The Real Glue of the Tattoo

 

I admit it. I don't read nearly enough books. I have no excuse. Shit, I'm unemployed, and going along these days under the various guises of self-employed Internet entrepreneur, political activist, volunteer, musician, retired executive or Special OPS man (Occupation Pooper Scooper for our four fur-balls) as calling cards for the few folks who actually inquire what I do these days. Every response filled with a small kernel of truth designed to distort the ugly reality of the day. Gosh, you would think with all these skills of disinformation I've acquired the last several years I would now hold public office, and would be dining with the small and powerful group of men who can really tell whoppers in the Boardrooms and in the halls of Congress.

The point is I have the time to read books, but hardly ever actually start and finish one at this juncture.

I used to read books regularly years ago. I have shelves and shelves of worthless (in today's world of commerce) bound paper I have amassed and ingested through the years, but over time, and with technology changes, I began to soften my brain more and more with music and film. Two hours, and a pack of lies to myself, convinced me that every movie based on a book with a great soundtrack behind it afforded me all the intellectual muscle needed to discourse with all the other great minds of my time. I found many compadres in this category of intellectual titan-hood to discuss philosophically the rituals of the day broken into small sound-byte segments for easy digestion.

I did begin to find topics outside of pop culture difficult to address with my intellectual cohorts as the film world became a total extension of cartoons and comic book heroes. Ultimately, I realized I had no superpowers, which might be the reason I have no job today. I also had to admit even the President I voted for had no superpowers either. He just claimed he might have some superpowers. The only big budget films made today all have characters with superpowers. If art is a mirror of society, today's mirror must be one of those circus carnival types of glass you find in the fun-houses where fat becomes thin and short becomes tall to great peals of laughter.

Given the grim economic reality of the world today, I can no longer take most of the films put up on the big screen seriously, or otherwise. There are a few feature length films I find worthwhile, and some of them actually make a little money, but I have found the lengthy time in between these pictures too great these days to wait upon. 

A case in point is the recent announcement from Hollywood that the American movie studio system has announced plans to make The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, and Mr. current James Bond, Daniel Craig, is set to star in this obvious big budget picture. This a masterful book, and the first in a trilogy from a man, Stieg Larsson, who died shortly after turning over the three manuscripts to his publisher. The books (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played With Fire and The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet's Nest) generated tremendous worldwide buzz due to the intricate plot matters involved in each novel, the brilliant character development of the various protagonists (all without superpowers) and to the social outrage eloquently discussed in the main subjects covered within the nearly 1,800 pages of print that comprise this epic achievement.

Hollywood generally dumbs down to imbecilic most great works of fiction, which is why comic books make for such a great alternative for a town short on new and engaging concepts. The Swedes have already completed filming this Millenium Trilogy, and all three books made into films will be available at some point this year. I might watch the series, I might not. My bet, however, is that the Swedish films will be superior in every critically thinking way to whatever Hollywood concocts for a public they now thoroughly believe is brain dead. The American film, or films if the box office on the first picture reaches critical mass, will look great. The gloss from the cinematography will shine more lovingly than the custom paint job on a Ferrari. Sadly, there will be a Chrysler product underneath all those of shimmering pixels of celluloid as the finished American film.

The original Swedish title for the first book, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, was Man som hatar kvinnor, or Men Who Hate Women.  Won't see that title on the big screen or at airport book racks anytime soon, but that is the major point of the series. Yes, the byzantine plots take the reader through financial corruption, computer hacking, ethical and moral decay, government crime and abuse of power along the many twists and turns of compelling literature, but first and foremost are the detailed systematic abuses and crimes committed against women.

A person can dream that a work of art might instill a new perspective for people to view the world, and that positive changes might happen quickly as a result. That is a pipe dream. One can realistically hope that a small chip against an ingrained and inflexible institutionalized practice might get noticed, and some other members of our society fed up with the bully tactics of the institution might start to chip away at the injustice as well, until one day there is little of the malignancy left. And so I hope that men and boys will read these important books of fiction for the greater truth found in the tales.

Maybe you would be surprised to learn, based on several surveys conducted in both the UK and US book markets, only 20% of men in both countries read fiction at all these days. That is a very sad modern day comment. When I think of it, I learned a great deal more about Southern California reading Raymond Chandler, Walter Mosley and  Ross MacDonald than I ever learned watching the evening news and reading the Los Angeles Times.

Thanks for the visit, and enjoy a good read.

Have MRSA Baby, Have MRSA On Me

The Rolling Stones did a number some 45 years ago, Have Mercy, and I've got a youtube clip below with Mick and the other original Stones performing the tune to canned squeals of delight.

Today's play on words directs your attention to a crisis condition many of you may not realize we find right under our noses now. MRSA is an acronym for Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus. This is a fairly recent bacterial strain of infection that is related to an old nemesis found usually in extended hospital stays, a Staph infection. MRSA was first detected by scientists in the United Kingdom in 1961.

Staph infections, generally, have not been considered altogether too serious unless your system is thoroughly compromised due to a surgery, or due to a serious illness like pneumonia, and any infection poses a grave threat to your health at that juncture. Staph infections usually get treated with antibiotics and routinely clear up after the necessary dosages deliver the knockout blow to the bacteria.

MRSA, however, is a mutant strain that resists these antibiotics, and now poses a grave threat because there are so few drugs left in our nation's medical supply cabinet to treat this recent type of infection.

How bad is the MRSA problem?

What if someone mentioned in conversation that MRSA now kills  more people in this country than AIDS? Would that shock you? According  to the CDC more than 18,000 deaths in 2005 were attributed to MRSA, which was roughly 2,000 more fatalities more than HIV/AIDS for the same year. Another troubling fact concerning this new killer bacteria finds very little current statistical data published today to give citizens the heads up. The last major study of significance available to the public by the CDC only gives information from 1999 through 2005.

I was in Sacramento a couple of weeks ago, and spoke to several of my old business friends. I speak to people here locally. Most people have never heard of MRSA, not to mention that this mutant staph infection now kills more people than AIDS. How is this possible given the information age we now live in?

The first stumbling block in giving people vital information about their health are the hospitals and their owners. Hospitals do not give out the numbers of  those patients treated for MRSA to the public. No big surprise that one of the major incubators of the problem would prefer not to let patients know going into the place that this dangerous and lethal staph infection more than doubled in incidence over the six year study period from 1999 to 2005.

The second major blackout on information for the public regarding MRSA occurs from the factory food industry. A study published in January of 2009 by University of Iowa researchers documents finding MRSA on pigs and humans at a large hog facility in Iowa. The researchers studied two corporate hog production operations, and the one with the highest pig concentration had 70% of all pigs with the bacterial strain ST398 and 64% of all workers with this type of staph. It has only been since 2003 in the Netherlands that the transmission link between pigs and humans of MRSA was established.

The fact that one hog production establishment had 27,000 pigs spread over several smaller locations with no MRSA found might lead one to make a very compelling argument against the horrible CAFO conditions most pigs are forced to endure in this country. A second sound argument against CAFO production facilities on all livestock is the tremendous antibiotic usage that occurs on the animals caged and raised in these facilities.

The Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production estimates 70% of all antibiotic use in this country goes into the livestock we eventually eat. The PBS program, Frontline, reported that Stuart B. Levy, MD estimated that somewhere between 15-17 million pounds of antibiotics are used sub-therapeutically in America each year. There is a growing consensus in the scientific community that this large unregulated use of antibiotics is directly related to human beings being increasingly at risk from bacterial infections like MRSA. The federal government under President Obama is pushing the FDA to take stronger action against indiscriminate antibiotic use on livestock, and to potentially ban many antibiotics from the food production operations.

You may wonder why I do not call these livestock operations farms, or ranches. It is because these operations have absolutely nothing in common with those pleasant terms. These are quite simply factories used to destroy and part out animals in the cheapest way possible. If throwing dead parts of other animals into the feed along with antibiotics is cheaper than allowing an animal to be an animal before it is slaughtered then so be it. But, please do not ever suggest to me these caged operations are in any way related to a farm or ranch.

There is a tremendous push back from the so call "farm" states in this country against the removal and ultimate elimination of antibiotic use for sub-therapeutic reasons on livestock. Money is all that matters to the very few companies and their paid people who control the current food industry in America today. An informed public is essential to change the unsustainable methods currently employed by the animal factory owners.

To break up these giant food monopolies will not only serve our overall health much better, but can also mean that true opportunities in food production could happen for so many of the currently displaced and unemployed.   

Thanks for stopping by.  

Sprung a Leak Everywhere

Welcome back. Is it just me, or has the entire planet somehow begun to spring more leaks than a dialysis patient strapped to a bed of nails? I needed to vent today on some current situations, and so I hit the keyboard this morning.

BP put a Tom Terrific cap on the hole at the bottom of the sea. Maybe it will hold, maybe it won't, but the just fired CEO will get something like a million dollars per year from an executive pension, plus all his stock options. Screw the pooch and get a fat reward for your failure. It's good to be CEO with an airtight corporate contract.

Still hot and hopeless for most people here in California's Central Valley. The unemployment now staggers along in Bakersfield/Delano at just under 16%, according the last BLS statisitics. Double-digit unemployment figures suck, but when when you add four of the bottom five lowest median income averages found in California coming from Fresno, Tulare, Kings and Kern counties into the hose you get a dead zone that makes the Chesapeake Bay and Gulf Of Mexico look like they are teaming with life again. Way too few jobs, and those available do not pay much in these parts.

I have often wondered why people in this area of California continue to take such brutal economic beatings, and never challenge those who rule the range. A report very recently from the Brookings Institute clarified matters for me. In ranking education for the top 100 metropolitan markets in America, Bakersfield finished dead last at numero 100. Fresno came in at #95, with Modesto at #97 and Stockton at #99.  There are precious few Masters and Doctorate people frequenting the old San Joaquin Valley these days. Hard to vote to force a change when you cannot read the ballot.   

One place in the USA where cushy still finds a home happens to be in the very place most Americans hate the most, our nation's Capitol. The Washington D.C. area booms happily along with heaps of industry and corporate investments blocking out all the whining noise from the rest of the country. The Washington Post spent over two years investigating Top Secret in America. The reporters uncovered a huge chunk of our tax dollars this decade created nearly one million Top Secret clearances from over 1,900 private companies that are now needed to spy on everyone here and everyone around the world for our safety.

I am actually surprised there has not been a million man/woman march on Washington D.C. just to fill out government job applications these past two years. But, of course, working stiffs could never get Top Secret clearances to ever work in all these great jobs that still have lots of openings, but working stiffs can do the census leg work for chump change on a temporary contracting basis. The Washington Post describes how these very elite eavesdropping workers all live in beautifully exclusive Maryland and Virginia suburbs and send their little boys and girls to best possible private schools who train them to be future spies and make large sums of money off all those little fees, assessments and taxes from the 98% of the human pool without a Top Secret clearance.

Maybe you groove on having these government people intercepting your computer keystrokes, your phone conversations and tracking your every movement throughout each and every day via GPS, Google and various cellular phone applications. You and I paid for it, we just don't get much benefit from it.

Oh, did I hear you say something about protecting all the teaming jobless and uninsured in this country from the nefarious foreign folks who kneel on a cloth each day at the appointed time and bow to the East in prayer with hopes of annihilating  all western infidels? Is that what we the people of the United Plutocratic States of America shiver in fear from these days?

Truly, I am much more concerned with young, illiterate and armed Billy Joe, Miguel, Duwann and Ashanti looking for a score in my neighborhood  than I am from all the people in the Middle East and Asia these days who have a grudge with our government's foreign policy. Does anyone really buy an Afghanistan, Iran or Iraq preemptive strike on the United States? Could any dirty bomb do more harm to this country than what British Petroleum has caused since April?  So why do we spend trillions we no longer have on spy versus spy games that resolve nothing?

I thought the Washington Post three-part series on Top Secret in America would have long legs and would be in the news for months, but with the very recent WikiLeaks.org  release of over 90,000 secret documents about the war in Afghanistan the Washington Post story just disappears into the shadows, just like their just reported spies do. I know our government is all up in arms over this brazen public display of classified documents, which gives readers the inside look at how we prosecute war currently. In all honesty, though, who can be surprised at this juncture about anything we do anywhere on earth after so much deserved negative publicity from Iraq, Afghanistan and every place where we set up a secret prison to interrogate enemy combatants over these many recent years.

The war leaks uncover just more secret society wormwood beneath the shiny veneer on the decks of our teetering Ship of State. Everyone now shouts about the deficit and our incomprehensible national debt, but still refuses to address the rot. Most of the world's economic deterioration stems from rewarding a tiny percentage of the population while exploiting the desperate multitudes who try to survive day to day. The conservative mantra of tax cuts as an economic salvation only helps those with luxury suites, never those in steerage or business class. I hardly think you argue for much in the way of tax increases if all the money not already destined for Social Security and Medicare ends up funding a bigger secret government military machine and subsidizing cartels in food, energy, telecommunications and finance.

Thomas Jefferson argued for a self sufficient agrarian society where the citizens farmed and sustained themselves while bartering for services with goods they produced. Alexander Hamilton argued for mercantilism, a heavy dose of nationalism based on trade barriers and bullion, which needed banks, currency and an investor class to fuel speculation for profits. Jefferson died penniless, and farmers are nearly extinct in America today. Hamilton was shot to death by the country's first gun toting Vice-President, Aaron Burr, in the famous duel of 1804. Hamilton's vision is the battered rough framework of our economy today, even immersed in the quasi-globalist corporate culture of aristocratic self interest. 

Here is an interesting statistic: since 2001 over 13 million Americans have filed for bankruptcy. That averages out to more than 1.45 million people going bust each year this decade.  How bad is it today? The cumulative mortgage debt is now twice as high as the total net worth of all housing in the USA. Banks now own more of the housing market in this country than all the individuals in the nation do.  The biggest joke on the American public is the stock market. Today 83% of all stocks are owned by 1% of the population. One last fact for you: the average federal government employee now earns 60% more than the average worker in the private sector.

I remember a vivid scene from James Cameron's epic film, Titanic, where the great vessel raises its bow to the dark star-filled frozen sky as the stern sinks into waters. The economic imbalance today feels every bit as skewed as that boat before the ultimate fall.

Seven Years This Seventh Month

The seventh month of the year pulls into time's station today. I melted down last month with a "June Swoon." "June Swoon" comes from an ancient baseball sports writer's tag the San Francisco Giants wore proudly for many years in the 1960s and early 1970s. The team always started out each season with great promise and lots of Ws. By the end of every May the Giants always seemed to be bona fide contenders to win the pennant. Then June came around to suck the life out of the Giants' baseballs, and some hated rival always seemed to come out on top by October.

Anyway, my blog faded and folded for the month of June. No excuses, really, just the swoon over life in America these days. My wife and I ditched our television satellite service last year, which brought some sanity back to my head for awhile. I did not miss the big sporting spectacles nearly as much I thought I would, and the calm from not seeing endlessly repeated commercials, Chris Matthews, Keith Olbermann, Anderson Cooper, Rachel Maddow, Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity and every other overpaid mouthpiece all-dolled-up and angry as hell about everything truly refreshed my spirits.

I experienced a calmness while reading some of the horrific headlines of violent confrontations coming from the US-Mexico border, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Israel, Iraq, Africa and Southeast Asia. Yes, it bugged my peace vibe, but I had a new zen about me from my courageous and thoughtful stance against corporate media, and could now refrain from launching into terrible tirades about the stupidity of war and premature death. 

The usual political divisive wrangling of the Right-Left Death Match 2010 became boring and increasingly meaningless in my new found net-only plug-in world. Rants against our President and his response to fiscal crises, or the health care reform initiative, made no impact on my serenity. Even the many food recalls from tainted livestock and produce, along with the growing number of stories on our nearly used up last line of anti-biotic defense against new and more virulent bacteria did not dispel my fresh new sunny disposition.    

Yes, I was good through May. The oil bursting on the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico in April would be contained by the corporate crooks with big damage, but not total devastation damage to the region and beyond.

I was a little saddened to see Dennis Hopper die right before Memorial Day, but actually found a zany bit of humor in his passing. By then the oil rupture had surpassed the Exxon Valdez as the worst oceanic oil spill on record. (Does spill sound right to you? Spill always implies tipping a tea cup to me. This was no spill.) Kevin Costner was on hand that week to deliver a new technology and save the day. I had to chuckle, maybe just a bit nervously, that Waterworld had come full circle here in 2010 in a cosmic joke kind of way with the Deacon sailing off into the sunset on his broken down tanker, Valdez, while our futuristic Hollywood hero saves the day. Into June the nervous chuckle was gone, and although Kevin's considerable efforts have made a small difference in the Gulf waters, the flood of oil continues at an astonishing high death rate for life in that large body of salt water. 

As June days ticked away my calm began to recede much like the oxygen in the Gulf of Mexico's waters, I began to ponder that it has been a full seven years since moving from Sacramento, and my reason for being in this city now rests in a little wall niche on the Panorama Bluffs. My beautiful wife, who dutifully joined me on my elder care road, these past several months has been cursed with some allergic reaction to something we eat. She has gone through three doctors an over the course of three months trying to find the culprit for the digestive disorders and hives she now endures. She has had every test the mind can conceive, but no answers.

For several years we have read and followed the food stories in this country. We have substantially altered the types of foods we eat  in response to these articles on food. Less meat, more vegetables, very few processed foods. We have not had ground beef in nearly four years. We don't even say the word burger any more. I digest food much more easily than I used to, and I have none of those Tums bouts of acid-reflex or heartburn any longer. My wife has hives, and they do not seem to want to go away no matter what plain basic ingredients we use and what major food groups we avoid.

Both of us do realize we live in the very worst area when it comes to air pollution. More harmful particulates sit on this city than on any other in America. The actual worst oil disaster in terms of volume of oil "spilled" happened in Kern County one century ago. This was the Lakeview Oil Gusher out between Taft and Maricopa of 1910. The Gulf hemorrhage is about half way to the Taft Disaster. Much of the southwest portion of Kern County was literally soaked in oil. Much of those chemicals I am sure still sit in that large stretch of scrub and dirt that make up the extreme southwest quadrant of Kern County.

Knowing where we are both locally and nationally, and now fully realizing what lurks just below and just above the surface here in my current habitat, dissolved the last vestige of my calm about a week ago. So here we are starting the seventh month on the anniversary week of seven full years in Bakersfield just as agitated as ever. So much so, that I went out two days ago and purchased a converter box and antennae for my television set. I guess I missed the serenity of the constant lies that can only be gained through television commercials.