you in oil

Look around yourself.  If you live in a city and are currently sitting in a man-made structure, there is nothing around you that did not profit an oil company. Not the clothes you are wearing or any item inside your house, nothing. Select an item in your environment.  From the power used to run the equipment to manufacture that item, to the plastic used in its components there is oil.  What, there is no plastic in the item you selected? How rare.  How was it transported from the place of manufacture to the store where you bought it? Did the store put it in a plastic bag for you? Did the store clerk ring up the item on a heavy duty plastic cash register while wearing a plastic name tag saying “Hi, my name is Underpaid"? Did you put the item in your gas powered car and drive it to your house?  Or did you bypass the store entirely and have the item delivered to you by a UPS truck? Was it packaged when you got it, what sort of packaging and where did it come from? Was it or any of its components made in, and shipped from, another country?  I defy you to find a single item in your house that did not directly or indirectly generate profit for an oil company. If you find one, let me know. And if you find one think about this:  have you ever moved and carried the item to your new house in a moving van?

So you tell me “I went to the cherry orchard on Sunnyvale-Saratoga road and walked home with – not a plastic bag of cherries, not a crate of cherries that would have used power saws and logging trucks, but a hand full of cherries! There!”  And I’ll ask you did you pay cash with manufactured currency or did you charge them to your plastic credit card?  You might tell me they were free, and I would then ask you how the workers who tended to the orchard get to work each day and what tools did they use? Hoses, water pumps, shears, fertilizer?

So you tell me that you picked them off a wild cherry tree in a vacant lot, and I will ask you - did you walk home on your tennis shoes on a paved road?  So you tell me you walked home on homemade shoes on a dirt road your grandfather cleared with his bare hands. And I will ask you – did you wash the cherries under some PVC piped tap water when you got home? Well water you tell me.  Did you draw the water in a plastic bucket from the well using a nylon rope or was it pumped by a power pump? Did you dry them on a manufactured paper towel? Did you put them in a manufactured bowl? On your linoleum counter-top?  There is nothing, not-a-thing, zip, zilch, nada, in your life that did not profit an oil company. Not your hair, freshly washed in plastic bottled shampoo, not your teeth, recently bushed with a plastic tooth brush, and certainly not your recently polished nails.

That’s not the scary part.  The scary part is that 100 years ago you would have been hard pressed to find an item in your house that did profit an oil company. You know, back when there was no hole in the ozone layer, the oceans weren’t dying out and every other species on the planet wasn’t going extinct… but I’m sure that’s just a coincidence.

don't flatter yourself, you're not that great, or that stupid

Vincent Van Gogh stumbled back to the Auberge Rvoux clutching his stomach and when asked if he had tried to commit suicide he said "I believe so" and then requested that no one be charged in the incident. The theory presented in the video below is that he was shot, intentionally or accidentally, by some neighborhood kids who were in the habit of taunting him. Why would Van Gogh protect his murderers? Simply because he thought the world would be a better place without him and that these kids were doing him a favor by killing him.




So on one hand we have Van Gogh, arguably the greatest artist of modern times, whose self worth was so low that he regarded his own murder as a favor to himself, his family and the world. In his mind his existence was a waste of resources, there was no lower creature on the face of the earth and he welcomed death. On the other hand we have George W. Bush, arguably the worst president in the history of the world, who single handedly destroyed the world economy and hundreds of thousands of lives in two wars based on lies. A below average student who was never able to construct a coherent sentence or formulate an intelligent thought. His self worth, on the other hand, is estimated in the highest possible terms. This incoherent moron feels so superior to the rest of humanity that, when forced to touch an inferior being, he feels the need to wipe his hand on the shirt of another inferior being.


Bush regards himself as god’s gift to humanity.

So the next time you are feeling completely worthless or perhaps like god's gift to humanity, don’t flatter yourself, you are not that great, or that stupid. No-one is.

No tea then, dears?

Mark sat across the table as she began to talk. Her speech was paused, but there was kindness in her voice. “I’ve lived in this house my entire life and I’ve never strayed far, this is my place in the world. I belong here. My parents were the first to go, then my husband and since we never had any children, I’ve been left alone to tend to the place. Well, not completely alone, there are the ghosts too. But they are harmless enough. I wouldn’t mind them as much if they would at least help with some of the chores.” There was amusement in her voice at the idea of having ghosts help with the daily chores. Mark narrows his eyes and tilts his head as if physically straining to hear her.

She continues “My name is Agatha and I’m an old woman now, too old to mind these ghosts and things that go bump in the night. When I was younger I would have called in a priest to get rid of these ghosts, but at my age I just can’t be bothered. They talk and they move things around, but they don’t bother me none. Some years ago they wanted to turn my house into a bed and breakfast, the notion of these young people, can you imagine guests in a hose where the curtain won’t stay open and you hear voices in the hallway? It’s my house and these are my ghosts, we are happy here.” She looks directly at Mark and adds “Aren’t we dear?”

Agatha hadn’t noticed the young woman sitting next to Mark until she said “I smell bread baking.” Agatha looked over her shoulder into the kitchen and said “yes, dear, I’m baking some bread. I like fresh bread, my late husband, God rest his soul, couldn’t get enough of my banana bread. I bake every day. You young ghosts can always smell the bread.” The young woman looks around a bit startled and says “did I hear her say she bakes every day?” Mark takes a hold of the young woman’s hand and soothes her with some words of reassurance. Agatha is a bit annoyed, the ghosts are getting younger and younger, these two couldn’t be more than 20.

Suddenly the drapes fly open and daylight streams into the room. Agatha looks over and there is no one by the window. The curtain had been flung open so violently that they were left swinging in place and one of the hooks came loose. Slowly Agatha stands up and continues her story as she walks towards the window. “These ghosts, I don’t really mind you, but if I open the curtains you close them, if I close the curtains, you open them. It never ends, you need an old woman’s patience to put up with you. When I was a young woman ghosts never came around, now they never go away. Like you young man, I haven’t seen you before” Agatha glances at Mark, tisks her tongue a few times, reaches for the drapes and closes them, slowly because of her rheumatism.

As Agatha closes the second drape the young woman next to Mark runs out of the room screaming. Mark raises his voice, there is urgency in his tone “Mother get away from the window! Come here with me!” Agatha looks back at her young ghost and there is a frightened middle aged woman standing next to him. She hadn’t been there before. Agatha is encouraged by the new presence, someone closer to her own age. Agatha likes this new ghost “Will you stay for some warm bread and tea dears?” As she offers her guests tea, Agatha moves the tea-set from one end of the table to the other so it's closer to the kitchen door, walks into the kitchen and opens the tap to fill the kettle for the tea.

When she returns to the drawing room the middle aged woman is screaming something about refusing to stay in this house another minute; the young man is screaming something about wanting his money back and having this abomination of a hotel shut down by the authorities.

Agatha stands in the doorway watching them and sweetly asks “No tea then, dears?”