Next Step?

Here's the rub. As the hippies have finally won the green card. Actually, more accurately, as the corporations decided to push the green machine: Green has become a (profitable) reality. It's insurmountably interesting that for something that the hippies fought so hard for only came to fruition when companies were able to profit off of it.

The masses were becoming environmentally-conscious in the last decade. Because the corporations saw no real way of impeding it, they went with the devilishly true adage: If you can't beat 'em, join 'em. For this, it meant joining them by profiting off them, which in turn, means "beating 'em." 

Here's the big rub, however. As we continue to do this whole green thing, something pops into my head, which I don't think others are mulling over. Jobs. A lot of Canada's blue-colour job sector is dependent on the oil and auto industries. Ontario being an apt example for what's happening to the auto industry and its gas guzzlers with ubiquitous job cuts. So, as the government is slowly coming around to accepting this inevitable change in energy consumption -- will there be enough jobs in the wind and solar industry? Definitely not as much as the oil industry.

Another thought. Since everything seems to be reaching the sky in cost (including fast food unfortunately for me and my addictions) food in general is at an all time high, just as is oil. The problem is that as we continue to pour money, research and resources into ethanol, won't it cost more, because the cost of corn now costs more?

The heavy waters of uncertainty are high. The next barriers are going to be interesting to tread through.

Cocaine Noses

Cocaine noses butterfly kiss--

San Fran runs afoul

with televisions screaming Baywatch,

loud.

Magazines askew among copper pennies

sprinkled with angelic soot.

Credit card usage, plastic bag package

hollow convo's -- happy howls.

Its a black night with snow--

plenty of fallen and 15-minute expiration date

snow

settling on cocaine noses.

What was I thinking about again...?

Diatribe #1: Sometimes (scratch that) The best way to listen to music -- like really listen to music as in hearing every decibel and right-ear-dependent sound there is -- is to simply toss on a pair of ear muffs a.k.a. headphones over your exterior head flaps. We're (scratch that) I'm not talking about iPod earbuds or any-silly-white-shit like that. It's just better. Haven't met anyone yet that will refute this. But I'm sure some ignoramus will come along with some asinine notion that "da club" is the best place to listen to music. Right in between all the fake people comes the fake, thump-thump quasi-music, which tools like him/her think constitutes listening to a) music and b) I don't know, but it's not fuckin' music.

Diatribe #2: It really sucks to be duped. Like really, Oprah got pretty pissed when Mr. James Frey set that elegant ruse. But, when it comes down to a whole nation, and subsequently the world, which is duped -- ouch. Well, that's a new kind of hoodwink. And, what exactly am I talking about? This: 

"A long-delayed Senate committee report endorsed by Democrats and some Republicans concluded that President Bush and his aides built the public case for war against Iraq by exaggerating available intelligence and by ignoring disagreements among spy agencies about Iraq’s weapons programs and Saddam Hussein’s links to Al Qaeda." -- The New York Times

Like really, how has this man not been impeached yet? The thing is that we all (well, most of us) know about this travesty already -- there just hasn't been enough public outcry about it. Are we all really that apathetic? Nevermind that, where the fuck are the protests that were so pervasive in the 70s that you couldn't swing a cat without hitting a protester. Now, we just watch Paris Hilton, and subsequently Perez Hilton fuck up whatever culture we had before. Lots of fucking going around, that's for sure.

Diatribe #3: I was at a concert tonight. I saw Matt Good play in (one-way street heaven/hell) Hamilton. Semi-great show, but that's not the point. The point that I'm scratching like a cat at a door in a blizzard is: Conformity. Really, it's never more obvious then at a concert. All you need to do is stop watching R. Kelly bust a move in a closet to see that we all follow suit. When one person, then another, and another arise out of their seats, well, it just becomes a faux-tidal wave of followers. If you don't clap after a performance in which everyone else is smacking their limbs together, you look like a schmuck. When you're making out and publicly pseudo-fucking on the dancefloor, you're just everyone's bane and people won't join in unless, of course, it's a swinger-cum-concert-outfit. Something that I'm musing about as I type this sentence for some reason. Like I said, Lots of fucking going around.

The Sky is Icy

I run through the school of thought, which steeps itself, in hiding in the blankets of ignorance. To jump under the duvet of naivete and roll amongst the spoon fed hearsay is a stroll down a picturesque cornfield where you can no longer see your surroundings. Kissing the blissful temptation of red-haired scarcity in an aloof, over-saturated market of knowledge and misunderstanding.

Walk with me, hand-in-hand, through this overgrown, unkept forest. Laugh, jump, punch. Bring me to that understanding -- our understanding, but not unlike the understanding. Forget them -- the whole fuckin' lot of them and scream. Just scream.

Just swim with me. Just.

The Gym Vs. Outdoors

So here's the deal: Gyms, those sweaty places fraught with soccer moms and juiced football players, are superfluous. And here's why: We have the outdoors. Remember that environment thing that we are seemingly fucking up.

Sew, you will be saying things, such as, 'But what if it's cold outside?' or 'I don't like running with cars' and so on and so fuckin' forth.

The apex of my beef with gyms are that they are a) ostentatious b) a status symbol c) expensive d) unneeded. Main point: If you find yourself looking out the window while running on a treadmill -- your intuition is right, something is wrong. Most go to the gym, ostensibly, to be seen working out. Like the common phrase, for example, "I'm going to hit the gym tonight" if not a conversation starter, is a status symbol to show that you like to 'keep fit' and have the ability to work out with various other strangers in a fishbowl milieu while putting your flabby gluteus maximus through (so-called strenuous) exercises.

And the solution to saving that plastic/paper in your wallet and ostensibly the evironment (by not using a simulator to run on) is to go the 'fuk' outside. Do it. You don't need to run inside or push iron inside -- go play tennis (I'm a huge new advocate -- it works all your muscle sources) or burn your skin while swimming in a lake or play competitive frisbee with your OCD dog (I'm also a newborn advocate for this sporting event).

What do you say? 'Well, I like to have all this (useless) equipment at my disposal.' Well, shit, we also have baseball fields, soccer nets, basketball nets, swimming pools, tennis courts, bike paths and a whole motley crew of other available OUTDOOR and FREE places to be seen while we exert our obese bodies rife with fast food and alcoholic beverages.

Just fuckin' question shit, like, 'Do I need to pay absurd fees to have strangers stare at my improper use of this monolithic, confusing mechanism?'

Then again, it's your fuckin' wallet and gluteus maximus.

Author's Note: If you're interested whatsoever, please entertain the idea of reading some of my professional (cough) works -- this one, actually, turned out decently:http://www.burlingtonpost.com/printarticle/178899

Bush has a redeeming quality, just one

(Author's Note: Sorry, I have been up to the dead skin cells on my head in busyness recently that I haven't had time for personal writing. I just finished a script for a small animation studio and have been writing like a rabid donkey with opposable thumbs for the Burlington Post. My bad and apologies.)

Let's be contentious here shall we? George 'double ya' Bush is a megalomaniacal simpleton. No one is going to refute this, well, besides those that Obama denounced as gun-toting, bible-thumping stereotypical small town America folk.

Bush is a lie-producing machine fueled by greed and oil at the helm of the world's biggest super power. Period. 

Aside for this, although, Bush has a redeeming, respectable quality in that endless cavern of foibles, lies, and hilarious double-speak that only an ex-alcoholic can conjure. That redeeming quality or attribute, well it's not so much an attribute, but organization holds close to my proverbial heart.

It's called PEPFAR.

Haven't heard of it? No problem. PEPFAR is the acronym for the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief. Established in 2003 in one of Bush's idiotic State of the Union addresses, PEPFAR is the largest commitment of its kind in the world to fight the pandemic of AIDS. The program has committed $15 billion over five years to go to battle with the disease. A battle like British land disputes in the 18th century -- lined up in flawless rows facing one another.

This is fucking huge. But more importantly, it's much needed. Very needed. Currently, there are an estimated 28 million people living with the HIV virus in Africa alone -- this number does not include the myriad of AIDS-related deaths over the years. To put this number into perspective, Canada has a total population of just over 33 million. Are you saying, "jay-sus"? because you should be. India, on the other hand, has a growing AIDS epidemic of its own which is seeing an exorbitant of lives lost. Lives which could be saved -- given that AIDS is de-stigmatized and education is spread not unlike the terminal disease. Something that PEPFAR is helping. But "helping" is the key word.

With a pandemic of these proportions, you need more that just PEPFAR and key notables such as Stephen Lewis and Stephanie Nolen (both are Canadians) and groups like Alive and Well, which band, the Foo Fighters have just gotten behind to support to have an effect on this monolithic life-taking pandemic.

But when it comes to Bush hating, so be it. But if you want to play devil's advocate (my favourite position at parties and essentially life in general) pull the PEPFAR card. 

Moreover, like those in Africa and India, however, just fuckin' learn more about the AIDS causing virus and preventive measures. And maybe, just maybe you could look into getting behind an AIDS fighting organization. It's easy to start. Just type, "AIDS/HIV organization" into the omnipresent Google.

Empty, replete faces

He follows suit in the throngs

challenges convention, broken intention

obviously torn in scope -- washed jeans, love-stained blues

Sullen winces, inept thoughts dangling pendulous clues

built up moniker to follow a mistaken placebo, lies.

Hidden decree lost to you and me.

I, 

miss their careless, intentionally broken days

Fallen only to those

whose words still hold. They hold.

It's the day, forgotten for today, lost for 

sunken tongue, but no cheek, just sallow, just sallow.

Flying judge walks in government--

it's always your judgement. It's always your judgement.

no more.