on leaving Kuta

I hold fast till the last day, refusing kids who beg and pray and badger me both day and night to buy a bracelet – brown, black, white? Then comes Mary, eight years young, whose pitch is crass, incessant, fun, who won't believe I'll buy one soon, whose mushrooms, “Take you to the moon”. I give her less than she asks for, I claim that I am very poor, I take her small and flimsy thing, she says “OK, better than nothing”. We leave fair Kuta before nine, our engines haul and buck and whine and drag us through the darkened hills, we take much care and do not spill. A storm has slicked our moon-lit path – great burst of light, a booming wrath – but now the night is calm and cool, a taxi driver hits his brights, can't seem to pass us on the right, we slow way down, give up the fight, I curse and yell that he's a fool. Great mounds of dirt cover the lanes, force us to slow way down again, as if from nowhere they appear, with naught to warn that they are near. Then I spy a red barrow whose owner causes me much fright, who interrupts our steady flow, out in the street – no warning light. We get waylaid by crafty men; they sneak us past the ticket pen; they bribe police and harbor boss; ours is not sting or pang or loss, for they defraud their government to feed their kids and pay the rent. No berth awaits us once aboard, no slightly bowing deck steward, we settle down right on the deck, avoiding many sticky flecks. Bali greets us pleasantly when something drops down from a tree and hits me square upon the head; I don't complain for I'm not dead. We make good time and maintain speed, for hurry there is never need, a road-side cop tells us to slow, I speak his tongue – he lets us go. I climb in through the side window, where only weeds and gravel grow, I have no keys for the front door, we settle down upon the floor, sleep for one hour, then awake, as violent screams the walls do shake. There's spitting blood, hurled accusations, this has been a strange vacation, full of laughs but violence too, oh fair Indo – I love you.

© americanifesto / 場黑麥

U.S. legislators stop accepting bribes

Following their ouster on National Public Radio (NPR), which did a segment last week called Forget Stocks Or Bonds, Invest In A Lobbyist (or, How Representatives Sell Out America), this nation's Congresswomen, Congressmen, and Senators have decided – unanimously – to stop being such money-grubbing, re-election-focused whores. Early last Friday morning, in the Capitol rotunda in Washington, D.C., all members of the House and Senate gathered to declare, in unison, “We have seen the error of our ways. We understand that this type of behavior ruins our fledgling democracy, that it tramples upon the voices of those citizens who cannot constantly contribute to our re-election campaigns, and that it destroys everything Americans have fought for, and died for, since the early days of this republic.”

The legislators, who until now had not even tried to hide the fact that they were selling their souls, their voices, and their access to – and influence over – the legislative process to anyone capable of physically handing them a check upwards of thirty-five thousand dollars ($35,000), wept with shame. “We are heartless bastards who have lost sight of our purpose,” said Speaker John Boehner. “Our real job is to speak to the people of our districts directly and to figure out what it is that they need; our job is not to sit around in tax-payer-funded offices and to hold court to see how many checks we can collect in a single day, nor is it to champion legislation such as that favorable merely to big business, to big corporations, our to our most frequent individual cash donors.”

To the amazement of the staff here at Mentiri Factorem Truth-Seeking & Truth-Speaking, it is not illegal for an elected official to sell his or her influence outright, nor do such despicable acts of flagrant corruption legally violate the standards of decency, the rules of common sense, the parameters of the Constitution, or the essence of the Declaration of Independence. Said D.C. occupier Herrold K. Chesterfeld, a computer programmer from a state on the Eastern seaboard, whose job was sold last year to an overseas conglomerate that had paid the Senator from his state a lot of cash-money to sanction the sale, “My great-great-great-great-great grandfather did not die during the Siege of Boston so that some pompous, millionaire official could pad his re-election coffers by selling my job to a group of rich scumbags in South Asia. Legislators are supposed to represent the interests of the individual citizen, individually, but when they cow-tow to persons or corporations that have heaps of money to burn, they prove that they are no better than slaves or truck-stop knob-slobbers. We need jobs in my state, we need health-care, we need reasonably-priced, high-quality, American-made food, shelter, and clothing – this circus, this fiasco, has gone on for long enough.”

場黑麥 mentiri factorem fecit

right to pass revoked in LA

Following approval from the city council issued at its emergency sitting late last night, property owners across Los Angeles revoked unilaterally the rights of pedestrians to use private property, including privately owned sidewalks. This move has been expected for months, since LA's city council long ago abandoned her pedestrian population, preferring rather to kowtow to rich property owners who because of their great wealth can have laws written in their favor by bribing and influencing elected leaders.

Attention pedestrians of southern California: you may not use a privately owned sidewalk unless you have on your person written permission from the property owner! Instead, use the street, the roadway, or any publicly owned sidewalk (which are stamped with City Of Los Angeles, whereas private sidewalks are embedded with polished bronze medallions that warn walkers to turn back). The Los Angeles Police Department is issuing tickets upwards of $1000 to any individual caught using or otherwise trespassing on a privately owned sidewalk.

“Anyone not driving a car by now is just not worth our time, nor are they worth any effort,” LA councilman Hinnrich Rheingoldt was overheard saying just after the sitting ended. “We just don't have time to protect economically insignificant, litigation-shy, foot-mobile fuckheads who aren't buying us flights to Mammoth, or who haven't contributed to any of our political action committees.”

場黑麥 ioanni elymucampus fecit

p.s. cars have right-of-way in the street, so stay on your toes unless you want to get sucked into the slipstream of a passing semi-truck and tossed around like a rag-doll