100 each of black men, white men, Asian men, Hispanic men and Native men, beautiful badass looking men, should go to the White House and stand apart in their respective groups silently and peacefully for one day. Halfway through the day, after the press and everyone with a phone has shot lots of photos, the whitest white guy and the blackest black guy walk to opposite ends of a city block and then the rest fill in as best they can.
It would be a great reminder to them of what America actually looks like and that it won’t roll over for the ugly monochromatic men demanding it.
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?
I don’t sleep well. I did when I drank, but that was more a passing out than going to sleep. And that went on for 40+ years. That freaks me out. I don’t even feel 40, mostly. But I don’t sleep well, and I’ve tried everything except any sort of sleeping medication – real ones, good ones. The ones that work. And that’s why I didn’t take em, because they work. I’ve taken many a drug in my time, but for whatever reason, I didn’t want to go there. Alcohol knocks you out, as I noted above, but you get those 7 hours of drinking leading up to it. Popping a pill and dropping off like boom is weird. It’s like the fancy people who always have proper meals and you stand at the sink wolfing down leftovers out of the to go containers. Maybe.
So, New Years Eve night before we were to go on a strict budget on January 1 I was on social media and got an ad for sheets that were able to be grounded and so ground you as you slept. Seriously. Here’s the ad. Okay, I can’t put the video up for some reason. Anyone know how to insert an Instagram ad into a blog? But found this one with the same guy. https://youtube.com/shorts/tdD0xP4040s?si=hT2Q90eQpP-4Z-bg
I thought, what the fuck? Even if it’s a bunch of hooey I get sheets, and I need sheets. But I do have to say that ad kicked ass. The guy talking is perfect, handsome, sciency but normal, and what he says and claims about this grounding business blew me away. While, of course, raising the beware internet scams flag. But I bought them and about two weeks ago they arrived. Well, they didn’t. What arrived was 9×12 padded envelope. Inside was a piece of sheet, I guess, about two feet wide and 8 feel long. And a cord that snaps onto the sheet with just the little round ground plug on the other end that I plugged into the nearest outlet. That’s perfect me, by the way. I didn’t bother to read the thing. I just went to the first item on their website, I suppose, and somewhere saw “sheet” and clicked buy. It was $99. Which was expensive even for a full set of sheets for a guy like me. I got ripped off, I figured and will forget to even try to return it. That’s the MO. I’ve got issues.
This came also in the envelope.
Feast your eyes on what this thing can do. These are some serious claims, although “Enhances detoxification processes” sounds a bit bullshitty.
So, I plug in my slip and slide lookin grounded sheet, strip naked to get the whole effect and lie down on it. I immediately experience what feels like the energy in my body falling down toward the fabric. It was weird but it also felt really good like that meditation of feeling the weight of your body being pulled toward the floor. My jaw was tingling.
All right, I figured it was me being all excited about it, some psychosomatic or placebo effect. So I got up thinking that it was for sleeping on anyway and walked away. Later in the day, I tried it again, and I got the same feelings. Still, though, placebo and for sleep.
I slept that night. Much, much harder than I had for as long as I can remember. It was a feeling I remembered now but had forgotten. I dreamed again. I hadn’t dreamed in a very long time. I usually wake up a couple-three times at night and I only woke up once. Could this thing seriously be for real, was grounding in this way somehow able to grab hold of my circadian rhythms and get them dancing in unison? Do we have more than one circadian rhythm?
PLEASE NOTE I AM NOT SUGGESTING IN ANY WAY THAT THIS MAKES ANY SENSE TO ME AND I AM NOT SHILLING FOR THIS COMPANY. THERE ARE A MILLION OF THEM OUT THERE I GUESS GROUNDING PEOPLE THROUGHOUT THE LAND. THIS IS NOT A SPONSORED BLOG, NOR HAVE I HAD ANY CONTACT WITH ANYONE RELATED TO THE COMPANY, ALTHOUGH I’D LIKE TO MEET THE GUY IN THE VIDEO. I THINK HE’D BE A GOOD CONVERSATIONALIST.
It’s been a couple of weeks and it’s still working. I’m sleeping way better. And I can still feel the energy thing. But maybe it’s still psychosomatic or placebo. I don’t know. How can I know? But could something this simple have merit like this? Sitting right under our noses for all these many years. Just sleep on the ground, fool! I’ll bet cowboys slept well.
Luke Soiseth 