The Left Column

Politics for Poets

Politics

Politics at Summer picnics is very bad etiquette.

Some people
      they know to stay away forever
 they live in a battlement
     up above the world
          and 
       if anybody ever hurt them
  they'd say
 “What does it matter,
        less than me that he/she is.”

As if Saturdays are for regrets
       over broken promises of people
           who didn't really make any promises.
 As if Sundays are for praying for
              people who would curse you
                if they knew you
                    were praying for them.
  As if Mondays are to run off after dollars 
          that are given by the lost one
                who you cared about at a time 
                        when he's desperate again,
                             and there was no body 
                                 else that he could call.
And Tuesdays are for traveling off
            and never thinking of him.
And Wednesday, wondering if he'll take my call.
 Thursday driving by his house twelve times.
  Friday with a restraining order.

As if Saturday
       his birthday
       would ever feel the same again.

Corruptology

The study of Institutional Dementia

Corruptology is the study of Institutional Dementia of organizations, governments, councils, etc.

How much of too much is enough?

How do we remember to forget?

We study objects to understand complexity. We may over abound in them. This is sometimes called hording. But only if we live it does it become a problem except for the regret for the time lost fussing over stuff of no real consequence. So people will say. Or we might imagine that they say it. Maybe no one cares.

Go ahead, horde the whatever. Is it harming anyone? If you were living in it. The lost time that you wasted doing it. But what else would you have been doing? And then you can have a business selling it all. Not a very good business plan. It's hard to fathom. I guess it must just be cheeper than theropy: a luxury of wealthy folks who indulge in trying to seem normal, whatever that means. I am just making them up.

So, we gain a handle on it. Whatever the collecting obcession is. We struggle. we shop and we don't buy. We wrestle with the demon of it: but just one more indulgence for your hobby. One more toy car. One more beanied over puppet shelf sitter. One more pair of collectible shoes. One more . . . whatever it is. Obcession. Obcession on created thing. Created thing that evokes some sense of some other thing, something that maybe we would like in our lives, some aspect, someone or people to love.

And then we realize that it is what it is. We do what we do for a time and then we stop. If it becomes a problem, say your whole house gets filled up with collectibles, we deal with the consequences. No place to put anything else. No room for guests. Embarrassment when people see that there are twelve hundred collectible whatever they ares in your living room and no where to sit. In box stuffed with auction win notices. How do we get past it? EVerything can be had at a great deal, when do we cease with it and say 'enough'?

Just accept it. No enjoy it. Divest in it. Do away with the need to have it and accept the joy that it does exist. Let someone else have a chance with it for a while. It is said that most things that are made to be collected are usually not going to be worth much (Cory from Pawn Stars said this). But people want it. They like it. It's not a drug. It's not illegal. But how many toy cars can a person have? I've got information of one gentleman who has 150,000 of them! So, ya, it becomes an obcession.

For me it was working out of issues. I wanted the blown-motor toy car and, damn it, I'm going to have it. I'll buy that one. That one. That one too. All of them. Oh, and the ones that you can see through. They are awesome. Some of them are heavier than others. People give them away. I thought "I'll buy some sets, that people sell for next to nothing. I'll fill the jones. But though it is not a drug, and technically it is not addictive . . . well . . . they are just so cool So very much fun. They give me so many ideas for stories. So much effort goes into them, the complexity of the individual item. The way that it can be cataloged in so many different ways. And what makes for one that someone likes and one that they just pass over? Ah. But you do have to put a limit to it. And even when there is a great deal that really can be broken down and remarketted for a lot more money, the time it takes to wait for the stuff to show up, and to resell it all, really, I'd be buying it just because I like it.

So then it's a matter of reigning it in. What is it really that I am celebrating with these toy cars with the giant engines? The hard work of ingenious people? The love that goes on in the family off-road rig on the fishing vacation? The joy of dirt-bike riding? Or the ones that are little police cars? Of course there have to be buff hero cop guys (or gals) driving those cars. And the fire truck, or the school bus, there many stories implied that any child or adult can catch if you are even a little bit creative. Hold the thing in your hand. Picture what it could be next: a little robotoic servant car that follows you around and checks for trouble.

And as for the answer of 'why'? The fact is that if it is a resalable item people often over due the hobby because they are looking for something real to hold on to (like angel from Montgomery, the song Bonnie Rait sings it, john prine wrote it?). Maybe materialism of this sort is due to a need to feel like part of some wide and purposeful world. What is the new issue? What are the new designs? How will this common item, the toy vehicle, be represented to the fickle youngsters, and collectors, to keep this tradition of tiny toy thing that people collect going?

There are so many different types of collectibles. The reasons for why some people are collectors adn some are not is something that we could study for a long time. Is it rooted in materialism? Is it fear of death? Is it celebration of other people's good ideas and patronage of their creative endevours? Is it a hard desire to not miss out on something? Is it a drive to capitalize on easy profits with die-cast junkies willing to pay out hard cash for that next great whizza-cool thing, whatever it is, the "this defines me, I gotta have it" kind of toy like for me the convertible blue Custom Firebird that came with my playset back when I was just a lad and the world would give me things for Christmas (my parents). I picked the thing out of the Sears Catalog and I can still buy one today if I want to for less than 34.94 and I could recreate the time when Mitchell, my first true jerk friend (who I loved) and I would play with our cars and I'd run them down that hill and make them bang into each other. He wouldn't do it with his cars.

Some time after that he moved away. We aren't friends. I could email him, I suppose and freak him out. I'd ask him for the 1967 Red Sox baseball cards that he has that we were supposed to have been coowners of. We had a ton of various cards. Sometimes I used to use baseball cards to put in the spokes of my bicycle. And then, when I was older, my game was that I would take the toy car out into the reservoir woods and it would have accicent after accident and I'd smash the thing. That was my way of reject materialism, I suppose.

Then, when older, I'd have these model war toys like a tank or a fighter jet. I'd bring them out to the woods and burn them. Or we had these little guys and we put firecrackers in holes in the toy and blew it up. One of my friends was big into pyrotechnices and he'd go down to Boston and buy illegal fireworks and sell them out the front door of his house. His mom had passed away and his father really didn't have a clue (sad fact of the 1970's about suburban fathers).

So I would ritually burn the war toys as a way to say 'let's not have war.', I quess. Even the PT109, my best output ever, burned in the vernal pond way out in the middle of the woods. I took pictures of it. Not when it was burning.

By the time I was 16 I was over my ritual 'burn the toy' phase. After that I had little interset in that kind of a thing. I never did stage show pyrotechnics. I never burned anything down. I was not a pyromania. My friend, when I was in juinior high school, he was a few years younger than I, he did like to burn things. if therre was a fire in the Resevooir woods, or in that swamp behind Lincoln School (that was a yearly battle) it might have been him who lit it. I nver did anything like that.

Well, I've tried to discuss the concept of collecting things. Also I dove into memories of pyrotechnics of childhood: nothing I recommend doing. And then I explained how when I was 14 I had an 11 year old friend who was a pyromaniac. I am sure he is better by now. In any case. Random blog moment. Have a nice day!

July 1, 2014

🔫 🚀 🚙🚤🚣🔨🍀⚜⏲⏱⏰

There is always time to
🍀 Praise God! 🍀
🍀⏲⏱⏰⏲⏱⏰⏰⏲⏱⏰⏰🍀
🎠 
🎠 
🎠 
🎠 
🎠 

To tired to sleep 
   he thinks
 "I must be dreaming."
  

Mar 29, 2014 (03-29-2014)

well . . .

I think I've blogged enough today.

"I'm all blogged out."

~ OK Now.

Praise God! awful first novel lines:

After only a week in LA, . . . [ . ?. . . ?]

Sanity?
It's over rated.
Insanity?
It shouldn't be ignored.
Don't be all judgey.
But don't be stupid either.
You know when people are flipping out.
You don't have to pretend that they are not
when they are, do you?

OK, I've actually got somewhere to go.

how hard is it to use these new symbols in your stuff? Well, first you need to know that they exist. Second, you can just cut and paste them.

🌀 🌁 🌂 🌃 🌄 🌅 🌆 🌇 🌈 🌉 🌊 🌋 🌌 🌍 🌎 🌏 🌐 🌑 🌒 🌓 🌔 🌕 🌖 🌗 🌘 🌙 🌚 🌛 🌜 🌝 🌞 🌟 🌠

I've got a message for . . . Mr Bash (an alias for someone else). Mr Bash, if I use brace expansion with the dot-dot idiom, ie like this:

echo -e {🌃..🌅}{🌍..🌏}{🌑..🌚}" "

why does that not work when

echo -e {🌃,🌄,🌅}{🌍,🌎,🌏}{🌑,🌒,🌓,🌔,🌕,🌖,🌗,🌘,🌙,🌚}" "

will? Maybe I've not ordered the elements properly. Well that little snippit doesn't work that well but t

Clang pans, demanding excellance. He dreams of her like that. He snuggles with her in his mind while he dreams. She is in the far away.

say good bye
to your fallacies
of mind.
leave your
fetish
behind.
It was fun
while you  needed it
you weren't harming anyone.
It wasn't a bad thing, it
was fun.


🖐🖑
🖑🖐   

The following poem is fresh, whipped up, off the cuff.

  

She defriended me
 when I'd never friended her
      no I never freinded her
           I never friended her.
 
 She banned me
       she blocked me
      when I didn't even have a phone
         when I didn't even have a phone

 Just the idea of me
       that I might even exist
           kept me off of the list
                of anyone who is missed.
  As if I ever cared about it at all.





  Praise God! 

🖐🖑
🖑🖐
   
 🖐🖑

He told me
he needed to
wash my feet
wash my feet
wash my feet
He told me
he needed to
wash my feet
so wash my feet, if you need to.
wash my feet
pave my street
meet and greet
stand the heat.
park my car
drive real far
to a star
up in Heaven

He told me
he needed to 
wash my feet
wash my feet
wash my feet
He told me
he needed to 
wash my feet
so wash my feet if you need to.

Wash my feet
brave the heat
beat the street
heat and eat
pave my street
poems complete
wash my feet if you need to.

Wake up!

Wake up!

And this really is at 
the end of the column