Grigovia bans junk

In solidarity with Bolivia (see here) and other countries that actively care for the health of their citizens, the Glorious Republic of Grigovia announced today it will ban unhealthy fast food. The country has set aside a portion of next year's expected export duties to buy back retail locations owned by chain restaurants such as MacDoorknob's and Bugger Cling and turn them into Centers for Communal Creativity, Activity, & Defense (CCCAD). This newest action against the incessantly creeping forces of corporatized cultural degradation was approved by a large majority of voters during the General People's Decision of 2012, a directly-democratic electoral process similar to the Swiss model during which the Grigovian citizenry decides how to shape its own future. “From now on,” said Orgyast Heidoyiest, deputy Minster of Cultural Affairs in the country's lower of two houses of parliament, “Grigovia will no longer foster the model of conglomerated chain food factories that answer to a board of well-to-do, hard-nosed foreign executives whose primary goal is to increase their own wealth and the stock returns of their rich investors.” The culinary world celebrated the news. “Finally, we are ridding ourselves of the faceless corporate leeches,” said Xi Hong-Deng, a naturalized Grigovian citizen and part owner (with his wife) of Feng Fang Fong, which serves locally sourced Pan Asian cuisine. “Now we can start the process of healing the children of this land using healthy and nutritious foods made with love and dedication instead of poisoning their little bodies with preservative-laden slop engineered to make them addicted to sugar-packed milkshakes, mechanically-separated chicken pucks, and lard-dipped strings of starchy potato-like product.” Critics argue that Grig's own culinary specialty, called tchuirff, a pastry made with acorn flour, goose meat, and sharp curry, is on average higher in calories and fat than nearly any single item on the menu at the leading fast-food chains, until they consider the long history of this local delicacy and the low levels of liver disease, diabetes, and heart disorders that existed before fast food was allowed to contaminate the guts of the Grigovian people.

mentiri factorem fecit – 場黑麥

on nine eleven

  On this day we mark a decade since the events surrounding the 11th of September, 2001. Many changes have taken place in our nation since that bright summer day, some that restrict us in our liberty, others that inconvenience to little noticeable advantage. Absent clear and defining purpose, we have foundered collectively among the shoals of short-sightedness and greed, bruised badly by the false promise of unlimited consumer credit, our public figures beating the drums of nationalism and xenophobia in tones ever more vituperative and religious, the cultural diversity of our peoples muted by creeping corporate homogenization, our inventiveness forgotten in the face of gadgets that rarely prove convenient to the economics of time, our artistic creativity lost in the mirror-maze of sequels, mash-ups, and gimmickry, our citizens willfully abusing the national flag in misguided attempts to prove to others their patriotism, that deep and pure sense of pride that shines most brightly when it is cultivated within the confines of the heart, a sense that shrinks when displayed too prominently.
  I was in Manhattan that day; I volunteered three days later in the dust and wreckage blanketing the North Cove; I lost a fraternity brother who had just started work high up in the North Tower. But, then as now, I will never succumb to fear, never believe in America-über-alles, never discriminate against someone because of their choice of religion, never accept torture as a means necessary to the common defense, never disgrace the Stars and Stripes to prove to another my love for country, and never cease in my attempts to secure the Blessings of Liberty to myself, my brothers and sisters, and our Posterity.
  My the people who died on that September day not so long ago continue to rest in peace.


Ultima Ratio Regum - 場黑麥 John Paul Roggenkamp

worth less

Most people in America are worthless. Their opinions do not matter. Their voices will never be heard. I am one of these people. I crow and I cry, leaving no eye dry, from rooftops and cellars and places loathed by all. I try to give my take on what is happening in this country, in this world, in this community, that runs counter to everything I think should occur in order to dredge humanity from the dark and dismal state we inhabit.
I look at the state of government intervention (on all levels of society) in the lives of America's citizens and weep for the loss of liberty, justice, and the right to do whatever the fuck it is you choose that makes you happy as long as you are not restricting another's right to do the same for herself.
I look at the cookie cutter communities, the endless small towns that have had their souls ripped out to make way for identical chain stores, eateries, apothecaries and hotels, their traditions falling before the heavy evening hand of corporate cost cutting.
I weep for the millions of adult Americans who have truly bought into the lies spread by fast-food advertisers, who have tasted the food packed with sugars and fats that is designed to be addictive, and who have stuffed that food into their pie-holes until they need surgery to get thin again, dancing on the precipice of immunological disorders avoidable entirely through change in diet.
I think of the millions upon tens of millions of our countrymen who have so lost faith in the system (if they had any faith to begin with) that they can not even manage to get to the polls once in four years, one tenth of one day out of twelve hundred days, in order to participate in the democracy for which they seem so proud.
My blood boils when I see people calling themselves patriots who desecrate and violate our living Stars and Stripes, who wear depictions of our living standard and suffer it to be cut into pieces and fashioned into apparel by people living across the oceans who will and can never understand the extent to which their illegal and condescending products are contributing to the ruin of the fabric of our country.
But I am not mad. I am not angry. Deep down, I know that my opinion matters not, that my words and my voice are only as strong as the number who hear them, that I too shall die, and that my actions now, every day, every damn step of ever cold hard day, will decide if I am remembered or not, if I have made a difference or not.
To the people who don't vote - get off your fat lazy asses.
To those calling themselves patriots who desecrate our flag - stop, now.
To the fat capitalists profiting from the annihilation of our national character - go soak your heads.

My love to all, and to all a good night.
Ultima Ratio Regum
JPR

a dearth of differences

  Leave your house and drive three days and tell me what you see.

  If you are in America, you will see town upon town, city upon city, places resembling each other in so many ways as to approach homogeneity. The shops are the same, as are the drugstores. The houses are carbon-copies of one another; when seen from the air, the grids in which they are arranged are indistinguishable from the grids of the next town over. Sure, the people are likely to vary slightly in appearance and dialect, but will they vary to any significant degree? The people speak a common tongue, they watch the same shows, they bemoan in common tones the state of their lives, yet they seem to have lost the courage to break out of their self-imposed little prisons.

  Did we developed in this way because our parents came to age in the industrialization and normalization period of the post-war era? Did we reach this point because our parents' parents grew up poor and toothless during the Great Depression? Do we allow this homogeneity to spread because it is the path of least resistance, a path that nine times out of ten leeches the color from our lives, a path that leaves us with a weak and faltering sense of personal identity?

  Get in where you fit in, the saying goes, a saying that exemplifies the citizen's drive toward a supposedly perfect cookie-cutter life. Then again, if people are happy being clones, they should by all means homogenize, and shed any vestigial characteristics that might allow them to be picked out of a crowd.

  Conditions in our larger cities still appear good. Here, myriad tongues are spoken, the races mix, new culture blooms, the senses are stimulated. It is to these places that the young and the creative flee. Out in the sticks, however, out in the bumfuck boondocks, the distillation of our culture into a few scant and puny rituals progresses apace (these rituals include watching football, souping up cars, going to parades, and shopping). While these rituals seem desirable to those advanced in age, or to families seeking a quiet nest from which to grow, the erosion of the cultural diversity, nay, of our very cultural identity, this erosion bodes ill for our fine nation.

  I am not sure if the President's call to shop and the rapid cultural homogenization that followed in the wake of Nine-Eleven have anything in common, or if they even belong in this same piece, but here it stands, immutable and preserved for all time in the digital medium. I lost a large amount of respect for the people of this country when, shortly after 11SEP2001, then President Bush said, "I encourage you all to go shopping more," and an unanimous silence was heard around the country as citizens dusted off their credit cards dutifully. It is the job of our nation's leaders to inspire us to serve our country, to create programs that would allow regular people to do irregular things in an effort to make this a better place; it is not their job to call upon us to spend money simply for the sake of spending money.

  So, before you reach for the remote, before you browse the endless aisles without a clear purchase in mind, before you settle down to business as usual, ask yourself if there is something you could be doing to make a better place out of the little space call home, and out of the larger space you call country.

Spes Mea In Ratio Est - JPR