Another letter never published

I like to write letters to the editor and here’s one (of many) they ignored.

The column inches dedicated to the cost of eggs over the last year has been absolutely ludicrous. Eggs are expensive because there is a shortage of eggs because we humans had to kill millions and millions of egg-laying chickens due to the bird flu. A shortage of something leads to an increase in price. Even our dear leader* can’t do anything about it, short of firing all the people tasked with killing the chickens or possibly adding bleach to their feeding tubes to treat the flu.

But I Play One on TV

I’m not a vegetarian but I mostly act like one. I just don’t eat much meat at all. I replace it with more veggies, beans, tofu, mock duck and those new fake meats you can buy at the store. Why? Because I feel much better physically. I’m leaner and lighter, yet stronger and more confident. That’s a good enough reason for me.

But there’s an op-ed in the Minnesota Star Tribune today by a guy named Ron Way. He’s a former assistant director of the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency. He’s reviewing a book by Sonja Trom Ayres who grew up on a family farm in Dodge County in southern Minnesota. The book is titled: “Dodge County Incorporated: Big Ag and the Undoing of Rural America”

Way, and more thoroughly in Trom Ayres’ book, which I have not read, spell out the effects of corporate farming on the animals and on the communities that were once filled with family farms. Instead, as Way writes, our “farmland has been transformed, mostly out of sight and little noticed, with look-alike, elongated buildings where tens of millions of hogs, cattle and poultry live short lives in crowded crud, guzzling feed for fattening in prep for a one-way trip to slaughter.”

I’ve noticed all those buildings and just sort of assumed they were chickens and turkeys. I did not realize that hogs and cattle were locked up there as well, and that is probably why I see so fewer cows out in pastures than I used to. If you’ve been around hogs and cows, you know that they are not, well, chickens. They’re intelligent, emotional, and have rich inner lives. It’s possible chickens are similar and you can tell me if that is so, I do know that they live the short, brutish lives of all of these animals, but I’m guessing they’re not dolphin, octopus or my dog smart.

They are not referred to as farms either, but “feedlots”, which sounds about as depressing as it could. Way goes on, “more than 23,000 feedlots now dot the Minnesota’s farm country,” and adds, “annually producing 49 million tons of manure – a waste-equivalent 17 times the state’s entire population.”

That’s a whole lot of shit to get rid of and they talk about how that works and doesn’t work, the immigrants who work the feedlots, the dying small towns, and much more. It’s one big-ass shit sandwich.

So, there’s another reason I act like a vegetarian. I can’t get behind that sick system. They torture the animals, destroy the towns and livelihoods of the people who live there, remove the money from the communities and up to corporate “big ag”. It’s just so horribly wrong in so many ways. Anyone for a mock duck salad?

Do what you need to make you feel better

It was 1976 – the Bicentennial, which was a rather big deal: flags, parades, celebrations, fireworks*, limited edition coins. I was twelve and had just discovered marijuana and was listening to a local radio station on my clock radio and on comes “The System of Dr. Tarr and Professor Fether.”

“Do what you need to make you feel better, do what you need to make you feel!”

I loved it! Had to have it!

So I waited for the break after the songs to hear the deejay say who it was and he didn’t! I was so pissed off. But I finally heard it again, got the name, went out to Hot Licks music store and head shop, bought it and I now owned The Alan Parsons Project “Tales of Mystery and Imagination – Edgar Allen Poe”. It’s a great album. Somehow they always came off to me like a more family-friendly progressive rock band. Emerson Lake and Palmer made some great music but it’s not for kids. It’ll fuck with their minds.

Just kidding. The Alan Parsons Project seemed to be making music for the smart kids (to wit: they do an amazing job of incorporating Poe’s poetry into this album), unlike say, Aerosmith. It’s all very theatrical with operatic and classical flourishes all around and side two is mostly a little rock opera. Big emotions and a little trippy. Maybe that’s why I associated the band with the theater kids in school.

It was always a bit of a mystery to me who Alan Parsons was. The band seemed to consciously and purposefully not showcase Alan Parsons, who was one of two main members – hence the “project”. Parsons was an engineer on Abbey Road, Let it Be and The Dark Side of the Moon, among many other great albums. The other guy, Eric Woolfson, was a songwriter and composer, according to Wikipedia, where I got all this information. This was their first album, which I did not know until today, and most of the musicians were from Pilot (Oh, ho ho, it’s Magic!) and Ambrosia (Baby, Come back).

Tales of mystery and imagination. Makes sense.

*Back in those days we saw fireworks maybe twice a year if we were lucky and somehow geographically near where they were being blown off. I’ll be honest, I never have to see another firework in my life. Redundant redundant redundant. They also fuck with my mental health. But have you seen those huge drone shows all lit up and transmogrifying all over the sky? Totally cool!

I’ve never seen an asshole

I’ve never seen an asshole die of cancer. Everyone I know has been among the kindest people I knew. I wonder what this is like to experience – the death of someone who has been cruel and angry and awful, and succumbing to cancer. Do they change? I wanna hear about a morning-after Scrooge epiphany. A great transformation of spirit! Or do they mostly just go out in a blaze of hate and unhappiness? Just one more way the universe conspired against them.

Mary, mother of truth

Mary M. Coady nailed it in her letter to the Minnesota Star Tribune today:

We seem to make up words to not use the word lie. Just to be clear, fake news is a lie. Misinformation is a lie. Alternative facts are a lie. Revisionism is a lie. We teach our children to tell the truth and anything else is a lie. Or remember the word fib? I wish the media wouldn’t shy away from saying something is a lie. When someone says that Ukraine started the war, the media should emphatically state that is a lie and that Russia started the war in 2022!

From your lips to God’s ears, Ms. Coady. And so should we. She’s absolutely right. Call it. Every time. Anytime you hear yet another lie from the republicans in any context, say it out loud, “That is a lie.” Like a religious mantra. “That is a lie.”

How about we just go ahead and start a religion: Truthism. But with one moral: Tell the truth.* One Psalm: Lying hurts. One holiday: Every day is truth day. One hymnal: Any song with “the truth will set you free” in it.

So someone says something, in front of you, or on the television, or in something you’re reading, and you know it to be untrue, say it out loud, “That is a lie.” And be ready with your sources and that is all you say, like a captured soldier who will give only name, rank and serial number, “I will email or text my sources.” Like Spock.

Let’s just stop putting up with it. It’s a lie. It’s a lie! It’s a god-damned lie! No. “That is a lie.” “That is a lie.” “That is a lie.”

Our sacred sound and invocation. Our own om.

What if it’s all because of glasses?

What if over the millions of years of evolution each of our eyesight had evolved to be what was best for each of us; the best eyesight for each of us to experience and see the world, to perceive what is happening, to respond, ergo, to survive?

But then we invented glasses and yes, we could all see better, but at the same time started to go just little bit crazy with our evolved eyesight decoupled from our evolved personalities? And with each generation that crazy gets just a little bit stronger?

And that’s what’s happening now? All because of stupid glasses?

News Letter 020925

Just to note

I found this in the paper today. A coach’s description of a new player in perfect sportsese. “He has the ability to make plays,” __ said. “He’s got good hands and can shoot the puck.”
Nice.

February 28, 2025

Good people gotta get together. One great thing we can do that I’ve heard about is getting off social media and any media and spending no money anywhere on February 28, 2025. Especially online or large retailers. Money is one of the psychopaths’ two languages; this would send a very strong message that we are the ones with the real… Power is the other language they understand. Neanderthals.
Let’s take it away for just one day.
To start.

From Harper’s Index

Estimated amount of energy, in kilowatt-hours, that was used to discover a new prime number last year: 3,100,000

Estimated number of U.S. households this amount of energy could power for a year: 287,000.

The world is full of these things that just slip by.

I love this

From: “The Painted Protest: How politics destroyed contemporary art” by Dean Kissick in Harper’s December 2024. I love Harper’s. Can you tell?

SCIENCE!!

“In his 2022 book The Mind of a Bee, behavioral ecologist Lars Chittka chronicles his decades of work with honey bees, showing that bees can use sign language, recognize individual human faces, and remember and convey locations of far-flung flowers. They have good moods and bad, and they can be traumatized by near-death experiences such as being grabbed be an animatronic spider hidden in a flower. (Who wouldn’t be?)”

From “Minds Everywhere” by Rowan Jacobsen, in Scientific American February 2024; Illustrations by Natalya Balnova

(Do I need to cite an artist when I’m just pulling a quote?)

Kendrick Lamar and the Super Bowl Halftime Show

The Super Bowl Halftime Show is an extravaganza of outrageousness. But it can be really cool. I just watched Kendrick Lamar – I have one of his albums – “To Pimp a Butterfly” – and I dig it and see his genius throughout his career and know how talented he is. But the extravaganza of outrageousness calls for a can-be-somewhat outrageous artist, an artist that can match that huge stage, in the middle of a boring (or exciting) football game, like Prince. Prince owned that huge stage. And I think that is partly because the tempo of his music changed. He could start slow and build up for the audience and then blow the doors off the place. Which he did. Rap songs mostly stay with one tempo which makes it harder for the artist to do what a Prince or Bruno Mars or Madonna can do. That is my theory of Kendrick Lamar and the Super Bowl Halftime Show

Luke Digs Deep to Discover How Tempo Affects Mostly Wealthy Listeners Clutching 24 Ounce 75 Dollar Beers in a Dark Stadium During the Halftime Break of an Athletic Contest

Embrace the program fully

“…embrace the program fully.”

I came across that phrase in a quasi-religious book just now and I chafed at it. As a young person I didn’t believe a thing about what they were talking about in our church, but for the be kind to your neighbor and that sort of thing. And I really didn’t like the pressure, the “see you next week!”, the forced camaraderie. I did, no do, like the little flour sprinkled buns with ham and cheese in the church basement though.

I also responded that way in sports. I played park board baseball and football, church basketball, ski raced and ran cross country and I never once felt good or bad about how I did. I tried! I really did. And I had fun. But I didn’t care. I couldn’t get my head around why I should care. “Here’s a made up scenario, now react emotionally to it.” Hey! That’s entertainment!

And to embrace the program fully, you must now react emotionally fully.

Fully doesn’t seem like a real word right now to me. You do that? Suddenly you see a word and think, huh? It could be four letters and you’ve seen it a bajillion times but suddenly it doesn’t look right. Is that how you spell boil?

I do have trouble reacting emotionally, like a lot of people and men in particular. And mine extends to the above. Oh, work, too. Similar inability to be a corporate guy. I once wrote an article about 3M employees who “bleed 3M red.” Super fans. Stans. Blew my mind.

I used to say, “I’m not a joiner,” and it is true. But I think I need to be more of a joiner. Like the church; I’ve attended a few AA meetings and enjoyed the people and the positive effects on my own sobriety. And sports; I could find a bar with a softball team. But then they’ll say, “we missed you last week” or “you’re playing again next year, right?” and I’ll freak out. I gotta get over that.

I often think that I could never organize a game of ultimate frisbee, because that’s way more nearby friends than I got.

You know what’s odd?

Minnesota is once again looking at legalizing sports betting.

Minnesota recently released an RFP for assistance with an awareness campaign related to problem gambling. (We already have casinos, horse tracks, lottery and the like.)

Stop the money. Save the nation.

I do this every once in a while where I write something after some immersion in the bad news of the day. Note that the current bad news is worse than it’s ever been in my lifetime. But I start pontificating on the evil, greed, hate and blah, blah, blah. This time I’m quite a bit more freaked out but when I got done and reread it, I was struck by how silly it all is. Bestowing upon the world my opinions on whatever. Here’s what we need to do! Whatever. But it’s cathartic and so ultimately it’s worth it, right? And I kind of like this one. Here goes:

Everybody right now open an account on Bluesky. Good Americans can talk there.

Completely shut down all of your other social media accounts – X, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, etc. All of them. We’ll do this fast and we’ll do this right and you can get your accounts back. Grab your data, or start fresh. Do it now.

Do not buy anything from any of those companies – purchase nothing on Amazon, close those accounts also, do not buy a Tesla, if you have one, enjoy it and drive it into the ground. Do not use Elon Musk’s satellite connections, nor any of his other companies, and those of you who do the science as astronomers and engineers and the like working for him, you’re smart! Get the fuck out of there! Anybody working for any of those companies, walk now.

Disrupt the activity of everything related to those same businesses. This of course includes Trump companies. Whatever you can do. Good hackers, this especially means you. Blow our minds.

Yes, this will create hardship, but if we do this fast and we do this right, we’ll get through it easily and the old-fashioned way, taking care of one another, looking after our neighbors. We’re the good Americans, remember? We can take a little hardship. In fact, we can take a lot of hardship to save the nation – and ourselves, our families, our loved ones, our friends and coworkers and neighbors.

If we do this fast and we do this right, we can avoid violence of any kind. That being said, everyone be prepared to the best of your abilities.

The only two things they understand are money and power, and they will stop at nothing to use their power to bring us to our knees and take all the money for themselves. They are doing it right now. Right in front of our eyes. We must immediately stop the flow of any money into their businesses.

Please pass this on to everyone you know.