You heard it here first, cats and kittens. The Vermont Maple Syrup Mafia is suspected in an audacious heist that has hit rival Québec ‘familia’ right where it hurts, I’ll tell ya. In a gutsy midnight blitz Vermonti commandos made off with an estimated $30 million CDN worth of Maple syrup! That’s 15,000 oil drums of the sweet stuff, kids. A very sticky situation, indeed.
Uh, yeah. No kidding. This is just hilarious!
So, hey? Does anyone know where I could unload a little surplus Maple syrup that I — just coincidentally — happen to be in possession of? 😉 lol
Sending this one out to the good folks of New Orleans. Here we go again. ’Round and ’round. Spin it.
Seven years to the day, New Orleans is under water again and we’re not engaged in some cyclical insanity? This never should have happened. There should be infrastructure in place by now. And if it were inevitable then might it be a good time to consider abandoning ship? Moving to higher ground? I dunno?
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When the Levee Breaks is a blues song written and first recorded by husband and wife Kansas Joe McCoy and Memphis Minnie in 1929. The song is in reaction to the upheaval caused by the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 (Shucks, another flood? Who knew?). It was famously re-worked by English rock group Led Zeppelin as the last song on their fourth album, released in 1971. The lyrics in Led Zeppelin’s version were partially based on the original recording. Many other artists have also recorded versions of the song or played it live. While the Led Zeppelin version is still under copyright by the band, the original song by Kansas Joe McCoy and Memphis Minnie is currently in the public domain.
Demonstrations in Idlib. These are the people being slaughtered.
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I don’t think you’re going to like this but it needs saying…
Sorry. But I’m genuinely choked.
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I know I’m a ‘grown-up’ and I should be able to wrap my head around things such as war, political unrest, poverty, inequities…
Sigh…
But, I can’t. I won’t. I don’t understand. I refuse to accept that this is just the way things are, have to be.
I don’t have anything to say except: Why?
Why? Why? Why?
Huh?
*shrug*
Why?
Just when I thought Syria could not possibly get any worse? It has descended into complete, total, utter madness and chaos. I mean, you have got to be kidding me, right? What gives? This isn’t really going on is it? And no one is doing anything? Humanity is letting itself down again. Selling itself short. Again? Yeah. Just like we let down Rwanda and Roméo Dallaire. Darfur…
Do you see a pattern emerging?
We keep failing ourselves, each other.
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When I was teenager I worked at the mall. One of the shopkeepers was Syrian. He confided in me stories of the horrors of a dark, shadowy land in the clutches of oppression. He said that he missed it, the land. It was his home. But, he was very grateful to be free of the oppression. There was no mistaking the look in his eyes when he told me Syria was a very bad place. I believed him then. I believe him now. The evidence has become irrefutable. These things don’t just happen overnight. They simmer under the surface before they boil over. And this one had been stewing in a crockpot forever. I’m surprised it hasn’t just evaporated the heat has been on so long.
Yeah.
This has been going on for a long time, people. Decades. Fifty years. It just wasn’t newsworthy. I’m not blaming the ‘liberal’ media here, there are many other factors at play. It’s been blown wide-open now. Those in the ‘know’ saw this one coming and chose to look away. Chose to do nothing while they dazzled and distracted us with stories of WMD and the like. You know, the usual muddled hodgepodge of obfuscations that would keep us from the issues of the day, the glaring inequities with which we should really concern ourselves.
“If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don’t have to worry about answers.”
We’ve been asking the wrong questions. We’ve been fooled, are fools.
There’s cataclysmic suffering being endured on a grand scale. Grand. It’s not just Syria, either. It’s global. Universal. It’s in our towns and cities, too, this suffering. These great divides, chasms that prevent us from attaining utopia, Universal Bliss.
We keep telling each other we’re wrong. We keep arguing and warring over what? What?!? That one’s world view should take precedence over another’s? There’s room. There’s plenty of room. Room for us all. For all our perspectives.
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According to the Law of Physics no two people may physically occupy the exact same Space at the exact same Time. Every event that has been ever been witnessed in the entire history of Time and Space, the Universe, has as many versions as spectators present. Because to have an identical perspective would mean you would have to see it from identical physical locations with an identical set of ‘controls’ which we know is impossible. Right, cats and kittens? Even though we may share similar beliefs, ideas, opinions, etc. they are never exactly the same. We have arrived by different paths, means, circumstances. It’s all relative.
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So how can we all adhere to one doctrine, world view, then? We can’t. It’s not going to happen. We’ve got to let go. Stop trying to control one another. It’s not working. It’s not. You know it. You do. And if you don’t, please, take a step back and consider what I propose here today.
“The most important trip you may take in life is meeting someone halfway.”
I’ve been watching the world turn my whole life. At this juncture it would seem the species has done the same things over and over again engaged in a some cyclical insanity anticipating a different outcome? At what point do we say “enough” and try something different? Or, at least stop what we are doing until we figure out how to do it right?
How hard can it be?
Live and let live not Live and Let Die. I don’t wanna give the other fellow hell. I want to Love him, gift him the Heavens. That’s what I wanna do. Please, join me? Let’s gift each other the the Heavens, hey?
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September 11th is the 35th anniversary of the murder of South African anti-apartheid opponent Stephen Biko while in police custody. (But you only know about the other September 11, right? Right.) Pussy Riot has been charged wth hooliganism and detained in Russia? Really? A bunch of girls in a band? And Wikileaks? C’mon. They’re going to kill the messenger? The messenger? Really? Arab Springs across a continent and it’s the Syrian people who must endure the retribution?
Dissent is not disloyalty. Massacring civilians is.
Dissenters are being silenced with impunity and civilians are being massacred while the planet watches from the sidelines. The game, the locations, keep changing but it’s the same story Time and again. The very definition of insanity from where I stand.
In 2012? Tsk.
Nothing ever changes? I swear they’d revisit the Spanish Inquisition if they could and burn the lot of us at the stake — or, at least, me.
I’m discouraged. Disillusioned. I need a Revolution. WE need a Revolution. It has to be us. There’s no one else. It’s our problem. Our’s. Not someone else’s. If we don’t stand for the Syrians, the downtrodden, who will stand when they come for us?
Stand and be counted. Please? Please?
Please?
Now.
My ‘Dads’ will tell you how it is. Revolution. 1968. It’s still relevant today.
It’s gonna be alright, isn’t it? Please, tell me it will?
Or, might there be an underlying $inister human element at work in all of this — undermining our prospects for peace in the name of power and profit — of which we’re all blissfully unaware? Just sayin’ is all.
It suddenly struck me that that tiny pea, pretty and blue, was the Earth. I put up my thumb and shut one eye, and my thumb blotted out the planet Earth. I didn’t feel like a giant. I felt very, very small.
Dizzy yet? 