don’t know how mean some of these actors are, themselves. They’re obviously mean to think that turning others mean is an honorable occupation, but they may be as “progressive” or as “liberal” as anyone. The problem is, the only characteristic they have that would be stronger than their liberalism is their greed.

Finally, after I thought and thought and thought about people being mean, I thought about what I was doing here at Studio 8, at AC and even on Facebook, which I’ve quit altogether by deactivating my account. I was posting my music or my rants or my poetry and then leaving. I’d come back if I received a comment, but seldom, not never, but seldom went out of my way to comment on what others were writing. Now that’s as mean as anything anyone else does. I feel as if I was a hypocrite.

Here, listen to the song that my friends and I rated as number whateverthehell, but I won’t listen to yours or read your column or poetry. What an ass-hole.

I can honestly say that I’m busy; I am. But I’m willing to bet that Doreen or you, Steve, or others are as busy if not busier than I am. Who the hell am I to post stuff and ignore the stuff other people post?

Well, this was longer than I thought it would be and I look at it as just another one of my narcissistic activities.

My signature is “To friendship”. It’s been that for years. I write it because, ever since I began using it, it seems that honor was found in war; killing, maiming, destroying; in winning, whether a sports event or a war; not being kicked off the island - something I’ve really never witnessed, but I’ve heard enough about. We salute everything that requires a loser as well as a winner. I don’t think friendship requires either or, maybe it intrinsically has only winners.

I salute you and the kind words in your post.

To friendship,
Michael

Steve Plonk
Posts: 2483
Joined: December 12th, 2009, 4:48 pm

Re: Reality

Post by Steve Plonk » February 23rd, 2011, 4:58 pm

Michael, you're welcome... :) Glad to encourage and need encouragement
myself sometimes. Solidarity forever! A safe business is good business...
We keep agitating regardless. 8)

Collective bargaining built this country. If the idiocy of the Wisconsin governor
spreads, we will have to take to the streets again around here and the capitol.
His ideas to end collective bargaining or mute it, will undermine existing federal
regulations which support the right of Unions to bargain with employers. I smell
a large class action lawsuit...

In addition, if that wasn't bad enough, the Tea Party is trying to negate long-standing bipartisan environmental regulations, ie., the Clean Water Act, saving the Chesapeake Bay, ending Mountaintop removals, stop cutting secondary trees next to national parks, and revamping the Clean Air Act. There are concerns
way beyond carbon tradeoffs, & "states rights". Many unlisted rights remain
with the people themselves.

So maybe we'll have to have an internet Economics MOBE &/or Environmental MOBE and suddenly converge in various state capitols and DC at once. Wouldn't
that be something? I believe there are enough progessives to block traffic--
especially if they bring their tractors and SUVs, busses, etc. collectively and
circle the various capitol malls with vehicles.

Am I being obtuse and ridiculous? I've seen it happen in the past on a smaller scale. What happened in Egypt could happen here with Progressive Action. Last year's Tea Party protests would look like a "mickey mouse" gathering at Disneyland compared to what I envision. Imagine nationwide protests against
the Tea Party and their policies. We could save Obama's back and he'd
appreciate us more. The US Senators must know how we feel...

Moreover, internationally, we could trade an arrested Pakistani spy for the American Embassy man held by the Pakistanis for defending himself against
robbers. We could signal our intentions to negotiate with new Middle East governments and help stem piracy with all out joint efforts. Boo Yah!

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stilltrucking
Posts: 20605
Joined: October 24th, 2004, 12:29 pm
Location: Oz or somepLace like Kansas

Re: Reality

Post by stilltrucking » February 23rd, 2011, 9:05 pm

I belong here like a pearl onion on a banana split.

You are one of the best prose writers here.

Keep on keeping on

I wish I could do it as well, and put my reality down on paper.


Yes uncle Walter that is the way it is.

But for what it is worth, I believe the world as it is can be a better place if people stand up and speak truth to power.
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Steve Plonk
Posts: 2483
Joined: December 12th, 2009, 4:48 pm

Re: Reality

Post by Steve Plonk » February 26th, 2011, 12:44 am

Yessir, it sure wouldn't hurt for those in power to hear a bit of truth.
Wish we could beat those swords into plowshares. 8)

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Arcadia
Posts: 7933
Joined: August 22nd, 2004, 6:20 pm
Location: Rosario

Re: Reality

Post by Arcadia » November 9th, 2011, 2:06 pm

it was good to read you again! (s-t shared one of your mails in the politics forum). I hope you are bien! saludos :)

Steve Plonk
Posts: 2483
Joined: December 12th, 2009, 4:48 pm

Re: Reality

Post by Steve Plonk » August 15th, 2014, 11:46 am

Hey Michael, hope this post finds you okay & in good spirits. :)
The "rat race" has caught up with all of us in one way or another... I miss you online. Hope you see your stuff again soon. 8) :idea: May the Lord Bless you & keep you safe. :arrow: :idea:

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