double double, toil and trouble

/rant on

so i have been giving minimal attention to sports stuff lately and what little i have heard really ticks me off. athletes being paid million dollar salaries, and all of the new draftees being hired with promises of millions of dollars. what the hell is wrong with this country? we are supposedly in the middle of a financial crisis, a recession and yet they are throwing millions of dollars at people to play a game! that is all they are doing, playing a game. games which millions of children across the country play for free every day in backyards, fields and driveways. it is just ludicrous to say the least. that is how it is, and how it has been for the longest time. for too long of a time. the people that provide entertainment for us, actors, singers, athletes, etc are paid huge salaries and bonuses. the real important people, like teachers, law enforcement, fire fighters and more importantly those that deliver mail and pick up our garbage, to name a few, are paid trivial amounts. meh, no point in complaining. people will never see the light and change things. they will try to justify it by saying that movies, sporting events and the like bring in lots of money, blah blah blah. so what, how did those people who entertain us get to where they are? by being taught in school by teachers, and living lives supported by all of the people working in public services.

and speaking of the recession, there are tons of people losing their jobs. millions lost their jobs last year and millions are expected to lose their jobs this year. there are budget cuts coming and guess where they are targeted? for funding of education and public programs. that's right, the most important parts of our budget are being cut. they aren't gonna cut military spending though, nuh uh. they must make sure we have plenty of weapons and vehicles to kill people with. we must be able to protect ourselves from an imagined enemy and keep paying huge amounts to military contract companies instead of taking care of our people. maybe it is a ploy by the government to encourage enlistment. i mean hey, life sucks, but if you join the army etc, you get guaranteed pay, a place to live and food to eat. you get your education paid for and money to spend on whatever you want (just hope that you aren't killed in combat before you get to collect on the offer). more craziness, that is all i can say, plain insanity.

as if this junk wasn't bad enough, there are outbreaks of swine flu worldwide. not too serious yet, as in it isn't killing many americans so it doesn't matter obviously. but many people in other nations are getting sick and dying. there may be a pandemic declared soon, i hope something can be done. i have read a few articles about it and it seems to be a result of the change in animal raising practices. instead of thousands of farmers raising hundreds of pigs, hundreds of farmers are raising hundreds of thousands of pigs. they are kept in close quarters and not allowed to roam free. they are injected with tons of antibiotics and fed who knows what. the antibiotics leads to mutation of the viruses they carry, and the close proximity of living quarters results in it spreading quickly. the same things happen in other food animal raising operations, like beef and chicken. mass production of mono-crops and a reduction in diversity is another huge problem. there are thousands of varieties of fruits and vegetables available, but we only get what is most convenient to grow in mass quantities. for instance, there are about 1000 species of bananas, 7500 species each of tomatoes and apples and at least 100 species of lettuce. that is only a short list, as there are many more that could be listed. bah humbug i say! the only way things will ever change is when we the people finally get sick and tired of all the mess and revolt. we need a revolt of all the people, people of every gender, race and ethnicity to band together. after all, we are all in this together, no matter what divisive politicians and analysts say. that was the ideology that helped keep people down after the civil war. hopefully, people have learned a lesson from the past. as george santayana said, "those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it".




/rant off

make like a tree...

i sometimes ponder what it is like to be a tree. to stand there with your arms and hands raised high and your feet firmly planted in the earth. to exist as a mute, stoic witness to the follies and foibles of humanity. to see the birth and death of generations and the rise and fall of civilizations. at least for the lucky trees, those not thoughtlessly cut down by people for some other use besides their natural intent. do trees laugh, do they let out a low rumbling chuckle at our futile struggle to subjugate nature to our demands? do they shudder as we engage in war over pieces of land that we have no claim to? as we destroy each other and the world to claim supremacy, as we explode bombs and missiles do they feel the fear and pain of the earth? do they mourn the loss of other trees and parts of nature to our ideology of progress? i wonder if they feel gladness when even one human decides to fight for nature. do they cheer for the radical environmentalists that chain themselves to trees and fight against the corporate exploitation of nature? i hope so. i will never know what goes on in the mind of trees, but i hope so.

i think this is why i have always been fascinated by and with trees. they are all so lovely and marvelous. i love trees very much, they just are the most wonderful thing in the world to me. if i could, i would take a tour of the world. not to see the cities and arts created by people, but to see the trees and forests of the world. there are some magnificent trees in the world, i have looked through a picture album of many of them and was utterly enchanted by their beauty. old trees are the best, the ones that have lived for centuries and just grown huge and stalwart. this is also why i like writings by j.r.r.tolkien so much. he includes a lot of writings about nature and trees. one day, one day i will go to see the wonderful trees of the world. until then, i will have to make do with pictures.