Bastille Day

A bon jour to whomever is out there. The weather geniis promised rains today, but except for a very brief torrential burst early in the day, it has just been muggy and sans precipitation, just some sun and some clouds. Un jour chien d'ete if ever there was one.

Interestingly enough A Tale of Two Cities, with the truly compelling Ronald Coleman (I mean that), playing Sidney Carton, just aired on the Turner channel, the one that plays “classic” films. It is to be followed by that pastiche, Scaramouche, “starring” Stewart Granger. His bland face, yet craggy jaw and toothy sNile work OK in what is essentially a two dimensional role. Janet Leigh is compelling as his lady love … compellingly awful. Oh well, it is probably better than a Friday night with George and Laura.

If we were going to try the Dickens route today we would have to make a film called a Tale of Two Worlds. The world as it is and the world as re-cast and envisioned by GWB and Co. And I do mean “company”. The world as viewed by corporations, whether they are American or some other concoction, does not resemble the world as envisioned by me, as well as several billion others. I am fortunate, I suppose, since I live relatively high on the hog, thanks to the assault on nearly everything provided courtesy of the corporate way of being in the world. Though I don’t live anywhere near the pinnacle of the hog compared to say, the CEO of General Mills or the cretinous creature that heads up Wal-mart. (He actually believes his own bullshit! And he has been truly frighteningly effective in persuading millions of others that his view is righteous.) Most of the world's billions live on roughly one 20th or less than I do. Make no mistake about it, the USofA is leading the not-so-free world into a slough of despair and degradation at a rate that is quite mind-boggling. Though if you give it too much thought you must come away with the knowledge that all of the so-called "American Way of Life" is a bright and shiny object built in the last three or four decades. Our habits have brought us to the point of probably-ain't-no-way outta-this-swamp. Let's face it: There is no god that will save us from our own deliberate ignorance and folly. Anyway. There are a lot of folks who would say that I shouldn’t complain, but I fully intend to until my last breath.

The whole gestalt… Bastille Day, Tale of Two Cities, the cover of the New Yorker, the cynical campaign of John McCain and the free ride the press continues to give this near-the-bottom-of-his-class-at-Annapolis candidate (recollections of C-student GWB?), the fires in California, not to mention global warming and the fact that I haven’t gotten laid in god doesn’t even remember how long …. reminds me that our nation was founded in blood and privation, by more than just the handful of gentleman farmers and businessmen who wrote the rules of the road. There were also a whole lot of farmers with guns. Give you any ideas? But, the rules of the road that they wrote didn’t envision what we have today; a government run by self-serving, spineless, ignorant politicians whose strings are pulled by kleptomanical, greedy, amoral corporations set on controlling everything that is under the ground and the oceans as well everything that flows across and over the ground. When corporations were given the legal equivalency of super-human status, we all got fucked. They name the game, they write the rules, they dole out the goodies and the punishments. Kontrol, it’s kalled kontrol…… O well… spread 'em and bend over.

There will be no revolution in this kountry of korn for fuel…. We’ve all bought the spectacle, ingested it without a second thought and now it's like a narcotic coursing through our system. Want to know what I'm talking about? Try slogging through a sort of Dr. Doom explains the meaning of life piece entitled The Society of the Spectacle, by Guy Debord, written in 1967. O yes BTW, he’s French. (You can find it at www.bopsecrets.org) And that provides me with a neat segue back to Bastille Day.

Just as Dickens's Madame Defarge knitted whatever it was she knitted, I am keeping my mind atuned as I contemplate the guillotine. I am performing an equally mundane and actually useful task; I am entering the names and characteristics of a few hundred plants into a list. It is a list of all of the plants that are planted in the gardens of one of the wealthiest women in the world, or in the USofA at least. What is the source of her wealth: Texas oil; what else? I am rather enjoying this task as I have enjoyed working in her gardens. This list will be used as the basis for a maintenance program and schedule to keep her place looking tip top. When I finish up for the day I am going to celebrate Bastille Day in Boston at the Gaslight Café. You just never know where or what will turn up when you turn out. As Derrick Jensen reminds us, it is possible to hold two thoughts in our head simultaneously: "we're all fucked, and life is good!"