1 May 2001
Happy Labor Day, I suppose. People forget, because some canny politicians
moved the =American= Labor Day to September, that International Labor Day,
May 1st, is to commemorate the Haymarket Riots, centered in good ole
Chicago, that secondest of 2nd cities.
I get tired of all this anti-capitalist shit. I will admit I've been
influenced a bit by Ayn Rand's ideas, but I believe that she & George
Orwell have been proven correct to a certain extent. If one tries to base
an economy where production and financial reward are totally divorced, one
soon finds that the workers in general are lazy. People may want to bring
up slave labor at this point, but in reading accounts of various slaves in
the U.S., many of the field slaves =were= shiftless when there was no
overseer. Why the hell would slaves work if there's not the threat of
immediate retribution? Also, more to the point, people wonder as to the
shittiness of public schools and the substandard service of governmental
services - isn't it obvious that in a system where noone short of
criminality is even demoted, much less fired. Yes, there are people like
my aunts and my Grandma who actually care about their students and do the
best they can, but when I was in school, there were plenty of teachers to
show us the disdain that obviously everyone showed them.
Feh, I will stop my economic ranting. It's difficult to stop, considering
today's date; sort of like my obligatory environmental ranting on my
birthday.
Let's see -- Commonweal Magazine said it would make its decision as to
their essay contest by today, but I see nothing at their web site. I
guess I will find out in the mail. The letter they sent back to me
indicated about 150 people sent in essays. If mine doesn't win, I hope
that at least they try to take it as a regular article. It would be nice
to be =paid= for something I wrote.
That reminds me of another economic issue - paying for the written word -
or intellectual property in general. I've got my little Amazon Honor
System button up there, and I've gotten a few bucks from a couple people,
mostly token. I can't say that I'm surprised. The only pure online
product I've ever paid for is livejournal, and that's because I use it all
the time, and find it more entertaining than any of my magazine
subscriptions. So I'm definitely willing to pay a
magazine-subscription-like prices.
So am I pissed that other people aren't giving me money for my little gems
of ... well, whatever these things are? Not really. All of these entries
are composed more or less ex tempore, and very few are ever revised as to
typos or content (there was =one= entry, but I =did= give up after a
time... online journals such as this one are not really a place for
dialogue. There is but room for ONE voice here, and since it's =my= name
on the site, I suppose the voice is going to be mine.) I have been
working on a few pieces that I shall try to sell; =those= I structure in
some kind of logical way, edit for typos and grammaro's (=cough=); in
those, I eschew too many parenthetical remarks (though the inner demon
must have its say!)
Right now I've been printing out all my entries from 1996. Looking
through my other years, I notice is particularly fallow, but that's hardly
surprising as 1) I was getting married that year, 2) Mathcamp intervened,
and 3) I had just found livejournal. It's kind of interesting to see how
the nature of my posts have changed from talking about things that were
occurring, to now, which tends to be either a) instructional, b) ranting,
or c) both.
Let me get back to the topic I had brought to this composition originally,
which has yet to stick its nose in:
Peanut butter & jelly sandwiches.
Not =actual= PB&J you understand, but =metaphorical= PB&J, standing for
the nourishment which we can consume time & again, fully sated, with the
good bits (aka nut fats, protein, vitamins) and the bad bits (aka
SUGAR!!!) both satisfied. I have found my metaphorical PB&J in , among
other things, Jane Austen, MST3K, and spicy bean burritos with sour cream
(mmm, sour cream). I could eat burritos every day, for every meal (ooh,
LSD is the bomb. I'm enjoying the music Stuart downloaded). They're so
yummy! They're so cheap! I can buy a can (a canner exceedingly canny/one
morning remarked to his granny/a canner can can/anything that he can/ but
a canner can't can a can, can he?) of black beans for 85 cents (pricey for
beans, actually), a buck-fifty for 12 (or is it 8?) tortillas, and I am
set up for the week! Also, the 10 different pepper powders and Texas Pete
couldn't hurt, as well. OOOOH, SPICE!
The taste can also cut through any allergic reaction. Sometimes I put too
much pepper in the bean mix, and I must heal my numbed lips with a lovely
schmear of sour cream. All over the lips. Like the zinc oxide smeared
over lifeguards' lips, but much much thicker. I was using no-fat sour
cream this last time, but I believe I deserve full-fat sour cream.
After all, when I tried on my spring clothes yesterday, I fit in all but
the pants that I haven't been able to fit in for over 10 years. Why the
hell did I still have those slacks? I haven't seen 110 pounds since 10th
grade, if that.