With all the biotechnological wizardry, I’da thunk that a Sleep Substitute would have been concocted by now.
Not to suggest ELIMINATION of Sleep, I wouldn’t DREAM of it. I have known some SERIOUS Sleepers in my time – people who really NEED sleep and/or people who really LOVE it. My night cap is off to them. The more, the merrier. Every person asleep is one less person on the road.
CLONING is getting out there at the edge of the envelope, dontcha think? Sleep being OPTIONAL doesn’t seem so farfetched next to CLONING. Wouldn’t it be grand to be able to go “around the clock” as whim or work command, without penalty of the many manifestations of Exhaustion?
Life strikes me as so very short, even if one lives to be 100. Ignoring extra-thumbprint footnotes to the contrary, Old Testament sez God deliberately and unambiguously set human lifespan at 120. I figgered ten years off for Substance Abuse, ten off for Bad Behavior.
I USED to think I’d live to be 100. I don’t anymore. I used to WANT to live to be 100. I don’t anymore. Isn’t that sad? In a big-picture, write-it-on-your-tombstone way, it is “of course” MY problem if I cannot turn lemons into lemonade but, to mix metaphors, there are some ACTUAL PEOPLE who purposefully pissed on my parade.
If CONSCIENCELESS ASSHOLES can screw me over and rip me off AT WILL – I mean, derail my LIFE with the blessing of Officialdom and without a backward glance – what must they be doing to people whose wherewithal is even less than mine?
Returning to Los Angeles, scene of many crimes, I am overcome by the hopelessness of Recovery. Pretty much exactly like when, in the first moments of my first arrival in Washington DC, the colossal Department of Agriculture literally inspired me to utter aloud, RESISTANCE IS HOPELESS.
Millions and millions of cars in orderly lines, “rushing” from stop light to stop light. Absent destination and schedule, ribbons of headlights and tail lights look sort of festive in the dark, even more so in the rain. But it is Optical Illusion, mercifully masking the LIVES OF QUIET DESPERATION immortalized by Henry David Thoreau.
There are old-school signs warning us of speed LIMITS, and high-tech digital signs flashing our EXACT speed. Who do Taxpayers think PAYS for all that? Speaking of untold sums “we” spend littering municipalities and countryside with signage, WHO GETS THE CONTRACTS? Do narcissistically thin Fat Cats in the SIGN INDUSTRY get rich off sign-craziness, or do “we” have an arrangement with “our” astonishingly large prison population?
If we have NOT harnessed the productivity of our EXTRAORDINARY prison population, WHY not? Lemme guess…violation of their Civil Rights?
If we do not ADDRESS the perversity of our having the largest prison population on earth, we’ll wanna remember that when/as WE are incarcerated, literally or figuratively. Only a very rich person or a very cowardly person thinks Death is the worst thing that can happen to a person.
Wanna know what will light a Prison Reform fire under politically correct asses? Sending White Collar Criminals to federal penitentiaries, and housing them with the “regular” prisoners. Half a dozen of them won’t have to be raped before the Silent Majority clamors for overhaul of our DRACONIAN prison system.
A few years back, I tuned in late on a radio report wherein the figure THREE PERCENT was applied to literacy among Convicts. I’d like to think, I certainly HOPE, it was a Convict sub-group of the general prison population that is so woefully uneducated but, even so, it is obviously safe to assume widespread illiteracy.
Pray tell, with how does an illiterate Ex-Con get work?
On the OTHER Recovery Circuit, the one whereon you CAN’T fudge numbers, it is commonly held that only an Alcoholic/Addict can get through to another Alcoholic/Addict. It stands to Reason that a similar simpatico exists among CRIMINALS.
Sentence Corrupt Officials and Executives to the same federal penitentiaries to which they so LIBERALLY condemn others. Oblige White Collar Criminals to teach T-shirt criminals to read and write and add and subtract Skip derivatives, to be sure, but familiarity with Fractions and Percents would be good. Skip legaleze, but competence with Employment and Housing applications would be good.
WHY are White Collar Criminals pampered in country club prisons? It is MORE reprehensible when people with SUPERIOR educations, means and opportunities resort to lying and thieving than when people with NO education, means or opportunities resort to lying and thieving. Without Need or Distress underpinning lying, only arrogance and greed, White Collar Crime is MORE offensive and LESS forgivable.
More resilient to rehabilitation, too, from where I sit.
It’s not like the Financial “Crisis” doesn’t have precedent in the Savings & Loan crisis.
CONSEQUENCES R TEACHERS. If we fail to persecute, prosecute and punish White Collar Criminals, then our bailout bonanza will have broadcast to the world and the next generation that CRIME PAYS IN AMERICA. The more elaborate the scheme, the bigger the payoff.
ADOLF HITLER: The great masses of the people … will more easily fall victims to a big lie than to a small one.
Ask yourself, if YOU were in a position to GET AWAY WITH IT, mightn’t YOU be willing to pay a half-billion dollar fine in order to pocket BILLIONS?
Power corrupts, absolute power absolutely corrupts – are we in agreement on that much? MONEY=POWER.
HOUSE OF MEDICI: Money to get power, power to protect money.
Illustrious Stanford University offered a chair to Donald Rumsfeld, the man who made TORTURE a household word. Hank the Bank Paulson teaches at heavyweight Johns Hopkins University. What do we SUPPOSE is coming down the pike?
Taxpayers PAY to destroy countries. RECONSTRUCTION of countries destroyed by American Tax Dollars constitutes BUSINESS & INVESTMENT OPPORTUNITIES FOR THE USUAL SUSPECTS.
Reap as ye sow. What goeth around cometh around. Do unto others as you’d have them do unto you. I go not far out on a limb in suggesting that only rocket science is Rocket Science.
WE ARE CRUISING FOR A BRUISING.
