January 18, 2010

Hate: “to feel intense dislike, or extreme aversion or hostility”. Aversion…if I want to avoid you do I hate you? Or more do I want to hate you? They tell you time and time again: Hate is too strong of a word, you don’t hate them. But what happens when hate isn’t strong enough? I want to hate you, avoid you, keep you at bay. The want to hate is there, it’s the ability that we cannot obtain. To turn away and run is all we really want. However this sets itself just out of reach. Taunting. Reminding us what we must obtain to have it: hate, an aversion, a disconnection. Emptiness would be a tempting alternative. But it too sits on a pedestal laughing at us. There are times when hate is visible, almost in our grasps. But then hides behind a word, a phrase, a gesture. Cursing as it vanishes from sight we watch as it disappears all because of an old, comfortable, habit. A habit we are unable to break all because we cannot bring ourselves to utter those three little words: I hate you. Yes they are easy to say, as are most words. Unfortunately it is near impossible to mean them, for them to carry the implication we so long to feel. So we continue our run on the hamster wheel. Uttering empty words under our breath hoping for once they’ll carry a meaning. But they never will. All because of a word, a phrase, a habit.

Driving. I take photos through the driver's side window,
or walk back and find the right trees.
It feels luxurious to stop and capture the dusk light.
No deadline, no explanations. A cool wind blows.

Slate sky and sunlit branches, eucalypts link arms overhead,
roughshod, ragged, lovely. White curves and jagged edges
against a dark backdrop; the sober formality of pine trees,
rows of dour regularity.

A battlefield, churned turf and emptiness.
On the far side the next crop of plantation gums and pines huddle,
curved trunks leaning together, away from the stark sunlight.

An old stone home stands with cows, salt-damp up to its windows.
The shed has given up its walls, the galvanised roof sits complete,
but grounded.

Bare-faced grapevines and olives grid the Willunga roads.
Fruit trees wear netting to bluff the cockatoos.

Driving the beach road, past the pebble house,
looking for agave. It's tall Seussian spikes stand
opposite Joan's house.

Black tea and chat.
Running fingers through the fur of two standard poodles,
accustomed to mellow afternoons.

Notes from the Surf

Unnecessary Censorship "Come and Play Edition" Jimmy Kimmel Live 6-27-08
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D8Vh9_Hi1kY
Not safe for work?

Boost your productivity with Hemingway’s hack
http://www.secondactive.com/2009/08/boost-your-productivity-with-hemingways.html
"stop when you are going good and when you know what will happen next. If you do that every day … you will never be stuck... You make yourself stop and you walk away. And you can’t wait to get back because you know what you want to say next."

How To Create Less Selfish Societies?
http://www.scientificblogging.com/catarina_amorim/how_create_less_selfish_societies_let_people_behave_they_wish_say_researchers
cooperation is very much alive, and more, is widespread, being found in a multitude of living beings from the cells of a multicellular organism to insects and of course humans - the “big cooperators”.

We're all Icelanders now
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/robertpeston/2010/01/were_all_icelanders_now.html
"most of us should surely empathise with the majority of Icelanders who don't see why they should be punished for the greed and stupidity of a handful of banks and bankers. Actually, let's be clear: they will vote in their referendum on whether they should be punished yet more for the mistakes of their banks; there's no doubt that Iceland and its citizens have already been firmly spanked for the failures of their financial system."

Geithner’s Fed Told AIG to Limit Swaps Disclosure
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aXIvW4igKV38
"The Federal Reserve Bank of New York, then led by Timothy Geithner, told American International Group Inc. to withhold details from the public about the bailed-out insurer’s payments to banks during the depths of the financial crisis... The New York Fed crossed out the reference, according to the e-mails, and AIG excluded the language when the filing was made public on Dec. 24, 2008."

Who will pay for Amazon's 'Chernobyl'?
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/green-living/who-will-pay-for-amazons-chernobyl-1863284.html
"remediation" sometimes involved little more than shoving soil over the toxic pits... Spikes in stomach and uterine cancer cases have been recorded, as well as high rates of miscarriages, birth defects and childhood leukaemia. And the closer people live to an oil well, the greater the incidence of problems... Chevron has promised a "lifetime of litigation"

Greek workers reject austerity program
http://www.workers.org/2010/world/greece_0114/
Can't afford as much health care as before but can still afford 10,000 riot police to attack its own people.

Free to choose . . . a master
http://www.struggle.ws/anarchism/writers/anarcho/anarchism/libcap/refuteAC.html
"capitalist property produces authoritarian structures (and so social relations) exactly like the state... So if the state were a legitimate landlord or capitalist then its authoritarianism would be fine? ...For those "anarcho"-capitalists who genuinely seek a free society and still think that markets are the best way to organise an economy then the ideas of anarchist mutualism should be of interest."

Italy: The integrity of the State
http://www.inaltreparole.net/en/whatpoliticiansdo/servizisegreti060110.html
"Ordinary citizens know nothing of all this, TV and newspapers have spoken very little of it, and the few citizens who know often don't understand the gravity of what happened. A government that uses the secret services against the judiciary, free press and opposition politicians... His government, however, can spy on everyone with impunity, even more now because he knows that no one will ever call him to account."

Can the Chicago Anti-Eviction campaign work?
http://trueslant.com/megancottrell/2010/01/08/can-the-chicago-anti-eviction-campaign-work/
"When I arrived, police were watching the front and back door, making sure no one tried to go inside. As one of the advocates put it, isn’t it a strange day in America when the police come to defend the rights of an empty building, rather than a family put out in the cold?"