Dog gets a bone

Republican millionaires condescended today to allow 160 million American workers a twenty dollar a week pay raise. They also grudgingly agreed not to cancel unemployment benefits of three hundred dollars a week to a further two million. From their posh offices they agreed they were under great political pressure to stop their assault on the American worker and throw the poor slobs a bone.

The president and the rest of the democrats were overjoyed with their rare piddling victory even though it was handed to them by the republican senate who seem to be close to having had it up to here with the fanatics from the so-called tea party. The president and his party seem grateful for whatever scraps they can grab as do the fraudulently named middle class after getting thrown out on their ears in droves.

Meanwhile the richest Americans don’t know what all of the fuss is about. With the size of their paychecks, bonuses, dividends, and stock options they find it hard to believe some of it isn’t trickling down to the shit shovelers. If power wealth and prestige was available to everybody what kind of country would this be?

A letter of thanks

I would like to take the opportunity in this special time of the year to express my thanks to the elected officials in Washington, especially to the republican side of the isle in The House of Representatives, for the concern and care you take for my personal welfare in such a holistic manner. In these days when so many are swayed by the uniformed opinion of the great unwashed masses it is with great appreciation I observe how from your exalted positions you do not bow to the uniformed pressures of your constituency. I understand with the great concerns of state you have little time to concern yourselves with the petty difficulties of the huddled masses and I hope our tribulations do not dampen your spirits as you jet home for the holidays.

I would also like to commend the Godly values you whole heartily encourage and support in me personally. I am mindful of James 1: 2-4, how much you are directly responsible for increasing my faith and ensuring I am “lacking in nothing.” Indeed, what good does a full belly do if I “lose my soul.” Take solace, especially, you men and women of the faith. Your Father in heaven is watching your deeds with great interest. If I can paraphrase Matthew 25:45, as much as you do to the least of these, you do to ME.

So again thank you very much. We all know how hard you are working and can see where your priorities lie. I am sure proper appreciation will be expressed come next November. A very special holiday greeting to you all.

Sincerely
Michael Lipuma

Dancing on the edge

I find myself trying to procrastinate, to do anything else but write. It’s a combination of fear and laziness, I suppose. Writing is hard work. It takes focused mental effort. Good writing takes guts. It takes guts because you have to get over the fear you, let’s make this an I statement, I have to get over the fear I have nothing worthwhile to say. Nothing new and original. That I suck at writing. That anything good I’ve ever written has been a fluke. That I’m procrastinating right now.

This is all BS. I am pushing the keys and putting words in some kind of coherent stream. That’s the goal: one word after another until something worthwhile begins to form. Sometimes creativity is a hard slog. I’ve, at least somewhat, bought into the notion that it’s all some kind of mist I can grab out of the air, that it doesn’t take work and sweat. Partly this is because good art looks obvious; something one sees or hears and you say of course, how could it be any other way? Which is also not true because there is art that blows my brain and I have no idea how it was done. Art is complex, there is a mystery to it, much like the divine. This is why I think creativity and spirituality are, if not directly linked, close cousins. Creativity takes faith. Writing takes faith there will always be another word, that if you keep plugging at it eventually it will make sense, that you are more than the sum of your parts and with the help of the divine you can produce something bigger than yourself, which also takes maybe a little bit of hoots-spa, if thats how you spell it?

Moxie. You have to have some arrogance to put down a bunch of words and expect somebody to want to read them. You see how conflicted writers are. We are required to live surrounded by paradox. We have to live with the ambiguity of not knowing if we’ll ever produce another worthwhile word. We dance teetering on the edge of a cliff we often go over in a spectacular fall. Often there is no one to help us get up and dust ourselves off. It is not unheard of that some never get up again. Art is a dangerous game and not for the faint of heart. It’s the edge of the world and “there be dragons here.”

Invented People

The world reacted with shock and dismay over the revelation of invented people. Though the most eminent scientist remain curiously quiet on the subject, US presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich revealed the existence of invented Palestinians. Though an accurate count of these invented people is imposable to guess, in 2003 it was estimated there were almost ten million, roughly half near the place they were invented and the remainder dispersed throughout the world.

This, however, is the tip of the iceberg. If mister Gingrich is correct in his reasoning, the existence of invented peoples may go back to shortly after the dawn of civilization. History and, dare I say, pre-history is rife with stories and myths of original peoples occupying a distinct geographical land mass being driven from it or subjugated by invaders. The revelation of invented peoples gives new insight to these phenomena.

The implications are staggering. The question worldwide seems to be; Are there any original people left? If in fact we are all invented people what is the moral implication? We have never experienced an identity crisis of this magnitude and scope.

This is not science fiction. The whole world is holding its breath. What will be the unintended consequences of Newt Gingrich’s revelation? Newt doesn’t know. Neither do we. Lord help us.

Man Overboard

The Tea Party, the original one in Boston, was about taxation without representation. It was about a big corporation, the East India Company, let off its taxes by Briton’s ruling class. Briton tried to make up the difference by jacking up taxes to the colonies.

Big business has representation. Lobbyists ply their trade in the corridors of power, special interest groups donate millions, and money fuels the electoral process. Corporate malfeasance is figured into the budget and the price is passed along. America’s myth of a classless society is a sham. Those at the bottom have always known this. As the divide between the bottom and the top becomes more apparent, word is getting around. America has a ruling class.

Maybe things don’t change in Washington because they like it how it is: political dynasties, old money, new money buying its way into the show. Blago’s crime was getting caught, lifting the veil on political horse trading, of rubbing it in our faces. I imagine the ruling class smug, the upstart commoner, got his comeuppance. It takes more finesse, a honeyed voice to steal in the name of the people.

Trickle down is an old idea. The great lords would put on lavish feasts for all the other upper crust and when they had their fill the commoners were allowed the leavings.

Who represents you? Remember the movie Network? “We’re mad as hell…” you know the next part. Throw’em overboard.

BP and Halliburton Do Their Part

The economy, according to spokesmen for some niche sectors, has just received a tremendous boost. Lawyers for Halliburton, the world’s second largest oilfield services corporation, said the latest accusation by oil giant BP will require counterclaims and that mean litigation which can only be good for our firm and various support industries. We are not talking about an insignificant amount of money here.

Lawyers for BP agree. This can only be good for us and the people we putt to work to bolster our claims, detectives, researchers, expert witnesses, talking heads, media consultants and analysis. The list is quite extensive. Few people realize how much of a public service we perform.

And don’t forget all news men and camera people who will benefit from our litigations, Not to mention just the reams and reams of redundant paperwork we generate. The forest industry is a little known beneficiary of suit and counter suit.

Paper servers, repo men and loan sharks also expected and uptick in business. All them shysters putting on the screws bound to jack up the price a tea, if you know what I mean. Folks get behind in their payments. They don’t get persuaded to pay up all by their lonesome.

Architects of Capitalism

Is it possible the economy is bi-polar? It seems to have manic and depressive episodes. Some bit of good news comes in and the economy is on the rise. You can almost hear them sing “Happy days are here again.” Then there’s a bit of bad news and up comes Boz Scaggs singing “Somebody loan me a dime.”

Congress is no help, squabbling about this plan or that plan when everybody knows what is making everybody nervous is they can’t agree on anything. Do they live in a bubble? This of course is a rhetorical question. Of course they do.

It’s made out of thick layers of narcissism, egomaniacal thinking that they are smarter than everybody else, or worse, that they’re holier than everybody, little Cromwell clones thinking they have the ear and sanction of the divine. They remind me of someone who used to be my friend. He came from privilege and had a very high IQ. He was very book smart. I told him once, for the smartest guy I knew, he sure was a dumb SOB. He had no street smarts at all. He knew how things were supposed to work, but had little practical knowledge of how they actually did, like an architect who expects things to work in the real world the same way they do on paper.

Meanwhile we have these giant soulless corporations running around like rabid dogs (We just passed the anniversary of Union Carbide's gassing of half a million in Bhopal, India. Some estimates say eight or ten thousand died the first day.) They chew up people and spit them out by the millions. You all know the great capitalist saying “Let the buyer beware.” Seems like we’ve all been sold the Brooklyn Bridge, or maybe swamp land in Florida.

I don’t even want to talk about the big financial institutions. They make Bernie Madoff look like an amateur.

The only football analogy appropriate to the Christian faith

Contrary to popular opinion, Sudden-Death-Overtime is the only football analogy appropriate to the Christian faith and I hate it. It’s a nerve racking, a how am I ever going to get through this without everything falling into the toilet kind of thing? Part of it is just freelancing, irregular paychecks and all that. But that’s not all of it. It’s me and who I turned out to be when this faith journey thing started. I didn’t have any faith of my own, in anything or anybody. Back when, I used to hope life wouldn’t suck too much more before I got through it.
Then, as far as I can tell, God called me. Now this was not God calling out, “Oh Mike? Mike? Can you hear me?” No. This is the creator of heaven and earth and everything besides having ordained from before the beginning of time that at such and such a time that everything before has led to cause and effect circumstances leading to me having a certain kind of sight I had previously been blind to eliciting only one possible response. That kind of call.
Since answering that kind of call requires a certain amount of faith in a deity capable of, well pretty much anything, faith that this deity is good and faith that said deity has my best interest at heart. Since, as previously mentioned I had none of my own, faith must be provided. We now arrive at sudden-death- overtime, my inexhaustible ability to screw up and the use of rope.
You’ve heard the phrase “Give him enough rope and he’ll hang himself?” In my experience God is generous with his rope.
Sometimes he gives miles of it. Sometimes I’m up on the scaffold over the trap door with a noose around my neck and the man has his hand on the lever. And always God shows up and I get another shot at things. And every time He ups the ante a bit, grows my faith a little more and He’ll continue to up the ante until once and for all I finally believe He ain’t going to let me fall, I don’t have to get it all right or all figured out. All I have to do is trust in him. And every time he pulls my butt out of the fire I believe that for a while.
The problem is I’m a backslider. Truth be told, I think we’re all backsliders. He picks us up and sets us on our feet and starts us out and keeps us steady and after a little while we get comfortable walking and we start thinking we pulled ourselves up by our own boot straps and are doing things all on our own, especially here in the states with our “rugged individualism.” When I get like that He plays out more rope letting me get to a place, usually near the edge of a cliff somewhere, where I can see and hear again. But, like I said, that’s me. I don’t know if it fits for you?

Anderson Cooper stunned

Country outraged over revelation members of US Congress live lives of privilege unlike their own.
Citizens were shocked and Anderson Cooper stunned when a Sixty Minuets probe revealed members of the US Congress don’t play by the same rules as the rest of us. The revelation that they lead lives of wealth and privilege is absolutely stunning. When confronted with the accusation of unfair practices one member bristled. “This is America where everyone is allowed to make a buck. Technically, nothing I did was illegal and nobody got hurt, really.
Having been apprised of the situation that she and other members of congress, in a bipartisan effort, are making a quick buck off of privileged information, congressperson Pelosi jumped on the growing bandwagon paying lip service to endorsing a fact finding subcommittee tasked with dragging out an investigation into the alleged wrongdoing until the rubes that voted for us go back to worrying about Kim what’s-her-name and how short her marriage was. Then we can get back to business as usual.
In a rare act of empathy Speaker of the House sided with the former Speaker. “Were just like everybody else. It’s just all our money and the lavish perks we get that make us seem different from you average Joe Blow. Come on? Don’t you remember that plumber we duped into shilling for us to show we’re just regular guys.”

The White Dragon and the Chosen One

The black wizards have set their minions on gatherings East and West. Tents were flattened and many were taken. They were not the first gatherings trampled. They will not be the last. Councils held throughout the land vow to continue to gather. The red and blue wizards continue to bicker in their impotence. The wizard chief calls for the factions to reconcile falls on deaf ears. The land founders, the people downcast.
The black wizards continue to weave their spells, taking profit from illusionary gains. The dragons are loose in the land pillaging the storehouses while winter begins to bite. I sit in a cold kitchen feeling the chill air press. How many want for work? How many look at their meager shelves and scheme for ways to stretch it more.
When will the white arise? I hear rumors of their stirrings. There was hope the wizard chief was of the white. Some still hope, but hope is fading as he seems to grovel and scrape at the feet of the black. If only he would stand and that hope prove true.
Still, the white wizards are said to summon their power. It is said the white has dragons, too. The old ones tell of a great white dragon that awakes at the appointed time when the chosen one finds the narrow gate to his chamber. I have heard the chosen one is with us now. I have also heard he does not yet know he is chosen. The white wizards watch and guide, but the chosen one must discover his own destiny.

Time keeps on slipping, slipping, into the future

I turned sixty last month. A lot of things are never going to get done. Nothing in particular, just a lot of them. Everything else being equal, there’s just not enough time. Even if money wasn’t an issue, there’s still not enough time. There’s too many places to see, trails to hike, stories to tell, roads to ride, mistakes to correct, too many books to read.
And there’s something wrong with part of my brain. It thinks I’m thirty, or that’s not it exactly, but it definitely thinks I should be, or it forgets sometimes that I’m not. It gets reminded pretty fast when I stand up and, just like my old man, it takes me seven eight steps to straighten my back. Do you remember that song; Peter, Paul and Mary might have done it?

“Work your fingers to the bone and what do you get?
Boney fingers. Boney fingers.”

That was my old man. It’s beginning to look like it’s going to be me. Sometimes I can feel my fingers trying to twist over one another. I have to grab them and force them back. Who’d a thought?
It seems life is about getting sidetracked. Best laid plans, as they say. It ain’t till your looking back you can see where you’ve been going and you thank whoever there is to thank if you’re in a half way decent place because there’s no going back to change things and how ever far you are when you look back there’s always more coming. And things don’t ever stop, at least not when your eyes are open, usually not even then.
So what choice is there? I’ll keep living the life I got, breathe in breathe out, keep stepping out having faith there’ll be something to catch my foot when it comes down.

Cold feet vs pie

The economy being what it is, this winter is going to be hard on a lot of people. I write this sitting in my kitchen with my fleece vest on, putting off as long as I can turning on the pellet stove. Well, I have a pellet stove to put off turning on. And I’m not going to go hungry or lose my house. I have a lot to be thankful for and I could write about that, but that’s not what this post is about. This post is about the widening gap between the one and the ninety-nine.
This post is about fat cats here in the states knowingly selling a lot of people a bill of goods, making an obscene amount of money, and, not only getting off, but getting huge bonuses for piloting their ships into the rocks. It’s not like they didn’t see the rocks. They were in plain sight. And everybody knows what they did. There is no mystery, or if there is it’s how much governments were a part of this gigantic Ponzi scheme?
And what of the ninety-nine? We’re getting cold here. We’re putting on extra clothes and downgrading our dinner menus. We’re buying used tires. We’re adjusting the hell out of our expectations. We seem to have the right to free speech as long as we don’t cause any inconveniences to commerce. People are getting arrested for trampling the grass while those trampling on the lives and futures of millions are getting another piece of pie.

Remember The White

Everything is broken, in the sea, on the land, in the air, and we who go about proclaiming our knowledge; we are the most profoundly broken of all. The best of us, with the best of intensions, hit so wide of the mark, are so blind to the infinite amount of things we do not know existing outside the reach of our puny grasp, we fail to judge rightly the inadequacy of our assumptions, refuse to understand the infinite cannot by us be divided into its components, studied under a microscope, and figured out.
This is the failure of both the Red and the Blue factions. The limitations of their private vision elude them obscuring the wisdom of the other and the foolishness of the self. They cannot hear the other not because they are deaf, but because of the belief there is nothing to learn.
The dragons of the Black are not hindered by this dilemma. The single mindedness of their devotion concerns itself only superficially, if at all, with the discussion of right or wrong. The bottom line is always the bottom line. All things must come under subjection to it. Mercy is only a viable option if it serves the ultimate goal of accumulation.
There is a longing for the White to come forth, to speak a new hope into the realm of the dispossessed beginning to occupy the public squares; the cobbled together meeting places, clamoring inarticulately for a better way. The White has been silent for too long. Its voice is barely remembered. It is like a word on the tip of the tongue one fails to grasp. Then, when one least expects, it suddenly burst forth, and White is remembered and believed. This is the only thing the Black fears.
Let this be the cry; Remember the White.

The Hall of Wizards

The hall of wizards is in an uproar, divided Red and Blue. They raise their fists across the aisle shouting accusations, hurling counter spells until nobody knows what confusion their magic brings.
In secret chambers upon the great wall gleeful hands are rubbed together. Overlords assure one another. “The fools,” said the fattest. “Let them argue. Let them believe their own lies. Let them fill their grubby pockets with our leavings. As long as they are at each other’s throats they leave ours alone. Always have we profited. Always has our secret incantation been proclaimed. Let the Red and Blue squabble among themselves. The tentacles of our dragons continue to multiply, search out ever more pockets. We continue to prosper. It is good to be in the Black.”
“Hail the Black.”
“Oh yes. Hail we Black wizards.”
And all their bellies shook as they roared out, “Hail the Black wizards.”
“What of the White? They attempt to stir the rabble.”
“Let them stir. It will be a weak broth. None believe in the White. Without belief their spells amount to nothing.

In the old days dragons hid in the dark recesses of the earth guarding their hoard of ill-gotten treasure. Today they sit on their treasure and gloat in broad daylight. Those of the occupy movement are the peasants with their pitch forks and torches, slightly amusing to the ruling class until the rabble become too much of a nuisance at which point the king’s men are called out to disperse them.
I don’t know where the dragon slayers are. The only one I know is Ralph Nadir and he is getting to old even to tilt at windmills.
The church, as usual seems to have taken residence with the dragon. They drink tea together lamenting days gone by when the rabble seemed to know their place.