My Dinner: An Expired Can Of Soup - Eaten In Freedom

Today I was told I'm becoming the thing I hate. I don't know if that's better than becoming the thing he hates:

“To all the folks living in poverty and drug and crime-infested communities, that was me as well, so I have lived all the lives of the people who come before me.  I can relate to them. I can speak their language.

You know we talk about the criminal justice system and in many ways I think it is criminal in and of itself. Being from the inside and the outside, I have the observation that the justice system, throughout our journey, has been used as a tool of oppression.

We find that we have a system where we fail to educate African-American men and we remove the jobs from their community and replace the jobs with guns and drugs and a failed education system and what we’re seeing now is the majority of our prison population is made up of African-American men.”

- TV's Judge Mathis

So - I can be trapped in a system of racial oppression - or, somewhat out of it, but still talking about a system of racial oppression. Hmmm:

I don't think my accuser's crazy about either option,...

 

I Lived With Two Women Once: Not Cool, Baby, Not Cool

A woman wrote critically of Whole Foods? Do tell:

"I see the gluten-free section filled with crackers and bread made from various wheat-substitutes such as cardboard and sawdust. I skip this aisle because I'm not rich enough to have dietary restrictions. Ever notice that you don't meet poor people with special diet needs? A gluten intolerant house cleaner? A cab driver with Candida? Candida is what I call a rich, white person problem. You know you've really made it in this world when you get Candida. My personal theory is that Candida is something you get from too much hot yoga. All I'm saying is if I were a yeast, I would want to live in your yoga pants."

Well that's one theory (Ewww!),...

 

Everything That They Don't Know Is Equal - To What I Do Know - And Even I Know I Need Help In Knowing Things

I've never heard of Karl Kraus, but he sounds, as the saying goes, like "a kindred spirit":

He wasn't in the business of denigrating the masses or lowbrow culture; the calculated difficulty of his writing wasn't a barricade against the barbarians. It was aimed, instead, at bright and well-educated cultural authorities who embraced a phony kind of individuality – people Kraus believed ought to have known better.

You can guess who all they'd be, today, I'm sure.

The political results - with blacks and the poor clamoring to join their cause - speak for themselves.

And, if not, here's a "ought to have known better" hint.

ADDED:

Can you imagine what things would look like, if Putin had written his Op-Ed, but started referencing the "teachings" of Joseph Smith?

We'd be far beyond just "embarrassed" on the world stage,...

 

Donations? What Have You Done With Them Already?

You know, if Andrew Breitbart were alive, I have a sneaking feeling he'd be a bit more nuanced about this headline on his site: 

Americans in 'Poverty' Have TVs, VCRs, Cell Phones, Air Conditioning

This is just a conservative bashing of the poor at it's worst.

I mean, Breitbart was smart - he could understand owning an empty fridge, right? Am I supposed to sell it? Then what? Who would buy my TV? I looked - people give them away now. Put them on the front lawn with a sign saying "FREE" attached to them. A VCR? Come on. I borrow CDs and DVDs from the library. And I use the cheapest cell phone I can get (above an ObamaPhone) but - according to these genius' - I'm rich in America.

Talk about rubbing it in. It's bad enough I've tried to do all the right things, but then to have this laid on me, just as all my latest efforts crumbled? Well, that stings a little. So, let's pull back the curtain a bit, and see how this whole pull-yourself-up-by-your-boot-straps thing works in reality:

I started off divorced, paying off debts. For the last few years, after NewAge management chased me out of corporate work, I've been employed as a laborer. Landscaping, working on houses, putting up steel buildings, erecting fences, digging ditches - you name it. And, occasionally, I'd get some help from the blog. Not much, anywhere from $5 to $25 usually, but sometimes a few thousand dollars. So what's it done for me lately? A lot:

I moved from this tiny room in a house - where I was living out of a suitcase, for years, with the few things I brought with me - into this bigger one below with all my recording equipment and things:

[Click to expand]

Well, how did I get all my recording equipment and things? I had to rent a U-Haul and go to several places, across the country, and get them (long story). Keep in mind, except for the time it took for the road trip, I never stopped doing labor. But, then, tragedy struck.

My landlord, an older white gentleman, had an accident and lost his mind - literally. We lived together so, all of a sudden, I became responsible for a lot of new things, because his family lives far away and his other renter (a creep who I despised) moved out immediately. (Did I have to move, too?) I am still (partially) responsible for my landlord's care, taking him out to escape the long-term care facility he's in, making sure his needs are cared for and he's comfortable. He's my friend. I'm fine with it, and enjoy doing it, but it's still been a burden. Financial and otherwise.

So, of course, I eventually got an ulcer, followed by my lower back getting hurt. Then, one night while I was sleeping, my neck "popped". As I recently mentioned, without health insurance, my first prescription was for $800.00 and it was one of three. More followed, including lots that made me comatose, so I'd lie still and not re-injure my spine, which has happened a few times in the last 8 weeks.

And yes, I do still have a *brilliant* album I'm working on, and - along with getting my recording equipment - three things have been purchased to make that happen. Two turntables (one normal, for my records, and one digital) and a small sampler. Thank you.

And now - the latest development - I've had a manic/depressive friend/helper here, to yelp at the moon, drive me crazy by never shutting up, and (I'm grateful) making sure I can care for myself.

But according to the guys at Breitbart.com, I'm rich, because the swamp cooler works.

The mind boggles,...

 

I Was "Nigger Rich" (As My White Friends Like To Say)

I had just driven cross-country - to two separate locations - recovering my recording equipment, only to get injured and now find myself mostly staring at it. So, to say I've wondered about this a lot lately, is an understatement:

"Past research has often blamed [poverty] on the personal failings of the poor. They don’t work hard enough; they’re not focused enough. What we’re arguing is it’s not about the individual. It’s about the situation."

In other words, I could barely "win" for losing. Sure, I got my stuff, but since I had nothing for a "rainy day," when it poured - an ulcer followed by two separate bulging disk incidents - I got soaked. How much effort, or talent, I was putting into making my project happen (and I was already giving it everything) didn't matter, when my first prescription (of three) was $800.00 out of pocket. And I couldn't work? 

Do the math.

  I put my first piece of recording equipment up for sale today.

That IS "the situation."

And yeah, conservative or not, I can't help but wonder if my party's given it any serious thought,...

 

Money Changes Everything, The Poor Don't Ask, Not Caring, Scandals, And Egypt's Night Of Broken Glass

Researcher finds wealth shapes an ideology 

of self-interest and entitlement

Unemployment is very low in some cities: 

So why don’t people move there?

Americans Don't Care What Scientists Think About Climate Science

Scandals costing us American exceptionalism

The Lessons of History: 

Kristallnacht in Egypt

Another Song By The Crack Emcee: Me & My Friends

Expand it to see the lyrics:

They're still as relevant as the day I wrote them,...

The Problem In News Isn't News But Those Delivering It

I always get a sick feeling in my stomach when I read this stuff:

I think that hard news reporting is a great social good. But as the Internet has unbundled news, it has become clear that this isn't a social good for which many people are willing to pay. Reporters who thought that political and international news reporters, plus a few people who write long reported series about poverty and related “serious” subjects, constituted the apex of their profession, have been humbled to learn that readers considered us a moderately interesting freebie to thumb through on the way to the important stuff in the sports section.

This from Megan McArdle, a member of the club that wasted everybody's time arguing the travel arrangements of Mitt Romney's dog. How about these post-election "scandals" they're trying to keep alive? The hero Bradley Manning got 35 years. HELLO! The hero Snowden's in Russia. HELLO! The hero Assange is in hiding. HELLO! Whites ain't looking so good after Trayvon. HELLO!

It never occurs to NewAgers - they're doing it wrong. Fuck the sports section, they're mixed up with astrology, and the articles on yoga insure it never crosses their minds that maybe, just maybe, their voices might not be the most pertinent at the moment, if they ever were. They don't affect my life. I know people who die, they don't report it. They don't investigate. They don't care. I don't know what they care about that I'm expected to pay for. They don't topple the wicked. They can't tell right from wrong unless Anthony Weiner's waving his dick at 'em. I mean, when they're that clueless, why are they in the news business?

 

There's a lot of people out there who know they'll never be heard, and some of them sure seem to have a clue to what should be done.

These so-called "journalists" are so stupid they can't even establish water ain't medicine in their pages yet.

Pay them? I take it back:

They're less than clueless,...

 

If I Was White TMR Would Be Popular - Without Changes

I rarely see American history, and it's participants being full of shit, explained so clearly:

Strange as it may seem now, in an America where Hispanics and Filipinos fill ever more of America’s servile jobs, African Americans were once employed across the land in vast numbers as trusted domestic servants. With the coming of the Black Pride movement in the late 1960s, however, blacks began to see service work as neo-slavery and an insult to their dignity. 

Meanwhile, well-to-do whites, alarmed by the rising rates of crime and surliness among blacks, were happy to be handed a politically correct excuse to stop hiring uppity African Americans and replace them with whites or more docile and less threatening immigrants who sometimes happened to be black, albeit West Indian or African. 

As recently as 1980, blacks were a solid majority of the caddies on the golf tour. As it came to seem shameful for a black man to carry a white man’s golf bag, by 2000 the black share was down to a few percent. As caddying became a six-figure job, white golfers were happy to stop oppressing blacks and replace them with family members or fraternity buddies. 

Similarly, a large fraction of the tiny number of black waiters left today appear to be gay, which is not true of Mexican waiters, who don’t seem to see much threat to their manhood in providing service with a smile. 

Unfortunately for blacks, it hasn’t turned out that there are all that many better jobs out there for them. While a few black men get to be gangsta rappers, many wind up dealing drugs and going to prison. This has proven a popular, stable system: Blacks get to act tough and whites get to not hire them.

In other words, a new way of being held in poverty - almost as inescapable - but with less effort. 

Wonderful fucking country, and system, we were born into. 

They've really worked this one out well - for everybody,...