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April 20, 2008 Newsletter
Totally Random
Time to have some fun with this "news" page, which is actually news plus opinion and "random" pieces of information. There has been this bird, a black tufted something-or-other, pecking at our window for days and at the wood that encapsulates it. I can't help it! This feeling of "random"! For "random" today as with "WTF" (and "WTH" in the halcyon years when most folks didn't cuss) means something that is not in line with the predominating train of thought or speech. For instance, uttering the word "yellow" or "fluffy?" at...well, random. I will explain "fluffy?" one of these days, but for right now...
Worst movie re-make ever: isn't even made yet, but it is being planned--the remake of "The Day the Earth Stood Still," which is one of THE GREAT ONES in its original. Long after folks forget about "The Passion of the Christ" or "Dude, Where's My Car?", this Michael Rennie film starring he and Gort, the robot, will titallate all who really give a crap about the fate of Planet Earth and its inability to see past trying to wipe out all life forms through war, hate, genocide, religious fanaticism and racial superiority bullsh*t, amongst other oligarch schemes. What we don't need now is a remake of this glorious early 50s movie where the sound of "Klaatu Barada Nikto" will bring about an end to global warming! This is akin to "Braveheart" fighting for "freedom fries," or the forces of Mordor winning in "Lord of the Rings." Why is Keanu Reeves even considering starring in this mess when he must sense that this movie just might unmake his career because the movie will, even over the remake of "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" (the previous worst remake ever), be considered if not the worst remake but the most insulting remake ever! (Wanna know what the best remake ever is? It is the remake of "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" starring that guy on TV's "Mail Call" who called everyone "maggot." Why is this the best remake ever? Because the original is sooooo bad!). All I have to say about this nonsense is... "ManBearPig!" Even if Al Gore takes a cameo role, that won't save it.
Here's why far west Texas is the BEST place to move to if you really think "armeggedon" (economic, social, political, or religious) is about to take place: first, because most people think this area, which is high desert surrounded by mountains, has "no water," few will dare try to "survive" here. But I know a secret: there really is water here after all, except that it will cost you a pretty penny to access it, and it is getting more expensive to drill for it as time goes on. In fact, the City of El Paso has known about our water supply for years, which is why they pay counties out here (Jeff Davis, Presidio, Culberson, and Hudspeth) for it, and some think El Paso will "dry us up." Some think that way because they don't know how the underground water aquifer system works, and why--I guess divine intervention--water sources keep on opening up out here, especially in the mountains. For instance, in 2004, we had almost 60 inches of rain!!! We thought we were in the Pacific Northwest there for a while! What all that rain made happen was that all the usually dry creeks out here ran for months, and most of that water eventually wound up underground. Prior to that our shallow well could pump water for about 5 minutes at a time. In 2006, we could keep it on for 30 minutes! Even today, we can run it for 15 minutes despite the fact that the latest La Nina has kept this area dry as a bone. Another reason: where would you rather hole up...a place where its sometimes 10 below in the winter (say, Alaska), or a place where it rarely gets below 20? Do you really want to shovel snow all winter? Do you really want to have to buy a snow mobile? Do you really want to have to put on and take off tire chains all the time? Do you really want to chop fire wood every single day from October to May? Do you really like short growing seasons? Do you really want to have to keep heaters in your barns all winter? As for summer, you might think far west Texas gets too hot, but out here in the mountains it usually stays in the 80s. And when it does get too hot, it usually rains. (I would not, however, recommend the area around Presidio, Texas, or Lajitas...the only place in the US hotter is Death Valley!). You do not need air conditioning or even swamp coolers, but you do need to build your house with screened doors opposite each other on both ends of the house to catch the daily breezes, and a fan system in the evenings. Third, land is still cheap out here. Fourth, the majority of people will leave you alone, and, fifth, along with that, this usually even applies to government! Local officials, who for the most part grew up in ranching and hunting/fishing/outdoors/wildlife-preservation families, do NOT go out of their way to find out "what you are doing on your private land" (and this usually even includes the Federales, aka the Border Patrol). If you are tired of the government interfering in your life, far west Texas is the place to be. Even Child Protective Services tends to leave you alone (ESPECIALLY if you stay under the radar and you homeschool your kids)...
And, speaking of CPS, I need to weigh in on that business in Eldorado (pronouned "El-Dor-AYE-Doh" for all you out of area folks), that Fundie Mormon Sect, and the State of Texas stealing hundreds of kids from their mothers. Bad! Bad! Bad! Children, unless their mothers are abusing them, should NEVER be taken from their mothers! I have no problem with CPS taking them from their idiot cult-loving fathers who, as is the case with the so called FLDS "Lost Boys" in the Four Corners area, got rid of all the teenaged boys so that they, the middle-aged and older men, could have all the women to themselves, and forced the women, including teen girls, to marry them. No one despises cults more than I do, but to punish the mothers, who were victims as well as the children, and thus punish the children to a lifetime without loving parents is maddening, even for a usually vile agency such as CPS (and, if they ever find that phony "16-year-old-caller", let me know!). Contrast that with CPS out here in Big Bend country (Eldorado is on the edge of the Texas Hill Country, and is about 80 miles in both directions from the nearest towns, Iraan to the west and Menard/Brady to the east. Except for Mentone in people-less Loving County [the entire county population is 80!], Eldorado just might be the loneliest town in Texas!). Out here west of Presidio are two tiny villages on the Rio Grande where, when I was teaching in Presidio, almost every family could tell of a child abuse story...and yet it took the suicide of one of these sexually-abused daughters in 1991 to get CPS to investigate these fathers. I had a rare female student from these two towns who could NOT give me a sexual-abuse horror story...and at least one of the victims was a boy! But that's the government: they are nowhere to be found when true tragedy strikes. Just ask any Katrina victim.
Americans are dummies, eh? Well, many Canadians might, in their self-righteous "superiority"--eh?--believe that (after all, Canadians don't invade other countries, steal their resources, have a Prime Minister who acts like Bush, discriminate against minorities or kill off its natives, institute fascist hate laws, and God forbid Cananda should suck up to Israel--eh?), but I am now feel that far more Americans that I had originally believed actually might be smarter than...well, than I had originally believed. For one thing, 80 percent of Americans, according to one poll, believe the US is in serious trouble. Not bad for, supposedly, a nation of folks who grew up on the myth that America could "do no wrong" and is the so-called "shining city on the hill." Not bad for a country that, despite claims to the contrary, does not have a truly free press, except on the internet, and has the most government-compliant mainstream media in the western, industrialized world, except on the internet. This can also be translated into 80 percent of Americans don't trust their government. I realize that this isn't the close to 100 percent figure that was found in the old Soviet Union, but we Americans are surely making progress. Just think, after 9-11, it was just the opposite! Then, 80 percent of Americans trusted their federal government, and, when "we" invaded Iraq, 70 percent agreed. What a difference nearly eight years of full frontal fascism can make! On the other hand, when too many Americans are concerned about keeping their jobs, their homes, and their sanity (which is hard to do in a nation ruled by "psychopaths"), it doesn't take too much effort to begin waking up. One by one, the delusions that have owned the American collective psyche for too long--might makes right, peace is for losers, poor people deserve it, what's good for Israel is good for America, and the general superiority complex--are beginning to fade. Funny what the threat of a newer, badder, Greater Depression can do. Good for us...and shame on Canadians who, feeling so smug that they can never deserve the same fate, write such tripe as I linked to above. Superior--eh? Well, I'm sure that the folks in Afghanistan, your own anti-SPP countrymen, the people of Quebec, the Inuit, Tlingit, Ojibwa, Metis and the other First Nations as you call them, folks like Henry Makow, and the Israelis who just negotiated your nation into their fat pockets, would disagree. In other words, Canadians, stop hiding behind US imperialism, at home and abroad...you, too, have committed abominations against the people of Earth! It is time you all collectively admitted it, instead of constantly pointing at us Americans.
And here is something that is even more sweet to my ears: more and more Americans distrust the MSM! According to Salon's Glenn Greenwald, a media critic and one of the very few MSM people who I consider honest to goodness journalists, ordinary Americans are getting tired of the MSM covering non-issues such as Obama's bowling score or Hillary's Bosnia mis-adventure and want the media to cover the real hardcore issues like the collapse of the dollar. Yet surely Greenwald must realize that those who own the MSM--our wonderful oligarchs!--will not tolerate their lackeys and tools, so-called "journalists," actually telling Americans what Americans need to know. So we get "we report, we decide" bullcrap. Greenwald, who I really do respect, does show his lefty side though when he complains that the MSM ignores McCain's idiocy ("al Qaida in Iran...ooops! Iraq") in favor of bashing Barack "bitterness" Obama. Glenn, we don't need more "progressives" in the MSM; we need more TRUTH! TRUTH, not leftist tripe, is what Americans need and what the MSM lacks, which is causing us to not trust it!
Do you ever, dear subscriber or reader, ever wonder whether or not the Bush Administration or the Three Stooges (McCain, Obama, and Clinton) actually believe the sh*t they are shoveling? Does McCain actually, factually believe that "we" are going to "be in" Iraq for 100 years? Does Patreaus actually believe (now that Sadr is stronger is Basra than he was before his "defeat" there) that the "surge" is working, especially when Iraqi troops, trained by "us", get their guns issued to them, after which they switch sides? Does McCain, who needs Leibermann to tell him what to say, actually believe that he, a POW for 5 years and thus underwent extreme PTSD, is capable of leading this country anywhere but completely down the drain? Is Hillary menopausal? I hope not for her sake should she steal the election, because, being myself a menopause sufferer, I know that she had better not be in night sweats when she gets that 3 a.m. phone call! God truly help us if she is! And as for Obama, is he going to get us out of Iraq only to get us into Africa? Darfur, anyone? And what will he do should Mugabe somehow retain power in Zimbabwe? Will Bobby the Butcher become Obama's Saddam Hussein? But if you think having Obama in the White House will be bad, I hate to break it to you, but his wife, Michelle, who really really hates white people and blames white people for everything from global warming to the heartbreak of psoriasis, will possibly make us wish for the Clintons again! At least Slick Willie had a sense of humor. I have no idea what his bowling score was.
I mean it about that last paragraph. Does Bush actually think he still has the ability to tell the world what to do? Does Hillary promising Israel more and more defense "umbrella" protection even matter? Does anyone running anything in the US actually believe anymore that the world gives a crap? When the idiots in Congress (and the media...I mean you, Lou Dobbs!) actually threaten China with anything, does China quake in its boots or does China give a collective shrug? Does Hugo Chavez go around afraid that, after coup attempts by the CIA, Bush's lame threats make any difference? Does anyone even notice Condi Rice anymore? Who has more respect on this planet--Bush, or Vladimir Putin? Who runs US foreign policy--the Bush Administration or Israel? Who is China more afraid of domestically--Bush, or the Dalai Lama? Who controls the world's energy resources--Bush/Cheney/Halliburton, or Russia, the Gulf States, Venezuela, Gulf of Guinea Africa, Canada, and Central Asia? Who is threatening the Palestinian people with extinction, Bush, or Likudnik Israel? Why are the Arab countries allowing the Palestinian people to be starved and beaten up when they should be supporting them? Are Jordan and Saudi, say, afraid of offending Bush or are they afraid of Israel's nukes? Why won't Egypt allow the suffering Gazans through the border wall to buy food and fuel as they did before? Is Mubarak afraid of Bush or of Israel? The answers to all of these questions, honestly, are not Bush. Even W must realize he controls very little now...he had the chance to make the US unbeatable, but he has blown it. It's all bluster, folks, and all their statements, Bush's speeches, Rice's pronouncements, Patreaus's official military reports, Cheney's smirking, Gates's unconvincing posturing, all of it is strictly to convince the American people that the United States still has the clout we used to have. "We're an empire now and we make our own reality," a neocon Bush official once told the journalist Ron Suskind. The world, which lives in REAL reality, knows otherwise.
Wouldn't you know it, but the other night I watched our DVD recorded movie, "Lord of War," starring Nicholas Cage (one of my fave actors), and the movie opens with the song by Buffalo Springfield, the mid-60s hit, "For What It's Worth," with its opening line, "Something happening here..." and you know the rest. That line, of course, inspired the naming of this web site! That one song introduced me (being 15 or whatever) to the notion that perhaps all is not right with the good ol' US of A. Especially in that last verse: "paranoia runs deep, into your life it will creep, it starts when your always afraid, get outta line, the Man comes and takes you away..." Well, what I want to say is that THEY and their tools and minions can come and take me away if they can find me. Folks, I'm not gonna stop speaking my mind telling it like it is. And neither should you if you have a blog or site or just express your opinion in a comments section. Even if you think everything I write here is bunk, even if you agree with McCain that we should stay in Iraq for 100 years, you should never be afraid to speak your mind. There is no forum here for reasons I've already expressed: I don't want hateful rants and raves here. I don't want some CIA tool spouting hatred of Jews (over Israel's persecution of Palestinians) or hatred of blacks, just to get me into trouble. That has happened at other blogs and sites, which have been sued or forced to close over one little hateful comment. If I do close this site it'll be to move it somewhere else...web hosting isn't free, and I am not about to charge people to come and read this, nor do I desire to become an Amazon affiliate or whatever. Free is free. So, if you want to comment on something I post here, e-mail me with your comment and I may post it on a special comments page.
Like what you read? Then subscribe to the Something Happening Here Newsletter! I do not have a set time for it to come out, but I try to make a newsletter once a week or as much as possible with hints and tips on how to live better and more naturally on your rural remote land. From handling garden insects to collecting valuable resources like water and firewood to raising your children to dealing with neighbors, I believe my 25 years experience living on the land can help you make the most of your rural remote life.
