food

Audiovision: Redemption

Or… sometimes redemption requires discipline:

Seems we’re coming up on some hard scrabble times for citizens down on their luck. And hard scrabble times call for hard scrabble responses. We’re going to have to grapple with how to handle the consequences of gutting the social safety nets. Nothing new, we’ve seen this play before. In Les Misérables, Victor Hugo’s novel uses the theft of a loaf of bread by Jean Valjean to illustrate the harsh and unjust nature of the justice system in his time. In more recent times, Willie Smith Ward, a Texan, received a 50-year sentence in 2013 for stealing a $35 rack of ribs. Now granted, this was the logical conclusion of this man’s incorrigible behavior in the light of Texas’ habitual offender laws, allowing for lengthy prison sentences to repeat offenders. Yes, he was a pervasive violator of civic good faith, but the final straw was the theft of food.

It’s probably no coincidence original sin is connected to behavior inspired by hunger. According to the Judeo Christian holy book, we’re guilty as soon as we hit the ground. And guilty of what? And why? Because the first XY chromosomes in our hereditary line fell for a cock-n-bull story about an apple being verboten per maximum overlord’s command? And why the prohibition? Because consuming the apple would drop the scales from our minds regarding the existence of good and evil? And the consequences of gaining this knowledge is… death? But not until one experiences a veritable parade of humiliation, pain, sorrow, and general suffering? Again… we get to ride this roller coaster of woe because some dipshit, 10,000 years ago chose to enjoy a spot of fruit with his girlfriend? Yeah… i don’t know if i can get behind this allegory. It seems a bit unfair to the XX natives. It paints them in a devious light. Like, both of them were instructed to avoid the fruit, but the devil’s serpent chose XX as an ideal target for corruption. And XY was just too gullible or dumb to mount an effective argument. Bottom line, XX is an hedonistic schemer, and XY is a goofy simpleton that just wants to eat. Naw, we’re not gonna fall for that misogynistic bullshit. XX and XY are born equally innocent, if they go bad as they grow, it’s the result of non-optimal environmental conditions or physical chemistry, but mostly… bad behavior is taught by irresponsible caretakers. 

The whole “bad behavior inspired by hunger” issue might grow into a nagging problem in this age of prioritizing gilded ballrooms, machine automated labor, and antiquated energy policies over the well being of the XX and XYs who happen to lack connections in society’s power structures. And how might that play out? We could look to historical record for cues. Has hunger ever been an issue for working and doomed classes through the ages as economic and technology conditions change? Indeed it has, is, and will continue to vex policy makers… Victor Hugo’s novel is a vivid example.

And outcomes have varied widely. The most recent encounter with abject mass deprivation in this country got defeated by what was known at the time as a New Deal for the nation’s people. This, many would acknowledge was a best case scenario. Things didn’t go so smoothly in Russia or France as they transitioned away from monarchical rule. You could say, for the ruling classes, these are a couple worst case scenarios. Given that, what’s driving the U.S.A. away from democracy, careening toward authoritarian ethno-nationalist governance? Time will tell, but for now, it might behoove the ruling classes to recognize working people and the doomed are talking to each other. They’re not as hampered by ignorance as has been a hallmark of previous socio-economic upheavals. Consolidating power may not be the golden ticket they think it is.

Now… how will all of this shake out? I wouldn’t venture a guess, but i do see chatter crisscrossing the social networks, and i can confidently predict how some will approach the oncoming hunger dilemma. As we advance into this age of machines automating repetitive rote tasks, and jobs continue to evaporate, people will ask for opportunities to earn the means of feeding their families. When no useful work is available, they will ask for food assistance, and when no food assistance is available, they will take the food from whatever source is handy. And there will be plenty of XX and XYs with the resourcefulness and discipline to create their own redemption. Regarding original sin i, for one, am grateful for the flood of knowledge passed down by the original XX and XYs. I’m GLAD they ate the apple. And if supporting tax dollars for food security to people i’ve never met makes me a communist, well, pepper-spray my ass and call me “Comrade!”

I gotta black bomb…
It’s tickin’ away…
Gonna take it out…
On the Blue Highway.

Cheers… Rohlfie

Lifestyle Dilemma for a Type-A Retiree

The Great American Clock punches out for the last time and the haggard Type-A knowledge-worker… decades of toil etched onto his face like a cracked roadmap of disappointments and half-victories… shuffles off to join the great ranks of the retired. The siren call of “slack,” that most decadent of working person’s vices, rings out like the church bells of leisure.

Slack, oh slack… thou art the balm of the tired ol’ pack-mule, the honeyed oblivion that washes away the stale aroma of missed opportunities and academic turf wars. It’s sleeping past dawn without the shrill cry of an alarm clock. It’s puttering about the van with projects that may never see completion. It’s entire afternoons lost in the dusty pages of forgotten paperbacks fished out from a bargain bookstore bin.

History sings with stories of those who chased the golden paycheck and unexpectedly found themselves wading knee-deep in slack. Take Harland Sanders, a lifetime of greasy failures… gas station flops and dishwashing stints… seasoned him just right. One day, his finger-lickin’ chicken recipe catapulted him from roadside chef to white-suited emperor of a fried poultry empire. Talk about trading an apron for a yacht.

Or consider poor, bumbling George de Mestral, a Swiss fellow with a penchant for wandering through fields. Burrs kept clinging to his trousers… a mighty nuisance to your average suit-wearing gentleman. But in those prickly seeds, he saw possibility. A decade of fiddling later, Velcro burst upon the world, replacing buttons and zippers, and earning de Mestral a mountain of cash… and much-deserved slack.

And who could forget Ruth Wakefield, the proprietor of the Toll House Inn, a regular empress of efficiency until a chocolate shortage forced her to improvise. She hacked up baking chocolate into chunks and tossed it in her cookie dough, half-expecting disaster. Behold, the chocolate chip cookie… a culinary miracle and testament to the virtues of slacking off with the best of intentions.

But what of those blessed fools, those slackers from birth, who stumble into riches as if led by a drunken cherub? History whispers of them too. There’s Art Fry, the church choir singer who, in search of a better bookmark, slapped a bit of not-too-sticky adhesive on some scrap paper. The Post-It Note was born, turning Fry into a corporate legend and affording legions of office workers the ability to slack off with colorful, passive-aggressive memos.

Then there’s the saga of Gary Dahl, the man who turned tedium into treasure. In a bar, amongst half-hearted complaints about pet care, he struck gold… the Pet Rock! Yes, a rock. A plain, ordinary rock, cleverly packaged as the perfect low-maintenance companion. It was an idea so brilliantly stupid, so utterly slacker-inspired, that America went mad for it, and Dahl found himself unexpectedly wealthy.

And let us not forget Robert Kearns, the inventor of the intermittent windshield wiper. He fought tooth and nail against the auto giants who pilfered his design. Lawsuits flew like confetti at a ticker-tape parade and finally, after decades, the victory was his… along with a fat settlement, finally allowing him to savor a hard-earned life of slack well-deserved.

For all of us, the chips fall with a clatter, as random as raindrops in the desert. The haggard retiree, weathered by a thousand battles won and lost, might finally earn the sweet slack so long deferred. For others, fortunes rain like random practical jokes, slapdash rewards for lifetimes of cultivated aimlessness. In the end, we all play the hands we’re dealt, Aces or Jokers… and we learn the cosmic truth: life is a carnival ride, loopers, a hell of a ride, and whether we end up in a penthouse suite or a van down by the river, the ride is sure to be one hell of a story.

Can this Type-A retiree change?
Hot-springs slack… or Type-A busk?
Come along for the ride… we shall see… :-p

Onward through the fog… R.H.

Hot Springs or Busk: Chapter VI (class bamboozle)

America, that grand experiment in democracy and greasy cheeseburgers, has split in two. It’s a nation of Penthouse and Outhouse, caviar dreams and dumpster diving. And in San Francisco, the poster child of this cracked reality, the divide slices cleaner than a Zuckerberg algorithm.

On one side of the looking glass, you have the Tech Titans. Think smooth-faced whiz kids who probably still get carded for rated-R movies, but their bank accounts have more zeroes than the national debt. They cruise around in their self-driving Teslas, sleek as chrome beetles, sipping twenty-dollar green smoothies. Their fortress-like penthouses look out on the city like bored gods on an anthill. At night, they gather at fundraisers you couldn’t buy your way into with a suitcase full of pirate treasure, nibbling on edible gold and discussing the colonization of Mars. It’s enough to make a regular Jane want to scream into her tear-stained pillow.

Then, there’s the other side… the sidewalk crew. These are the folks who exist in the blind spots of the digital aristocracy. Tents sprout like poisonous mushrooms along cracked concrete, faces etched with a lifetime of hard luck, and eyes that mirror the dull sheen of discarded iPhones. They push their worldly belongings in shopping carts, a symphony of rattling wheels and despair that no noise-canceling headphones can drown out. The smell of unwashed bodies and stale urine hangs heavy in the air, a constant reminder that while some worry about stock options, others worry about their next meal.

The great irony, one that would have Kurt Vonnegut cackling into his cornflakes, is that these two Americas need each other. The tech overlords, for all their billions, would be lost without the army of delivery drivers, baristas, and dog walkers that keep their designer lives running like clockwork. And let’s not forget those poor souls who clean up the aftermath of their all-night coding binges fueled by energy drinks that could power a small nation.

Meanwhile, the street folks are an endless source of moral hand-wringing for the penthouse set. They fuel charity galas, anguished blog posts, and the occasional guilt-ridden donation tossed to a panhandler like a bone to a stray dog. It’s a sick kind of symbiosis, the way their high-tech kicks need the muddy puddle to prove just how awesome they are.

H. L. Mencken, the old cynic, would have a field day with this mess. We can practically hear him snorting into his whiskey highball: “Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.” Ouch.

The thing is, nobody seems to be doing anything about this chasm that grows wider with each passing Uber Eats order. Politicians, as usual, are flapping their mouths like beached fish, some spinning promises about fixing a broken system that’s been cracked since before iPhones were a twinkle in Steve Jobs’ eye, others still blaming the poor for not pulling on their bootstraps hard enough. Both sides, with a few rare exceptions, not even trying to hide the fact that they are bought and paid for in a system of abject corruption. They’re too busy eyeing their campaign donors in those sterile fundraisers to actually do anything that might rock the boat.

So it goes. While the tech wizards dream of space colonies and the sidewalk crew prays for a dry patch of pavement, the rest of us stand somewhere in the middle, bewildered and nauseous from the whiplash. The great American experiment, once a beacon of hope and hotdogs, now resembles something more like a Salvador Dali painting… melting, distorted, and just plain bizarre.

Dear Hubris

You humans squabblin’ there with flags and fists held high… pointin’ fingers… buildin’ walls beneath polluted skies… you think you’re callin’ shots… you masters of the show… let me tell you somethin’… Mother Earth don’t hear your woes.

Burn your dino-fuels… choke the air with smog… carve the mountains open… leave a bleeding bog. Fight your petty wars… spread your hate like weeds. Earth shakes it off… got resilience deep.

You think you’re killin’ her with nukes and plastic waste… but she’s seen worse than you… empires turned to paste. Dinosaurs gone… poof… ice caps came and went. It’s a dance of constant change… a cycle heaven-sent.

So go ahead and frack her dry… let oceans rise and boil… she’ll sprout all new continents… on volcanic fertile soil. Poison every river… turn forests into ash. She’ll just shrug it off… like sprouts in a fiery crash.

Don’t lament the future… though your tears fall like rain. She’ll weather every storm… endure greater pain. Go ahead… rage and fight… throw your puny sprees. She’ll just abide and bide your time as vapid history.

Burn it down… you tiny ants… empires crumble fast. Rebirth will rise from the ashes… the only thing that lasts. With mountains carved by glaciers… oceans vast and blue. She’ll be here… my darlings… when you’re just dust and dew.

So go ahead and blame “others” for your woes. Earth dances on… laughing as your petty drama goes. Forget your gods and demons… your flags and walls so high.

Change is the only constant… beneath the endless sky.