Quantitative Easing

"Q.E. (Quantitative Easing) does not distribute money across the broad economy. It just feeds cash into the top 1/10 of 1%: the biggest banks." 

Time-stamped

 "...it would be regarded as idiotic." --James Robertson

We need state money without debt

 Still absolutely nails it here:




Amen and amen.

Snappy

Try not to understand the need for
small dogs to bark - upon friend or foe,
mattering not: there is one I know
that I've been passing for four years
on and off, the low fence between us:
by rote sight and smell, would they not
supply the mutt enough to know me?
On days when I catch him silent,
him deciding not to bark, but content
with his head down on his king's cushion,
aware of me passing and letting me pass,
I turn and extend my hand with benevolent
gesture, cooing and beckoning kindly enough,
and he flings himself into immediate alarm,
barking his chestnut brain to a fine and dandy duff,
and I sigh, roll my eyes, and continue on, remembering
he will let you pet him, and begrudgingly at that,
only when his owner is present.
How can you get inside the mind
of such critters - the reasons
for his snotty button nose, snorting anxiety
and fierceness according to his kind, his pincher mouth snapping:
is it like a neurotic king, fearing his throne
will be supplanted?
What is the strange attachment
that keeps them so riddled through?
Is it a dim extension of the behavioral
habits of the owner? That would be
an uncharitable assessment - and untrue.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton owned such a one;
nasty to the maid, a vociferous snapper,
who after snapping, would flee to his master
and from that great bulwark would look out with
insolent gloating, as though to say, "Just try it,
just try and kick me like a football through the door
into the neighbour's front yard - I'd like to see you try."
Max Beckmann and his Quappi
kept one also. I don't know what this all means.
But Lord help me if I ever own one,
and Lord help you too. And Lord help the snappers
with a mistaken sense of size,
ejecting their internet canards
in an anonymous bundle of white curly fluff
like an eighteenth century pompadour
powdered wig of the court
that hides their rat-like forms;
critics of Francis, boors of the net,
instead of truth, put across this pet;
insular, freakish, wound-up little snappers
with a hidebound, intransigent God complex
the likes of which to make Nietzsche look sane,
tuned only to their excellent guardianship,
blind to how their solemnity's inane,
like the little barkers that are suffered,
who bark at those aboard the barnacled barque,
especially at the helmsman, steering them to harbour.

Long Lens

How prolific are the sides of roads,
tansy-teeming, space-surrounded, full-ways grown;
lank-headed, broaching their own horizons,
tossing nectar-celled tiaras, potent
on the wayside, ditch-side, drive-by,
gravel-eating, house-drowning, bat-playing
greenery of the mountain-watched flats,
pondering the early moon. That sky surprise
on the east's field, freely, has gained,
for the eve-time whispering, pullover trance;
a man seated on his truck's back cradles
a camera's unwieldy, forearm-long lens
on the roof, pylon-wide towards its end.
Protracting this wyrd weed-eye to capture
the full-flushed escapee: bare, the flat face
blushes gold like a ripened field of grain
over the babyish earth - moon, moon, moon,
as a boon of glory we could not take,
but stare we must, stare, and so we wake.

Painting: Stump Culture

Title: Stump Culture

Medium: Oil on canvas

Size: 10 in. x 10 in.

I posted the painting earlier, but knew it wasn't where it should have been, so I went back to it.

Uncle Corky

Proselytism is solemn nonsense

Pope Francis' 10 Keys to Happiness

1. "Live and let live."

2. "Be giving of yourself to others."

3. "Proceed calmly" in life.

4. Have "a healthy sense of leisure."

5. "Sunday is for family."

6. Be "creative" with young people and find innovative ways to create dignified jobs.

7. Respect and take care of nature.

8. Stop being negative. "Letting go of negative things quickly is healthy," he said.

9. "The worst thing of all is religious proselytism, which paralyzes."

10. Work for peace. "We are living in a time of many wars," he said. "The call for peace must be shouted."

Misc.

Have you ever shopped at Wal-mart? The prices are to die for! And thankfully the store practices localism, since they can be found pretty well close to neighbourhoods everywhere. There are two  about a fifteen minute drive either east or south from here. Actually there are three, including the one fifteen minutes north. That saves burning of fuel too. In fact, it's really reductive of carbon footprints because you can do pretty much all your shopping in one go - for accessories, clothes and groceries. They have everything - everything. Some Wal-marts even have a McDonald's in them! They should make a deal with Trader Joe's and incorporate Trader Joe's into Wal-mart somehow. That way fans of Trader Joe's would not need to make two stops, just one. It would also go towards healing their schizophrenia! And it would make for a more global, communal kind of peace: the latte-sucking Libertarian asking where can he find the tzatziki for his fresh-made pita bread will rub shoulders with the wife-beater-wearing fatty asking where can he find the kerosene to deal with the bed bugs under his mattress. Some people make a big fuss about Wal-mart. They say to patronize your small outlets instead, make your wallet cast a vote for the dirty hippies. But Wal-mart is so huge - and you're so puny! It won't make any difference. Think about the money you save by shopping at Wal-mart. That money can then be spent on the movie theater, with popcorn and nachos and coca-cola.

*

I have become very obsessed with fig trees, with growing them, the kinds that will grow here, in the ground. You go around Vancouver and Burnaby you see the fig trees in so many yards, some quite big. There is one that local legend has it is the biggest in-ground fig tree in Canada. No winter protection. I've seen a picture of it. I can believe it is the biggest in Canada. It's huge. There really is a quiet cottage industry of fig growers here in southwest British Columbia, started of course by Italian immigrants.

I've got Negronne, Desert King, Celeste Improved and Uncle Corky's. I still need to get Lattarula, and heck, I'm just going to keep acquiring any and every variety available. Because I'm obsessed. Figs are so damn good.

So is Chilean Guava.

*

How exactly is the Invisible Hand not crypto-communism?

*

A person passed by and said, "That must be a labour of love."

And I forget what I said in response, except that afterwards in the useless recrimination of afterthought, I said to myself, "But you should have answered: a labour of love is the only true labour. Everything else is toil." And I would have sounded so enlightened too.

Then another passed, and said, "That must be tedious." To which I said, "It can be". Except that it was not an honest answer. For as far as the activity goes, I love it while I am resigned to it.

There are many things that do not require patience, so much as they require resignation.

Acrostic Poem: Hyssop

Hwæt! They drowse the air beside the beans,
Yielding heavy, hairy spires to the bees.
Simple, brilliant, modest colour of their blooms
Spreads a dazzling flush when teamed, bush by bush.
Opulence near escapes the eye with these!
Pure as their inner pungence, washing clean!

Desert King

Two Differences

I.

He poured his love upon the plants.
They grew before him in a trance.
When he went upon a trip,
all the plants grew deathly sick.

II.

He tended not, nor ruled a row.
Plants sprang forth without a hoe.
When he came to care and tress,
all the plants gave up their breath.