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Michael Raney
Inspector
Username: Mikey559
Post Number: 322
Registered: 9-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, April 27, 2004 - 2:58 pm: |       |
Dave,
Unfortunately there is no quick fix. How do we change mileniums of war, pestilence and apathy? One step at a time. Proactively instead of reactively. By motivating our fellow human beings through our acts and deeds. By making our voice heard, such as by voting instead of saying that our vote doesn't count. By standing up for our rights and the rights of others. By teaching our youth our true History, the bad as well as the good. By returning violence with non-violence. By accepting and realizing that we are all one race. The Human Race. Sounds so easy, doesn't it?
Michael |
Dave
Sergeant
Username: Dave
Post Number: 29
Registered: 4-2004
| | Posted on Tuesday, April 27, 2004 - 3:30 pm: | |
M,
not easy but it'll have to get done, eventually.
Come on down, aliens! Teach us a lesson!
That ought to do it.
Seriously folks, take the time to empathize.
- Dave |
Sarah Long
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Sarah
Post Number: 1069
Registered: 11-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, April 28, 2004 - 4:43 am: | |
Dave,
The way you talk, it's as if the you think all people are horrible and selfish when that's not true. I always do my best to help people and I would never walk away from someone who needed help. I don't lie and I don't cheat, in fact I'm the sort of person to tell the truth if I had too much change given to me.
The only thing I wish I could bring myself to do is to give blood, but I hate needles and go faint even when I have a blood test. I am also, unfortunately a bit anaemic so that doesn't help anyway.
Hey, I'm sort of person who, when I was young I used to help insects out of the paddling pool in our garden and even the other day moved a caterpillar from the pavement so it wouldn't get stepped on. I knew that if I didn't move it I would feel bad for the rest of the day.
Ok, I really am sappy now.
Sarah
Smile and the world will wonder what you've been up to 
Smile too much and the world will guess  |
Dave
Sergeant
Username: Dave
Post Number: 33
Registered: 4-2004
| | Posted on Wednesday, April 28, 2004 - 7:02 am: | |
Sarah,
I'm not saying people are necessarily bad. People are, however, selfish to at least some degree. It's inevitable.
It's seldom that you'll find an action that is totally devoid of intent. Intent is a desire to change something/keep something the same. Desire is selfish.
I don't want to start on the whole Buddhist thing or even start whipping out syllogisms but you see what I mean. It's about how you do affects yourself as compared to your environment, which includes your neighbours.
When actions have a positive influence on how you and your compatriots live, it's less selfish than just lookin' out for ol' No. 1. (Sorry satanists; lack of capitalization intended)
BUT... that sounds a bit like communism, which doesn't work too well these days because people are greedy and selfish... unwilling to make petty sacrifices.
What do you guys think?
- Dave |
Sarah Long
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Sarah
Post Number: 1078
Registered: 11-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, April 28, 2004 - 7:11 am: | |
Dave,
I don't know why you went all into italics there.
People can be selfish to an extent, and some way more than others. But then if you don't look out for yourselves who will? It's about self preservation and the will to live the best life you can, that's what I think.
There are some real nasty pieces of work out there, but on the whole, I think people just want to get on with their lives and not annoy other people as best they can.
Sarah
Smile and the world will wonder what you've been up to
Smile too much and the world will guess |
Dave
Sergeant
Username: Dave
Post Number: 35
Registered: 4-2004
| | Posted on Wednesday, April 28, 2004 - 9:00 am: | |
Sarah, I agree. You have to think of number one, granted, but number is almost always better off when the people he's around are well off as well. Inequality breeds negative relations.
- Dave
p.s. Maybe that's the root of discord: the (perception of) inequality in the World. |
Alan Sharp
Chief Inspector
Username: Ash
Post Number: 567
Registered: 9-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, April 28, 2004 - 9:23 am: | |
This whole topic impinges (as indeed does Ripperology itself) on Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs.
As many of you know I have just returned from a month of climbing in the Himalayas. While there I hired a team of porters. Let me tell you about them.
These burly men, I hired 14 of them, get up about 5 am and prepare the camp for breakfast. Then while we pack our gear and have our breakfast they break the camp and load all the gear into packs. They then spend about 8 hours walking over difficult terrain with these packs, weighing between 40 and 50 kg each, supported on their backs by a hession strap passed over the top of their head. On arrival they build the new camp and prepare it for dinner.
These men do not change their clothes. They can't, because they are carrying all our gear and thus are not able to carry spare clothes for themselves. They don't even take their clothes off. At night they wrap a blanket around themselves, usually in a bitterly cold open hut, and go to sleep. They eat three times a day. For breakfast they have rice and lentils. For lunch, rice and lentils. And for dinner, rice and lentils. As expedition leader I hired them for the equivalent of one dollar a day each.
For these people, life sucks. But you would never hear any of them saying that life sucks. They don't care that they can't change their clothes, because they have clothes. They don't care that every meal consists of rice and lentils, because their bellies are full. They don't care that they work like trojans and only earn a dollar a day, because it is enough to feed their families. These three things are their needs, and they are too busy maintaining them to think about whether or not life sucks.
You and I, on the other hand, have clothes, food and money and we don't have to spend our every waking hour maintaining it. Thus we have leisure time, which allows us to move on to the next level of need, intellectual stimulation, and it is at this level that we have time to think about how sucky life is.
Thus, the only reason you are wondering why life sucks is because, by comparison with my porters, yours doesn't! |
Monty
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Monty
Post Number: 1056
Registered: 3-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, April 28, 2004 - 9:25 am: | |
What is it about guys named David ?
They ask the questions yet pose no answers.
They pontificate to people, of whom they know nothing about.
Yet they talk sense.
Man, that annoys me.
Monty
Our little group has always been and always will until the end... |
Caroline Anne Morris
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Caz
Post Number: 1028
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, April 28, 2004 - 10:52 am: | |
Hi Dave,
If all new parents knew - or at least cared enough to want to know - how to give their precious bundles of joy the best start in life, we might get somewhere.
I think it depends on the welcome a baby receives when it arrives here. If it is made to feel like the most important person in the world, while completely dependent on adults of the species, given oodles of love and self-esteem, and taught to value him or herself first, that gets the biggest job out of the way early on, so the little person can concentrate on valuing others when he or she is not so little or dependent.
If grown men and women are still struggling to value themselves, because no one did the job properly when it needed doing the most, how can we expect them to set aside the time to value others enough to help them?
How many of us can truly say to ourselves that we did a good deed for someone today - and every day - without anyone knowing we did it?
Doing some good every day for its own sake, for no thanks or reward, heavenly or otherwise (not even for that inner glow of self-satisfaction), would probably require us to have self-esteem and selflessness bursting together out of every pore.
I agree that something's gotta give in the end, but for selfish reasons. I can't survive alone, and if I don't try to look after those around me, when they need help, why should those around me ever look after me, when I need help?
I know it's a golden oldie, but (trying to) do as you would be done by, preferably with a smile on your face as you're doing it, is not always easy but nearly always rewarding in the long run.
Love,
Caz
X
|
Sarah Long
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Sarah
Post Number: 1085
Registered: 11-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, April 28, 2004 - 11:02 am: | |
You know, this reminds me of that episode in Friends when Joey tells Phoebe that there are no selfless good deeds because when we do a good deed for someone it gives us a good feeling inside which is selfish.
Strange, but he actually had a point.
Sarah
Smile and the world will wonder what you've been up to
Smile too much and the world will guess |
Sarah Long
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Sarah
Post Number: 1086
Registered: 11-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, April 28, 2004 - 11:07 am: | |
Actually, as soon as I had posted that I remembered a good deed I did once that wasn't selfish (at least I don't think so).
I set up my best friend at school with this guy she really fancied once and they got together because of me but it wasn't selfish because I had such a major crush on the guy myself and I cried for ages over it.
Sarah
Smile and the world will wonder what you've been up to
Smile too much and the world will guess |
Jason Scott Mullins
Inspector
Username: Crix0r
Post Number: 225
Registered: 11-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, April 28, 2004 - 1:09 pm: | |
Bearing in mind of course that no selfish deed goes unpunished :P
And yes, the world does suck. To quote from a very good book and movie "Life is pain, Highness. Anyone you says differently is selling something."
That however doesn't mean much of anything other than life is difficult. Most things are with out the proper tools or by their very nature. No need to get depressed about it.
crix0r |
Michael Raney
Inspector
Username: Mikey559
Post Number: 324
Registered: 9-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, April 28, 2004 - 1:28 pm: | |
Sarah,
I have no fear of needles and would give all the blood I could. The blood bank won't let me, unless I lie. I refuse to lie. They ask you several questions, one of which is, "Have you slept with another man since 1977". If you say yes, they inform you, in not so nice a way, that you cannot give blood. What a$$holes! I am not sick, I test every six months for AIDS. It's required at work for us to test at least once a year. My partner is a nurse and he is also required to test yearly. They also test all blood before it's used. In my opinion, this is just another form of discrimination. I mean, most women have slept with a man since 1977. How come they are allowed to give blood?
Mikey |
David O'Flaherty
Inspector
Username: Oberlin
Post Number: 284
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, April 28, 2004 - 5:53 pm: | |
Hey, wait a minute, Monty! I may not make sense, but at least I hope I don't pontificate (too much)
Cheers,
Dave |
Dan Norder
Sergeant
Username: Dannorder
Post Number: 48
Registered: 4-2004
| | Posted on Wednesday, April 28, 2004 - 10:54 pm: | |
Yeah, the world sucks. People suck. Everything sucks. Physicists call this gravity. It's better than the alternative.
Dan Norder, editor, Ripper Notes |
Caroline Anne Morris
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Caz
Post Number: 1032
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Thursday, April 29, 2004 - 3:33 am: | |
Hi Mikey,
I agree with you - my brother and his partner are in exactly the same position as you are. They would willingly give blood at any time but their blood is not acceptable.
The question we get asked these days is: "Are there any cases of CJD in your family?"
Answer: "Not as far as I know, but then, how the hell would I know anyway, since it can take years and years before anyone realises?"
Everything in life is a risk. If I'm gonna die without an immediate blood transfusion, and not enough of the 'right' type of people are donating, I'd sooner have the right to take a risk with the 'wrong' type.
Love,
Caz
X
|
Monty
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Monty
Post Number: 1058
Registered: 3-2003
| | Posted on Thursday, April 29, 2004 - 4:07 am: | |
Dave,
You make hope that...I couldnt possibly comment !!
Monty
Our little group has always been and always will until the end... |
Alan Sharp
Chief Inspector
Username: Ash
Post Number: 570
Registered: 9-2003
| | Posted on Thursday, April 29, 2004 - 5:02 am: | |
Mikey
I am in a similar, albeit different situation. When I first arrived in Ireland (nearly 5 years ago) I tried to give blood. They wouldn't take it. The question I fell down on was having lived in the United Kingdom during the mad cow crisis. This apparently means that I am a high risk for CJD. Which would be fine, except I'M A VEGETARIAN FER CRIPES SAKE!!!!!!!!! |
David O'Flaherty
Inspector
Username: Oberlin
Post Number: 287
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Thursday, April 29, 2004 - 8:50 am: | |
Alan,
That's crazy. So what do they do in Britain? Import blood? Your trip sounds fascinating, by the way.
Monty. . .ouch.
Cheers,
Dave |
Dave
Sergeant
Username: Dave
Post Number: 37
Registered: 4-2004
| | Posted on Thursday, April 29, 2004 - 11:18 am: | |
It's all a matter of scaling, I'm afraid. Scaling and false perceptions.
- DVW
p.s. Alan, your trip DOES sound fascinating. What do you feel that you have gained because of it? |
Michael Raney
Inspector
Username: Mikey559
Post Number: 329
Registered: 9-2003
| | Posted on Thursday, April 29, 2004 - 12:42 pm: | |
Caz,
Thanks for understanding!
Love ya,
Mikey |
Monty
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Monty
Post Number: 1067
Registered: 3-2003
| | Posted on Thursday, April 29, 2004 - 12:45 pm: | |
Dave O,
Im only yanking ya chain. You know I am.
But it is uncanny....they could almost be twins !
Monty
Our little group has always been and always will until the end... |
Alan Sharp
Chief Inspector
Username: Ash
Post Number: 573
Registered: 9-2003
| | Posted on Thursday, April 29, 2004 - 12:54 pm: | |
Dave
The glib answer would be another summit bagged.
The real answer, I wouldn't know where to start. This was my third time in the Himalayas, it won't be my last, and I'm already counting the days until I can go back. |
Dave
Sergeant
Username: Dave
Post Number: 43
Registered: 4-2004
| | Posted on Thursday, April 29, 2004 - 1:00 pm: | |
Alan,
why climb? What 'does it' for you?
- DVW |
Alan Sharp
Chief Inspector
Username: Ash
Post Number: 575
Registered: 9-2003
| | Posted on Friday, April 30, 2004 - 3:44 am: | |
Dave
Now there's the million dollar question!
Quick story. The day before summit we had a tough climb up to our high camp, around 7 hours of climbing, first an ice climb up the steep side of the glacier and then a hike up snow slopes littered with crevaces. We were aiming to make high camp by around 2pm because early afternoons in the Himalayas the clouds roll up out of the valley and envelop the mountain.
On this day one of the guys had a problem on the side of the glacier, pulled a bunch of tendons in his leg and we had to stop to strap it up so he could continue. This put us way behind schedule, so that by the time the clouds rolled in we were still about an hour and a half away from camp. Only this was no ordinary cloud cover. The snow came, and turned into a blizzard and a white-out. Visibility was down to about 3 feet and somehow we got separated.
So now I'm on the mountainside on my own, no idea where high camp is, can't find any of the Sherpas, my goggles have fogged up so visibility is almost zero. I can see holes in the snow where someone has been using poles. All I can do is follow them. This is a highly dangerous thing to do as if the guy I'm following has fallen into a crevace or walked off the edge of an ice cliff, I'm going to as well. But the alternatives are worse, either stumbling about blindly and hoping to run across the camp, or else staying put and hoping the blizzard will blow itself out, which if it doesn't happen by nightfall would leave me out on the mountainside for the night where if I didn't die of exposure I would almost certainly lose a finger or two to frostbite.
Anyway, the fact that I am writing this indicates that I did get there in the end, although the guys said that when I came stumbling into camp I looked like the abominable snowman.
All this is to illustrate why I climb. Because mountains are big and we are small and that reminds us how magnificent the world is. It reminds us how powerful nature is and how fragile life. And it reminds us of what we have inside, what we can achieve if we only want it enough and are willing to put in the effort. People talk about conquering mountains, but that's daft. Nobody conquers a mountain, because the mountain doesn't care that you are there and will snuff you out just like that if it feels like it. You work with the mountain to conquer yourself. And that's much more satisfying.
And if that makes any sense to you at all, explain it to me would you? |
Steve Laughery
Unregistered guest
| | Posted on Thursday, April 29, 2004 - 9:38 pm: | |
Abraham Lincoln said, "It is my oberservation that people are as happy as they allow themselves to be".
I.E. - The world is as sucky - or as unsucky - as your attitude.
Steve |
Dave
Detective Sergeant
Username: Dave
Post Number: 52
Registered: 4-2004
| | Posted on Friday, April 30, 2004 - 4:46 pm: | |
Like I've said previously (somewhere): it comes down to scaling and perspective. How big is your microcosm?
I'm sorry.... that sounds like a confidential question between you and you doctor.
- DVW |
Kris Law
Inspector
Username: Kris
Post Number: 321
Registered: 12-2003
| | Posted on Thursday, May 20, 2004 - 11:59 am: | |
COLD TURKEY
-Kurt Vonnegut
Many years ago, I was so innocent I still considered it possible that we could become the humane and reasonable America so many members of my generation used to dream of. We dreamed of such an America during the Great Depression, when there were no jobs. And then we fought and often died for that dream during the Second World War, when there was no peace.
But I know now that there is not a chance in hell of America’s becoming humane and reasonable. Because power corrupts us, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Human beings are chimpanzees who get crazy drunk on power. By saying that our leaders are power-drunk chimpanzees, am I in danger of wrecking the morale of our soldiers fighting and dying in the Middle East? Their morale, like so many bodies, is already shot to pieces. They are being treated, as I never was, like toys a rich kid got for Christmas.
-------------------------
When you get to my age, if you get to my age, which is 81, and if you have reproduced, you will find yourself asking your own children, who are themselves middle-aged, what life is all about. I have seven kids, four of them adopted.
Many of you reading this are probably the same age as my grandchildren. They, like you, are being royally shafted and lied to by our Baby Boomer corporations and government.
I put my big question about life to my biological son Mark. Mark is a pediatrician, and author of a memoir, The Eden Express. It is about his crackup, straightjacket and padded cell stuff, from which he recovered sufficiently to graduate from Harvard Medical School.
Dr. Vonnegut said this to his doddering old dad: “Father, we are here to help each other get through this thing, whatever it is.” So I pass that on to you. Write it down, and put it in your computer, so you can forget it.
I have to say that’s a pretty good sound bite, almost as good as, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” A lot of people think Jesus said that, because it is so much the sort of thing Jesus liked to say. But it was actually said by Confucius, a Chinese philosopher, 500 years before there was that greatest and most humane of human beings, named Jesus Christ.
The Chinese also gave us, via Marco Polo, pasta and the formula for gunpowder. The Chinese were so dumb they only used gunpowder for fireworks. And everybody was so dumb back then that nobody in either hemisphere even knew that there was another one.
But back to people, like Confucius and Jesus and my son the doctor, Mark, who’ve said how we could behave more humanely, and maybe make the world a less painful place. One of my favorites is Eugene Debs, from Terre Haute in my native state of Indiana. Get a load of this:
Eugene Debs, who died back in 1926, when I was only 4, ran 5 times as the Socialist Party candidate for president, winning 900,000 votes, 6 percent of the popular vote, in 1912, if you can imagine such a ballot. He had this to say while campaigning:
As long as there is a lower class, I am in it.
As long as there is a criminal element, I’m of it.
As long as there is a soul in prison, I am not free.
Doesn’t anything socialistic make you want to throw up? Like great public schools or health insurance for all?
How about Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes?
Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the Earth.
Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God. …
And so on.
Not exactly planks in a Republican platform. Not exactly Donald Rumsfeld or Dick Cheney stuff.
For some reason, the most vocal Christians among us never mention the Beatitudes. But, often with tears in their eyes, they demand that the Ten Commandments be posted in public buildings. And of course that’s Moses, not Jesus. I haven’t heard one of them demand that the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes, be posted anywhere.
“Blessed are the merciful” in a courtroom? “Blessed are the peacemakers” in the Pentagon? Give me a break!
-------------------------
There is a tragic flaw in our precious Constitution, and I don’t know what can be done to fix it. This is it: Only nut cases want to be president.
But, when you stop to think about it, only a nut case would want to be a human being, if he or she had a choice. Such treacherous, untrustworthy, lying and greedy animals we are!
I was born a human being in 1922 A.D. What does “A.D.” signify? That commemorates an inmate of this lunatic asylum we call Earth who was nailed to a wooden cross by a bunch of other inmates. With him still conscious, they hammered spikes through his wrists and insteps, and into the wood. Then they set the cross upright, so he dangled up there where even the shortest person in the crowd could see him writhing this way and that.
Can you imagine people doing such a thing to a person?
No problem. That’s entertainment. Ask the devout Roman Catholic Mel Gibson, who, as an act of piety, has just made a fortune with a movie about how Jesus was tortured. Never mind what Jesus said.
During the reign of King Henry the Eighth, founder of the Church of England, he had a counterfeiter boiled alive in public. Show biz again.
Mel Gibson’s next movie should be The Counterfeiter. Box office records will again be broken.
One of the few good things about modern times: If you die horribly on television, you will not have died in vain. You will have entertained us.
-------------------------
And what did the great British historian Edward Gibbon, 1737-1794 A.D., have to say about the human record so far? He said, “History is indeed little more than the register of the crimes, follies and misfortunes of mankind.”
The same can be said about this morning’s edition of the New York Times.
The French-Algerian writer Albert Camus, who won a Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957, wrote, “There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide.”
So there’s another barrel of laughs from literature. Camus died in an automobile accident. His dates? 1913-1960 A.D.
Listen. All great literature is about what a bummer it is to be a human being: Moby Dick, Huckleberry Finn, The Red Badge of Courage, the Iliad and the Odyssey, Crime and Punishment, the Bible and The Charge of the Light Brigade.
But I have to say this in defense of humankind: No matter in what era in history, including the Garden of Eden, everybody just got there. And, except for the Garden of Eden, there were already all these crazy games going on, which could make you act crazy, even if you weren’t crazy to begin with. Some of the games that were already going on when you got here were love and hate, liberalism and conservatism, automobiles and credit cards, golf and girls’ basketball.
Even crazier than golf, though, is modern American politics, where, thanks to TV and for the convenience of TV, you can only be one of two kinds of human beings, either a liberal or a conservative.
Actually, this same sort of thing happened to the people of England generations ago, and Sir William Gilbert, of the radical team of Gilbert and Sullivan, wrote these words for a song about it back then:
I often think it’s comical
How nature always does contrive
That every boy and every gal
That’s born into the world alive
Is either a little Liberal
Or else a little Conservative.
Which one are you in this country? It’s practically a law of life that you have to be one or the other? If you aren’t one or the other, you might as well be a doughnut.
If some of you still haven’t decided, I’ll make it easy for you.
If you want to take my guns away from me, and you’re all for murdering fetuses, and love it when homosexuals marry each other, and want to give them kitchen appliances at their showers, and you’re for the poor, you’re a liberal.
If you are against those perversions and for the rich, you’re a conservative.
What could be simpler?
-------------------------
My government’s got a war on drugs. But get this: The two most widely abused and addictive and destructive of all substances are both perfectly legal.
One, of course, is ethyl alcohol. And President George W. Bush, no less, and by his own admission, was smashed or tiddley-poo or four sheets to the wind a good deal of the time from when he was 16 until he was 41. When he was 41, he says, Jesus appeared to him and made him knock off the sauce, stop gargling nose paint.
Other drunks have seen pink elephants.
And do you know why I think he is so pissed off at Arabs? They invented algebra. Arabs also invented the numbers we use, including a symbol for nothing, which nobody else had ever had before. You think Arabs are dumb? Try doing long division with Roman numerals.
We’re spreading democracy, are we? Same way European explorers brought Christianity to the Indians, what we now call “Native Americans.”
How ungrateful they were! How ungrateful are the people of Baghdad today.
So let’s give another big tax cut to the super-rich. That’ll teach bin Laden a lesson he won’t soon forget. Hail to the Chief.
That chief and his cohorts have as little to do with Democracy as the Europeans had to do with Christianity. We the people have absolutely no say in whatever they choose to do next. In case you haven’t noticed, they’ve already cleaned out the treasury, passing it out to pals in the war and national security rackets, leaving your generation and the next one with a perfectly enormous debt that you’ll be asked to repay.
Nobody let out a peep when they did that to you, because they have disconnected every burglar alarm in the Constitution: The House, the Senate, the Supreme Court, the FBI, the free press (which, having been embedded, has forsaken the First Amendment) and We the People.
About my own history of foreign substance abuse. I’ve been a coward about heroin and cocaine and LSD and so on, afraid they might put me over the edge. I did smoke a joint of marijuana one time with Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead, just to be sociable. It didn’t seem to do anything to me, one way or the other, so I never did it again. And by the grace of God, or whatever, I am not an alcoholic, largely a matter of genes. I take a couple of drinks now and then, and will do it again tonight. But two is my limit. No problem.
I am of course notoriously hooked on cigarettes. I keep hoping the things will kill me. A fire at one end and a fool at the other.
But I’ll tell you one thing: I once had a high that not even crack cocaine could match. That was when I got my first driver’s license! Look out, world, here comes Kurt Vonnegut.
And my car back then, a Studebaker, as I recall, was powered, as are almost all means of transportation and other machinery today, and electric power plants and furnaces, by the most abused and addictive and destructive drugs of all: fossil fuels.
When you got here, even when I got here, the industrialized world was already hopelessly hooked on fossil fuels, and very soon now there won’t be any more of those. Cold turkey.
Can I tell you the truth? I mean this isn’t like TV news, is it?
Here’s what I think the truth is: We are all addicts of fossil fuels in a state of denial, about to face cold turkey.
And like so many addicts about to face cold turkey, our leaders are now committing violent crimes to get what little is left of what we’re hooked on. |
Jason Scott Mullins
Inspector
Username: Crix0r
Post Number: 257
Registered: 11-2003
| | Posted on Thursday, May 20, 2004 - 12:42 pm: | |
Ahh a reader of Vonnegut.
I myself haven't read any of his works. I think a lot gets attributed to him that isn't true (Baz Lurman's sunscreen comes to mind). Out of sheer curiosity, are we sure he wrote this?
crix0r
"I was born alone, I shall die alone. Embrace the emptiness, it is your end." |
Kris Law
Inspector
Username: Kris
Post Number: 322
Registered: 12-2003
| | Posted on Thursday, May 20, 2004 - 12:48 pm: | |
crix0r,
Indeed, a lot of internet fluff is attributed to him, this one, however, is actually his own words.
Here is the link, if you are interested:
http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/article/cold_turkey/
And, if you are interested in trying something of his, I would try maybe Galapagos, which has a similar theme to the above essay, or maybe his more famous Slaughterhouse Five, which is also similarly themed.
-K |
Jason Scott Mullins
Inspector
Username: Crix0r
Post Number: 258
Registered: 11-2003
| | Posted on Thursday, May 20, 2004 - 12:48 pm: | |
http://www.snopes.com/politics/soapbox/vonnegut.asp
Apparently, true. Gotta love snopes.
crix0r
"I was born alone, I shall die alone. Embrace the emptiness, it is your end." |
angel_eyes
Unregistered guest
| | Posted on Wednesday, May 19, 2004 - 4:32 pm: | |
Okay... umm... so, what is the topic of discussion here? Is it the world and how sucky it is or isn't? Personally, I think the world is what you make of it. Why do you think that the world sucks, David?
Angel
Monty,
What do you mean when you say, "Our little group has always been and always will until the end..."
Love,
Angel |
Kris Law
Inspector
Username: Kris
Post Number: 330
Registered: 12-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, May 26, 2004 - 8:45 am: | |
Well, I would think the title of the thread would be sufficient to explain its contents, but yes, it is about whether the world sucks or not.
Some say yes, some say no, some say I dunno.
-K |
Monty
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Monty
Post Number: 1159
Registered: 3-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, May 26, 2004 - 8:53 am: | |
Angel,
I found it hard, it was hard to find....
.........Oh well, whatever, nevermind
Monty
Face cream.....now thats just gayness in a jar... |
Kris Law
Inspector
Username: Kris
Post Number: 332
Registered: 12-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, May 26, 2004 - 10:07 am: | |
Monty,
Something about a mulatto, an albino, a mosquito, and my libido?
Something of that order . . .
-K |
Monty
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Monty
Post Number: 1160
Registered: 3-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, May 26, 2004 - 11:35 am: | |
Kris,
Quite.....and with the lights out, it's less dangerous,
Here we are now, entertain us.
Yay !
Monty
Face cream.....now thats just gayness in a jar... |
Llama Farma
Unregistered guest
| | Posted on Tuesday, June 01, 2004 - 8:27 pm: | |
maybe it's just your world, the world i live in ROCKS!!!
p.s: maybe it's just you that sucks?
p.p.s: it's 10:35! |
Jennifer D. Pegg
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Jdpegg
Post Number: 1005
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Monday, September 13, 2004 - 2:22 pm: | |
You know I find it reassuring to note that people dressed as Batman can't scale the walls of Buckingham Palace.
Yes, that would be insane, it's a good job things like this don't happen........
Jenni
ps though at least they managed to detain Robin before he got towards the balcony.
"Think things, not words." - O.W. Holmes jr |
Kris Law
Inspector
Username: Kris
Post Number: 440
Registered: 12-2003
| | Posted on Monday, September 13, 2004 - 2:33 pm: | |
Jennifer,
Batman? Robin? Huh?
-K
Hello Vinny. It's your Uncle Bingo. Time to pay the cheque. |
Kris Law
Inspector
Username: Kris
Post Number: 441
Registered: 12-2003
| | Posted on Monday, September 13, 2004 - 3:54 pm: | |
Jennifer,
Never mind. I just heard about it.
What does that have to do with the fact that the world sucks, though?
-K
Hello Vinny. It's your Uncle Bingo. Time to pay the cheque. |
Jennifer D. Pegg
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Jdpegg
Post Number: 1006
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, September 14, 2004 - 3:28 am: | |
well,
not a lot i couldnt find a better thread though!
Jenni
ps though i guess if he had been a suicide bomber dressed as Batman that would be a different story.
"Think things, not words." - O.W. Holmes jr |
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