It may look like a garden, but its really more of a snake pit. Its not the paper thin walls, or the windows that have been painted over so many times that they will never open, or the termites, or the weird (unwritten) rules, or the obsolete electrical system, or the baroque legacy gas system where you are as likely to be paying for your neighbor's utilities as your own. Its not the suicides of which there have been two in recent years. Its the people. The smile to your face, stab you in the back people that is the problem here. The emotionally-challenged woman who thinks that every man lusts for her calves and complains about invasion of privacy when no such thing has occurred. Or the neighbor who sang Joni Mitchell songs at night whenever she got drunk (which was every night) but complained to management that I used the telephone. I didnt appreciate it when Management threw her out with 3 days notice, I think that she deserved more compassion than that, even if she had stabbed me in the back. But by far the worse part of this was the new landlady, one of those who is scared of computers and doesnt know much about them, and is willing to say the most appalling things in writing apparently too stupid to realize that she was letting both herself and the Magnolia in for an astonishing lawsuit that they would lose, if I did lawsuits, which I dont. And neither does my patron, whose guest I was. And so, may I advise you, dear reader, if you are considering the Magnolia to save yourself some trouble and go elsewhere. Life is too short.
Monday, September 20, 2021
Friday, September 17, 2021
Who Has the Best Failed State?
I could use some help figuring out what we believe the long term deaths and wounded statistics of the Chernobyl disaster. Chernobyl is the gold standard by which to measure the failure of a government to cope with a crisis and the long term effects of their incompetence. But its hard to get good numbers of the long term deaths and wounded of Chernobyl. There are reasons for this beyond mere suppression of the facts for political purposes (like we find in this country). They may be trying to avoid despair which causes death through other self inflicted wounds such as tobacco and alcohol. If you believe you are going to die of radiation poisoning anyway why not smoke another pack of cigarettes a day and drink more vodka?
I am pretty sure though that America and a few other countries like Brazil can proudly say that their failed governments have been much more incompetent and caused many more deaths than the USSR and successor states. In fact, the Republican response may still be killing a Chernobyls worth of their own citizens every 100 days. Oddly, these deaths of the last six months are restricted almost entirely to the unvaccinated, who are almost all Republicans. This will not affect elections since voter suppression and the supreme court's destruction of voter rights have the intent and effect of delegitimizing elections and installing more right wing thugs like Trump and is self perpetuating. But the reports I have read suggest that the USSR and successor countries have devoted and still devote huge resources to social and medical welfare to people in the various affected regions even when it is likely that they were not affected. Our country, with its corrupt right wing judiciary, throws people on the street if they are 3 days late on rent. I had to hear a lot of shit about how bad communism was and how great western democracy is. Not so sure about the former but about the latter I can be quite sure. We laugh at people saying that under Socialism an NKRP reactor (or whatever) cant explode. Well in this country we have trump and the moron republicans (there are only republicans, the people who oppose them and a third group which is passive) saying the virus is a hoax, that the democrats are using it to defeat trump, who is the chosen one, that the virus is just bad flu, that quinine water or horse tenderizer will keep you from getting bad virus, and that there has never been a time when any american has been forced to exercise basic public health protocols (because the people saying it are too stupid to know about the history in this country of cholera, yellow fever, basic sewage, speed limits and water controls, etc). The Republicans did this, and caused what will be no less than a million unnecessary deaths (we are very close to that number now).
Shouldnt I be hearing a lot of people talking about the failures of the western democracy and capitalism?
Sunday, September 12, 2021
Commentary on September 11th
I was in NYC on September 11th. By far the worst part was not that day, but the months afterwards as my fellow NYers put up posters acknowledging their loved one was missing. Literally everyone I knew in NY either knew someone in the two towers who died or was one person removed. Second, it is probably not well known outside of NY or maybe I am wrong about this: but no one actually knows how many people died in the collapse of the towers. Why is that, you may ask, its because there is illegal immigration in all areas of american life, and the financial industries are far from immune and when something bad happens, the family is not going to go to the police only to have ICE show up in a week or month to deport them. Finally, you make your guess at how many people died, then make a guess as to their average body weight, then realize that the clean up crews had to remove that much dead body parts that was layered through the wreckage. Do the math. You will be surprised.