Legacy, My Ass

We have a lot on our plate right now. The Economic Stimulus package is getting its day in the spotlight because we have to get it in place right NOW. But there will come a time in the next few weeks when a nagging question will need to be answered.

What will happen to the criminals that just left office? We know they're criminals because they've admitted their crimes on network TV. I believe they are actually proud of their larceny and torture. Just watch to what Darth Cheney had to say on it.

Well, I have something to say too. But I'm going to let a friend of mine tell it. Sadly, he's no longer with us. But Jim, if you're watching from above, this one's for you.
(video compiled by jizman71)



Jim Hinde, Seattle Busker extraordinaire.

Rest In Peace, good sir.

So Mote It Be,
David A.

A Tonic

In November, we won a battle. It had been a long time since we had one of those. But the war rages on. We have the upper hand for now, but the fight isn't over.

Our enemies were not defeated. They only suffered a set back. They will do as we did in 2000 and 2004, step back and regroup. But we can look back at their successes in 2000 and 2004 and see how they came to lose what seemed for a long time, an insurmountable lead.

The country is in a tailspin and we need someone who can pull us out of it in a big freaking hurry. We need a political equivalent of Captain Sullenberger to take the stick and bring us in safely.

We the people, on the other hand, need to take care of our own houses. We can't sit in the La-Z-Boy at home crying over our lost wages, tuning into Lost or Desperate Housewives, while our lives swirl down the shitter. We have to do our part to salvage the legacy our parents and grandparents left for us.

Here are a few of the things we can do:

1. Turn off the TV - Jesus Fucking Christ, this idiot box will be the death of us all. It is only a single form of entertainment, not a replacement for using your brain. If you 're hooked and still need that boob tube fix, here's what you do. Pick your five favorite shows and watch them, TIVO them or whatever. Pick a good time, like 7:30 on Mondays, Wednesday, and Thursday. Watch no more than an hour at a time. Only an hour, two if it's a movie. Make two of your five shows educational (No, Fox News does not qualify) Something from Discovery or the History Channel. If you can't find 5 shows, make it 3 or 2 but not more than five. Be strong, there are other things to do.

2. Do Something Creative - Hobbies, home projects, gardening, anything that involves working with your brain and your hands. For example, I do leather work and I like to garden. When the season is upon us, I will start a small container box garden on the deck of my apartment. The challenge will be to select the right plants for the conditions. Just cruise through my links and you'll find a few folks who'll be more than willing to give you a head start. Here, here, and here for starters. Ask and you will receive. As for leather work, I have to fix the sewing machine so that one is on hiatus. Hand sewing leather bags is hard on the digits. Let me know in the comments what hobbies or activities interest you with links.

3. Get Serious - No shit here. This isn't tin hat conspiracy theory bullshit. Plan for the worst. My friend, Monkeyfister, has lots of ideas and suggestions for becoming self sufficient. The best advise is to get involved in activities that will sustain you and your family through rough weather if it comes right down to it. Stockpile non-perishable food, medicine, drinkable water, simple appliances that do not need external power. If you are qualified and responsible, you may want a firearm. Protecting your family is the idea here if the bottom falls out of the country's political structure. This also works as a hedge against natural disasters. Growing your own food will be a godsend in this case.

4. Get Active - Don't sit on your fucking hands! Let your worthless leaders know how you feel. Call them on the phone. Write them a letter. If you send an email, back it up with a snail mail. Get your neighbors involved too. Join a Meet-up in your area. Connect with people in your city that feel as passionate about this shit as you do. Hold our congress critters' feet to the fire on the Stimulus Bill and any add-ons that come later. The crap that went on the last eight years would not have happened if people had paid attention. Don't rely on the traditional media for your news. Get it from other sources. Compare the stories. Search the Web. Be informed.


There are other things to do. If I missed an important one, let me know and I'll add it to the list. The reality of it is simply that We, the People, need to get off our lazy asses and start being Americans again. My ancestors didn't stop working in the woods to watch Oprah, they didn't whine and snivel about hangnails and boo-boos so they could stay home from work. Shit, most of our ancestors didn't even have weekends. They certainly didn't have vacations. They worked until they died so that their kids could go to school and live a life that was better than theirs. Are we made of the same stuff? Can we be as strong and dedicated as our great grandparents were?

The Boomers are an 'entitlement' generation. They feel that success is their by reason of entitlement. They need not work for it, it must be given up by the previous generation. The work ethic suffered a great injustice. Luckily, it wasn't killed outright. There are those who never really got out of the hole financially. They still worked the farms, in the factories or in the woods hard as before. They never got the good government grants or the great retirement plans. They had to work just as hard as their fore bearers did. Many of us come from those folks.

So there it is. Deal with it. Right now, the Republican Party is doing everything in its power to derail the Stimulus Package for no other reason than it gives Obama a win. They'll trash the country just to keep Obama from being proven right. That borders on treason. And not to be undone, our intrepid Media is following the Repubs every word like a bunch of lovesick teenagers.

Don't get me started on that...

So Mote It Be,
David A.

Wake Up!

Busted Knuckles, over at Ornery Bastard, has a post linking to our buddy, Monkeyfister. He has a post that everyone should read, learn, and heed.

We face a catastrophe of biblical proportions in the next few months. Obama is our best bet in the White House but even he isn't the whole answer. We, as a people, need to take responsibility for our lives.

For eight long, fucked up years, the American People have been fed shit and been told it's apple pie. And we believed it. We kept eating Bush and Cheney's crap and calling it good. Well, no more!

The time to be sheep has passed. The time to be Americans again is now. My ancestors came here with nothing - abso-fucking-lutely nothing. They helped build a country that was second to none. Somewhere, down in our genes, we have the same stuff. Are we brave enough to reach down a pull that shit out? We're in this shit together, folks. You, me, the guy next door, the bum under the freeway bridge - fucking all of us.

The time is here. But now, we sit all warm and fuzzy in our homes, sucking our thumbs waiting for our Powerball numbers to hit.

Fuck that!

Monkeyfister has the goods on what we can do to prepare for the shitstorm that's coming. He's no tin-hat freak, but a good man with a noble purpose. His suggestions should be taken to heart. Scroll down his blog and look at some of his previous posts. Talk about bloggy goodness, this shit'll save your fucking life.

READ AND HEED!

So Mote It Be,
David A.

A little touch-up and remodeling

I haven't been satisfied with the way this blog looks for a while. I'm a dinosaur when it comes to HTML so I have to be content to use Blogger's lame templates. I have found a few cool ones elsewhere on the Toobes but they need a bit of modifying before I can upload them here.

So, you may see a few changes here and there. Feel free to let me know how it looks or offer a suggestion or two. I'm all ears. Well, under this old gray mane that is!

My technorati number is 9! Wow, it was only 0 just a week ago! You guys are great!

Update: Well, that was an exercise in futility. Every template I used was bunk. They looked great but had more bugs than a stray dog's ass. We'll keep trying, so enjoy the blandness of the sight for a few more days. I'll get it right yet.

So Mote It Be,
David A,

I gots a Birthday!

In all the commotion of the last couple of weeks, with the Inauguration, skewering the VRWC, and B.A.D., I neglected to notice a rather auspicious occasion.

On Jan. 22, this blog turned five years old.

OK, it hasn't made much of a splash in that time but its not for want of trying. Posting has been sporadic and a bit austere but I have made some gains.

Let's look at the first few entries of 'Shamanaqua' circa Jan/Feb 2004...

The first post: Jan. 22, 2004, shortly after Bush's State of the Union speech.
State of the Onion
To Grow Without, We Must First Grow From Within
Quagmire? It's A Damned Vortex!

My, how time flies.

¡Cinco más años!

So Mote It Be,
David A.

Gekkos and Greed

Greed: -noun "excessive or rapacious desire, esp. for wealth or possessions."

Gekko: - ie: Gordon Gekko, character in the movie "Wall Street" who said:

"Greed, for lack of a better word, is good"

On Wall Street today, we are seeing fiction become fact. Not just unrestrained greed, we've always had that. But what we have is unrestrained greed as the ship is sinking.

Consider this metaphor:

A rich man is on the deck of the Titanic, ready to jump into the water and swim to a waiting lifeboat. A crew member hands him a life vest instead of a young woman with a child. Before he jumps into the sea, he fills the life vest with gold coins and jewels he got from the ship's safe. He jumps overboard with a suitcase and pockets filled as well.

The CEO's of financial institutions are like our foolish man overboard. They see disaster ahead and before all else, with concern for no one but themselves, they fill their suitcases and pockets with gold and jump. But this time, rather than sink to the bottom of the Atlantic, these Gekkos land IN the lifeboat. Our government gave them the gold and made sure that before anyone else, before any of the regular passengers could be saved, these Icons of Corporate Rape are assured a place of safety and security.

Believe it or not, we've seen this shit before. History is a bitch. If you refuse to learn from it, it will sneak up behind you and kick your ass. Think back to the heady days of the late 1800"s. We had just gotten over the Civil War and were getting our industries started. Immigrants from all parts of the globe were streaming into the US to work for a pittance but much more of a pittance than they were making back home. The great industrial giants raked in the ducats and became the modern American Rich. Names like Carnegie, Vanderbilt, and Morgan gave rise to the myth of the common man making good, when in truth they were just robber barons. They controlled the government and made policy. This lasted into the early part of the 20th Century until the shit hit the fan.

A lot of historians can point to different watershed events, publication of the book "The Jungle' by Upton Sinclair, the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire, the massacre of Wobblies (IWW workers) at different places across the country. But, for me, it all spells out quite clearly that the common folk got schooled. They had been kept in the dark for more than 50 years by the Corporate Giants and finally had enough. Add to that a new World War, a flu epidemic and a financial collapse. Starving people have a way of causing a ruckus.

Well, now we have an economic collapse not seen since the days of Herbert Hoover, perhaps earlier. After eight years of servicing by the Bush administration, our Gekkos have convinced Congress to give them a bailout and have raked in hundreds of billions in ill gotten booty. This unadulterated orgy of consumption could only last so long. Warnings and pre-shocks of impending disaster were seen as early as 2001 when Enron and Global Crossing started to fail. Soon, we started seeing corporate giant after corporate giant fall or be consumed by another up and down Wall Street. It was a financial mass extinction as the old Wall Street was being replaced by new and more devious creatures. However, like the little mammals and lizards who watched the Great Chicxulub (Yucatan) Impact of 65 million years ago, we are seeing a pending horror approaching us quickly and can do little to stop it.

But first things first, we may have to let the big dinosaurs die off to rebuild this world the way we need. They are doomed, the great corporate giants are history. We watch and listen but all we hear is how much they earn or how much they've taken from our pockets. This isn't chump change, this is the only resource we have to rebuild and clean up the mess these bastards left for us. I can't stand by and allow them to rape and pillage the country as we sink into the sea.

Let the Gekkos drown, save the real people. Otherwise, there will be no one left to bring the country back from the Deep.

Because as I said earlier, starving people have a way of causing a ruckus.

So Mote It Be,
David A.

I've Got a B.A.D. Feeling About This!

Ye Olde Rogue's Gallery of Lesser Blogs and Other Enemies of the Crown
Posted Here For All To See....

These Brigands and Hooligans Are Hereby Deemed Enemies of the Crown Of Blogtopia.
Loiter amongst them at your peril!

David Aquarius' List of Nefarious Blogs

Peachy Green: These young ladies are quite good at letting me know how much of a putz I am for not applying some common green sense to the junk I do every freaking day. Go there, be schooled.

Copper Springs Leather Craft: I dabble in crafting leather bags and purses for friends and fiends. Since moving into a smallish apt. I haven't had the space (nor the will) to get back into the mix. So, I go here to see what creations I can steal from his repertoire. I'm afraid I can't quite match his goods but he has a lot of insight into crafting that I enjoy.

Mekosan and Co.: OK, this is a great blog, concise and fun, written by a short-hair Mexican Chihuahua named Meko. Hey, he's nine times smarter than Limbaugh and lots more lovable than Glenn Beck! I confess, this blog is from a great friend of mine and former roommate. Meko was a rescue pup that we got just shortly before we lost the lease on our house. Due to economic reasons, we parted ways. Who knows, I may post of few pics of Meko on my blog.

A Gardener In Progress: I've always been at ease when my hands were full of dirt and manure. OK, that didn't come out right...Let me rephrase that... I've always loved turning soil, seed and sunshine into real good munchies. My aforementioned friend and former roomie is a horticulturalist and specializes in container gardens. She's amazing! She can create with flowers and plants what Picasso did with paint. Anyway, I travel through Blogtopia (gotta love da Skippy!) looking for bloggy goods to see what I can do now that I'm holed up in a cardboard box apt. I came across Catherine's blog a few days ago and love what I see. It helps that she's in my back yard too. I can see Mt. Rainier from my deck, if I strain over the railing. Check out her blog if you love to see new life springing forth from the good green Mother Earth!

Rawmodel.com: I came across Anthony's blog a few weeks ago as I was trolling around Google. Good looking gent and has a damn good sense of global citizenship. Go there and read about his adventures in Bali and his work in Permaculture. Good stuff, Maynard!

Lots more bloggy goodness to be had if one just takes the time to adventure into the unseen waters of Blogtopia. I've come across angry right wing environmentalists (sorry, can't bring myself to link there), self-absorbed yuppie spawn obsessed with all things Twitter, naked old folks who can't seem to understand what all the fuss about Rush Limbaugh is (Ewww, just ewww, that one was totally by accident!)

In other words, you never know where the next click will take you. Go there, be shocked, but be schooled. After all, it's all about humanity. And you know how freaking nuts we all are!

So Mote It Be,
David A.

Update: I used Lucida Blackletter font for the title, hope you see it that way.

Update deux: Skippy and Jon Swift have kindly given this page a nod. I thank you!