Sunday, March 14, 2010

Wait for the wind to call your name...

It's funny, but as i get older i really realize how all the awesome, creative and unique friends and people i've met over the years are really just streaks of light, colored by their passions and talents flying all around me.

Sometimes we intersect and work in perfect harmony for a period of time or another, only to veer off in an unexpected direction of new self invention. I could'nt sleep tonight and i got this awesome visual as i played back the last few days events in my mind.

This whole "beam of light" scenario was OUR lives and they intersected and then bounced on along their own particular way. ALL of this was to this exact tune:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wlb0C7TDUM&feature=PlayList&p=1C2B8A2B88646418&index=26

It was fucking awesome, the viewpoint that i was seeing this in was like a floating camera, zooming in on points of interest and back out to give these really great perspective shots of the whole arena. The marvelous thing about your imagination is when you can invent something in your mind, and when it gets too complicated to keep your Active mind on it all, your subconscious takes over and gives you what you need.

As i was curious about 1 or several peoples journey, i just looked at it and i instantly knew all about what they were doing and where they were going. Maybe this is just a super-intense/vivid near sleep dream state i was in, but either way it was phenomenal.

Monday, November 16, 2009

Retrospective for the Introspective

George Washington Carver was a smart man. In the early 19th century, he invented new and promosing uses for peanuts, soybeans and sweet potatos. Peanut butter, pest resistent foods all those things were helped to make popular by GWC. Back in the day, public institutions of higher learning were often contracted(or they did it on their on volition) to try to create new type of seeds. Cross breeding plants, seedless watermelon, broccoli with bigger buds were all helped along by these public institutions.(that is, colleges and college kids doing the work)

Around the 1980's genetic engeneering became possible for some of the best and brightest. Naturally, the food industries were one of the first to climb aboard the wagon. There actually was a law passed stating that any food that is genetically engineered or modified can be PATENTED. There was a company by the name of Monsanto that created their own type of Soybean.

Monsanto is the same company that created Agent Orange and DDT, two extremely destructive and deadly chemicals(one was designed to maim, the other was not). Agent Orange was a biologically corrosive substance that was scattered en-masse amongst the think jungle canopies in Vietnam in order to be able to see troops better from the air.

Years after coming into contact with Agent Orange, the children of the people most heavily contacted would be born with terribly disfigurments, mental disabilities, and many other chronic health concerns.

DDT was a pesticide that was sprayed over just about every damn thing is the US in the 40's. The problem was not with it contaminating the plants, it was that DDT was insoluble. DDT would survive in the ground, mix in with rain water and eventually become part of the water table of the local town. You get the picture.

So THIS fucking company gets the bright idea to manufacture its own Soybean. Ok sure, whatever, move on. What made this bean so different is that it supposedly could be sprayed with this new type of pesticide RoundUP and it would have no ill effects. No other Soybean could match this boast. And, it appears as if in our new environmentally conscious age that it's ill effects are negligble.

But, there was a catch. The farmer who buys and uses these genetically modified beans also has to buy the only pesticide that will now work in conjuction with the beans, RoundUP. So double money for the company.

The problem lay after the harvest. The farmer that had bought the beans could NOT keep the seeds for another year. Because of the law passed and the patent recieved by Monsanto, the famers had to either give back or destroy the seeds after each harvest. Monsanto had somehow found a way to not only patent nature, but to own their own specific brand of it...I.E. the Soybean seeds.

So i have one last question... where does their jurisdiction of the product end? If i pay for some Soybeans seeds, plant them and then eat the crop, does Monsanto technically own little parts of my shit? What if a passing crow eats some of the seeds off the plants, craps them out 4 miles away on another farmers plot of land that is NOT Monsanto bean-grown? Would Monsanto own just one plant in a field? What if this happened for years and the pollen and seeds of the Monsanto beans mixed with a non-Monsanto field let's say, across the road?

The answer is that Monsanto still owns it. It is legally responsible to the farmer to NOT have that happen.

So that's the story. The more i learn about Corporate America as a whole i less and less i like of it.

Monday, November 9, 2009

What you will not hear and what to expect:

Roughly once a week i will log in and give to you, the huddled masses another diatribe of cyrystal clear thoughts in a roughly sembled order.

I sit here about 15 Bud Light's deep into my day off, brimming with information. One of my favorite authors once said something like this:

"Obviously, it took my whole life up until the point in which i finished the last page to finish my first book. A collection of experiences and emotions. Ideas thought out in both the form of argument and invented on the fly..."

It speaks to me.

Creation of Cliches

The baby boomers. They were responsible for a great deal of the innovation, both cultural and technological of the last 30 years. Our parents! They invented so much. It was only about 10 years after each of these inventions that they had a re-imagining of each of these ideas. They range from the corporeal to the physical. Examples of each follow:

Seat Belts: remember the crash tests they used to do with live monkey's? 200 frames per second video, super slo-mo crash at 60 MPH with ONLY A CHEST BELT. Naturally, the monkey got decapitated. Most kids my age remember riding in small Ford Sedans where the lap belt was not attached to the across-the-chest belt. Now it's all once piece and thank god. I mean, who the fuck invented the decapitation belt in the first place and thought they did a good job?

Disney Land: this may be a little outside of my time zone but it bears attention. Upon the launch of Disney Land, Walt Disney was so distraught at the quality of service it was able to render to each family, that we went all the way across the country and bought the cheapest land he could in bulk. His intention was to make it way bigger than the one in LA, therefore allowing for more personal comfort.

That would be a shit ton of acres in Central Florida. Swamp land, full of gators, typoid, mosquitoes and rednecks. He bought the land and built his second miracle. It worked for a while. There were enough trash cans, prices were low and people were happy. Then he died and another invention of the Baby Boomers reared it's ugly head. Corporate America.

Money money, fuck the little man, work 50 years at the same company then get told to piss off with no stock options or pension, unpaid internships and endless commercilism.

New Job

Just watched the Michael Moore movie Sicko. He is a very talented filmmaker and social analyst. At the same time he is literally a walking ironic pile of American crap.

He is a grossly overweight, middle-aged man from the breadbasket of America. He is smack dab in the middle of the most iconic, culturally influental and common generation of American history.

The Baby Boomers! The people who invented Disco, Hippies, Free Love, Freedom Fries and Beastiality. There never has been a more diverse, creative, or destructive group of American citizens in the history of the U.S.