Every medium wants your attention, to sell you stuff. “News”
has to make money for its Owners, so it’s another show, a diversion, usually
with propaganda. Mostly celebrities, train wrecks, and bad weather
wherever.
In reality, greedy folks are ripping out and burning every
last bit of “energy” as fast as humanly possible. Too many people, poison
everywhere, crazies with high caliber weapons, not enough food or good water,
wars and rumors of wars! Life on this tiny cosmic speck is not going well for
everyone.
So if you have food in your belly and a warm safe place to
sleep tonight, consider yourself very successful. Meanwhile, humans survived
for eons without any printed or electrically-powered diversion, so why worry about
“the news”? The real news is always
right in front of you.
At Cheap Wildlife Sanctuary, for example, springtime sprang as
it always does when the appropriate calendar pages are turned. Desperate beings
fight to survive in the wretched high desert!
Terrified mom abandoned her front porch nest when anyone
came near, unaware that most humans will run away if you simply try to peck
their eyes out. Baby seems angry.
Being free as a bird means you never worry about getting your
cleaning deposit back, you just leave your old crap behind.
Meanwhile, on a bow saw atop a back porch tool cabinet, this
brave bird-brain built a shoddy nest. She seldom panicked, even when I’d open the
cabinet and pieces of nest fell off.
I ventured no closer during this follow-up photo-op--she could easily have pecked my eyes, maybe not out, but enough to really hurt.
Almost erotic the way these two writhed, shamelessly
ecstatic before the universe and everybody.
Local bunnies routinely browse my inter--lawn. This brave
bunny proves my macho swagger is bogus.
Un-civilization has a dark side of course, which is where desert
rats live and move and have their being. Like my van’s engine compartment. I
decided that my modern traveling contraption was more important than the
well-being of a young family, and soon they were homeless. My own trip to the
dark side.
Vacuuming rat nest from an engine is an interface with wild
nature which not many folks appreciate. However, re-wiring rat-gnawed wire,
while contorting in a tight space, is good exercise, and in 106 degree heat,
builds character.
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| Smoke-rise Over Cornville |
More dark news on our doorstep when Oak Creek Canyon cooked.
Some nights the wind shifted, the smoke flowed down with the creek, and
Cornville looked like Los Angeles in the worse old days. Scientists say fire is
how our world will end.
In other science opinions, the universe is like a Lego set
of uncountable size and endless combinations, according to a woman with a
Bachelor(ette) of Science degree.
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| Camp Verde, Arizona |
For today’s propaganda, a new political “party” I just
invented: Interfaith Anarchism. “People or organizations of different religious
faiths or creeds,” “…advocating voluntary cooperation and free association of
individuals and groups in order to satisfy their needs.” (Definitions from an
old hard copy of Webster’s.)
An obituary for this edition, found blowing down the street:
And finally, from the health editor: some doctors might
suggest that you shut off your electronics and go play outside while it’s still
nice out.
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| Near Jerome, Arizona |
%$#@!
“Today the methods are different—now it’s not the threat of
force that ensures the media will present things within a framework that serves
the interests of the dominant institutions, the mechanisms today are much more
subtle. But nevertheless, there is a complex system of filters in the media and
educational institutions which ends up ensuring that dissident perspectives are
weeded out, or marginalized in one way or another. And the end result is in
fact quite similar: what are called opinions “on the left” and “on the right”
in the media represent only a limited spectrum of debate, which reflects the
range of needs of private power—but there’s essentially nothing beyond those
“acceptable” positions.”
Noam Chomsky, Understanding
Power, p. 13
