Last Chance
Ezra woke up this morning with the following mantra playing in his head.
It's the last chance to speak your mind in 2004. The last chance to get it off your chest. The last chance to rant and rave this year. The last chance to get it all out in the open. The last chance you'll have in 2004 to show those assholes that you don't like how they're running the show. The last chance to let them know you don't even like the frigging show to begin with. It's a lemon. It's a loser. It doesn't work, hasn't worked in 400 years. Maybe longer. Maybe it never worked. Only on paper. On scraps of paper that got bound into books, that filled entire libraries, then reels of microfilm, then forests of hard drives. The collected drivel of the ages. Dead white men speaking to you from beyond the grave. Scrap it all. Put it out on the curb along with five weeks of funnies and all those mutilated copies of National Geographic. Get rid of Plato, Socrates, St. Augustine, Filo (Ezra threw him in to see if you were awake. He's really a baker in Jersey City), Seneca, Cicero, Rousseau, Locke, Hume, Hegel, Kant, Diderot, Voltaire, Nietzsche, Bertrand Russell, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Paine. And the list goes on. And on.
Hey, we're not talking about book burning. Burning would turn them all into martyrs, heroes of free speech, champions of the republic of ideas. Keep the books. Dump the frigging ideas. Start over. Stop going to school. Stop digging in the graveyard of the past for inspiration. Or, at least, stop looking for inspiration in sources wrapped in the Great Books of Western Wisdom Seal of Approval. Sure, you say. These guys - yeah, always white guys, have produced thoughts that have survived the test of time. Bullshit. They've survived because somebody was in the business of producing content for millions of dodo factories called schools. These dead white guys are the Brand Names. They were branded and, over the course of hundreds and hundreds of years, won a top shelf position in the supermarket of ideas. Think of Plato as the Nabisco, Aristotle as the General Motors of the knowledge industry. Hegel as Smuckers.
Consider this. Over 120,000 people died in the disaster that only a few days ago swept the Indian Ocean basin. Over a third of these victims were children who never had the advantage of going to school. Innocent children. That's a disaster of biblical proportions. That's approximate to depopulating Tompkins County, New York. Think about that. Walking from one end of Tompkins to the other without encountering a living soul. Now, an hour or so before the quake, indications started to come in to scientists around the world who were drinking coffee from cute Nietzsche or Aristotle mugs in their air conditioned labs. Maybe they were walking around, sporting teeshirts with that daffy grandaddy of science, Albert Einstein. You know the guy who tipped off Rooselvelt to the A bomb. So when the shock hit, What did they do? They started parousing the data, crunching the numbers. They picked up their cell phones and starting calling their buddies in the scinetific community. Or they opened their lap tops and started sending emails to the same buddies or else they opened logs and recorded the information for use in future research. Then the seismograph went off the hook. 9.0 on the so called Richter Scale. Richter was probably one of the grand old men of geology. It's not important to remember who he is because he got his name pasted to posterity. Now all these university trained scientists knew that tsunamis follow oceanic earthquakes. Yeah, we've all seen the computer simulations on tv. We all know what a tsunami is. The bozos sitting around at their seismic station in Hawaii knew what a tsunami was. What did they do? What did they do to warn folks who lived in coastal areas around the Indian Ocean? Folks in Sri Lanka, India, Thailand? Folks who had time to evacuate their villages, the resorts, the coastal cities?
Nothing. No one was warned. No one who had a chance to survive survived. The scientists sipped coffee, checked out their machines, crunched the numbers and did nothing.
In the bible, that savage, seemingly heartless, aloof, curmudgeonly dude named Jehovah or Yahweh would occasionally destroy a city, send a pillar of fire, or a flood or whatever as a warning. He would slay the wicked, sometimes even the innocent but unfortunately guilty by association, to make his point.
Well, maybe this our last chance to get the point. Civilization as it's been run so far by white men with college degrees hasn't advanced us to the point where we can even call ourselves mensch.
Comments invited at: ezrakidder@gmail.com - Peace, Ezra at 6:35 AM
Peace boutiqueReally now. Where else on the frigging globe would you expect to find a peace boutique outside of Ithaca, New York?
Yessireehbob. Above the Autumn Leaves Bookstore on the lovely Ithaca Commons. The second floor of Ithaca's liberal Bloomingdale's. The Peace and Justice Gift Shop. That's right. Ezra's not making this up. He doesn't have to suck down absinthe cocktails with a straw to conjure this shit up. He doesn't have to smoke Mother Nature. Nosirreebob. In Ithaca, you don't even have to cross the street to encounter the remotest fringes of the liberal imagination.
If you missed an opportunity to shop at the Peace and Justice Gift Shop, here's another chance. You guessed it. They're having an after Christmas sale. Don't worry. All the proceeds still go to support the Living Wage Coalition. Not the shop's workers/employees. The Living Wage Coalition doesn't employ anyone. They don't have to pay a living wage. They don't have to pay anything. The Living Wage Coalition is operated entirely by volunteers. It's a non-workers workers advocacy group. That's right. One of those thousand points of light that George Bush Sr. talked about. They're doing something for the poor workers of the world even though the members don't have a frigging idea what it means to work for wages. Well, neither did Karl Marx, for that matter.
Anyway, back to the big blowout sale.
Here's a list of best buys Ezra's worked up to help you make your shopping experience more meaningful.
Catonsville Nine Coasters - $8.99. Marked down from $19.99 Yep, pictures of Dan and Phil and all the gang right there, depicted as they do their thing, pouring blood on all those draft records. So you never leave a beverage ring on your coffee table.
Hiroshima Door Mats - $7.95. Regularly $24.95. Save big on this handsome door mat with the striking image of a mushroom cloud.
Scottsboro Boys' Shower Curtains - only $12.95 while supplies last. It's nice to know that the boys didn't hang for a crime they never committed. But you can hang these lovely curtains in your bathroom and wow your friends and guests with the sheer breadth of your liberal sympathies.
And more!
Sacco and Vanzetti Coffee Mugs - $9.95 per set of 2.
Haymarket Martyrs Tea Cozies - $7.95 each. Matched Set $27.95
Rosenbergs Chair Cushions - $19.95 each.
Yep. Who says you can't find merchandise with social relevance these days?
Capitalism with a small "c" for caring.
Comments invited at: ezrakidder@gmail.com - Peace, Ezra at 6:46 AM
Ezra's Last Minute Holiday Gift Ideas!
Santa's little elves up at the new Cornell Nano Center have been working overtime to come up with some dandy new stocking stuffers for the holidays.
If you order within the next minutes, you will be guaranteed delivery for Christmas. Don't delay!
Best Bet! SUV Mall Locator
- Attach this handy new navigational device to your SUV's Norstar system and never miss a chance to shop again! The SML tracking device locates the nearest mall, strip plaza or big box store anywhere in the United States, Canada or Guam. Simply activate the tracker and wait as our remote satellite wobbling around somewhere over New Jersey feeds you instant images and directions to retail establishments in your geographical area.
List Price $750.00/ You Pay $19.95
Visit all 2,756 Walmarts over the course of a year and win a free expense paid vacation to Arkansas!
Combo Cell Phone/Vibrator
-Spice up your conversations with our new CPV! Gives new meaning to 'phone sex! ' Our pocket size CPV is a handy way to stay in touch! Your CPV can go anywhere and doesn't rely on batteries. List Price $250/You Pay $9.95
Electric Tooth Brush/ Game Boy
-Have trouble getting Johnny to brush his teeth? As a parent, you know the importance of making everything fun for kids. Now you can promote good oral hygiene the Nano Way! Just slip a game cartridge into your new ETBGB and watch Johnny spend hours in the bathroom, brushing and zapping! Save thousands on dentist bills. List Price $475/You Pay $15.99
Virtual Reality Vacation Goggles
-Too busy with career and making money to pay for your kids' college education? Haven't taken a vacation for years? With the new VRVG, you can go anywhere in the world (restrictions may apply for Iraq, Syria, Palestine and South Yemen) and never leave the comfort of your living room! Take that vacation you've always wanted without the hassle of making reservations, waiting in airport lines, exhanging currency. Never have to worry about drinking the local water or being attacked by terrorists. Simply slip on the VRVG's and presto! you're on the beach in seconds, soaking up the virtual rays and watching the virtual tide roll in! List Price $3,750/You pay $199.50
Order any of these wonderful holiday gifts within minutes by going to the link for Ithacasucks.com. Have your credit card ready!
Nanotechnology brings small things to life.
Comments invited at: ezrakidder@gmail.com - Peace, Ezra at 6:10 AM
