echo says:

the cruelty and stupidity of the species. with a few exceptions, but i don't get on with them, because in order for them to be as they are, nice, decent, and kind, they can't look at it full on. or i don't know how they do it. why don't you tell me moo? looking at animal planet, there are about 100 tigers left in the wild, and they are killing them for consumption (along with many other endangered species) because they believe vthey will take on the strength of the tiger by eating it. when they asked one woman involved in the trade how she would feel when there were no more tigers in the wild when her granddaughter is grown, she said indifferently, "she can see them in the zoo".

then looking at zeitgeist-the movie. now that's something else. the people who made it weren't very bright, they told half-truths and exaggerated and made connections that were a stretch. so they come off looking like nut-jobs. but they brought up some very scary possibilities. there is a lot to 9-11 that is dubious. and there are too many similarities with the whole situation to the manipulation of a population toward a war whose only purpose is the ultimate gain of those in power.

another reason i hold the species in such contempt is that they believe in politics. and they have no clue what goes on behind the scenes. they actually seem to think that these people running things are looking out for them. or at least consider them. you are only considered as something they consume, something that feeds them. you are cattle. to be corralled and controlled. here is a description of what i'm talking about, from joseph nye's book, soft power.

posted Jan 15

echo says:

"The basic concept of power is the ability to influence others to get them to do what you want. There are three major ways to do that: one is to threaten them with sticks; the second is to pay them with carrots; the third is to attract them or co-opt them, so that they want what you want. If you can get others to be attracted, to want what you want, it costs you much less in carrots and sticks."

he is a harvard professor, i saw him in a pbs program. he is frighteningly intelligent. i think people like him, as well as the people in power, really do see the masses as cattle. literally. the gulf between nye's intelligence and the average person's is about as great as between an average person's and a cow's. the same formula applies to those in power, though they are not as smart as nye, they feel superior in the same way. so they are no more concerned for your welfare than you are for a cow's. and some are less concerned.

perhaps it's a matter of looking at the basic nature of humanity. i feel that it is generally evil. i have been on the fence on this one for a long time and have only recently come to this conclusion. but it is firm. i feel there are some exceptions. now the people who are decent generally seem to feel that people are basically good with a few exceptions. and those viewpoints are incompatible.

posted Jan 15

echo says:

no need to key my car. i was just getting in my car and the door was open maybe a minute. and i'm in the suburbs here, which has it's own problems (a lot of uptight narcissistic assholes), but parking space isn't one of them. there must have been 50 empty spaces in that lot, at least. it would have been a difference of 5 seconds of walking for her to take a different spot. there was another car i really wanted to key, but my husband was there and didn't want me to (he had no moral or philosophical objection, he was concerned i would be caught). she parked in an end spot next to a curb. she parked up against my car so close i could not get in my car. on the other side she had about 3 or 4 feet. we waited for her and told her off, but again, just not satisfying. we did try to have her towed, but she came back too soon.

and i'm very glad to see you here.

posted Jan 8

moo says:

I wouldn't have keyed your car - I never have done that, but it wouldn't have stopped me wanting to! (not yours, you sound like you were in the right there).

Thanks - I'll be around but I'm working at the moment (can't you tell??)

posted Jan 8

echo says:

i was in a parking lot at albertson's, getting into my car with my groceries. there were plenty of spaces, starting two spaces down from me, and in other rows. but this bitch wanted the one next to me. as i said, i was getting into my car, so my door was open. i was struggling to swing my groceries across me to the passenger side, because the back door behind the driver doesn't unlock automagically. so i had one foot one the ground and was swinging the bags across when i hear this obnoxious horn. it was one of those things where you can't believe someone actually just did that, and you're stunned into a shocked silence at first. and that's not the capper. so i closed the door, because like i said, i was shocked and was just about to close it anyway. then after the woman parks (this 50ish bitch with that uptight suburban white sense of entitlement and arrogant superiority) and gets out, i roll my window down and say to her very reasonable, albeit somewhat bitchy, that she could have at least waited until my body had actually gotten into the car. not that i think that there is any excuse under any circumstance to demand that i move until i'm good and ready. so she says to me, very nastily, you were in the car and i did wait. again, can't believe what she just said, apart from it being a bald-faced lie, to come back at me as if i had done something wrong. so i sit again in stunned silence while she walks away. after she's halfway across the parking lot, i get out of my car and let loose a string of profanities at her at the top of my voice. and i'm loud in general. i told her the least she could have done was apologize instead of insisting that she was absolutely right. all she had to do was apologize. and that would have been the end of it. she kept walking without a backward glance.

to be continued...am i the only one who thinks 2000 characters is not quite enough sometimes?

posted Jan 7

echo says:

now, as usual in these circumstances, i found that yelling and cursing at her were less than satisfying. i want blood. and for the first time, i decided to take it. she doesn't have the most expensive car, but it's a late model, average car, primly kept. i walk along casually running the key along the length of the car. i turn to walk back to my car and look down and see the worst keying i've ever seen. i'm talking long and wide and deep. i get in my car and leave. end of story. although i do avoid that lot now in case she recognizes my car. TAWANDA! (it's a chick flick. the girls will get it hopefully)

posted Jan 7

echo says:

in my benevolence, i shall grant an exception and welcome him in all of his glorious malevolence. i'll even put a note on the page declaring his malevolence so no one mistakes the matter. i can turn malevolent myself. ask me about that car i keyed recently, and why she had it coming to her...

perhaps this will be my new thread: tales of revenge on the douchebags of this world.

posted Jan 7

echo says:

cities and ghosts

there is a city that is said to be haunted. as you walk through you see old concrete buildings, long abandoned. the houses are full of dust and cobwebs.
in a third story window a woman sits, looking far away into the distance. she cannot see you, being so close. it is said she cannot be persuaded to come down, remaining only to look at something which is no longer there.

posted Jan 6

annihilation [these hinges] says:

there is an artist in toronto who spends much of his time painting his black cityscapes downtown on queen st. amidst the crowds of people, cars, and looming towers.

though not my city... there is much within that i identify with

mike parsons - www.heyapathy.com

posted Jan 6

zerodoug says:

Hidden City 1

This city is situated by the sea, yet unlike most port cities it is surrounded inland by a vast scorching desert. The sea is always in a hurricane and is filled with dreadful man eating monsters.

The citizen of the city (there is only one inhabitant of this vast exotic city) has single handedly constructed immense walls around the city. Being the only inhabitant who never braves the hostile surroundings, the walls have been built with no doors.

Thus the inhabitant is trapped within his own invented city, which has become the only world he can remember as his days come to an end.

posted Jan 7

echo says:

i hope no one forgets this thread, this is one that takes thought, maybe months or more. i am very interested in people's cities. perhaps read the book, and mull over it a while. i'll always check back to it. if anyone is interested in reading more calvino, in three of my blogs i have transcribed a couple of his stories, and a bit of one essay.

and i think people sleep because they're afraid. when they seem awake and mobile, that's their greed animating them.

posted Jan 7

jess says:

there is a city where Things Are Not As They Appear. to visitors, to outsiders, the city seems to be a halfway-decayed place, full of dingy churches & even dingier bars, roads full of holes, fading facades of old breweries. but the inhabitants of this city know that there is magic lurking beneath the surface, things that appear mostly at night, and even more when it is foggy. the residents of the city drink often, they suck down bottles of cold & yeasty concoctions, because they also know that it is easier to see the magic when drunk. when intoxicated, the citizens of this Not-As-It-Appears city, walk around at night, or on fogdamp early mornings, and they see things - they see that the gutted factories are portals to other universes, they see that the octagonal brick tower of an apartment building is really a tower of ancient knowledge, they watch the statues on top of the engineering school stretch their bronze limbs & come alive. and as they head home, they blow kisses at the orangeblue skyline of downtown, thanking their city for holding such beauty, and for keeping it so well protected from the eyes of outsiders.

posted Apr 9