Apparitions

In the night, we'd run around in the streets
jacked up on life in hell.
Thunder love has struck us again;
we're apparitions of a sinful spell.

Elude the harsh reality of our lives,
we saw tears and tragedy.
We joined a pack of rebel angels at night
like apparitions of an infantry.

Let's get out of here.
I want you to come along.

In the sunless days of war,
I was a young pilot strewing death.
I see tears in frightened eyes;
put them to sleep 'til I was out of breath.

A silhouette of jealousy in the sky,
I took revenge on love nightly.
I'll take a hard look back someday
and deny we're apparitions of sympathy.

-- Sune Rose Wagner (Raveonettes) 2011

endless war profiteering

"[T]he insidious increase in power, and the influence over foreign policy that the military has, is very dangerous.  And maybe in the long run it's even more dangerous than a coup.  Because what happens is, the power shifts gradually, and gradually, and incrementally, over to the war-making side, to where you wake up one morning and all you're doing is making war.  And you have so many people, from Lockheed Martin to the Congress of the United States, to the Armed Forces, to you name it, who are making so much money off that war-making, that you can't stop it.  That's not a coup, but it is something worse in my view.  It is ultimately the destruction of our Republic."  
-- Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson (U.S Army, retired) 2012 interview

Minstrel in the Gallery

The minstrel in the gallery looked down upon the smiling faces.
He met the gazes -- observed the spaces between the old mens' cackle.
He brewed a song of love and hatred -- oblique suggestions -- and he waited.

Then he called the band down to the stage, and he looked at all the friends he'd made.
The minstrel in the gallery looked down on the rabbit-run.
And threw away his looking glass -- saw his face in everyone.

-- Ian Anderson / Martin Barre (Jethro Tull) 1975

The Problem of Big

So long as there are only two ways to get ahead -- the legitimate way, which leads to earned success, and the illegitimate way, which leads to unearned success or, if things go wrong, to jail -- the system of freedom and responsibility we call democratic capitalism works very well. As a rule, people who make good choices (who work hard, play by the rules, and live within their means) succeed, and people who make bad choices (who don’t work hard, don’t play by the rules, and live beyond their means) fail. This goes for institutions large and small, and for people powerful and weak. The rules for all of us start with the law and, ultimately, the U.S. Constitution.

One of the problems of Big (i.e.: an organization that has reached such a size that its continued existence and success is no longer contingent upon its quality of service) is that it creates a third option: neither obeying the rules nor breaking the rules, but changing the rules as you go. That’s what happens in cronyism, which is in effect legal cheating. [Big] institutions change the rules, so what would have been cheating, and what many people see as cheating, is actually blessed by the state. The transactions of crony capitalism -- campaign contributions on one side, policy changes on the other -- are all perfectly legal.... Big government and its Big partners rob individuals and our nation of freedom, opportunity, and prosperity.

-- Jim DeMint, former US Senator (SC), Falling in Love with America Again (2014) [quote edited]

Lazy Afternoon

It's a lazy afternoon
And the beetle bugs are zooming
And the tulip trees are blooming
And there's not another human in view
But us two

It's a lazy afternoon
And the farmer leaves his reaping
And the meadow cows are sleeping
And the speckled trout stop leaping upstream
As we dream

A far pink cloud hangs over the hill
Unfolding like a rose
If you hold my hand and sit real still
You can hear the grass as it grows

It's a hazy afternoon
And I know a place that's quiet
Except for daisies running riot
And there's no one passing by it to see
Come spend this lazy afternoon with me

-- John Latouche / Jerome Moross (1954)

shock the monkey

fox the fox.  rat on the rat
you can ape the ape -- i know about that
there is one thing you must be sure of -- i can't take any more
don't you monkey with the monkey
-- peter gabriel (1982)

Effigy

Where I stand, the winds have always blown
Dust to sand -- the way I've always gone

Where I've been, the dreams that I've been shown
To burn again, to leave it all alone

All these plans are left with all these bones
And all of this, I won't miss.  I didn't want it
I never changed, never could

I won't wait, won't see straight for another year on
Shout out in hate -- it's a police state, and I want a way out

I don't want an apology; I want an effigy

-- Kato / Roeser (Urge Overkill) 2011

Science of Imaginary Solutions

High as the moon, deep as an ocean
You fall apart, the pieces hit the ground
I pick up all your inventions
But your science keeps you from being so
-- Autolux (2010)

war is a racket

War is just a racket.  A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of people.  Only a small, inside group knows what it is about.  It is conducted for the benefit of the very few at the expense of the masses.

I believe in adequate defense at the coastline and nothing else.  If a nation comes over here to fight, then we’ll fight....  I wouldn’t go to war again as I have done to protect some lousy investment of the bankers.  There are only two things we should fight for.  One is the defense of our homes and the other is the Bill of Rights.  War for any other reason is simply a racket.

-- Major General Smedley Darlington Butler, USMC.  1933 speech

market speculation and waste

When the central banks turn the money markets and the capital markets into carry-trade driven casinos... the result is inherently a massive, dead-weight loss to economic output and national wealth.  That's because capital and other economic resources are drastically misallocated to pointless secondary market speculation and pure economic waste....

[A]bsent the inherent checks and balances of the free market, these central bank-enabled casinos do not simply boom and bust randomly;  they do so chronically and predictably.  With the ever-increasing confidence levels developed over the bubble cycles since the early 1990s, an entrenched class of permanent, professional speculators has learned to front-run the maneuvers of our monetary politburo almost perfectly.

-- David Stockman, The Daily Reckoning (April 16, 2014)

The Riddle

I'm the button that's been passed from hand to hand.
I'm the tidal wave in a sea of fear.
I'm the tornado from the fiery holocaust.
I'm the acid rain and the fallout dust....

I'm the supersonic jet with a nuclear payload.
I'm the conscience of the future world.
I'm the mushroom looming in the sky.
I'm the finger on the button, who but I.....

-- Space Ritual (2007)

taught myself how to grow old

Most of the time I got nothing to say
When I do it's nothing, and nobody's there to listen anyway
I know I'm probably better off this way
I just listen to the voices on the TV 'til I'm tired
My eyes grow heavy and I fade away

-- Ryan Adams (2007)