haiku 10 Jun 2018

The keg was finished 
As were many fine smoked meats 
In record damn time 

[ americanifesto / 場黑麥 / jpr / urbanartopia / whorphan ]

sweet-tooth actually diabetes

Contrary to popular belief, the delight with which local resident Horace J. Winston consumes sweets is not due to a sweet-tooth of yore. In fact, his endocrinological system - having been subjected to decades of frequent alcohol consumption combined with a sedentary lifestyle - is now struggling to adequately regulate Winston’s blood-glucose levels. Unless he makes drastic changes in his daily patterns and habits within the next couple of years, his condition will be exacerbated, and worsen.

On an average day, Horace consumes at least five beers in one sitting, two meals of primarily meats and cheeses; he drives nearly everywhere he must go, walking only a few miles cumulatively. (In secret, Winston knows something is amiss inside but chooses to blame it on the common cold or changes in the weather.)

No one in his circle of friends or relatives appears concerned about the Winston’s fate, however, since they are clueless to the signs of onsetting diabetes and themselves engaged heavily in both sloth and overindulgence. With health insurance priced out of his reach, Horace will also not be seeing a doctor, anytime soon.

[ americanifesto / 場黑麥 / jpr / urbanartopia / whorphan ] ​

my sentiments exactly

‘This is the life,’ the drug dealer thought, pulling back on a hinged brass handle screwed into a row of others like it. A brownish, fermented, sugary fluid ran out of the nozzle attached to the handle, flowing into a freshly washed glass. Setting the now-full glass down on the copper counter erected for the purpose of giving the users of that particular drug somewhere upon which to rest their arms while using it, the drug dealer took cash in exchange for the addictive, mind-altering substance he’d just dealt.

The appearance of cleanliness was important to the drug dealer, wherefore he carefully wiped down a few meters of bar dirtied by customers who’d become slightly sloppy after using the habit-forming drug he peddled. The drunk people had left earlier - not because he’d kicked them out for shouting crassly or the other drug users had told them to leave for making racist comments but because they’d decided to keep taking drugs elsewhere. Such things happened often, and the dealer was used to it. He knew they’d be back. He sold them the junk they liked in an environment they enjoyed, and he pretended to listen to their problems, which made them repeat customers.

“This is the life,” slurred a middle-aged patron, holding up his glass of beer to admire its color under the tepid house lights, his back stooped and bent under the weight of decades of sadness and addiction, his skin fallow and eyes yellowish from early-onset liver failure. On the bar in front of the middle-to-end-phase addict was a packet of cheap, pre-rolled cigarettes and a cheap lighter, things he needed on his sprint to an early grave. The drug dealer, who was in the process of mixing a drink using a more refined and potent form of the life-shattering substance he got paid to sling, nodded encouragingly, saying, “My sentiments exactly.”

americanifesto / 場黑麥 / jpr / urbanartopia / whorphan

goodbye, national victory garden month

Contrary to attempts by lobbyists hired by sellers and manufacturers of grilling-related materials, they who make and market charcoal, compressed natural gas, roll-away cooking tops, and the flesh of animals, to have the federal government of the United States of America officially designate the month of May something as utterly foolish as National Grilling Month, that selfsame government has come to its senses and passed such legislation as is necessary to promote the common citizen's assistance in her nation's various war efforts. By designating May as National Victory Garden Month (and striking down previous efforts to hoist aloft such a petty, consumption-driven, non-victory-related activity as lighting a fire in one's yard and heating upon that fire meat, or vegetables), the federal government has recognized, and dutifully underlined, the role that each and every citizen in expected to play in helping her nation to end the multiple acts of aggression it initiated – against sovereign foreign peoples who had not really done anything bad – swiftly and without too much additional bloodshed.

Championed via a bi-partisan panel filled with the more intelligent, forward-thinking, non-corruptible members of the U.S. House and Senate, National Victory Garden Month (NVGM) will feature a nation-wide series of classes (held at most United States Postal Service locations) to teach the People how to grow sustainable, organic foods in Their own square-foot gardens. Furthermore, NVGM will feature the distribution of organic, heirloom seeds and the distribution of high-quality gardening tools made in America by proud, upstanding, victory-conscious citizens, not by aloof foreigners who care nothing for this nation's success in her armed conflicts. Additionally, good, dark soil, and the materials needed to make raised beds, will be available for pick-up at any of the NVGM certified, small-scale mom-and-pop stores that have survived, over the last decades, the Assault of the Big Discount Retailers, which have reduced our once-high wages, lessened our once-high standards of living, and generally helped to make America a more homogeneous, worse place, a place all but devoid of self-sufficient, self-respecting individuals who actually reuse things.

Gone are the days when the good honest people of this nation were asked to do little else than to burn things and to stand around eating fatty burgers and drinking warm beer; arrived are the days when we as individuals are given the tools to guarantee victory, when we are expected to do our part in shaping for America, for ourselves, for our children's children's children, and for the world, a better, greener, and more sustainable future. So please, my good honest fellow ketchup-eaters – rip out your backyard BBQ and plant a garden in its place; sink your hands into a cool heap of soil instead of digging those hands into the couch cushions in search of your TV's remote control. Every piece of steel you do not absolutely Have To have made into a ride-along lawnmower can be used by our brave warriors overseas; every scrap of leather you don't absolutely Have To have made into a reclining armchair can benefit our proud claw-lads and talon-lasses. Together, we can fight the dangers of consumption for the sake of consumption while helping our boys and girls to win the wars we have asked them to fight for us. Arise, masses chewing lazily at your bits – together, we shall can make America a better place for all.

場黑麥 mentiri factorem fecit

Man, 34, “Sees clearly, now.”

In the wake of his first ever solo spring-cleaning (during which, however, according to a subsequent eye-witness report, only a few of the dirtiest windows were washed, and only some portions of the wall-to-wall carpet received a merely mediocre vacuuming), Darius Gordon Crickleburg, 34, of Waynesboro, NC, finished feeding the spring-loaded electrical cord into the built-in storage compartment of his brand new vacuum-cleaner, and stepped back to view his handiwork. “The rains are gone, now, and I can see clearly. It all seems so much nicer – all the plants look so much more green, and my house is no longer a total pigsty. I believe I shall write a song about this monumental event in my life,” Mr. Crickleburg said as he settled into the reclining lounge chair he had moved to the garage some years earlier, during the last, then-wife-assisted spring cleaning, and never retrieved. “Look at that,” he continued, pointing out of the window at a house across the street. “I can see Mrs. Chuhsin-Handell's house very well, and all of her begonias look so colorful, and pretty.”

Before said monumental event, very little light penetrated into the dark, dank recesses of Darius' double-wide home, which, since his wife left him last fall for a female shipping clerk from Spokane, has been but infrequently kept up. “The last six months, since Rachel left, have been rough, but the dark clouds seem to be gone, and I don't feel quite as down on my luck as I did before. It looks to be a bright day, outside, a day of abundant sunshine. It is as if I can see all obstructions, all obstacles, that stand in my path, and I can not only see them, I know how to surmount them – what to do about them.” Things continued to look up, and to run smoothly throughout the day, until sunset, however, when Mr. Crickleburg purchased a case of beer from the corner store, and fell to drinking.

場黑麥 mentiri factorem fecit